With upwards of 87,000 names, Protect Loch Tay’s online petition is undoubtedly a social media success story.
The group’s concerns about a US real estate firm’s intentions for the Taymouth Castle estate have captured the attention of TV crews and national papers.
Subsequent reports have typically been variations on the theme of David and Goliath. Dispatches from the plucky Perthshire community that’s taking on the might of the American money men.
But with only around 200 residents in Kenmore – the village on the doorstep of the Taymouth Castle estate – it’s fair to say the vast majority of those signing the petition are from outside the area.
And so – for all their good intentions – they cannot begin to understand how local people really feel about this supposed threat to their way of life.
Kenmore and District Community Council can though.
Kenmore has long history with Taymouth Castle developers
The watchdog group has been in regular dialogue with Discovery Land Company since it took over the Taymouth castle estate five years ago.
It has watched as previous developers came and went. And as the castle and its surrounds became more and more dilapidated.
And, given this troubled history of the site, it’s perhaps not so surprising that Discovery Land Company has built up a reserve of goodwill in the area.
The Taymouth Castle renovation is well under way and work has started on restoring its golf course.
Employees are living in homes that were formerly holiday lets. Some have children in local schools.
Discovery Land Company funding has paid for Christmas festivities and Highland Games. It’s led to improvements to the beach and village square.
And 200 new jobs are in the pipeline when the resort is completed.
Time for calm to prevail around Taymouth debate
That said, it does no harm to ensure an undertaking of this scale is scrutinised to the nth degree.
And to its credit, Protect Loch Tay has shone a spotlight onto a massive project with the potential to bring about great change in rural Perthshire and beyond.
Questions over access and environmental protections have implications that reach far further than Kenmore.
And Discovery Land Company has admitted its communications were not good enough, and pledged it will do better.
But contentious talk of “gated ‘worlds’ for the super-rich” and “an influx of American millionaires and their speed boats, watersports and helicopter taxis, destroying our peaceful loch” does not tally with what the company’s representatives have said publicly to this paper.
Stating that Discovery Land Company has closed down the shop, hotel and other buildings is only half the story.
And suggestions that the Scottish Government should step in; that the community council and Perth and Kinross Council are somehow ill-equipped to deal with a development of this nature should send a chill through anyone with a belief in local democracy.
Emotions have been running high on either side of the Taymouth Castle estate debate.
A period of calm reflection would be in everyone’s best interests now.
Conversation