Land Matters

I am a scientist by training. I believe that science holds out great promise for a better future. I believe all research dedicated to making the world a safer, healthier and more equitable place for us all to live is important. I therefore also believe that the public should be encouraged to get acquainted with the latest findings by researchers in science and the humanities. This is particularly important just now when the very nature of the scientific method and its relationship to public policy is under sustained attack as never before over the science of climate change.

When I read a newspaper article about the latest scientific findings in a field of interest I often want to get behind the headlines and read the actual research paper to read for myself what it’s all about. So I found myself recently reading about the findings of a major enquiry into the future of land use in the UK - the Foresight project.

I wanted to read the Evidence Reviews and noted the link to the Science Direct website where i found that I had to pay $39.95 for each of the 34 reviews - that’s around £1000 for the lot! I was taken aback and contacted the officials involved. They helpfully pointed out that I could actually download the papers directly from their wesbite. That was good to know but it was not immediately obvious as the paying link came before the free link. Anyway, it reminded me again of the concerns I’ve had for a long time that the public are denied access to publicly funded research. The House of Commons Select Committee on Science and Technology looked at this whole issue in 2003-04 and their report is excellent. But nothing’s been done as far as I can see to implement its conclusions.

A day after my frustrations over the Foresight reports, the media was reporting new research from the Met Office showing that the evidence that humans are responsible for climate change is stronger now than it was two years ago. In the current fevered atmosphere of public debate on this topic, this is quite a claim to make. Again, I wanted to read for myself the actual report. So I went to the Met Office website and read about it  I followed the link to the report and found myself at Wiley Interscience and having to register and pay for the report. So I contacted the Met Office press people who apologised and said they were tying to get a link to work directly but meantime I had to register with Wiley to get it. I did this but found I still had to pay. That was on 8th March. Tonight (12 March), I went back to the same site and, lo and behold, I didn’t have to pay and the pdf downloaded fine. Thank you Met Office for your swift action. Here is the report.

Finally, another piece of work caught my attention - a report on upland land use. I followed the link and got a 4 page summary at the end of which I found another link to the project website and another link to the full report Future of the Uplands and we’re back at Science Direct and $39.95 for the paper!

I am currently writing book on land issues and am finding access to hundreds of academic articles that I want to consult blocked by academic publishers who want £20 a copy. This is outrageous. How is the public to be informed about important issues such as climate change if it has to pay for the privilege? Most of this research has been paid for out of public money. It should be available to all under a simple Creative Commons licence. Will this be an issue in the forthcoming General Election? Don’t hold your breath.

Interesting news from Downing Street. It has announced that it intends to make most Ordnance Survey maps free for use online from April 2010.

Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the world wide web appears to have convinced Number 10 that this is the best way forward. For anyone who has read of my own problems with the OS, it will be obvious that this is a very welcome development. It remains to be seen, however, if it will actually happen or whether the OS resist the idea.

The scope of the proposal is impressive - in total over 11,000 public datasets are to be made available including, from the OS, electoral and local authority boundaries, postcode areas and mapping.

Official report here and here

Full story at the Guardian

But why no reports of this in the Scotsman or the Herald?

Following my post yesterday, it is great to see Heather Brooke on the cover of the Guardian’s G2 supplement today. Her story is a fascinating (but all too brief) account of the efforts she had to go to to secure access to information on MPs’ expenses. Some of the quotes from the Parliamentary officials are priceless.

“Transparency will damage democracy.” Andrew Walker, Head of House of Commons Fees Office

Wow!

Amidst all the justifiable anger over the revelations of MPs’ expenses it is worth remembering that we owe our knowledge of these issues not to the Daily Telegraph, not to the person who leaked them and certainly not to the House of Commons authorities who tried desperately first to suppress them and then to exempt themselves from the provisions of the Freedom of Information Act.

We owe it to Heather Brookes who made the original Freedom of Information request and who was determined enough to go all the way to the High Court in London  to secure this disclosure.

One day she may get the thanks she deserves.

In 2002 I launched a site called whoownsscotland which was designed to document the ownership of land in Scotland. Progress has been slow because it is substantially a voluntary effort though I have had great support form folk in meeting the expenses of running it. The biggest expense has been Ordnance Survey digital mapping. Now, however, my reationship with OS is over due to them terminating my contract unilaterally and trying to bully me into a new, far more expensive contract.

You can read the full story at

www.whoownsscotland.org.uk/os.php

Please leave any comments you care to make here at this blog entry.

11 COMMENTS (these have been carried over from my previous blog site - new comments apear in “comment”) link below
2:59 PM
George Clark said…

Andy
I have read the story and it makes grim reading. Hopoefully the OS crew will change their ways.

George

2.59pm
Anonymous said…
I find this incredible! You have taken all steps possible to be correct in your dealings with the OS and then they refute all agreements?
Does this mean that a sport such as Orienteering, where you mark out a course on a reproduced OS map is illegal?

7:25 PM
Greg said…
It’s genuinely outrageous that OS charges for this stuff at all; never mind their pricing and licensing policies make no sense.

At the end of the day, our government (at all levels) needs OS mapping to do its work; so our taxes pay for this data anyway. Making it free would cost no more, but enables all levels of the economy to generate innovation and wealth. This is the US approach, and part of the reason that their tech industry is able to fluorish so beneficially for their whole economy.

