£25 million Visitors Centre for Stonehenge

Among the cuts in proposed public expenditure yesterday was the new £25 million Visitors Centre for Stonehenge. On balance I am glad this project is not going ahead. There has been unease for some time at the quasi-political manipulation of historical "interpretation", particularly related to the pre-historic, Roman and early medieval periods (ie the scandal of Francis Pryor's Britain AD: England and the Anglo-Saxons – an extremely controversial television series that seems to have been publicly funded via a convoluted series of "diversity" front-companies). Probably if the Stonehenge Visitors Centre had gone ahead the "interpretation" would have told us that it was constructed by hard-working immigrants from Eastern Europe because most of the local population was on benefits and too lazy to get a job, and that therefore the Labour policy on unrestricted immigration was entirely justified. One of the most unforgivable aspects of the previous government was their perversion of science. Not just archaeological science, but statistical science, scientific advice on drugs policy etc. This interference was seldom done overtly, but via a series of official "nudges" that in an oppressive political climate were impossible to ignore.