I agree it's best to be in possession of all the facts, like if you were sitting in the court.

But, 99.9% of people who hear about the outcome of the case weren't in that courtroom. All they heard reported was
- owner of land allows bulldozer to destroy irreplaceable prehistoric monument (whether deliberately, negligently, ignorantly, carelessly, or whatever)
- owner of land gets fined relatively paltry amount
- world keeps turning (without irreplaceable prehistoric monument)

Don't you have to consider the example it sets to other people who have prehistoric monuments on their land, who might find them inconvenient, and might then weigh up the cost of paying the fine for the convenience of making it easier to plough the field (or whatever reason one might have)?

Big fine = deterrent
Relatively small fine = well maybe it's worth the hassle

The law, sir, is an ass (at least it can and often is!). You may have heard the news assailing us all day that criminals, living in multi-million pound properties and driving big fat cars, can and do claim legal aid – aid (our money) which is never paid back! Pha!

The Priddy fella certainly did want the place ‘flattened’ or, in his words, ‘tidied up’. But let’s not split semantic hairs over that one. Whether or not he’s ‘paying enough’ is, to my simple mind, a very easy question to answer. Whatever the cost is going to be to restore the henge to it’s former state is what he should be paying – no ifs buts or maybes, and if it requires him to sell a portion (or all) of his land to raise the amount so be it.

I get totally pissed off with the namby-pambies of the world who jump to the defence of those who wreck our heritage and/or facets of our society (politicians, incompetent police officers, social workers, fools in the BBC, the military etc, etc etc) and those (as in this case) who are virtually let off the hook and others who are allowed to ‘resign’ from their positions with a fat payoff and an equally fat pension. Until such people are personally held responsible for their actions and forced to pay whatever needs to be paid nothing will ever improve - nothing.

Angry? You bet! Grrrr... doesn’t do it justice.