The Highland Titles Nature Reserve On Tripadvisor

Currently there are twelve reviews of the Highland Titles Nature Reserve On Tripadvisor, all give it the full five stars. I believe most of these reviews are unsound, as they were mainly written by Highland Titles customers who have bought plots.

Until recently there were fourteen reviews, but two have been removed after complaints. One of those was by William Melnyk, a Highland Titles vendor from the USA (slight lack of integrity there I think!). The other one which was removed was by someone who had not even attempted to visit but had still given it five stars. As an aside, Mr Melnyk used to be an Episcopal priest, but was asked to resign at the request of his parish vestry, after it was discovered he was also a practising Druid!


The danger that reviews written by plot holders are liable to be unreliable and biased is beautifully demonstrated in the review by "Iwannahorn". The reviewer did not even find the nature reserve, took pictures of an ordinary field beside it and gave it the full five stars! This reviewer it seems, believes that an ordinary sheep field which could be anywhere, is deserving of a full five star nature reserve! The unfortunate lady also includes a picture of her plot which she also clearly failed to find.

 

It is quite clear to me, that reviews written by plot holders really cannot be relied upon to be objective or unbiased. The "thrill" of plot ownership would appear to result in a rather "rose tinted" opinion.

There is another review by owners of self catering accommodation in nearby Ballachulish, Craigavon Cottage, as they are likely to profit from people using their accommodation when they visit, I'm suspicious that this review might also not be entirely relied upon to be completely reliable.

The fact that after over a year on Tripadvisor that there are only twelve reviews surely indicates that there are in reality few visitors. Where are all the reviews by all those local people Highland Titles claim visit? Could it be that local people don't visit it much and those that do are much less than overwhelmed by the experience?

The Highland Titles Charitable Trust For Scotland Article

Earlier this year, the same people behind Highland Titles, were involved in starting an organisation called The Highland Titles Charitable Trust For Scotland, a Guernsey (not a UK) registered charity. It is interesting to see what Peter Bevis of Highland Titles wrote back in August of 2012 on the subject of Highland Titles and charities. This was published by Highland Titles in response to material published on the scots-titles.com website.

"Let me explain some facts of business. Enterprises such as Highland Titles register as charities for one reason only. To avoid paying tax, so that they can spend more of their money of the projects they advocate.  There are many taxes that can be avoided, tax on retained profits and sales taxes being the most significant.  In return they suffer the overheads of accountancy, which is a reasonable trade off most of the time.  Highland Titles operates in the Bailiwick of Guernsey. There is no tax on retained profits in Guernsey(zero). There are no sales taxes  in Guernsey (zero). If we registered as a charity, which we could easily do, we would have less money to spend on conservation, not more, as our accountancy costs would be considerably higher. Highland Titles is a family run business. We take no dividends or profits from it. We never have and never will. We refuse to waste money on unnecessary accountancy because pleasing you does not form part of our remit."

It would appear that the people behind Highland Titles have gone against their own good advice, and now one would presume, there is considerable amounts of unnecessary money being spent on accountancy rather than conservation. As Highland Titles had little or no tax burden already, what on earth would be the point of the charity if there are no saving on tax to be made?

I certainly do not agree that the only reason to register as a charity is to avoid paying tax, there is another very good reason involving transparency. In Scotland and England, registered charities are required to produce accounts which are made available to the public, and names of directors are published. In this way anybody can satisfy themselves to some degree that the business of the charity is being conducted in a proper manner which adequately benefits the cause. It also means that any claims made for income and expenditure etc. can be checked against accounts submitted to the authorities.

Guernsey registered charities on the other hand, have no such burden of financial transparency. The only requirement in regard to transparency required of Guernsey registered charities, is to publish their name, address, and charity number, nothing else.

In Guernsey, “The law neither specifically provides nor requires the Registrar or the organisation to make accounts available to the public….. the information that is published is limited to the name, business address and reference number of the charity.”

It is not possible to find out the names of the directors or trustees, it is not possible to examine their accounts, it is not possible to check any published accounts against those submitted to the authorities. There is no transparency at all.

I can find no firm statement either from Highland Titles or The Highland Titles Charitable Trust For Scotland that any revenue generated by Highland Titles sales is passed to the Charitable Trust. If you can find such a statement please let me know where it is, I'll be happy to report it.

This charity appears to offer no tax advantage, no transparency, no accountability, but will surely incur accounting costs, and perhaps even more salaries to be paid and marketing costs. If someone can explain how this is an improvement and will result in more of the available funds being spent on conservation, please do.

