CHARLIE WHELAN: How green are the new generation of re-wilding lairds?
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The failing SNP government recently announced yet another new land reform bill that was greeted with horror from landowners despite the fact that it is unlikely to have any meaningful impact on the pattern of landownership in Scotland.
The fact is that land ownership has actually become more concentrated despite all the so called land reforms - nowhere more so than here in Badenoch and Strathspey.
So-called green investors like Anders Povlsen the Danish billionaire who owns 12 estates amounting to 88,296 hectares and includes the Glenfeshie estate has seen his share grow by 37 per cent since 2012 and now actually owns more of Scotland the Duke of Buccleuch.
We hear a lot about the good these new lairds do with their so called re-wilding but a bit less about their businesses that often damage the environment.
ASOS the retail company - of which Povlsen is the major shareholder - was recently told that it must avoid misleading claims about the green credentials of their clothes.
They will have to file regular reports to the UK’s competition and markets authority after an investigation examined concerns that the company along with others were using vague claims to bolster their environmental credentials.
It remains a scandal that just 433 landowners own half of the private land in rural Scotland and lest we forget this has its roots in the Highland Clearances during which local people were evicted to make way for sheep.
Even in fairly recent times communities have been forced off the land including on the Glenfeshie Estate where you can still see the remains of the community on the way down to Landseer’s bothy.
Today, ironically given that Landseer’s most famous painting is the Monarch of the Glen, it’s the deer that have been evicted!
This may or may not be a good thing but no one was consulted and no one had a say it what was happening to this most beautiful glen.
It was and is all decided by just one man.
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I recently had a trip over to Ireland to try and discover where my father was born. It’s an easy ferry ride over from Scotland to Belfast and thousands make the short journey every year.
We went in March because we were warned that in the summer Ireland just like Scotland is overrun with motorhomes!
I had to laugh recently when I say an advert for a local SNP meeting for a discussion on motorhomes in North Berwick.
Perhaps they should consult the former first minister who had an empty one parked up on her mother-in-laws driveway for a year.
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My old friend Feargal Sharkey has been leading the campaign against sewage in our rivers and seas. Last week it was announced that in England the amount of sewage pumped in to them had more than doubled in a single year.
Whilst some are arguing that the solution is to renationalise the water companies others point out that in Scotland and Northern Ireland where they are state owned the problem is just as bad.
And they are right. Although most outlets in Scotland aren’t even monitored new figures show that Scottish Water released sewage into rivers, lochs and waterways more than 14,000 times in 2022.
The solution is more investment in our sewage systems and to make it a criminal offence to pump filth into our rivers.
• Charlie Whelan (Labour) is former spokesman for Gordon Brown.
