THE letter we publish today from the New Forest Commoners' Defence Association illustrates a point Spectator has made obliquely in the past, namely that national parks seem to be struggling to gain the support of the people who live within them.

The troubles within the Yorkshire Dales national park have been chronicled at length in these pages in recent years. Northumberland has had its difficulties too and now an area which doesn't have a national park seems to be mobilising in advance of a suggestion that it should have one.

The New Forest Commoners' Defence Association has indeed already reached the view that a national park in its area must be opposed on the grounds that the traditional character and way of life of the New Forest would be destroyed by national park designation.

Preserving the traditional character and way of life is, of course, exactly what national park authorities are supposed to do. Which simply and emphatically demonstrates just how big a gap there is between the national park movement and some of its "subjects".

Surely this is a priority issue for Mr David Butterworth as he settles into his new role of chief executive of the park authority in the Yorkshire Dales. His predecessor had a strong message on the subject when she spoke shortly after her appointment. Sadly something of Mrs Heather Hancock's meaning got lost in the translation.

No caravans

WHEN one considers the town-and-country-planned monstrosities which have been visited upon Newton Aycliffe over the last 50 years, a recent planning decision by Sedgefield borough councillors confirms the world is, indeed, a rum old place.

A plan to site a caravan at a stables, to enable the round-the-clock security necessary to obtain a National Hunt trainer's licence, was rejected. Racehorse training, planning officials told councillors, was "harmful to the character of the countryside".

In a bizarre twist, it was pointed by the scheme's defenders that neighbouring housing estates included street names such as The Saddlery, The Stirrup and The Chase.

Another example, sadly, of townies wanting a sanitised, ersatz version of rural life. And another example of councillors and planners making fools of themselves