If you are of the opinion that The Highland Titles Charitable Trust For Scotland was set up for any reason other than as part of the Highland Titles marketing machine, in order to financially benefit the for profit Highland Titles company, you might want to consider revising that opinion. What other function could it possibly exist for?

You might also like to read about the promised Highland Titles Scottish charity which was mysteriously aborted after the inaugural AGM had been announced.

Buy A Lord Title Laird Title or Lady Title For Christmas

Christmas is coming, and I'm sure some people out there might be tempted to buy a bit of land and a Laird Lord or Lady title as a present. Well I'm afraid there is bad news, to put it quite simply, you can't ... sorry.

Despite what some of the vendors of some of these fake titles say, it is not possible to buy any of these titles. But it says so on their website you might say, and I agree it does, but if it does, it is a con, a lie.

There are no additional rights to any titles granted with the purchase of any kind of land in Scotland. After purchase you still have exactly the same right you had before to put any word, phrase, combination of characters you feel like in front of your name, and say it is your title. Ownership of land has no bearing on the matter at all. The whole thing has been made up by the people that try to sell them!

When you pay your money for one of these fake titles, you have bought precisely nothing, naught, zilch, nada, not a thing. Anybody that claims you become a Lord or a Lady by buying any land in Scotland is conning the public, pure and simple, you get nothing for your money ... except possibly a worthless personal right to a worthless miniature plot of ground.

See this link -  Do You Get A Laird Lord Or Lady Title By Buying Land In Scotland?

As a whole, apart from the non existent titles, the land sales are themselves usually very suspect. Please get this straight. It is not possible to own a souvenir plot of land in Scotland, note the words "not possible". You see under Scots Law, the owner of the land is whoever has their name in the Land Register of Scotland, or the Register of Sasines, nobody else. Whatever fancy document they sent you, however it is worded, the best you can hope for is a personal right to the land which will only be enforceable against whoever you bought it from. If for instance they go into liquidation, you can kiss goodbye to your land, it will now belong to the liquidator, and there is nothing you can do to get back what you did not really own in the first place!

See this link -  Souvenir Land Plot Ownership in Scotland

To put it simply

If any company claims or implies you get any title as a result of merely buying land in Scotland, they are lying.

If any company claims that you can be the real owner of a souvenir plot of land in Scotland, they are lying.

Let's give these lying con merchants the Christmas they so richly deserve

&

Don't buy a title for Christmas

Highland Titles Fake "Laird Scheme" Review Website

As if using fake newspaper articles to promote their fake titles fake land sales scheme wasn't bad enough, it seems Highland Titles may have sunk, if that is possible, even lower. Recently revealed over at the scots-titles.com forum, it is alleged that Highland Titles are behind a website which claimed to be giving impartial reviews of various "laird schemes". The website was lairdreviews.com which was pulled down shortly after it was claimed on the scots-titles.com forum that Highland Titles were in fact behind it, though the site is now up again.

Update

The fake review website at lairdreviews.com has just undergone an overhaul. The trolls page which was used to abuse critics of these schemes has now gone entirely, as have all the fake contact details, there are currently no contact details at all ..... Update - The Trolls page is now back.

Read the forum posts by Andrew and PetePiper

Rather annoyingly for Highland Titles, an email address seemingly belonging to Helen McGregor of Highland Titles (helenmcgregor55.gmail.com) appeared on a little known record called the SOA Record for lairdreviews.com

The name server for the domain was also changed immediately after the forum posts. As noted above, before the change, the name server for lairdreviews.com was NS1.17135745287.COM.

This name server was used at that time for four domains:

LAIRDREVIEWS.COM reviews (en) laird (en)
ALDERNEYBELLS.COM Alderney (en) bells (en)
GLENCOEWOOD.COM Glencoe (en) wood (en)
CIBELLS.COM bells (en) ci (fr)

The name server change can be seen here

All the above domains except lairdreviews.com are registered to the Bevis family who run Highland Titles.

http://whois.polodomains.com/nameserver/NS1.17135745287.COM/1.html

 The email address helenmcgregor55@gmail.com can be associated with the following domains:

lairdreviews.com
ehic-support.org
fakescotstitles.com
sar.co.uk
glencoewood..com
aldeneybells.com
cibells.com

https://www.google.co.uk/?gws_rd=cr&ei=44JlUr3MHfHY4QS94YGACA#filter=0&q=helenmcgregor55.gmail.com&start=0

The site itself gave glowing reviews of Highland Titles, while being a little, and in some cases, a lot less kind to competing company's offerings.

