Latest news with #KneecapGlastonbury
The National
14 hours ago
- The National
AI alone just won't wash – people must be in the pipeline
I needed to spin up a very quick solution to the problem of getting 2025 tourism information in Tiree tidied up into a single usable place which was, crucially, easily updatable. This might surprise some folks, who remain convinced that by talking about the challenges of tourism, and second homes, I am single-handedly trying to destroy the industry. Nothing could be further from the truth – the goal is to try and do tourism better, to the benefit of our communities – but that's a column for another day. READ MORE: 'Completely unprecedented': BBC cuts live feed for Kneecap Glastonbury performance In this instance, I am wearing my Trust comms hat, and trying to ensure that people visiting Tiree get all the information they need at their fingertips. I want to make sure that we are promoting all local businesses, and that we are clearly communicating the key things we want people to know – like how to use passing places, and when and how dogs should be controlled. This is an important part of making tourism sustainable, and beneficial. It should also give the visitor a better experience. Getting that information out to as many people as possible seems like something that technology should be able to simplify. After all, in 2025, isn't everything solved by applying 'AI'? In short, no – but it can help if you know what you are doing. AI doesn't know where we live. It doesn't know what is still open or not open, it has no idea about the realities of visiting an island with no cash machine and cranky crofters (I include myself in that demographic), and it has not a scooby about the vagaries of island life. The problem of getting the details right is not one that's going to be solved by AI and it's not one that's going to be solved by guides that are based on people sucking information off the internet and turning it into a money maker. It's a problem that needs to be solved by people. We understand the difference between information and knowledge. Computers do not. (Image: Unsplash) A disclaimer: I am writing this before the app is launched, and in the full knowledge that I might end up with egg all over my face as the entire concept flops. Such is life. Let's take this information guide as an example of when and how 'AI' is particularly useful. Why am I insisting on putting it in quotes? Because it is not true AI. Not even close. The AI tools we are using are just clever computer programmes with fancy names. Most of the companies producing 'AI' solutions are simply reclothing the emperor. The emperor has had many outfits. Remember Dropbox's early days? It presented itself as seamless cloud magic, but behind the curtain, there was a bloke manually moving files between servers – a classic piece of human-powered sleight of hand. We've seen that before, and now it's happening again with AI. Take once a Microsoft-backed, billion-valuation startup, it claimed its 'AI' assistant Natasha could build apps just by chatting. In reality, however, it leaned on around 700 human engineers in India to do the coding while calling it AI-powered – a textbook case of 'AI-washing'. It's not that it didn't work – it did, thanks to real people – but the magic was all in the marketing, not the algorithm. So back to the practical side of building this thing. The island already has a very good website, but staff at the Trust find it hard to update because the backend of the website is needlessly complicated, and requires them to set aside time to refresh themselves on how to do it every time. When it came to the data, I could have sent AI off to gather all the up-to-date details for businesses in Tiree, to scour the web for the important stuff people need to know and to compile it into a guide. But that would have been a deeply stupid course of action. The internet is full of information about Tiree – some of it right, a lot of it not. There are business websites and social media profiles updated on an ad hoc basis, glossy magazine features with variable accuracy and out-of-date attempts at exactly what I am doing. If you want a good laugh, there's an 'AI'-written guide to Tiree that's so wildly inaccurate it's worth buying for the giggle. (Image: Getty Images) AI doesn't think independently. It draws conclusions from the data it's given. If that data is wrong, so are the results. In this case, the data is far from sound. We would have had to check everything anyway. So we did the data entry manually – copied content, cross-referenced with social media and filled in what we could from public sources. We did the bit AI cannot do – we verified. Content gathering, though, was the easy part. The harder bits were organising the information and making it super simple to update. For users, it had to be laid out in a way that made sense to both visitors and the community. What do we want people to know? What are they likely to miss? What matters here, in Tiree? These are not questions AI can answer. You need to live here, or listen to the people who do. So I asked around, took advice and tried to reflect the priorities of the island. None of that could have come from a chatbot. That part still takes people. Always has. It was the updating part that I was most interested in. If you have an office tech geek with the time to update opening hours in an inscrutable content management system, that's great but those are few and far between. Updating needed to be quick and effortless. I asked ChatGPT how best to do it. It came up with a series of suggestions – including an app builder that runs off a spreadsheet. I had never heard of it, but I was interested. I ended up using it to build the new information app. And the whole thing does indeed run off a Google spreadsheet. To change an opening time, all anyone needs to do is update a spreadsheet cell. That's it. In this case, AI earned its keep by giving me a quick solution I didn't know existed. It offered up an app builder that runs off a spreadsheet, and that turned out to be exactly what I needed. But it only gave the right suggestion because I already understood the 'why' and the 'who'. The software itself also describes what it does as 'AI'. What it actually did was ask me what I wanted, suggest a suitable template and walk me through connecting a spreadsheet and mapping fields to cells. As a front-end person, databases are not my bag, so this worked really well. But let's not pretend it was thinking. It was responding to instructions. So yes – AI helped me build an app. But the purpose, the content, the priorities? That came from here. It didn't speak to the people who live on the island, or consider what makes life easier for visitors and locals alike. I did that. The tool was helpful because the hard part – the understanding – had already been done. Only the season will tell whether other people agree with my understanding.
