To many people, the issue surrounding the sale of 44 acres of land at Balloch on Loch Lomond is a local one, with concerns over the environment and the loss of trees. Would that it was that simple. The issue is in fact many issues of governance, accountability, and precedence. It is also an issue of land ownership, something Scotland still, unfathomably, has not got to grips with. And to make it worse, it is also an issue of an attack on the commonweal. And it is also a matter of public trust. Let this be made as clear as possible. Should this sale be passed, Scotland has stood back and let an entire set of values be swept away for profit motives and to satisfy short term objectives mired in secrecy. It is not a dramatic statement for the sake of it when I say this sale is perhaps one of the least penetrable acts in the public realm. So complete is the closing down of public discourse (achieved by the silence of nods and winks from those that really ought to be tearing this apart in the wide open) one would feel that instead of a holiday resort, what was in progress was a major government defence project of the utmost sensitivity. Scottish Enterprise have engineered this sale in such a way, all inquiry is and can be rebuffed. Legally. Elected representatives, in the main, don't want to know. At all. Their names are not ones you will see asking hard questions. The hardest any have gone so far is the Greens demanding a talk about what the company is GOING to do, so the inference there is either the Greens don't get that this is a profound matter of accountability, or they have meekly accepted it will go ahead. Having approached our Labour MSP, the feeling is one of total closing down of avenues to power. The SNP's response is astonishingly silent - yet here we are with sensitive Scottish land, with a sale to a very wealthy Tory donor, and they do not wish to discuss it in public. The champions of the people in both parties, which make up by a long Scots Mile the representation of most of West Dunbartonshire, have said less than even the Tories - the local councilor there having at least expressed strong reservations. You may say, but hang on a minute, of course the bigger working class based parties do not want to rock boats as this is about jobs? Well, you could take that view, but surely equally valid is the view that if we are to weigh up the pros and cons, open and full exploration of the entire range of issues this sale brings up are paramount in that decision making? However it seems not. Even locally, perhaps because no mainstream representatives are willing to raise the merest warning flags, thereby creating an atmosphere of non-issue, locals are not fully grasping that this sale is going to see our ancient riverbank's rights sold off- a thing that would never have been contemplated beforehand but now is part of the estate being subject to sale. This in itself is even more unbelievable than the fact of an ancient woodland being subject to purchase. Add on the mind-piercing sale of a shore that commands the loch's best view and is to be appropriated entirely by an hotel complex the purchasers wish to build, then we have here a silence that speaks volumes. In any other place in the world, there would be an outcry, there would be TV cameras filming documentaries. There would be severe questions raised in their parliaments. Not so here. The processes have all ground to a halt under the guise of commercial sensitivity. We have not only to ask why, we should be demanding an inquiry, and that all involved are held to account and brought before the public to explain how they could possibly have thought it correct that public and national rights, lands and ancient burdens can be sold at a pound to a quasi self-serving public body which in turn sells it secretly to a private company. For secret it is. And all of this in a National Park. It is a scandal of epic proportions. Yet, the silence refutes the possibility of scandal. Silence is dangerous. The government should be asking questions of its ministers, of its quangos, of all of the political representatives, from national to local level, asking them why they are silent, why everyone has pulled a veil over proceedings. To not question it to say democracy, accountability and the respect of heritage, ancient rights, and proper accounting of land ownership are all now meaningless in this country. For they appear completely meaningless in this sale. The silence speaks of hidden agendas, close understandings in the corridors of power and a very rotten state of Denmark in Loch Lomond. It is that Shakespearean a situation. Meanwhile, we have only mad Hamlets trying to make sense of this epic darkness. We need the disinfectant of democratic light, we need, urgently, to stop this sale and demand answers from all - from local governance to national accountability. Otherwise, we may as well remove all statutes, all guardians, all safeguards and put a sign over Scotland saying "Come ye with bags of cash, Scotland is for Sale At ANY Price"