Author: Nourish Scotland

Click here how to run a Kitchen Table Talk

The Scottish Food Coalition launched their public engagement on the Good Food Nation Bill today. The Kitchen Table Talks engagement will explore public priorities for a good food nation in preparation for the Government’s consultation.

Pete Ritchie, Executive Director at Nourish Scotland and Co-Convenor of the Scottish Food Coalition said:

“Becoming a Good Food Nation requires a whole of Government and whole of society approach. It stretches from social justice and health, to rural economy, environment, land reform and climate change.

“The Government’s consultation is expected to begin later in 2018. For truly transformative legislation we need the voices of people across Scotland to shape the whole process.”

Vicki Swales, Head of Land Use Policy at the RSPB Scotland and Co-Convenor of the Scottish Food Coalition said:

“We expect to have over 300 Kitchen Table Talks hosted across Scotland in the next 10 weeks. Everyone is invited to participate – whatever your relationship to food is: we all have a stake in the future of our food system”

Angus Hardie, Director at the Scottish Community Alliance said:

“Kitchen Table Talks are a brilliant way to let Government know what we think about our food system. They can happen anywhere – in your village hall, down the pub, in your favourite cafe or even at your kitchen table. Let’s get talking!”

Author: The Commission on the Future of Localism

Full report   from The Commission on the Future of Localism

In the wake of the vote to leave the European Union, policy-makers and commentators now speak of our ‘left-behind’ communities. But these divides have been growing and widening for years. They are the product, in part, of political and economic centralisation and a long-term failure to address our profound democratic deficit. Entrenched geographical health inequalities, with a stark North South divide. Educational opportunity tied to parental income, pushing up house prices in neighbourhoods with good schools.  Withdrawal of finance from disadvantaged communities, with our big banks secure in the City deemed ‘too big to fail’.  An electoral system that only feels like it counts if you live in a marginal seat, with political alienation most prevalent among the young and the poor.

Strengthening localism offers the potential to tackle disadvantage, rebalance our economy, and revitalise democracy. Taking part in local action can strengthen feelings of community cohesion, generate a greater sense of pride and purpose, and improve wellbeing.  Localism in public service design and delivery can ensure that services are equipped to address local needs and harness local assets, and make sure public procurement spend is reinvested in the local community.  Giving places the means to strengthen their local economies and rebalance economic growth away from London and the South East is not only good for local areas but also supports productivity across the nation as a whole.

There is growing political consensus on the need to decentralise. It is clear that the scale and complexity of our social challenges is so great, they are unlikely to be effectively addressed from Westminster. But while successive pieces of legislation and various programmes have sought to achieve this, our Commission finds that we have not yet secured a radical rebalancing of power to people.

Localism should enable local solutions through partnership and collaboration around place, and provide the conditions for social action to thrive. Localism is about more than local governance structures or decentralising decision-making. It is about the connections and feelings of belonging that unite people within their communities. It is about how people perceive their own power and ability to make change in their local area alongside their neighbours.

We need to completely reframe how we think about power. When we think about power we tend to look upwards – towards Westminster-based institutions and elected politicians. Those who wish to see greater localism often ask politicians to give it away and push power downwards. But this is looking at things the wrong way round. Instead, we need to start with the power of community. The task of our political system should be to support this, harness it, and reflect it in our national debate.

Our Commission has heard evidence about what makes a powerful community. While different communities build and experience power in different ways, there are common sources. We heard how the power of any community lies with its people, their collective ideas, innovation, creativity and local knowledge, as well as their sense of belonging, connectedness and shared identity. We need to bring this into political life much more effectively via a renewed effort to foster localism in future.

However, our Commission has also heard about a fundamental imbalance of power that is preventing this power of community from coming to life and restricting collective agency: top-down decisions leaving community groups and local councils unable to make the change they know their neighbourhood needs; a lack of trust and risk aversion from public bodies, dampening community energy; a lack of control and access to local resources, limiting the scope of local action.

Author: Robert Armour, TFN

Big Lottery Scotland has confirmed 22 posts have been shed as part of a major restructuring.

