SIR, In reply to the correspondents in The SF of July 27 and August 3, the answer is yes, the Scottish Government have been attacking the ‘little people’ for some time.

Market economics have always made life difficult for crofters and tenant farmers, but government is supposed to help them or at least provide a level playing field, but instead ScotGov practises economic apartheid against these ‘little people’.

The rot set in in 2008 with the SRDP scheme which handed vast sums of cash to landowners while effectively excluding younger tenant farmers on insecure leases. These tenant farmers still had their SFP deducted to pay for the scheme, yet could get nothing back. That was fair, wasn’t it?

Those farmers suffered, and the environment also suffered as they got no funding. This incoming scheme in 2025 will probably repeat that error.

The other hurdle was the SRDP work had to be paid for first, then wait a year or more to get it back.

Just what you need as a struggling young farmer with a young family.

But the jewel in the crown of ScotGov’s stupidity has to be the decision in 2013 to allow landlords to evict tenants and claim the farming subsidy themselves without doing a hand’s turn.

ScotGov made tenancies obsolete at a stroke.

They took the decision to impoverish large numbers of younger tenants, see them put out on the street, and hand all the taxpayer-funded subsidies to multi-millionaires.

SLE lobbying, of course, had nothing to do with it.

Since then, the roads are clogged with giant machinery while farmers and workers’ houses lie empty, decaying while the rural fabric dissolves.

Meanwhile, the death rate among evicted tenants continues to climb.

Common sense is obviously in very short supply. They say they want young farmers, then kick them in the teeth.

The ‘land reform’ meeting at the Highland Show mentioned by Tom Gray was a moment of high farce – the chairman of the committee is a landlord himself! Hardly impartial.

The only sensible words were from Andy Wightman who called for the end of feudalism by giving tenants the right to buy their holdings.

Not one tenant spoke up – how could they with the room packed with factors and landlords?

The ScotGov has an agenda, and the ‘little people’ are not on it.

They are simply collateral damage in the net-zero lunacy, with common sense long departed.

But with ScotGov coats now on a very shoogly peg, is there time for a rethink?

Name and address supplied.