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Blow for tourism
Credit: The Scotsman | 05 February 2014 | www.scotsman.com ~~
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Translate: FROM English | TO English
Joss Blamire of Scottish Renewables claims that 69 per cent of respondents to a recent poll said their decision to visit Scotland would not be affected by the presence of a wind farm (“Ryder Cup: Gleneagles views ‘spoiled’ by turbines”, your report, 2 February). So we are entitled to conclude that 31 per cent of tourists would be deterred.
As the proprietor of a rural café on the main route from Loch Ness to Skye and the north-west Highlands, my profit margins would be wiped out by a reduction of that scale. Many other small, tourist-related businesses would be in the same predicament. I know this because of the horrified reactions of visitors to my café in Glenmoriston to plans by developers to pack this glen with turbine arrays, pylon lines and sub-stations.
Joss Blamire can pump out propaganda on behalf of the vested interests he represents.
On the other hand, Fergus Ewing, as minister for energy and tourism, should be ashamed of himself for parroting the same line.
One thing above all else attracts the majority of visitors to the Highlands: the prospect of unspoiled wild land and the wildlife it sustains.
At the present rate of wind farm development, Scotland will become internationally notorious as the country that has done most to trash its single most important asset for an energy policy thought up on the back of an envelope.
Tourism employs 200,000 people and earns Scotland £11 billion a year. That dwarfs anything the wind industry could achieve.
Gerry Worth
Glenmoriston
Inverness
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