Stonehenge

Some weeks after the meeting advertised, we have got around to looking at the brochure sent to us about the National Trust AGM in October.

There were two members' resolutions on the card, one about the iniquity of foxhunting (or even of pretending to hunt foxes or anything else) on National Trust land and one about the dreadful proposals of HMG regarding Stonehenge.

Not particularly interested in foxhunting, beyond finding the opponents of foxhunting rather tiresome. With the second thought being that if a lot of troublesome people have been corralled into fox hunting agitation, that is a lot better than their being somewhere else. Perhaps agitating for squatters rights in leafy Epsom.

But Stonehenge did catch my eye. It seems that some NT members are getting into a lather about this, despite plans to spend £1.5 billion or so on a tunnel. Which seemed to me to be an awful lot of money to spend on a pile of old stones which one is not even allowed to approach these days, let alone touch or climb on.

I remember being similarly unenthusiastic about the fine new tunnel at Hindhead, directed at a similar purpose. See references 2 and 3. Or ask for 'hindhead' if you want the full story.

But how much is £1.5 billion, apart from being a big number? So off to Bing to inquire about national statistics. The annual figure for national product, leaving aside statistical niceties seems to be around £2,000 billion, of which around £800 billion is government spending. I might say in passing, that getting this second figure out of the ONS website was challenging as I got completely lost in a maze of complicated and EU flavoured tabulations. The Budget Report from the Treasury was a lot more accessible - but then, it was intended for boozy, lechy and bottom-pinching MPs rather than solemn & serious civil servants.

From which I take away the fact that £1 billion on Stonehenge is a very small fraction of the total. But how do you decide whether it is a fair and sensible fraction? A matter to which the Treasury devotes a lot of high powered procedures and manpower. While I cannot muster the energy to inquire further.

I therefore commend the proposal at reference 1 to the Trust.

PS: the good news is that the candidates for election to the Trust board did look like a reasonable mix, twenty or so people from a good range of backgrounds standing for five or so places.

Reference 1: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2016/02/a-suggestion-for-trustees.html.

Reference 2: http://pumpkinstrokemarrow.blogspot.co.uk/search?q=razzmatazz.

Reference 3: http://pumpkinstrokemarrow.blogspot.co.uk/search?q=battleship+conventional.