Scottish lairds will be ordered to break up their estates into smaller parcels during sales under plans to reverse the country’s heavily concentrated patterns of land ownership.
A land reform bill proposes introducing rules that could force someone selling an estate larger than 1,000 hectares (2,471 acres) to divide it into smaller lots, if it is was needed to increase the number of people owning land or living in the area.
The Scottish Land Commission, a government quango, has found that Scotland has Europe’s most concentrated pattern of land ownership, predominantly in the hands of hereditary owners often known as lairds, as well as farmers, heritage bodies, forestry businesses and grouse moor managers.
OK, blah, blah etc. But here:
Properties would be subject to a “transfer test” by a new land and communities commissioner, who would join the Scottish Land Commission but answer directly to ministers in Edinburgh. Ministers would then decide the size of each piece of land.
You’ve just put the sale and purhase of a piece of land right into the middle of electoral politics. The politically connected will find their purcahses sail through, those not so connected will not.
This is fascist economics – not fascism, for it’s sans the spiffy uniforms. But fascist economics. Nominally a private and capitalist economy but wholly controlled by politics.
I’m minded that fascism is probably the default state. All political economies tend towards it. The unfettered market economy is at best a fluke.
Find a politician who says he doesn’t think the economy would benefit from his intervention & you’ve found a liar.
If you own land in Scotland start donating to the SNP now.
It still makes me chuckle that the most expensive street in Scotland is Dick Place.
Where 1ha is probably worth 1000ha near Cape Wrath.
‘I’m minded that fascism is probably the default state.’
You have a point BiS.
I suppose I’m thinking of the old family home, cos as far as I’m concerned, when we finally sell it, the pollies can fuck off.
To be fair, those Gazan refugees will be more used to small parcels of land.
Trying to Mugabe the nation, eh? Should work a treat.
@Bongo
I’d be surprised if Dick Place is the most expensive place per ha. The Grange is nice enough, but I’d have thought the new town was pricier.
Yeah yeah yeah but the one thing I do always keepo coming back to on ‘lairds’ owning land is that there’s really no such fucking thing as a ‘laird’ and any land they own was at one point taken from someone else at swordpoint.
I understand the reductionist nature of the argument, and the fact that much of this land is essentially worthless and only kept from permanent re-wilding by shooting (and I speak as a shot), but I would have no fucking problem whatsoever if, for instance, the inbred sausage-fingered jug-eared tampax fantasist at the top of the lairdly tree were to have all of ‘his’ land taken off him and sold to people in parcels of some size or other.
Not a perfect solution, but ‘his great great great great great great great great great great grandfather killed everyone else who wanted to use those acres so it’s his’ isn’t a convincing argument to me, either.
Maybe we should ask Owen Jones if these women really were raped.
Grrrr. Wrong thread
Now I’m confused. My comments appear on 2 separate threads. Even though I posted the first one here and the second on on the one about the lairds. Weird.
Interested – yes, but it seems to me the only fair and honest way to solve this problem is through violence.
Does King Charles own a destrier, and how well does he handle the lance?
If we’re gonna have feudal overlords, they should at least be the kind of men who are capable of leading other men into battle against the flower of French chivalry, keeps them honest.
One of my 19th century ancestors went from being “farmer” in one census to “farmer and landed proprietor” in the next. My guess is that he’d been a tenant farmer and had then bought the farm from the owner, and maybe a wee bit more besides.
Had he become a “laird”? Dunno – we never used the word when I was a boy. Literally never – we met it in school history lessons though and in the newspapers.
The SNP is an ugly, nasty little party. Driven by hatred of our cousins on this island, wrapping everything in sight in the Saltire, plundering the public purse for their own enrichment and that of their cronies, sticking their noses into private land sales, encouraging the public to snitch on their neighbours to agents of the state (their “Hate Crime” Act, with its “third-party reporting centres”, comes into force in a couple of weeks)… I never thought I’d see the like in Britain. But never forget that it’s the rest of us who are “extremists”.
And we can’t kick the bastards out until 2026, because Democracy™.
Sam,
I listened to a program about Erich Honecker recently. It was meant to be a warning but it looks like the SNP has taken it as a “hold my beer” challenge.
DM – One of my 19th century ancestors went from being “farmer” in one census to “farmer and landed proprietor” in the next.
Candidly you are a Kulak exploiter of the honest peasantry.
BiND: The it-can-never-happen-here effect is strong, and, sure, they aren’t exactly shooting people at the border (although we saw during the damnedpanic that there are plenty among their number who’d do it with glee), but I’m inclined to agree.
Interested,
“Not a perfect solution, but ‘his great great great great great great great great great great grandfather killed everyone else who wanted to use those acres so it’s his’ isn’t a convincing argument to me, either.”
OK, and we probably should have the same income and inheritance taxes applied as everyone else, but what’s the difference between killing everyone to get the land compared to Mark Zuckerberg being super rich because Facebook beat everyone else at social media? The rich man’s game used to be land, now it’s tech.
