funicular railway eh? another grant for that then, especially if it can link all the huts to the nearest town and the big house (convert to hotel). could be powered by water... that should cover it then!
A free mountain...
share certificates in the post, borrow the cash through some dodgy EU scheme to build the huts and where away, now where did i put mandelsons phone number...
"Dear Sir, I represent the government of Johnmuirtrustitania and you have won several thousand pounds in our lottery. Please forward me your bank account number, sort code, PIN number and collar size and we will pay the funds into your account."
and that should do it nicely...
(if that's a bit obscure it might be cos I just cycled 11 miles home from work on a blazing hot day and decided JUST the thing to quench my thirst would be a couple of 1/2 litre bottles of beer. Sorry for being inconsequential.)
Three million pounds. It sounds like a lot of money. For me, it is a lot of money!
But for people down south, all you would need are the proceeds from the sale of 10 detached houses each priced over £300k and they would still have some spare change! Suddenly raising £3M doesn't sound like quite such a daunting prospect.
Indeed, when walking past an estate agent in Ullapool last January, I saw an average looking cottage for sale at £175,000. It wouldn't take too many of those to be sold in order to raise enough cash to buy the estate.
Sure it's a lot of money for an individual, but not amongst many. And with the internet it might be posible to find that many people. Do we value that land or not?
It's £75 per acre. How about each person contributing for 10 acres. They can see their 10 acres marked on the map, and go and visit it.
Otherwise watch it be bought by a foriegner who wants a windfarm and telecom masts. At least we'd get to moan then.
Land sales like these are always difficult but we have to be wary of being too critical of foreign buyers. I could name several estates in Scotland where foreign landowners are doing a damned sight better job than their British counterparts. I'm also becoming wary of the idea of the government buying such land for the people. None of our political parties are very enlightened about wild land management - the Tories just want it for huntin' fishin' and shootin' and Labour just want to cover it with windfarms. The Lib Dems will simply disagree with the main parties and come up no viable alternative. Possibly the best hope Scotland has is in the Scot Nats, who at least appear to understand the value of walking/climbing.outdoors tourism. Anyway, let's encourage the JMT in their efforts to help the local community in a buy-out. Then encourage the JMT to influence that community group as much as possible.
The government should put 1p per litre of the outrageous amount of tax they get off us into a fund to protect our countryside while we still have some. OK we may not be able to do much on a global scale to protect the planet, but at least we could start with our own country. With just 1p of that tax we could buy out not only this area but also The Cuillin and many other "wilderness" places. Not only that but we could also give our National Parks a decent level of funding.
DaveM, what they should or shouldn't spend money on matters not; it's a given that they'll spend it on the crap and defend that crap to the death; three brief examples;