The funder, which has a budget of nearly £60 million in Scotland, offered all staff “voluntary exit” packages which were taken just before Christmas. It leaves the organisation with 79 staff across its Scottish operations.  Part of the ongoing restructure, which has not been made public, will see the funder shift priorities, building on a year-long pilot run across a number of local authorities.

It said it was now working to develop a “greater understanding of the local context” and how “our funded projects contribute across their wider community.” The restructure has raised fears that Scotland’s biggest independent source of cash to good causes could be struggling to maintain current levels of funding due to falling ticket sales.

However, a Big Lottery Fund spokeswoman said: “This restructure has been long planned and helps us to meet our vision to put people in the lead here in Scotland. It is not connected to levels of National Lottery Good cause revenue.” More posts will face redundancy, the funder said, although other posts will be created as part of the restructure.

The spokesperson added: “Over the last decade, we have focused on programmes and themes and we have structured ourselves internally as an organisation in the same way. We are restructuring the Scotland directorate to prioritise the importance of getting closer to communities and deliver our work differently to ensure those National Lottery funds we award are serving communities themselves. Before the restructure we had a staff compliment of 94 FTE posts and after the restructure is complete we will have a staff complement of 90.5 FTE posts.”

Last October Linwood Development Trust lost out on a £1,000,000 application of support from Big while autism charity the Tailor Ed Foundation said last week it will have to shut its doors as soon as March after a £405,000 funding bid was rejected by the Big Lottery.

However the funder said fluctuations in income did not necessarily signal immediate changes in the amount of money it awarded.

“We plan our cash flow over the longer term and awards made now are paid out over a number of years, so short-term changes in income can be managed,” said the spokesperson.

“The fund will continue to work flexibly to ensure that National Lottery funding continues to support charities and communities across the UK.”

Lottery operator Camelot’s half-year results, published last September, show that total returns to good causes in the six months to the end of September were £746.6m, a fall of £36.8m on the previous year.

Big says it has been working proactively with other distributors in response to the income drop.

It said it fully backed Camelot’s review which seeks to re-engage players and improve performance in the draw-based games.

So far the National Lottery has delivered more than £37 billion to good causes across the UK.

Author: DTAS

The Scottish University Land Unit (SULU) has been set up to encourage law students across Scotland to take an active interest in land reform, community empowerment, and community rights in respect of land; and, working in partnership with the Development Trusts Association Scotland (DTAS) and the Community Ownership Support Service (COSS), to provide practical support to community bodies looking to exercise these rights.

Fundamentally, this is intended to be a two-way relationship which, on the one hand, gives DTAS/COSS access to the unparalleled wealth of legal knowledge and research skills that law students have while, on the other hand, giving students an opportunity to learn from DTAS/COSS experience in this area, and gain an invaluable insight into how the land reform/community empowerment agenda works in practice.

Ultimately, it is in everyone’s interest for tomorrow’s lawyers to take on board the principles of land reform/community empowerment, and to be well versed in both the letter and spirit of the legislation. It is hoped that partnership working between DTAS/COSS and SULU will positively contribute to this.

Author: Rebecca Munro, Huffington Post

Since it was announced in October that residents of the Isle of Ulva, along with those on neighbouring Mull, would be given the opportunity to attempt a community buyout of the island, there has been a great deal of interest from all over the globe. Articles have featured in newspapers and online in the likes of Australia, France, Singapore and the UAE. There has been great support for the project, but also a certain amount of criticism – land reform can be a divisive topic.

For Ulva and our community in particular, community ownership would be a massively positive step for several reasons. It offers the opportunity to reverse the social and economic decline of the island, and to secure the future of our fantastic primary school. It would enable us to provide housing with security of tenure, and to protect the island’s diverse natural environment whilst still ensuring it remains accessible for everyone to enjoy. We would have the ability to shine a light on Ulva’s historical importance, both the island itself and its former residents. We could create new business opportunities for new residents, while offering security to existing ones. And most importantly of all, it would give local people a voice.

