What’s really crazy is that 6.75 Billion is still Chump change to others like Musk.
I’ve never even heard of him.
No one can justify having that amount of money.
I don’t know enough about him to form an opnion.
Don’t care but I hope that moneys going somewhere better than a 5th house in skye
Fairly sure some charity (amnesty?) put the cost at stopping world hunger at 6bn.
Idk about you but if I could just stop world hunger, and still have £750m left over I think that would be a nice thing to do rather than just make a number go up.
Let’s say anders has 45 years to go. That still leaves him 16 million a year. An amount you’d genuinely struggle to spend even living an extraordinarily lavish life.
And yet kids still die of hunger.
I first became aware of him when three of his kids were killed in a bombing in Sri Lanka in 2019. Very sad.
He lost 3 of his bairns in the Sri Lankan Easter bombings. He works with some decent Architects on his rewilding projects. He is refurbishing Jenners with Chips which will be decent.
Wish I hadn’t read the wiki. 3 of his kids were killed in a terrorist attack while on holiday in Sri Lanka.
He didn’t like passing place signs near his Sutherland Estate, had workers illegally remove them, stepped into the hole left behind and snapped his leg.. also had 3 of his kids blown up in Sri Lanka in 2019.. pretty much owns the north of Scotland… not sure how good he is for the area to be honest.
Seems an okay guy made his money on the asos website i think. There is an article about him meeting up with a local guy who had radical ideas on how to rewild scotland and he funds it ill try find. Sadly i think three of his children were killed in an attack in sri lanka
Largest individual private landowner in the UK. Extensive re-wilding projects in Scotland and mainland Europe contrast starkly with an absurd amount of private jet usage. Greenwashing much I wonder.
I know him as he bought Jenners. I worked there before the closure and heard good things about his interest in restoring the building, his connections with good architects and his willingness to spend money on the project. Based on that I have a retry positive impression of him.
Not sure why you’ve used his first 2 names but not the surname (Povlsen – pronounce Polsen) which is how I’ve heard of him. I know he’s bought huge estates and have heard he’s rewilding them. I guess I have concerns about anyone from abroad buying a lot of land and then doing anything with it which doesn’t involve the people living there. I’m not sure exactly what Povlsen is doing though, and there does appear to be still people working for and living in the estates he’s bought. If he wants to manage them in a better way for wildlife and have our forests return then I think that could be great, as long as there is room for people and he doesn’t just want to return Scotland to the stone-age while he salves his conscience in hi tech Denmark.
Saw him on one of those police traffic programmes based in the Highlands. He was pulled over driving a VW van. Going a bit over the speed limit…was perfectly civil to the Police and took the three points…they knew who he was by the registration but at no time did he give it the whole…’don’t you know who I am:…and threaten the officers and whole process with expensive lawyers like he could have. Seemed like a low key nice guy…
I think having that much money is insane, but after having to see Elon Musk force himself into literally everyone’s business, i’ll take a billionaire i’ve never even heard and hear nothing about over that.
He is very very disliked by locals . He’s buying up most the land along the west of the highlands
No harm to him given what happened with his weans but the fact that one person owns so much land is a national disgrace
I think he’s a good guy, he’s spent a lot of his time and money making the Scottish countryside a better place.
He’s moved here because he gets more power with his money than he does in his home, he buys up half the country, prices locals out and like all billionaires just isn’t that great.
We don’t need billionaires.
Never met him or heard of him.
He’s not Scottish, he’s danish. But he’s scotlands biggest landowner
Lend us a quid laddie
And he is not even Scotish 🏴 but Danish 🇩🇰
Pieces of knowledge I have about him:
– His 13 estates in Scotland (and possibly all the individual houses he is buying in Sutherland) are owned by separate limited companies. Many of them run at a loss (this is fairly standard). These companies undoubtedly receive money from the Scottish taxpayer via Nature .Scot administered grants to manage (this includes rewilding) his own land. Again, all very standard for land ownership in Scotland.
I mean, its obviously awful being the only country in Europe where this is possible and actual Scottish people are shoved out of the way so their country can be a rewilding themepark for the wealthy and various charities, and its the Highland Clearances that made it possible…but anyway. And no, its not because of the weather in Scotland or bad land or mountains that its empty – it was well inhabited before the Clearances, and Sutherland had a population of nearly 26,000 immediately prior to the Clearances and less than 13,000 now. And no, its not because of the appeal of moving to the cities – other countries at a similar lattitude don’t have this problem – Norway and Sweden for example are well populated as are the Faroe Islands.
– one of his companies acquired a controlling stake in North Coast 500 Limited around the time publicity changed from being positive to negative about the route. He is no longer in this position.
