Articles by Joseph Ritchie



“Let All Indignados in all the squares join together”: Beginning From the Beginning

Posted on October 5, 2011 | No Comments

The Occupation of Wall Street is entering into it’s third week and things are heating up. The large Transport Workers Union has pledged it’s support, echoing the much-vaunted ‘Teamsters and Turtles’ (Unions and environmentalists) alliance that helped make Seattle so legendary. Similar movements are spreading around the country (see here and here). The first official [...]

Assessing the Evidence on the ‘Community Right to Buy’

Posted on July 28, 2011 | No Comments

The Land Reform (Scotland) Act, passed by the Scottish Parliament in 2003, provoked both controversy and enthusiasm. Best known for creating Scotland’s ‘Right to Roam’, – the right to responsible access in rural Scotland, the Act also established what’s known as “the Community Right to Buy”. In light of a research published last month by [...]

Introducing the Land Issue Part 2: Why it Matters and How it Can Change

Posted on July 10, 2011 | No Comments

“The impact of the land tenure system goes far beyond land use. It influences the size and distribution of an area’s population; the labour skills and the entrepreneurial experiences of the population; access to employment and thus migration; access to housing’ access to land to build new houses’ the social structure’ and the distribution of [...]

Introducing the Land Issue Part 1: How Scotland is Owned.

Posted on July 10, 2011 | 1 Comment

Part 2 will be posted this afternoon Whenever I have a conversation about Scottish nationalism, someone always argues that Scotland, for whatever reason, is somewhat to the left of England on a number of issues. While there is some empirical basis for this claim, it risks externalising Scotland’s problems and ignoring the trickier issues that [...]

On the future of food in Scotland – an interview with Pete Ritchie (part 2)

Posted on May 29, 2011 | 2 Comments

Part 1 appeared yesterday, you can read it here And thus politics comes into full focus. There is a lot that can be said about the SNP’s recent landslide in the Scottish elections, but for Pete their attitude to food is worth mentioning: “Of all the parties they are by far the strongest on both [...]

On the Future of Food in Scotland: An interview with Pete Ritchie (Part 1)

Posted on May 28, 2011 | 1 Comment

Jo Ritchie interviews one of the leading voices in Scotland’s organic movement. Part 2 will be up tomorrow morning – the 29th I’m sitting across the table from my dad in what must be the fifth attempt to conduct this interview. He’s drinking coffee from a mug little cup that someone must have bought us [...]