(As an act of common decency I have obscured any real names from the review quotations below.)

Quotations from the Monarch Of The Ben - Laird Of Ben Nevis review ....

"suggests that the owners are trying to evade paying tax and we would certainly not want to do business with such a Company"

"A****  M**** is well known to Trading Standards and a journalist colleague that we consulted "

On Highland Heritage - Laird Of Glenmore / Laird Of Kingsdale ..... 

"Domains by Proxy are owned by B**** P****, and his services are used by shady grops who wish to protect their privacy from the taxman, customers, Trading Standards, etc."

"They also trade on eBay, where they share that forum with some rather dubious vendors and some very unlikely titles."

 On Native Wood Preservation -  Laird Of Blackwood ....

"The first disappointment comes with a page describing the land on offer – Loch Wood by the village of Blackwood. Blackwood sits adjacent to the M74 motorway – Scotland’s main arterial route South to England. It is no more in the Highlands than London and being a Laird is all about the Highlands"

On Mac Sothis - Laird Of John O' Groats ....

"The order process is incredibly basic with room for error and only payment by Paypal is accepted.  We are always wary of shops that only take PayPal; lots of internet scams make use of PayPal"

Of course the Highland Titles offering is described in glowing terms ....

"Our email was replied to within 20 minutes and a follow-up telephone call was answered second ring by a helpful human.  If only all the businesses were like Highland Titles"
(Eh..... it took 20 minutes to answer an email they sent to themselves!!)

Then there was the "Trolls" page, which was nothing more than a personal attack on John Duncan and William (Robin) Cunninghame Graham, completely misrepresenting their positions and making claims they use multiple identities and produce multiple blogs without a shred of evidence in support. Currently the page is still available via the Google cache here.

Should the site vanish again it may be available via the Google cache, follow this link, click the little arrow to the right of the domain name, and click on "Cached".

I find it completely hilarious, there is much evidence to support the theory that Highland Titles use multiple identities all over the internet, and have allegedly produced several blogs to support their scams and attack people they don't like ..... but always somehow "forget" to put their name on them. Yet that same accusation about others is made on a fake review website without a single example of any specific instances to support the allegations made!

Fake newspaper articles ... fake review websites ... accusation that others are trolls when Highland Titles are seemingly using a fake review site to promote their own products and make the competition look very unappetising .... can it get any worse?

Highland Titles Scam Snubbed By Glencoe Cafe

Highland Titles are always trying to make out that they are well supported locally, without providing much evidence of that of course. It seems they are not at all popular with the proprietor of the rather excellent Glencoe Café in Glencoe Village, as attested to by a post on the Glencoe Café Facebook page back in August 7th 2013.

Glencoe Café
7 Aug 2013
Regrettably, after receiving a number of enquiries from concerned local customers. Glencoe Cafe would like to make it clear that it has no association or connection what so ever with the company Highland Titles, its employees or its volunteers. Nor does it support or condone the trading practices of the said company.

 It would seem that the Glencoe Café was worried about being associated with Highland Titles through their ex employee Stewart Borland from Ballachulish who was gullible enough (I had thought Stewart was smarter than to fall for the Highland Titles guff) to become Highland Titles' meet and greet lackie.

So worried about losing local customers through that association to issue a clarification of their real position on their Facebook page.

Local support in Glencoe for Highland Titles? .... Don't think so!

A great big thank you from me and the residents of Glencoe to the Glencoe Café, for making it quite clear that Highland Titles are not welcome in Glencoe.

Do You Get A Laird Lord Or Lady Title By Buying Land In Scotland?

Quite simply no you do not, I can find no reliable source which suggests that this is or ever was the case. No right to any Laird. Lord or Lady titles is conferred by way of ownership of land in Scotland. The only people it seems who claim this is true, are companies like Highland Titles and others, who stand to profit from such nonsense, it is a con, pure and simple.

I have on the other hand found several reliable sources which confirm that there is no truth to the "titles" claims of the fake Laird, Lord, Lady, Scottish land plot selling companies.

One such source is this document, written by two Aberdeen University School of Law graduates, Douglas Bain and Catherine Bury.

