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Thursday, September 21, 2006
Is the Land Reform Act falling to bits?
This legislation through the Scottish Parliament was meant to protect responsible public access to all rural land and wild places across Scotland. It would appear that a few people are rich enough to think that the law doesn't apply to them. The act is currently being challenged by Ann Gloag at Kinfauns Castle near Perth, and by Euan Snowie of Boquhan Estate, at Kippen, west Stirlingshire. Others have also challenged it in the past.
Surely in buying an estate they must realise that they are now custodians of the land with a responsibility to allow (non-motorised) public access to all but the area immediately surrounding their residence. If they can't deal with that then they have no place being a landowner in Scotland. I would go so far as to say that continued non-compliance should result in the freezing of assets. The law is there for all of us. We have to be responsible when we're on the land and they have the responsibility to provide access to that land. I really do hope that these cases are overturned and that our land access rights in Scotland continue to be defended rigorously. Posted by bigcrags @
10:08 AM
Comments:
One hopes that the court will deal objectively with the respective arguments in the Kinfauns Castle case, and that loopholes in the new law will be minimal. One would also expect a national charity, which regularly criticises politicians and landowners, to set the highest standards of propriety. However, as a member of the Ramblers' Association I am concerned about the secretive approach of the trustee board. Their names and interests are not given to RA members or the public, and the RA chairman is being investigated by the Charity Commission for "conflicts of interest". The chairman is in fact both a trustee and a well-paid executive of the access movement. This kind of arrangement is highly questionable. In fact, the chairman and other on the trustee board are committed extreme socialists, and such political bias is extremely prejudical to a charity, which should be unbiased. Conservatives like walking too, and as long as Labour politicians, like Lord Smith, and Andrew Bennet use a charity for political ends, there will remain a "them and us" attitude. The countryside should not be a battleground, and the RA is often in conflict with conservation groups. The RA should either act like an honest socialist political pressure group, and relinquish charity status, or become more politically even-handed. Freedom of speech requires the speaker to avoid hypocrisy, which will bring their arguments into disrepute. J Hunt # posted by
 : 9:15 PM << Home
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