One of the most important things community ownership offers residents in the case of Ulva, is a security that does not exist under private ownership. As shown by the population decimation over the past couple of centuries, islanders are at the mercy of the landlord. The sale of Ulva came out of the blue to residents, who had no inkling about the intention of the owner to sell until photographs were taken for the brochure. The current residents’ leases expired in November last year, meaning we are now on a rolling month by month tenancy. Any new owner is under no obligation to let the islanders remain in their homes. Security of tenure would be assured for current and future residents through community ownership, and the importance of this cannot be overstated. If you offer people security, they are more likely to be invested in the island and contribute to its ongoing upkeep and success.

Housing provision is another significant opportunity presented. In a time when the UK is chronically short on housing, it is frustrating to walk around and see homes unoccupied and neglected – the majority of Ulva’s housing stock is not lived in. Community ownership would mean the refurbishment of the built infrastructure on the island – allowing families, couples and individuals to move back to the island, supporting both the local primary school and the local economy.

Ulva contributes to the Mull economy predominantly through tourism and fishing, and this is another aspect to which community ownership is vital. We are committed to the environmental sustainability of Ulva, and making sure access is assured for locals and visitors alike. Ulva has a great deal of historical and environmental importance, which would be protected through community ownership. The sale of the island comes with a small piece of land on Mull which includes the pier and access to the island via the ferry. A private owner would be perfectly entitled to shut down the ferry and prevent access to the island, as well as stopping the use of the pier by the many fishing boats currently reliant on it.

Despite the reasons above, the question for some still remains – why is a community purchase so essential, compared to a philanthropic private purchaser, willing to enact all the hopes and dreams of the islanders without any public cost? It all comes down to certainty. Yes, perhaps we would get lucky and a white knight would ride in and save Ulva. But when the thirty-six page sales catalogue did not feature a single mention of the thousands of tourists who visit every year, and was marketed as a private playground retreat, this seemed highly unlikely. Even so, a private buyer with the best intentions is still the sole owner, with the residents at their mercy of their decisions. Private ownership may have been the norm in Scotland for centuries, but historically this has not ended well for the people.  Ulva, in common with many other areas, has seen its population decimated – in the case of Ulva from more than 600 in the 19th century to only six residents today.

If a community can put forward a sensible, sustainable and affordable business plan, why shouldn’t they be given the opportunity to own their land? Land reform legislation is available to communities like ours precisely because of this question. It is no longer solely about who has the most money to buy a chunk of Scotland, it is also a judgement call about what owner will act in the best interests of the community. In a lot of cases, it may be private ownership – but in the case of Ulva, a community buyout is the correct solution.  The road ahead will not be easy, we are under no illusions about that; despite the hard work, the inevitable differences of opinion, and the pressures that community ownership will entail, I believe that the people who live and work here are best placed to run the island. All we are asking for is the chance to shape our own future, and provide opportunities for our children and generations to come. Community ownership offers us a say in that future. And that is what makes it essential.

Author: Kathryn Welch, VAS

There are more than 10,000 volunteer-run creative groups in Scotland, from choirs and amateur drama groups, to sewing circles, poetry slams and ukulele bands. The individuals who lead these groups give their time and energy to bring vibrancy to communities and joy to so many of our lives. BBC Radio 4 presenter Sheila McClennon put it simply and effectively: “These are the people that are the cultural backbone of the United Kingdom”.

At Voluntary Arts Scotland, our role is to celebrate, champion and support volunteer-led and community-based creative groups. This week I met with people who lead such groups, and asked how it feels to run them. They shared how rewarding it is, making them feel connected, useful, privileged, joyful and energised – but also what hard work it can be, leading to feelings of uncertainty, exhaustion and anxiety.

The Scottish Government is currently writing a culture strategy for Scotland; a pertinent moment to highlight the impact of community-led creative groups, and champion national-level policy to help their activity thrive. To help us understand what this vibrant, but often overlooked part of the voluntary sector needs – and feed back those needs to policy makers – Voluntary Arts recently launched the ‘Big Conversation’.

