BBC’s cutbacks in Highlands and Islands will shortchange us
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LAST week’s announcement to cut senior BBC reporters in the Highlands and Islands by 50 per cent is not just bad timing, it spectacularly fails to see the range of stories generated in northern Scotland that are in demand Scotland-wide and deserve UK attention as well.
Marine renewables is a key example where the Highlands and especially Caithness and Orkney are the focus of a new industry with world-leading potential. How can two senior journalists cover such a huge region for the state broadcaster? Answer – they can’t be spread that thin.
News of these cuts came on the day the human tragedy of the fatal canoe capsize at Gairloch demanded coverage in every bulletin. Also the Deputy First Minister was announcing the Saltire prize participants in the wave and tidal power race. These BBC cuts in Inverness are inept and ignore the huge potential interest of stories from the Highlands and Islands to the local and wider audience alike.
I know these professional broadcasters can’t be replaced and the BBC licence fee payers of the Highlands will be short-changed unless this decision is reversed.
I would go further and say that a whole new approach to broadcasting is needed to get quality local news on TV screens and radio to meet our needs.
Local TV in Glasgow and Edinburgh has been put out to tender. Why no Highlands and Islands licence?
Of course our well-read local newspapers carry a big variety of local stories but the immediacy of TV is expected 24/7. I note the attempts by news groups to cut costs just like the BBC but surely there needs to be a media strategy that applies the Heineken effect and gets to the corners others don’t, for that’s where the stories wait to be told.
I have used the BBC remote sound studio in Wick on several occasions. As you can see from the picture, it is freezing in winter or summer. We deserve much better in this digital age.
BBC Scotland’s announcement decrees the level of job losses faced by the Inverness newsroom. It is disproportionate and most colleagues consider that such a move has the potential to adversely affect the ability of BBC Highlands and Islands to continue to deliver a high quality of local news and public scrutiny of issues and events across a vast and diverse region.
LAND REFORM
I AM very pleased that the Scottish Government has announced both the leaders and the remit of its Land Reform Review Group. I have been intimately involved for decades in the SNP’s approach to reforming the basic natural resources of the nation.
Now our Government is committed to generating innovative and radical proposals on land reform that will contribute to the success of Scotland for future generations.
The relationship between the land and the people of Scotland is fundamental to the wellbeing, economic success, environmental sustainability and social justice of the country. The structure of land ownership is a defining factor in that relationship: it can facilitate and promote development, but it can also hinder it.
Since 1999, the Scottish Parliament does not have to look over its shoulder at the House of Lords. This has led to the near abolition of feudalism and to the expansion of community land ownership, a new generation of which manage 500,000 acres of land which is home to some 20,000 people at present.
The creation of the £6 million Scottish Land Fund earlier this year – which can allow further crofting, rural and urban groups to own and develop their assets – was an SNP manifesto pledge.
The Land Reform Review Group is tasked to identify how land reform will firstly enable more people in rural and urban Scotland to have a stake in the ownership, governance, management and use of land, which will lead to a greater diversity of land ownership, and ownership types in Scotland.
Secondly, it will assist with the acquisition and management of land (and also land assets) by communities, to make stronger, more resilient, and independent communities which have an even greater stake in their development.
Thirdly, it will generate, support, promote, and deliver new relationships between land, people, economy and environment in Scotland.
In making these wide-ranging inquiries, the group will bear in mind the sustainability of its proposals for reform, including their economic impact.
It will assert the importance of good stewardship and governance of land the relationship between urban and rural concerns and opportunities. Finally, it will assess the relationship between local and national interests.
TENANT FARMING
MY committee at Holyrood has been investigating tenant farming, the success of which relies on long overdue and speedy agreement by the industry-based Tenant Farming Forum and Rent Review Group on fair rents, reduced costs for dispute resolution, improved way-go payments and increases in letting of secure tenancies by estates to existing tenants and new entrants to farming and crofting.
To this end, a rural affairs, climate change and environment committee delegation visited Bute to specifically look at these issues in an area where there were known to be significant tensions between many tenants and the landlord.
Having surveyed tenant farmers’ houses in several islands and on the mainland, there are many in a poor state of repair. I can only echo Dr Brenda Boardman’s plea for effective fuel poverty. In The Herald newspaper she said that property owners should foot the bill for wind and water tight buildings – "Landlords have to be responsible. They are the key." That applies to rented flats in Wick or tenant farms in Bute and elsewhere. It has to change soon.
Rob.gibson.msp@scottish.parliament.uk
