#landreform · Vihāra

Simon Brooke @simon_brooke@mastodon.scot · 3 weeks ago

Content Warning

"Land in Scotland remains the largest store of untaxed wealth in the
country. This has negative effects not just on national and local budgets,
but is corrosive to social equality, democratic accountability and on local
economic and community development"

#LandReform
#ScotPol

(aside: I DO WISH people would not publish documents like this as PDF. It makes them so difficult to work with. Even MS Word would be better)

Continued: warning, long thread!

https://commonweal.scot/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Taxing-Land.pdf

Simon Brooke @simon_brooke@mastodon.scot · 3 weeks ago

Content Warning

"More urban Councils benefit less from a Property Tax on land but this is
compensated for by their greater expected revenue from Property Tax
on buildings. Given that Council Tax is currently one of only a few taxes
(semi-)autonomously controlled by Local Authorities, applying a locally
controlled tax to land will give a greater degree of democratic control and
accountability to those Local Authorities"

#LandReform
#ScotPol

https://commonweal.scot/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Taxing-Land.pdf

Simon Brooke @simon_brooke@mastodon.scot · 3 weeks ago

"communities are simply being ‘priced out’ of land,
even where legislation has made some steps
towards making it theoretically easier for them to
purchase such land assuming they somehow had
the capital to do so"

#LandReform
#ScotPol

https://commonweal.scot/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Taxing-Land.pdf

Simon Brooke @simon_brooke@mastodon.scot · 3 weeks ago

Content Warning

"The high profile failure of a
local community to be able to enact a community
buyout of the Tayvallich Estate in Argyll – which
had an asking price of £10.5 million, equivalent
to around £7,800 per hectare – is indicative of
Scotland’s broader failure to enact #LandReform
and will only be one of many such failures until
reform is embedded. A local #LandTax can, should,
and must be a part of this reform"

#ScotPol

https://commonweal.scot/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Taxing-Land.pdf

Simon Brooke @simon_brooke@mastodon.scot · 3 weeks ago

Content Warning

"The patterns of land ownership in Scotland are
some of the most pathologically concentrated
in the developed world with fewer than 450
people accounting for half of Scotland’s privately
owned land"

#LandReform
#ScotPol

[apologies for the formatting. I'm trying to shame Common Weal into publishing their policy papers in a less user-hostile format]

https://commonweal.scot/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Taxing-Land.pdf

Simon Brooke @simon_brooke@mastodon.scot · 3 weeks ago

It needs to be said that this speculative bubble and the unscrupulous and the fraudulent '#CarbonCredit' nonsense underlying it has been consciously and irresponsibly driven by #SNP #ScotGov policies.

This is not JUST bad lairds; it's also really poor governance, and if you're still voting SNP in the face of this, have a long hard look at yourself. This policy hits Scotland, it hits the people of rural Scotland, and it benefits only the kleptocrats.

#LandReform
#ScotPol
#Greenwashing

Simon Brooke @simon_brooke@mastodon.scot · 3 weeks ago

Content Warning

#LandReform
#ScotPol

https://commonweal.scot/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Taxing-Land.pdf

Simon Brooke @simon_brooke@mastodon.scot · 3 weeks ago

Content Warning

"the total amount of
assets that have been transferred is still marginal
with less than 3% of Scotland’s land being held
in community ownership"

#LandReform
#ScotPol

https://commonweal.scot/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Taxing-Land.pdf

Simon Brooke @simon_brooke@mastodon.scot · 3 weeks ago

Content Warning

""the drop in scale of community
land transfers is very likely to be linked to
the rise of land prices in Scotland and the
speculative bubble that has been building over
the past several years. These are increasingly
linked to the rise of ‘Green Laird’ activities, such
as buying land ostensibly to engage in climate-
friendly activities such as rewilding and repairing
degraded peat bogs but which are often in
fact more closely linked to the ‘ #greenwashing’"

#LandReform

https://commonweal.scot/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Taxing-Land.pdf

Simon Brooke @simon_brooke@mastodon.scot · 3 weeks ago

Content Warning

#LandReform
#ScotPol
#Greenwashing