The National
14 hours ago
- Politics
- The National
Anas Sarwar and Keir Starmer have taken another hit to any credibility
For the recently wedded, the first anniversary is known as the paper one. So-called, apparently, because the relationship of the couple is still fragile and delicate territory and is also a blank page representing how they are just beginning their life story together. Or maybe underscoring the need for a government to remember the all-important relationship with its own troops. However, you dress it up, the very late-night concessions wrung out of a beleaguered Work and Pensions Secretary last Thursday night count as the third government U-turn in the last month. Thatcher once famously told her conference: 'You turn if you want to, the Lady's not for turning.' As they say; compare and contrast. READ MORE: 'Completely unprecedented': BBC cuts live feed for Kneecap Glastonbury performance In the past 48 hours, the narrative has been swiftly rewritten as the bill being strengthened, and the Government only changing its mind having listened – however belatedly – to its own backbenchers. The latter, of course, had already been listening to some very alarmed disabled voters and unpaid carers, liable to lose some £4k of urgently needed funds. Turns out that what the PM dismissed as 'noises off' when he was at the G7 was more of a howl of anguish from a wheen of Labour MPs who had listened to their constituents more assiduously than their own cabinet had listened to them. What can't be mended by this late-night about-turn is the anguish of many PIP recipients who have been through the mental wringer as minister after minister intoned that the bill would not be amended. There's a very instructive passage in the book Get In, which recounts how Starmer was selected as Labour's likely leader and, if all went to plan, the PM in waiting: '[Morgan] McSweeney and his acolytes saw themselves as insurgents … as long as Starmer's private office was functional, they could control the party's politics themselves, without interference from small-minded Westminster villagers.' The book also details Starmer's contempt for, and refusal to play by, the normal political rules. Which may just explain why Labour's high command, and its leader, remained tone-deaf to the scale of the rebellion until five minutes to midnight. It also explains why Starmer first appointed Sue Gray as his chief of staff, believing that she could plug the gaps in the rest of the staff's political nous. Then she too was defenestrated. McSweeney took the post instead which is a high-profile insider's role when the going is good, less so when the solid matter hits the fan. As he found out when he and Sir Keir tried to stem the rising tide of rebellion. Even deploying high-profile colleagues to ring around the erstwhile faithful failed to persuade them to take their names off the so-called wrecking amendment. They longed for more of what Bush Senior once called 'the vision thing' and less growth through guns. (Image: Rafik Wahba on Unsplash) There's always spare cash for shiny new weaponry, many thought, but less for the poor, vulnerable or disabled. This was not why people had voted for Labour. (Not at all incidentally, the 12 new F-35A planes – which can carry tactical nuclear weapons – will come in at £80 million each, or just under £1 billion all told. Other defence contracts will be just shy of £60bn in the next calendar year.) Not really the sort of price tag which usually attracts 'noises off'. The other thing to note about the purchase of the planes is that they're entirely contingent on the USA giving the go-ahead for their use – a bit like Trident which some people persist in calling our 'independent' nuclear deterrent. The other day I heard Pat McFadden, the Scot who has sat for a Wolverhampton seat for the past 20 years, talk of America being a 'reliable ally'. Really? Would that be the country with a president as predictable as a Scottish weather vane? The chap with the shortest attention span of any adult political leader? Allegedly the G7 timetable was hugely truncated to stop the Trump person getting too bored and maybe even again leaving early! It was once observed of Scottish golfing great Sandy Lyle that the longest thing he had ever read was a left-to-right putt. Bit like the perennially (and expensively) golfing bod in the White House. Maybe flying back early from the Canadian summit gave him time for a quick nine holes before popping into his security meeting. Typically, he then claimed credit for solving all conflicts everywhere, his Iranian adventure certainly ensuring that attention was diverted from the carnage in Gaza. Despite the ill-named Humanitarian Foundation he set up with his pal 'Bibi' having led to the murder of countless civilians whose 'crime' was being so desperate for food that they approached the aid stations, where many were gunned down. Trump's reaction to all of this was to toss the Foundation another $30m, although the operation had been roundly condemned by everyone who actually understood, after many years of experience, how to distribute aid without casualties. Inevitably, the fallout from the latest UK Government's capitulation has had an impact on the politics in our own backyard. Although there were the signatures of no fewer than 12 Scottish Labour MPs on the amendment, Anas Sarwar chose to back his ultimate boss. No change there, then. Wonder how he felt on Friday morning when the commitment to reform welfare and the pre-existing bill met the Head Office's shredding machine. If you want people to stop referring to Scottish Labour as a branch office, then it's essential to stop behaving like a branch manager. Sarwar may have to eat some humble pie this coming week, but his are flesh wounds compared to the ugly gash in the PM's credibility. Sir Keir was much given to mocking what he called the 'sticking plaster' policies of the government he so handsomely defeated a torrid 12 months ago. It will take more than a temporary plaster to heal this particular wound, I'm guessing. And what of his Chancellor? Her legendary fiscal rules are apparently self-imposed; a naked bid to convince the marketplace that she was a serious chancellor with a serious agenda and would not cave in to external pressure. That too will lack credibility when she checks her spreadsheets and finds an ever-larger, blacker hole than the one she inherited. She and Keir will doubtless argue that the humongous hike in defence expenditure was an essential response to the dangerous times in which we all now live. If that response includes tax rises and these are not aimed at those with obscenely broad shoulders, she may find herself pointed at the shredder too. There is a well-trained army of lawyers and accountants whose day job is to allow the very wealthy to stay that way by stashing their cash in a variety of offshore hidey-holes. Every government promises to clamp down on this mammoth tax fraud and no government, to my knowledge, has made the smallest dent in it. When Denis Healey was chancellor, he got pelters for suggesting he would 'squeeze property speculators until the pips squeak'. Mind you, the same gent once observed: 'Being chancellor is not a woman's job. There's a difference between the sexes, and people who don't know that don't know what people are like with their clothes off.' I'm sure he didn't repeat that in the hearing of the redoubtable Edna Healey, his missus. Then again, having a woman ruling the roost at number 11 probably depends on the woman.
