It can be done!
- 26 June 2010 13:1158059In the past, in the nineteenth century, serge led the men up Western Heights, and thousands of soldiers dug the moats, built the barracks and placed all the bricks along the cliff's walls within the deep trenches. They just did it! No traffic tunnel about a mile long would cost anything near that in terms of labour, as a tunnel doesn't need to be that deep from bottom to top and because modern machinery does most of the hard work, and there would be no need for barracks in a tunnel.
Again, serge led the men up Eastern Heights and they excavated miles of tunnel under the cliff's surface around the Castle, in the twentieth century!
We could certainly be able to make a tunnel under Townwall Street and Snargate Street in the twenty-first century, in Dover, instead of having a motorway running through our town and poisoning us. If we look at what Serge and his men did and we inherited, we would be making the project and recruiting a few regiments of workers, and just go and do it, may-be with some modern machinery that does all the hard work! The chalk is not too difficult to make a tunnel in, and Dover is situated on chalk ground, so it wouldn't be like building a tunnel under the Alps, which are made of granite and marble. If one day we get UKIP councillors in, may-be we will just go and do it!
Personally I do not believe that we should be spending 50 billion pounds on a nuclear sub project to aim missiles around the world, but invest our energy and savings in creative projects, the Union Jack Flying High.
Our Fair Lady's Light-tower Church standing overlooking Dover, the Garden and the Sea!
Today I joined the UKIP and intend to make the best of it.Chanters, Drums and Drones Potty Time http://youtu.be/99fMqpjnXYA
Rule Britannia!
Kent First http://youtu.be/04F3mAP3fV4 Keep banging on http://youtu.be/qYCU_SKmkGQ - 26 June 2010 13:4858062And who pays the bill for all this digging you are proposing?
- 26 June 2010 14:3758065Once difference... water table....Been nice knowing you :)
- 26 June 2010 14:4058067Priorities........True friends stab you in the front.
- 26 June 2010 15:2058072Alexander, listen to your Chairman!
- 26 June 2010 15:5258076Alexander's reference to the Western Heights fortifications immediately brings to mind William Cobbett's "Rural Rides," published in 1830. This is, of course, the publication in which Cobbett famously describes this immense sprawl of brick-lined ditches as "A parcel of holes made in a hill, to hide Englishmen from Frenchmen!"
I acquired a Penguin paperback recently for the section of "Rural Rides" covering "From Dover to the Wen." *
Cobbett travels from Folkestone to Dover along the turnpike-road through the valley and is mightily impressed by the the fact that it is home to eighteen square miles of corn - "It is a patch such as you very seldom see, and especially of corn so good as it is here."
On arrival in Dover, things start off well. "The town of Dover is like other sea-port towns; but really, much more clean, and with less blackguard people in it than I ever observed in any sea-port before. It is a most picturesque place, to be sure."
Unfortunately, he then ascends the Western Heights and there follows several pages of unbridled raging at the profligate extravagance he sees before him, all the stuff I expect you are all familiar with "I went to see, with my own eyes, something of the sort of means that had been made use of to squander away countless millions of money"......"either madness the most humiliating, or profligacy the most scandalous must have been at work here for years......."for a purpose so stupid, so senseless, so mad as this, and withal, so scandalously disgraceful, more brick and stone have been buried in this hill than would go to build a neat new cottage for every labouring man in the counties of Kent and of Sussex".......and so on and so on.
After further bouts of righteous indignation about borough-mongers, parsons, et al, he ends "I must get from this Dover, as fast as I can."
As a consolation, adjoining towns do not get off lightly either....."Deal is a most villainous place. It is full of filthy-looking people. Great desolation of abomination has been going on here"......."thence upon a beautiful road to Sandwich, which is a Rotten Borough. Rotteness, putridity is excellent for land, but bad for Boroughs. This place, which is as villainous a hole as one would wish to see, is surrounded by some of the finest land in the world."
