Author: SCOTO

Who we are

SCOTO is a network of community tourism enterprises located throughout Scotland and led by a team of dynamic indviduals who each have extensive and varied experience in community tourism.

Why make a conscious choice?

Communities across Scotland own and operate a range of tourism services and experience ready for you to enjoy. By making a conscious choice on your travels, any spend you make will have important benefits that are felt across the host community.

SCOTO members are unlike other tourism providers because they are owned and operated by the communities they serve. Every penny spent with our members is reinvested back into local services, generating immediate and long-lasting benefits for that host community.

Community Tourism is delivered by professionals but also invariably engages volunteers who invest their time with a real passion for their local area, making your experience memorable. These enterprises are highly innovative and entrepreneurial in everything they do.

Author: Ally Tibbitt, Jamie Mann, The Ferret

Full article

HALF of Scotland’s councils have been accused of mismanaging Common Good Funds created to benefit local communities after their value collectively plummeted by nearly £8 million in four years.

Common Good Funds are unique to Scotland and collectively worth an estimated £860m. They are supposed to be managed separately from normal council resources and – according to a 1491 law still in force – used “for the common good of the town”.

However, the Scottish Community Alliance claimed some local authorities are mismanaging “a very significant” community asset. 

It said Common Good Funds were “in desperate need of reform and renewal” and claimed they had “sat in the shadows of our public finances for long enough”.

Common Good assets include town halls, churches, statues, schools, hospitals, green spaces, libraries, water bodies, golf courses, public toilets, museums, allotments and art, such as paintings.

They include notable sites, such as the Inverness Caledonian Thistle football ground; Calton Hill and Princes Street Gardens in Edinburgh; Glasgow’s George Square, Kelvingrove Park and Glasgow Green; the Midsteeple building in Dumfries; Carnegie Hall in Dunfermline; and Gourock Pool in Inverclyde.

While some assets cost money to be maintained, others – such as car parks, farms or harbours – generate revenue and increase the value of common good funds. 

However, investigative journalism co-operative The Ferret found that Common Good assets were sometimes used by councils in ways that suggest they are being undervalued and 

used to subsidise other council services or used to buy things of little community benefit – such as limited edition £170 bottles of whisky or portraits of council officials. 

Two councils have failed to publish a register of common good properties, seven years after since it was made a requirement by law.

Common Good assets are derived from ancient burgh property such as land, buildings and investments and held on behalf of local people by councils.

In conjunction with The Herald, The Ferret looked at how the net value of each council’s Common Good Fund changed in recent years. 

It found the value of 16 funds collectively fell by nearly £8m between 2017-18 and 2020-21, when the 2017 value is adjusted for inflation.

Just 14 councils increased the value of their funds, by nearly £40m in total. Shetland and Western Isles councils are the only local authorities without Common Good Funds.

South Ayrshire’s fund fell by £2.6m – the biggest drop in value of any council. A spokesman said the fall was due to “the revaluation of assets” that occurs every five years. 

The council did not respond to a freedom of information request that sought details of the assets held in the local Common Good Fund and spending records.

It was followed by West Dunbartonshire and Moray, which saw drops of more than £1m each. East Ayrshire and Perth and Kinross saw falls of £869,000 and £763,000, respectively.

Detailed spending records from West Dunbartonshire Council show more than £1m had been spent from the fund over the last three years, including costs for fireworks displays, Christmas lights and funding for local Citizens Advice Bureau branches and museums.

The council also took at least £25,000 each year from its Common Good Fund for “central support” and “estates management” fees. 

A council spokesman said that while no assets were purchased or sold between 2017-18 and 2020-21, its assets had been revalued – an action councils are required to take every five years.

Moray Council did not respond to a freedom of information request seeking detailed spending records for its Common Good Fund.

A spokesman said that, while the council reinvests a proportion of funds annually, lower interest rates in recent years and transferring ownership of assets to community groups had impacted its growth.

East Ayrshire Council attributed its fund’s reduction to “the depreciation and revaluation” of assets. 

Lease information from the fund obtained by a freedom of information request shows that key assets on the East Ayrshire register, such as Darvel Town Hall, the Palace Theatre and Newmilns Library, are leased to the East Ayrshire Leisure Trust (EALT) for just £1 per year.

