More Response

I’m getting tired of commenting on the over-long letter in Saturday’s Sheffield Telegraph but I’m grateful to the writer for one thing: He has drawn attention to our website and to this blog. But I wish I could be more generous about the content of his rather silly letter. The more I look at it the more it lacks any semblance of accuracy and in fact reads like fanciful wishful thinking. I would be happy to waste no more time on it were it not for the space it takes up in the Telegraph. Some people pay more attention to quantity than to quality:

The plan is also about community awareness and
involvement. I find it quite astounding that given the hostile environment
within which it has to work, the Trust continues to welcome community
participation in its management planning process.Without this participation we
lose the opportunity for the plan to reflect our needs as local people visiting
the site. We should feel privileged to be invited to be involved rather than
antagonistic when the Trust on balance takes decisions that upset some of
us.From what I understand there are a small minority of people who are anti the
idea of cattle grazing. (I understand that there were a large number of
signatures on a petition. However there are only a handful of people who feel
strongly enough to turn up to a meeting.)

This is sanctimonious and just flies in the face of the facts. SWT were never bothered with the views of the regular users of Blacka Moor ('the community') until the petition forced them to confront their image. Around this time somebody or some group from their allies told them that they would have to polish up their image and they tried to show themselves as ‘responsive’. The main form this took was to go through the motions of consulting at more length. This led to the Icarus sessions. The trouble was this was revealed as being no more than window dressing when the minutes of a closed meeting were obtained. The meeting was restricted to 'professional' public servants involved in conservation land management. The minutes showed that there was to be ‘no negotiation’ on the subject of cattle and grazing. In other words we were being led unwittingly into a time-consuming exercise under the impression that the whole approach to managing the moor was up for discussion when all the time they had no intention of negotiating. Read about this HERE.