– He is known to be fairly litigious and instructs legal challenges to many applications for planning permission in his areas of interest in Scotland. He does seem to have a particular philosophy here of being anti-development except where it suits him, and in a way he is acting as an unelected overseer of Sutherland. Its difficult to say what his philosophy is because he has never made a clear public statement. In many ways, this is a pity as he sounds like an interesting chap, but then again, its probably better not to court the public eye. He is however not shy of flying in pop stars to his Highland home on private jets so he doesn’t seem to have particularly rigid views in this regard.
– on a lighter note, Sutherland was once the viking’s “suther land”. It and Caithness had parts which were Old Norse speaking. Old Norse is the ancestor of the Danish language. Perhaps this is part of a planned taking back of the north of Scotland by the Norse (there are also a couple of Norwegians who are amongst the top 5 largest landowners in Scotland). Denmark is a small country, and it is banned by Danish law for one individual, even via companies, to own so much land there.
– on an even lighter note, I’m thinking he really needs to be re-deployed to buying up a significant chunk of a US state. Something like South Dakota would do. US property is cheap in these places, and it would be a good way of warning off the present US administration from thoughts of buying Greenland.
£6.75 you say? pay more for a pint down south
On the one hand, the rewilding efforts he is making on his estates are a valuable improvement to the nature deprivation of Scotland’s landscapes. As a local to Glenfeshie I see the difference with my own eyes.
On the other hand, none of his estates make money – they are entirely supported by his business interests, which reflects no real change to the pattern of Scotland being owned and managed at the whims of whoever has the deepest pockets. Green lairdship, even done well, continues to deprive us of the opportunities of community land ownership. At one extreme, green lairdship is flagrant greenwashing (Brewdog). At the other, it’s a slightly benevolent dictatorship of land management.
According to his interviews, his ambition has always been to leave the Scottish environment as a better place for his children and grandchildren. This makes the extreme personal loss he and his family suffered all the more poignant. Yet, how does the ethics of rewilding stand against the ethics of being a billionaire? I genuinely believe it’s not possible to be a billionaire ethically.
tldr: it rubs me the wrong way that so much of Scotland is and can be owned by so few people. Scotland should belong to the Scots. But, if that’s not going to change, he’s probably the best kind of land owner you can hope for if you support rewilding and conservation.
Eat him, I reckon
Never heard of him but might ask if he has a lend of a few grand
Hoarding – whether its ephemera, food, pets, or money – is a mental illness. I don’t understand why we indulge billionaires’ mental illness.
So that’s what I think of any country’s richest person.
31 comments
What’s really crazy is that 6.75 Billion is still Chump change to others like Musk.
I’ve never even heard of him.
No one can justify having that amount of money.
I don’t know enough about him to form an opnion.
Don’t care but I hope that moneys going somewhere better than a 5th house in skye
Fairly sure some charity (amnesty?) put the cost at stopping world hunger at 6bn.
Idk about you but if I could just stop world hunger, and still have £750m left over I think that would be a nice thing to do rather than just make a number go up.
Let’s say anders has 45 years to go. That still leaves him 16 million a year. An amount you’d genuinely struggle to spend even living an extraordinarily lavish life.
And yet kids still die of hunger.
I first became aware of him when three of his kids were killed in a bombing in Sri Lanka in 2019. Very sad.
He lost 3 of his bairns in the Sri Lankan Easter bombings. He works with some decent Architects on his rewilding projects. He is refurbishing Jenners with Chips which will be decent.
Wish I hadn’t read the wiki. 3 of his kids were killed in a terrorist attack while on holiday in Sri Lanka.
He didn’t like passing place signs near his Sutherland Estate, had workers illegally remove them, stepped into the hole left behind and snapped his leg.. also had 3 of his kids blown up in Sri Lanka in 2019.. pretty much owns the north of Scotland… not sure how good he is for the area to be honest.
Seems an okay guy made his money on the asos website i think. There is an article about him meeting up with a local guy who had radical ideas on how to rewild scotland and he funds it ill try find. Sadly i think three of his children were killed in an attack in sri lanka
Largest individual private landowner in the UK. Extensive re-wilding projects in Scotland and mainland Europe contrast starkly with an absurd amount of private jet usage. Greenwashing much I wonder.
I know him as he bought Jenners. I worked there before the closure and heard good things about his interest in restoring the building, his connections with good architects and his willingness to spend money on the project. Based on that I have a retry positive impression of him.
Not sure why you’ve used his first 2 names but not the surname (Povlsen – pronounce Polsen) which is how I’ve heard of him. I know he’s bought huge estates and have heard he’s rewilding them. I guess I have concerns about anyone from abroad buying a lot of land and then doing anything with it which doesn’t involve the people living there. I’m not sure exactly what Povlsen is doing though, and there does appear to be still people working for and living in the estates he’s bought. If he wants to manage them in a better way for wildlife and have our forests return then I think that could be great, as long as there is room for people and he doesn’t just want to return Scotland to the stone-age while he salves his conscience in hi tech Denmark.
