Bog Myrtle & Peat

The recent launch of an online “Information Hub” has only served to heighten tensions around the new National Park. We’re told that in-person meetings are coming, but a staggered, multi-platform consultation is inherently confusing. Once you’ve said your piece on the Hub, is there any further need to engage with the consultation? Do online comments churned out in a few seconds receive equal weight and consideration as feedback provided by people who travel for hours across Galloway to stand and speak their mind in a public forum? Or in a moment of panic and uncertainty, do we just fling anonymous comments at a passive corporate whiteboard?

The “Information Hub” is valuable because local contributors have highlighted many of the same old problems about Galloway – issues which have genuine traction and clout at a local level. Comments on the Hub return to recurring fears about the failure of local transport infrastructure, as well as a lack of jobs and young people in the area. There are also fears about renewable developments, intensive agriculture and forestry expansion; not least the fact that so much of our landscape is being bought up by investment groups which seem to have no real interest in local communities. There’s no doubt that Galloway is under the cosh – the confusion here is what should be done about it. 

Watching comments unfold on the Hub, it’s interesting to realise that many of the same issues are used both for and against designation. If you’re worried about jobs and young people, it’s said that a National Park can invest in tourism and local industry to support those young people – but it’s also a concern that a National Park will drive up local house prices so that young people have nowhere to live. If you’re into conservation, the general idea is that parks are good for nature, but there are many examples of UK parks which have done nothing more than monitor the decline and loss of wildlife. It follows that concern for nature is a reason to both love and hate a National Park.

The Parkers have been very effective at mobilising a sense that Galloway has got problems, but they’ve fallen short on demonstrating how a National Park might help. It’s becoming clear from a wealth of contradictions and confusions that we really don’t know what National Parks can do. Will a Galloway National Park repair our roads, protect us from wind turbines and develop sustainable tourism? We genuinely don’t know – and importantly, we can’t trust anybody to tell us honestly. It’s no point of embarrassment to concede that we don’t understand what designation means. It’s really complicated, and the possibilities are endless. Government Minister Mairi Gougeon has called the proposal “a blank sheet of paper” – she’s trying to make the process sound collaborative and flexible, but it’s hard to support an idea that doesn’t exist.

As a consequence, we’re being encouraged to support a National Park on an impossibly vague and slightly disingenuous promise that it can be “whatever we want it to be”- which is to say “let’s get it and think what it means later”. Worryingly, the bid is being pitched as an opportunity for us to stand in the spotlight at last – as if we’ll only get the investment and support we need if it’s taken as part of this specific National Park package. To extend this narrative, if we decide that we don’t want to be designated after all, it’ll somehow mark us as ungrateful, placing us back at the end of the queue for services again. Parkers are clear that if we say NO, “we won’t be offered this chance again”, but there’s no reason why Galloway should have found itself in such a rubbish state in the first place – and no reason why we should have to beg and be grateful for services which the rest of the UK takes for granted. In that sense, it seems like the Government is in a clever position here – if we’re designated, they’ll get the kudos for making a new National Park at the cost of simply paying for stuff they should have been funding all along. 

It’s also hard to hear a constant repetition of Galloway’s status as an economic and environmental basket-case. We do have problems, but this bid has been weakened by a sense that we’re on our knees and begging for help – while many places are designated for being wonderful and precious, it’s begun to feel like Galloway is being put forward as a National Park because we’re so rubbish and needy. To have got this far, we’ve had to demonstrate that we’re worse and more broken than any other part of Scotland. That’s a terrible message, and it hardly puts a spring in our step to have our weaknesses showcased and shared across the national press.

In the aftermath of Covid, the local council covered our towns and villages with disgustingly ingratiating posters encouraging tourists to spend their money in Galloway. Some of these signs went so far as to greet visitors with “We missed you!” during Lockdown – it was a revoltingly subservient message, and it seemed to imply that we have to cringe and scrape for any passing pound or penny; that tourists are the only chance we have to rescue ourselves from the filth and dishonour of our lives. If I have ever felt ashamed to be from Galloway, it was when these posters and this tourism campaign made us look like a spineless and pathetic shell-of-a-place.

Here’s where the Parkers lean too heavily on our problems, because it’s absolutely not in our nature to beg and slither and bow. We’re proud of our landscape and heritage, and it’s a uniquely nauseating experience to imagine that our future depends upon bending the knee to every passing motorhome and caravan. If we say NO to a National Park and the system decides that we’re a bunch of ungrateful bastards, then it would be very like Galloway to respond by calling it a petty and pathetic little system which can shove the whole deal up its own damn arse. It’s surely better to be ourselves – and even in what’s being described as our current state of ruin and decrepitude, I can still think of a hundred reasons why Galloway is worth ten of any other place in Britain. If the Parkers mean to capture and protect a uniquely Galloway spirit, they have to incorporate a degree of pride, recalcitrance and stubbornness too.

And all the while, it’s a growing point of horror to imagine how any future National Park will be managed on our behalf. When Galloway’s name appeared in the media for the first time, there was an almost imperceptible tremble in the catfish tank where the overweight bureaucrats are stored. A single, petrified eyelid cracked open through the sediment and a bloodshot pupil peered out at the world for the first time in many years. Never having heard of Galloway until that moment, the monstrous chief-executive-in-waiting wound his drooping whiskers into a calm, untouchable grin. “This would be good opportunity to find secure employment for the last ten years before retirement”, he thought to himself, wiping a clud of custard-green sleep from his creasy, somnolent eye.