Shooting tax in scotland

[Heym SR20]

What NEEDS to happen here is what should have happened a long time ago.
Land owners that need deer controlled for woodland, agriculture or environmental management purposes shouldn't be using it as a cash cow and charging people to undertake their pest control. Emotive but deer are pests in the eyes of many.
There may just be a silver lining in this where land managers stop offering leases and start paying their GOOD stalkers, albeit it may be a nominal amount.
If you look at this from a commercial forestry perspective income from a stalking lese is a very small percentage of the average per hectare annual income. The critical ting in commercial forestry is to have local people who understand they have a job to do and dont fanny about only shooting trophies.

Utter bollox.

In most other parts of tye world, hunters very effectively manage wildlife numbers in partnership with landowners and government agencies. Some hunters with limited time but plenty of money will pay several thousand for sport hunting, and pay for shooting old trophy animals that are well beyond breeding age.

Those funds go towards the rest of the game management and conservation. Other hunters do the bulk of the management work in keeping numbers at a sustainable level.

If it pays it stays, if not it’s gone. Once Scotland has lost its deer, its grouse etc because they are of no value and nobody looks after them and their land, Scotland will end in commercial forestry and windfarms all owned by foreign corporations. There might be a little rewilding and game reserves, but those will be little islands.

Going back to failure of stalking leases not delivering cull requirements that you have stated. That’s nothing more than poor management on behalf the forestry owners. Like any contract you need to have like minds working together. If the syndicate doesn't deliver then something is fundamentally wrong. Probably leased for too much money to the wrong people without clear expectations of culls put in place, or cull targets totally unrealistic, or time frame totally unrealistic.

Fundamentally land management is about long term partnerships over several years. Not quick fixes. SNP government has spent tens of millions on contractors to shoot deer. They wanted a quick result.

What has happened is they have killed off decades of rural land management that just worked well, and cost little to the tax payer. FLS is one of the landowners in Scotland. It’s annual grant from the Scottish tax payer is tens of millions of pounds. Yes it has reduced but its still millions.

And now all of us who are quite happily pottering away manage deer in a sustainable way, earning money elsewhere and paying our taxes- which in part are going to fund FLS contractors, employees and their pensions are now being asked to pay yet more tax to fund the SNP incompetence.

This is just yet another ferry, roads, trams, fenicular railway debacle where the SNP just **** money up against the wall. Nothing more, nothing less and the sooner they are gone the better.

 

[slider]

Utter bollocks.

Your favourite saying without understanding the CURRENT situation and from the perspective of a pre conceived public agency hater.

You are not subsiding contractors. The general public is (was) subsidising recreational stalkers on the National Forest Estate as the damage done to woodlands by ineffective syndicates was far in excess of any stalking income.

 

[Oldstalker]

Utter bollocks.

Your favourite saying without understanding the CURRENT situation and from the perspective of a pre conceived public agency hater.

You are not subsiding contractors. The general public is (was) subsidising recreational stalkers on the National Forest Estate as the damage done to woodlands by ineffective syndicates was far in excess of any stalking income.

Same two first words.
Since the First World War, when Death Duties, then Estate Duty, then Capital Transfer Tax and finally in its current form of Inheritance Tax there has been a toll on the ownership of larger estates in Scotland. What were proportionately fairly small subsidies, initially from the owner(s) prior to WW1 (mutton and wool commanded reasonable prices as did timber) for upland estates became larger by mid-century. Even increasing forestry and agricultural grants could not keep pace with the ever increasing tax burdens. There were also hidden subsidies to private ownership through free forestry and agricultural advice. The camel's back was eventually broken and the public purse is now picking up the increasingly large (and growing) cost of its own inefficiencies.
Compare the costs of private conservation work with quango or public costs. This is becoming a real (and increasing) scandal as the RSPB or some other conservation charity tell the public "give us the money" or "the curlew/black grouse/puffin gets it". Re-wetting by putting excavators on moorland will rarely achieve very much and at what cost? Failure to maintain traditional land management practices (landowners did not spend money they did not need to on such work as was necessary for sustainability) leads to ever worse wildfires - RSPB are the worst Scottish culprits - because no amount of re-wetting is going to save you from wildfire in a drought, or leaky dam building on a small scale from excess winter rainfall. I am only decrying the enormous and ineffective costs of these works - not the need for some of them as our climate changes.

