Michael Russell

Calls to accelerate funding for community buyouts in Scotland Land reform campaigners and community landowners have called for a £25 million annual fund to maintain Scotland’s "world-beating"…

Calls to accelerate funding for community buyouts in Scotland. Scottish Land Fund (SLF), which provides funding for the scoping and purchase of community buyouts. is heavily oversubscribed with applications this year. 150 applications outstanding. www.heraldscotland.com/news/2552487...

In today’s National (Scotland), you can find a feature article celebrating thirty years of the Scottish Oral History Centre. And about their recent ‘Lost Villages’ project, recording memories of community and deindustrialisation in East Ayrshire. 🎤📼🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

Its day sax o #Scotstober 2025! The day's wird is: quair

Rhoda Meek: When Storm Amy hit, every network failed. The analogue lifeline must stay I CHANGED my column topic at the 11th hour this week. Why? Because, as luck would have it, only a few weeks after I wrote about how island…

Absolutely correct. Though we kept our supply this time we were without electricity , water, phone & internet during Storm Eowyn. Rural/ Island Scotland needs a more resilient & customer focused set of services, capable of meeting climate related challenges. www.thenational.scot/comment/2551...

Hullo and welcome ! It isn’t magical but it’s a good place to be….

About 400 people last night showed up to hear about amazing progress to restore Britain’s temperate rainforests. Great to share a stage in Exeter with Sam Manning & Eleanor Lewis from the Woodland Trust, Ennia Bosshard from Thousand Year Trust, & Andy Bakere from Natural England.

Instead of private finance, we need public investment for public goods – plus action on systemic barriers:

📈 Reducing financial uncertainty for landowners
💷 Tax reform
🌱 Fairer land ownership
🦌 Tackling deer numbers
👷‍♀️ Building skills & housing

www.futureeconomy.scot/publications...

Land Reform and the Gentrification of Braemar - Land Matters Regular readers will by now have (hopefully) picked up an odd and perplexing intellectual lacuna at the heart of the Land Reform (Scotland) Bill. Ministers have got themselves into a spot of bother in...

BLOG - Land Reform and the Gentrification of Braemar andywightman.scot/2025/09/land...

The Colintraive The Colintraive is a 4-Star Inn in COLINTRAIVE, ARGYLL & BUTE rated by the AA. AA Inspector: "Perfect setting on the edge of Loch Lomond National Park."

Congratulations to what I could call my “local” on winning the AA Scottish Inn of the Year award : www.ratedtrips.com/bed-and-brea...

'Unacceptable': Scottish estate sparks access row after banning walkers from 4 munros

A Perthshire estate 'stopping walkers' from accessing four popular munros on its grounds due to a deer stalking program has triggered a right to roam row

The three most damning paras in the UN Report alleging that Israel is perpetrating genocide in Gaza: Siege starvation, attacks on health care, direct targeting of children as patterns that cannot be explained except if group destruction is one animating purpose.

I felt greatly privileged to take part in this today by contributing some reflections on the Education (Scotland) Act of 1918 and the different outcomes it had for the two churches. Thanks for inviting me.

Right to swim and wild camp in England should be enshrined in law, Labour MPs say Report from group of MPs calls for broader access to rivers, woodlands and fields to improve connection with nature

Labour MPs today call for new legislation to extend a right of responsible access to more English landscapes, and for the right to swim and wild camp to be enshrined in law

@righttoroam.bsky.social inputted to this new report from the APPG for access to nature:

www.theguardian.com/environment/...

George Reid’s Memorial service on 3rd October : an important opportunity to celebrate a unique contribution to Scotland and the world as well as a good friend over many years.

www.facebook.com/share/p/1JTH...

Professor Alison Phipps: "We’re in foothills of genocide" as far-right threat grows Professor Alison Phipps is the nation’s foremost authority on asylum. She tells our Writer at Large demonisation has gone too far and Westminster…

Scotland’s leading academic on refugees warns that British political rhetoric is taking the UK ‘into the foothills of genocide’

Professor Alison Phipps, Unesco chair in refugee integration at Glasgow University, says demonisation will end in deaths

www.heraldscotland.com/news/2544663...

It is fascinating. I hadn’t seen heard of Glenbuck but didn’t know the others even though I was brought up in Ayrshire. I will read the book with interest.

We're very excited to announce that our wonderful exhibition 'Celebrating the Scottish Poet, Robert Fergusson (1750-1774)' with the Mitchell Library, Glasgow, has been turned into an online exhibition!

Check it out at the link below: robert-fergusson.glasgow.ac.uk/online-exhib...

Across the Loch Number 13 - 26th August 2025 Podcast Episode · Across the Loch · 26/08/2025 · 39m

Latest edition of the “Across the Loch “ podcast from ColGlen in Argyll. podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/a...

The @scottishlandcom.bsky.social meets in Wick next week and will be holding a public meeting there & then elsewhere over the next few weeks

Complete shambles trying to get to London from Glasgow by Avanti West Coast. Four hours have elapsed since departure and we are only in Warrington but have just been transferred to another greatly overcrowded train.

The meetings are only one part of the initiative. We don’t have a huge budget but we are also encouraging input via our website too . Please contribute.

www.landcommission.gov.scot/scotland-fut...

We don’t have a huge budget but we may add other venues if we can stretch to it. However there is a website for giving views and I would encourage you to take part :

www.landcommission.gov.scot/scotland-fut...

Map of Scotland with dates for Scottish Land Commission “Scotland Futures” meetings

This autumn, the Scottish Land Commission is heading to towns & cities across Scotland to talk land, place and the future of land reform.

We want to hear what matters most to your community and your local area.

Find out more about our “Scotland Futures” events & book your spot: lnkd.in/e7j2KgDZ

Pleased to have contributed to this with a piece on Winnie Ewing’s 1967 Hamilton by-election victory

small infographics showing outputs of funded project activity

Scottish Government's Nature Restoration Fund 1st evaluation report published today. Its investment has supported habitat and species restoration across Scotland. It's only the start but it powerfully shows how nature can recover given investment.
www.gov.scot/publications...
🌳🌱🐝🦋🐟🐸🦢🐾🌍

Call for community ownership of forests to combat corporate influence Forestry experts are calling for more community ownership of Scotland’s woodlands to combat forestry corporations.

www.thenational.scot/news/2535679...

Very pleased that @scottishlandcom.bsky.social has started to publish responses to our #ScotlandFutures initiative. Still time to have your say and help move Scottish Land Reform forward.

www.landcommission.gov.scot/news-events/...

“Looking up, I saw a low green heaven mottled with vanishing bells of white; looking around, except for the weedy spokes and shafts of the ladder, nothing but a green gloaming, somewhat opaque but very restful and delicious”

—A teenage RLS goes underwater in Wick
edrls.wordpress.com/2012/09/05/e...

Sorry to hear that Jamie McGrigor has died. My opponent in 2012 he was an original with a keen interest in rural affairs especially agriculture & freshwater fisheries. Good company too - an approach to politics which saw disagreement as a contention of ideas not a vicious battle of personalities.

“Tha tìm, am fiadh, an coille Hallaig”

“In ‘Hallaig’, MacLean, as a Gael, stands firmly at the centre of his world, and, consciously, close to the end of his world. As a poet, he shows us that the particular horizon and times that happen to encircle him, encircle us all.”
—Seamus Heaney