Author: Gerry Hassan, Scottish Review

The entire coronavirus pandemic has been shaped by the incompetence of Boris Johnson and the UK Government. At nearly every stage, they have seemed almost wilfully too slow to act, learn or admit mistakes.

One underlying problem has been the degree to which the UK Government has acted centralising English decisions. It has been unwilling to encourage or support localism, decentralism and civic leadership across the country. Instead, it has advanced a one-size-fits-all approach for England, bypassing local government, not drawing on regional public health and other expertise, and instead, attempting to govern by ministerial diktat. This critique is well-founded and is one that Scotland – along with Wales and Northern Ireland – have stood apart from. All three have shown a much more striking degree of competent leadership and co-ordination during this crisis.

Yet by mirroring Westminster’s centralising mind set Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland are acting in a similar way. They are centralising within their territories – drawing up powers and competencies to their devolved administrations and leaderships. And in so doing, they are accentuating the evolution of devolution in each of the three nations – which has seen the emergence of powerful political centres in Edinburgh, Cardiff and Belfast, which are not only counters to Westminster but coalesce authority in their own countries.

Take the Scottish story of centralisation. Much of this has a logic during the exceptional circumstances of a pandemic. But in a country with an atrophied, financially strapped local government which is barely worthy of the name ‘local democracy’, and an absence of powerful intermediate public institutions between citizens and the state, the Scottish Government’s capacity to reflect and understand the diversity of the nation is being severely stretched.

The remorseless centralisation of the Scottish Government in this crisis is present in numerous ways. There are the daily briefings by the First Minister Nicola Sturgeon which started for understandable reasons. Two-and-a-half months into lockdown, they have now become a showcase for the limits of how the system and our politics work.

Every daily briefing is led by the First Minister. No other Government minister has led one of these briefings; Jeane Freeman, Health Secretary, often attends but on many occasions barely contributes. Then there is the lack of accountability and sidelining of Parliament in the cumulative effect of these briefings – with important announcements not made to MSPs but to the media and TV audiences. There is a creeping presidentialism in this, with the Scottish Parliament being seen as an afterthought – both unhealthy trends which have been building for years.

The mismatch between centralisation and how people are responding in their lives is even more stark. All across Scotland, thousands upon thousands of people are reacting to the crisis and its challenges by supporting localism and embracing local initiatives, actions and networks, some ad hoc, some more permanent. People are taking action in supporting their neighbours; communities are creating informal systems to assist one another, and giving a new energy and purpose to already existing groups.

Much of this as you would expect is below the radar, taking place without publicity or even in many cases funding. But it is also happening in many cases beyond the reach and awareness of the Scottish Government who are too busy to recognise this but also don’t seem to have the mind set to understand what is going on. There is, at the moment, little capacity in the system at the centre to embrace such learning but also a lack of dialogue and relationships between the centre and local informal initiatives.

The centralising mantra has consequences in a pandemic because local activism, leadership and decision-making, alongside a diverse ecology of different arrangements and institutions, can provide a more sensitised way of responding to the crisis. Take an extreme example elsewhere showing the power of the local. In the US, the disaster Presidency of Donald Trump has to an extent been mitigated in this crisis by the power of the states, governors and local government, who have adopted state level responses to the pandemic which have in places been effective: California being one such place.

The longer story of Scotland’s centralisation has been ongoing on for decades. In many accounts, Margaret Thatcher and Thatcherism are blamed for a war of attrition and distrust on local government. But Scotland’s story of centralisation goes back much further. There was the 1976 IMF-approved public spending cuts, and before that the 1974 local government re-organisation which brought in huge regions such as Strathclyde and abolished single tier city government in Glasgow, Edinburgh, Aberdeen and Dundee.

Before that, many actions of the post-war Labour Government, such as nationalising railways, coal and electricity, created British-wide bodies with no distinct Scottish autonomy. And before this, the 1929 local government reforms swept away an entire patchwork of local town councils and parishes – many with centuries of traditions and local pride.

Hence, the road of centralisation in Scotland is at least a century old. What is seldom analysed is why this distinct pattern has continued over different political periods, parties in power, and pre and post-devolution. One dimension is the link between the rise of the Scottish dimension, the ‘Scottish lobby’ of institutional opinion, and the pressure of that to get organised groups to speak with a single corporate voice in relation to Westminster. All of which encourages a centralisation of attitude and institutional arrangements.

A major agent of this pre-devolution was the Scottish Office, which although a UK Government department, saw its role under successive Secretaries of State for Scotland as making the case for more funding and resources within the Westminster and Whitehall system.

This played into a cycle whereby the success of the Scottish Office at gaining more monies and allocation of public services gave it a higher status in Scotland, and more leverage and leadership with bodies here such as the STUC, SCDI and CBI Scotland. Slowly from the 1920s onward, as the size of Government expanded here, this embryonic state saw one of its roles as rationalising the old hybrid mixture of public, semi-public and charitable services, many of which in their arrangements stretched back to Victorian times.

This system produced a series of centripetal tendencies whereby the more successful the Scottish Office was (and the more high profile the actions of ‘the Scottish lobby’) the more centralisation occurred in public life. This is the story of the Scottish Office pre-devolution through Tories such as Walter Elliot in the 1930s, Labour’s Tom Johnston and Arthur Woodburn in the 1940s, and the Tory James Stuart and John Maclay in the 1950s and early 1960s.

Many thought that this set of dynamics and the mind set behind it would weaken with the Scottish Parliament, but instead the centralising tendencies of the system have strengthened. First, the Scottish Government itself has become a giant lobbying force vis-a-vis Westminster. The very existence of devolved institutions can be seen as an expression of ‘the Scottish lobby’.

Second, any new set of institutions such as the Scottish Parliament and Government always want to assert themselves and make the case for their existence, legitimacy and powers. In so doing, new political institutions have a propensity to want to accumulate and hoard powers to themselves – taking them from other bodies.

