…the blog and website of Andy Wightman
Musselburgh Town Council The 2013 COSLA & Improvement Service conference might yet go down in history as a historic event. Opening the conference yesterday, COSLA President Councillor David O’Neill, laid out a future vision for local government which is a radical
Continue readingBack from long but fascinating & positive trip to Raasay. What a stunning place & journey was amazing! Loch Laggan & ferry =real highlights! — Paul Wheelhouse🏴🇺🇦🇪🇺 (@PaulWheelhouse) March 2, 2013 Paul Wheelhouse seems to have enjoyed his jaunt to
Continue readingUPDATE 28 MARCH 2013 Paul Wheelhouse has confirmed in a written answer to Claire Baker MSP (S4W-13541) that the Estates Charter remains in force and that it is “standard practice for the principles behind the Estates Charter to be taken into
Continue readingThe decision by Scottish Ministers (Minster for Environment and Climate Change, Paul Wheelhouse) to award the lease for hunting rights on Raasay to an absentee tenant rather than to negotiate an extension to the very successful operation run by Raasay
Continue readingPictured above – a Danish kindergarten paid for in part by Danish property taxes on Scottish land. The Scottish Government is consulting on the future of the the non-domestic rates (business rates) regime. The consultation closes this Friday 22 February
Continue readingCampaigners 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 readingFollowing last year’s declaration I am, like a couple of my self-employed writer/activists colleagues (George Monbiot and Alastair McIntosh), making an annual declaration of interests and income. I think it is right that commentators and others in the public eye should be open
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 reading