The council said these and other properties were leased to the EALT at this price for 

£1 each when the trust was founded. 

“To have set a larger charge would only have meant East Ayrshire Council would have to fund EALT to pay a larger rent, which would not make budgetary sense,” a council spokesman said.

Perth and Kinross Council said 68 per cent of its assets’ net value related to land or buildings, which were “revalued annually to reflect market conditions – therefore no adjustment is required for [inflation].”

Its reduction had actually been £282,000 “predominantly due to the revaluation 

of Common Good land and buildings”, a spokesman said.

The Angus fund grew the most, by £12.3m, followed by Aberdeenshire’s, which increased by £5.6m, and Aberdeen’s, which rose by £5m. East Lothian’s fund was up by £3.6m, Glasgow by £3.5m and both Renfrewshire and the Scottish Borders by £2m each.

Many councils are still discovering “new” Common Good assets that should be on their registers. Angus Council said the recent transfer of council assets to its fund had led to an increase in value. Highland Council said it had added a number of bowling clubs to its asset register.

Aberdeenshire Council attributed its fund’s rise to the revaluation of assets. 

Aberdeen City Council said its fund’s increase was due to its annual budget “growing cash investments and supporting future income streams”. 

Growth was also due to the sale of land and the increase in value of other assets.

West Lothian’s Common Good Fund is only worth £23,000, while Midlothian Council has the smallest fund, worth just £9,369 in 2022. Yet, 13 years ago, Midlothian’s fund was valued at £72,000. All other local funds are worth at least £1m.

Midlothian Council said it inherited two funds from the former burghs of Dalkeith and Penicuik.

“These are historic funds, and their value reflects the sums and assets vested in them, and decisions taken over a number of decades, on how they should be used for the benefit of residents,” a spokesman said.

West Lothian Council said it held a community consultation in 2021 to assess what assets should be included in its Common Good register. It was now working to “assess a number of properties” and expected its asset list “to change in the coming months”.

Some council Common Good Funds show a long-term decline. Both the North Lanarkshire and North Ayrshire Common Good Funds are worth less now than they were 13 years ago.

Professor Richard Kerley, an expert in public services management at Queen Margaret University and a director of the Centre For Scottish Public Policy, said it can be tough for councils to accurately value Common Good assets.

As some assets are seen to have historical importance or be key to local leisure, such as statues or parks, their true value is almost “incalculable”. He said some changes in the value of funds will be due to different assessments given by various surveyors and auditors.

The Scottish Community Alliance (SCA) said the investigation demonstrated that Common Good Funds were “in desperate need of reform and renewal”.

“The fact the key piece of legislation that regulates these funds is over 500 years old tells its own story,” said Angus Hardie, the SCA’s director.

“The discrepancies in the performance of the funds in different local authorities suggests very different approaches are being adopted – many of which appear to be to the detriment of what is in effect a very significant class of community asset,” he added.

“As the Scottish Government is now talking in earnest about community wealth building, with legislation on the horizon, we need to have a major rethink about how we treat this particular aspect of community wealth in the future.

“The Common Good has sat in the shadows of our public finances for long enough.”

Some councils faced accusations of mismanaging their funds in 2019 after The Ferret revealed spending patterns that critics argued did not benefit the common good.

Aberdeen City Council spent £38,280 of its fund on “civic drinks” for events, while Highland Council paid £4,439 for “civic hospitality” drinks. 

Dundee City Council used £5,500 of its fund to pay for a portrait of the city’s Lord Provost in 2018, while Highland and Aberdeen councils splashed out £2,000 and £1,350, respectively, on flights.

Despite this criticism, councils with large Common Good Funds continue to use them to subsidise similar costs. 

In 2019-20 Aberdeen City Council, which has by far the largest Common Good Fund, spent£10,000 on a portrait of the Lord Provost.

It also spent £13,193 between 2018-19 and 2021-22 on the Lord Provost’s travel expenses. 

Similarly, in 2018-19, Highland Council continued to spend thousands of pounds each year on hospitality, catering and travel, including £1,708 on 10 bottles of specially labelled single malt whisky.