People have been telling us how important it is that we protect and prioritise spaces for groups to gather. Community centres and village halls have long been affordable and accessible places where people can meet, but are increasingly neglected, privatised or forced to raise hire costs to survive. Meanwhile, however, traditional lines between charities and businesses are blurring, with social enterprises and community-minded companies offering new possibilities for meeting spaces. The so-called ‘night time economy’ offers opportunities for groups to use commercial spaces out of hours. And some grassroots groups have found imaginative, ambitious ways to create the spaces they need.

In East Ayrshire, I met the Cumnock Area Musical Production Society, who in 2015 took over the use of Barrhill Community Centre, becoming the first community organisation in the region to successfully complete a Community Asset Transfer. Under their careful stewardship, the venue has become a thriving hub for all kinds of activity, from a volunteer hub and first aid classes, to children’s drama, a floral art club and an creative group for adults with mental ill-health. They are a thriving example of how community-led venues can support and empower a wider ecosystem of local activity.

What is needed from the Scottish Government is investment in, and recognition of the importance of, community venues. This includes prioritisation of community ownership (and straightforward legislation to make that happen), alongside a more radical reimagining of what ‘community space’ is, via initiatives to realise community access to public, private, out-of-use, vacant and night-time spaces.

Secondly, we need support and consideration for the capacity of volunteer-led community groups. Creative life in Scotland thrives thanks to the time and energy of volunteers. They do it for the love of their community, the people around them and their artform. But volunteers tell us that much of their energy is drained by legislation which wasn’t designed with them in mind:

‘[We need] better recognition from authorities that we do not work magic with small pots [of money], we put in hours of in-kind time to make things happen and work’… ‘[What would help is] recognition of the hard slog volunteers do to keep the organisation running’.

We need a Government commitment to simplify legislation and strengthen local democracy to allow greater leadership at community level. Groups tell us about the value of locally-managed grant funding in making appropriate investment in communities; as one group told us: ‘it currently feels like a mountain to climb for just one application’. Similarly, there is a pressing need for support to help groups navigate the sometimes impenetrable structures of local government. Clearer access to local decision-makers would enable a wider range of groups to make their voices heard.

Finally, there is a need to acknowledge how cultural activity is connected to so many aspects of our daily lives, from education to health. It is vital that all Government policy – not just its cultural strategy – considers how our lives are influenced by ongoing access to creative activity.

If we are to recognise the diversity and scale of culture in Scotland, we must celebrate the ways that creativity extends far beyond the boundaries of the professional and publicly funded arts sector. We must ensure that policy is designed to enable grassroots groups to thrive, so that they can continue to bring vibrancy, joy and connectivity to communities across Scotland.

The culture strategy for Scotland consultation process has now ended and a report is being compiled for release in 2018. For more information see the Scottish Government website.

Author: Chun-Yin San

In 2011, Lord Martin Rees, the British Astronomer-Royal, launched a scathing critique on the UK Government’s long-term thinking capabilities. “It is depressing,” he argued, “that long-term global issues of energy, food, health and climate get trumped on the political agenda by the short term”. We are facing more and more complex, intergenerational issues like climate change, or the impact of AI, which require long-term, joined-up thinking to solve.

But even when governments do invest in foresight and strategic planning, there is a bigger question around whose vision of the future it is. These strategic plans tend to be written in opaque and complex ways by ‘experts’, with little room for scrutiny, let alone input, by members of the public.

Brexit, Trump and the rise of more extreme political voices around the world can all be viewed as a rejection of these arguably elitist visions of the world

That said, we are starting to see a greater push towards more inclusive, democratic approaches to tackle these issues. It was heartening to see, for example, France’s President Emmanuel Macron calling for “democratic conventions” throughout the EU in his Sorbonne speech that would allow citizens to participate in identifying “the priorities, concerns and ideas that will fuel [the] roadmap for tomorrow’s Europe”.

At the same time, there has been a resurgent interest in participative democracy through activities such as citizen juries or participative budgeting. Yet, while there are some great examples of futures projects that include broader involvement, futures as a field still remains largely restricted to expert thinkers, professional futurists and high-level stakeholders.