Personally, I just see it as declining assets. He’s worth about £21bn, most of which is the crown estate (£20bn), but in truth, they get a fraction of income from the crown estate. Of the £400m income, they collect around £90m as sovereign grant and £20m as the Duchy of Cornwall. And he’s the rich guy with a load of Cornwall. What’s the income from owning those bits of Scotland that resemble Mordor?
As problems go, it’s just nowhere near what the government pisses away. We’re spending £7bn on East-West rail, for all those people desperate for a slower, more expensive and less reliable way to get from Banbury to Oxford than a Honda Civic. Scotland is pissing away more money than the Duchy of Cornwall on Gaelic language, which almost no-one speaks.
I wonder if the lairds have the same problem that large land owners have here. If you want to subdivide your land, you are subject to painful fees and taxes. In addition, you will likely be required to “donate” a large chunk to the government or an ecoquango for ecological purposes.
You have a large grouse moor; now it is six small grouse moors. Who pays for the gamekeeper(s) and new birds?
The SNP should always be given their full title of “Scottish National Socialist Party”.
As many have pointed out, most of these Scottish multi-thousand acre estates are a wasteland of bog and grouse moor with a few red deer and ptarmigan and very little commercial value. The nearest European equivalent would be Norway (outside of a few cities). I wonder what the land ownership patterns are like there?
Not the best example, because it seems about half of Norway is owned by the government in one form or another.
In particular three big estates:
1) the State-owned forestry business owns about 20%,
2) the government owns Svalbard, the islands right up in the Arctic Circle, bits of which it seems to licence for coal mining,
3) the northern mainland bit is owned by some government body for the benefit of the Sami.
Then there’s smaller chunks like the military estate (small by Norwegian standards – somewhere between Berkshire and Bedfordshire in area), municipal landholdings, smaller bits of government land, etc. (and that’s before you worry about whether to include lands owned by the official church; I think Norwegian Lutheran bishops are still technically civil servants). All adds up t something around half, probably more once even smaller holdings are included.
See here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_largest_landowners_of_Norway
Chris Miller said:
“As many have pointed out, most of these Scottish multi-thousand acre estates are a wasteland of bog and grouse moor with a few red deer and ptarmigan and very little commercial value. The nearest European equivalent would be Norway (outside of a few cities). I wonder what the land ownership patterns are like there?”
Not the best example, because it seems about half of Norway is owned by the government in one form or another.
In particular three big estates:
1) the State-owned forestry business owns about 20%,
2) the government owns Svalbard, the islands right up in the Arctic Circle, bits of which it seems to licence for coal mining,
3) the northern mainland bit is owned by some government body for the benefit of the Sami.
Then there’s smaller chunks like the military estate (small by Norwegian standards – somewhere between Berkshire and Bedfordshire in area), municipal landholdings, smaller bits of government land, etc. (and that’s before you worry about whether to include lands owned by the official church; I think Norwegian Lutheran bishops are still technically civil servants). All adds up t something around half, probably more once even smaller holdings are included.
See here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_largest_landowners_of_Norway
As CM says they’re Nationalist and Socialist. Who would ever think they could adopt fascist-like policies?
Doesn’t “laird” just mean “owns some land”?
@Western Bloke
what’s the difference between killing everyone to get the land compared to Mark Zuckerberg being super rich because Facebook beat everyone else at social media? The rich man’s game used to be land, now it’s tech.
Well, I was being a bit tongue in cheek, but if you insist on taking me seriously – there is some sort of moral argument about the origins of land ownership. Zuckerberg didn’t kill people to take Facebook off them and there’s nothing stopping other social media platforms replacing it (as is happening – kids don’t use FB, it’s all olds).
Personally, I just see it as declining assets. He’s worth about £21bn, most of which is the crown estate (£20bn), but in truth, they get a fraction of income from the crown estate. Of the £400m income, they collect around £90m as sovereign grant and £20m as the Duchy of Cornwall. And he’s the rich guy with a load of Cornwall. What’s the income from owning those bits of Scotland that resemble Mordor?
That’s £110 million the cunt shouldn’t get (I didn’t care until he started lecturing us all about green shit and other stuff he doesn’t understand and has no place involving himself in).
As for Mordor – agreed, I said as much. In which case they won’t mind giving it up.
As problems go, it’s just nowhere near what the government pisses away. We’re spending £7bn on East-West rail, for all those people desperate for a slower, more expensive and less reliable way to get from Banbury to Oxford than a Honda Civic. Scotland is pissing away more money than the Duchy of Cornwall on Gaelic language, which almost no-one speaks.
Oh I completely agree. But that A is bad but B is worse is just a reason to deal with A and B, not to ignore A.
All traditional seats of power want us dead or at best immiserated. Fuck the lot of them.
The “parcels of land” have to be of a size affordable by Useless’ “chums” to get a toe hold in the Highlands to diversify the vile whiteness presently extant…
Why not go full Moggy Bob Mugabe, kick the landowners out and hand out the land to loyal cadres for free on a fist come first served basis. Watch farm production decline to zero and responsible land management become “That’s the way the slave-owning colonialists used to do it.”
@Southerner
Because that would be stupid. Taking it off ‘King’ Charles and selling it to farmers would be satisfying.