A Highland Council spokesman said: “The Inverness Common Good Fund grant sub-committee meets quarterly to make decisions on how funds are spent for the benefit of communities and to assess applications made to the Common Good Fund.

“Minutes of the sub-group committee meetings are included in the city of Inverness area committee meeting papers for the scrutiny [of] Inverness councillors.” 

Common Good-funded “civic duties” in Inverness were agreed by city councillors, in 

which “expenses are accrued – such as hospitality,” the spokesman added.

Neither South nor East Ayrshire Council have published a register of Common Good properties, seven years after it was made a requirement by law.

Professor Kerley said that it was “pretty inexcusable to have not produced a register”, as most Common Good asset holdings “are not extensive” compared to that of general council assets. “Transparency is essential” he added.

Joseph McLachlan, head of finance for East Ayrshire Council, said its approach to accounting for Common Good assets was agreed with auditor, Audit Scotland, whereby it was agreed “all of the costs in maintaining the assets would be met from the council’s budget rather than from the respective Common Good Fund”.

He added: “As a consequence of this approach, any income from the Common Good assets would also be retained by the council but it is important to highlight that the cost of maintaining the assets far outweighs any income that is generated.” 

A South Ayrshire Council spokesman said: “Finalising the list is a substantial piece of work that involves a time-consuming process to ensure all information is correct. However, the process will continue to be progressed.”

Author: Nan Spowart, The National

A SCOTTISH island development trust has called for levies on empty and second homes in order to build more affordable houses for local people.

Arran Development Trust (ADT) said it “empathised entirely” with the coastal community of Whitby which has just voted to limit the sale of second homes.

It is the latest tourist hotspot to demand action against wealthy buyers pricing local people out of the housing market by paying high prices for holiday homes.

The medieval Yorkshire fishing port, made famous by Bram Stoker’s Dracula, voted last week by 93% to restrict the sale of new-build and additional housing to permanent residents.

While not legally binding it is hoped it will send a message to council planners that “enough is enough”.

Around 28% of properties in the resort are second homes, but on Arran, which has 40% of North Ayrshire’s second and empty homes, the development trust said they would rather introduce a rates levy on them.

“Whilst the Arran Development Trust empathise entirely with the community in Whitby, we recognise the growing trend for second/holiday homes pricing local residents out of the market and the resultant detrimental effect on local services,” said a spokesperson.

“The ADT also recognise the second home/holiday home market is important to tourism areas and as such the ADT would rather support a less divisive approach, by advocating and introducing a financial contributory Second/Holiday Home Owners Fund specifically raised primarily through rates levies on empty and second homes with the funds raised being spent in the specific area contributing.

“For example, Arran has 40% of North Ayrshire Council second and empty homes, therefore Arran should receive 40% of the fund to spend on increasing the number of affordable homes on Arran.

“Additional, substantial area-specific revenue would provide affordable homes for current full-time residents and contribute financially and directly to the local economy, easing the ‘them and us’ culture which is appearing across the Scottish islands and rural areas.”

Martainn Mac a’ Bhaillidh, of Gaelic campaign group Misneachd, said he would fully support the levy idea but added that there should also be restrictions on who is permitted to buy homes in a community and the rental income of property should be regulated and restricted. In addition, empty homes also had to be brought back into use and land made available to build more.

“This is obviously part of the problem, but the shortage of homes isn’t just caused by an increase in population. Ownership of second homes as holiday homes or rental businesses reduces the available number of properties,” he said.

“Clearly if we urgently need to increase the number of homes, and reduce their price, we need to build more but also stop the market leaking properties at the same time.”

He said Scotland could move to a formal “two-tier” housing market in certain areas through licensing and regulation, alongside planning controls both of existing properties and conditions attached to new-build homes.

“Obviously, we need land reform to free up affordable house plots for self-builders. We need many more new-build homes, affordable homes and social housing, all permanently restricted to full-time occupation,” said Mac a’ Bhaillidh.

“We need short-term let control areas introduced and a robust licensing scheme. We need rent controls to ensure the affordability of long-term tenancy. We need restrictions on foreign investment in real estate. We need a progressive land value tax targeting large estate holdings as well as second, third and fourth homes.

