Two fat geese 14/3/13
Sirs,
There is an old Highland story that goes along like this. Two Highland gentlemen are in dispute over some land boundary. One of the gentlemen takes himself to Edinburgh to find a lawyer in order to resolve the argument. As the lawyer is an acquaintance of the other gentlemen he suggests another lawyer and writes him a letter of introduction. On the way round to the second lawyer his curiosity gets the better of him and he opens the letter.
Imagine his shock as he reads, it says: ‘Two fat geese in town, you have one and I’ll have the other.’ Disgusted he returns home.
Where is this leading you may ask. The Crofting Commission have set up a system to register crofts in Scotland. Instead of doing an A1 job they are taking short cuts that will only lead to disputes and the only winners will be the lawyers in Edinburgh.
The Crofting Commission have chosen to use paper copies of Ordinance Survey (OS) data. As a picture I suppose this may be satisfactory but for resolving land boundaries it is totally unacceptable.
So far £1.50 million pounds has been put towards the problem, only to achieve nothing. I have spent over twenty years drawing land plans in the Western Isles and I understand the errors that can occur in using OS in defining land boundaries.
Kenneth Morrison,
6 Bain Square,
Stornoway
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