Thoughtland

PK column in The National: What’s it called? Soulless? Is it really fair to denigrate Cumbernauld?

By Pat Kane. First published on MAY 25TH, 2019

FOR those of a certain vintage, the news that the comedian Craig Ferguson has abandoned the TV studios of Los Angeles, for the sandstone-and-trimmed-bush bourgeois of the West End of Glasgow, is strangely comforting.

From Bing Hitler bouncing off the walls of the Sub Club, to this silver fox ambling down Byres Road, with the vintage microphones and starlet parades of late-night US TV in between, is one of those Scottish journeys to take some pleasure in.

PK column in The National: Here's how a bold approach to housing policy could transform Scotland

By Pat Kane. First published on SEPTEMBER 23RD, 2017

HOUSING should be one of the most urgent topics for public-minded Scots. We have an evident crisis; we have many fluent advocates and activists in this field; and we have some (though not the full range) of the governing powers that might address it.

I’ve seen the programme for the forthcoming Common Weal conference, Housekeeping Scotland – happening the day before the SNP conference begins on October 8 – and it is a full menu of reforming busyness. Need something to do in your “day job”? Enough here for any minister.

PK column in The National: Scottish land must not be the plaything of the rich

By Pat Kane. First published on APRIL 15th, 2017

‘THEY are a plaything – like a yacht or a Riviera villa”. Thus speaks a London lobbyist when asked about the status of Highland properties for his clients, while staying at Blair Atholl for hunting and shooting.

The quote comes from a brilliant set of articles by Cathy Newman in the new National Geographic magazine. The pieces make a very well-informed tour d’horizon of land politics and ownership in modern Scotland. Do they also make your blood boil? Do they make you want to flatten the accelerator of land reform legislation to the floor? Almost entirely.

Map of Thoughtland: James Hunter

Director of the Centre for History since its establishment in 2005. The author of eleven books about the Highlands and Islands, Jim Hunter has also been active in the public life of the area. In the mid-1980s, he became the first director of the Scottish Crofters Union, now the Scottish Crofting Foundation. Between 1998 and 2004 he was chairman of Highlands and Islands Enterprise, the north of Scotland’s development agency. In the course of a varied career, Jim Hunter has also been an award-winning journalist and broadcaster. He is presently a board member of Scottish Natural Heritage and chairs SNH’s Scientific Advisory Committee.

Jim Hunter’s first book, The Making of the Crofting Community, described by a contributor to Scottish Historical Review as ‘one of the most significant books of its generation’, has been in print for more than thirty years. His other books include A Dance Called America: The Scottish Highlands, the United States and Canada (1994), Last of the Free: A History of the Highlands and Islands (1999) and Scottish Exodus: Travels Among a Worldwide Clan (2005). Professor Hunter was made a CBE in 2001. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 2007.

via www.history.uhi.ac.uk

One of the foremost "land" intellectuals in Scotland, who's also (as you can see above) gotten his hands dirty in public administration, and is now esconced at one of the most interested "networked" universities in Scotland, the University for the Highlands and Islands.

Map of Thoughtland: Andy Wightman

I'm Andy Wightman, the author of Who Owns Scotland and The Poor had no Lawyers. I am an independent writer and researcher on issues of land and democracy with a particular interest in community land rights.

via www.andywightman.com

 

 

One of the frontiers opened up by the Scottish Parliament has been land rights - the Land Reform Act was one of the earliest and most significant pieces of legislation passed in its early years, beginning a process of restitution of control over Scottish territory that is (hopefully) exponential. Andy Wightman has become the foremost engaged intellectual on these issues (following on from James Hunter), and is actively involved in crofting and other community landclaims. His new book, The Poor Had No Lawyers, marks an exciting turn in his thinking towards the status of the commons in Scottish land law (chiming with the work of David Bollier and Nobel-prize winner Elinor Ostrom).