john o’groats

Via the always interesting Things Magazine, we learn that the Islands Bill, passed by the Scottish Parliament back in May of this year, has recently come into force and includes a provision championed by Member Tavis Scott that prohibits the Shetlands to be depicted alongside the mainland’s coast in inset boxes, a geographical fiction quite irksome to the widely scattered archipelago’s residents, and demand that cartographers portray the islands accurately, empty space and all. The Ordinance Survey agreed with opponents who called the change impractical and warned it would reduce the level of detail that could be attained in all maps by changing the scale.