The National
14 hours ago
- Politics
- The National
Scottish refugee charity ‘won't shut up, it will show up'
Selina Hales founded Refuweegee, 10 years ago this December. The charity aims to 'provide a warm welcome to forcibly displaced people arriving in Glasgow' through the provision of welcome packs and emergency packs. Hales is experiencing an even busier week for Refuweegee than normal: 'Every week at Refuweegee is a busy week but whenever you're asking people to stand up, to get involved, to vote with their feet, to be present, to pay attention, it tends to be a lot busier. 'Over the past week, we've had protests, we've had events, we've had horrific news stories, we've had our usual 200-plus people through our door each day looking for critical support and the picture, the landscape, just seems to be getting more and more difficult for people. READ MORE: 'Completely unprecedented': BBC cuts live feed for Kneecap Glastonbury performance 'Normally when we talk about things being more difficult for people, we're talking about the refugee community and those we work with, but actually, it's getting more difficult to peacefully protest, to work in this sector, to get people to approach things with kindness. 'It's terrifying that kindness actually appears to now be becoming radical.' Refuweegee was involved in events for the Refugee Festival Scotland which ran between June 13-22. The festival is 'always a busy time' for them. The charity participates in different protests for two main reasons, which Hales says are the need 'to show up for the community that we work with' and for the positivity brought by 'connecting with other people physically on the streets' which 'really helps when you're feeling overwhelmed.' Hales recounts a horrific experience at the Aye Welcome Refugees march earlier this month. (Image: NQ) 'While with my daughter, I had to tell a man that it was entirely inappropriate to follow me and my daughter, shouting at me that refugees are 'dogs' and 'should be sent back home',' she explains. 'I've never encountered that before, so that's the change that I can see – even though it's still a minority of people, there's a boldness in their hatred and their racism and their Islamophobia and their xenophobia, and that is not pleasant.' Refuweegee deals with people in a range of different circumstances. 'Some people who have fled hate crime, who heard that Glasgow is a safer place, have come up from England,' Hales says. 'We have people who have literally just arrived in the UK. Some people who have been waiting in the housing system for months.' Hales outlined a major problem with the asylum system. People who 'have been moved out of asylum accommodation and are now homeless because they're waiting for their permanent accommodation'. 'At the beginning of Refuweegee, there wasn't a gap there, when somebody left asylum accommodation, they were moved straight into their permanent accommodation,' she adds. 'You can have somebody who's been in the asylum system for three or four years, who's stayed in a residential flat paid for by the Home Office.' Their successful asylum claim should feel like a positive step for integration into the community, but Hales states that instead 'they get evicted from their accommodation' and are left to wait on housing lists. Refuweegee is not afraid to tell it as it is and to take firm stances. The charity has dropped partnerships with companies over them being 'complicit' in crimes committed by Israel. 'BDS [the Boycott, Divestments, Sanctions movement] is the only way for us to move forward comfortably in ourselves,' she says. Refuweegee has had corporate partnerships over the years where staff working for a company will take part in the services that it offers, but the charity 'will not be used as a corporate tickbox' while an 'organisation invests in Israeli weaponry'. 