Letter: Simple solution

I thoroughly disagree with Dr R E Swanepoel's summary (Letters, 7 July) of Lesley Riddoch's article - both she and he have failed to engage with the real problem underlying the issues they are trying to resolve.

That Scotland is one of the most unequal societies in northern Europe has been known for many years - the 7:84 theatre company took its name from that unequal wealth division (7 per cent of the population own 84 per cent of the wealth).

That unequal distribution of wealth is manifested in both urban and rural areas. In our rural areas, especially in the Highlands, we still have the infamously emptied straths and glens, under one of the tightest, most narrowly based private land tenure systems in the world. Dealing with the stunting and stultifying impacts of this land tenure system is behind the laudable attempt by Ms Riddoch to resolve the issue, but she and others favouring quasi-Stalinist, hostile buy-outs are tackling it from the wrong perspective.

During a study trip to Norway in 1984 with crofters from Skye to areas in Vestlandet, we enjoyed a veritable culture shock to see the different successful end-point derived from essentially very similar conditions (including deforestation, mass emigration and language suppression) It was a cultural difference not based in communal ownership but on an extensive participatory private ownership. It was "landowners per square mile" and not "square miles per landowner", as in Scotland.

The private land monopoly we have allowed to develop is the root cause of the problems Ms Riddoch and Dr Swanepoel seek to redress. It will end through the simplicity of a 100 per cent collection of land rental values to replace all forms of taxation on work and bricks and mortar.

Ron Greer

Armoury House

Blair Atholl, Perthshire