Third, domestic politics count in this and the limited political vision of Labour and the SNP: the two dominant parties of devolution. Both have seen the accumulation of power at the centre as the way to organise public services with ministers and their departments able to have more of a direct role. It also matters that the advocates of localism and diversity of public services have been weak and not had powerful enough advocates in the system and Parliament, the Scottish Greens being the sole exception.

The limits of centralisation have been shown in this pandemic – and as self-evidently in Scotland as in Westminster’s approach to England. This is despite the obvious fact that Scotland has a Government which is more focused and competent, and a First Minister who is on the detail in a way Boris Johnson isn’t.

Despite the above qualities, centralisation has shown its limitations here, whether it be in public services such as health and education, police and emergency services, and the wider responsibility of local government – the last of which does seem to have been missing from the public face of national leadership. Centralising politics ultimately do not work. All they lead to is an inexorable tendency to more centralisation, micro-control and lack of good decision-making and accountability, as any diversity, pluralism and competing viewpoints are eliminated from the system.

Scotland, in recent years, has talked another game, the Government promoting and passing a Community Empowerment Act which is weak and does little to progress such ideas, while such welcome ideas as community asset transfers which are happening across the country illustrate the lack of expertise in the system or support for those undertaking such endeavours.

There is a desperate need for building up insight, advice and an understanding in practice on how to nurture local people, groups and initiatives, beyond such positive groups as the Scottish Community Alliance with their agenda of ‘Local People Leading’. This is a terrain that national organisations such as SCVO do not seem to see as core to their mission – much of which has become an adjunct to existing Government policy and thinking.

All the pressures in the system – pre-pandemic and reinforced by it – are towards more, not less centralisation. Public monies will be tight after lockdown and difficult choices will have to be made. Government ministers here will continue to see the solution as being more power to Government ministers. Already before the pandemic one consultancy view put it that Scotland could not sustain a mere 32 local councils, but instead should have between 12-14; this when the country once had hundreds of councils pre-1929.

If the trend to centralisation is not stopped, one dystopian future for Scotland is – irrespective of whether independent or remains part of the UK – of a stark, minimal public landscape of a Scottish Parliament and Government, one stand-alone commissioning body for public services, little to no intermediate public agencies, and a local democracy not worthy of the name. This is not a route to effective public services, democracy or accountability; but it would make sense to ministers and their advisers.

The political centre will not voluntarily let go of the powers it has gathered. Rather, if the march of centralisation is to be stopped and reversed, the system is going to have to be challenged and changed. That will require pointing out the limits and costs of centralisation and the development of counter-proposals which put localism at their heart, and then organisation to push for the remaking of local democracy in Scotland: an agenda and vision which has to go far beyond town halls and local government.

Author: Bella Caledonia

On #GlobalDegrowthDay, the Enough! collective lay out some principles of degrowth for those not familiar with the idea and ask: What would the economy of a degrowth Scotland look like?

As long as our economy is dependent on growth, any ‘economic recovery’ from the coronavirus will be a disaster. Instead, Scotland needs a planned, sustainable, and equitable downscaling and a fundamental reorganising of the economy. Today on #GlobalDegrowthDay, we lay out some principles of degrowth for those not familiar with the idea and ask: What would the economy of a degrowth Scotland look like?

The Scottish Government’s ‘Sustainable Growth Commission’ calls for an “inter-generational economic renaissance”, but starts from the impossible premise that economic growth can be made sustainable. As we think about how to repair and reconstruct our economy following Covid-19, Enough’s Degrowth Commission is calling on the Scottish Government, civil society and communities to embrace ideas of degrowth.

Put simply, degrowth is “a planned yet adaptive, sustainable, and equitable downscaling of the economy, leading to a future where we can live better with less.” Degrowth does not mean ‘shrinking’ all areas of human life or of the economy. It allows for the creation of more of what we need, and less useless material goods and toil.

There is a growing movement for degrowth economics worldwide. A recent letter from the International Degrowth Network, published in the UK by Open Democracy, has pointed out that the crisis triggered by the Covid-19 pandemic has exposed weaknesses of growth-driven capitalist economies. Crippled healthcare systems, austerity, climate change, poverty and hunger and biodiversity loss cause millions of deaths every year. The letter states:

“For decades, the dominant strategies against these ills were to leave economic distribution largely to market forces and to lessen ecological degradation through decoupling and green growth. This has not worked. We now have an opportunity to build on the experiences of the Corona crisis: from new forms of cooperation and solidarity that are flourishing, to the widespread appreciation of basic societal services like health and care work, food provisioning and waste removal. The pandemic has also led to government actions unprecedented in modern peacetime, demonstrating what is possible when there is a will to act: the unquestioned reshuffling of budgets, mobilization and redistribution of money, rapid expansion of social security systems and housing for the homeless.” Degrowth New Roots Collective

This letter has been published in 18 languages and signed by more than 1,100 experts and over 70 organisations from more than 60 countries.

The experience of Covid-19 has taught us something we already knew, now made explicit: a different kind of world is not just possible; it is a crucial and urgent necessity.

We cannot return to our toxic past and “business as usual”. The old growth economy, based on hyper-consumerism, was one marked by gross inequality, catastrophic carbon emissions and a globalism that was committing us to omnicide. Any return to “normal” will not just be socially disastrous, it will ensure that our current trajectory for climate catastrophe is ensured. The endless cycle of production and consumption must cease.

As this oft-quoted passage by Arundhati Roy reflects:

“Nothing could be worse than a return to normality. Historically, pandemics have forced humans to break with the past and imagine their world anew. This one is no different. It is a portal, a gateway between one world and the next. We can choose to walk through it, dragging the carcasses of our prejudice and hatred, our avarice, our data banks and dead ideas, our dead rivers and smoky skies behind us. Or we can walk through lightly, with little luggage, ready to imagine another world. And ready to fight for it.” Arundhati Roy

5 Principles for Degrowth Recovery

Enough! today shares the 5 international principles for a just recovery of our economy and the basis of creating a just society. To develop new roots for an economy that works for all, we need to:

1) Put life at the center of our economic systems. Instead of economic growth and wasteful production, we must put life and wellbeing at the center of our efforts. While some sectors of the economy, like fossil fuel production, military and advertising, have to be phased out as fast as possible, we need to foster others, like healthcare, education, renewable energy and ecological agriculture.

