Simon Wilson said:
Bottlebank said:
The Old Ruminator said:
its how land owners are approached. if cavers barge in stating a right in the first place things may well go rapidly down hill. i spent 25 years getting access to dig up private property where there were old rubbish tips. on occasion we even used a digger. we never got an access refusal because we went about it in the right way with photos and testimonials from previous landowners. now i cant believe the places we got into. getting the landowner interested in our projects helped a lot also. what worries me about the whole thing is if the landowner feels threatened by crow he just might fill the cave entrance in anyway. one landowner with a cave on his property expressed great concern that nobody had visited his cave for years. thats the sort of attitude you need to foster.i have not voted on the issue as i cannot decide what is right. regions vary too much to have a blanket approach.
so in defence of land owners i say treat them with the respect and you are half way there. my other caving friend is voting against the issue..
Old Ruminator,
I've a lot of respect for that position but one of the things that worries me a lot about the way many people (offline) are talking is that they are saying something similar. Some have and some haven't followed the debate but they can't decide between the enticing carrot of free access for all and worries over knock effects.
Unless I've completely misunderstood the BCA's position they will only be counting the votes that are returned.
If you are concerned I think you really should consider voting no, we understand the status quo and I think you're probably suggesting you would prefer to keep it - but abstaining means your view won't count - which is a shame because you are absolutely right to be concerned by both the blanket approach and the risk to landowner relations.
Your last post crossed with this - but I think it still applies.
Cheers,
Tony
Bottlebank keeps mentioning the staus quo and I just want to remind people what the status quo is. The status quo is a state of conflict in which most cavers disagree with DEFRA and are becoming increasingly vocal about that disagreement.
Simon,
That's a very over simplified and incomplete view.
The status quo is the present state of access.
If we knew most cavers disagreed with Defra we wouldn't need a poll, although I agree those who do have become more vocal - as have some who don't!
The impression I get is that like Old Ruminator many cavers aren't sure or don't care about this, but let's wait and see what the poll says before making firm statements about who thinks what. And lets see how many votes get returned. A low turnout would tend to confirm my impression.
The question is do we want BCA to campaign to change this status quo?
A "yes" vote does not mean it will change. What it does mean is that the BCA will be forced to spend a lot of time and money pushing for a change that may never happen, running a campaign that in itself may result in temporary or permanent damage to landowner relations, and that even if it's successful will probably make it more difficult over time to get permission to dig.
David Rose earlier mentioned Great Whernside. It's quite possible opposition to the campaign may emerge from landowners there.
I think at least so far no pro CRoW campaigner has tried to claim that landowner relations are likely to improve whilst the campaign is in progress, which is something.
No one on the "No" side of the debate is trying to pretend the status quo is perfect, of course it needs work, but we're fair better starting that work from where we are now than from the wrong end of long and unsuccessful campaign, especially if that's been contested.