Here's a cutting from the Salisbury Journal nine years ago:
The Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg was at Stonehenge this morning to announce the long awaited £1.1billion tunnel under Stonehenge as part of one of the biggest road building plans in living memory. ...
Mr Clegg said: “The A303 as anyone who lives in the South West knows is a very important route and it is blighted by bottlenecks.
“The traffic slows to a walk past the stones and we do not just want to rebalance the books we want to rebalance the British economy and that means linking different parts of the country.
“The money is not only there but we are going to legislate on it and it will become part of law.”
But not everyone was pleased with the announcement:
Despite the fact it was announced by the leader of the Liberal Democrats the local party remain sceptical about the project and have called for a local referendum something that was ruled out by Mr Clegg.
The parliamentary candidate Reeten Banerji said: “We are not keen that the tunnel plan is being linked with improvements to the whole A303.
“We would like the money to be used for road improvements all the way from Somerset to Amesbury. We suspect that linking the money is going to be a reason to kick the entire project into the long grass.
“The local Liberal Democrats are going to stand up to the national party and would like to see the tunnel option on a local referendum with other alternatives.”
As the person who tweeted this cutting pointed out, there was little sign of gratitude for Clegg's announcement among West Country voters at the following year's general election.
Was Clegg a time traveller?
ReplyDeleteSorry, that should have read "2104 BC".
ReplyDeleteClegg jumped in on one of England's enduring transport problems: links are good north to south, especially if they pass through London; west to east is always a tricky journey, in spite of well intentioned creations like the M62.
ReplyDelete