2) Radically reevaluate how much and what work is necessary for a good life for all. We need to put more emphasis on care work and adequately value the professions that have proven essential during the crisis. Workers from destructive industries need access to training for new types of work that is regenerative and cleaner, ensuring a just transition. Overall, we have to reduce working time and introduce schemes for work-sharing.

3) Organize society around the provision of essential goods and services. While we need to reduce wasteful consumption and travel, basic human needs, such as the right to food, housing and education have to be secured for everyone through universal basic services or universal basic income schemes. Further, a minimum and maximum income have to be democratically defined and introduced.

4) Democratize society. This means enabling all people to participate in the decisions that affect their lives. In particular, it means more participation for marginalized groups of society as well as including feminist principles into politics and the economic system. The power of global corporations and the financial sector have to be drastically reduced through democratic ownership and oversight. The sectors related to basic needs like energy, food, housing, health and education need to be decommodified and definancialised. Economic activity based on cooperation, for example worker cooperatives, has to be fostered.

5) Base political and economic systems on the principles of solidarity and decolonisation. Redistribution and justice – transnational, intersectional and intergenerational – must be the basis for reconciliation between current and future generations, social groups within countries as well as between countries of the Global South and Global North. The Global North in particular must end current forms of exploitation and make reparations for past ones. Climate justice must be the principle guiding a rapid social-ecological transformation. Abandon economic practices that rely on outsourcing cheap labour within and outwith national boundaries, on extractivism and plantation principles.

Degrowth in Scotland

While there is a burgeoning and collaborative degrowth network emerging across the globe, there is no such network in Scotland yet, although there are many groups, organisations and campaigns whose work connects with degrowth ideas and principles. We need to come together and work collaboratively to realistically assess projections for Scotland’s social, political and economic future.

In order to mobilise resources required to respond to the climate emergency according to principles of social and environmental justice, livelihoods will need to be reconfigured under different potential governance scenarios, taking into account Brexit and the case for Scottish independence.

We also recognise that any movement for degrowth must be just: “Unless it is just, it is not degrowth.”’ Scotland must also face its dual role as oppressor and oppressed in the UK’s colonial past. The high rates of Covid-19 deaths among BAME people in the UK are a stark reminder that carrying forth an economic logic that maintains and increases exploitative race and class structures is not an option.

Call to Action

We call for the following actions in response to these principles:

• Convene Citizen Assemblies across the country to discuss and plan the shift to a degrowth Scotland. These should inform a new economic plan.
• Constitute a Special Commission on Degrowth Futures in the Scottish Parliament. This commission should actively debate the principles and priorities of a postgrowth society actively debate the principles and priorities of a postgrowth society, devise policy alternatives for degrowth futures, and abandon the pursuit of growth as an overarching policy goal. The commission should be open to all and broadcast each day and only call on experts who are committed to real change.
• Incorporate alternative indicators into the macroeconomic framework of Scotland. Economic policies should be evaluated in terms of their impact on human wellbeing, resource use, inequality, and the provision of decent work.

Author: The Stove Network

We believe that a creative voice is vital in the conversation about the futures being planned for our communities. To that end, we are gathering together creative practitioners, from all walks of life, to work collectively on a project that will examine the way our society is reacting to the COVID pandemic and make creative responses to what is happening and what could happen in the future.

The pandemic is both local and global as it is lived by individuals and communities.  Above all, it is a collective experience, and one that must be looked at through different scales of magnification to reveal the different truths and insights about relations between individuals, communities and the larger influences in our lives; and some of the inequalities embedded within these, as well as the positive possibilities.

Over the last few months we have all seen and sometimes participated in many, many examples of cooperation, generosity and care.  Maps to a Kinder World is a means of creatively learning and building on these informal networks and gestures of human solidarity. Can an Atlas Pandemica help reveal the real power of the local for the way we live together with each other and the environment into the future?

Atlas Pandemica: Maps to a Kinder World is one means to support creative voices to be heard and offers an opportunity for new thinking, actions and innovations.

We are looking for eight people to work on the project. Each will be given a separate commission to explore a theme. Projects will be of an action research nature – working alongside people, groups, organisations and agencies to learn and engage, then making creative responses to the research that deepens understanding and the potential for further participation and development of ideas. Each of the eight creative journeys will be seen as a map (in the widest sense) that will be gathered together in an atlas of Maps to a Kinder World that can be used to help our region navigate to a new future from the COVID pandemic.

We very much hope that you will be interested to take part in the project, if so, please do get in touch. We would like to hear from creative practitioners with an initial response to the project and proposal of what they would like to research and with which communities, people and organisations. We have identified a list of a themes that are intended to give an idea of the direction we imagine the project going in. We’d like you to respond to one of these and propose an approach you would take to developing this. All options that engage with local activity and aim to enhance the future for communities are valid – we are committed to the idea that we are navigating uncharted territory. Supporting the greatest diversity of approach and people is our aim.

Please follow this link for the proposed themes for Atlas Pandemica.

The Commissions:

We are offering eight separate commissions to take part in the project. These are available to individual creative practitioners or teams (see Background and Criteria below). Each commission will receive an all-inclusive fee of £3,500 and the project is planned to last for approximately 5 months (NB we live in times defined by uncertainty).

Commissioned practitioners will be supported by The Stove Network in terms of project management, partnership working and personal support. This project is about kindness and mutuality and we aim to create a collective support network around Atlas Pandemica with regular group check-ins and opportunities to share insights and learning across the group for the benefit of all. Sharing of work in progress will be an important feature of the project as it exists within an incredibly fluid and changing context. Commissioned practitioners will be working with the project’s co-curators (Robbie Coleman and Matt Baker) to develop their work in a form that can sit alongside the work of others to be presented as part of a collection of ‘maps’ in the Atlas Pandemica.

Please download the background and criteria for the project here.

