THIS land, to adapt Woody Guthrie’s words slightly, is not your land. This land does not belong to you and me. We all know this in Scotland, and have only relatively recently started to get restive about it.

But even the English, the world’s most property orientated people, don’t own their land. According to a new book, Who Owns England? by Guy Shrubsole, half of England is owned by less than one per cent of its population.

Says Mr Shrubshole: “Land ownership in England is astonishingly unequal, heavily concentrated in the hands of a tiny elite.” Labour MP Jon Trickett added: “The dramatic concentration of land ownership is an inescapable reminder that ours is a country for the few and not the many.”

In Scotland, the fewest of the few is Anders Holch Povlsen, a Dane who owns one per cent of “our” land. That’s 220,000 acres. The clothing magnate is worth an estimated £4.5 billion, although no one is worth that. Or everyone is.

Mr Povlsen is different to the deplorable kind of landowner that we’ve come to despise in Scotland, those who make wastelands fit only for urban fantasists who visit them once a year to do battle with the mighty grouse.

The differentiated Dane is committed to something he calls “rewilding”: restoring native land to its natural state. He’s also committed to education projects, restoration of houses, and archaeology. He’s even provided financial assistance (an interest-free loan) to the Assynt Foundation. So, despite the odd, inevitable controversy over deer and wind farms, he seems like a good ‘un.

But that amount of land in the hands of one individual remains wrong in principle. It’s like monarchy: fine when it’s a good king, bad when it’s not. We can’t depend on whims of generosity or decency.

So, how do we change this? Community ownership has been seen to be the way to go. According to the latest figures (from 2017), around 562,230 acres of land – 2.9 per cent of the country – is in community ownership. The Scottish Government wants that to reach 1 million acres by the end of 2020, which seems typically ambitious.

Even then, it isn’t nearly enough, but at least a determination to do something about the absurd situation is growing. When I was a young man, you’d hear people in Highland or island pubs hush their voices during talk of land ownership for fear they’d be heard by lackeys – that proud Scottish profession – of what in those days seemed mainly to be Dutch, German or Swedish landowners, people who had done to our countries what they weren’t allowed by law to do in their own.

Today, with at least some semblance of our own government in Edinburgh, and with the development of the internet allowing us to be anonymously bold, we are finding our voices.

Inevitably, there are braying or simpering voices in favour of the status quo. Even I might whisper of a part of me that agrees it doesn’t matter who is doing it as long as the good work is done. It’s also possible that one motivated individual might achieve more than committees, or the state, mired in meetings and factions.

However, there’s no good me talking common sense to myself about the matter. For a start, Mr Povlsen is more the exception than the rule. And we would draw his attention to a rule devised by fellow Scandinavians: “lagom”, a Swedish concept meaning “just the right amount”.

He owns an excessive amount of our land and, while he is doing good works, you can have too much of a good thing.

RIGHT, you: listen up. And stay listened up. New research shows that the deluge of information now drowning us is shortening our attention spans. Still with me?

Part of this is blamed on Twitter, with its 280-character limit. On paper, or indeed not on paper, this ought to be a good thing, brevity being soul’s wit (as Shakespeare should have put it). But it’s led to a situation in which folk flit manically from one thing to another, rarely stopping long enough to sip words of wisdom or let an argument develop logically.

There’s so much out there that we give none of it – blogs, videos, even newspaper columns – a chance. In my line of business (moaning about the world), I have to read many newspapers, and do most of this digitally.

When I sit down with a cup of tea and a vanilla slice or yum yum to read a proper, physical newspaper, it’s a completely different, more relaxed and enjoyable experience.

Reading online, by contrast, is fraught, rushed, enervatingly judgmental and somehow colder and more distant. If you’re reading this online, maybe you should try reading an actual paper, on paper. Hello? Oh, you’ve gone.

SEXUALITY is kinda complicated and I guess that, these days, anything goes. But it can go too far, such as the point to where a man indulges in a relationship with a 6in-high doll.

The 29-year-old, from Maryland, USA, said he’d been drawn to RoboTroll’s “satisfied smile” and “popping” pink hair. Previous lovers included a lamp, transformer truck and Halloween figurine.

The Daily Mirror reported that the besotted loon plans to marry the RoboTroll. He’s quoted saying: “I find it easier to form romantic bonds with objects rather than people, so I’m happy with my sexuality.”

I’m not sure “sexuality” can possibly be the right word here. And, while I don’t want to sound controversial or – heaven forfend – intolerant, this is surely nuts.

Over the years, I’ve frequently eulogised the 1960s – great time to grow up as a kid, all colours and love and fun – but even I’m beginning to think that the free love that it espoused has gone too far now.

It’s time to look back to the 1950s, which may have seemed rather repressed, but would not at least have countenanced someone saying “yes” to the question: “Do you take this inanimate object to be your lawfully wedded wife?”