Much was made of the 80,000 people “represented” there. Indeed, I do believe that these community councils play, as the blurb goes “an important role in local democracy, bridging the gap between local authorities and communities, raising awareness of the opinions and needs of the communities they represent”.

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But it should also be pointed out that there are 156 community councils in Highland. 10 were formed by contested elections. 10. For the other 93.7% of Highlanders represented at this conference, they were being “represented” by volunteers, such as myself, who put themselves forward and are now claiming to speak for them. The vast majority of people have no idea who their community councillors are.

In contrast, the politicians on the stage were the recipients of 278,452 votes in their last outings to the poll. A significantly more “representative” sample of Highland opinion, one might think.

Crawford repeatedly promised a conversation. But there was no conversation. Anyone who offered a differing opinion was heckled from the floor. This has been represented as being the result of the unanimity of the people – it actually was intimidation and a mob mentality triggering a bystander effect where people with differing views were too scared to speak out. Not that the carefully managed question selection allowed others to air their views anyway.

In Edderton, community benefit money has paid for skills grants allowing young people to learn to drive and stay in the area, taking up apprenticeships. It has paid for linked smoke alarm grants, community group start-up grants, insulation grants for people’s homes.

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This year, it allowed the community council to step in and replace the Winter Fuel Payment in the wake of the UK Government’s attack on pensioners. And yes, it also paid for the ubiquitous pensioners’ Christmas lunch.

Community benefit money is not seen as a bribe in our community. Some of the chosen few allowed to speak bemoaned the £500 statutory amount given to community councils and their powerlessness – and then in the next breath complained that they didn’t want more community benefit money.

If it is used properly, this is money which can revolutionise community facilities and genuinely distribute community control back to the people.

Instead, we had to listen to Fergus Ewing spreading misinformation regarding Spain’s green energy power outage: something widely debunked.

We were told about effects on tourism, despite the only two academic studies available saying turbines have no impact on tourism – which makes sense. Travelling to a place and then leaving because you see a wind turbine seems eccentric in the extreme. But extremes is where this crowd of the middle class Nimbys, radicalised with their own self-righteousness, live. If they are so confident turbines are going to wreck tourism, perhaps they could use some of this community benefit money to fund an independent, academic study. But something tells me that won’t happen.

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Tourism we have; what we do not have is people. The people we are importing are exactly the sort who were in the room that day: retirees with the time to attend a meeting on a mid-week afternoon and worry about the provenance of their asparagus.

To this end, we were told, again, about the “unspoilt landscape”. But the Highlands is not unspoilt – it is, in fact, a ruined landscape. Sutherland continues to limp on with 50% of its pre-Clearance population. The people were excised for the industrial farming of sheep. We retain only 1% of the Caledonian Forest because of the industrialised logging which has led to those same Clearance estates often growing invasive monoculture species for their own economic gain.

I would have a lot greater respect for this forum if I had heard a single idea for sustaining and keeping the Highlands alive. But I didn’t. All I heard was the bully pulpit of the radicalised echo chamber – with no understanding of fairness, no cognition of intergenerational handover, no desire to offer solutions: just anger and whipping up the masses because when you came here you thought you had bought a view, not a house.

Well, boo hoo. The Highlands are dying. Is community benefit the perfect? Absolutely not? Do we need land reform, do we need accountability for the Westminster privatisation and lack of control we have as a country? You bet.

But, almost all of this will be redundant if we don’t try and address climate change and the smattering of young people in the Highlands need jobs now and a future. And these are not the people to supply it.

Peter Newman
Edderton