Bear with me whilst we do a quick detour to Scotland’s other national park in the Cairngorms.

Twenty years ago there was a right old stushie over development plans which would see a funicular railway travel up Cairngorm taking visitors to a restaurant on the summit.

Cue many excitable flurries in the doo’cots of the assorted associations representing ramblers, nature conservation, and wildlife.

This was an area of outstanding natural beauty, a national treasure, a protected national parkland. Who would dare despoil it?

Such was the furore that in my then incarnation as a radio presenter I went up there with a team from BBC Scotland to host a public debate. And, you know what, the folk in the audience least concerned about intrusion were the locals.

They didn’t want their area trashed either; but they did want jobs and opportunities for their young folk where precious few existed.

In the event the railway opened 15 years ago and at peak times attracts 150,000 visitors.

Presumably they all spend the odd bob or two in nearby Aviemore, in the summit restaurant, and on tickets for the twice daily guided walks and mountain bike routes all strictly controlled to protect fragile areas.

In short, after due discussion, a compromise was reached which allowed a new asset to be build whilst taking due note of the risks to our natural heritage.

I was reminded of all this when reading of the online petition attracting more than 30,000 objections to a proposed new development at the Balloch end of Loch Lomond.

The preferred bidder to develop this 44 acre parkland site is the company which runs a 375 acre theme park in North Yorkshire.

That resort sells itself as a place where visitors can use 100 odd rides and visitor attractions including a zoo, and swimming pools.

It is, in short, an entertainment complex of the kind few folks would like replicated on the bonny, bonny banks.

But yet again the people most relaxed about developing this lochside corridor are those living in Balloch who have expressed the hope that a development which includes “glamping pods” as well as lodges and a hotel, “retail opportunities” and adventure activity might persuade more visitors to come to the area and stay for longer periods.

Flamingo Land, the designated developer, has been painted as exactly the wrong sort of company to dig up the land – a park created from old industrial sites – chop down its trees and intrude a series of buildings and shops.

But it has insisted that the Loch Lomond venture would not be a mark two theme park, but one suited to the local environment.

So perhaps, just as with Aviemore, the best way forward may be to surround any planning permission with the kind of checks and balances which would ensure that there is sensitive economic development without environmental vandalism.

There are enough public bodies around the Loch Lomond area to howl loud and long if one of the most famous stretches inland water in the world were to be downgraded to an outdoor amusement arcade.