Through our new project on participatory futures, Nesta is starting to explore where democratic futures exercises have been done well, what the value of wider engagement in building collective future visions is, and how we can support more communities, cities and countries to do this better.

There have been some great examples of more democratic futures exercises in the past. Key amongst them was the Hawai’i 2000 project in the 1970s, which bought together Hawaiians from different walks of life to debate the sort of place that Hawai’i should become over the next 30 years. It generated some incredibly inspiring and creative collective visions of the future of the tropical American state, and also helped embed long-term strategic thinking into policy-making instruments – at least for a time.

A more recent example took place over 2008 in the Dutch Caribbean nation of Aruba, which engaged some 50,000 people from all parts of Aruban society. The Nos Aruba 2025 project allowed the island nation to develop a more sustainable national strategic plan than ever before – one based on what Aruba and its people had to offer, responding to the potential and needs of a diverse community. Like Hawai’i 2000, what followed Nos Aruba 2025 was a fundamental change in the nature of participation in the country’s governance, with community engagement becoming a regular feature in the Aruban government’s work.

There are examples closer to home, too. Newcastle City Futures 2065 reflects an ongoing effort by the city of Newcastle to ensure plans for future city development is built on top of “the tacit knowledge held by those who will be affected by any decisions about the future”. In towns and cities from St Alban’sto Basingstoke and Glasgow, city futures exercises are becoming increasingly important fixtures in city planning, and with it new models for anticipatory democracy that is giving citizens a greater voice.

These examples demonstrate how futures work is at its best when it is participatory. Radical and provocative visions of what a society could, or even should become, can’t rely on a few privileged minds alone. By bringing together people of different backgrounds, disciplines and imaginations, we pave the road to richer futures that are more challenged, nuanced and reflective of the needs of vibrant communities.

Challenges of participation

However, aside from some of the projects above, examples of genuine engagement in futures remain few and far between. Even when activities examining a community’s future take place in the public domain the conversation can often seem one-sided. Expert-generated futures are presented to people with little room for them to challenge these ideas or contribute their own visions in a meaningful way. This has led some, like academics Denis Loveridge and Ozcan Saritas, to remark that futures and foresight can suffer from a serious case of ‘democratic deficit’.

There are three main reasons for this:

1.            Meaningful participation can be difficult to do, as it is expensive and time-consuming, especially when it comes to large-scale exercises meant to facilitate deep and meaningful dialogue about a community’s future.

2.            Participation is not always valued in the way it should be, and can be met with false sincerity from government sponsors. This is despite the wide-reaching social and economic benefits to building collective future visions, which we are currently exploring further in our work.

3.            Practitioners may not necessarily have the know-how or tools to do citizen engagement effectively. While there are plenty of guides to public engagement and a number of different futures toolkits, there are few openly available resources for participatory futures activities.

Moreover, even where engagement has been tried, there are barriers that can limit success. There has, for instance, been little coordinated knowledge sharing between the participatory futures exercises that have been done. This means important lessons (such as the importance of avoiding lopsided representation) are learnt and lost, and challenges around problems like navigating complicated political landscapes or long-term investment and sustainability are frequently replicated.

Examples of this include the Hawai’i 2000 exercise, which, although it engaged large numbers of people, tended to exclude women and people from disadvantaged backgrounds – a gaping flaw for an exercise that tries to identify common futures for all. Additionally, in Brussels we are finding that participatory futures projects have struggled to find a place within a complicated political landscape that houses at least 7 different parliaments, and nearly two dozen boroughs and mayors. Furthermore, in Newcastle the project planners continue to struggle with securing long-term investment, while similar projects from other British towns face headwinds trying to be taken seriously by city leaders altogether.

Engaging citizens in futures

To this end, over the next few months, we will be working to surface the best examples of citizen engagement in futures, and explore the tools and methods they deploy to make engagement successful. We will look at the case for wider participation, exploring its downstream social and economic impacts. We will also examine examples of groundbreaking participatory futures exercises that have taken place over the years, traveling from the UK to the likes of the Netherlands, Germany, Canada and the Caribbean, to see what has worked, what hasn’t, and how we can support a broader community to make the most of these insights.

