This post takes a further look (see here) at the Scottish Government’s continued unfair restrictions on people’s right to travel for outdoor recreation and why they have been able to get away with this. The change in the Stay at Home “rule” Both the UK and Scottish Governments have muddied the differences between “law” and…
Tag: Scottish Government
Since the involvement of Highlands and Islands Enterprise HIE) with the Cairngorm ski resort and the construction of the funicular railway, the mountain business and its skier/ boarder capacity has gone downhill faster than G.B’s olympic skiers ever did. The folly is continuing with HIE deciding to have the funicular repaired at any cost and,…
The Cairngorms and Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park Authorities (NPAs) were both awarded significant increases in funding in the Scottish Government’s budget (see here), a significant turn-around in fortunes. In September the Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park Authority (LLTNPA) reported a significant hole in their finances, with a projected deficit – after yet…
The Scottish Government has been promoting the FACTS message about how to stay safe during Covid since last July. Nicola Sturgeon repeats them on an almost daily basis at the end of her Covid briefings. The advice is perfectly reasonable, even if the differences in the risks of catching Covid-19 indoors from outdoors is only…
I was not expecting the Scottish Government to relax the current “rules” on Outdoor Recreation when Nicola Sturgeon made her announcement in the Scottish Parliament last week and I was right. While P 1-3 children will be allowed back to school this week, a welcome move but one which has some risks (there is now…
This post takes a critical look at the implications that the Scottish Land Commission’s “Legislative proposals to address the impact of Scotland’s concentration of land ownership”, published on 4th February (see here), has for our National Parks in the light of the purchase of the Kinrara estate on Speyside the week before. The sale…
The planning system in the Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park is so bad that normally it can be difficult to laugh. But regular readers might just enjoy this tale of an application to install a glorified tap at the back of the toilet block at Rowardennan…………….. The story, I believe, begins in 2018 when…
On Friday the Scottish Government’s Planning and Environmental Appeals Division rejected a request from the local community at Gartocharn that the Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park Authority (LLTNPA) should have required the Hunter Foundation to conduct an Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) before approving their planning application at Ross Priory. The reasons for the decision…
Fifteen months ago, I tried to find out from Highlands Enterprise the estimated costs of removing the funicular and, after an initial brush off, they admitted they had commissioned a “Funicular Railway (Railway Dismantling Report” in May 2019 (see here). However, HIE refused to provide the report pending their development of a business case for…
[Tim Ambrose is a retired Chartered Accountant and Treasurer of The Cairngorms Campaign] The first Accounts of CMSL were published at the end of November (see here). They show losses as expected but raise many questions. Background – What is CMSL? When Highlands and Islands Enterprise (HIE) took over the business of the former…
On Xmas Day I took advantage of the relaxation of advice on travelling to head up to Breadalbane for a walk over Maol Ghaordie with my partner. The bog was nicely frozen on the way up, it felt properly wintry on the top and we traversed the hill to descend by the scenic and rarely…
[Update. While I checked the law at New Year, I did not realise when drafting the post the list of reasonable excuses for leaving the place you are living was amended on 5th January (see here clause 18 (2) t) to include outdoor recreation. I have consequently amended the post which had highlighted the differences…
The tree tube problem The theme of the Spring/Summer issue of Reforesting Scotland was climate change. It ended with an excellent piece by a forest manager, Willie McGhee, on “Seas of plastic in the countryside”. His guesstimate is that in Scotland we may have used 200 million plastic tree tubes in the countryside over…
This post takes a critical look at the new laws on travel that the Scottish Government introduced last week and their implications for outdoor recreation, in all its forms. I argue that the restrictions would, if interpreted by the police and courts as the Scottish Government apparently intends, be unjustified and discriminatory and fail to…
Backed by a host of environmental NGOs, the Greens have secured a debate in the Scottish Parliament this week about the Nature Emergency. With the A83 at the Rest and Be Thankful still closed, it seems to be a good time to highlight further the challenges posed by landslips (see here for Glen Falloch and…
There is, of course, a case for repairing the funicular railway. Our consumer society fails to repair far too many things before abandoning them. A terrible waste. And the funicular has attracted some visitors, even if significantly fewer than predicted, who have enjoyed the experience and brought some benefit to the economy on Speyside. In…
A tourist travelling north through the Drumochter for the first time, on looking up to their right and seeing this scar, might be forgiven for wondering if someone had tried build a new railway through the pass. I doubt they, or many of the thousands of people who cross the Drumochter each year, realise they…
On Thursday the Scottish Parliament’s Public Audit and Post-Legislative Scrutiny Committee – a mouthful of a name! – questioned Audit Scotland about their report (see here) on “Highland and Islands Enterprise: management of Cairn Gorm Mountain and funicular railway” which they published in June. The session, which lasted just over an hour, can be viewed…
In response to recent written Parliamentary questions, Fergus Ewing (Cabinet Secretary for Rural Economy) has stated that: – A decision on the repair of the funicular is expected shortly. – The business case will be published shortly. This suggests that there will be no period between publication of the business case and a decision by…
The Dirty Camping debate in the Scottish Parliament On Wednesday, almost an hour after it was scheduled and after a very long day, MSPs started to debate Murdo Fraser’s motion on Dirty Camping (see here) at 6pm. Although the chamber appeared mostly empty, a number of MSPs contributed online and the debate went on until…
If you did not hear the Call Kaye programmme on 18th August, “Is it time to stop moaning about tourists”, it is highly recommended listening. It is available on iplayer (see here) for another 9 days (from 1 min 20 secs for an hour) and, after all the moaning, mainly featured people who were advocating…
Having announced a new masterplan, that wasn’t, in April 2017 (see here) and, eighteen months later, a new £27 million vision that went nowhere (see here), Highlands and Islands Enterprise, without reference to those failures or what could be learned from them, launched at the end of July a consultation called “towards a new vision…
Earlier in the week, a few people copied me into a twitter exchange about Scottish Natural Heritage’s delayed name change. If I was capable of doing anything on twitter, except using it as a means of enabling people to follow parkwatch’s posts, I might have shared this: Says it all really! If you don’t…
The Scottish Government will soon be asked to support Highlands and Islands Enterprise by approving the use of the considerable public funds that will be required to facilitate the repair costs. A figure of between £10-15m has been quoted. The public are entitled to expect that government ministers will be in possession of ALL of…
Last Tuesday, almost exactly a year after the large floods that caused so much destruction in Glen Falloch (see here), torrential rain triggered another massive landslip on the slopes of Beinn Luibhean closing the A83 and the old Military Road below the Rest and Be Thankful. This post argues that the Scottish Government’s tinkering option…