To Apply:

Please send us:

• A statement of no more than 500 words stating how you would propose to approach being part of this project. Please include your theme of study and whom and how you would propose working with to explore this.
• Current CV
• Up to 4 examples of past work that you feel best supports your application – this can be in any form (images, films, texts, testimonials etc, links to online video or other online resources, etc)
• Please send by email to info@thestove.org with a maximum file size of 10MB
• The deadline for receiving submissions is 5pm on Wednesday 17th June
• Interviews for the commissions will be held virtually on 30th June and 1st and 2nd July. By applying you are deemed to be making yourself available for interview on one of these dates.
• We will always send an email acknowledging receipt of any applications. If you do not receive an email, please contact us again by email.
• If you require specific support when making an application please let us know

Author: Lesley Riddoch, The National

IF you are what you eat, Scots need a wee conversation with ourselves. We eat too much processed food and too little of the outstanding top-quality fresh food we’ve traditionally exported across the world.

But the Covid lockdown has temporarily changed all of that, bringing long international supply chains to a grinding halt and opening up the tantalising possibility that local people can buy locally produced food.

Buying fish and shellfish at Scotland’s big fishing ports has been nigh-on impossible. But with continental markets mostly beyond reach now, some shellfish producers have reached out to local suppliers and, with a bit of work on all sides, that could become a permanent thing.

But actually, Scotland’s food revolution is already gathering pace elsewhere – in the fairly unlikely setting of our local corner shops.

According to the Association of Convenience Stores, the proportion of their members making deliveries has risen from 12% to 62% in a matter of weeks. This week, 600,000 food deliveries will be made across the UK by small corner stores and grocery shops.

Take mine – Wormit Spar, situated in a small coastal town in North Fife, overshadowed by Newport-on-Tay (sorry, it’s true) and Dundee.

It may seem surprising that wee corner stores could be thriving during lockdown, given nightly news reports of vast profits being made during lockdown by the Big Six supermarkets – eyewatering sums that bolster the belief amongst Scottish policy-makers (and therefore most of us) that big really is beautiful.

Look at the excitement when Tesco delivery slots finally become available. The news travels round rural WhatsApp groups here like wildfire, until the moment passes and slots are closed again.

Yet alternative food supply chains are building right under our noses, and with a little support from the Scottish Government and ourselves as customers, they could blossom into a more democratic food economy with lower food miles, fewer unnecessary journeys (for customers and delivery vans), improved quality and more cash and jobs kept in local communities.

OK, that’s a lot to claim – especially when the store that prompted this local food fantasy hasn’t advertised or even described its extended delivery and ordering services – that’s mostly because Wormit Spar hasn’t got a website.

It’s got something much better – customers. Talkative customers.

And it was good old-fashioned chat that started the transformation of Wormit Spar from an OK small corner shop into a bit of a local distribution/delivery hub and stockist of locally made produce.

Gordy Landsburgh, who owns the shop, has always done deliveries for a few regulars, but now goes out all day, twice a week, coinciding with the arrival of meat and bakery items from Stuart’s of Buckhaven. Nothing new there either, except that the Spar’s own regular delivery from this local company now also includes special items pre-ordered by Gordy’s customers which are then added on to his free delivery service.

Is there a price list? Well, no.

But if folk aren’t happy, items can come back with the next delivery. So far, not much has, and this word-of-mouth approach based on trust avoids the off-putting burden of constantly updating a website. Now Spar customers can access a far wider range of fresh food than Gordy can fit on his shelves, from further afield than they can currently travel, and his shop is a distribution hub for other high-quality, local food companies (who couldn’t otherwise reach these North Fife customers). Gordy’s also been stocking more fresh vegetables from the neighbouring Peacehill Farm, especially tatties, cauliflower and (soon) broccoli so fresh they’re slightly damp from the watering they had a few hours before harvest. If customers want to know what fruit and veg is in store, Gordy takes a photo and sends it over to their phone on WhatsApp. No, this kind of system wouldn’t work at scale. And that is its very beauty.

What’s next?

GORDY’S wishlist includes the idea of deliveries of Mellis cheese from St Andrews and distributing Jannettas artisan ice cream. It all depends on customer loyalty post-Covid lockdown.

If there’s a wholesale return to the big, anonymous weekly supermarket shops, Gordy’s extra deliveries might not survive. But if just a few customers make the switch towards planning, ordering and having a relationship with their local food supplier, then Wormit Spar, corner shops and our food economy more generally could be quietly transformed.

Lest Spar get alarmed, the vast bulk of Gordy’s stock still comes from its Dundee depot. But the co-operative of small retailers allows members to use local suppliers for fresh foods. And the combination of all these supplies certainly works in Wormit.

How did all these modest but powerful changes start? Not by a clever marketing strategy, but by local customers talking to Gordy about what they’d really like to find in his shop.

According to Pete Ritchie from the food policy group Nourish Scotland: “Local food’s all about talking to customers. There’s no need to talk to human beings in supermarkets. Social connection is what people have been missing in our pre-Covid food economy. Even behind a perspex screen, you can still see whether your local shop owner is actually interested in what you are having for tea. Not so long ago we’d assume a connection between local shops and local farms, now that needs to be rebuilt. The Scottish Government needs to make local food part of its green recovery – more jobs, more relationships, more trust to make sure all of us are able to buy local.”

How can Holyrood help? Indirectly they already have. Minimum alcohol pricing has boosted corner shop sales, because their supplies of booze are no longer any more expensive than the supermarkets, which used to loss-lead in a bid to get punters through the door. But there’s a chance for the Scottish Parliament to go further with the Scottish Agriculture Bill being debated right now, which will decide how Scotland deals with the imminent end of farm subsidy payments from the European Union.

The bill could include a new aim – to support farms and community groups who make more local food available. Not just because shorter food chains are better for the planet and Covid safety, but because the new, decentralised post-Covid economy must rapidly deliver a bigger bang for our bucks – and every £1 spent on local food has a multiplier effect of between two and six in local areas.