If you have any thoughts or suggestions as to why citizen engagement should be done in futures, how it should be done and what questions we should ask, we would love to hear from you.

As the avant-garde artist Yoko Ono once wrote, “a dream you dream alone is only a dream. A dream you dream together is reality.”

Author: Lynn Watson, Kirkton Community & Safety Partnership

5 days ago, I’d just discovered that all of our community group’s representations to Dundee City Council’s Local Development Plan (LDP2) consultation had been shoved into a ‘Schedule 4 document’.  This appears to be the resting place for ‘unresolved issues’ – that’ll be the comments that the council said it wanted on the LDP2…  I had no idea if this was supposed to happen – so I fired out a scattergun email to anyone I thought might be able to help.

Since then I’ve had quite a few responses & done a lot of reading.  I’m still confused, but it’s heartening to know I seem to be in good company!

We were told, in writing, that ALL comments on the LDP2 are contained in the Schedule 4 document.  Last night, at the City Development Committee, the Executive Director of City Development stated that not all comments were added to the Schedule 4.  Who knows?

All these comments get the council response:

‘No modification is proposed to the Plan’

So this ‘consultation’ was to obtain responses which will automatically be dismissed by the council and chucked to the Scottish Government Reporter.  Is this a good thing?  According to our Convener of City Development, yes, as it means that they are

“being presented to a body that council officers do not influence” – and she thinks “That’s what we all want”

So much for ‘local’ ‘community’ planning!

Unlike the Convenor, I have actually read the Scot Gov Planning Circular 6/2013.  The Reporter’s job is not to consider each point for its merit – it is to plug gaps in The LDP to bring it up to minimum standard.  The Reporter will have access to the responses made by companies, groups & individuals – and the council planner’s reasons for dismissing them.  There are mistakes and inaccuracies.  Can we point these out? Nope.

My partner, Stephen, went to work early & dashed back from Glasgow so he could appear as a deputation to the Committee.  (of course the email from the council regarding out contribution didn’t even tell us of this as an option, but luckily we’re wise to these things!)  I was up in the (very cramped & uncomfortable) public gallery, frantically scribbling who said what – as there is NO public record of this at any council meetings, only the bare outline of amendments & who voted which way.

Stephen appeared on behalf of our community group, Kirkton Community & Safety Partnership; and also Dundee Cycling Forum.  He outlined some of the problems we faced with the council’s approach to planning – for example, a site in our area mysteriously appeared in the LDP2, though not mentioned in any previous plan documents, and  we’d never been consulted.  Our concern was rejected as we had ‘not proposed any alternative uses’  That would be because we hadn’t been asked to! 

Another local site has a significant flood risk – details of which had been withheld by both the council planners and the developer.   We requested changes in the LDP2 to improve & update flood information.  How is the Reporter supposed to follow this as we cant even give a reference number to this site as it doesn’t exist on either the LDP2 or current LDP??

Stephen had asked that an amendment be made – to allow contributors the chance to add information before the Schedule 4s go to the Reporter.  This was denied as the Director of City Development stated that there had already been opportunity for dialogue, and that any significant change would mean re-starting the consultation process (note that there’s been no definition of ‘significant’ and the Scottish Government appears to allow for modification of the LDP in response to consultee submissions)

 Stephen quoted the  Scottish Government’s Development Plan Examinations: Practical Guidance for Planning Authorities

(because you’d think they’d know what they were talking about & councils might listen…)

‘Note: Feedback from some authorities, who agreed their summary of the representations with the respondents prior to submission for examination found it a useful task and commended this practice. It provides assurance that the representation has been appropriately summarised.’

Nope – having none of that.  He-who-must-be-obeyed decreed the planners had gone ‘above and beyond’ in all respects of community engagement, consultation and everything else.  Anything that anyone had doubts about would be resolved with the new Planning Bill.

The councillors unanimously passed the Proposed LDP2.