“And we need all this to be robust, free from loopholes and properly funded and enforced. These are all steps which could be taken by the Scottish Government, working with local councils.”

Whitby follows St Ives (above), Fowey and Mevagissey in Cornwall in voting to limit sales of new-builds to full-time residents and the Welsh government recently increased the maximum level of council tax on second homes to 300% over concerns that tourist spots such as Gwynedd and Anglesey were being swamped by holiday lets. They are also tightening rules on self-catering accommodation being liable for business rates rather than council tax.

The Lake District National Park limits the use of homes given planning permission with new-builds only allowed where they help communities remain vibrant and are secured permanently for the original intended purpose using planning controls attached to the deeds.

Scottish campaigners argue this demonstrates that such measures are possible in a UK context.

“Solutions do exist,” said Mac a’ Bhaillidh. “The main difficulty is the reluctance of politicians to regulate the ‘free market’.”

Author: SMSA

Start a Men’s Shed

WHAT IS A MEN’S SHED?

Men’s Sheds mean very different things to the diverse parts of our society. The SMSA feel it is very important to highlight some of these different views,

‘What is a Men’s Shed? –

• Men,
• Women and Families
• Professionals’

and the danger if we try and fit them all into a ‘one box fits all’ mentality. So to understand the varied community benefits please do read the proceeding three sections in the same drop down menu under – What is a Men’s Shed?

In a nutshell however, a Scottish Men’s Shed is a permanent meeting place for men where lots of good community and healthy ‘self and group determined’ experiences take place. They take place by ‘everyday’ men with ‘time on their hands’ willing to act with the skills they already have within their local community.

The ‘place’ (many different types of buildings = the Shed) which is used for many different activities is run by a volunteer group (Shed committee) for themselves and other men over the age of eighteen (usually) who have ‘time on their hands’, want to get out the house/flat to socialise (chat and put the world to rights, sometimes) and maybe also do something (build/repair,up-cycle/create/learn/mentor) in between the socialising in an alcohol free and welcoming environment.

The Scottish Men’s Shed is for all men who have ‘time on their hands’ who might want to lead active lives, make a difference and build their communities into something better. It has older men and younger men, unemployed and employed, skilled and unskilled. It has a value system of: ‘we value you for who you are, not what you do or have done’. If you have ‘skills’ that’s a bonus not a prerequisite to become a Shedder. Everyone by virtue of ‘experiencing life’ has value and something to share. Shedders go to a Men’s Shed for different reasons and over time those reasons can also change. We certainly hope they may as your life changes and therefore so do your needs and outlook on life.

So we encourage you to read all the three sections to get a broader perspective of, ‘What is a Men’s Shed’ –  Men, Women and Families and Professionals’.

We hope the quotes on the right hand side demonstrate what going to a Shed means to the men and the photos and video will give you some idea of the activities which take place in a Scottish Men’s Shed and indeed many of the 1500 Men’s Sheds in the Western world today.

Author: Scottish Civic Trust

Watch short film of the Montrose Playhouse story

 The My Place Awards celebrate community-led built environment projects that have transformed their locality. They are supported by the Scottish Government, and are unique in Scotland as a national celebration of good design and conservation nominated by local people. 

The Montrose Playhouse project began in 2012 after a new swimming facility was built in Montrose, causing local people to wonder what would become of the old pool hall. David Paton, associate Director at Crawford Architecture and eventual Chair of Montrose Playhouse Project SCIO, posted his thoughts online about how the building could be re-imagined as a cinema.Within a few hours, 500 people had liked the post and urged for the designs to become a reality. Within a week, the Montrose Playhouse Project was born.

In 2017, the Montrose Playhouse Project SCIO committee purchased the disused building from Angus Council for £1. They then held a community event to strip the building back to a shell, engaging over 80 volunteers and saving the project around £250,000 and six months of time.

Construction began in 2021, and over ten months, the former pool hall was converted into three screening rooms with a combined capacity of just under 400 people. The Playhouse also features education and exhibition facilities, retail space and a cafe bar. Since its opening in October 2021, the Playhouse has seen a six percent lift in its operating budget, and over 52,000 cinema tickets were sold. 

