SIR — May I reply to Sue Levinge’s letter please (Free Press November 13).

Ian Liddell-Granger spoke nothing but the truth about outsiders trying to influence how Exmoor is run.

She never at any time mentions Exmoor itself, she only refers to it as an national park.

We are Exmoor first and foremost, and what is good for Exmoor is good for tourism because tourists like the local people and way of life.

It is the work put in by the farmers, self-employed farm workers, foresters, wallers, hedge layers, path clearance foresters and many other top quality crafts which maintain Exmoor in all its beauty.

If someone has an accident, finds some walker injured, gets caught in the snow, finds a road blocked with a tree or is told someone is lost, they are the first to go to a cottage which might be two miles away to get a landline phone and get help because 70 per cent of Exmoor has no mobile phone signal. But obviously the lady is not interested in such dire happenings.

She says businesses can be run by “mobiles through a router, using Skype (in the middle of Brendon Common?)” and use of the satellite technology combined with smart phone and landline.

Doesn’t she think the locals would use these if they could afford them?

In time these technologies will come to Exmoor and then this poor little mast she is creating about can be removed, but in the meantime local people are entitled to a little security.

She asks: “Does your MP not notice that property within the national park changes hands at a considerable premium and the main reason is that many people come to live there because the landscape is protected (or meant to be)?”

Yes he is well aware of them because he has been trying to help us get a cheaper form of housing for local people.

Does it not occur to her that there are many indigenous inhabitants, like myself, who have a deep love of Exmoor and work hard to keep it beautiful, but my children couldn’t afford to live where they were born because these money bags come in and buy up tiny cottages and do them up and come down for the odd weekend and are keeping locals out of a home of their own. This is killing the moorland villages.

A Cornish councillor stated recently: “Why should we agree to building second homes when our young people can’t afford a first home?”

Personally I think second homes should have to pay 500 per cent Council Tax and that should go to building cheaper types of homes for locals.

As for her saying she is dismayed by Exmoor National Park’s “casual attitude” to destroying Haddon Hill, this is the biggest overstatement this side of the Empire State Building.

They were quite correct - their mandate states they are committed to the welfare of the inhabitants when dealing with planning matters.

Molly Groves,

Exmoor Uprising.