20th September 2023

‘Speaking truth to power’ is one of those phrases that gets ascribed to our sector but is all too rarely exercised. And if it is, it’s normally awash with sentiments designed to provide ‘balance’. The recent stooshie at RSPB, where some truths were spoken and then very quickly ‘unspoken,’ will have disappointed many who may be asking whether there’s any point in being the country’s largest nature conservation charity at a time when nature in this country is so imperilled. George Monbiot explains that this was simply an illustration of how power in this country actually works. 

When asset transfer legislation was being drafted almost ten years ago, we should assume it wasn’t a conscious decision to make the procedures quite as complicated as they are nor that it should demand quite so much time and energy of volunteers to negotiate them. And yet, that’s what has transpired. A community group near Inverness has, after an 8 year campaign, and an initial refusal from the owner (ironically Scottish Ministers) finally secured a 20 acre site for community growing and recreational purposes. The forthcoming Land Reform Bill is a big opportunity to resolve this once and for all.

When ‘nudge theory’ – the idea that our behaviour can be changed by ‘soft interventions’ – became the received wisdom as a way to implement public policy, politicians lapped it up. David Cameron and Barack Obama were known to have established ‘nudge units’ across their governments in the belief/hope that achieving gradual behaviour change would be politically less problematic. But some recent analysis has cast doubt on the whole effectiveness of the nudge approach and even suggests that vested interests may have been encouraging this approach as a means of avoiding or delaying more directly effective policy implementation.