'We've walked away from very big financial corporate relationships,' Hales adds. She makes the distinction between the corporations and their staff, recognising how difficult it could be for an individual to leave a corporation just because they disagree with it, and urges those employees to still get involved, provided that Refuweegee will not be used to promote a corporation. Refuweegee has also had different organisations turn away from it, including 'two private schools' who disengaged from the organisation 'because of pro-Palestinian posts' after having pressure put on them, Hales says. She maintains that Refuweegee is very careful about the content that it posts and that it stands by it. Speaking about the organisation's reaction to ongoing news stories including those on the conflict between Israel and Iran, with US involvement and the ongoing bombardment of Gaza, Hales says that 'I have never felt so concerned about my team – because of the news because of the witnessing of a genocide', and the people they meet 'whose families they're watching for in those videos'. In speaking to Hales, the message from Refuweegee that stands out is the need to 'show up'. What does that mean? Speaking about 'attacks on the arts', she points to Kneecap, saying 'that is how you show up'. 'It is glorious and beautiful and I take my hat off to them. I've just bought tickets to see them in London so that says it all,' she laughs. 'The media response to the genocide we are witnessing, predominantly, has been utterly shameful. 'The celebrity and public figure response is also utterly shameful. Just show up for individuals as human beings, look at what you are witnessing and say you are utterly horrified. Show up.' 'I think [Kneecap] have done a spectacular job and I couldn't be prouder and I think with the government response and the banning of them from playing in certain places and the attack on the arts, protesting has become unsafe. 'You can feel the shift and the tension, it's become unsafe. 'Look at what's happened at the CCA [the Centre for Contemporary Arts in Glasgow, where there was a pro-Palestine protest last Tuesday], the police response to a peaceful protest in an arts organisation around something very clear, none of it has been violent, it has been open book, the police response to that was vicious. (Image: Newsquest) 'We need creative spaces that we can show up in.' Citing the UK Government's decision to proscribe Palestine Action as a terrorist organisation, she adds: 'The criminalising of organisations who are there to stand up … I firmly believe that we are all Palestine Action.' Hales also speaks on her belief that Refuweegee itself is penalised for taking a stand: 'I feel like we're pushing against the tide. The Government response is so horrific and vile. 'The community engages with us really well, individuals across Glasgow and Scotland can see what we're all about, that we're a complete open book. 'They can trust in us to say what needs to be said, share the information that we've got, to educate and to show up but that works against us in terms of Scottish Government and council funding, we receive neither of those things and I firmly believe that is because we won't shut up.' From the beginning of Refuweegee, Hales has been asked the question of where she wants the organisation to be in the next five years. Her answer has always been the same: she doesn't want Refuweegee to exist in five years. 'The ultimate aim is to not be needed,' she explains. While there is a need for Refuweegee, however, Hales is clear about the role of its team: 'What we do for people is really simple, it's just holding space. 'It's just joining up, for every ask, there's always somebody willing to give and it's lovely to be in the middle of that. 'Every day can be different. There are some things that are routine but when dealing with people, you don't know what will be thrown at you. 'Some days you'll just have the best intentions of getting stuff done and then a trafficked 17-year-old will walk through the door saying 'I need help'.' In March 2025, Refuweegee moved to a new space in George Square, which it has used to create a space for people which allows them to access the services offered by the charity, but also have social spaces, a children's play area and a prayer area. Hales concludes: 'There's loads of ways to get involved in Refuweegee, from fundraising, to volunteering, to letter-writing, to coming and hanging out in our space.'