"The Court reminds readers that only those people who have been bestowed with a peerage can correctly use the title ‘Lord’ or ‘Lady’. Similarly, the word ‘laird’ is a historical term often used by the people in a district to refer to the owner of a large Estate on which their ancestors are likely to have derived their livelihood. It is not a title and it is not possible to derive the right to be referred to as ‘laird’, ‘Lord’ and ‘Lady’ from the ownership of a souvenir plot"

Douglas Bain -  Graduate, School of Law, University of Aberdeen. Douglas Bain is writing a PhD on the use and management of common property in Scotland, and is a Teaching Fellow in the School of Law

Catherine Bury - Graduate, School of Law, University of Aberdeen. Catherine Bury is an associate in the Aberdeen office of regional law firm Ledingham Chalmers LLP, specialising in rural law.

Or how about this article from The Journal of The Law Scociety of Scotland.

"Ownership of a souvenir plot of land does not bring with it the right to any description such as ‘laird’, ‘lord’ or ‘lady"

"The words ‘lord’ and ‘lady’ apply to those on whom a peerage has been confirmed and do not relate to the ownership of land"

Who would you rather believe, two University of Aberdeen School of Law graduates and The Law Society of Scotland, or a company like Highland Titles who has been found to be telling lies, more lies, who's founder Dr Peter Bevis has been involved in other dubious enterprises before, and make use of forged fake newspaper articles as part of their mainstream advertising effort?

If you bought a plot of land in Scotland, and thought through that you gained the right to any titles, I'd thoroughly recommend you both ask for your money back, and report the matter to the relevant authorities.

Can we get this perfectly straight once and for all, you DO NOT get a title by buying land in Scotland period. Anybody who claims you do, is a liar, and probably just trying to con you out of your money.

Oops, I nearly forgot, you don't even really own the souvenir plot of land in Scotland you thought you bought, you might want to give that a read too.

The Highland Titles Scam Charity - What Happened?

Update

Dr. Bevis originally promised a Scottish charity, and claimed to be consulting experts on Scottish Charity Law. We waited. The Scottish charity never materialized. Now - exactly as feared below - Dr. Bevis has found a means of claiming charitable status without subjecting his accounts to public scrutiny by registering the Highland Titles Charitable Trust for Scotland in Guernsey .... the secretive Channel Islands.

What proportion of revenue is spent on conservation? How much goes on salaries and directors' remuneration? This would be public information for any organisation in Scotland that claimed charitable status; here it's a secret. The only publicly available information available for Guernsey registered charities, is their name and address, that's it, nothing else.

If he really was consulting experts on Scottish Charity Law, perhaps his question might have been how to circumvent it! Anyone who takes this registration at face value is truly deserving of the "one born every minute" epithet.

Original Article

Last week, Highland Titles held their much vaunted meeting of the gulli .. errr customers at Glencoe House. It was announced some time back that at this event the first Annual General Meeting of the charity which was being set up to manage the Highland Title Nature Reserve, with election of trustees, would take place. The AGM vanished from the schedule before the event, and I can find no mention of any such meeting having taken place at the event.

I can find no mention of it on the Highland Titles website, or on their Facebook page, it wasn't mentioned in a Mail on Sunday article (rather aptly headed "Gathering Of The Shams"!), nor in a piece the Daily Mail did on the event. So, it would appear that this charity has not been set up and was in fact more bluff & deceit in order to gain credibility by using the cachet of involvement in a charity. If anybody has any information regarding this and knows that Highland Titles have in fact been involved in the setting this charity, please let me know and I'll correct this post accordingly.

Schedule from18/02/2013 (now you see it)

Schedule from15/05/2013 (now you don't see it)

 

 Of course there is now no mention of this charity on the Highland Titles website, but fortunately Mr Bevis did mention it elsewhere.

http://www.bletherskite.net/2011/02/23/end-to-buying-a-fake-scottish-title/#comment-11764

"In a few months, management of the Nature Reserve passes to a membership charity that will manage the estate"

http://www.bletherskite.net/2011/02/23/end-to-buying-a-fake-scottish-title/#comment-11756

"Yes, of course the charity number will be published. The charity is being formed by our solicitor, Colin Liddell, a Specialist in Charity Law with the firm J & H Mitchell WS of Pitlochry"

http://www.bletherskite.net/2011/02/23/end-to-buying-a-fake-scottish-title/#comment-11751

"In 2013, The Highland Titles Nature Reserve moves into the control of a Scottish charity run by a membership of thousands. The lies and spin perpetrated by two or three small minded bigots will not change that fact."

