NEWS.com.au | Public must keep clear of Madonna (June 19, 2004)
MADONNA has won her bid to stop walkers from traipsing over large parts of her £9 million ($24 million) country estate in England.

The singer's lawyers had argued before a public inquiry that a demand from the Countryside Agency to let ramblers onto areas regarded as open countryside would bring strangers close to her home at Ashcombe House, compromising both her privacy and her security.

The inquiry ruled today that the public had no right of access to 15 of 17 contested segments of land on the 548-hectare estate on the border of Wiltshire and Dorset.

But the Countryside Agency claimed a partial victory, saying the two parcels of land where walkers must be allowed accounted for 54 hectares of the 142 hectares under dispute.

"Almost half of the land contested at the public inquiry has been classed as open count," the agency said.


-------------------
Where to begin? But isn't her name Esther or Divinity or Abstinthe or something now? Anyway, now that she has clearly established her right to keep the stinky public off her land, what does she think we should do about Iraq? I, for one, don't feel comfortable voting until she tells me what to do. Do you?