NEW DEFINITION

Stonehenge Update

.....or rather Downdate. For this was the master plan for safeguarding Stonehenge`s future as a World Heritage Site. Figures revealed yesterday showed that a staggering £30million has been spent/squandered/wasted (delete as appropriate) in the past decade on preparatory work for the scheme which was abandoned last month by HM Gov.

£16million went on buying a chunk of land on the outskirts of Amesbury which would have been the site of a new visitor centre. As well as buying the land, lots of work was carried out by the usual suspects involved in any `development` - surveyors, engineers, quantity surveyors, architects - all of whose work has proved abortive.

Another £23million has gone on preparatory work, consultation after consultation and inquiry after inquiry for the proposed tunnel under the busy A303 to leave the ancient monument in peace away from all the intrusion of traffic. It ain`t gonna happen! You can almost feel the stones groaning in despair.

Now it seems, there is to be a thorough review of proposals which will doubtless involve yet more expense but I`m not holding my breath that anything will actually happen in my lifetime. As well as the outrage I feel as a taxpayer and someone who is embarrassed every time I make a pit stop at Stonehenge, I`m sure UNESCO - the guardians of World Heritage Sites - will have something to say about this shambles, as will the good folk of Winterbourne Stoke, whose hopes for a by-pass have been dashed yet again. They could easily have had their by-pass with the money that has been wasted so far.

The whole episode kind of brings a new definition of the word `disgrace.`