 Where is this charity now? Nobody seems to know, the whole idea seems to have vanished. Unless Highland Titles can come up with this charity it would appear the lies and spin mentioned above belong to Mr Bevis, and the critics are proved correct once again. Perhaps they did actually apply to set up a charity but were refused. A fairly likely scenario in my opinion.

So, a question for Highland Titles, what happened to this charity? My email address is displayed on the right hand side of this page if you would care to comment and give me the charity registration number, and I will amend this post accordingly.

There is an excellent post over at the scots-titles.com forum by Andrew on the missing Highland Titles charity, which I'll reproduce here in full.

http://www.scots-titles.com/forum/fake-scots-titles-exposed-group3/scots-title-reseller-scams-forum12/scottish-highland-titles-no-longer-trading-thread6.62

"Dr. Bevis attended the October 10th 2012 meeting of the Duror and Kentallen Community Council. According to the minutes:

“Dr Bevis said that it his intention to pass the enterprise over to a suitable charity, run by a local management committee; and he would then pass over control.”

Certainly some of his comments on Bletherskite are barefaced lies (“I do not clone websites.” Ha!), but did he also stand up and lie to the local Community Council? Did he assume that the charity story would swing opinion behind him, and in a few months' time everyone would have forgotten it?

It’s not possible to be certain. I incline towards the view expressed on the Lochaber Highland Estate blog that he did apply for charity registration but was turned down.

Dr. B explained on scotstitles-faq.blogspot.com (August 16th 2012) why he would never register HT as a charity: “If we registered as a charity, which we could easily do, we would have less money to spend on conservation, not more, as our accountancy costs would be considerably higher.”

Palpable garbage of the first order. Two-bit community charities with revenues of only a few hundred manage the accountancy burden just fine... and most of them don’t benefit, as HT does, from a director who studied accountancy at university.

The real problem, of course, is that registering as a charity would expose HT’s accounts to public scrutiny. As it stands, despite previously being described as a not-for-profit, HT’s accounts are not even subject to the same scrutiny as a regular UK for-profit because of the Alderney registration.

Then Dr. B had a lightbulb moment: HT remains the completely opaque money-handling end of the operation and he registers a Scottish charity to own the plots which HT will periodically throw wodges of cash at.

As we have it in his own words that (because of the tax regime in Alderney) charity registration would afford no benefit, it is purely a stunt.

The upshot of this wizard wheeze is that he gets to dangle a bona fide Scottish charity in front of his customers, bolstering his conservation credibility no end, while the business end is hidden under a thick Channel Islands fog.

So clearly unacceptable you have to admire the audacity. Dr. B does tend to assume he can pull the wool over everyone’s eyes. And experience has often borne him out. The course of events suggests that (assuming HT ever did attempt registration!) the Charity Commission turned out not to be quite as dopey as he’d bargained on."

Update

Rather bizarrely Highland Titles have claimed a copyright infringement of the screen captures of their Meet The Neighbours Glencoe House itinerary shown above, http://www.chillingeffects.org/dmca512c/notice.cgi?NoticeID=978560

Not that it matters, it provides confirmation of the accuracy of my screen captures and the disappearance of the charity AGM from the itinerary, which can be confirmed by looking at the images stored on the Highland Titles website of which I am supposedly breaching copyright of.

http://www.highlandtitles.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/05-Jan.-16-18.10.jpg

http://www.highlandtitles.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/ScreenHunter_01-May.-01-16.18.jpg

 

Highland Titles Fake Newspaper Articles Scam Reported In Private Eye

Highland Titles have yet again been chastised (well as Private Eye say on their website, "The ASA gives a limp-wristed slap to a firm selling fake lairdships") by the Advertising Standards Authority, and have once again come to the attention of Private Eye magazine, issue No. 1339 page 11, buy your copy now.

Every company likes a bit of good publicity right? Highland Titles are no exception, so the idea of linking to existing newspaper articles as part of marketing strategy is quite attractive, cheap and easy. But wait, there's a snag, what if some of those articles have the odd less than complimentary statement and the odd comment they might wish nobody saw? Not a problem for the Highland Titles marketing machine apparently, simply use convincing cloned copies of the real newspaper articles with the offending bits changed or removed ... neat!