This highlights another important concern.  “Don’t worry, there’s a new Planning Bill coming soon and it will improve these things” seems to be getting bandied about quite a lot.  Is this actually useful to anybody?  Well, except our councillors who can do their standard  ‘We were advised by council officers – our hands are tied’ shrug.

I really don’t think so, because:

a)  Communities will be affected for a very long time by decisions made NOW.  The fact that things might be better for other folk some time in the future is not much consolation.

b)  This ‘Golden Age’ where communities are well-informed and sit around making Place Plans, which will be taken seriously by the Planning Authority and Scottish Government.  How exactly do we get there from here?  The way things are going, magic forces will need to be involved.

For anybody currently attempting to put in representations to a LDP2 consultation, there is this handy guide.  Maybe your local authority told you about it.  Ours didn’t.

When you’re at the hitting-your-head-off-a-brick-wall stage, get in touch with Planning Democracy.  They’re in touch with many of us fellow head-bangers & we can all give you a shoulder to cry on.

Author: Iain McWhirter, The Herald

WHEN the obituary of neoliberal capitalism is written – as I’m confident it will be within the next decade or so – Royal Bank of Scotland will merit a chapter all on its own. Up to its neck in sub-prime mortgage lending in the US, it was a major figure in the 2007 financial crash, during which its toxic balance sheet was found to be larger than the GDP of the entire UK.

Then, after RBS had been bailed out with taxpayers’ money, it continued to give capitalism a bad rep, ruthlessly exploiting the small businesses who were suffering from the post-crash recession it had helped create. This was confirmed last week in a revealing internal RBS memo from 2009 which urged managers to let struggling small businesses “hang themselves” so that the bank could pick up their assets at rock bottom. The now notorious RBS Global Restructuring Group was condemned in the Commons last week for “the largest theft anywhere”, and for ruining thousands of viable companies.

The current RBS chairman, Sir Howard Davies, says that the Public Finance Initiative was a “fraud on the people” and he should know because Royal Bank was one of the biggest names in PFI in the noughties. A National Audit Office report last week confirmed what readers of the Sunday Herald have long known, that the PFI contracts for building and running schools and hospitals are around 40 per cent more expensive than orthodox public procurement. This means around about £200bn in public funds is being diverted to pay for the houses, cars, private schools and investment portfolios of managers and shareholders of the various PFI schemes. Enthusiastically adopted by Tory and Labour governments since the 1990s, these public private partnerships have been revealed as an ingenious scheme for enriching the business elite by diverting money that should have gone into public services.

No-one should be surprised at this. It is how business has learned to behave in the era of what some have called “turbo-capitalism” – the unregulated, low-tax, bandit capitalism of the last 35 years. A succession of scandals – the Panama Papers, the Paradise Papers, PPI, endowment mortgages, private pensions – has fatally undermined capitalism’s moral claim to be the fairest and most efficient economic system. But the very visibility of these fraudulent activities now constitutes a real and present danger to the future of the capitalist system as we know it.

Take the privatisation mega-corp, Carillion, which was also heavily involved in PFI and has been one of the leading agents in the “outsourcing” of public services. It has now gone bust putting at risk the welfare of some 40,000 dependent businesses and their employees. Effectively an arm of the state, Carillion represented the most blatant form of toxic collusion between Government and the private sector. The managers of Carillion, who paid themselves inflated salaries and bonuses even when the company was effectively bust, were just doing what comes naturally. Money is its own justification. Most have salted away their fortunes, and moved on – but the public, who paid the price, have not.

It is not just public sector outsourcing but the entire neoliberal policy – religion almost – of privatisation that has been exposed. Look at the state of the railways in the UK, privatised in the 1990s when it was naively assumed that private capital would, almost by definition, run things better than the state. Utilities like rail, gas, water and electricity, are essentially natural monopolies. State monopolies are often inefficient, but the promises of privatisation have simply not materialised for consumers, as they realise every month when they open their energy bills. Most voters now want utilities such as rail taken fully back into public ownership.

