The Local News

Up here in the wilds we are not immune from modern progress. Castle Douglas is getting a Tesco’s supermarket; planning permission was granted in spite of strong local opposition and accusations of malpractice. So from next year we fully expect to see the many vibrant local shops and town centre businesses start closing down, and a unique, characterful and diverse little town turned into Everytown, complete with rows of boarded-up shops. Sigh.
It would appear that Tescos’ determination to be the only shop in every town in the land will eventually bring it down; already the other supermarket chains are getting nervous and there is much talk about bringing in the Monopolies Commission to cut the giant down to size. But that will all come far too late for this wonderful little community.

Another sign of progress is a proposal to build wind turbines atop Blackcraig, a nearby hill. You’d think that any intitative towards renewable energy production would be welcomed, but some people don’t like it. As soon as the plan was announced last year, a group called GLARE was set up with the single-minded aim of stopping the windfarm. They are extremely vocal in their objections, which all seem to boil down to “We don’t like it and it will look horrible”. Oh, they’ve come up with all sorts of figures that appear to show that wind generation is not as good as claimed; they’ve claimed that wind turbines will permanently damage the hill and, once installed, will be impossible to remove (eh?);they’ve claimed that the turbines will be a hazard to the Golden Eagles in Galloway (the one Golden Eagle in this area has its range some twenty miles north). And so on. But no real arguments for not having wind turbines.
When they started up, they very nearly shot themselves in the foot, by inviting Dr David Bellamy to join in their campaign; for those who don’t know what the venerable old naturalist has been getting into lately, he is now busy denying that there is such a thing as global warming and climate change. They must have been delighted when he obligingly wrote for their newsletter and spoke at a couple of their meetings, claiming that there was no need for developing renewable energy sources such as wind farms. Unfortunately, somebody in the group had just enough sense to realise what a PR liability he was; his name, and his climate-change denials, are now conspicously absent from their leaflets.
One of their latest tactics was to plaster the local area with large notices saying “No wind turbines here”. They nailed these up on fenceposts, telegraph poles and the like, all without asking anyone’s permission (I know because one of them appeared overnight on the pole outside our group of houses). When irate residents and landowners started taking the notices down, GLARE went whinging to the local press about “vandalism” and “suppression of free speech”. That was some three weeks ago, and the signs have continued disappearing. Driving around the other day, I counted just six of them. One is on the house of GLARE’s founder and two of the others are on different sides of another property. So it would appear that GLARE doesn’t have as much local support as they would like.They evidently have lots of resources – enough to produce full-colour leaflets and mass mailouts and buy full-clour press ads. They undoubtedly work very hard and are passionate about what they believe in. I really, really wish they could have put those resources, and that passion, towards fighting Tescos instead.