On the Highland Titles website on the "as seen on tv" page there were links (now changed to link to images of newspaper articles) to various newspaper articles which gave the appearance of the real thing. Many of the articles linked to (I counted ten) were actually fakes, very convincing clones of the real newspaper websites and articles, but actually forgeries. Some (or perhaps all?) of these articles had been adulterated and did not accurately reflect the original content, some had the comments section edited to remove negative comments etc.

The ASA stated the nature of the complaint in a Freedom of Information request response HERE 

For Instance an otherwise intact article from the San Francisco Chronicle had "The offer has been attacked as a fraud by internet critics" removed, an article from the Daily Record had the words "scam" and "phoney" removed, on a Scottish Express article Emily Farquarson's (the cheek!) unflattering comment had been removed entirely and so on. Highland Titles would rather readers did not know that some people suspect such buy Scottish land become a Laird, Lord, Lady conservation schemes, to be a fraudulent phoney scam.

The domain used to host these fake articles was newsfeed.ws, with web addresses starting with for example dailyrecord.newsfeed.ws/ used, to make them look like the real thing. The only content that I could  find on the newsfeed.ws server while searching was, cloned website pages with articles concerning Highland Titles, an mp3 file of a radio interview with Highland Titles (also linked to from the Highland Titles website) and a forgery of a pdf document nicked from baronage.co.uk, a forgery which had the content changed from the original in some apparent attempt to support some of the laird / land  vendors' claims about Scottish titles (this file has now been removed from the server).

Interestingly, a user named Peter Bevis (who would appear to me at least to be posting as the real deal director of Highland Titles) claimed on the Bletherskite website, that content on websites belonging to Highland Titles had been  faked by an internet troll. He did strangely fail to point out where any examples can be seen.  From http://www.bletherskite.net/2011/02/23/end-to-buying-a-fake-scottish-title/

Peter Bevis says:

December 5, 2012 at 10:14 am

"I have been shown several examples of fabricated content which has been created by a troll and which purports to reflect our web site content but which in fact only represents somebody’s skill with a graphics package"

 And this:
Peter Bevis says:

December 4, 2012 at 12:25 pm

 "I do not clone web sites"

As the matter has been recorded by the Advertising Standards Authority, Highland Titles will hardly be able to claim this blog post is all lies, the work of internet trolls and that they did not make use of cloned websites containing errr,  favourably edited newspaper articles, as part of their mainstream advertising effort, will they? It strikes me that the real troll is in fact Highland Titles, exercising their skill at using cloned websites which purport to be real newspaper websites and articles, but which are in fact forgeries with adulterated content.

One article found at newsfeed.ws, though not linked to from the Highland Titles website, was a forgery of an article by the Daily Record, with a story about souvenir plot sales which mentions Highland Titles and contains some wild misquotations by Scottish MSP Rob Gibson. totally transforming his meaning. The quotations from Rob Gibson MSP from the real Daily Record report read as follows.

http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/scottish-news/would-be-lairds-given-chance-to-own-1ft-1067759 

"MSP warns it exploits Scotland"

"But an angry MSP slammed the scheme, claiming it could attract "spivs and speculators". SNP rural affairs spokesman Rob Gibson said: "This exploitation of Scotland should be outlawed.""

"But Gibson urged Scots and visitors to stay away from the scheme."

"He said: "Selling square-feet souvenir plots of Scotland purely for financial gain is utterly unacceptable. I find this activity attracts spivs and speculators and people should avoid it with a bargepole."

"There should be some means to stop this. This is not the first time somebody has tried to make a fast buck out of selling a little piece of Scotland."

Whereas the quotations from the forged Daily Record report found on newsfeed.ws have been transformed to read:

"MSP welcomes boost for Scotland"

"An enthusiastic MSP praised the scheme, claiming it would attract "visitors and tourists are the life blood of the Scottish economy". SNP rural affairs spokesman Rob Gibson said: "This novel conservation of Scotland must be encouraged.""

"Gibson urged Scots and visitors to support the scheme and 'come and visit Scotland'.

"He said: "Selling square-feet souvenir plots of Scotland to support conservation is inspired. I find this activity attracts people who love Scotland to visit and so we should all give these people our full support."

"There should be some means for the Scottish Parliament to advertise their support for this. This is not the first time somebody has tried to make money out of selling a little piece of Scotland, but these people have the good of the whole nation at heart.".

Image capture of a forgery of the Daily Record website with a fake news article, sourced from the newsfeed.ws server. This article contained fake quotations from Rob Gibson MSP highlighted. Genuine Daily Record article here for comparison. Note the company involved and the locations have also been changed to suit.

