Which did you prefer - Dallas or Dynasty? This article is about a series that is quite outwith the realms of eg Take the High Road or Eastenders - but the principles are the same. To fully appreciate each episode you have to know the background. Sometimes, if you do, you realise what you are being shown is a tad ridiculous, and wouldn't happen in real life.

For the past 15 years what we have had in the Cairngorms is our very own soap opera. This time, if you know the full story, yes it is a tad ridiculous, but yes, it is for real. As we put pen to paper for the next instalment of the Cairngorms Funicular Railway (with apologies for the unglamorous title) I am as ever struggling to adequately set the scene whilst at the same time bring you up to date with "what has just happened". I've been helping run, or should I say record, this series as a theme in NEMT's newsletters since Winter 1986. In that issue we have an article entitled Planning Conditions for Ski Developments and it starts

At our AGM complaints were made to the Trust that planning conditions for ski developments often seem to be breached.

They seem to have missed the point that more sustainable alternatives for developing ski-ing in the Cairngorms are available but are just being ignored.

However back to this episode - what has happened? To set the scene readers will be only too well aware the Millennium Dome is now acknowledged by most as a national financial disaster. Politicians are struggling to defend the extra, non-budgeted, £179 million the Millennium Commission has had to pay to keep this initiative open. How that money could have been better spent is almost as popular as talking about what you would do if you won the lottery. But what has the "Dome problem" been? -

The problem has been vastly over-estimated visitor numbers.

Parallels are now being drawn between the Dome and the Funicular. Mountain Views has already documented how independent surveys, made by well qualified individuals, were able to so refute the forecasted visitor numbers put forward by HIE (Highlands and Islands Enterprise - owners of the land on which the funicular is being built) that they had to be re-done. Readers will recall HIE had a new forecast carried out.

This is where in true soap style we had to close an issue - just when something mind boggling had happened - the public were refused access to the re-forecasted figures! If the original figures, which were know to be the minimum required to make the Funicular viable, were too high, then the new figures have to be lower. It would appear the scene is well and truly set for the Funicular to create financial and environmental ruin. The main problem is that we are talking about the centre of the Cairngorm Mountains here - soon to be Scotland's second National Park. The payoff to keep this initiative afloat (ie attracting enough visitors) is going to be environmental as well as financial - Greenwich is not known for its wilderness qualities.

But every good soap has its characters- what has been going on here? Don't worry the plot is well and truly up to standard in this respect.

• Iain Robertson, Chief Executive of HIE is planning to follow his predecessor of the HIE CE position, Sir Fraser Morrison (Chairman of Morrison plc) to become Director of Corporate Development for Morrison plc. The decision to build the funicular was made whilst Sir Fraser was HIE CE, and the £9.6 million to build it was awarded to Morrison plc whilst Iain Robertson is still in office. But for the potentially environmentally catastrophic implications of the spend of the £9.6 million, out of the £12.9 million which passed between HIE and Morrison's whilst these two were in office, this would not have been an issue Mountain Views would have touched. These things go on the world over and anyway, as far as we know, other than the above, Morrison plc is a first class company providing employment - yes, well up to standard of any of the main Dallas players.
• As the coup de grace of this last event, we have to record the resignation of Alan Blackshaw from his directorship with Moray, Badenoch and Strathspey Enterprise. The grounds for his resignation? - these are no less than the circumstances surrounding the move of HIE CE, a one Iain Robertson, to become full time director of Morrison plc. Space does not allow me to give coverage to the full implications of this. Suffice to say when an individual of Alan's political and personal integrity has to step down, given what he has leaned from an "insiders" point of view, do not underestimate the circumstances involved. To conclude let me quote from an article on Alan in Climber, January, 2000.

  Blackshaw is one of the climbing world's most assiduous and skilful policy makers and influencers, one of those trusted figures who have the ear of Government and other institutions and who, behind the scenes, protect us all from the predations of too much officialdom in the constant struggle to maintain the freedom to climb and roam that we all take for granted.

For the next happening we have to run the tape back until last summer when we were just welcoming in the new Scottish Parliament. Do you recall that, because the Highland Council had pledged to underwrite the Funicular by a "last resort" £1million, the application had to go before the brand new Parliament? Remember - it was all signed and sealed and passed on its merry way whilst the new politicians were all out on their first summer recess. OK, so we now record this £1 million has already been officially called in to assist fund the project. There is still another year's building to go so how long will it be before requests for the unplanned hand-outs start coming in?

And talking about unplanned handouts - more news has broken even since I started writing this piece. NEMT now have a copy of a letter dated 1st September, written by the Cairngorm Chairlift Company, to SNH. Let me quote:

May we (Cairngorm Chairlift Company) ask you (Scottish Natural Heritage) to consider, given all the public comment and evidence of use, to take an approach to visitor management which permits the Company to commence operations next year with a closed system that incorporates the following:

• ranger guided walks on management footpaths within the ski area boundary with an emphasis on environmental education
• use of the hill road from the Ptarmigan back to the car park on existing footpaths within the ski area for non ski-ing visitors on the basis of a permit managed system
• year around access and exit by non funicular users to the Ptarmigan

Does this not make a complete mockery of all the bellyaching SNH went through before it finally lifted its objection to the Funicular application - on the condition no one was allowed out of the Ptarmigan Restaurant. If SNH do allow the "year around access and exit by non funicular users to the Ptarmigan" then the Cairngorms National Park has about as much protection as Duthie Park.

As a closing scene we have NEMT deciding how to let SNH know that, in the eyes of the thousands who value the Cairngorms, they are in danger of blowing their credibility as a government agency capable of protecting our heritage, if they let go of the reins on this one.

Jennifer A Cook, September 2000

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