Luddite Plague
January 17th, 1996
A letter to the Daily Telegraph which was published on 17th January 1996.
Charles Clover’s article (Jan. 15th) and Henry Porter’s Notebook (Jan. 16th) on the Newbury bypass take the biscuit for precious environmentalism. The third battle of Newbury certainly reflects a deepening public disquiet, as Charles Clover puts it, but in the opposite sense to the one he implies.
Over a period of 40 years the vehicle population has increased by about 10 times while the road network has expanded by about 10 per cent. It is absurd to imply in the light of these numbers that the Transport Department is roads-mad.
The A34 is the main road between the large populations in and around the ports of Southampton and Portsmouth and the industrial Midlands and the North-west, the two most important regions of the country for making the goods which provide environmentalists with the standard of living they take for granted.
Over the past 20 years or so, the DoT has laboriously constructed a dual carriageway for most of the A34’s length. At the moment, on the south side of Newbury, A34 traffic debouches into a tarmac bridleway, not much different from that which existed at the time of the Domesday survey. In Newbury itself the traffic inflicts massive danger and discomfort on thousands of people, who long for the relief the bypass will bring.
No other country on earth allows itself to be tormented by a Luddite band of protesters having a jolly time while being paid by the taxpayer. We no longer have unemployment benefit but a job seeker’s allowance. You can’t seek a job up a tree. The sooner the allowances are withdrawn from those manifestly not seeking gainful employment, the sooner sanity will return to a small part of our public affairs.