…the blog and website of Andy Wightman
Two weeks ago, on 23 April 2014, Scottish Land and Estates (the body that represents some of Scotland’s landowners) held its Spring conference at which it published a report on the economic contribution of estates in Scotland. (1) A week
Continue readingMy previous blog on Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) farming subsidies attracted a bit of interest in The Herald today and a number of people have been in touch to ask what can be done to ensure a fair distribution of
Continue readingImage: Sheik Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum wins the 2012 St James’ Palace Stakes, Royal Ascot It’s hard to imagine the Government devising a new system of Jobseeker’s Allowance or Housing Benefit where the claimant is told they that their
Continue readingGuest Blog by Jess Smith, Scottish author, musician and story-teller from Perthshire’s Travelling People The Tinker’s Heart is a small arrangement of white quartz stones embedded in the ground at the junction between the road to Strachar (A815) and Hell’s
Continue readingImage: Becky Hitchcock The persecution of birds of prey is one of the most malign of wildlife crimes. Yesterday, the ever excellent Raptor Persecution Scotland (RPS) website (which has courageously and doggedly documented and reported on the topic for over
Continue readinghttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X-r_J14n100 Forty-one years ago today, the play that revitalised Scottish theatre had its first theatrical performance in public at Aberdeen Arts Centre on 24 April 1973.(1) Above is the BBC’s Play for Today version – a fascinating mix of live
Continue readingHilltrack on Ledgowan Estate Last year, in a series of blogs, I highlighted a number of issues relating to Ledgowan Estate – in particular the controversy over the construction of an ugly bulldozed track. The story was promoted by an
Continue readingOn 15 October last year, I was preparing to leave home and travel to the Isle of Skye to visit my parents for the weekend. Shortly before I left, an email arrived from John Clegg & Co. advertising for sale
Continue readingGuest Blog by Brian Wilson Brian Wilson’s column is reproduced here with kind permission of the West Highland Free Press. Reading reports by Parliamentary committees is normally a pastime more likely to act as an antidote to insomnia than to
Continue readingImage: Allan MacRae, John Mackenzie, Michael Forsyth and Bill Ritchie 1993 When I first became interested in land rights in Scotland, I remember reading an article in Crann-tara in 1978 by Danus Skene in which he observed “It once befell me,
Continue reading