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December 02, 2004
Where is Callander? I
Well, it is located on the Highland Boundary Fault, an emphatic geological uplift between the lowlands and the highlands of Scotland. It looks impressive in the diagram, a narrow column of rock thrust up through the surface of the earth. It was once at the bottom of the ocean and fossils of sea creatures can be found around the town.
That’s perfectly scientific. Unfortunately when it comes to political geography, things are not so clear.
Our local constituency is Stirling, and I’ve verified that our wheelie-bins are emptied by Stirling Council. On the other hand when we gave our new address to the Bank of Scotland, their database, relying on the post code, insisted we were in Perthshire. This doesn’t seem to be a unique error: since then we have come across a number of Callander businesses including Perthshire in the address and indeed Perthshire appears on correspondence from Scottish Gas.
Checking the history of the town I found that Callander was indeed in Perthshire, but only until 1975 when the boundaries were changed. That’s a long time ago. Do we have a group of Perthshire irredentists at work here? Perhaps bankrolled by the Halifax Bank of Scotland and Scottish Gas? Something to ponder …
Posted by Simon Holledge at December 2, 2004 01:17 AM
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