So the future could see a range of local food businesses working together with a social enterprise/non-profit making delivery business so that drops are kept to a minimum. But that will mean investing in local processing capacity – in many rural areas there’s nowhere to make skimmed milk powder or butter despite a surfeit of milk, and eventually local suppliers will need the smart software and logistics deployed by Amazon.

Will that come to pass? Will clever, knowing, personalised food delivery change the way we shop? One thing’s certain. The food revolution will not be centralised.

Full report here.  Short video of the project here

The Project In Detail

This chapter describes the Housing Rights in Practice project in detail. It explains how the project came about and the work that took place over its four year lifetime.

How did the project come about?

In 2013, SNAP (Scotland’s National Action Plan for Human Rights)  was launched as a framework for action to address gaps in the reality of human rights in people’s everyday lives. One of the actions identified through SNAP was to pilot an approach to tackling poverty and social exclusion by empowering people to claim their rights, drawing on the experiences of PPR .

The PPR approach involves ensuring that ‘rights holders’ – people whose rights are directly affected by an issue or problem – are supported to take part in measuring and monitoring the way their rights are upheld. They can then use this information to hold to account and engage constructively with ‘duty bearers’ – organisations with human rights obligations.

This approach was first adopted by PPR with residents living in the Seven Towers in North Belfast. It has been commended by Mary Robinson, former United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, and Raquel Rolnik, former United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Right to Housing.

Through working together on SNAP, the Commission and PPR had also built links with the Edinburgh Tenants Federation (ETF). ETF expressed an interest in supporting a pilot project on the right to housing. They then supported the Commission to approach different registered tenants organisations (RTOs) from across the city at a meeting in June 2015. Officers from the City of Edinburgh Council also attended this meeting.

One group based in Leith came forward, recognising similarities between their own housing conditions and those experienced by people in the Seven Towers in Belfast. The majority of residents in the area were social housing tenants, whose landlord was the City of Edinburgh Council. The housing is made up of two high rise blocks of 76 flats (Citadel and Persevere Court), and one low rise block of 30 flats (West Cromwell Street). The area is in the most deprived 20% in Scotland according to the most recent statistics from the Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation.

The Council had made a number of previous commitments to carry out work on the housing blocks in 2010, 2011, 2014 and early 2015. However, investment had not been forthcoming by the time the Commission began working in the area in June 2015.

To read fill report click here

Author: Sally McDonald Sunday Post

It is a hidden gem; a wild place protected by law where hen harriers court on the wing, merlin and short-eared owl hunt and black grouse strut their stuff.

Langholm Moor, in the Southern Uplands, is home to some of Scotland’s most iconic wildlife and has a natural and cultural heritage of which locals are proud.

For 250 years, they have been riding out on horseback, marking its boundaries in the Common Riding. Said to be the oldest equestrian event in the world, it is a spectacular tradition that continues today.

Now the community has a chance to buy the land they love and turn it into the Tarras Valley nature reserve.

The ambitious scheme aims to protect the moor, enabling it to flourish for future generations. It could also help turn the tide of climate change along with the fortunes of an ailing textile town.

But the 10,500-acre moor, owned by Buccleuch Estates, does not come cheap. The community buyout will cost more than £6 million – £3m of which is being sought from crowdfunding. As the race to close the deal gains pace, we find out what makes Langholm Moor so precious.

Buccleuch announced its intention last year to sell off 25,000 acres of its land. It gave the buyout body 14 days to demonstrate community support for the plan. Within 10 days, 833 people signed a petition in favour of the bid.

There were also letters of support from groups including Langholm Common Riding, Scottish Natural Heritage, Forestry and Land Scotland, Scotland’s Regeneration Forum and Community Land Scotland whose policy director Calum MacLeod praised Buccleuch Estates for its proactive engagement in the process.

He said: “This is a really important development in terms of demonstrating how community ownership can provide a real stimulus for a renewal and sustainability of local community and landscape spaces. Trusting the community to do that should be something we should be encouraging even more throughout Scotland.”

The buyout body says the community fears that if another party purchases the land, forests could be planted or wind farms erected on the section that borders a Site of Special Scientific Interest.

It is now discussing backing from the South of Scotland Enterprise Agency, and has applied for £3 million from the Scottish Land Fund.

So far it has received £100,000 from the John Muir Trust, taking its total to £137,000.

Buccleuch Estates confirmed it has had discussions with the Langholm Initiative and had made progress but milestones outwith its control had to be passed before a deal could be completed.

Dr Chris Miles, chairman of the Southern Upland Partnership, was previously manager for Scottish Natural Heritage, and he rates Langholm Moor, with its 250-plus species of plants, a natural treasure.

But he says it is the area’s diversity that sets it aside.

“Langholm Moor’s geology and location make it fairly complex and it’s this complexity that leads to diversity,” said Dr Miles. “Its hilltops are broad and rounded with peat bogs that are host to their own range of plants like cotton grass, cloudberry, bog ashpodel, and sundews.

“The sides of the hills are steep and rocky with crags. They support habitats for ferns, one of the less common is green spleenwort.

“The moor is cut into by some significant watercourses, like the Tarras Water. This broad valley has remnant native woodland of mostly of birch and willow, but also unusual things such as aspen.”

He explained how calcium carbonate in boulder clay enriches the springs and flushes that emerge on the hillsides creating green areas where unusual plants can be found. “There are also nice populations of grass-of-Parnassus, as well as marsh valerian, which is relatively uncommon.”

They and other plants such as northern marsh orchid and the common spotted orchid are indicators of a “good, wetter habitat”.

Dr Miles said: “The buyout is an exciting proposal as those behind it would have nature as the driving purpose for its management. We are in an era where we are worried about our loss of important wildlife sites.

According to Duncan Orr-Ewing, RSPB Scotland’s head of species & land management, Langholm Moor has more rare hen harriers than the whole of England.

He said: “More than 1% of the UK population (around 500) is on Langholm Moor. It has as many breeding pairs as the whole of England.

“There are about seven pairs at present and the figure has been as high as the mid-20s.

