An ill wind

Published on 20/09/2012 00:00

Mount Lothian developer Karen Thorburn (Letters, 19 ­September) states that Mount Lothian lies outside local, regional and national landscape designations and implies this is a reason to destroy the landscape. This is to misunderstand the meaning of landscape.

Landscape is continuous. Although the landscape at Mount Lothian is not designated, it is only a few miles from two areas of great landscape value and highly visible from both.

Go to Wull Muir on the ­National Cycle Route 1 on the B7007 in the Moorfoots and see Midlothian stretched out before you with part of East Lothian and Fife. I defy anyone to say where the line on the map is to say which bit is not beautiful.

Then stand on the Pentlands and look over to the Moorfoots, as half a million people do each year from the regional park. Can you say the whole view is not beautiful and worth preserving?

The wind industry attended the local plan public inquiry to try to ensure the setting of the Pentland Hills was not protected for their own ends.

Representatives of the Penicuik Environment Protection Association spoke to defend the area. The Reporter agreed with them and protected the setting of the Pentland Hills in the local plan, reinforcing the Midlothian Landscape Capacity Study which says the Midlothian landscape cannot support high turbines.

Since then two more ­government Reporters have backed this up at the Auchencorth public inquiry.

The only way the government has been able to overrule council decisions and locals’ opinion is by eroding planning guidance over the years at the instigation of the wind farm lobby.

For example, such ridiculous assumptions on landscape ­demarcations are now used to destroy areas previously protected. As my Platform piece (18 September) said, so much to do with the wind industry defies common sense. Think for yourself.

Celia Hobbs

Peebles Road

Penicuik, Midlothian