The National
14 hours ago
- Entertainment
- The National
Woman sets up her tent to make sure working-class voices are heard
Rents of £7000 for one bedroom in a shared flat for a month has made Narin Özenci shell out for a tent so she can bring her one-woman show to the city. She told the Sunday National that she wasn't going to let the high costs put her off staging her show, Inner Child(ish), as she felt too many working-class voices were being forced out of the Fringe because of the expense. 'I don't know how anyone can justify £7000 for one room for a month,' said Özenci, who has autism. 'You hardly see any working-class people there now because of the costs. That has driven me to do it even more as I want to help represent the working class.' READ MORE: 'Completely unprecedented': BBC cuts live feed for Kneecap Glastonbury performance Özenci first appeared at the Fringe in 2014, creating a stir by performing her show in her car. 'I could only squeeze in four or five people at a time but it got good feedback and Mark Watson came to interview me for BBC2's Edinburgh Nights,' she said. As she no longer owns a car, she will have to lug her tent to Edinburgh via public transport. And while she has camped before, she admitted that living in a tent for a month would be a challenge. 'I've never camped for as long as a month so it is going to be intense,' she joked. 'I probably will get a bit grumpy. Fortunately, I have a good sense of humour so I am trying to look at it as a funny adventure. And I might try to find someone strong and sexy to help me put up the tent.' Born in Essex to a Turkish Cypriot family as a second-generation immigrant, Özenci was not screened for autism until she was at university where she also discovered the clowning group Ridiculusmus. Inspired, she entered a TV writing competition and won a place in the Edinburgh International TV Festival 2003. However, during a networking event, she was laughed at by a group of girls in the toilets for not wearing party clothes or make-up. After ranting about it to the comedian John Ryan, he advised her to try stand-up comedy. She took his advice and started gigging, integrating comedy into her degree and finally graduating from Aberystwyth University with a BA (Hons) in Performance with Film and TV. In 2016, she received her first major acting and writing credit for Girls Go Trolling (Channel 4 Online) and made guest appearances in Hooligan Legacy (2016), Finding Fatimah (2017) and Man Like Mobeen (2018). Özenci is making her welcome return to the Fringe this year with her new show which is a cross between stand-up and clowning. 'It's a satire but it comes from a place of truth as the whole show is an allegory for an autistic meltdown,' she said. 'I wanted to demonstrate what it is like to be in a meltdown and how I get out of it. 'I'm not actually having a meltdown – I am humourising it because that is the only way it does not have power over me. It's also to educate neurotypical people as to how we process information and what we do when we are in a mess.' In the show, Özenci's alter ego, Narin Oz, is a misbehaving, rule-breaking, prank-loving being who enjoys nothing more than taking reality and flipping it on its head. She likes challenging the status quo, messing with social order and enjoying the chaos. It's a relaxed performance for the whole month as she wants neurodivergent people as well as neurotypicals to come along. 'I want people to be able to own who they are as a person because being neurodivergent is nothing to be ashamed of,' Özenci said. As well as writing and performing in the show, she is in the process of developing clown workshops specifically for neurodivergent people to help them embrace their full, unmasked selves. In her spare time, she is practising putting up her tent. Narin Oz: Inner Child(ish) is on from July 31 until August 24 (not August 12) at the Just the Tonic Mash House.