“The Moor has been designated a Site of Special Scientific Interest because of its moorland breeding bird population, so there are other birds like black grouse, golden plover, curlew and various wading birds.

“The SSSI is because of the assemblage of birds, the collection of types of all the species that occur.

“In much of the Uplands the heather moorland habitat has largely disappeared because of commercial afforestation and overgrazing.

“Heather is the main food plant for species like red grouse and the main nesting habitat for birds like the hen harrier. But it is also endangered because of human persecution.”

He added: “Sadly, those species that occur at Langholm are declining on a national scale. We want to see them maintained.

“Everything the buyout team are proposing sounds sympathetic and what we would do. We hope they get backing to buy the moor.”

Kevin Cumming, the man leading the buyout bid, works for the Langholm Initiative. He runs its Wild Eskdale project providing outdoor education and promoting eco-tourism.

Kevin, 34, who lives on the edge of Langholm with his wife Ellen, 32, and their seven-month-old daughter Freya said: “The experiences of Langholm Moor are unique.

“In a single day you can stand under a sky of spectacular courting hen harriers, witness the silent hunt of a short-eared

owl or be mesmerised by the intimate lekking of black grouse.

“This is a special place. But during the eight months I’ve been leading the working group to investigate the community, we have seen the devastation caused by the Australian wildfires and the global impact of Covid-19.

“That is why this buyout is important; it’s a project of vision and hope when we need it, and it is a project for our future.

“We need to concentrate on this for our children and the generations that come after. The Langholm Initiative is proposing we undertake climate action, wildlife conservation, ecological restoration and community regeneration all built around a central goal – creating the Tarras Valley Nature Reserve.

Author: SCA

Call for Views : Advisory Group on Economic Recovery

NOTE: Due to the short time frame allowed for responses, Scottish Community Alliance has elected not to respond to the prescribed questions but instead has submitted this brief response which outlines our views on what recovery should look like.

Twin tracked interventions from top-down and bottom-up have shifted national consciousness. While the country has depended on the UK Government’s macro-interventions in the economy in order to retain jobs and businesses in the short term, it has simultaneously come to rely on countless and varied micro-interventions of the community and voluntary sector to deliver support and comfort to thousands of households and localities.

As a result of lockdown, we have all become intensely focused on the places in which we live. We have become more aware than ever before of the significance of our immediate locality – be that at the street level where informal, mutual aid initiatives have proliferated, or at wider neighbourhood level where responsibility for the provisioning of food and medicines and maintaining levels of social contact has been assumed by countless local voluntary groups.

We have come to rely on one another in a way that has shifted not just our levels of trust in each other as citizens, but also our relationship with the state and many of its key institutions. Instead of complaining about NHS waiting lists and demanding better services, our national focus is now to ‘Protect the NHS’. This marked growth in the national reserve of social capital represents a rare opportunity for the architects of economic recovery.

As the country transitions from emergency response into recovery, the scale of the damage that has been inflicted on the economy and the extent to which all sectors possess the necessary reserves and resilience to recover is, at this stage, largely unknown.

What is known however, is that many of our systems had a pre-existing vulnerability to shocks such as have been inflicted by this pandemic, and that while the immediate priority must be to recover from this crisis, the approach we adopt should build appropriate resilience into the system so that the impacts of predictable threats in the future (climate emergency, collapse of biodiversity, further pandemics, global conflicts) can be mitigated.

A national recovery based on locally rooted solutions. It is already clear that the countries around the world that have coped best with the pandemic are those that have both routinely invested in productive relationships with the value creators in society, and have recognised serving the public interest as their primary concern. Years of outsourcing public sector functions and a culture of privatisation in pursuit of best value efficiencies have systematically weakened our systems to the point where they have been unable to respond quickly and effectively to Covid.

Whatever economic stimulus the government is able to muster for this recovery, the quality of the subsequent investment decisions is as important as the quantity of that public investment. Think back to the ‘recovery’ from the economic crisis and how much of the QE investment was absorbed by banks rather than the real economy.

As an example of a country that has coped well with the pandemic’s impact, New Zealand had already moved towards implementing a ‘wellbeing budget’ and has explicitly promoted a ‘spirit of service’ and an ‘ethic of care’ across its public services. These sentiments are in accord with the current (albeit perhaps only transient) mood of national unity in Scotland and a level of consensual support for foundational services in this country such as health and education, and should be incorporated into the design of any recovery plan.

As other countries (Taiwan, New Zealand, Norway) have demonstrated, building effective levels of national resilience can only be achieved by investing firstly in the infrastructure of resilience at the scale of community. This will require a major reassessment of how national priorities are pursued and the re-localisation of many aspects of the foundational economy including our food systems, energy distribution and generation, local transport, social care provision, community health services and so on. Inevitably, new local governance arrangements will need to evolve to support the administration of these localised arrangements.

The New Deal for Communities

This proposal moves far beyond the ‘nice to have’ activities of communities that have perennially sat on the edge of mainstream economic activity in Scotland. The New Deal represents a fundamental rebalancing of Scotland’s economy so that community led solutions become our default modus operandi and sit alongside national and regional economic interventions with equal status.

The New Deal for Communities represents an initial bid for £200m of investment across a range of community-based activity. Detailed proposals are currently being worked up across different parts of the sector.

As an example of what this will consist of, and a demonstration of how such an intervention would address the multiple imperatives of tackling the climate emergency, injecting vital stimuli into our local economies and building local resilience, we propose a massive and universal extension of the domestic building retrofit programme. This work would be led by local anchor organisations (of which there are hundreds across Scotland), create local jobs with economic benefits being retained in the local economy and secure the active engagement of local people in achieving the national target to reduce carbon emissions to net zero by 2045.

