23/02/2012

Available for over a year

With Winifred Robinson. Scotland's first commercial gold mine in Loch Lomond's National Park has formally been granted planning permission. Scotgold Resources plans to extract more than £50m worth of gold and silver from a hillside near Tyndrum. It is the firm's second attempt at securing planning permission. The first application was rejected by the Loch Lomond National Park Authority over conservation concerns. The mine is overlooked by Ben Lui, which is scaled by up to 15,000 climbers a year. Gordon Watson Director of planning and rural development at Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park and Robert Maund, Vice President of the Scottish Campaign for National Parks join the programme to discuss the balance of conservation and development. Claer Barrett, the Retail correspondent of the Financial Times discusses the new trend of local councils buying town centre retail units or shopping centres. Will it help save the high street? Living wills are a way for people to retain control over medical decisions as they near the end of their lives. At the moment there is no central register for them. This makes it difficult for relatives and doctors to find the wills, when a person has become incapacitated and is unable to communicate. Helen McGrath is a solicitor who is calling for an easy to access database for living wills. Producer Helen Roberts.