Saw him on one of those police traffic programmes based in the Highlands. He was pulled over driving a VW van. Going a bit over the speed limit…was perfectly civil to the Police and took the three points…they knew who he was by the registration but at no time did he give it the whole…’don’t you know who I am:…and threaten the officers and whole process with expensive lawyers like he could have. Seemed like a low key nice guy…
I think having that much money is insane, but after having to see Elon Musk force himself into literally everyone’s business, i’ll take a billionaire i’ve never even heard and hear nothing about over that.
He is very very disliked by locals . He’s buying up most the land along the west of the highlands
No harm to him given what happened with his weans but the fact that one person owns so much land is a national disgrace
I think he’s a good guy, he’s spent a lot of his time and money making the Scottish countryside a better place.
He’s moved here because he gets more power with his money than he does in his home, he buys up half the country, prices locals out and like all billionaires just isn’t that great.
We don’t need billionaires.
Never met him or heard of him.
He’s not Scottish, he’s danish. But he’s scotlands biggest landowner
Lend us a quid laddie
And he is not even Scotish 🏴 but Danish 🇩🇰
Pieces of knowledge I have about him:
– His 13 estates in Scotland (and possibly all the individual houses he is buying in Sutherland) are owned by separate limited companies. Many of them run at a loss (this is fairly standard). These companies undoubtedly receive money from the Scottish taxpayer via Nature .Scot administered grants to manage (this includes rewilding) his own land. Again, all very standard for land ownership in Scotland.
I mean, its obviously awful being the only country in Europe where this is possible and actual Scottish people are shoved out of the way so their country can be a rewilding themepark for the wealthy and various charities, and its the Highland Clearances that made it possible…but anyway. And no, its not because of the weather in Scotland or bad land or mountains that its empty – it was well inhabited before the Clearances, and Sutherland had a population of nearly 26,000 immediately prior to the Clearances and less than 13,000 now. And no, its not because of the appeal of moving to the cities – other countries at a similar lattitude don’t have this problem – Norway and Sweden for example are well populated as are the Faroe Islands.
– one of his companies acquired a controlling stake in North Coast 500 Limited around the time publicity changed from being positive to negative about the route. He is no longer in this position.
– He is known to be fairly litigious and instructs legal challenges to many applications for planning permission in his areas of interest in Scotland. He does seem to have a particular philosophy here of being anti-development except where it suits him, and in a way he is acting as an unelected overseer of Sutherland. Its difficult to say what his philosophy is because he has never made a clear public statement. In many ways, this is a pity as he sounds like an interesting chap, but then again, its probably better not to court the public eye. He is however not shy of flying in pop stars to his Highland home on private jets so he doesn’t seem to have particularly rigid views in this regard.
– on a lighter note, Sutherland was once the viking’s “suther land”. It and Caithness had parts which were Old Norse speaking. Old Norse is the ancestor of the Danish language. Perhaps this is part of a planned taking back of the north of Scotland by the Norse (there are also a couple of Norwegians who are amongst the top 5 largest landowners in Scotland). Denmark is a small country, and it is banned by Danish law for one individual, even via companies, to own so much land there.
– on an even lighter note, I’m thinking he really needs to be re-deployed to buying up a significant chunk of a US state. Something like South Dakota would do. US property is cheap in these places, and it would be a good way of warning off the present US administration from thoughts of buying Greenland.
£6.75 you say? pay more for a pint down south
On the one hand, the rewilding efforts he is making on his estates are a valuable improvement to the nature deprivation of Scotland’s landscapes. As a local to Glenfeshie I see the difference with my own eyes.
On the other hand, none of his estates make money – they are entirely supported by his business interests, which reflects no real change to the pattern of Scotland being owned and managed at the whims of whoever has the deepest pockets. Green lairdship, even done well, continues to deprive us of the opportunities of community land ownership. At one extreme, green lairdship is flagrant greenwashing (Brewdog). At the other, it’s a slightly benevolent dictatorship of land management.
According to his interviews, his ambition has always been to leave the Scottish environment as a better place for his children and grandchildren. This makes the extreme personal loss he and his family suffered all the more poignant. Yet, how does the ethics of rewilding stand against the ethics of being a billionaire? I genuinely believe it’s not possible to be a billionaire ethically.
tldr: it rubs me the wrong way that so much of Scotland is and can be owned by so few people. Scotland should belong to the Scots. But, if that’s not going to change, he’s probably the best kind of land owner you can hope for if you support rewilding and conservation.
Eat him, I reckon
Never heard of him but might ask if he has a lend of a few grand
Hoarding – whether its ephemera, food, pets, or money – is a mental illness. I don’t understand why we indulge billionaires’ mental illness.
So that’s what I think of any country’s richest person.
Comments are closed.