Kent
We frequently hear about the rape of the countryside, and ‘rape is indeed an appropriate word. For in the last forty years the landscapes of England have fallen victim to the unwanted attentions of planners, developers and farmers to a degree that is awesome to contemplate. The Council for the Protection of Rural England notes that, since the war, an area of unspoilt countryside the size of Berkshire, Bedfordshire, Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire has disappeared. This is more than shaming in a country that supposedly prides itself on its heritage. England is indeed a ravished woman, and further rape is to be committed here, in the country’s ‘garden’. Kent stands now in real danger of becoming the scrap heap of the nation with the unwanted and unnecessary Channel Tunnel threatening to despoil vast areas of outstanding natural beauty. This loathsome construction, whose principal advantage at this stage appears to be that it will allow travellers to drive on to a train rather than a ferry and permit them an extra hour or two on the Continent of Europe, threatens to blight the landscape around Folkestone in such a way as to render it unrecognisable. It will remain as a testament to the folly of a politician so remote from the wishes of those she purports to serve that she is prepared to ignore unprecedented local opposition in her determination to ride roughshod over people whose lives will be disrupted and diminished long after she has retired to Dulwich. Politicians of all complexions come and go. The havoc that they wreak lives after them.
This special edition of FROGMORE PAPERS, issued to co-incide with the Kent Literature Festival, celebrates a county that is and has been. If there is to be a county to celebrate in a hundred years’ time it is vital that every concerned individual should do something. Now.
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magazine list
- Features
- zines
- 10th Muse
- 14
- Acumen
- Agenda
- Ambit
- Angel Exhaust
- ARTEMISpoetry
- Atlas
- Blithe Spirit
- Borderlines
- Brando's hat
- Brittle Star
- Candelabrum
- Cannon's Mouth, The
- Chroma
- Coffee House, The
- Dream Catcher
- Equinox
- Erbacce
- Fabric
- Fire
- Floating Bear, The
- French Literary Review, The
- Frogmore Papers, The
- Global Tapestry
- Grosseteste Review
- Homeless Diamonds
- Interpreter's House, The
- Iota
- Journal, The
- Lamport Court
- London Magazine, The
- Magma
- Matchbox
- Matter
- Modern Poetry in Translation
- Monkey Kettle
- Moodswing
- Neon Highway
- New Welsh Review
- North, The
- Oasis
- Obsessed with pipework
- Orbis
- Oxford Poetry
- Painted, spoken
- Paper, The
- Pen Pusher Magazine
- Poetry Cornwall
- Poetry London
- Poetry London (1951)
- Poetry Nation
- Poetry Review, The
- Poetry Salzburg Review
- Poetry Scotland
- Poetry Wales
- Private Tutor
- Purple Patch
- Quarto
- Rain Dog
- Reach Poetry
- Review, The
- Rialto, The
- Second Aeon
- Seventh Quarry, The
- Shearsman
- Smiths Knoll
- Smoke
- South
- Staple
- Strange Faeces
- Tabla Book of New Verse, The
- Thumbscrew
- Tolling Elves
- Ugly Tree, The
- Weyfarers
- Wolf, The
- Yellow Crane, The