This menacing land-grab is completely insane

If the Scottish government wants to redistribute land away from big landowners to ‘communities,’ that’s fine. But it shouldn’t trample all over people’s rights to do it.

If I were a Scot, said Damian Thomas in the Telegraph last week, "I'd be feeling scared". He reckons Alex Salmond's jovial grandiosity is acquiring "a menacing edge". If I were a Scottish landowner, I'd be tempted to agree with him.

The SNP is talking a lot about another round of land reform. Under the current system under which the Scottish government had hoped to bring large amounts of land into community ownership communities have first dibs on land coming up for sale if they have expressed an interest in it. Here is a simple explanation of the system.

Subscribe to MoneyWeek

Subscribe to MoneyWeek today and get your first six magazine issues absolutely FREE

Get 6 issues free
https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/mw70aro6gl1676370748.jpg

Sign up to Money Morning

Don't miss the latest investment and personal finances news, market analysis, plus money-saving tips with our free twice-daily newsletter

Don't miss the latest investment and personal finances news, market analysis, plus money-saving tips with our free twice-daily newsletter

Sign up
Explore More
Merryn Somerset Webb

Merryn Somerset Webb started her career in Tokyo at public broadcaster NHK before becoming a Japanese equity broker at what was then Warburgs. She went on to work at SBC and UBS without moving from her desk in Kamiyacho (it was the age of mergers).

After five years in Japan she returned to work in the UK at Paribas. This soon became BNP Paribas. Again, no desk move was required. On leaving the City, Merryn helped The Week magazine with its City pages before becoming the launch editor of MoneyWeek in 2000 and taking on columns first in the Sunday Times and then in 2009 in the Financial Times

Twenty years on, MoneyWeek is the best-selling financial magazine in the UK. Merryn was its Editor in Chief until 2022. She is now a senior columnist at Bloomberg and host of the Merryn Talks Money podcast -  but still writes for Moneyweek monthly. 

Merryn is also is a non executive director of two investment trusts – BlackRock Throgmorton, and the Murray Income Investment Trust.