Personal account - views all mine.
Thurso, Caithness
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Fisheries, aquaculture, whisky, forestry, renewables, especially curtailed wind, and defence all have specific remote and rural geographical contexts.
If Scotland’s rural industries are foundational for an independent state, rural communities need better courting by government.
If the Scottish Government wants to prepare for independence, it needs to double down on our best bits. My thoughts in today's @heraldscotland
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I will say that quangos have a disproportionate impact impact on remote/rural and particularly island communities and without strong remote/rural/island leadership, impending quango reform poses significant risk to communities furthest away from Edinburgh and Holyrood committees.
Ewing berates Swinney over quango “exclusion” of islanders trib.al/VlJaIas
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There is a case for a rationalised Highlands and Islands super quango which pulls together HIE, HIAI, BnG, CNPA, the CC, CMAL, SLC, etc but that’s not being made.
And all of this comes separate to concerns on NHS and local authority centralisation.
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Syre in Strathnaver, being one of many crofting estates under ownership of Scottish Ministers.
These resettled estates have in places reversed the Highland Clearances thanks to a raft of radical land reform measures enacted by a pre-devolution UK Government.
Lessons for today?
"that's not crofts. Unless I am unaware of public bodies that own land that is used for crofting" [Climate Action Committee 17 Sep 2026 09:38]
Scottish Ministers own 95,000 hectares of crofting land containing over 1500 crofts (almost 10% of all crofts).
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There was a generational run of land reform policy in a period akin to how long we’ve had devolution and we should really be asking why we’ve not seen more out of Holyrood.
We were promised that politicians and ministers in Edinburgh would be better suited to delivering reform.
Crofters Holdings (Scotland) Act, 1886. Congested Districts (Scotland) Act, 1897. Small Landholders (Scotland) Act, 1911. Land Settlement (Scotland) Act, 1919.
Interesting land reform legislation, delivered in thirty three years. My grandfather’s reference copies for work.
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You live long enough for your hometown to turn up as the trendy place on your for you page.
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Larping being colonised to try and revive an independent state that spent centuries of pre-unification independence subjugating the highlands and islands.
Also in the news in this week BBC Alba Gaelic content slashed to 22% and highland healthcare to be run from Glasgow.
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17% of Highland population is born in England. Up to 30% in some areas like the north west Highlands and 50% in a few small communities.
The issue for our communities isn’t English (or central belt) ‘white settlers’, rather lack of investment into housing, transport, jobs etc.
🏴 Very few Highlanders left nowadays
Those that weren't slaughtered @ Culloden or evicted during the 100 year aftermath, suffered devastating village losses fighting 'The Brits' wars for them
Today, they are being replaced by white-settler Brit immigrants, mostly from England
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A good examination of what is increasingly becoming a touch point for disenfranchised nationalists.
thetimes.com/article/40a1488…
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In the early 2000’s the Scottish Executive, now Government, decentralised SNH, now NatureScot, from Edinburgh to Inverness. It was an admirable position to take, but met with some backlash at the time.
Where will the new body be headquartered?
This is a big change from PfG
“Bring the national environment public bodies (SEPA, NatureScot, Zero Waste Scotland and potentially Scottish Forestry) into a single overarching environment body…”
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A prudent example of how this might work in practice for rural communities would be to compare how Orkney and Caithness differ in maternity provision.
Orkney, with its own NHS Board, fairs considerably better than Caithness, within NHS Highland, largely centralised to Inverness.
Scotland's NHS will be split in two, down from 14 health boards, in plans set out in today's Programme for Government. @heraldscotland
heraldscotland.com/news/2650…
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Not convinced it’s the most entertaining literature for a five year old but good on her for giving it a go.
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By my reckoning of the 12,000 private and business aviation flights operating in Scotland last year, 68% were aircraft movements through airports owned by the public sector.
Greater tax might lead to fewer movements, less commercial income, and higher subsidy required.
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We recently saw Logainair cut lifeline services to Stornoway, Kirkwall, and Sumburgh off the back of a £1m landing fees subsidy required by, but found late for, HIAl who own most of our public airports. This was a good indication of services being at the whim of relatively small
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Edinburgh has £6bn and 42k jobs based off natural capital largely found outside its boundaries with Glasgow at £10bn and 60k jobs. Likely to get concentrate more with demographic change.
We shouldn’t forget that part of this growth is being extracted from rural Scotland.
Scotland’s route to growth runs through our two principal cities - Donald Anderson trib.al/NU4lso6
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