I’m not complaining about Glover Report
TMany now see it (the National Park) as a public play park, rather than my home and workplace
HERE’S already a lot of worried foot shuffling and hand wringing regarding a potential shake-up of the country’s National Parks. See, some clever fellow by the name of Julian Glover has looked into them, and found them wanting. The element within his report causing the most excitement is that, perhaps, maybe, they ought to be brought together under one national organisation, rather than run and managed at a local level, as is currently the case.
Unsurprisingly, many of the fears being voiced are that some remote unanswerable office goons would be running the show, with scant knowledge of the Parks themselves, or any concern for the locals. This is pretty ironic for most of us who live under the current system, as it’s just about exactly what we’ve come to feel about the Park system this last decade or two.
Ostensibly, the doings of each National Park – such as Dartmoor, where I make my abode – are overseen by its governing committee. This body includes various vaguely local councillors for whom we might
– or might not, as the case may be – vote at their respective elections. Not all of them by any means, but potentially, some of them. But regrettably, we don’t get to select which councillors are put forward... that’s done by someone far removed from my dirty finger-nailed existence. Other members of this committee are, I believe, appointed by the relevant Secretary of State. In effect, this means that large chunks of my life are governed by a body over which I have no statutory right of effective influence. I cannot vote for them myself.
Now I accept that my interests and needs, as someone living inside a National Park, have to be weighed against national interests and needs. It would be churlish to ignore this reality. We live on a grotesquely overpopulated little island group, and it’s inevitable that my urban neighbours, who outnumber me so very much, have a greater voice than me.
However, giving me no voice, no chance to put my case, sounds pretty unfair to me. I can’t even use my voice in Westminster, as the parliamentary system means I don’t get to vote for a representative with my fellow Dartmoor inhabitants. Our vote is simply lost among surrounding constituencies, where we are tiny minorities. We’re Gerrymandered out of representation.
On balance, I consider my human rights to a say in how the country is run are eroded by the National Park system. My forebears, and those of my farming neighbours, have been shepherding stock in and around Dartmoor’s slopes for centuries. Why do we have no effective vote?
As for the current system... ne’er mind Glover’s vision. With the honourable exception of the few poor folk at the coal face, I have no faith or confidence in the organisation. Too many of their cadre are highly educated professional desk jockeys, blow-ins who are completely remote from the most basic understanding of the workings of our community at ground level. Their chief concern, as with office-wallahs everywhere, is to defend their desk... preferably making it bigger, and indispensable. Glover might open new opportunities for some, making even bigger centralised desks. But here, precious few of them have much more than the barest local connection, and when they cash in their respective pails, they’ll no longer have any stake in the community. Several are privately outright hostile to my community. I say ‘privately,’ when in fact it doesn’t take much Sherlock Holmes sleuthing to track down evidence that they would far remove us.
Any such comments generally get, in response, a smooth response trotted out, outlining all the fabulous good works they do to help everyone enjoy what many now see as a public play park, rather than my home and workplace. Various initiatives will be referred to, illustrating how the farming community are being specially looked after, although right now I’m struggling to think of which of these have been of much use to me... unless I’m paying for them myself.
A nationalised central Park authority might well serve me even worse. But right now, we don’t feel that we’ve got much to lose. Which is why you won’t hear many of us complaining about the Glover Report. Certainly not until we’ve seen some meat on the bones of proposals.