A Road By Any Other Name
‘A CHANGE of name can hide a multitude of sins.
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| Beware! Composting ahead |
Would Shirley Crabtree have made it in the rough and tumble world of professional wrestling had he not acquired the soubriquet Big Daddy?
Does ‘My name is Maurice Micklewhite’ have the same ring to it as ‘My name is Michael Caine’?
Would people have voted for Tony Blair in their droves in 1997 and again in 2001 had they known that he is in fact RX-1491, a rogue mechanoid developed in the United States during the Vietnam War?
It is a lesson that RX-1491 and his Government have learnt well, and the Times has news that it is not just government departments and public institutions that are being repackaged in this way.
The Government is apparently resurrecting road building schemes that it has already rejected as being too damaging to the environment, renaming them and putting them back on the agenda.
‘Countryside campaigners celebrated in 2001 when Stephen Byers, then the Transport Secretary, rejected the Hastings western bypass because it would cut through areas of ‘designated high environmental value’,’ the Times reports.
‘Now, a key section of the bypass is being promoted again by East Sussex County Council as the ‘Bexhill to Hastings link road’.’
The A36 Salisbury bypass is also back on the agenda after being rejected by the Government in 1997 because it would have crossed water meadows painted by Constable.
It has now been granted provisional funding under the new name, Harnham relief road and Brunel link.
And a new version of the ‘Acle straight’ dual carriageway in Norfolk is being considered by the Highways Agency after being rejected in 1996 because of the adverse impact on the Broads National Park.
It is a tactic that has no limits. If environmental campaigners start complaining that it will harm the Broads National Park, just rename the park.
And if they still complain, stop calling it a road and refer to it as a nature trail instead.’
Posted: 3rd, March 2004 | In: Broadsheets Comment | TrackBack | Permalink
