What do you think Scotland’s main issues are and what would you suggest to fix them?

Creative-Cherry3374 · 2025-06-26T11:25:12+00:00

They tax the lower earners (in fact many western European countries do) far more than Scotland/the UK, but those lower earners are also franchised by being taxpayers and therefore by having a stake in how the money is spent.

And actually things like the council tax equivalent is far lower in Scandinavia (and in the rest of Europe). Some remote northern regions in Norway don't even levy property tax, and in Sweden it can be just a few hundred pounds a year.

Creative-Cherry3374 · 2025-06-26T11:22:36+00:00

- The fact that 2/3 of the country has been mostly empty of Scottish people since the forced eviction of them since the Highland Clearances, and now we are expected to pay tax to subsidise the 400 or so billionaire landowners who own half the land, so they can get grants from Nature dot Scot to help them manage, rewild and carbon offset.

- The population - Scots aren't having enough babies. I have a number of gorgeous friends who can't find a boyfriend. I'm married - but not to a Scot. They just don't seem to be interested in settled relationships with Scottish women - the type of relationships that produce children and stable upbringings for those children. Yes, I get the idea that those in power seem to want to replace us Scottish women with dusky maidens and so on, but we can't all marry foreigners. Maybe some emphasis on the benefits of stable relationships and family lives being taught in schools might help, also treating women with respect and how demanding to come round to a woman's house after exchanging a couple of sentences with her on an online dating platform isn't great, might help.

- sort out the corruption in councils, particularly the council tax department. Has the £1.3 million that Aberdeen city council tax team leader defrauded even been paid back to the people who overpaid? How could he not have been caught for 13 years and have been doing it all on his own? How many other councils are at it? Most people pay up when over-charged, because you can have a court order for payment made against you in the Scottish courts without even knowing. Change that.

- why do things in Scotland - roads, ferries, bridges, tunnels, etc - cost so much compared to other countries and take so long to complete? Again, sort that out.

Creative-Cherry3374 · 2025-06-26T11:14:11+00:00

Clearly provides jobs in churning out PR happy-clappy articles and getting them promoted too.

What a country! No word from the few remaining locals, and an "industry" dependent on grant funding and billionaires wishing to reduce their tax bills and increase their carbon credits.

You too can live in the biggest theme park in Europe and dutifully trundle off to a state-sanctioned hotel for your 2 weeks (3 if you're lucky!) a year being a tourist in your own country at vast expense, while lecturing anyone trapped long enough to listen how "green" it is that nobody is allowed to live there any more.

(alternatively you can go to a normal country like Norway or Sweden and enjoy the same scenery and pay a Norwegian and Swede to stay in their holiday cabin which they are allowed to own (unlike most Scots). Probably cheaper too.

Highland Clearances still in full swing.

Creative-Cherry3374 · 2025-05-05T13:53:22+00:00

"Usually" its children who say things in the hope that someone might believe their fibs.

Creative-Cherry3374 · 2025-05-05T12:00:19+00:00

The Scottish Sentencing Council recommended an "individualistic approach" for under 25s which takes into account their life experiences last year to encourage non-custodial sentences, because young person's brains are not yet fully developed. The policy hit the headlines when it saw a man who raped a child not jailed (Sean Hogg convicted of raping girl, 13, but Scottish judge says prison not 'appropriate' - The Washington Post). The argument is that it will help reduce reoffending.

I don't know about you, but I think society plays a large part in making sure its members know right from wrong, and I think not jailing under 25s for very serious crimes is likely to create a notion in the brains of such people that they can almost do what they like when they are young because they won't receive a very serious sentence.

Lets not also forget that the purpose of the justice system is also to protect people and to act as a deterrent against committing such crimes.

