…the blog and website of Andy Wightman
Campaigners are today celebrating the “saving” of England’s public forests. But what about the real issue of who owns England’s publlic forests? And what if all that has happened is that the UK government is preparing to hand the entirety
Continue readingRather surprisingly, there is very little scholarship on land relations in Scotland. There are a few academic papers on some topics (such as the legals scholarship of Malcolm Combe) but much less than I certainly think there should be. So
Continue readingPictured above – Daily Mail 24 January 2003 Ten years ago today (23 January 2003), the Land Reform (Scotland) Act 2003 was passed by the Scottish Parliament. The Act provides a right of responsible access to land (Part I), a
Continue readingThe City of Edinburgh Council is consulting the citizens of Edinburgh about whether it should promote a Private Bill in the Scottish Parliament to build a new Portobello High School on Portobello Park. As previous posts have discussed, the Court of
Continue readingBy way of introduction to this blog, I should stress that I have no interest one way or the other in whether Portobello Park is common good. I am, however, interested in the law relating to common good and this
Continue readingOn the day that George Osborne is due to deliver his 2012 Autumn statement, I thought it might be worth reminding ourselves of what he thought of the Irish economy in 2006 when, on 23 February he gave a speech
Continue readingMs Diana Cairns submitted a Freedom of Information request to the City of Edinburgh Council for information about what advice I have given to the Council, how much I have been paid and for copies of emails between myself and
Continue reading(Following my tweets today – if you simply want the source for the statistics and brief descriptions of the functions of the various tiers, download and read Local and regional Government Structures in Europe. Structures and Competences published by the Council of European
Continue readingThe Scottish Parliament has had its high points and its low points but the past couple of days has witnessed as woeful a low as I can remember. Scotland’s mainstream political parties appear to value petty point-scoring about who said
Continue readingI have an original copy of Tom Johnston‘s Our Scots Noble Families from 1909. It is a treasure. It was reprinted by Argyll Publishing in 1999. Here, reprinted, is the opening chapter entitled A General Indictment. Read it and remember
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