Category Archives: crofting

The Back pony lady – “I don’t think I want to be normal”

Posted on January 13, 2012 | 4 Comments

Click the arrow above to hear my interview with Stephanie Noble.

IMPORTANT NOTE – Just a word to those who have been busy putting it around to anyone daft enough to listen that Ms Noble has made a lot of money from her media interviews. That is not the case. I can say with certainty in the case of the newspapers and broadcasters I was working with that she did not ask for, and was not given, any money – although she admitted keeping a pony was a costly undertaking. Other reporters worked with other press but I understand Ms Noble also did not ask them for any money.
However, I hope that one TV station will pay for a bale of hay – when they get my expenses claim.
While I completely understand that feelings in neighbourhood disputes can run high, it is important to correct misleading impressions put around by certain people who are either badly-informed or downright mischievous.

Below is some of my footage (some unedited) that has been used by TV stations.
All material is copyrighted to Iain Maciver to whom terms for usage may be requested.

→ 4 Comments

Posted in council, crofting, Isle of Lewis, Outer Hebrides, Police, Stornoway, Western Isles

Scottish Government set to nobble grazings committee bullies

Posted on September 29, 2011 | 1 Comment

Well well. Wonder who else is reading this blog?  Just hours after I mentioned appalling bullying by certain out-of-control Lewis grazings committee members – some of them who you would think would know better – the Scottish Government contacts a victim of these vicious bullies to confirm a proper map-based Crofting Register is being introduced as Part 2 of the Crofting Reform (Scotland) Act 2010.

Incoming crofters will soon be able to fix the boundaries based on the sale and other documents and objectors will have to come up with proper evidence if they think it is inaccurate.  It may not completely stop the ongoing harrassment in certain Lewis villages but putting that into the Act instead of the current haphazard and unfair procedure by leaving it all up to the Little Hitlers on these committees is a splendid first step.

I have also heard today from people who have had to leave this island because of campaigns against them by these committees without shame.  Nothing official, making life difficult, stealing, damaging, always at night. Drunkards and church-goers. They have all been at it. Makes you proud, eh?

As well as knowingly selling land they know will be snatched back by grazings committees, some solicitors know about the intimidation and turn a blind eye. If anyone else is unhappy about how island solicitors – and certain ones in Inverness – are handling these transactions, please let me know.  Let’s build up some firm evidence – just like they would do.  After all, one of these solicitors – who has obviously been watching too many Ku Klux Klan films – recently gave one woman the wonderful advice: “You’d better move on somewhere else. It is useless to complain. This is how things are done here. No one will listen to you – not even the press.”

Er, excuse me, Mr Dodgy Solicitor.  That may have been the case then. Now some of us are definitely listening – and writing.

→ 1 Comment

Posted in corruption, Crime, crofting, Government, Isle of Lewis, Outer Hebrides, Police, Western Isles

Aite mo Ghaoil? For some people, it’s very far from that.

Posted on September 28, 2011 | 21 Comments

Just imagine if you went into a shop for beans. I’ll have a large tin, you say. When you get home, you find they had deliberately given you a small tin of beans. Would you complain? Me too.So how do you think people feel when they think they are buying a place with land and then find out it’s not the three acres advertised by the estate agent, but just two.

That’s exactly what happens in some villages on Lewis where unprofessional solicitors and power-mad grazings committees are working together to rip off new arrivals. There is a foul  anti-incomer sentiment among some supposedly decent people which allows this to happen. Some areas are worse than others. People have fled in the face of this bullying. However, at last, because other villagers are disgusted, a clear picture is emerging of exactly who’s at it.

The acceptance by allegedly-professional individuals that it is OK to advertise something and later, after the sale, reveal to the buyer that they didn’t get what they thought is reaching epidemic proportions, according to my sources. Corrupt grazing clerks keep turning a blind eye when immoral villagers – usually a cousin or neighbour, of course – attempt to turn the ignorance of buyers to their own advantage.

Knowingly selling croftland as a fixed acreage and later claiming that no map or other records exist to confirm the boundaries is not only morally wrong but criminal. Yet it is happening regularly on this island. Buyers should be told before the transaction if there is no map-based register or other proof of boundaries so they have the facts in advance. It should never be up to whether random grazings committee members agree, or can remember, or think they can get you into bed.

The Crofters Commission has been aware of the problem of inaccurately-described parcels of land being flogged by slightly-dodgy lawyers for some years and wants to stop it, but hasn’t. The police know and have done nothing … yet. The Scottish Crofting Federation knows and has done nothing. A victim went to the MP who has done absolutely nothing. A victim went to the MSP who did absolutely nothing. Even the great campaigner for truth, The Stornoway Gazette, knows all about the conspiracy of grazings committee bullies and their legal sidekicks but has decided … well, you guessed it.

Claims that arguments over crofts and boundaries have always gone on is simply not a valid excuse. Victims are bullied if they object to the kangaroo court system of grazings management. One whom I know has had her sheep stolen. Intruders regularly go onto her property. Gates are mysteriously opened to let her sheep out. She and her children are regularly abused, usually with very unchristian obscenities, by the children of committee members. One such young yob tried to run her down.

Now though, there are decent residents in the village where racism and discrimination are rearing their ugly heads and they do speak privately about what is going on and who is doing it. Someone may have to start naming names soon. It may be me.

I don’t know what’s happened to some people over there. I always thought Aite Mo Ghaoil was a nice place.

→ 21 Comments

Posted in corruption, crofting, Isle of Lewis, Outer Hebrides, Police, politics, scams, Scotland, Western Isles

Is the Scottish Crofting Federation bankrupt or barmy?

Posted on September 27, 2011 | 1 Comment

There are so many clues when an organisation is badly losing its way and likely to go tits-up. Take the allegedly almost-bankrupt Scottish Crofting Federation, if that is what it’s called this week.
It refuses to help community wind farms on the grounds it has no spare cash and, interestingly, that there is no evidence the people involved have a clue what they are doing. Pots and kettles.
The future, say certain SCF people, is to support big commercial operations like Amec, the Stornoway Windfarm people. “It’s almost as if a Tory is pulling the strings,” an exasperated crofter tells me. Hmm, who can he mean?
Yet the supposedly member-led SCF has plenty cash to splash about on a barmy idea to get the United Nations to recognise crofters as indigenous people – without asking any sons of the soil if they actually want to be tagged.
That will aid PR, they reckon, because National Geographic will then come and take pictures like they do of African tribesmen with bones through their noses.
I gather the SCF has already jetted someone across the Atlantic to talk nonsense about the idea. Could Krause & co be about to spend a whole lot more soon?

→ 1 Comment

Posted in crofting