Made a hot topic. There was a big upgrade in the UK's road network from the early 60s to the mid-80s, and every town that had had a major route running through it - it seemed like, at the time - got a bypass route built. This was alongside the building of the motorways, of course, some of which were bypasses in themselves. The first stretch of motorway in the UK was the Preston Bypass, which later became the stretch of the M6 just north of Junction 29, which is about twenty minutes' walk from where I'm posting this: it's local history to me. Just as local is the Penwortham Bypass, which I could hit with a thrown half-brick from here. Starting in the 50s and running right through the 70s, the land to build all these new roads, many of which were designated the InsertTownHere Bypass, was acquired by means of Compulsory Purchase Orders consequent on all of the administrative and legal tomfoolery that went with choosing the routes.

Since most of the bypass routes went through suburban and green-belt rural areas, the administrative, legal and political proceedings could and frequently did get extremely fraught. Compulsory Purchase Orders had hitherto been used either for Defence Of The Realm purposes or slum clearance projects and hadn't run into much opposition. Now, however, they were going through prime farmland, cutting through country estates and driving traffic out of town centres and the suburbs and into rural areas. Even areas of outstanding natural beauty - the Vale of Eden is not notably improved by having the M6 right up the middle of it.

Without getting into the economic and social class structure of the British Isles, it will at least suffice to say that many of these bypass schemes would either take land from, or reduce the general amenity of land of, people who could afford much more expensive lawyers than national and local government had been used to dealing with in such matters before then.

There is also a stereotype that local government in the UK is, if not outright corrupt and incompetent, at least a little nepotistic and bungling around the edges, so the bypass schemes that weren't motorways (which are handled at the national level) would from time to time make the newspapers as having at least the appearance of corruption and/or cock-up, over and above the fuss being raised in local and national press about the new road schemes in and of themselves.

The Pythons (I can't recall a Python skit about bypasses at all, although I've never been particularly keen on them) and Douglas Adams would have had all of this very public controversy as grist to their satiric mills. Not sure where Simon Pegg was getting it from for Hot Fuzz; he's only a little younger than me and most of the fuss and subsequent roadbuilding was over and done by the time he was writing. I can just about remember tired-looking little gaggles of protesters about the Penwortham Bypass (which I was mildly annoyed about because part of the route was a disused railway cutting where I used to play as a little lad).

The Newbury Bypass is a good illustration of how Britain reacts to the building of a new Bypass.

It was designed to take the pressure off a major intersection in the middle of Newbury and reduce the traffic in and around the Thames Valley. It cut through common land, wood land and some residential areas. Apparently 360 acres of land including 120 acres of woodland were bulldozed, and nearly 10,000 trees in Greenham Common and Snelsmore Common were cut down.

The actual building of the bypass was in early 1996, but protests and various "engagements" occurred in and around Newbury and the bypass site from 1994. Many different groups of people, including primary school students, environmental activists, local farmers and business owners, and hippies from all over the UK formed a pressure group called the Third Battle of Newbury to protest the bypass. The first and second battles of Newbury were during the English Civil War, so the protestors were trying to tie these protests into the larger historical significance of the town. According to that Guardian article:

Six-hundred security guards were brought in to police the site, at a cost of £25m - one fifth of the total bill for building the road. During the January protests, some 748 people were arrested.

One of the preferred tactics was Tree Sitting, where protestors climbed to the highest reaches of the trees and lived for months at a time. They built elaborate tree houses connected by walkways, and even had toilets. A guy called Swampy was one of the leaders and became a national celebrity for a time. This Guardian article has some amazing photos of the Tree Sitters and others sites of the protests.

2000 people were said to be camping or protesting there by February 1996, and as many as 5000 people joined a protest march through the site which was the largest protest march against road building in British history.

A few bands have since written songs about it, and there has been several documentaries about it, Tales of Resistance; the Battle of the Newbury Bypass is the most recent one.

At the time it was being presented as one more attack on the rural natural world of Little England by an uncaring and corrupt national government. The protestors were there defending the natural world that couldn't defend itself, while the police were seen as quasi-fascist thugs working for big business. It became connected to this sort-of Robin Hood underdog mythology that Britain loves so much.

In Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, Arthur Dent is this typical Little Englander, forgetful and a little bit of a drunk who has to defend his home from the destruction wrought on the natural world by uncaring businesses. Douglas Adams recasts all of Earth as the galaxy equivalent of this Little England, a place where people start drinking pints at noon, and are eternally mystified by digital watches. The Vogons are these horrible bureaucrats who don't know about and don't care about the people who live where the road is going to go. They just need to build the road, the people there are in the way.

In Hot Fuzz the bypass is played for laughs. Instead of laughing at the corrupt officials, it looks at the protestors (the NWA) who are thought to be protecting the beautiful natural land from developers, but are actually killing for more mundane reasons.