Capitalists focus relentlessly on the bottom line, so it is ironic that they have signed their own death warrants. But there’s nothing so blind as human avarice. Our degenerate business class seems incapable of understanding why voters are so incensed at their behaviour. They persuade themselves that they are “wealth creators”, when it is patently obvious that they’re simply syphoning off wealth created by society as a whole.

Some entrepreneurs are arguably wealth creators. For the two centuries following the Industrial Revolution, capitalism was the most innovative and productive economic system in human history, as Karl Marx observed. Even today, capitalists like Elon Musk of Tesla or the late Steve Jobs of Apple, bring great products to market, though in both cases they were heavily underpinned by direct and indirect public investment. But the people manipulating Libor rates in the City, setting up hedge funds, selling sub-prime mortgages, running PFI schemes etc are simply parasites. Britain’s managerial class today is about as entrepreneurial as Homer Simpson. They’re mostly dull-witted accountants who’ve sat on their bottoms for 20 years.

Even as they were creating the greatest financial crisis in a century, City bankers persuaded themselves that they were worth every penny of their absurd remuneration. They still do, having learned nothing. Neoliberal capitalism has been defined by globalisation and the growth of a plutocratic international elite which has tried to cut itself off from the rest of society. Soft larceny has become an entire management culture. Even university vice chancellors and public sector bureaucrats have taken to paying themselves ridiculous salaries on the grounds that they too must be “worth it”.

Well, here’s the news: they aren’t, and everyone knows it. These are no captains of industry; they are pirates in suits who’ve been tolerated far too long. The UK economy is in a terrible state, even without Brexit, and wages have been stagnant for over a decade. The housing market, which is both a consequence and a cause of gross inequality, is a national disgrace. It has become a Ponzi scheme to enrich the lenders by bidding up the price of housing while artificially restricting supply. London property has meanwhile become a bricks-and-mortar bank in which the management plutocrats stash much of their loot.

The beneficiaries of this kleptocratic capitalism are hiding in plain sight. And I believe their time is nearly up. In the 19th century, plutocrats could protect their wealth behind laws largely drawn up for the benefit of the wealthy. The poor had no lawyers. But today the poor have the vote, and lawyers, and there is no way this kind of structural inequality can survive in the 21st century, short of the extinction of popular democracy. Eventually, people will vote for change: for a society in which wealth is spread more equitably, and in which public services are run in the interest of the people who pay for them.

I don’t know if Jeremy Corbyn is going to be the agent of this change; I suspect he is too old. But behind lies an entire generation of educated young people who have no stake in the system as it stands. Their parents accepted regulated, post-war capitalism because it offered them secure jobs, pensions, cheap houses, free higher education. Millennials have seen all that swept away as corporate capitalism’s thirst for profit became insatiable. They will be the grave-diggers of the system, and while it may take a decade or so to be buried, this era of capitalism is already a dead parrot.

Author: Scottish Farm Land Trust

Blackhaugh Farm is a community managed 43 acre farm in Spittalfield, Perthshire, owned and managed by members of BFAG (Blackhaugh Farm Action Group) since 2015.

So far, we’ve renovated a farm house, set up a market garden, planted over 500 trees, converted shabby outbuildings into useful spaces and built a hut. The farm also hosts an apple tree nurseryand provides grazing for sheep and cows.

It has been a busy few years. Next, we aim for Blackhaugh to provide affordable access to land and host many more small scale, ecologically sound, land based/farming enterprises. Find out more here.

We host work days at the farm on the second Saturday of most months. Join us if you can on Saturday 10 February, Saturday 10 March or Saturday 14 April 2018, or email us for the latest dates.

Our aims and objectives

Aims:

•           Support people to live, work, and learn from/on the land

•           Foster a land based and inclusive community which is based on principles of autonomy and mutual aid

•           Facilitate and create a farm that is ecologically beneficial

•           Look outward to support other communities and engage with wider movements for social and ecological justice

Objectives:

•           Build affordable housing

•           Produce healthy food

•           Create and improve wildlife habitat

•           Practice co-operative working principles

•           Host businesses, enterprises and projects on the land and buildings

•           Support self-sufficient living

•           Create community spaces