The Independent Website That Asks The Awkward Questions
Simply Irrational
Why Be Rational When Emoting Will Do?
Despite the damning case against supporting the Huts appeal, this
website occasionally receives notes from Heritage Trust supporters
suggesting that despite logic or merit we should support the Antarctic
Heritage Trust campaign regardless. That, of course, is up to you; you
will be in good company. Sir Edmund Hillary has lost any pretence to
sound judgement.
According to press reports:
“Sir Edmund said that when he went to Shackleton's hut two years ago a figure had appeared up near the stove ‘and walked towards me with welcoming arms’. ‘Then it disappeared but I just had the feeling, I don't believe in anything really, but I just had the feeling of Shackleton welcoming our group to this old hut of his.’ Sir Edmund said the huts should be preserved.” (January 22, 2007, The Age or New Zealand Herald)
With touching naivety and no regard for the consequences, Sir Edmund then went on to insinuate that the valuable resources used to support British polar science and heritage should be diverted away from the work of other polar heritage charities such as the Scott Polar Research Institute in Cambridge to fund the huts campaign:
“’I think they should put more money and people into the field’… The Scott Polar Institute in Cambridge was a great store of memorabilia and a great deal of knowledge was held there, Sir Edmund said. But it seemed to ‘completely ignore huts like this and Scott's hut"….’I can't understand it.’” (January 22, 2007, The Age)
Perhaps someone should explain to Sir Edmund that the international memorial to Captain Scott and the Polar party is a scientific institute with its resources currently committed to work on climate change; and that its’ internationally important polar library and archive currently require £5 million in order to remain operational - projects of considerably greater import to the future of polar science and heritage than ‘preserving’ the huts.