The judges said: “Montrose Playhouse is an inspiring example of how communities can come together to develop innovative places and achieve a positive change for local people. It’s clear that Montrose Playhouse has established itself as a versatile cultural community asset, stimulating the local economy and providing an accessible and aesthetically pleasing social space for all ages.”

Watch short film of the Montrose Playhouse story

Author: BBC

Twenty-five years ago, the residents of Eigg completed the purchase of their island. It marked the end to a system of absentee landlords and the start of a time of innovation and growth.

“In the 1990s, the whole community suffered from the poor management and bad decisions of several private landlords,” said Maggie Fyffe, secretary of Isle of Eigg Heritage Trust and one of the islanders involved in the community buyout.

“People were being threatened with eviction, there was no investment in any of the island buildings or infrastructure and we were all very worried about what might eventually happen.”

Eigg is one of the Small Isles, a group of islands south of Skye. It is only about five miles (8km) long and three miles (5km) wide.

The island is steeped in history, including a bloody feud between the clans Macdonald and Macleod of more than 400 years ago, and a legend of murderous female warriors.

A lack of tenure of farms on Eigg was among the reasons behind the buyout

In the 1990s, Eigg was home to about 60 people. Many of them were deeply unhappy about how the island was managed, particularly a lack of security in the tenure of homes and farms.

Talk began of mounting a community buyout.

Ms Fyffe said the purchase by crofters of the 21,000-acre (8,498 ha) North Assynt Estate in the north west Highlands in 1993 gave Eigg’s residents the confidence they could be successful.

With support from others across Scotland, a campaign was launched to draw attention to the plight of the islanders.

A fundraising appeal – called Let’s Crack It – was set up with help from Highland Council and the Scottish Wildlife Trust to raise money for the purchase.

For a time, there was an asking price of £3m, but the sale was eventually completed for £1.5m.

Highlands and Islands Enterprise provided a grant of £17,000 but the rest was raised by donations, including an anonymous donation of £750,000.

On 12 June 1997, islanders marked Eigg’s “independence day”, having successfully completed the buyout.

Ms Fyffe said: “It was very, very hard won. There was no land reform legislation and there was no land fund at the time.”

A piper helps mark the community purchase in June 1997

She added: “A huge number of people helped us along the way – 10,000 individuals donated to our appeal.

“It’s that kind of thing that’s very important on the anniversary.”

Since 1997 the population has grown to 110, and includes young families.

The island has also moved away from reliance on fossil fuel generators to power homes and businesses.

Its renewables scheme was the first in the world to provide electricity 24 hours a day from a mix of wind, sun and hydro power, and has inspired similar systems in Africa and the Americas.

Eigg achieved a world first with its wind, sun and hydro renewable energy system

Eigg’s original shop and café have been completely redeveloped and it now has a craft shop and space for a cycle and kayak hire business.

There are new visitor facilities and office space for the trust. Existing housing stock has been refurbished, and there are plans for new homes.

There is also a tree nursery which is growing thousands of native plant species to sell to other islands and the mainland.

The heritage trust’s director Lucy Conway told the BBC’s Good Morning Scotland programme: “It’s extraordinary seeing the contrast between then and now and the difference the community buyout has made.”

Author: Isle Develop CIC

isleHoliday is the new project from Isle Develop CIC: the company behind isle20.com

isle20 was created as a direct response to the impact of Covid-19 on the islands’ tourism sector. It was set up as a marketplace, to allow small businesses to keep selling despite the lack of tourist footfall. The success of this project gave rise to Isle Develop CIC – a Community Interest Company dedicated to putting profits back in the hands of island communities.

isleHoliday is a bookings site, which will reinvest its revenue directly into local island communities.

Like other booking sites, for every booking taken, isleHoliday will charge commission. But that’s where the similarities end. That commission will not only go towards running the business – which already supports 2 jobs in the islands – all surplus will go into the Isle Develop Fund.

That Fund is focussed on supporting small businesses and community and housing projects in the Scottish islands. By keeping profits local, we hope to have a visibly positive impact which will help our communities to thrive for many generations to come. We want to make sure that the islands remain a great place to live as well as a great place to visit.

The Fund can only be used for the benefit of the islands and their residents; not for individual or corporate profit.

