Monday's RAG Meeting

The Monday RAG meeting was one of the two or three opportunities in the year that local people get to put a view to SWT and question their strategy. It’s quite normal to come away feeling puzzled or irritated and this meeting was no exception. Some of the usual tricks of the trade needed to be exposed. One of the better known tricks is the way that SWT use the minutes to bamboozle. No different I suppose to many organisations who are charged with a duty to consult the public; it becomes part of the culture. As an organisation more at home with paperwork than with work on the ground they are well rehearsed in the creation of false impressions and the manipulation of perceptions. The minutes of the May12 meeting were a classic. Everyone knows the strong reservations local people have about SWT’s importation of a herd of cattle onto Blacka and their accompanying barbed wire and scuffed up pathways. Nobody wants them except a small group of SWT members who rarely visit the place anyway, and there have been complaints though SWT are shy of telling us how many. At the May 12th meeting a National Park warden came along and lectured the RAG members about the wonderful success of the cattle grazing on Stanage Edge and this was recorded in the minutes. As Blacka Blogger was not able to be at that meeting it was only when he saw the minutes that he realised that the whole thing was utterly fraudulent. There are NO cattle on Stanage Edge. So all the guff about how well the whole thing worked with the thousands of visitors was just so much poppycock. Yet those who did attend believed that's where they are. Typical of SWT’s brand of cynicism. Those who naively believe that a conservation organisation and a charity must be above this sort of thing are living in the past perhaps a past which never existed. Here’s a link to the main part of the minutes. Read them carefully. Then bear in mind that actually the cattle are grazing on an area of the North Lees Estate called Cattis Side Moor which has no tradition of public access. The area where people go when they visit Stanage is the Edge and the area below the cliffs of the Edge. Note also that a public consultation several years ago at Stanage concluded that cattle would be inappropriate for Stanage because “cattle and recreation do not mix well” and a number of other reasons all of which are equally valid for Blacka. There has been a disagreement about cattle grazing at Blacka and there are strong arguments against it. One assumes that SWT and others think there are also very strong arguments in favour. The trouble is that they have not been prepared to put them up for scrutiny and examination by the RAG. Instead they have chosen to rely on broad statements that it has “worked” elsewhere and by misleading the public and being “economical with the truth”.

This notice has always said No Public Access. It is on Cattis Side Moor. It has now been painted over because the CRoW Act means people must be allowed to roam here. Nevertheless I've not seen anyone walking here, understandably as the popular area is Stanage itself. So no surprise members of the public have made no complaints!