Twenty years ago when I started to undertake proper research into issues to do with who owns Scotland, I began to get to know the traditional repositories of knowledge such as the National Archives of Scotland, the National Library and the records of landownership kept by the Registers of Scotland.
Research was hardly a leisurely pursuit but the quest for knowledge from paper records was inevitably a rather ponderous affair involving extensive note-taking followed by transcription of the results at home onto a computer.
Today the process is transformed. Visits to archives and libraries are still necessary of course but there has been a revolution in the availability of material on the internet. We have freedom of information legislation and it is now ridiculously easy to transmit ones thoughts and opinions widely via social media such as Twitter.
I, like many others, have embraced this new technology and find it extremely useful. Suddenly, many barriers have been removed and institutions and individuals who could in the past hide behind the anonymity and firewalls erected around the inner sanctums of knowledge and power are now exposed to critical inquiry.
Such thoughts came to me recently as the results of a review into the management of the Mar Lodge Estate in the Cairngorms were published. Controversy has raged over the National Trust for Scotland’s policy of culling large numbers of red deer to promote nature conservation and regeneration of the Caledonian pine forest.
This conflicts (or so it has been argued) with the agreement struck between the NTS and its £4 million benefactor, the Easter Trust, to have the estate managed as a “traditional” Highland sporting estate for so long as hunting remains legal.
On the review website you can read a whole raft of evidence and background documents. And, thanks to freedom of information, all the Scottish Office files from 1991 (when conservation organisations first tried to buy the estate) have now been released (Ref DD37/164 in case you are interested!) and can be consulted in the aforementioned National Archives of Scotland.
Back in 1996, when I wrote Who Own Scotland, I could merely speculate as to what was happening behind closed doors and what deals were being struck by powerful elites over Mar Lodge and other places. Now the conflicts, arguments and background documentation is laid bare for all to see - which is how it should always have been.
In this blog I hope to bring you some of the fruits of my investigations into the people who make decisions about how land is used in the cities, towns and countryside of Scotland.
I hope that these may educate, inspire, anger, elucidate and generally encourage a healthy curiosity. I will explore the underbelly of what we often take for granted, the dodgy deals, the surprising facts and the amazing public information and records held on our behalf.
I am also partial to a bit of roaming around the rest of Europe to see what we can learn about how we could do things a bit more imaginatively. I’m looking forward to the journey.
Oh, and, if you are into such things, feel free to follow me on twitter @andywightman
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