Letters

A Letter from Bill Todd to his MP

Dear Mr. Best.

Access to mountains and other matters

Belated congratulations on beating Keith Hampson, I never thought you would when I met you on Edale Way two or three years ago. Now that the Government should be settling down to die tasks in front of it may I draw your attention to some ways in which the total happiness of the nation may be increased at minimal cost.

Access to Mountains.

The Government is politically committed to introduce legislation providing for free public access to uncultivated moorland. The known wishes of the late John Smith make this a moral commitment as well. I am aware that landowning interests are making loud noises about the cost. I enclose, for the consideration of the relevant department, a scheme for assessing financial compensation in a fair manner. I am copying this to the mountaineering press.

As well as the County Landowners other bodies which pose a threat to the legitimate interests of outdoor lovers are the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds and English Nature. The latter body has placed notices on the approaches to Ingleborough purporting to welcome visitors and pointing out that access is freely available on the public footpaths (it always was) and by permit elsewhere. To people like my friends and I who have been walking over Ingleborough for over fifty years and who were serving in this country’s armed forces before English Nature was invented these notices are a gross impertinence.

Similarly my friends and 1 have been turned  back  from   Upper Waldendale because peregrine falcons were nesting on the crag up die dale. Firstly I have yet to be convinced that a few people walking past would do the slightest harm to the peregrines and secondly if it did I fail to see why the access rights of fifty million English people should be prejudiced to protect the interests of a bird which lives by preying on other creatures.
Tire power of diese two bodies, which represent notiiing more dian a noisy if influential minority, should be seriously curbed in any access legislation.

Lastly, it would be a good idea to stop using the phrase ‘Freedom to Roam’. This only helps to spread the view put out by some writers that the outdoor groups are demanding the right to trample people’s crops and disrupt country sport.

Summer Time.

I believe that it has been demonstrated that die putting back of the clock every October lends to an increase in road accidents due to tired drivers coming home in the dark. I have seen no rational explanation for this practice except diat without it it will get light too late in Scotland. I see no reason why die Scots should not carry on with the present system and have a different time in winter. Perhaps their own assembly will have power to do this.

Bank Holidays.

The contrast between the early part of the year with Easter, May Day and Spring Bank Holiday and the latter half widi late Summer and Christmas is too great. There should be a balancing holiday in October.

The foregoing proposals will in my view be a more constructive use of parliamentary time than abolishing hunting and of money than building a dome which most of your constituents will not see.

Yours sincerely,        Bill Todd
Leeds, February, 1998