Dogfood: Simon Brooke's blog: Rural Policy

Rural Policy

I live in Auchencairn, a small village in Galloway. The whole of Galloway falls into a category the European Commission describe as 'remote rural'. From where I sit the problem is not that we're remote - the problem is that they're remote. Remote from us. Unaware of our problems, and of the way that the laws that they make for populations which are mainly urban affect us adversely.

Of course, this doesn't only apply to the European Commission. Westminster is, if possible, more remote. Holyrood is remote. Even the management of the public beurocracies which manage so much of the rural landscape - the Forestry Commission, for example - are remote.

It's not that I think those of us who choose to live in rural places should be favoured over urbanites; I don't. I'd like to see the subsidies now paid to agriculture withdrawn. But policy designed for a mainly urban population can sometimes have odd consequences in places like this.

Draft response to Ordnance Survey consultation -- Tuesday, 29 December, 2009

The government are consulting on proposals to release a substantial chunk of Ordnance Survey data for free. This is my first draft of a response to that consultation.

Reform? -- Thursday, 14 June, 2007

I have the right to exclude the public not merely from the pavement outside my house, not merely from the street outside my house, but from the houses and gardens across the street and well into the field beyond. I have the right to exclude my neighbours, not merely on either side, but for the next twenty houses up both Main Street and Church Road.

Of Size, and Governance -- Thursday, 8 February, 2007

Quarter of all the nations and self governing territories in the world have a land area smaller than Dumfries and Galloway. Id this 'local' government?

Let's hear it for the Mullwarchar! -- Friday, 17 December, 2004

Radio 4's 'Today' programme has been asking for nominations for a 'listeners peer', and I've been listening with half an ear to the suggestions. And what I've been hearing is more of the same old same old; the soi disant great and good, and, more particularly, the metropolitan great and good. So I thought I'd make a nomination completely outside the London box.

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