The SNP's secret state stopped serving Scotland long ago |
Scotland’s Information Commissioner David Hamilton told The Herald last week that lawyers and civil servants were blocking the public’s right to access details of the decision-making and finances of our public institutions. Here Kevin McKenna issues a stark warning
“It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.” George Orwell: 1984.
Near the end of my interview last week with David Hamilton, Scotland’s Information Commissioner, he touched on the unfolding scandal around Stobo Hope Forest in Peebleshire. He was using this as an example of the multitude of cases in which his office has become involved which fly beneath the public’s radar.
This beautiful old forest – home to some of Scotland’s magnificent and protected beasties – was described as having been ‘napalmed’.
The basis of the dispute will be familiar to those still fighting to prevent the Flamingo Land leisure development on the banks of Loch Lomond. A £2m publicly-funded grant had been handed to a private enterprise for a forestry scheme backed by the regulator, Scottish Forestry.
This was opposed by a residents’ activist group who crowdfunded enough money to challenge approval of the scheme which had been allowed to proceed without an Environmental Impact Assessment. Their judicial review was successful but not, allegedly, before “more than 750,000 conifers had been planted and vast areas sprayed with herbicide,” according to a blog on Raptor Persecution UK’s website.
Read more Kevin McKenna
Drone footage of the site does indeed look like it’s been blasted by napalm. The question for Scottish Forestry is........