I want the whole of the moon
Michael Gray, on Common Space, writes: 'Peter Peacock, policy director of Community Land Scotland (CLS), whose members manage 500,000 acres of land, told Common Space that the Holyrood's movements on the subject are "encouraging".' Well, with all respect to Peter, that's not encouraging in the least. Scotland has nineteen million acres, so the proportion that is community 'managed' — and note, that's 'managed', not owned — is 2.6%. OK, that's the situation as it is now — before this vaunted bill. But as Peter very accurately says, 'a huge amount of effort will be put into [the reform bill] by vested interests.'
Ian Bell, in the Herald, writes of 'a bold new chapter in the history of our land', and goes on to gush 'If things happen as they could and should, Scotland will be altered permanently.' Aye, Ian.
Me and you and the Duke of Buccleuch
I've written before about an exponential land tax. Rather often in fact... Here I want to give a clear account of how it would work, with a computer program (in Clojure) so that you can fiddle with it yourself.
The code on this page is live: you can edit it. I recommend that (at least at first) you change only the constant and the exponent.
Quarter of a million crofts
Imagine a Scotland where the rural areas are not desolate but vibrant, where the glens are not empty but populous as they were 250 years ago. Where the landscape is littered, not with desolate ruins of abandoned homes, but the cheerful life of new-built ones. Where the village schools are not empty and closing, but packed with children. That isn't a dream: that's achievable now, and all it takes is land reform.
The average agricultural holding in Scotland is 101 hectares: just over one square kilometre, or, to make it easier for you, the size of one of the National Grid squares on an Ordnance Survey map. That's enough, on reasonable land with reasonable husbandry, to provide an income for a family — and in many cases, more: enough to employ someone in addition. A countryside with one farm per square kilometer, with one or at most two working households per square kilometer, is a sparsely populated landscape, a landscape which finds it hard to support village schools, village pubs, village shops, village post offices.
The breakfast any self-respecting dog would reject
The Smith Commission report has 28 pages, but in fact the meat of it is precisely half that: fourteen pages cover the 'three pillars' of its recommendations. That's four pillars, by my arithmetic, short of wisdom.
The pillars are, in brief
Proposal for a Rural Policy meeting/workshop this winter
The Scottish Rural Parliament was an interesting event, but it — necessarily and desirably — was a meeting of people from all strands of Scottish rural life, so it wasn't an ideal situation for wild-eyed radicals to get together and plot. The Radical Independence Conference was invigorating and inspiring, but it was too big, effectively, for any real discussion of detailed policy.
We have, coming up in parliament now, three very important issues. The first is Community Empowerment, which is before parliament now and unless we get our act together quickly we'll effectively miss. The second is Land Reform, which will be before parliament soon. The third is Local Government Reorganisation, for which there are no clear proposals yet, but which everyone knows has to be addressed.
Policy making is a conversation. The law is, at best, a lagging indicator of the popular consensus of what is just, and that consensus can be moved (as we saw during the referendum campaign). If we want the law to move even a little in a radical direction, we need to have concrete proposals from a very radical position to balance the very reactionary proposals which will undoubtedly come from Scottish Land and Estates and their allies.