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With the ever-increasing volume of traffic it may be inevitable that your Council spends
time on trying to deal with assorted road problems.
Of course you must never let common sense come into these things, but there must be
something seriously wrong when chicanes are installed, and then removed, despite it
being known the concept was unsatisfactory before the installation, sign posts get put up, and then it is decided that the west entrance to the Ministry of Defence Training Area is dangerous, so we continue to admire two very fine posts with no sign on them, and cycle tracks are painted in, and then painted out, on obviously dangerous locations.
I gather a friendly resident of Llanvair has filled in some potholes, and is sending a bill to the Monmouthshire County Council for the cost, which sounds logical, as if I do not cut a roadside hedge the Council does it, and then sends me the bill. If the Council does not fulfil its duty to maintain the roads then it seems fair that they should pay the friendly fellow who does so. County Councillor Graham Down who attends our meetings is still firing paper missiles at the traffic department, to get the road sorted where the Crick housing development meets the highway, as well as resolving the drainage problem in Crick. I see in a recent judgement that if a drain will not cope with a freak flood, and causes damage then the owner of the drain remains responsible. This might resolve the curious phenomena of a "once in a hundred years storm" occurring once every five years, which if I was a lawyer would be described as a "difficulty". On your behalf I have now read the white paper "Our Countryside; The Future. A Fair Deal for Rural England" which you may think is a bit off-target as we are not in England, but for your information any legislation passed by the National Assembly is secondary legislation to that passed in London, which in turn has to be integrated with European law.
One item on this "wish list" white paper is that villages should have a master plan, and
also a plan for wildlife conservation. This we need to do in Caerwent, as we have to
locate a bus stop, and obviously want to make sure that it fits into the grand plan, with the
school site being in use for a visitor centre, maybe a pedestrian area, a new post office,
with Internet cafe and bank and whatever else needs including. Moving a big 16 inch
naval gun here such as used the products of the Royal Naval Propellant Factory (now the Ministry of Defence Training Area) which was in production here until 1967 might bring in more visitors.
Orchestrating that lot is probably more difficult than the rest of the project put together.
Trewen should be getting play equipment fairly soon, principally funded by Llanvair Village Hall Fund, which shows that if cash is available something can be achieved. Also we appear to be doing the right thing by setting up a this web-site (www.CaerwentCom.com) as the White Paper wants each community to be Internet linked. 'Cirque Energy', being an energetic bunch of fellows, are going to explore for oil and gas round here, and seem to be doing the same geophysical survey as was done a few years ago, so if you meet a curious looking lorry blocking the road, it is only creating shock waves to bounce off rocks half a mile underground, just as happened a few years ago on the same roads, presumably frightening the same rock formations. Farmers are now being offered a deal to give up pig farming, and as we usually follow the Americans in farm policies I thought you might be interested in the following 1993 letter from an American citizen to the President.
Dear President Clinton, At the time of writing this, the rain has stopped, the wind is in the north and so maybe we are going to get some proper winter, and so maybe your 2001 will a better one than 2000. At least I hope so.
Richard Micklethwait |
 Click the DETR logo to read the Government White Paper |