It would appear that supporters of these fake lairdship schemes will stop at little to promote this tat, and seem to think nothing of making up comments from a Scottish MSP in apparent support of this nonsense. Fake titles, fake land sales, fake conservation, fake websites, fake newspaper articles, fake quotations, whatever will the fake lairdship lot fake up next? The mind boggles, the kilt shudders.

Images of a selection of the fake newspaper articles used by Highland Titles from newsfeed.ws, to give an idea of how like the real websites the fakes were.

Fake Express Website Page Used By Highland Titles

 

Fake Northern Star Website Page Used By Highland Titles 

Fake Daily Record Website Page Used By Highland Titles

 

Fake Goldcoast News Website Page Used By Highland Titles

The Private Eye article about the Highland Titles scam cloned web sites from Private Eye issue number 1339 page 11.

“Highland Titles, one of the largest firms selling ludicrous fake lairdships as gifts, has been given a slap on the wrist by advertising’s watchdogs after tidying up press cuttings on its website to remove any hint that the scheme is a scam.

The Guernsey-based firm, which sells Laird and Ladyships of Glencoe, although the Glencoe Woods being sold by the metre aren’t even part of the Glencoe estate (see Eye 1328), has a web page of links to press coverage from Scotland and around the world. While the articles looked like the real deal, they were actually mock-ups with cunningly disguised web addresses, such as dailyrecord.newsfeed.ws. The Daily Record article was largely copied from a real one but had been doctored to expunge the words “scam” and ‘phoney”.

Meanwhile an otherwise genuine article from the San Francisco Chronicle was tweaked to remove a paragraph noting: “The offer has been attacked as a fraud by internet critics.” The Advertising Standards Authority investigated the website and closed its file on the complaint after Highland Titles agreed to remove all links to the fake articles (though the fakes themselves remain online)” 

It should be noted the fakes have now been removed.

Is Highland Titles A Scam - Scots Titles Scam - Buy A Title Scam

There was a very interesting post over at the scots-titles.com forum by the user Andrew. It outlines very nicely how the Highland Titles scam works, I'll post the whole thing here if I may.

From  this thread of the scots-titles.com forum.

Is Highland Titles a scam? Let's keep this very simple and just look at the "Laird of Glencoe" sales, leaving aside some of the more extraordinary behaviour that is alleged.

The page title of highlandtitles.com, which is the most prominent element in a Google search result, reads "Become a Lord, Laird or Lady | Buy a British title | Purchase a Lord Title or Lady Title".

But Highland Titles of course can in no meaningful sense sell a British title. Although they will happily take people's money under this pretence.

The title sale does not exploit "loopholes" in the law as is sometimes claimed - the sale confers nothing. It exploits customers' ignorance of the fact that in the UK people are essentially free to adopt whatever title they please, providing it isn't for fraudulent purposes.

Having paid Highland Titles £30, the customer would have no greater right to adopt the style Lord, Laird or Lady than before.

Of course, Highland Titles can prevent non-customers from using their specific trademarked wording "Laird of Glencoe", but this is a tactic of denial not of enabling. The trademark no more enables Highland Titles to make their customers "Become a Lord, Laird or Lady" than Budweiser ("King of Beers"<tm>) can make their customers Kings.

So the title sale is meaningless.

The plot sales, as has now been widely documented, are not land sales in the conventional sense but private contracts between Highland Titles and the buyer.
If Highland Titles were to go out of business, as a number of vendors have, then these contracts would likely be unenforceable.

The purchasers of square-foot plots may be content to chalk this up to experience. The purchasers of 1,000 square-foot plots (US$799 at the moment) may be less sanguine.

So the plot sale is meaningless.

From a Highland Titles customer welcome letter dated 1st January 2012, "You also have the absolute right to use the Glencoe crest which can be downloaded from our web site…".
From the website of the Procurator Fiscal to the Court of the Lord Lyon, "The use of such un-registered heraldry is an offence under Scots law."
The heraldry element is played down now, but it used to be part of what customers thought they were buying.

So the heraldry sale is worse than meaningless. Scottish customers were actually being encouraged to commit an offense.

Nothing that the customer was offered was for real, not least the "Glencoe" aspect.
What's left? The customer might cling to the hope that their money is going towards conservation. And there is some tree planting and path building going on. But, in contrast to all bona fide conservation organizations, Highland Titles' accounts are not public. We trust the customer is not clinging too avidly to this hope.

