Friday, July 15, 2005
Let's Have Windmills, Not Scottish National Heritage.
Scottish National Heritage and the John Muir Trust want to enhance and protect wild land in Scotland. They have drawn up an action plan, concerned that things like forestry, deer, sheep and wind farms are spoiling areas of natural beauty.
What are they going to do? Put local sheep farmers out of business and send them all to work as waiters in tourist hotels? Demand that estate owners slaughter the wild red deer that roam the mountains, or fence them all in? Eight foot high deer fences look VERY natural!
These people put tourists and greed before peoples ways of life.
Ben nevis is owned and managed by the John Muir Trust. If their aims are so high and mighty, are they going to bulldoze the Nevis Centre, a disgraceful blot on the mountain, and control the number of visitors tramping and mountainbiking the place to a scarred mess? Not a hope, I guarantee. Money is far more important to these self proclaimed "environmentalists" than any genuine concern about the environment.
Wind farms? Many locals in the areas where they are planned have no objection to them, and see the advantages to the environment and the local economy, which is far too reliant on the tourist industry. The campaigns against them are invariably run by incomers, who have scant regard for local folks, and are very keen only on protecting their own expensive "ghettoes". The charities or organizations who object, supposedly concerned with the well-being of wildlife, are often more interested in their own political or financial agendas.
Personally, I would be perfectly happy to see huge wind farms around the Highlands. The more the merrier. This place is blighted with more otherwise useless land than any other part of the UK, and it's a sensible way to utilize much of it. Anyway, I think windmills, especially lots of them, look rather impressive.
A lot better than this.
With fuel prices fast going the way here that they have in the Western Isles, the tourist industry is going to take a huge knock one of these days. Visitors may be daft enough at the moment to fork out these ridiculous prices to trail around a few pot-holed roads looking for outlets which then rob them with specially inflated prices, but they will catch on eventually, and when they do, they won't come back.
Then they'll be begging for windmills.
What are they going to do? Put local sheep farmers out of business and send them all to work as waiters in tourist hotels? Demand that estate owners slaughter the wild red deer that roam the mountains, or fence them all in? Eight foot high deer fences look VERY natural!
These people put tourists and greed before peoples ways of life.
Ben nevis is owned and managed by the John Muir Trust. If their aims are so high and mighty, are they going to bulldoze the Nevis Centre, a disgraceful blot on the mountain, and control the number of visitors tramping and mountainbiking the place to a scarred mess? Not a hope, I guarantee. Money is far more important to these self proclaimed "environmentalists" than any genuine concern about the environment.
Wind farms? Many locals in the areas where they are planned have no objection to them, and see the advantages to the environment and the local economy, which is far too reliant on the tourist industry. The campaigns against them are invariably run by incomers, who have scant regard for local folks, and are very keen only on protecting their own expensive "ghettoes". The charities or organizations who object, supposedly concerned with the well-being of wildlife, are often more interested in their own political or financial agendas.
Personally, I would be perfectly happy to see huge wind farms around the Highlands. The more the merrier. This place is blighted with more otherwise useless land than any other part of the UK, and it's a sensible way to utilize much of it. Anyway, I think windmills, especially lots of them, look rather impressive.
A lot better than this.
With fuel prices fast going the way here that they have in the Western Isles, the tourist industry is going to take a huge knock one of these days. Visitors may be daft enough at the moment to fork out these ridiculous prices to trail around a few pot-holed roads looking for outlets which then rob them with specially inflated prices, but they will catch on eventually, and when they do, they won't come back.
Then they'll be begging for windmills.
© Colcam 2005-2007