With it, we hope to support projects that will enrich the islands; directly investing in community and sustainable development for our islands’ future. The success of isle20 has already allowed us to make positive impacts in the last year in the form of grants for micro businesses, who have used the money to buy equipment that is essential to the long-term viability of their business.

By placing communities at the centre of everything we do, we hope to use isleHoliday to make tourism work better for everyone.

If you are interested in finding out more about isleHoliday – whether you have your own website or are currently using another service, or both or none, drop us a line and we will be in touch!

Author: Land Matters, the blog and website of Andy Wightman

Today marks an important moment in the struggle to reclaim rights for the people over common land.

In May 2005, I discovered an extant commonty in the Parish of Carluke (pictured red above). Commonties are ancient areas of common land, often very extensive, that provided residents of the parish with fuel, building materials, food, and a place to bleach linen, conduct meetings and undertake the distillation of exotic drink. Unlike in England where the commons were enclosed by individual Acts of Parliament, in Scotland an Act of 1695 created a simple judicial process that facilitated the division and privatisation of millions of acres of common land.

The Division of Communities Act 1695 remains on the statute book (when I invited the Scottish Government to consider repealing it, I was told that it remained of value for farmers and landowners – so much for land reform).

Over the next seven years, I and others undertook extensive research on the history of the common and concluded that there was indeed no owner and that it was an undivided common. Unfortunately, land reform has yet to create a statutory process for reclaiming such areas of land for the common good and thus we had to work out how to bring the land into community ownership.

We settled on the process of registering a non domino title, one where the grantee was by their own admission not the owner of the land. This is a clever trick used by the landed class down the centuries. It felt curious to be using such a procedure but we proceeded anyway. It took some time for the Keeper of the Registers of Scotland to accept the deed. Various parties had to be consulted including the Queen’s and Lords Treasurer’s and Remembrancer. Eventually on 23 May 2012, the Keeper registered the title in the Land Register as LAN212232.

But that was not the end of the matter since the title remained open to challenge for ten years under Section 1 of the Prescription and Limitation (Scotland) Act 1973 after which, should no challenge be forthcoming, the title would be beyond challenge.

Thus today marks the 10th anniversary of the registration and Carluke Development Trust are the full and indisputable owners of the former parish common.

My blog of 16 January 2014 contains further details and today I am pleased to be able to finally publish the report that I wrote for Carluke Development Trust. Until now it has been deemed inadvisable to draw attention to some of the historical research for fear of alerting a possible claimant. Today that fear disappears and provides, I think, cause for some modest celebration.

Author: Kate Pickett. Social Europe

Kate Pickett explains how to turn the vicious circle of inequality and social mistrust into a virtuous one.

Holidaying on the island of Arran, off the west coast of Scotland, we came upon a geological site known as Hutton’s Unconformity. James Hutton, an 18th-century geologist, became curious about junctions between different types of rock formation, created at different times and by different processes, as if manifestations of a collision between mighty opposing forces.

At the time, people thought that rocks were either created by volcanic activity or they were laid down by oceans. Hutton realised that both processes had shaped what he was seeing—neither of the simple explanations could resolve what was going on. His ‘unconformity’ struck me as a good metaphor for collisions, contradictions and disconnections which I have been thinking about.

Tolerating inequality

The first collision is between people’s expressed values and the actions they take. According to statistics presented in a recent paper, racial inequality cost the United States economy $16 trillion in lost gross domestic product over the last two decades. Meanwhile, the gender pay gap holds back the global economy by about $160 trillion. Yet people in positions of privilege continue to tolerate inequality and fail to support policies which would lead to greater equality—despite generally claiming to have egalitarian values.

The authors of the paper, American social psychologists, argue that this contradiction arises because the privileged and those in positions of power believe that policies which increase equality will necessarily harm them and undermine their status. In a series of experiments, they showed that members of advantaged groups consistently believed that policies which would actually benefit everyone would harm them, while policies that increased inequalities between groups would always be good for them. The researchers conclude that ‘these misperceptions may explain why inequality prevails even as it incurs societal costs that harm everyone’.

