Quote Originally Posted by Jock Scot View Post
Just for your information we regard Perth as the Southern border of the Highlands. I think that there is a geological feature(a fault line I think) that runs along a line just south of Perth and across Loch Lomond, about a third of the way up, that is the actual geological boundry. Another mildly interesting fact that may interest you, is that if an East/West line is drawn through the Southern part of Perth so the line goes from coast to coast, as of the year 2007, less than a million people live above that line in Scotland(roughly the Highlands).
I believe that is what Mr. Churchill called it, "The tyranny of democracy". Whilst the Scottish Assembly in Edinburgh may be a good thing, it seems to lack a moral consciousness of the way the people "North of the Highland Line" actually live, and wish to be allowed to live. The same might be said of those vastly unpopulated areas in the Borders. Life for these people is different than for those who live in the conubanizations of Glasgow and Edinburgh. But yet it seems, at least from this remove, that the Scottish Assembly has no more regard for those "beyond the pale of the city" today, than did those city-dwelling rogues of centuries past. It should not surprise me in the least to see the number of Scots in the Borders and, especially, the Highlands be reduced by a further 50% in the course of the next decade.

While absentee land owners and the SPCK did much to "blot out" Highland ways and culture in the 18th and 19th centuries, it now seems as if faceless bureaucrats, acting with the authority of "city-fied" legislation, will continue that work into this, the 21st century.

How ironic that given a degree of "self rule" Scots may now be responsible for completing the clearances, a sort of cultural genocide brought about by the "tyranny of democracy".