In addition to new investment, the New Deal would seek to harmonise existing streams of public investment into communities from across Scottish Government and would look to:

• build appropriate infrastructure to support the development of local food systems
• establish local energy economies which match supply and demand for renewable energy, retain value in the local economy and reduce carbon emissions
• secure the financial sustainability of a vital element (community anchor organisations) of the recovery plan infrastructure
• grow levels of community ownership of land and buildings and thus release the well documented phenomena of collective creativity and entrepreneurism
•  increase the number of community owned and cooperative enterprises
•  build the circular economy from the bottom up
• take action to restore loss of biodiversity through tree replanting and restoration programmes

There are already examples of all these activities operating in isolation across the country. The New Deal seeks to build on this experience with a significant roll out of what we know to be tried and tested approaches.

Facing up to the dual challenge of the pandemic and climate emergency. The world is likely to have changed profoundly and permanently as a result of the pandemic and any plan for recovery must reflect not just the new reality that we will inhabit but in addition, the even greater challenge presented by global climate breakdown. It follows therefore that the economic recovery plan must take a fundamentally different path from that which conventional wisdom might have suggested in the past.

Moreover, the composition and remit of the Advisory Group on Economic Recovery appears to be fundamentally flawed given the true scale of the task in hand. We would propose at the very least that the membership be extended to include a much broader base of expert opinion to reflect the scope and scale of the challenge it faces, with the remit and ambition of the group expanded accordingly. Given our proposal to implement a Growth Deal for Communities, an obvious omission on the Advisory Group is from the community sector and in order to rectify this we would be pleased to contribute some names for consideration.

May 2020

Author: Michael H. Shuman, Post Growth Institute

This past weekend, a bright Georgetown undergraduate asked me how I squared my passion for localization with the theory of comparative advantage. For economics newbies, he was referring to David Ricardo’s argument that every community should find one product to specialize in and trade for everything else. I gave my usual response that the theory is great — except for the thousands of goods and services that are cheaper to produce locally — but that answer left me uneasy.

Once the dust settles from the Covid-19 crisis, communities across the world will find their economies shattered — in part because we uncritically followed the ideas of David Ricardo over the past two centuries. Restaurants, retailers, theaters, service providers of every stripe, even physician practices will be seeking bankruptcy protection by the millions. After the trillions in federal assistance run out, we will all be looking for ways to rebuild our economic lives. As we do so, we will need a new set of principles and practices of economic development that do not leave us sitting ducks for the next crisis.

For an idea of what should come next, I dusted off my copy of Brittle Power: Energy Strategy for National Security, written by Amory and Hunter Lovins in 1982. That book was mostly about the huge vulnerabilities in the U.S. energy grid, but it was also about economic design. Chapter 1 begins: “The United States has reached the point where: a few people could probably black out most of the country; a small group could shut off three-fourths of the natural gas to the eastern U.S. in one evening without leaving Louisiana;…a few people (perhaps just one person) could release enough radioactivity to make much of U.S. uninhabitable….”

Chapter 13, titled “Designing for Resilience,” contains a brilliant distillation of the criteria for creating resilient systems — concepts any good engineer would recognize. Resilience requires creating a network of relatively independent, self-reliant nodes, so that the failure of one node does not imperil the entire system. Connections between nodes should be optional, not compulsory. Diverse systems are critical because they are less likely to fail all at once or in the same way. These systems should be simple, replicable, and transparent.

The hyper-specialization promoted by David Ricardo is the opposite of resilience. And our historical embrace of this theory is one reason Covid-19 has been so devastating. Following the recommendations of Ricardo, our community economies became too narrow, too dependent on outside forces, too vulnerable to complete shut down by an unforeseen crisis.

Diverse systems are critical because they are less likely to fail all at once or in the same way.

We need a different way forward, what we might call the Theory of Comparative Resilience. My basic proposition is simple: Those communities that are best able to withstand future crises — whether pandemics, climate disruptions, or financial meltdowns — will be the ones that thrive economically. They will be the best places for investors to park their money. They will attract the best and the brightest people. They will be the places where residents feel secure enough to innovate.

Those communities that are best able to withstand future crises — whether pandemics, climate disruptions, or financial meltdowns — will be the ones that thrive economically.

As your community begins the long road of rebuilding, here are eight criteria by which you might measure your community’s comparative resilience:

1. Local ownership

What percentage of jobs are in businesses owned by people living in your community? A high percentage means your community is relatively independent and will enjoy the high multiplier benefits of local businesses buying from one another. Local businesses have always been the building blocks of a successful economy, but now we can’t afford to get distracted by global businesses. Putting a penny into attracting an Amazon HQ — let alone a few billion dollars — rather than expanding locally owned businesses is the most counterproductive approach to economic development imaginable.

2. Local investment

To what extent are your residents investing in local businesses, projects, and people? Localizing purchasing patterns boosts prosperity but it’s not enough. Why invest in global companies, about which you know little and which leave you vulnerable to the whims of public markets, when you can make a higher return, with less risk, by investing in the merchants you love, or your city’s stormwater management system, or getting your son out of student loan debt?

3. Economic diversity

Is your economy diverse enough to meet the basic needs of residents? Put another way, how self-reliant is your economy? The more self-reliant you are — on local food, energy, water, and finance — the less global disruptions will matter. Diversity also boosts your local economic multipliers, which increases income, wealth, and jobs.

4. Regeneration

Is your economy living within its natural means? We are already spending 70–80 percent of our family budgets on services, which is great news for sustainability, because most service businesses have light environmental footprints. But even for goods like food, water, wood, and paper, we will need to bring inputs of our diverse industries in line with what our local ecosystems can renewably provide.

5. Innovation

To what extent are you fostering local innovation? The key to economic dynamism is entrepreneurship. Is every person in your community with a great business idea, especially young people, able to find the capital, people, space, and partnerships needed to succeed? The proliferation of incubators, maker spaces, and shared workspaces are among the many tools communities can deploy realize this objective.

6. Social equity

Is your community economy leaving no one behind, irrespective of race, gender, ethnicity, and so forth? Look out for blind spots in your economic-development strategy. One reason to embrace locally owned businesses is that we know, thanks to studies by the Federal Reserve, that communities with high densities of local business have higher per capita incomes and less inequality. Entrepreneurship and workforce development programs should focus on those who most need inclusion. This means embracing social inventions like worker cooperatives, community land trusts, and Time Dollar systems.

