NTS to be Reformed

At long last the National Trust for Scotland is to be radically reformed.  George Reid, a former presiding officer of the Scottish Parliament, is chairing a review of the trust and said that an Act of Parliament would be required to implement the scale of reform required by an organisation of such "Byzantine complexity".

The Trust presently has 11 board members, a 90-strong council, numerous committees and a variety of special advisors "almost 200 people have their pinkies in the pie," said Mr Reid. "We are pretty sure the sheer size of governance has to come down.  The NTS has only 310,000 members.

The Trust administers a vast estate of 120 historic properties and more than 76,000 hectares of land, with 450 staff and about 3,000 volunteers.  It sunk into financial  crisis in recent years and has seen a rapid turnover of its most senior executives.

The scale of Mr Reid's task in arguing the case for reform was underlined by some of the Trust's council members, many of whom are chosen from professional, artistic or conservation organisations with an interest in the Trust's work.

Part of Mr Reid's proposals is that NTS share some of its business with Historic Scotland who said it was considering partnership issues and that it would provide £1 million in the next three years towards Trust buildings and developing new joint projects.

If anyone can reorganise the NTS George Reid can.  May I suggest his next project should be a long, hard look at NHS Health Scotland.

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School Children's Visits to Scottish Battlefields Could Cause Anti-English Sentiment

The Battle of Culloden

The Scottish government is to offer school children subsidised trips to Bannockburn and Culloden, raising fears pupils will be indoctrinated with a 'narrow nationalist' view of Scots history.

Historians and opposition politicians have warned against teaching pupils a 'tabloid' version of history that could fuel anti-English sentiment. What absolute nonsense.

Ministers have given a sum of public money to the National Trust for Scotland which will supervise the trips to the battlefields and Burns Heritage Museum in Alloway, Ayrshire, but reval politicians said pupils might receive a skewed account of the past that fails to grasp that Scots fought both with the government as well as the Jacobites at Culloden.

What an insult to our history teachers and also those who from the NTS who will supervise the outings. Do they honestly think history teachers are incapable of teaching the history of Culloden and Bannockburn?

I'm rather pleased to hear of this innovation because I am of a generation which was taught only English or Empire history and the history of my own country was omitted from the curriculum.

Labour initiated trips to Auschwitz for school children and many, including myself, objected on the grounds that children were too young to cope with the raw emotion which is still evident there, so why are the unionists complaining about school children visiting Scottish battlefields?

As Huntly loon comments on the Scotsman article:

Surely the Unionists would be welcoming a proper interpretation of our history or is it that they would rather have it concealed or expunged.

Tom Devine, Professor of Scottish History at Edinburgh University sought to quell the unionists' doubts:

"If this is under supervision and organisation of both the schools and the NTS, I would certainly trust them to be responsible."

Source: Scotsman

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