Is Rural Renewable Development Out of Hand? The Return of Erasmus; Fire Festivals and Contaminated Water; ….but first ….
Scotland’s new Mega-Lairds
Community Land Scotland (CLS) is concerned about the rise and impact of the new ‘Mega-Lairds’ in Scotland, with land ownership still largely concentrated in just over 400 owners, as it was when Andy Wightman first wrote about it.
In the lead is Dane Anders Holch Poulsen, Scotland’s biggest private landowner, with 88,406 hectares, mostly in Sutherland, the Cairngorms and Lochaber. Fellow-Dane and billionaire Lego heiress Sofie Kirk Kristiansen holds 42,730ha at Strathconon Estates in Ross-shire.
Next is Exeter-based Oxygen Conservation (OC), with 5 Scottish estates totalling over 48,000 acres, including the 12,000-acre Invergeldie Estate in Perthshire; 15,000+ acres of Dorback Estate in the Cairngorms; over 11,000 acres at Newcastleton in the borders; 523 acres of the Firth Tay, and the 9301-acre Kinrara Estate near Aviemore, purchased from BrewDog.
CLS say Oxygen Conservation’s stated ambition is to expand its holdings to over 250,000 acres worth £1bn by 2030, then sell the lot. The purchases required debt of £25 million to be taken out against the Invergeldie Estate and £18 million against the Newcastleton estate. CLS says that plans for windfarms on acquired land in Comrie, Perthshire, were not made clear at the time it was bought.
All told, Scotland is being bought up by entities which some say have their own interests at heart, not Scotland’s.
Scots Pupils to get Outdoor Stay
The Schools (Residential Outdoor Education) (Scotland) Bill was recently passed by the Scottish parliament, mandating that every pupil in Scotland has access to at least four nights and five days of residential outdoor education during their school career.
The bill was lodged by Conservative MSP Liz Smith but gained cross-party support. Holyrood’s Education Committee estimated that the legislation could cost up to £40 million, but SNP Children’s Minister Natalie Don-Innes decided to support it despite initial reservations about the cost, as it was the will of the parliament, and said she would work to ensure it was deliverable.
Up to now, only a third of secondary schools and a quarter of primary schools have been able to offer this experience to their pupils.
Will the new Lenzie Academy be Safe?
A decision has not yet been published by East Dunbartonshire Council on whether they will build the new Lenzie Academy at Whitegates Park on a site which has toxic waste underground, a problem first identified in 2018. It is also the site of mature trees and a wetland habitat. But the costs of the project have risen from £85 million to around £138 million, £4.8 million of which is for hazardous waste removal. Whitegates was previously deemed unsuitable by the council, but now they claim it is somehow safe.
The council say that a number of investigations have been carried out, and while they admit that there are contaminants present, the site is somehow not classified as contaminated land. The spokesperson said there is ‘a requirement to remove some of the contaminants from the site’, but presumably not all. Not much comfort to pupils or parents.
Rosehall Village ‘Getting Overwhelmed’
Residents of Rosehall in Sutherland have said they are overwhelmed by energy developments around them, the latest being proposals for 231 turbines around the village, including 13 ‘mega structures’ to be built by German energy company EnergieKontor, which would be 250 metres tall. This follows on the 38 existing turbines in the area operated by SSE Renewables and RWE, plus another 37 which have been given consent, and another 156 turbines either in the scoping or planning stage.
Campaign group No Ring of Steel Kyle of Sutherland (NORoS) is concerned the plans will affect wildlife including the critically endangered freshwater pearl mussel. Sutherland is also home to a large area of intact peat which support waterfowl.
Campaigner Tisi Dutton said the Scottish government’s National Planning Framework 4 is not protecting Sutherland and contravenes plans to accelerate peatland restoration, with turbines placed on peatland, which is then degraded by the building work and releases carbon into the atmosphere.
SNP Drops Speed Reduction Plans
After spending £500,000 on plans to introduce the speed reduction scheme, the Scottish government has abandoned plans to lower the national speed limit on single carriageway roads to 50 mph. Nine out of ten respondents to a public consultation had opposed the reduction. But incredibly the government is ploughing ahead with plans to INCREASE the speed limit for HGVs.