 

[slider]

Same two first words.
Since the First World War, when Death Duties, then Estate Duty, then Capital Transfer Tax and finally in its current form of Inheritance Tax there has been a toll on the ownership of larger estates in Scotland. What were proportionately fairly small subsidies, initially from the owner(s) prior to WW1 (mutton and wool commanded reasonable prices as did timber) for upland estates became larger by mid-century. Even increasing forestry and agricultural grants could not keep pace with the ever increasing tax burdens. There were also hidden subsidies to private ownership through free forestry and agricultural advice. The camel's back was eventually broken and the public purse is now picking up the increasingly large (and growing) cost of its own inefficiencies.
Compare the costs of private conservation work with quango or public costs. This is becoming a real (and increasing) scandal as the RSPB or some other conservation charity tell the public "give us the money" or "the curlew/black grouse/puffin gets it". Re-wetting by putting excavators on moorland will rarely achieve very much and at what cost? Failure to maintain traditional land management practices (landowners did not spend money they did not need to on such work as was necessary for sustainability) leads to ever worse wildfires - RSPB are the worst Scottish culprits - because no amount of re-wetting is going to save you from wildfire in a drought, or leaky dam building on a small scale from excess winter rainfall. I am only decrying the enormous and ineffective costs of these works - not the need for some of them as our climate changes.

I have never argued that the public sector is not inefficient. The opposite in fact
My point all along is that the likes of FLS are inefficient because, well because they are public sector. As a result of that they have to contend eith continual interference from politicians and the general public.
Outcomes are not purely (sometimes not even close to) financial. Outcomes are delivering policy objectives.
Now I disagree with many of these policies as much as the next man, but the fact is that is how the system works.
The alternative, privatisation of the national forest Estate has been suggested in the past and the very idea met with horror by the electorate.
Who a full privatisation of the national forest estate deliver Scottish Govrrments policy objective?
Never in a million years - public access, restoration of open cast mines, access from disabled groups, access for disadvantaged communities, renewable energy, community buy outs, forest research, a national tree nursery, enhanced peat land, environment archeology protection...........

You might not want these things, I certainly dont care about some of them but these are national objective that matter to a great any more people than just the stalking community.

 

[Dan Newcombe]

I’m all for forestry companies giving leases to established, effecting stalkers - but that would leave a lot of stalkers without leases and drive up private prices - the stalkers are the issue, the managers are trying to work round that issue as best they can and as financially responsibly as they can as well.

Careful what you wish for

 

[artschool]

I have never argued that the public sector is not inefficient. The opposite in fact
My point all along is that the likes of FLS are inefficient because, well because they are public sector. As a result of that they have to contend eith continual interference from politicians and the general public.
Outcomes are not purely (sometimes not even close to) financial. Outcomes are delivering policy objectives.
Now I disagree with many of these policies as much as the next man, but the fact is that is how the system works.
The alternative, privatisation of the national forest Estate has been suggested in the past and the very idea met with horror by the electorate.
Who a full privatisation of the national forest estate deliver Scottish Govrrments policy objective?
Never in a million years - public access, restoration of open cast mines, access from disabled groups, access for disadvantaged communities, renewable energy, community buy outs, forest research, a national tree nursery, enhanced peat land, environment archeology protection...........

You might not want these things, I certainly dont care about some of them but these are national objective that matter to a great any more people than just the stalking community.

what about establishing the National Hunting Service? the NHS would have the goal of providing comprehensive, universal, and free deer control at the point of delivery.
Crucially this service would be free for all landowners, regardless of ability to pay.

 

[WW.]

what about establishing the National Hunting Service? the NHS would have the goal of providing comprehensive, universal, and free deer control at the point of delivery.
Crucially this service would be free for all landowners, regardless of ability to pay.

Would there be a Quango season?

 

[Dave_45]

What’s the deal with this

Are farms exempt if it’s only pest control and marauding deer on crops ?

 

[slider]

What’s the deal with this

Are farms exempt if it’s only pest control and marauding deer on crops ?

Rates relief clarification welcome but concerns remain