Opportunities are lacking in our rural areas
A rural Perth and Kinross councillor says many people are being driven into towns and cities because of the“sheer lack of opportunity” in rural areas.
Strathallan SNP councillor Tom Gray believes once industrious farm steadings are turning into “pockets of middle class enclaves”.
The Perthshire farmer recently raised the decline in the number of farms during a council committee’s discussion of Perth and Kinross Council’s food growing strategy.
And he hit out on Facebook at the changing face of rural Scotland.
He wrote: “Huge estates prevail throughout Scotland, as they do elsewhere on these islands, under ownership and for the pleasure of a wealthy few families and institutions.
“The poor are, and have been for centuries, driven to our towns and cities by sheer lack of opportunity to survive in the countryside under control of such estates.
“Large urban areas of ‘affordable’ rented housing exist in all our towns and cities where the economic climate of employment and opportunity dictate the well-being of those living there.
“Heavy industries took a serious hit in the ‘80s and ‘90s. Manufacturing and service industries have taken their place, but come and go as globalisation allows.
“Latest big hits are in the high streets where electronic purchasing is accelerating - to some extent hastened by the pandemic - and retail is never likely to return as was.
“Again the flow of urban employment is disturbed and uncertainty returns to the low wage sector.”
Cllr Gray said farm steadings were now “beyond the financial reach of those who would stay, get their hands dirty and work there given half a chance”.
He added: “Meanwhile rural Scotland is in a world of its own.
“Villages are expanding as local farmers and landowners cash in on the tax-free benefits of selling a field or two, or a plot or two, for housing, none of your low value stuff mind, but invariably for those who can afford them type of home.
“Farm steadings, once centres of work and production, [have been] turned into pockets of middle class enclaves beyond the financial reach of those who would stay, get their hands dirty and work there given half a chance, i.e. the generations down the ages from those earlier expelled from the countryside.
“[There is] a huge area of hidden opportunity denied to those who both yearn it, consciously or otherwise, and would thrive on it.
“Lose your job in an urban area then you become dependent on handouts.
“Hundreds of thousands are in this vulnerable position. No property owned, landless frankly, and totally dependent on others providing employment opportunity or response to your housing and survival needs.”