Rear Window
and the August Poem
Photograph by Islay McLeod
I had a rather daft interaction with quite possibly the Russian mafia last month that has been giving me nightmares ever since. First then, the daft bit. I had been asked by an English friend to buy him a Highland estate. I warned him against such folly.
You can imagine my script. Expense, hassle, the possibility of being a whipping boy in a newly independent Scotland, the rain, the midges…But my friend ignored my arguments and reminded me that I owed him a favour.
So a hot afternoon in July finds me sitting in the front room of an estate owner who I hear is selling up, but the owner is as jumpy as a flea. He explains that he had recently thought that he had managed to sell the estate to a Russian for a whopping seven million quid – a hugely inflated price – but that when it came to time for the money to be handed over, the Russian explained that two of the millions were to be handed over in cash in Lebanon – a country that my host nervously explained had been having a load of trouble with that man called Gaddafi.
I thought about my amusing host for some days. Had he been telling me the truth? Was there really any Russian? Had this amiable character been pulling my leg? I had rudely arrived at his door unannounced. Maybe he thought I was fair game for a bit of teasing, maybe he was right.
Around 400 people currently own around half of the privately owned land in Scotland. How big a swing of relative wealth will it take before a huge percentage of our land is owned by people who have gained their wealth in sinister deals in the far east? A single house has just come on the market in London and with a price tag of over two hundred million. That’s 50 small estates.
Recently I came across a paper that has just been written for the Scottish Affairs Committee by four Highland figures who should surely be taken seriously – Jim Hunter, Andy Wightman, Peter Peacock and Mike Foxley. It makes chilling reading.
Here’s some of their figures. Around 0.025% of Scotland owns 67% of the privately-owned land. Much is now owned by people who live out of the country, pay no tax, and by claiming millions in subsidy arguably become the most successful of all our benefit cheats.
Suddenly the story of the Russian, particularly if they had paid with ‘hot’ money that as my host had discovered had little real value, didn’t seem so implausible after all. My English friend would indeed be a mug to buy that estate at that inflated price, the Russian a mug not to. This is the way things are trending.
It was interesting to note that in a recent Commons question on the matter, no less a person than the prime minister asserted that he was determined to make ownership of land more transparent. Good for him. But is that enough?
Next April will see the ever excellent Dr Alison Elliot’s long awaited review on land management being delivered to the Scottish Parliament. From what I hear it’s unlikely to be very radical. Maybe it should be.
Maxwell MacLeod is an author and journalist
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