Historians have too much power

WHEN I cruised the tidal Thames I was somewhat taken by that great engineering project of the new sewage tunnel that is being built under it, writes Jamie Hawkins.

At a cost of five billions it is some project, but will save sewage finishing up in the Thames as it does now, and quite obvious to us boating on the river.

Utterley ridiculous

But what struck me as utterly ridiculous was that historians discovered three rotten timbers stuck up out of the mud that they told was part of an ancient fish catching system, so the three timbers had to be preserved, though of course nobody had cared about them for centuries and nobody will care about them in the future.

But the upshot was that part of the expensive work had to be diverted around the three timbers at a cost of the hell of a lot of money but also a week's delay on the contract.

It seems to me that those concerned with past history and with nature have far too much power these days being able to cause such expensive problems.