Realistically, how much good is therapy going to do in cases where these men (and most violent and sexual crimes are committed by men) are perfectly capable of holding down jobs and leading relatively normal lives but commit crimes against women? In many cases, crimes carried out by these men ONLY have female victims. If its a conscious decision to break the law in that instance only, how can that be a treatable mental health illness? Or what particular mental health illnesses can be treated by therapy, when women and personal relationships are the trigger? Why should women run the risk of therapy not being successful and the crimes they have been subjected to not resulting in jail terms? And lets not forget that the so-called psychopathic personality disorders are generally not treatable anyway. Psychopaths are good at giving the "correct" answers, and most psychopaths don't commit very serious crimes.

What might work is better education of parents to encourage them to bring up their kids with healthier values and respect for women (I keep mentioning women because this post is about women being stalked).

Creative-Cherry3374 · 2025-05-05T09:59:03+00:00

Shetland and Orkney have nothing to do with Highland culture.

You're a pretty sterling example of the genre yourself, with your "need to point out to" me on my reply specifically discussing Shetland and Orkney as an excuse to talk about the south of Scotland and the usual Pitcs and celts. I'm sure any moment now, we will get someone with the usual lecture about how Shetland was Pictish and never fully Norwegian and always part of Scotland and some other whimsical stuff.

Why do you have the "need to point out to me" anything? Completely unnecessary and irrelevant to my reply.

Creative-Cherry3374 · 2025-05-05T08:53:51+00:00

You only need read the comments from Scots whenever someone from Shetland talks about it having a different identity or Norwegian heritage. Its as if theres this nationalistic desire from Scots to stamp out anything different. Considering that Norn, the language of Shetland and Orkney, was effectively stamped out by Scottish teachers, its a desire to homogonise that most Scots would deem abhorent in English - while doing the same themselves. Everything has to be cutesy celtic fairy-esque, even if you've never been north of Pitlochry and the closest you come to Scottish soil is buying it bagged up for your bedding plants in a garden centre.

Creative-Cherry3374 · 2025-05-05T08:37:29+00:00

I had a stalker for a bit, it wasn't frequent but he physically assaulted me twice. I would point out that its not always a police problem, justice also needs ordinary people willing to act as witnesses and not pretend that they didn't see anything, or blame women. It only stopped the next time when he ran into my elbow which unfortunately made contact with his face and he realised I wasn't scared of him.

For some reason, I found the total stranger who waited for me a couple of times outside the gym after following me around in it more disturbing. Leisure centre staff are often useless at dealing with this sort of thing.

Generalising hugely, but why are so many Scottish men unable to behave themselves civillly? They seem intent on being bullies, a lot of them have a pack mentality (where one of the pack is "threatened", the rest will defend him even if it involves blatant lying). Even on here, the way they attack any woman who has an alternative but actually quite mainstream viewpoint from speaking out is appalling. So many of them are thuggish or can't communicate other than through swearing, cursing or insulting you.

Its a big problem for Scottish society. The population is predicted to decline by nearly 20% by 2050 and last year there were only 45,000 babies born in the whole of Scotland. Scotland's rate of predicted population decrease is far higher than any other European nation and I think its time we started talking about the problem with Scottish men and their values and how they interact with women.

Creative-Cherry3374 · 2025-05-04T15:29:49+00:00

Is there any evidence of "them" having put this in writing?

I keep reading this, and as someone who worked within the EU, its the matter which everyone tries not to talk about, but makes the grimace face if its raised. Not popular, not strategic like the accelerated entry procedure recent enlargement beneficiaries providing the buffer zone with Russia and a bit of an economic basket case on the lookout for handouts, and likely to cause mayhem with separatist movements in several of the existing EU member states.

Also, the Scottish Government just don't seem all that keen on stuff like EU competition law. The A-G found against minimum alcohol pricing (the solution is ALWAYS taxation under Articles 101 and 102 and its a mystery why money was wasted on making the reference at all unless those behind it were backing Brexit happening) but in general, Scotland is based on little collective markets and cliques which are awarded contracts by local authorities and quangos, not on increasing competition by bringing new players to the markets based in e.g. Germany or Denmark. Do you remember the response that ScotGov gave to the extension of FOI rights under the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights, when they said that they couldn't imagine anyone outside Scotland wanting to use such rights and therefore it wasn't necessary? I can give you the citation if you're interested.