7. Connectivity

To what extent is your community cosmopolitan and connected with the rest of the world? Are your businesses learning from their peers elsewhere? Are your policymakers? Those connections — especially with people, culture, and knowledge — will allow you to take advantage of the best of what the world offers, without becoming dangerously dependent on it. When other communities get in trouble, your connections will enable you to offer help. When you get in trouble, they can help you.

When other communities get in trouble, your connections will enable you to offer help. When you get in trouble, they can help you.

8. Social performance of business

Are all your businesses embracing the principles above? How many, for example, are measuring their performance through tools like the B-Corp assessment? Those businesses that are monitoring their social performance with regard to their workers and other stakeholders and that are steadily trying to improve it should be recognized and rewarded, and their practices shared and spread with other local businesses.

These principles of comparative resilience will play out differently in Oregon versus Alabama. Vive le difference! Every community has a different history, culture, place, demography, marketplace, and political philosophy, and should adopt these eight principles in its own creative way.

________________________________________

Michael H. Shuman is an economist, attorney, author, and entrepreneur, and a globally recognized expert on community economics.

Author: Peter Peacock, Scottish Review

I carry no brief for the First Minister, but I have been mostly admiring of her public handling of the COVID-19 crisis to date. Is she setting a new standard and expectations for public decision-making, and will others follow?

Her approach to the complex issues around the way out of lockdown is notable and contrasts starkly with the PM’s approach. She is clear that this situation is complex; that people should be treated as grown-ups; that data and the nature of the complexity is shared; and that an adult conversation about the issues and trade-offs is needed before proceeding. It is deft handling. Of course, she knows she needs to take people with her because if she doesn’t, the strategy won’t endure. Get this wrong and confidence and trust evaporate, and the implications are not confined to COVID-19 handling.

Teele Pehk is unlikely to be a name well known in Scotland. She is an activist within the Open Government Partnership in Estonia, who has described the need to change decision-making in the public realm from ‘decide, announce, defend’ (often followed by ‘abandon’) to ‘engage, deliberate, decide’ – for delivery of policy that endures.

The latter territory is where the First Minister seems to be positioned on the way out of lockdown. With little time for extended conversation, she is using the intensity of a daily spotlight for an impactful engagement, increasing public understanding of the key issues. Trying to keep people with her. Regular polling of the public mood reveals over 80% approval of the approach and keeping a close eye on public mood is part of how you inform good decisions that will stick. Not being aware of shifting public mood before crucial decisions is a foolish place to be.

But will the standard being set for better decisions spill over into the wider decisions on key strategies across the public sector? Will we be able to move away from stultifying online standard consultations now so prevalent, to more deliberative and engaging styles?

Not every decision-making exercise can achieve the sort of intense engagement the First Minister is able to generate around COVID-19 today, but there are many long-term strategic policies that could benefit from more deliberative engagement approaches. For example, few will be aware that the water regulator in Scotland wants to get people onto a water prices escalator for the next 20 years which will see their water charges double. This is no small matter: it is an approach of far-reaching consequence.

It started as an asset growth and replacement strategy, consuming resources at a vastly increased rate to improve and maintain service levels into the future. But it is known from research that over 80% in Scotland do not favour above inflation price increases when they aren’t aware of the challenges of maintaining high-quality water delivery in ways that also meet the climate challenge.

However, when water users are given the opportunity of gaining understanding, there is some evidence they are more prepared to support potential charge increases. It was in pursuit of an adult conversation on complex interactions between service levels, investment, climate change and prices that the Customer Forum for Water struck a deal with Scottish Water to hold a National Engagement Programme before final decisions on future water charges were confirmed.

Many a public policy strategy in recent times will have had elements of representation as a climate emergency strategy, doubtless because that label is more likely to win approval. Investment strategies labelled ‘COVID-19 recovery’ are likely to abound shortly. But to win enduring support to public policy, the ethical approach embodied in an ‘engage, deliberate, decide’ operating style is necessary.

Some who favour the old ways will still exist – those who believe there is no alternative to their thinking. We need to face the reality and get on with it, whatever it is. Down that road may lie the odd short-term victory but at the likely expense of durable policy. For that, as for COVID-19 lockdown exit, people need engaging to build confidence and trust that the strategy is right before it is confirmed and implemented.

I hope the First Minister finds the successful routes out of lockdown that we all want. Progress on this is pitched as a shared endeavour with shared success the prize, but it is not the only public endeavour for which shared and enduring confidence and trust is needed.

Will others follow the First Minister’s lead and adopt a new standard developing trust and confidence in potential policy as the basis for enduring decisions? I live in hope.
 
Peter Peacock is a former Labour MSP and Cabinet Secretary who, until earlier this month, chaired the Customer Forum for Water in Scotland

Author: SCDC

Foundation Scotland launched the Response, Recovery and Resilience Fund on Friday 27th March 2020 with funding from the National Emergencies Trust (NET). The overall aim of the Fund was to help those most affected by the recent coronavirus outbreak.

In order to quickly evaluate the initial impact of the RRR Fund, and understand the next set of challenges in the short, medium and longer-term, we worked in partnership with Scottish Community Development Centre to survey the recipients of all funds distributed in the first 12 days. Within this time we distributed just over £1m in grants to 300 different projects.

The online survey went out to 291 recipients and was completed by 135. In addition, there was also a series of 31 telephone interviews with a cross-section of the grantees. The high response to both the survey and interviews was very encouraging and shows how important this funding has been to the recipients and their commitment to continuing to support those people who are most vulnerable and at risk during the crisis and in the aftermath.

This report highlights what the key impacts of the funding are, and the main challenges that the grantees are now facing. The review has set out a list of recommendations for Foundation Scotland (and other funders) to consider when developing and delivering future phases of the Fund. The report combines an overall analysis of the findings with illustrative examples, along with a set of key findings and recommendations for Foundation Scotland and their partners in the RRR Fund.

To read more please choose from one of the following links (open as PDFs):

• A summary of the report
• The report in full