Little Ideas

Last year E.M.P. stopped taking comments on its draft Management Plan and it has only now published here on its website a resume of those comments. Given the time they've had to respond to comments one might have hoped that they could have made less of a dog's breakfast of presenting some of the responses in the document. At times they are made to look incoherent. The document has a good solid line in presentational graphics and charts laid out with compelling style. But once you get to actually reading, things are different. For the target audience is those who are easily impressed by appearance and prefer quick skimming to close reading. They are in fact the people who dispense public money on behalf of you and me in the form of grants and subsidies and who have criteria in a tick box insisting that a well run consultation has been constructed before the dosh is handed over.

In truth there was never the remotest chance that anything imaginative and inspiring would come out of this process however many times the managers used the word 'inspiring'. Setting the consultation around four themes carefully chosen to reflect their own agenda kept them well in control especially as one of the themes was:

Farming, land management and economics

Understand how land management, particularly farming can be used as a vehicle to deliver a rich and healthy place for nature, while striving for a sustainable economic model that supports the concept of a living landscape.

As the grouse moor style favoured by managers is about as close to dead and frozen in time and as far away from a genuine dynamic natural approach as you can get the words 'living landscape' have a hollow ring. The best comment would be a link to one of the websites that comes up if you google the words living landscape - a picture of a paved patio with spaced out pot plants. As a comment you couldn't beat it. But just note that word 'understand'. It speaks volumes. No blank sheet consultation here then. Educating the public in what the managers want is the aim - (Stand up that person who called out "brainwashing"!). So those who vet the consultation - if any exist - can be shown that nobody thinks outside this particular box; they were not invited to.

Because when you scrape off the hype and the middle management thinking what you're left with is something stale and static. Farming takes much of the essential life out of a landscape. And on a large expanse of upland heather moor grazed by livestock there's not even the compensation of hedgerows that can still be found in traditional lowland farm scenery.

So in response to our call for more ambition and a big idea to inspire future generations we get more of the same:

In relation to being radical the EMP proposed changes are more radical, but this is balanced with a sense of responsibility to enhance not harm the special features of the place. As the Eastern Moors are not managed for their completely natural state (forest), the type of wildlife here is dependant on management.

This is essentially a bureaucratic exercise and should never be expected to produce more than little ideas. A big idea to a bureaucrat is upgrading to new computer operating system. Being radical is.... Well that's an easy game to play