I took my own advice and signed up for the Gaelic-News Yahoo groups. Now I can let others trawl the WHFP, Scotsman, Herald, Press & Journal, etc for articles about Gaelic. Recommended, but only if you have quite a strong interest in the topic, as there's a lot of reading.

I read a few articles which addressed my question of Who says 50,000 means dead.
Here is an extract from Vitaliev's Scotland
http://www.theherald.co.uk
The Herald. 3rd March, 2003.
"'He who loses his language loses his land,' runs an old Cornish proverb. If
so, Scotland must be in real danger of shrinking to the size of Monaco or
San Marino in the near future. According to the recent census, the number of
Gaelic speakers fell by 7000 during the past 10 years and has reached the
critical mark of 58,652.

"Why critical? Because all Scottish newspapers in their coverage of the
census quoted (with no source revealed) the figure of 50,000 language
speakers, below which, allegedly, the tongue was considered 'officially
dead'. As a multi-linguist, who wrote a lot about so-called minority
languages, I had reasons to doubt it.

"One sign of proof was the Faroe Islands, which I visited some time ago. With
just 40,000 people in total, this small semi-independent nation boasted
eight daily newspapers and 150 titles of books a year in Faroese - its
much-treasured indigenous language.

"The purity of Faroese was fiercely defended by the committee for the
protection of the language - a government-supported watchdog, making sure
that every child born on the islands was given a Faroese name and that as
few foreign borrowings as possible could sneak into the mother tongue. This
might sound too harsh, but the Faroese had to resort to extreme measures to
revive their language after five centuries of Danish domination."
I can't see the Scottish Gaels using such extreme measures. If anything, the native speakers are too reticent to use their language outside the home, and too ready to switch into English whenever a stranger or a known non-Gaelic speaker is present. But in the areas where large numbers still speak Gaelic as a first language, I would like to see a stronger push to use the language, in tandem with economic and social measures to keep the islands vibrant
. I think, for instance, that all nursery and primary schools in these areas should have Gaelic-medium teaching and that there should be every encouragement given to incomers and other adult non-Gaelic speakers to have intensive language training. There are immersion courses in Scotland, 16-20 hours a week for a school year; it is easier to find the numbers willing and able to make this commitment in centres of population such as Inverness and Glasgow than in more remote areas. I think Strupag's suggestion of a very intensive 1 month course, followed by distance learning and day-schools, might work better in less populated areas. The question still remains how to increase the demand? In Scotland as in Ireland, no one can get by without English but people can live for decades in an area where the main language is Gaelic and never learn to speak the language.
It looks like the language will survive as a second-language, spoken by sub-groups in the community and as a hobby by dispersed language learners. But will we also have some strong Gaelic-speaking communities?
There are some encouraging signs in the increased use of Gaelic in areas where the language was weak, but where there were some remaining native speakers. The third-level Gaelic-medium institution Sabhal Mòr Ostaig in Sleat has brought a number of younger Gaelic-speakers into the area, and while the college not fully integrated with the community, staff members have joined the local community association (which does a small portion of its activities through Gaelic) and enrolled their children in Gaelic-medium classes in the local school. And I visited an area in Sutherland where old people could speak Gaelic, but hardly any one else. Gaelic-medium nursery and primary classes and an immersion course for adults were being started while there was still a chance for the learners to mix with the older native speakers. My reason for being in the area was to partake in a week-long community project making an animation video based on a local folk-tale. Three native Gaelic speakers from Lewis worked on this peripatetic project and most of the rest of us were learners - both children and adults - speaking the language as best we could as we did our art work. A couple of the children were being raised with Gaelic - and Greek, their father's native tongue.

I hope Gaelic will Fare Well in future!