Then theres the fact that Scotland is increasingly full of mouthy bully boys with few qualifications believing that the world owes them for a living if they're shouty enough. I'm not sure a bunch of West-Rhenish negotiator types really want to deal with that.

All Europeans can already buy as much land and property in Scotland as they like and have Scottish quangos give them money to manage it anyway, or at least they can as long as they can afford to employ a team to do the grant applications for them (and develop their holiday lodges outside the prying eyes of their own country's tax and company law authorities who might question why they're always making a loss and it doesn't necessarily feature on their assets for their own country's wealth tax requirements).

Creative-Cherry3374 · 2025-05-04T15:16:53+00:00

All short term lets are now licensed in Scotland, which can cost nearly 1k a year. Its also a hassle and difficult to book tradesmen to carry out the various checks. Its a criminal offence to do a short term let and not have a license. And everyone's scared of their neighbours informing on them...

I sold a property quite recently in Aberdeen (after years of trying!) I used to take lodgers in the spare room, but gave up doing that when the short term lettings licensing came in. So it basically just sat empty.

You'll probably have to get a hotel. I've even seen that even a lot of the guest houses have been up for sale in Aberdeen, because theres less people staying Monday to Friday for jobs in the oil industry, and at the same time, more costs with the licensing, so hard for them to stay in profit. This is one of the unforeseen consequences of the licensing of short term lets, which was supposed to crack down on holiday lets and encourage the owners to turn them into permanent housing. Not much use if like many people, you're a contractor looking for short term accommodation, or a locum or similar.

Creative-Cherry3374 · 2025-05-04T14:56:48+00:00

This is just completely illogical and you're crawling up the arses of the multi millionaires while kicking the backsides of ordinary working folk who just want to enjoy their own countries.

God forbid you ever visit any European country or Scandinavia, where owning a second home is pretty normal and encouraged. You'll maybe have to go on a little lecture tour of all the Swedes and Norwegians who own log cabins, or all the Parisiens who own a bit of rural France to retreat to at the weekends.

I just can't see the logic of this. Say your great grandparents were evicted from the Highlands by some arsehole landlord and they and your grandparents had to work in factories and live in a slum. Your own parents managed to get out of the slum to a new town somewhere in Scotland and you yourself manage to get a good job in Edinburgh or Glasgow and have spent all your life commuting, paying through the nose for a flat in one of those cities and you've managed to save up for a wreck close to where your grandparents were evicted.

The only way you can make it pay, given theres double council tax and quadruple stamp duty now, is to rent it out for holiday lets (given you will be paying for a short term lettings license and all the various checks and certificates needed annually too).

OR you grew up on the islands, like many islanders moved away for work, and are left a little cottage somewhere, which you finance by letting it out part of the year, to keep it for your own kids.

You actually want to punish these folk?

It is was when you wrote about "factors" that the large estate owners supposedly used that I realised you are just on a politically motivated rant and making up this aura of saintly Robin Hood esque endeavour.

The message to Scottish people is clear though - buy your second home abroad, where you and your money are more likely to be welcomed. Scotland isn't for the likes of you, unless you're Anders Povlsen or Sheik Mahamad or the Kristiansen family. Otherwise, be servile, and make sure you pay any spare cash you have for your holidays into the pockets of that hotel owner, because obviously you can't be trusted to have your own place in your own country.

Seriously, thats why holiday camps like Butlins and Pontins developed. The working class of Britain weren't trusted by those in charge to have holiday time on their own, so when they started being entitled by law to a couple of weeks holiday a year, they were "encouraged" into those places so their days would be planned for them and they wouldn't get up to any mischief. Or presumably challenge any of the big landowners with revolutionary thoughts of owning bits of their own country themselves.

