Re: [scots-l] For bigheidit Toffs only:

[David Kilpatrick]

Title: Re: [scots-l] For bigheidit Toffs only:

on 10/1/2001 11:41 pm, stan reeves at [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

NOW
66 landowners own one quarter of Scotlands 19 million acres
120 own one third
343 own one half
1252 own two thirds
40% can trace their family land holding beyond the sixteenth century
" in rural Scotland, two thirds of households have incomes below the low pay unit threshold. Rural Scotland has the most concentrated, inequitable pattern of landed property anywhere in Europe. Scotland is the last country in the modern world still to have feudal tenure" (Andy Wightman 1999)

As it may be. Does not seem to have done Scotland any harm, does it? When we first came here I was surprised to find that you could be standing behind a Countess in the supermarket queue and not realise it, since no-one makes any real social distinction between 'classes' other than at ceremonial or formal events. I like Scotland. I like being in a place where you never see a suit and tie except behind a bank counter or at a funeral, and where you have to go into Glasgow or Edinburgh to see a girl wearing make-up in the daytime (High School 4th-years and our Gothic community excepted).
I'm sure there are exceptions and the cities have class- or wealth-conscious yuppy communities.

A few years ago an elderly bloke came in wanting some DTP work. He was motorcycle nut - serious vintage stuff - and well liked by our local bikers, whom he allowed to fill up his country property with all sorts of 'work in progress'. I ended up doing a load of scans, but because it was for a club publication didn't really want to charge him a commercial rate. He could have afforded it - minor Baronet and one of those landowners. So I asked him if I could have a bale of hay or two for our goats. I imagined he'd get a couple of small bales dropped off by Land Rover when one of his tenants was going into town.

He and his son drove a TRACTOR almost 20 miles with one of the HUGE circular bales impaled on the prongs. It lasted our goats three years and occupied an entire garage (you have no idea how big those things are till you get one inside!).

I like Scotland - feudal or not. (But what about all the traffic stuck behind his tractor? you ask - what traffic?).

David