…the blog and website of Andy Wightman
The 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 readingAbove – Richard Lochhead at NFUS AGM. Image: Paul Watt Photography The future shape of the Common Agricultural Policy for 2014-2020 has become clearer following the EU budget summit on 7 – 8 February and the European Parliament’s adoption of
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 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 readingIt was announced today that the Scottish Government is to spend £3m on building a pier to export timber from Mull’s forests and “boost the island’s timber business”. Whilst this may boost the timber harvesting business, it does nothing for the
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 readingThe Guardian are running a series of investigative articles on the use of offshore tax havens to acquire land & property in London. It was timely, therefore to see Steven Vaas’s article in the Herald on Monday which revealed that
Continue readingI am very grateful to Ross McConell for helping me to interpret Trump Golf Club Scotland’s accounts. (This post was originally published on 28 Feb 2012 and has been updated to include the 2011 Accounts) Many claims have been made
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
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