Comment

TO oppose the creation of the Wharfedale Trail for whatever reason is entirely reasonable: to use dishonest and offensive tactics to further that opposition is not. Lurking in the shadows behind the public and legitimate campaigners against the trail, there has been an anonymous minority desperately seeking to smear the consultation process at the same time as engaging in the attempted character assassination of those associated with it.

That view would be less than compelling if those who have condemned their tactics as both malicious and dishonest were supporters of the Wharfedale Trail, but that is far from the case.

Disinterested officials of entirely independent organisations like North Yorkshire County Council and the Dales Way Association have expressed shock and dismay at the depths to which people have been willing to sink. Complaints against a parish councillor have proved entirely without foundation, as have the insinuations of impropriety against the consultant employed by the Wharfedale Trail Forum.

An anti-trail leaflet which suggested that a short diversion of the proposed trail across a field in Ilkley could be equated to a Mugabe-style land grab' is not only puerile in terms of the local issues concerned but, without doubt, a disgraceful trivialising of the ordeal suffered by white and black farmers who have endured murder, torture, violence, loss of their life's work and abuse of human rights in that ruthless dictator's wretched country. Where is the sense of proportion?

Perhaps some of those opposing the Wharfedale Trail are simply not experienced at campaigning and mistakenly regard dirty tricks as somehow acceptable?

It may be time to consider objectively what their underhand efforts have achieved. At most, all they have done is to discredit what is an entirely legitimate and reasonable anti-trail campaign with a deplorable display of mendacity and malice. Their lack of dignity has not only injured their case it has also discredited the otherwise admirable community of Addingham.

Shame.

9:42am Thursday 25th October 2007

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