Silbury Hill 180
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Silbury Hill

Trespass on SSSI sites

moss M
moss Sep 6, 2012 06:59:09
Replying to thesweetcheat

thesweetcheat wrote:
Sorry, just to clarify, I don't think the agreement aspect was bland either (I meant the thread has managed to avoid becoming a bland "everyone agrees", but has also avoided handbags at dawn, mostly).
White sheep versus black sheep;

I thought it was an excellent debate on both sides, the analogy that came to mind (must be those 'black sheep' elsewhere on the site,) was the fact that driving through the countryside one sees, great flocks of white sheep with one or two black sheep. It is not a particuarlarly good analogy, after all it is probably down to genetic dysfunction as far as the black sheep are concerned, but it is a bit like us humans. There we are expected to follow the rules 100%, (we get to look very boring doing this by the way) then up pops the individual, who says no I want to do something different. To impose the 'rule' on our black sheep won't make he/she act like the rest of the white sheep so why bother? Wanting to destroy the free expression of the individual is bad practice, wanting to make him like the white sheep is also wrong. Luckily we live in a tolerant society which adapts along the way, 98% won't go up Silbury nor sit in Skara Brae, so we have to live with the 2% who think differently and be glad they exist to make us argue ;)....

R Rhiannon
Rhiannon Sep 6, 2012 07:52:50
Replying to moss

"98% won't go up Silbury nor sit in Skara Brae, so we have to live with the 2% who think differently and be glad they exist to make us argue ;)"

Well I'm not glad about it Moss, I can't really understand why so many people (and strangely sudden upstarts like love-it-or-hate-it "marmite") are saying it's all great and we should all live and let live, yeah let people climb Silbury, what the hell, there's only a few of them, it won't make any difference, hey they're just expressing their individuality, good luck to them, etc.

To be picky 2% of 70,000 is (erm) 1400, so that's 4 people a night sitting in skara brae, I don't think so. I think we're talking a much much smaller percentage of visitors that consider they can disregard the wishes of the site's guardians (they've carefully considered it, mind). And I reckon there's an appropriate word that nobody's used yet for fear of upsetting this minority, well I think it's actually Selfish. As in wilfully determined to pursue your own advantage to the detriment of everybody else.

I'm really surprised that so many people on this website would be agreeing it's ok to walk on silbury or wander through Skara Brae. Bloody hell if people on this geeky forum don't really mind damaging these places, then what hope the general public. Oh no - actually virtually all the general public play by the rules and respectfully go along with what they've been requested to do. So it turns out, people on this website are actually MORE likely to damage ancient monuments. And those that don't do it, some of them actually think it's ok if the others do. What a disappointing surprise.

It's not just "us" that read this forum you know. This information's sitting out there for anyone to read. People may read this and think "well the geeks on the modern antiquarian think it's ok" encouraging them to do it as well.

Whatever.

H harestonesdown
harestonesdown Sep 6, 2012 08:33:41
Replying to moss

moss wrote:
so we have to live with the 2% who think differently and be glad they exist to make us argue ;)....
Quite.
Where would we be without the Benny Rothmans of this world. :)

B bladup
bladup Sep 6, 2012 13:29:26
Replying to moss

moss wrote:
thesweetcheat wrote:
Sorry, just to clarify, I don't think the agreement aspect was bland either (I meant the thread has managed to avoid becoming a bland "everyone agrees", but has also avoided handbags at dawn, mostly).
White sheep versus black sheep;

I thought it was an excellent debate on both sides, the analogy that came to mind (must be those 'black sheep' elsewhere on the site,) was the fact that driving through the countryside one sees, great flocks of white sheep with one or two black sheep. It is not a particuarlarly good analogy, after all it is probably down to genetic dysfunction as far as the black sheep are concerned, but it is a bit like us humans. There we are expected to follow the rules 100%, (we get to look very boring doing this by the way) then up pops the individual, who says no I want to do something different. To impose the 'rule' on our black sheep won't make he/she act like the rest of the white sheep so why bother? Wanting to destroy the free expression of the individual is bad practice, wanting to make him like the white sheep is also wrong. Luckily we live in a tolerant society which adapts along the way, 98% won't go up Silbury nor sit in Skara Brae, so we have to live with the 2% who think differently and be glad they exist to make us argue ;)....

I'm very proud to be in the 2% club, it's a lot more interesting, and if 98% is the norm than surely the 2% are out of the "ordinary" and may in these terms be "specical", my name on here is a play on bladud [my names Blades] the last king of the druid's who used to fly from stamford [near lincoln were i'm from] to bath, i'm from lincoln and have flown in my out of bodies, do i believe i'm a relative- yes, pompous- yes,know stuff inside-yes, i must think a lot of myself- yes, what the fuck is wrong with that? if you don't think much of yourself, no one else is going to are they?

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