COMMENT

A Brave New World

MCofS is currently undergoing an internal review with help from sportscotland and the UKsport “Sport Modernisation Programme”. Our innards are being dissected and part of the process is establishing what the MCofS is about, and strategic directions. In my mind an 'aim' identifies the direction in which you face, and 'objectives' are the achievable steps that have to be taken to go in the direction of the aim. This approach to strategic thinking has enabled me to ascend a few mountains – my main aim!

Strategically we identify leaflets about safety and environment as key to raising the profile of what the MCofS is in business for (our aims), and for defining the MCofS as the authority on matters mountaineering. Advice we put into the public domain helps to establish the MCofS as the authentic, and authoritative voice and our association with partners such as sportscotland and the Scottish Mountain Safety Form are important for us to be regarded as representative of the widest body of informed opinion, not a team of self opinionated 'backs woodsmen'.

Intellectually on all major issues, the MCofS has usually won the argument, and been accepted eventually as both responsible, and having acted in the wider public interest, particularly in its opposition to short term industrialisation of our 'sports ground'.

We need to think critically about whether we contribute to 'pay for play' commercial recreational provision. We have always been for free access and participation as a 'birthright'. Both contributing to spectator events, as if we are part of the 'entertainment' industry and accepting that the recreational land user has an obligation to pay an additional levy to maintain a landscape that others have received subsidies to destroy, needs to be thought about in this context.

Take parking fees, its not that they are in question, its their justification - if cars need to be accommodated, toilets provided and litter removed this is about recreational management, and the public purse pays and recoups its outlay. If the charges are justified as necessary for the maintenance of the landscape, when the landowner/managers are receiving millions to build tracks, plant industrial woodland and wind farms, then I have a problem.

MCofS members should at least have free access to such car-parks in acknowledgement of the work the MCofS does in supporting path work, and protecting the environment with the help of members subscription income. The members pay their way already (this is the implication of the free parking for NTS members).

The members need to have real every day evidence of what benefit comes from belonging to the MCofS. I find it ironic that we should give our free time so that members can have access to cheap huts, and feel guilty when we are accused of competing with bunkhouses; then see important training facilities for our sport charging premium rates for members, as if they are no different from any body else. At the very least any sports facility which is 'recognised' in any way by the MCofS should be giving favourable access to MCofS members.

The commercialisation of many sports and the focus on costly facilities is making participation something which is limited to the time and money rich, the consequences in terms of the health of the less well off is now a national crisis. I believe we should be emphasising the importance of mass, free, participation and the duty of the state to assist in funding it and the on costs entailed. The age of leisure was not envisaged as for the rich alone, [they already had it ] it was to free people from wage slavery and soma, and improve their quality of life and health, not condemn them to ill health and restricted opportunity and a choice between heroin and boredom.

We should be contributing to improved and cheaper access to beneficial healthy leisure, so that people can be active, free, healthy and enjoy their natural heritage without constraint. We have to take a coherent and integrated stance.

Obviously you would expect a socialist rant in opposition to the 'Brave New World' and the 'Blairite Neo Con Capitalist Utopia', but where we are going was not what I envisaged even in 1984!

By Nick Halls
(MCofS Honorary Secretary)

NB: the views expressed here are personal and do not necessarily reflect the views of the MCofS Executive Committee