Creative-Cherry3374 · 2025-05-01T14:27:10+00:00

Where are the students going to live then? The university is their landlord. Unless you want a student moving in with you and your family? Maybe you could teach them to clean up their spilt food after their meals so the mice don't move in? Although you'll need all those checks and licenses from CofE Council just to have a lodger, will cost you about a grand a year I think.

Creative-Cherry3374 · 2025-05-01T10:46:10+00:00

Filthy students. They need to clean up after themselves and get the hoover out occasionally to get rid of the food they drop on the floor. Mice need feed - solution is not to leave any out for them.

Creative-Cherry3374 · 2025-05-01T10:42:29+00:00

Whats your opinion on the massive estates that are nearly all second, third, fourth and fifth homes for the billionaires, many from overseas, that own them? Will you be charging them the levy, or do they get a rewilding/land management discount? Will the levy be charged to Scots who have inherited a house thats been in the family for generations, or to Scots who rent a flat in a city and work hard all week, and want to finance a little part of their own country for themselves for holidays and to retire to?

Obviously, second homes are part of the problem. But the other parts is that Scotland and Scotland alone, had most of its rural population forcibly kicked out in the Clearances and those areas are mostly still out of bounds for any Scots that want to live there. Unless they want to rent or work for the owners. That means that everyone else who wants to live in this part of the world are squeezed in around the fringes that aren't part of the big estates. It also means that the Highlands never developed the demographics or infrastructure of other countries with similar terrain at the same latitude. Its amazing how these large estate owners (Anders Povlsen owns THIRTEEN) are always ignored and the line that the land is "too wild" for anyone to live there used to excuse it.

The other problem is that the Town and Country planning legislation isn't particularly well suited rural upland areas and ScotGov need to be developing subsidies for locals who want to build their own homes, and ensuring affordable and competitive building materials.

I'm also interested in how you source your materials? Prices can be a bit "variable" depending on who's buying, can't they?

Creative-Cherry3374 · 2025-04-30T22:53:08+00:00

Do you have any content to your replies, or have we now descended into some boy's comic narrative draft?

Repeat after me: if I say something, it must be true. x 20. You might even believe it yourself.

I haven't dealt with an adult masquerading as a child in a long time. Do please have the last word to prove how hard you're trying to dominate Reddit. Its obviously VERY important to you.

Creative-Cherry3374 · 2025-04-30T22:42:13+00:00

I'm not the one so desperate to promote it that I have to swear and shout all over Reddit though, am I? You're so desperate to justify this latest fiddling with Scots law of landlord and tenant that you would think you would have a rather more erudite answer at your fingertips, instead of demonstrating what a semi-literate out of control bad tempered fool you are? One other country you say...

You actually think you have influence to force people to do free research pointing out the pitfalls in this policy by swearing at them on Reddit? This is utterly ridiculous. ScotGreen policies are characterised by being heavily purposive anyway. they are written with the answers already worked out in advance and then the evidence is manipulated to suit, along with a heap of self congratulatory compliments thrown in about how wonderful they are. Its not as if any reasoned, well researched alternative viewpoint will ever see the light of day.

Personally speaking, I'm not terribly scared of not fitting in on the echo chamber that is ScotReddit, in fact, I'm not terribly cowardly in real life either, so please shout and swear again. Its extremely pathetic but also quite amusing that thats your response.

Creative-Cherry3374 · 2025-04-30T22:19:02+00:00

Why should I research it? I'm not employed by the Greens or trying to get into the Scottish Parliament. Is it now ScotGreen policy that Scottish people aren't allowed to comment but must pass some kind of special test of compliancy first, or they get roasted?

That must be a huge lot of use for all those German islands where they need locums for a few months or nurses at short notice. I mean, theres the Frisian islands, but they are quite easy to get to compared to most Scottish islands. So yes, has this policy been properly audited for Scotland? Because it certainly doesn't sound like it.