* The Great Wen is a disparaging nickname for London. The term was coined in the 1820s by William Cobbett, the radical pamphleteer and champion of rural England. Cobbett saw the rapidly growing city as a pathological swelling on the face of the nation. The term is quoted in his 1830 work Rural Rides: ('But, what is to be the fate of the great wen of all? The monster, called, by the silly coxcombs of the press, "the metropolis of the empire?"').
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Wen - 26 June 2010 18:4258100Who was Serge ? Can't we bring him back ?
- 26 June 2010 19:3558103Serge? Not material Handyman!
- 26 June 2010 19:5058104"Deal is a most villainous place. It is full of filthy-looking people. Great desolation of abomination has been going on here".
A touch harsh? - 26 June 2010 19:5458106serge may have been recalled to mother russia by the tsar.
- 26 June 2010 22:2658124Suspect no chance of bringing Serge back...
- 28 June 2010 13:2358269Ed, well, I agree with the idea that the Moats are not nice, nor was I really trying to suggest lengthening them. The topic is, if people could get massive projects done then on that scale, how come we can't get a tunnel under Townwall and Snargate Streets now?
Tony, in modern tunnel technology, digging is not so common as using machinery that does most of the hard work!
Paul, couldn'g grasp the meaning, what is a water-table? Are you referring to the level of water under the ground's surface? If so, a good point, but I think it wouldn't be a problem technically.Chanters, Drums and Drones Potty Time http://youtu.be/99fMqpjnXYA
Rule Britannia!
Kent First http://youtu.be/04F3mAP3fV4 Keep banging on http://youtu.be/qYCU_SKmkGQ - 28 June 2010 13:2558270Yes that is what the water table is, it is also running through the form roman harbour so the water is not that far down there....!Been nice knowing you :)
- 28 June 2010 13:3258272The best thing, should the tunnel be beneath the water level, is to excavate a deeper ditch (below the tunel) to collect the water, and to regularly pump it out in the Dour or into a drain system.Chanters, Drums and Drones Potty Time http://youtu.be/99fMqpjnXYA
Rule Britannia!
Kent First http://youtu.be/04F3mAP3fV4 Keep banging on http://youtu.be/qYCU_SKmkGQ - 28 June 2010 13:3858273Is it just me, or this completely bonkers?
- 28 June 2010 13:4158276Just you, Sid, I assume!
Chanters, Drums and Drones Potty Time http://youtu.be/99fMqpjnXYA
Rule Britannia!
Kent First http://youtu.be/04F3mAP3fV4 Keep banging on http://youtu.be/qYCU_SKmkGQ - 28 June 2010 13:4558279You may be right Alexander!
- 28 June 2010 14:0358284It's as potty as sending Marmite soldiers to fight a war
- 28 June 2010 15:5658290Paul Scotchie, coming back to your point of the water-table, could it be that the hole which appeared on the promenade - the one which they are still repairing - was actually caused through the water level under the ground that could not pass through the stone-work into the see (the level of the promenade in that area being higher than the beach) rather than by sea-water seeping in? It could be a theory I think.
Tony: the idea of a (covered) ditch below a tunnel or near it (but still lower than the ground of the tunnel) to collect underground water would be the equivalent to a drainage system underneath the streets of a town. The water collects in the lowest level, as long as there is a drainage system to collect it! In the case of a tunnel under Townwall and Snargate Streets, the collecting drainage system would be on the land-side of the tunnel, from where the underground water would come. As for soldiers, I believe that we should have voluntary regiments trained in discipline and that receive good training in work-skills, and who could be employed in usefule projects, especially considering that in our bankrupt Country so many projects are being written off for lack of money! if this is what we achieve in a Country free of war and of famine, then what on Earth would we achieve if we had a war or some bad drought?
That is why I am part of the UKIP now! I believe in working and carrying out useful projects, consulting the people and encouraging comments, such as Pauls, which was a good point!Chanters, Drums and Drones Potty Time http://youtu.be/99fMqpjnXYA
Rule Britannia!
Kent First http://youtu.be/04F3mAP3fV4 Keep banging on http://youtu.be/qYCU_SKmkGQ - 28 June 2010 15:5958291If I were a foreign soldier subjected to the Marmite torture, I'd surrender quicker than any Frenchie!True friends stab you in the front.
