The following letter , published in the Strathy 2.4.08, draws attention to an inaccurate claim by the Cairngorms National Park Convener quoted in the Press and Journal (20.3.08) regarding conflict between the 1st and the 4th aims of the National Park.
Dear Sir
During the Battle of Copenhagen in 1801, Admiral Nelson was informed that a signal from his flagship required him to withdraw from conflict. Raising his telescope to his blind eye, Nelson replied that he could see no such signal and continued the engagement.
Turning a blind eye to unwanted or inconvenient truths may have had an auspicious beginning, but knowingly to refuse to acknowledge something which you know to be true is not generally regarded as a virtue: nowadays it is called "denial". Furthermore, it appears to have taken root within the Cairngorms National Park Authority.
Mr David Green, chief of the CNPA, claims (Strathy, March 26), "There hasn't been one occasion in the past five years ... where there has been a conflict between" the first (concerning conservation) and the fourth (concerning development) aim of the national park.
Perhaps Mr Green was merely, disingenuously, alluding to the fact that the CNPA has not, yet, landed itself in court as a result of such conflict. But in a national park where native woodlands and herb rich meadows and their species are being lost to development, or allocated for development in the CNPA deposit local plan, where bulldozed tracks continue to scar the landscape and communities are suffering from unsympathetic cramming that is destroying their open spaces ... where all this is occurring, to claim there is no conflict is, to say the least, remarkably complacent.
Complacent? Or something more sinister? The National Parks (Scotland) Act 2000 sets out the four aims for the CNP, but adds (Sect.9.6) "if, in relation to any matter, it appears to the authority that there is a conflict between the National Park aim set out in section 1(a) [the first aim] and other National Park aims, the authority must give greater weight to the aim set out in section 1(a)."
"Appears to the authority"! There's the rub. Turn a blind eye; pretend that everything in the garden is rosy, deny that conflicts exist, and Sect.9.6 of the Act can be quietly ignored.
Aye, there's the rub.
Yours sincerely, Roy Turnbull
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