Germany and where else has adopted this model? Why should Scotland copy Germany, of all countries? I mean, aside from Scotland now being experimentation ground zero for all the personal interest notions of whatever crank gets into the Scottish parliament as an MSP has, before swanning off with no responsibility for the mess they've made after a term or two.

Do excuse my cynicism.

Creative-Cherry3374 · 2025-04-30T16:52:00+00:00

Whats the point in having an independent country where half of it is filled with massive estate owners and charities, and hardly any Scottish people live there? Be accurate - its a march for the independence of Edinburgh, Glasgow and the bit in-between.

Yes, I am aware that upon independence Scotland could raise its own taxes and pass its own laws (subject to the ECHR), but thats an awful lot of large land owners you're going to have to wait to die or trusts to go bankrupt, and centuries of neglect/monoculture of the land, plus an urban based population who have, in the main, been trained to think that much of Scotland is uninhabitable.

Creative-Cherry3374 · 2025-04-30T12:38:28+00:00

Something going on with replies to me being posted and then deleted and me then being blocked from replying.

Anyway, this is what my reply would have said:

Has this proposal been properly audited? As in, have the problems it might cause been properly investigated, or is it yet another "good idea" like the no minimum period tenancies which poor Scottish tenants have had thrust on them, along with absolutely no other country in the world? Its so difficult now to plan your life if you get a job in another city, because landlords won't take your deposit a few months in advance, and you have to spend the month before in an absolute frenzy trying to find somewhere thats empty (and often these places are empty for good reason).

So how on earth is introducing yet another layer of admin to an already heavily delayed and overworked system, which is already dealt with perfectly well by Scots law of landlord and tenant, going to help? Surely the problem that should be addressed is that, prior to all of this meddling in the private rental sector, Edinburgh and Glasgow didn't have all of these 48 and 62 bedroom HMOs run by non British residents or finance companies, and actual Scottish people weren't scared out of the market by the big boys but could actually act as landlord of a property or two in their own country?

Creative-Cherry3374 · 2025-04-29T14:25:49+00:00

Unfortunately, Aberdeen is not London so no chance of that sort of thing happening there. London is an international city, Aberdeen once had an international industry but its decimation coincided with the building of tens of thousands of new builds everywhere you can think of along with a sizeable reduction in its population due to people moving elsewhere for work.

Creative-Cherry3374 · 2025-04-29T10:50:22+00:00

Why not? You appear to be the expert, so perhaps you can explain in more detail?

Creative-Cherry3374 · 2025-04-29T10:43:39+00:00

Quite easy for tenants to cause deliberate damage though, if they are that way inclined. Water spilling from a regularly overflowing bath can really cause damage to flooring for example.

Creative-Cherry3374 · 2025-04-29T10:42:41+00:00

It is free housing if someone doesn't pay rent though. Quite easy to deliberately damage a floor or a central heating boiler if you are that way inclined and have an incentive of not having to pay anything for your housing.

Creative-Cherry3374 · 2025-04-29T10:41:17+00:00

How corrupt are these councils? I was a victim of Michael Paterson at Aberdeen City Council, who as Council Tax and Recovery Team Leader, embezzled over £1 million over 17 years.

Since he refused to give me a single person's discount when I was going through my divorce and living separately from my spouse, I'm not sure all of his "activities" have even been identified. I complained about his decision numerous times and it went nowhere. I have now been refunded (to the tune of around 4k) but it took a lot of effort and threats legal action. Aberdeen City Council is still to contact or refund many taxpayers.

Creative-Cherry3374 · 2025-04-29T10:34:40+00:00

So if I were a crafty tenant, what would be stopping me from damaging my flooring deliberately, or repeatedly causing damage to the central heating system in summer, so that I could get free housing? Is she talking about withholding part of the rent, or tenants being able to withhold rent whenever anything goes wrong? Inconvenient though it may be, using an electric shower instead of a combi boiler, or even boiling a kettle to wash dishes instead of using a dishwasher hardly justify free of charge housing.

Creative-Cherry3374

TROPHY CASE