Very well said Andrew I hardly think it could have been put better

A footnote on the Laird Of Glencoe trademark held by Highland Titles which they seem to imply is a real title. There was a recent case brought to the attention of the Advertising Standards Authority. This complaint was in regard to a company called Enssen Ltd trading as lordtitles.co.uk.

http://www.asa.org.uk/Rulings/Adjudications/2013/5/Enssen-Ltd/SHP_ADJ_219487.aspx

The ASA noted in their assessment .....

"We also noted the titles Lord of the Manor of Wansley and Lady of the Manor of Wansley were registered as trademarks with the IPO, rather than being genuine titles"

In the same way, the Highland Titles Laird Of Glencoe trademark, is not a genuine title.

To sum up and answer the question in the title of this post. Highland Titles claim that with their purchase, buyers will gain a Laird, Lord, or Lady title which they were not entitled to before making that purchase, and ownership of a piece of land in Scotland. Neither of these claims is true, neither of these items is actually supplied, therefore yes, the Highland Titles offering is in fact a scam.

Buy a Title - Plot of Land For Sale and Scots Law

Over at the scots-titles.com forum, there is a post with a link to a blog post by Scottish solicitors Halliday Campbell. This explains very nicely the position in Scots law as seen by them of buyers of souvenir plots of land in Scotland, It also goes into Laird and Lord titles, and use of Coats of Arms, a very interesting, informative, and enlightening article, well worth a read. Who would you rather believe, a company which makes proven misleading statements and uses fake newspaper articles in it advertising, like Highland Titles Glencoe Estates, or a company of reputable Scottish solicitors?

http://www.hallidaycampbell.com/2012/06/who-owns-souvenir-plot.html

Bottom line is, if you bought a souvenir plot of land from Highland Titles or anybody else, you can't really own it under any accepted definition of the word own. It simply is not possible to do so under Scots law, all you can ever have is a personal right against the existing owner.

Ownership of the property, which is a real right, (that is, a right in the land as opposed to a personal right against the existing owner, and which prevails on insolvency) does not pass to the purchaser until the disposition is registered in the Register of Sasines or Land Register of Scotland. Which is specifically prohibited in Scots law for souvenir plots.

Further confirmation if any is needed of the legal position regarding sales of souvenir plots can be seen on the HMRC Customs Scottish land law terms page.

http://customs.hmrc.gov.uk/channelsPortalWebApp/channelsPortalWebApp.portal?_nfpb=true&_pageLabel=pageLibrary_ShowContent&propertyType=document&id=HMCE_CL_000157

Extracts from the HMRC Customs Scottish Land Law Document

Disposition
This is a formal document transferring ownership, or 'title', to land. Following the first stage in the sale of a property (the missives or contract), the purchaser has a personal right against the seller - that is, a purely contractual right to make the seller confer ownership on the purchaser in exchange for payment of the price. (Purely personal or contractual rights often cannot be enforced if the person who is due to perform them is or becomes insolvent). Ownership of the property, however, which is a real right, (that is, a right in the land as opposed to a personal right against the existing owner, and which prevails on insolvency) does not pass to the purchaser until the disposition is registered in the Register of Sasines or Land Register of Scotland."

Personal right
Right enforceable only against a specific person or limited class of persons for example, a contractual right. The disadvantage of personal rights is that, if the person against whom the right is enforceable becomes insolvent, the right is likely to be worthless in practice.

Real Right/Personal Right
A real right is one which is enforceable against everyone (in the traditional phrase, 'against the whole world'), as opposed to being enforceable only against one person - which is a personal right (such as rights arising under a contract). The main difference between them is that personal rights may be unenforceable against the party who is bound by them if for example, he/she becomes insolvent; while real rights (such as rights of ownership or registered securities over land) prevail against everyone, regardless of their status.

So if those interpretations are correct, what do you get for your money when you buy into one of these plot of land / title deals? Apparently not a lot, you don't get any word to use you could not have put in front of your name and said was your title perfectly legally already, and it looks like you don't actually own the land. Might as well have burnt your money, at least you'd have a bit of heat off of that.

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I have a lot more evidence suggesting dishonest and unethical business practices by several souvenir plot / title vendors which I have not published.. If you are a bona fide journalist or Government department with an interest in investigating this business and would like access to that evidence, please get in touch with me by using the email address on the right or sending me a comment marked "confidential", I will not publish comments so marked.