NeitherI nor Common Weal are against development in Scotland. Quite the opposite. We believe our country is desperately in need of much more investment in modern infrastructure, including tourism infrastructure.
Scotland's tourism industry takes too much value out of its assets in relation to how much it puts in. Lots of infrastructure is ageing and lots of places lack development.
So our anger at the Flamingo Land decision has nothing to do with whether there should be a tourism development on the banks of Loch Lomond, it's that the development should benefit Scotland and its people. This development doesn't and never did.
Letting it go ahead is the wrong decision environmentally. Good infrastructure in the 21st century should enhance the environment, not damage it.
Every assessment made concluded it should be rejected. So adapt the plans, scale them for the location and make them work – don't just ram them through anyway. Have we learned nothing from the damage done to a Site of Special Scientific Interest by Trump's Aberdeen golf course?
It is the wrong decision for the community. The local opposition to this development was overwhelming, for all sorts of reasons. It is dubious whether lots of low-pay service sector jobs are what this community needs.
It certainly has no stake in or ownership of the development. No-one who will take the profits out of this venture lives within 300 miles of the affected community.
But it is also the wrong decision for the community because it is the wrong decision for infrastructure.
I take the road past Loch Lomond every time I head to Scotland's north-west. It is always slow and busy. The projected traffic flow increases will make significantly worse a situation that public policy should be improving.
The reason good development works well in nations who do it so much better than Scotland is that they are taken as holistic exercises, used to improve the wider area and to create better outcomes for people.
They are scaled to location, not grossly enlarged as financiers demand. If developments induce substantial new traffic road updates or public transport alternatives are integrated.
Work is done on amenities and water supply and parking and sewage. Development plans are created to leverage benefit from new development. These nations seek to boost other economic or tourism offers in the surrounding areas so maximum benefit comes to as many people as possible.
They design ways for the overflow of economic activity to flow into surrounding areas. They do not dump everyone else – everyone else – with the price of a millionaire's profits.
The scale of Scotland's centralisation is petrifying – local communities are always, always weak
This development means you will pay every time you try to drive to Scotland's north-west, because your journey will be slower and worse and long traffic snarl-ups much more likely. You will pay to mitigate environmental harms.
The community will pay in its quality of life. Local young people will pay as they are streamed into low-pay service-sector employment, or they will compete for affordable homes with a foreign workforce.
Only the owner will gain. That is a bad development.
And the decision is very, very clearly wrong democratically. Everything above is what was found at every stage of the planning process which is why, again and again, it met overwhelming opposition and was unanimously rejected. That this all carries less weight than some "reporter" who, after chats with the wealthy, can overrule the entire process is a scandal in itself.
For the Scottish Government then to pretend that this wasn't its decision is simply false. This is a Scottish Government decision and its elaborate attempts to create plausible deniability are a poor show.
The scale of Scotland's centralisation is petrifying. Local communities are always, always weak. The Scottish Government gives them next to no power and then, when they exercise what little power they have, too often central government contemptuously reveals it was all a charade in the first place.
The First Minister holds summits to try to work out why people have lost faith in democracy and politics in Scotland. This kind of shit is why it has happened.
The phrase "it never matters what we think" should really be Scotland's national motto. In Scotland, democracy appears to be a con that keeps the public busy while the rich do what they want anyway.
So this decision is utterly terrible for trust in the honesty and probity of politics. Do you know anyone in the building industry? Ask them what planning conditions are. They will tell you that they're just there to soothe the locals.
They will disappear once approval is given and the fines for breaking them are negligible anyway. Tree protection order? Don't make me laugh – the fine is worth less than the land under the branches of the tree.
The decision is wrong economically. The holding company that will operate the resort is registered in Scotland but is wholly owned by a family based in Yorkshire. I can see no mechanism in the ownership structure of this enterprise that will bring any profits into the Scottish economy.
The sorry, sorry reality is that economic policy in Scotland starts and ends at the desire to sell the country and its assets to any foreign millionaire it can, as fast as it can.
The question isn't whether we were culturally colonised 300 years ago, it's whether we're being economically colonised now
It is time we understood that "foreign direct investment" is Scotland's biggest failure, a betrayal of the nation. Remember when Scotland's North Sea oil was taken from us? That was foreign direct investment. So is ScotWind.
Our land, our businesses, our infrastructure, our airports and ports, our tourism, our high street properties, our trees – enormous proportions of all of this are owned by corporations from foreign countries who extract the wealth.
Last year, Common Weal produced a report which showed that in the preceding year, £36.5 billion flew out of Scotland while only £26.4bn came in. That is a net loss of 5.6% of GDP, which is greater than the average of any World Bank income group, including the income group made up of the world's least developed and most heavily indebted nations. We lose our wealth faster than the average third-world country. Scotland has lost £277 bn of national wealth since devolution.
The question isn't whether we were culturally colonised 300 years ago,
it's whether we're being economically colonised now. Which means this decision is really bad for independence, because week after week, Scotland's pathetic, needy economic strategy strips it of ownership of the national assets that make us a viable future nation-state.
There is a local development trust with 1000 members and strong local business links. It has plans. If I was a Government minister I'd be up there tomorrow, supporting them to develop an exciting proposal based on local benefit.
And I'd commit to fund a viable final business plan via the Scottish National Investment Bank, keeping the whole development in community ownership, with the economic benefit staying in Scotland and the wealth created shared across the community.
There is really only one upside to this whole, sorry affair; the massive property developers, financiers, consultancies and legal firms who in reality appear to operate government in Scotland all have generous fees coming.
On every other possible level, this is a farce and a scandal.