Defacing Stonehenge is not

an act of "environmental activism". It is an act of vandalism and it needs to be treated as such. 

I do not care in the least if the damage is only "temporary" and "no harm has occurred". Stonehenge is not "just some stones stuck in the ground". It is something far more important than that. 

Those who did it are no better than the Taliban destroying the Buddha statues at Bamiyan or Rio Tinto destroying the acknowledged site at Juukan Gorge. Indeed they are, if anything, more at fault. They are more at fault because they have done so fully intending to do harm in order to get publicity. 

The problem is that the cause they claim to support has already been given a great deal of publicity. It is already supported by a majority and there are other ways of taking action which will harm nothing and still have an impact.  

I would very much like to see those responsible incarcerated for a lengthy period. They won't be. The court will give them a slap on the wrist and tell them not to do it again.

The first time I went to university in England I was taken to Stonehenge by a Cambridge academic and his wife. They both knew a great deal about the site.  We were able to go right in, almost up to the stones themselves. This was long before it had become the tourist site it is now. This was a site in a landscape. It was not surrounded by fences and walkways and notices.

The wonderful couple who took me explained it all to me. I have forgotten the details of course. I don't think that really matters because they gave me a sense of the knowledge those who built it had. They gave me a sense of the planning that must have gone in and the enormous amount of work it must have taken to bring it all together. 

They left me alone for a bit so that I could take it all in alone. There was nobody else around at the time. I could stand there in the middle of it all and just try to understand a little of what it represented. It is difficult to put into words how difficult that was. I was standing there in the middle of something built almost five thousand years before I was born. It was still there. It was, despite the motorway in the distance, quiet and peaceful. It had been of huge significance to those who built it.

It should still be of huge significance today. I cannot help wondering how many people, people who think at all, have gone past it and thought, "If they could do it then - then I can I do it now."  Stonehenge is not just an ancient site. It should be a reminder of what we can do now and in the future. Defacing it to "protest" is not only an act of vandalism. It is an attempt to destroy rather than look after our future.