Top all-time · #11564
Andy Wightman
Personal blog · andywightman.compoliticseconomics
Andy Wightman's personal blog at andywightman.com covers politics and economics. Since 2016, 7 different Hacker News readers have linked it 11 times. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-09-28, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (11) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Andy Wightman's site for writing on Scottish land ownership, including his book 'The Poor Had No Lawyers', and for research into opaque landowner shell companies and the economics of land rent.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 11 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
…the blog and website of Andy Wightman
Most-linked posts?
- /docs/churchill.pdf3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2021-08-18
- /poor-had-no-lawyers2 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2016-05-03
What Hacker News says?
I can strongly recommend the excellent book "The Poor Had No Lawyers" for a look at the land ownership situation in Scotland: http://www.andywightman.com/poor-had-no-lawyers Edit: Another book I recommend to give a taste of the kinds of stuff that went on here is "Donald McLeod's Gloomy memories in the Highlands of Scotland" - a first hand account of the Clearances: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Donald-McLeods-memories-H…
Comment linking /poor-had-no-lawyers
on “Who Owns England?”Andy Wightman's writings are a good starting point for understanding Scotland's land ownership matters: http://www.andywightman.com/writings/publications
Comment linking /writings/publications
on “Who Owns England?”Here's an example of that kind of shell company trickery: http://www.andywightman.com/archives/4492
Comment linking /archives/4492
on “Who Owns England?”True, but sadly there are still some land owners in Scotland who forget their place and the laws: http://www.andywightman.com/archives/category/ledgowan https://www.scotsman.com/news/cairngorms-landowner-accused-o...
Comment linking /archives/category/ledgowan
on “Britain's Next Megaproject: A Coast-To-Coast Forest”The Scottish Government seems to be thinking about introducing a register of beneficial owners: https://www.gov.scot/Publications/2018/06/2736/355007 Finding out who actually owns anything has been recognised by many people as being a problem for a while: http://www.andywightman.com/archives/category/who-owns-scotl... Scotland has very old and very weird landownership laws.
Comment linking /archives/category/who-owns-scotland
on “A million-dollar brownstone that no one owned”These kinds of discussions always make me think of this story: "A Scottish miner was walking home one night with a bunch of pheasants he had poached from a local landowner's estate when the landowner appeared and demanded that the miner hand over the pheasants. "Why should I hand them over to you?", asked the miner. "Because this is my land and those are my pheasants", the landowner replied. "OK", said the miner, "w…
Comment linking /poor-had-no-lawyers
on “Italian court rules food theft 'not a crime' if hungry”This is fraud, they are literally selling you nothing. They sued a Member of the Scottish Parliament for writing a blog which explains the tax haven structure they use. http://www.andywightman.com/archives/4152 Don't believe any similar claims they make like "reintroducing lynx" they are doing no such thing. It's just a way to get people to give them money in return for nothing.
Comment linking /archives/4152
on “You can’t buy one square foot of land in Scotland and become a Scottish lord”Landowners have monopoly control of land. There are ways of defining monopolies that avoid this conclusion, but the effect of a monopoly is precisely the effect of landowners. See, for example, Churchill: http://www.andywightman.com/docs/churchill.pdf Land is essentially monopolised through regulatory capture (council land use restrictions) and the lack of new production of land (ignoring for now the very minor exce…
Comment linking /docs/churchill.pdf
on “As cities grow in size, the poor 'get nothing at all': study”This is unsurprising. Take a step back and squint enough and you can see any wide-scale fiscal stimulus will be absorbed by land rent. This is the inverse of the Georgist observation that "all taxes come out of rent." All stimulus is absorbed by rent. Winston Churchill on the topic: http://www.andywightman.com/docs/churchill.pdf > Some years ago in London there was a toll bar on a bridge across the Thames, and all t…
Comment linking /docs/churchill.pdf
on “Record rise in U.S. rents”Edit: thankyou for amending your comment about this being a good way to achieve right to roam. It's a rare thing from anyone on the internet to admit any kind of inaccuracy. This view ignores all the history and has it exactly backwards. A full description would require at least one book, although I'd suggest starting with http://www.andywightman.com/poor-had-no-lawyers A few things which must be taken into account:…
Comment linking /poor-had-no-lawyers
on “How the British aristocracy preserved their power”Rents and wages are inextricably bound. One cannot address one without addressing the other, least a gain in one side be appropriated from the other. The law of rent meets the iron law of wages. An excellent recent comment: "All goes back to the land, and the land owner is able to absorb to himself a share of almost every public and every private benefit" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28267591 http://www.andy…
Comment linking /docs/churchill.pdf
on “The Battle of Blair Mountain”