A government owned monopoly trying to maximise its income is a dangerous beast.

9:57 AM
Nick said…
Seeing as we paid for this data once (as taxpayers) paying for it again is a bit much.

Maybe you could derive your polygons from the recently released KGB maps

5:39 PM
Anonymous said…
This is not a unique story. OS are managed by a bunch of incompetents, with one hand not knowing what the other is doing, and like the blind monkey incapable of even reading and understanding their own drivel.

They are responsible to the Deputy Prime Minister, who despite correspondence on a similar but unrelated matter totally ignores everything put to him. Even to the extent of sending a dismissive comment back in a plain unstamped envelope with a Post Office demand to pay £1.23!

OS has not the slightest bit of common-sense to enable them to understand how negative and antagonistic they are, without the slightest sign of any real business acumen. Their ivory tower needs to be pulled down.

10:54 PM
Mike said…
Andy, like the others, I agree that this is not an unusual story. We had to go through hoops recently to get a small excerpt into an academic book we were publishing. All very unsatisfactory. I have worked in academic GIS for over 10 years and the recent surge in open source mapping tools is fantastic. Have you thought about putting your whoownsscotland mapping into a GoogleMap hack?

11:49 AM
Jack said…
I’m surprised nobody has suggested the obvious: that wealthy, well-connected landowners don’t like having maps of their estates published online; and perhaps one or two of them have found ways to lobby or put pressure on the OS to have them removed legally and discretely.

12:55 AM
Anonymous said…
Is there somewhere we can lodge our complaints, this is good, but doubt if OS will ever see it…

12:49 PM
Anonymous said…
They did what they did, and that can’t be changed. 

What I’m more interested in is the WHY. 

Why after telling you, initially, that all was OK, did they seemingly go out of their way to make things difficult for you?

8:30 PM
Anonymous said…
It is to be hoped that the EU’s INSPIRE Directive (2007/2/EC)which seeks to make “spatial information” gathered by governmental bodies more open will help to stop this sort of nonsense as practiced by the Ordnance Survey.

Keith T.

4:18 PM
muymalestado said…
So; OS adds value to the land of Great Britain by mapping and we are charged for it. On the face of it that sounds about right. Now; the Crown also charges for using the sea bed. Did they add value there? Will they soon charge for walking on the surface of Britain? Most of us breathe. Will we be charged?

1.21 AM 21 September 2007
Jackie Quinn said….
Sadly this is so typical of they way life is ..it is always all about money or someone wishing to flex their little power muscles.. It is a pity.

I feel for you going through all that stress for nothing.

Ross Finnie, the Minister for Environment and Rural Development, made an interesting announcement on Wednesday. He said that the Scottish Executive would in future disclose who got what in agricultural subsidies under the new Single Farm Payment Scheme. This follows a similar announcement in England. Click here to see the press release.

This is very welcome news since for many years, we’ve been told a lot about the public benefits that the Common Agricultural Policy delivers but have never been able to know who is delivering what benefits in return for what cash. With the new Freedom of Information Act, such secrecy becomes hard to defend.

There remains one thing still to be done. As the Advice Note from the Scottish Executive states: -

3. Establishing entitlements
We will send you a claim form in March 2005. This will show the number of entitlements you have and their value. To participate in the SFPS 2005 you must complete and return the claim form and submit an Integrated Administration Control System (IACS) Aid Application 2005 detailing all the land (arable and forage including all seasonal land) you farm on 15 May 2005 in the United Kingdom as a separate IACS business. We must receive both forms by 16 May 2005.

The IACS forms include a map of the land to which the subsidy relates. I’ve been trying for years to get hold of this information but it’s always been denied. I’ve thus written to Ross Finnie to ask whether the public can details of the land to which subsidies relate so that they can assess for themselves the value for money delivered by the subsidies that are paid from their taxes. I will report on any result I receive.

Predictably the farming lobby is suspicious. The NFU released this statement. The Scottish Farmer Journal has condemned the proposals as “another attempt by petty, narrow-minded Labour administrations (up to their necks in sleaze both at Holyrood and at Westminster) to bring those so-called Tory-supporting country-folk to heel. In their editorial they don’t explain exactly what these sleaze allegations are. They also do not reflect on the fact that it was a Lib Dem Minister who made these announcements. Vast parts of rural Scotland vote Lib Dem (borders, Argyll, North East, Orkney, Shetland etc.). A farming journalist, Andrew Arbuckle has just become an MSP. So it’s ridiculous to talk of Tory-supporting country folk.

The editorial suggests that social security payments should therefore also be disclosed. Not only are these not administered by the Scottish Executive, the amounts available are already made public.

Scottish Enterprise and Highlands and Islands Enterprise publish details of subsidies given to other private businesses. Why should farm businesses be any different? The Inland Revenue publish details of inheritance tax exemptions complete with maps to show the public the benefits that are being delivered. Again, why should farmers be treated any differently.

Farm subsidies represent substantial sums of money handed over to private businesses to provide an alleged public benefit. It’s only right that we should have access to the information on who gets what, where and what for in order to enable us to make our own judgement as to whether this is money well spent.