THE problem with the idea of “increased tourism” being a benefit to local Galloway communities can be addressed by the equally pressing problem of properties being bought for Airbnb use, taken out of the local housing market and inflating house prices.
The increasing lack of local rental properties for local young folk is not addressed by a “National Park”, nor is the condition of the roads all these extra folk are going drive along.
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I am for a National Park, but not the proposal currently on offer which will do much harm to Galloway while bringing benefit to the few but adding another level of expensive jobs for the boys and girls, bureaucracy where it is not needed.
We do not need a “National Park” to deal with rough camping, nor do we wish the levels of tourism on the North Coast 500, which have lead to dumping of sewage by camper vans, blocked roads and bust-ups with locals.
So far the National Park offering to Galloway locals has been long on “jam tomorrow” benefits while making claims about educational activities that already happen in Galloway or nature preservation and re-introduction which are also already happening in Galloway.
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The NTS, Historic Scotland, Woodland Trust and RSPB are already doing the hard lifting across Galloway, local farmers are re-foresting with native species while Forestry and Land Scotland balances the need for wood production with the need to re-establish native species in its commercial plantations to protect water sources.
So please, tell me again, what are the hard benefits of a “National Park” to Galloway?
Peter Thomson
Kirkcudbright
I REFER to the article by Kate Forbes in Saturday’s National (Communities like this one show the huge value of Gaelic) and commend her untiring defence of the use of the beautiful Gaelic language.
In my time as a genealogist over many years, I have seen Scottish census pages that record thousands of people who are recorded as having spoken either Gaelic on its own, or Gaelic and English.
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The extent of this began to peter out as time went on, and the main reason for this was because the Gaelic language was literally beaten out of children in schools. This draconian and ignorant behaviour was set by “the authorities” and practised by the teachers, so much so that even parents began to discourage the continuation of the language for fear of reprisal. We probably all know people whose parents and/or grandparents spoke Gaelic, but they have no knowledge of it. It is tragic that families were not encouraged to pass it on for future generations, and that the very place that should have kept it alive, our schools, failed to do so.
Quite apart from the fact that Gaelic was once spoken all over Scotland (witness the Gaelic place names that still universally exist in Scotland), it is crucial, and incumbent, on today’s “authorities” to right this wrong of the past, and further increase resources to restore the use of this ancient language which is a huge part of our heritage.
Dennis White
Blackwood
I SEE Two Jags Prescott, one year younger than me, is now being sanctified. I met him as a merchant seaman whilst I was in Liverpool docks on strike with the short-lived Seamen’s Reform Movement, which was formed to combat to the scab National Union of Seamen. He was just a loudmouth who loved shouting at meetings. He ended up in the House of Lords along with other New Labourites and MI5 tame unionists.
I was also a shop steward in Pilkington’s Fibreglass factory in Possilpark. We were out on strike for six weeks in 1969, as much against the tame Municipal Workers Union who policed Labour’s zero per cent pay freezes under Lords Wilson and (Sunny for some) Jim Callaghan.
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After the strike, the Glasgow factory was closed and moved to St Helens in Lancashire with a grant from the Labour government, as was the usual practice.
I will not be joining in the sanctification of Lord Two Jags. Nor will I wish to receive a royal telegram from Big Ears if we both survive the grim reaper in 2025. Death comes to us all. I may have managed to survive a few orchestrated attempts on my life, but I would not be afraid to face euthanasia, rather than suffer any more divisive splits under London rule.
Donald Anderson
Glasgow
I WAS employed through the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister under John Prescott. It was the one time the Labour Party enacted a determination to make things better for poorer communities.
He forced joined-up thinking in Whitehall – and the civil service did not like being hauled out of their silos. SureStart and neighbourhood programmes were socialism in action.
Tony Blair undermined JP’s influence. But for a while there was a real effort to make improvements. JP tried and succeeded for a while to make a real difference. For that fact I will hold him in respect.
Ro Bell
via thenational.scot
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