Very soon after the Snowdonia Society’s opposition to Kemble Air Services plans to restart flying operations at Llanbedr Airfield became known, a petition with the title, ‘Llanbedr Airfield yes, yes, yes!’ was circulated in the area. The subtitle was, ‘We who have signed below are in favour of developing Llanbedr Airfield in order to bring jobs to the area, increase tourism and boost the local economy’, so no one was in any doubt about what they were signing up to.Petitions canvasing support for some local issue are not unusual in this area, and one often sees rather dog-eared forms lying on shop counters with a few signatures scrawled on them. What made the airfield petition different was the number of signatures that it attracted in this sparsely populated rural area: over 1200 in little more than a week.
As the Snowdonia Society seemed to be under the impression that they would receive widespread public support for their campaign this must have come as rather a surprise to them.
Not to be outdone, the society launched their own petition Against Llanbedr Airport on the Welsh Assembly web site. Being an internet based operation, this had the potential to attract tens of thousands of signatures. The result was interesting.
The petition was available for signature for about a month, and it collected just 156 signatures.
Those very few people who did sign were required to provide their address, of which only the county was visible on the petition form. From this it is possible to draw some conclusions about where support, if any, for the Snowdonia Society’s campaign is coming from.
Nearly half the signatories, 75 (48%) were domiciled in England, only 25 (16%) were from Gwynedd, and could therefor make some claim to being locals who might understand the issues rather than relying on the misleading and lurid accounts of Kemble’s plans that were reported in the media, which seemed to have got their information from the Snowdonia Society, the Council for National Parks and Greenpeace.
More interesting still, only one of the Snowdonia Society’s staff at their Ty Hyll office seems to have signed the petition.
In my opinion, the Snowdonia Society are a bunch of blinkered fools who would rather see wales turned into a theme park for the tourists rather than it progressing forward. I hope the airfield is allowed to open, the locals were dealt a blow when the site was closed and they finally have a glimmer of hope but the snowdonia society are trying to scupper it.
Paul
Llanbedr airfield is the most valuable resource this area of Wales has, after its scenery! On its own, the airfield can ensure the future prosperity of a wider area by providing jobs and income, not just visiting aircraft etc but the knock on effects of more visitors and money coming in. The airfield has been in existence longer than me and many of those objecting to its continued use! I presume the Snowdonia Society are the type of individuals that object to church bells ringing on a Sunday. I flew over the airfield today (Saturday 20th September 2008). How sad I couldn’t land. Hopefully, this time next year I will be a regular visitor to this enigmatic airfield, lying in the most dramatic and fantastic landscape the UK has. Bless the Kemble guys: maybe we can find a quiet corner of Snowdonia for the members of the “Society” to occupy. An area just as they want it, where nothing ever happens, where no one lives, without any economic value and no one can do anything unless it fulfils only their (The “Society’s”) interests. Flower pressing or birdwatching benches perhaps!