The National
14 hours ago
- General
- The National
Rule-breaking mega farms in Scotland revealed as polluters told to pay
MEGA farms in Scotland, including some with more than a million animals, have repeatedly leaked excrement and failed to monitor contamination, putting humans, wildlife and the environment at risk, The Ferret can reveal. By failing to responsibly contain or dispose of slurry, wastewater and harmful air particles, these industrial-sized farms were responsible for 126 breaches of green regulations between May 2022 and November 2024. The rule-breaking is revealed in inspection reports compiled by the Scottish Environment Protection Agency (Sepa), which The Ferret obtained under Freedom of Information law. Campaigners and an MSP argued that polluters should face greater penalties for allowing more serious breaches to occur. Scotland's megafarms 'pollute rivers, degrade soils, fail to deliver nutritious food and drive biodiversity loss,' according to wildlife charity WWF. READ MORE: 'Completely unprecedented': BBC cuts live feed for Kneecap Glastonbury performance In reply, Sepa said intensive farms are 'regulated closely' and repeat rulebreakers face 'enforcement' from the environmental regulator. Farming sites that have the capacity for more than 40,000 poultry birds, or either 2000 pigs or 750 sows, must obtain a permit from Sepa and face inspections. Smaller operations, and beef and dairy farms, do not require such permissions, despite being major polluters, although they are subject to other rules. Some 114 intensive pig and poultry farms currently have permits and are collectively allowed to keep nearly 19 million birds and 109,000 pigs, according to Sepa's data. HOOK2SISTERS THE worst offending intensive farm company was Hook2Sisters (H2S). The Oxfordshire-based firm, which is permitted to keep nearly 7.5 million birds at its 19 Scottish sites, was responsible for more than a quarter of all intensive farm environmental breaches. At its poultry complex, near Eccles, Berwickshire, H2S polluted the environment with 'chicken litter and dirty water' in 2022, and was not treating surface water to remove pollutants. Around two years later, Sepa found that operators were failing to check whether the site was contaminating soil and groundwater. Polluted groundwater can threaten drinking water supplies, according to Sepa's English counterpart. No pollution monitoring was taking place at the H2S intensive farm near Balado, Kinross in 2022. In each of the two years that followed, the firm contaminated ground via cracked concrete at the site. Further monitoring failures were discovered at the H2S mega farm, near Meikleour, Perthshire, in 2023. More cracked flooring and a lack of drainage systems designed to prevent water pollution were found at its poultry complex near Broxburn, West Lothian, in both 2022 and 2024. The Broxburn site is allowed to hold nearly 1.3 million birds. (Image: Archant) At Balado, a 'significant build-up of dust and mud' had formed under the fans ventilating four chicken sheds in 2023. Poultry farm dust contains faeces and other pollutants, which can harm humans, according to a 2023 study published in the Science Of The Total Environment journal. At its Gogarbank poultry complex in western Edinburgh, dirty water was not being properly contained and 'waste material' and rubbish littered nearby woodland in 2022. H2S had also not adequately concreted the ground to stop pollution. An H2S spokesperson said: 'As of June 2025, we can confirm remedial action has been taken at all farms and all locations as listed are compliant. We remain committed to upholding the highest environmental standards and continuing to invest in our Scottish farming base.' The Ferret previously revealed that between 2015 and 2017, H2S sites at Alloa, Balado and Broxburn were among the biggest polluters of ammonia. The harmful gas combines with other pollutants in cities and creates a deadly form of air pollution called PM2.5. 