Bill Jamieson: Beauly - Denny power line is 'like taking a razor blade to a Rembrandt'

Published on Thursday 7 January 2010 21:52

WAIVE opposition from four local authorities. Discard the status of a national park. Overrule the objections of more than 18,000. And allow through the greatest act of environmental spoliation inflicted on Scotland.

How has the Scottish Government allowed the sacrifice of the unique grandeur of our Highlands to the giant marching pylons of Beauly-Denny?

In years to come we will look up in astonishment as we pass through the Great Glen and ask, How on earth did we let that happen?

This is a rape, with a muffling cloth stuffed down the throats of protesters. As appalling as the act has been the government's fumbling and incoherent attempt at explanation. Far from clarifying matters, it has left both parliament and the wider public deep in the dark as to what safeguards there will be and how exactly they will work.

Will the government oblige, or not oblige, the power giants to put the most visually intrusive parts of the line underground? Could, or could not, the government exercise its right to withhold planning permission?

Simple questions. And Jim Mather, the administration's tourism and enterprise minister, can normally be counted on for a confident and upbeat performance. But never was the man more miserable than at the end of his interview with BBC Newsnight Scotland's Gordon Brewer.

He looked like a petrified rooster being put through a Wallace and Gromit mincing machine. All that was left by the end were two ears, an expression of utter defeat and a pile of clean bones.

It beggars belief that the minister should claim he was unable to oblige the developers to go underground because the application was for overhead lines. If a home-owning couple put in for a 50ft rooftop observatory with glass surround they are highly unlikely to be told they can proceed because they didn't plan it for the basement.

It is even more astonishing that the power companies that have been pushing for the pylons should now be asked to submit "visual impairment reduction" schemes of their own rather than being set detailed and specific requirements. And the modifications are to be vetted by the same panel that gave the overall consent. How can that possibly give reassurance?

The government's feeble performance should sound the alarm on the indefensibility of its position and its failure to protect the natural heritage of Scotland. And all this from an SNP administration, a party to whom many especially looked to safeguard the unique landscape and scenery that has made Scotland famous the world over. The government has been caught in a vice between its own climate change targets on one side and the subsidy-fired ambitions of energy giants on another: a trap largely of its own making.

Three features of the decision to allow through this 137-mile parade of giant pylons give cause for question. The first is the setting aside of the unique status and environmental protection of the Cairngorms National Park. At a stroke the approval makes a mockery of establishing such a park, with its conservation regime and array of planning protocols. The national parks were established precisely to provide this protection. Why bother? And why should home owners now meekly accept a rejection of permission for their wee lean-to conservatories when 600 pylons 200ft tall have been allowed through?

The second is the precedent-setting nature of this development. Once a project of this magnitude is allowed, we will not have to wait long before being told that the new line is insufficient and will need upgrades and new feeder lines.

And the third is the scant treatment accorded to alternatives such as reinforcing the less intrusive east-coast line or subsea cabling. The Scottish parliament should demand that these alternatives are more thoroughly explored and the findings put in the public domain.

This should be a basic duty of parliament. Given the huge scar across the face of Scotland – "like taking a razor blade to a Rembrandt" in the words of landscape campaigner Cameron McNeish – this is the least that Holyrood must demand.

Sadly this is unlikely, for the government's failure is but part of a greater one. Virtually the entire political class is silent before the spoliation of Scotland's outstanding natural beauty. It had signed up long beforehand to support the Beauly-Denny line. The LibDems, the Conservatives, Labour, the SNP and the Greens, all have hitched their whooping caravans of apologists to the renewables lobby and the careering puffing billy of Scottish & Southern Energy. Those who strutted their stuff as world-beaters in the fight against global warming with hopelessly unrealistic targets are now silent when the horrific cost is revealed in the coldest week for Scotland in 30 years.

And the business lobby on cue has blindly nodded its approval, from the Scottish Chambers of Commerce (were its tourism members asked, I wonder?) to that clanking rustbucket wheeled out of the museum and wound up to emit an enfeebled, debilitating death-rattle: the Scottish Council for Development and Industry.

That business support has been given with little thought for the potential loss of tourist income and a cost-benefit analysis of alternatives. And the objectors, arrayed against some of the biggest vested interests in the land, are on their own: 18,000 voiceless in a parliament set up to give the people of Scotland a voice: truly a democratic deficit.

Despite the forces arrayed against them, the objectors show every intention of fighting on. Helen McDade and the John Muir Trust; the Beauly Denny Landscape Group; the Association for the Protection of Rural Scotland; Ramblers Scotland; the Scottish Wild Land Group: these and countless thousands of individuals have surely earned a William Wallace award fighting for our landscape against a monstrous threat. They fight for Scotland and the best it has to offer. We owe them our support.