Funny that.

The jobs are, according to the Scottish government, increasingly in the tourist trade. The incentives are for inward investment in that industry. Highlands even have covenants on many cottages for sale that they are only for short term holiday lets!

Yeah, your wonderful "once free of Westminster" SNP are my biggest fans it would appear. The ones I completed on in Fife last week? Local builders are awaiting my people to ask for bids. Each and every house has had at least three companies visit them prior to bidding for the refurbishment work I am offering. Cards from cleaners and other domestic services are clogging up the hallways.

If you want to look at bad landlords, instead of attacking those propping the country up, look at Dundee Council. They are worth a whole series of BBC Panaroma......

Funny how real Scottish people roll out the red carpet? Even in your own locality.

The demise of living locally is cyclic. I left the Derbyshire village I was born in, then left the mining town I served my apprenticeship in. You can't live on nostalgia. Following the money has been a constant since the stone ages. Where I come from, we have the caves to prove it.

Pricing people out of the housing market is a problem. So is lack of work. Holiday lets in nice geographic areas is at worst neutral, at best encouraging infrastructure.

Popular? I'm more popular than you for starters. I judge everyone on personal merit rather than wondering what they use their arse for. I encourage people to get on rather than whinge (hitting the wrong target) about how we are all doomed. Doomed I say!

Go and play with your friends on the bishop thread I created. You found a whole new set of admirers there with no help whatsoever. {chortle}