Maybe lowering the speed limit would increase driver frustration as some claimed, and lead to accidents, but increasing the speed limit for HGVs is surely the wrong move.
Despite this, Transport Secretary Fiona Hyslop is still working towards Scotland’s roads being the safest in the world by 2030!! Yet still refuses to dual the A9 and A96.
Social Care is Crumbling
A report produced by the Scottish Women’s Budget Group found that service users, unpaid carers and parents are often left to pick up the pieces because of ‘chronic staff shortages, underfunding and patchy policies’. It issued a ‘FAIL’ mark of 42% to adult social care, where access is over-complicated and can burden some of the poorest in society with huge contribution costs. Elder care also scored 42%, with Scotland scoring below 60% in most social care services.
Unpaid carers felt invisible and taken for granted, with very patchy access to breaks, despite the Scottish parliament voting this year for a new legal right to breaks for unpaid carers. Local authorities will have to provide support to allow carers to take breaks, but financial barriers still prevent carers from accessing them, as well as uncertainty over replacement care while they are away.
Without the unpaid carers who, according to Carers Scotland and the Centre for Care, save the Scottish government an estimated £15.9 billion a year, the social care system would have collapsed long ago. Carers Scotland is calling on the Scottish government to prioritise social care in its January 13th Budget.
Fire Festivals
A number of places around Scotland feature fire festivals around the New Year, including Up Helly Aa in Lerwick, Shetland, where a replica Viking longship is burned; Stonehaven’s Fireball Ceremony and parade on Hogmanay; the Biggar Bonfire, lit somewhat worryingly in the centre of the town, surrounded by homes and shops; and Burghead in Moray which holds the Burning of the Clavie (a barrel full of staves) on 11th January every year unless 11th falls on a Sunday, when the burning takes place on the 10th. The Clavie is taken through the village and up the Doorie Hill, refuelled and allowed to burn out and scatter down the hill.
and Contaminated Water
But Burghead’s claim to fame is not limited this year to the Clavie. It had already been in the news, with Scottish Water accused of endangering people’s health in the Moray village by not shutting off supplies of water contaminated with E-coli for almost a year. Tests on the water found deadly bugs in a storage reservoir three times last year, but continued to pipe water into domestic taps until July. Scottish Water had been hit with an enforcement notice to clean up nearly 1300 Treated Water Storage Points (TWSPs) which had been condemned as a ‘danger to human health’ in 2023.
Scandalous Scottish Water Inaction
At the same time, Scottish Water executives were paid bonuses totalling £236,000 last year despite NO work having been initiated into the TWSPs. The community council said Scottish Water did not notify anyone in Burghead about the ongoing problems.
Other areas suffered water contamination, with animal remains found at the bottom of a tank near Hollybush, Ayrshire; and coliform detected in facilities at Darvel, Ayrshire, and Oyne, Aberdeenshire. Clarklyhill facility remained open despite bugs being found in the water in September, November and December last year, and the tank had to be removed twice for repair after these problems were first discovered.
And meantime, Scottish Water boss Alex Plant was paid a total of over £500,000 in 2025.
Erasmus to be Reinstated in 2027
The news of the reinstatement of the Erasmus exchange educational scheme in 2027 has been warmly welcomed, with placements due to resume in higher and further education, training, culture and sport opportunities and will provide funding for students. The Turing scheme which replaced it in the UK never really got off the ground.
While this is good news, will there be anything for those students who have missed out over the years since we left the scheme in 2020?
Finally,
Dundee United Fan
Jon Attenborough has seen his team play for the first time thanks to a special headset which incorporates vision-boosting technology for the visually-impaired. He saw the stadium and players in person for the home game against Motherwell recently. Although he has attended Tannadice for 17 years, he has until now only got the commentary for visually-impaired supporters, but the GiveVision headset allows him some sight at the ground, with control of the brightness, colour contrast and focus to take in different parts of the ground. He trialled the device first at a match between Motherwell and Livingston at Fir Park, but was overjoyed to finally see his own team on their home ground.
Attenborough’s previous claim to fame was that he had visited all 42 Scottish league grounds with his then guide dog Sam. He has the device on loan till the new year, which will allow him to take in the Dundee derby. The device manufacturers essentially lend them out to visually-impaired people who try them out and give the firm feedback to assist in further development