10th January 2012, 08:45 PM
As a 'heritage professional', my thoughts are: what are the impacts? Can they be mitigated (another can of worms)? If not, can the 'loss of significance' be justified in terms of benefits to other aspects of the common welfare (in this case: climate change, reduction in car emissions, etc.). EIA should sort this out, in theory. I don't know how much work has been done already, but at least some screening/scoping work identifying 'show-stoppers' because there has been reference made in the press to alterations to the route on gronds of Listed buildings. That implies that the experts involved have decided that it can be done acceptably, so now the question is to work out how. I have no problem with this and am surprised at Kev that you seem to.
As a tax payer, my thoughts are: what economic benefit will this actually bring for that enormous outlay? Could we use our money more wisely? I applaud any attempt to reduce our national carbon footprint or rebalance the geographic economic disparity inb this country; however, I am yet to be convinced that this is a good use of our money.
On another point touched on by earlier posters, I turned pro in archaeology when a Conservative government was busy spending our way out of recession by building roads. I was pretty dismayed when the first thing Gideon did was cancel ?1.2 billion of road projects. Perhaps someone has recently slipped him a book abpout Kenynesian economics.
As a tax payer, my thoughts are: what economic benefit will this actually bring for that enormous outlay? Could we use our money more wisely? I applaud any attempt to reduce our national carbon footprint or rebalance the geographic economic disparity inb this country; however, I am yet to be convinced that this is a good use of our money.
On another point touched on by earlier posters, I turned pro in archaeology when a Conservative government was busy spending our way out of recession by building roads. I was pretty dismayed when the first thing Gideon did was cancel ?1.2 billion of road projects. Perhaps someone has recently slipped him a book abpout Kenynesian economics.