[subjectHarold]

...yep, and the fact that the population of Scotland is tiny and over 50% of that population live in the Central belt.

Afaik, the only solid evidence against is an apparent lack of "participation" from local communities on land use. Unfortunately, this is an issue that applies as much to council as private landowners in Scotland and also tends to elicit opinions on what "should" be the case, rather than what is actually possible (i.e. people who live in the middle of nowhere complaining about the lack of economic development, complaining that the landowner isn't selling them a house at a cheap enough price, complaining that the landowner only comes up from England to shoot, etc.)

There has been an abundance of loose reasoning on that is justified only by the perception that of unfairness (and, unf, a bit of light bigotry about the English). One of the sources for the rather brief Land Commission report was some political theory on power and participation (https://landcommission.gov.scot/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/R... - Section 5 - I studied Politics postgrad btw, theory shouldn't be used this way...it is basic). Madness.

[neffy]

It's not really a "perception" of unfairness... it's a long rooted and fossilised class system, acting to the detriment of the entire country. (Hopefully your politics postgrad included the clearings.) England at least had the Civil War to equalise things a bit, Scotland has never had any kind of revolution or similar to break very old land ownership structures.

Scotland's second biggest problem is England, in the form of unbalanced monetary transfers from borrowing from London, and the brain drain to England, and for that matter the rest of the world. But its greatest problem is itself, and the domination of control in a few families hands.