I was up in Inverness recently stopping people in the street and asking them questions, as you do, and one thing that kept coming up, because I kept asking about it, was what they thought of life in the Highlands. On the whole, they said, it was good; they loved it. But what they didn’t love was the state of the local services and the local council. The big question is: what’s to be done about it?

One of the suggestions you hear quite a bit is the idea of changing the structure of Highland Council; breaking it up, basically. The idea is that smaller councils would be better able to understand what particular areas need and do something about it, and it’s now the subject of a motion from a group of Highland councillors who want a review of the issue. “Bigger is not definitely better,” they say.

You can see the logic of what they’re saying. The Electoral Reform Society has been raising this for ages and one of the things they point out is that England has an average of 2,814 people per councillor, Denmark 2,216, and Norway 572, but the average Scottish councillor looks after 4,155. It means councillors in Scotland, through no fault of their own, are taking decisions about areas they barely know.

One of the councillors who supports the call for a review of the Highland situation, Andrew Baxter, also makes this point. “It’s a nonsense that someone living in........

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