But the participants in the experiments may not have been misperceiving anything at all. The equality-enhancing scenarios they were presented with all focused on increasing material assets. For example, they were asked to consider increases in the amount of mortgage loans to disadvantaged groups with no changes for the advantaged group, or increases in pay for women with no changes in pay for men. Clearly the respondents did not like these proposals, even though the scenarios they were presented with would not decrease their own material assets and would reduce absolute differences between groups.

Relative status

Perhaps they were instinctively—or should I say unconsciously—recognising another, second, collision, between material and relative status, and understanding the importance of relative status. What one has matters less than how much one has relative to others.

Karl Marx understood this, pointing out: ‘A house may be large or small; as long as the neighbouring houses are likewise small, it satisfies all social requirement for a residence. But let there arise next to the little house a palace, and the little house shrinks to a hut … the occupant of the relatively little house will always find himself more uncomfortable, more dissatisfied, more cramped within his four walls.’

And indeed this is backed by modern research. A study found that people were satisfied with the size of their house only until someone came along and built a bigger house on the same block.

So it is not really a misperception to think that others obtaining more material assets does not hurt as long as one’s own assets remain unchanged; if they now have relatively more, one’s relative status has actually declined. And relative status matters enormously: research suggests it is more important for health and wellbeing than absolute income or wealth.

Capitalism—its neoliberal variant in particular—has trained us to desire ever bigger incomes and ever more stuff, despite this being a zero-sum game. If we all receive the same increments in absolute terms, none of us gains relatively, one against another. And having more things does not buy happiness, or at least it does so only transiently.

False promises

Advertising plays on everyone’s desire to have more, implying that having more will fulfil us. But that is another collision, this time with the truth: we are being offered false promises. True wellbeing emanates from things which do not have a price tag—a sense of purpose, agency, social connection.

Of course the pursuit of more income and possessions would not matter that much if it ‘only’ gave rise to broken dreams and lack of fulfillment. But consumerism and over-consumption are not just pointless—they are harmful.

We live on a finite planet with finite resources and here lies the final and most important disconnect. There is a fundamental collision between what we need to do to address climate change and other environmental problems and the neoliberal ideology of economic growth. We cannot have both, and our politics and policies have not yet grappled with that contradiction.

But just as Hutton was forced to come up with new ideas about geological processes by pondering his ‘unconformity’, taking a clear look at the clashes between neoliberalism’s pursuit of economic growth and sustainable wellbeing can lead us to focus on solutions.

Resolving the paradox

Tackling inequality, happily, offers a pathway out of all of these conflicts, collisions and clashes of social forces. Greater equality helps resolve the paradox between people saying they prefer equality yet acting in favour of maintaining inequality, because in more equal societies people trust one another more and act more collectively, for the common good.

Equality also helps reduce the conflict between wanting more and that not bringing us happiness. In a more equal society the hierarchy is flatter, our relative status is more similar and greater ‘social capital’ enhances our flourishing and wellbeing.

Finally, greater equality is an essential and powerful enabler of a transformation to a sustainable economy. It can help create the shared spirit of collectivism needed if we are to tackle this great challenge, simultaneously reducing our competitive desires to consume ever more while enhancing public health and happiness.

Greater equality is thus a triple win: good policies, greater wellbeing and a society flourishing within planetary boundaries.

Author: Scottish Land Commission

Community-led action on vacant and derelict land – handy guide 

The legacy of Scotland’s industrial past means that almost a third of the Scottish population lives within 500 meters of a derelict site. In deprived communities that figure increases to 55%. The amount of land on the Vacant and Derelict Land Register has remained static for years, and the consequences of this for wellbeing are enormous.

Never has the importance of high quality places been more important or their absence so keenly felt. But it doesn’t have to be this way. These sites could be so much more – they could help us solve some of our biggest challenges.

Bringing abandoned and unloved urban places back into productive use could help us tackle climate change, improve health and wellbeing, create more resilient communities and rebuild our economy in a way that helps everyone achieve their full potential.

In 2018 the Scottish Land Commission and SEPA established a national taskforce to help realise this opportunity. The Vacant and Derelict Land Taskforce brought together senior representatives from around 30 businesses, public bodies and third sector organisations who have spent two years working to transform the existing approach to bringing vacant and derelict land back into productive use. 

Community-led action on vacant and derelict land – handy guide