Overview Common Good – Whightman

Scotland in 200 years went from a country of common open space to a country mainly owned by private landlords? in 1996 half of Scotland was owned by just 500 people. Article

The following was taken from a video interview with Andy Whightman. This will give you the general idea of what “common good means. You can see it here: The common good in Scotland

The scottishcommons.org website is designed to help you identify, document and restore Scottish Commons. Here you can find information on all sorts of Scottish Commons including extensive research on common good Land in Scotland.

Snips from the above video: (My Italics)

common good is:

• Land property movable assets. (That is all the things we have been taking for granted over the years, art galleries and artworks, museums, parks, all the things we get into free and in public ownership)

• The legacy of the former burghs of Scotland
wound up in 1975 when town councils were abolished

. But the funds remained with the towns to be used for there benefits – administered by the new district councils – and in 1996 by the new unitary authorities (That means any profits made through sales of rent of land, buildings and public assets should go back into the common good fund. Where is the money? We should be asking)

• The funds can be used as the citizens wish

(Members of the public as they can do in Aberdeen, should be able to apply for grants from these funds to do things in their community – events, parties and such like. Maybe you are thinking by this time. “I didn’t even know there was such a thing as the common good” Well you probably did – you probably knew parks and such like belonged to the public but the collective name for all of these things is “common good”. That’s part of the reason of this website to help people to understand what is entailed when they hear the words “common good”)

Whightman, sets out some of the problems in doing this:

1. Lack of awareness by citizens that this land funds and property exists. (The fact you are reading this means that situation is improving and even more when the reader starts to tell their friends)

2. Very poor recording of assets by local government – in some cases not recorded at all. Meaning land property rents off common good assets do not get put back into the fund. (This is when we need to become common good detectives and think about what kind of skills we can use or share to discover where our common good is and what is happening to it.)

3. Lack of awareness in local government of what “common good meant. (In lots of cases constituents (that’s you) know more about the common good than the people they vote in to look after the publics affairs. Voting for someone is only part of the democracy process. Another part is making sure the person you vote for does and knows what they are supposed to be doing – and knows for instance where and what the common good is. If they do not—you may have to educate them.)

4 Corruption millions of pounds disappearing from common good funds. Primarily through the sale of CG land where councils concealed facts it was CG land.
This is land that was used to graze livestock, for markets all towns had them. Most of it is gone, sold off. (Take a look around your town. Where was the grazing land? Where was the market place? It is there somewhere. Couldn’t have disappeared. Maybe there is a shopping centre on it – is the rent being paid back in to the common good? Try asking your councilor.)

So the questions are: How do we go about it?

How do we build a picture of what the common good is?

How do we recover common good and put it into the “publics” hands?

How do we get the research skills into the communities?

How do we put the common good on the curriculum in schools?
These are some of the questions this website will set out to help answer.