Save Siena From More Jobs And More Money
“JUNIOR jet set fight to halt Tuscan hordes,” says the Times’ headline.
“Young British rich lead campaign against planned ‘holidaymaker’ airport at Siena.”
There’s a demonstration on the steps of the National Gallery. Not because it’s handy for the club and Hugo has a house nearby for post-protest restoratives but because the Italian bank, Monte dei Paschi di Siena, sponsoring an exhibition of Renaissance art from Siena at the gallery, just happens to be one of the new airport’s backers.
Says the Times: “Most of the protest group are in their late teens or early twenties. Many can recall idyllic summers spent in Tuscany at the villas of their parents or grandparents.”
Their number features: Fred Lambton, grandson of Lord Lambton, “the former Tory cabinet minister who lived out his life in Tuscany after resigning from the Heath government over a call-girl scandal”.
Rose Hanbury (model) and Zita Lloyd (model); Joseph Getty, Sir Paul Getty’s grandson; George Frost, Sir David Frost’s boy; Rollo Weeks (actor brother to Honeysuckle Weeks and Perdita Weeks, also actresses - his name means ‘famous wolf’); Arthur Jeffes, a polar explorer; Marissa Montgomery, founder of the Pussy Glamore lingerie range,;Guinnesses, “Heskeths” (a Germanic tribe?); and socialites.
They are the Save Siena group.
Says Lambton: “I spent a lot of time out there when my grandfather was alive and I have seen what the airport would do. The site is completely surrounded by a national park and has a delicate ecosystem. Building an international airport would be disastrous on so many levels.”
Notes the paper: “Lambton, who has previously fought campaigns against the power of supermarkets and the expansion of Heathrow”.
Thank goodness, say we, that the privileged have taken the time to warn us of the dangers of cheap flights, cheap food and more jobs. If only Zac Goldsmith had been there…
Pic: Siena’s Il Palio horse race in full tally ho!
Posted: 13th, January 2008 | In: Broadsheets, Global Warming Comments (5) | Follow the Comments on our RSS feed: RSS 2.0 | TrackBack | Permalink
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January 21st, 2008 at 9:04 pm
The key infrastructure needed in Siena is completing of the rail link to Florence and the world beyond. It’s still single track in parts, and the journey to Florence is 2 hours. If rail connections to Florence and Pisa airports were reasonable, there would be no call for a third airport in Tuscany.
January 15th, 2008 at 2:53 pm
The majority of the oposition is from ordinary people in Siena and the surrounding countryside, around 5000 local people attended a protest against the airport in Siena last month.
January 14th, 2008 at 5:12 pm
I know this part of Italy very well and have stayed very near the proposed airport sight many times. I am not part of this so called privaleged group but I agree absolutely that the effects of having an airport in this very rural part of Tuscany just outside Siena would be disasterous.
It would ruin Siena which is still somehow off the track but easy to get to - you can fly to Piza and take the train directly from the airport or fly to Florence.
The quiet city and the surrounding quiet countrside would become a noisy and overcrowded and take away any of the reasons why you would want to visit the area.
I am amazed that the Sienese have not come out in force against this. Do they really want their city invaded any more than it already is and have its location completey ruined by planes, more cars and modern industrialization?
January 14th, 2008 at 8:20 am
It is a tourist region. The English in the protest are all tourists. And they do not want other tourists in their holiday resort. Any italians at the protest? Any Italians born and bred in Siena? These protestors see Siena as an exclusive theme park…
January 13th, 2008 at 10:08 pm
I think the article is misguided. The point isn’t that the people are NIMBY’s or who was there. The point is that people were trying to raise some international awareness for a cause that could prove damaging to the environment, but, more importantly, the region where they propose to build this airport.