2 Sisters Food Group, a separate entity which runs chicken abattoirs, also has a history of flouting Scotland's environmental regulations, as we have previously revealed. It has received millions of pounds in taxpayer subsidies from the Scottish Government. OTHER BREACHES FACTORY farms that flouted environmental rules included those run by PD Hook, which acts as a supplier to H2S and other firms. PD Hook's Helensfield Poultry Farm near Clackmannan, which houses 133,000 birds, failed to monitor soil and groundwater in 2022. Cracked concrete flooring was discovered at PD Hook's Mossbank Farm, near Cowdenbeath, in 2022. PD Hook said that this and all other environmental issues discovered by Sepa had since been resolved. At pig producer DW Argo's Ellismoss Farm near Kinellar, Aberdeenshire, which can hold up to 4277 pigs, slurry was found to be leaking into surface water in 2023 – an issue that Sepa officers had 'raised at several previous inspections'. DW Argo declined to comment. In 2022, Sepa found that Welsh poultry firm Annyalla Chicks allowed dirty wastewater to flow on to land neighbouring its Addinstone complex, near Earlston. Operators of the site – which can house up to 382,000 chickens – put soil and groundwater at risk due to the 'exceptionally poor condition' of concrete surfaces, and allowed dust to accumulate beneath chicken shed ventilation fans. The farm also lacked a suitable way to store dead chickens and the liquid waste produced by their corpses. In 2024, Sepa found that York-based Warrendale Eggs Ltd was releasing dust and particulate matter – air pollution which is harmful to humans – via exhaust fans from its chicken sheds at Swinton Poultry Farm near Greenriggs, Duns. Sepa also found a blocked and broken drain, ground surfaces in poor condition and large cracks in a drainage channel, both of which risked pollution to soil and groundwater. Poor drainage and cracked and worn surfaces were also found in 2022 at Warrendale's Cottage Wood farm near Earlston. Fragments of polystyrene were discovered in blocked drains on the site and in nearby water. Meanwhile, 'significant quantities of dust and feathers' had formed on fans, outside surfaces and nearby vegetation. CALL FOR POLLUTERS TO PAY CAMPAIGNERS and an opposition MSP argued that polluters should be made to pay for environmental breaches, or have public funds clawed back. Kirsty Tait, Scotland director of the Food, Farming and Countryside Commission, an independent charity, said: 'The challenges of avoidable pollution highlighted in this investigation are ones that citizens involved in The Food Conversation, the UK's largest public dialogue about food, want addressed. 'Notably, there was frustration from citizens in the Lothians about the lenient treatment of polluters, and support for making serious ecosystem damage a crime was high.' Tait added: 'Citizens want government and industry to be accountable for their actions and to protect people and planet.' Jenny Hawley, policy and advocacy manager at Plantlife, also called for Sepa to charge polluters 'for the devastation they are inflicting on our natural environment and to extend the permitting system to smaller poultry units and intensive beef and dairy farms'. She claimed that 'uncontrolled air and water pollution from this kind of intensive livestock farming is driving Scotland's wildlife ever-closer to the edge of extinction'. WWF Scotland branded the rise of intensive farming 'a warning sign that our food system is heading in the wrong direction'. 'We've built a system where the most harmful forms of agriculture are also the most profitable – megafarms that pollute rivers, degrade soils, fail to deliver nutritious food and drive biodiversity loss,' said Ruth Taylor, WWF's agriculture and land use policy manager. She added: 'What we urgently need to see is farming with nature, through nature-friendly methods that restore ecosystems, build resilience and ensure farmers stay profitable.' The Scottish Greens spokesperson for rural affairs, Ariane Burgess MSP, said: 'These industrial-scale operations, which cram millions of animals into confined spaces, are clearly failing in their responsibilities' 'The fact that these firms continue to ignore basic environmental protections while raking in taxpayer money is completely unacceptable. There must be consequences for those who break the rules, and that includes the removal of public funding and the suspension of operations until environmental practices are improved.' Sepa expects 'all regulated operators to understand their impact on the environment and to comply with their obligations in legislation, and conditions set out in authorisations'. 'Intensive agriculture is regulated closely due to the potential risks it poses to the environment,' said a spokesperson. 'Our experience is that most of those we regulate respond to our advice and guidance and come into compliance, preventing repeated patterns of behaviour. 'However, when necessary, we will escalate our enforcement response, and have served enforcement notices and final warning letters as required. This has already led to compliance being restored at some sites. 'All sites that are currently non-compliant are scheduled for inspections in 2025.' Every intensive farming company named in this article was asked to comment.
