Hot TOPICS 
Time for Action on A36 is NOW
(June 29, 2012)The A36 three-strong-death toll to one of the smallest communities in Wiltshire so far this year leads to a call 'to pull out all the stops' as a disastrous breakdown between Westminster and locals who look to their MP and local councillors has had tragic consequences.
"The two decades of 'complete indecision' over who should be responsible for the safety of local residents in their cars, commercial drivers, British and foreign tourists, and a tragically locally mourned young cyclist now has to be nailed to a mast," claims Paul Macdonald. Paul Macdonald and Steve Dancey have campaigned for nearly three decades to complete the life saving improvements to the roads through and around their home town of Warminster and local villages including the parishes of Heytesbury, (Imber). and Knook. "We both agreed when I was elected as a district councillor in 1991 that his two years local roads life saving work as a county councillor was an imperative," adds Paul. "This 21-year old cock-up and fatal let down coincides with our MP first being elected. We were lowly councillors but should now all work together with a lot of others to get this sorted " Government indecision led to a hiatus as neither the county council or the department of transport could take a decision for years while the argument went on over who should look after the A36 trunk road. In a hot topic on the visionforwarminster.co.uk website Steve wrote on 21st March 2010 'The A36 trunk road runs 14 miles through our community area and contains such traffic hazards as Black Dog Hill, Warminster by-pass and the dangerous Knook hill section near Upton Lovell. 'Even though they may not be local people who are often victims of our roads it should be for the local MP to campaign more vigourously for action.' Paul Macdonald has raised the Knook issue with Dr. Andrew Murrison MP on numerous occasions starting with his days as a local photo-journalist shortly after Andrew Murrison was elected and latterly as a concerned local resident. "This year we lost Althea Wynne who died suddenly in January 2012, killed with her husband Tony Barrington-Brown who I met through his commitment to the Woolstore theatre at Codford," mourns Paul. "It was another preventable road accident, near her home while returning from the foundry that was to cast her last commission, two large bronzes of Windsor horses for Windsor Great Park." Both Anthea Wynne and Tony Barrington Brown were killed instantly in a collision between their car and a lorry close to the notorious Upton Lovell junction that has claimed another local life this month. Police named the latest victim who died in the road traffic collision at the A36 junction with the village of Upton Lovell as nearby resident Stanley Knight who was know by locals in the village and Warminster as 'Rocky'. He sustained multiple injuries in the collision between a car and a lorry at around 1.40pm on Friday 15 June. The Wiltshire air ambulance attended but Mr Knight died at the scene of the accident. "If the MP Dr. Andrew Murrison did not have the ammunition to campaign more vigourously as my fellow campaigner Steve Dancey wrote in 2010 then he has it now and we will pull out all the stops if he will accept it to support him." "At the start of the 1990's an improvement scheme later collapsed that would have saved lives. Again in the early the new millennium another scheme was close to agreement. Is this the decade that something is finally done?"