TO be tartanised sounds a terrible fate. Whether the victim be an individual or a community, the implication is that they have become tawdry, fantastical, risible. The individual has mutated into Braveheart played by Sir Harry Lauder, the community Brigadoon with its own Starbucks and Pret.

It’s a shame that, like shortbread, the noble cloth of tartan has become associated with a term of derision. But, like other aspects of our culture and history, tartanry has been appropriated for the purpose of selling tat to tourists. Remarks by Pete Irvine, author of Scotland the Best and former director of Edinburgh’s Hogmanay, go beyond tat shops to encompass wider fears about Scotland’s capital city. Mr Irvine has detected a “commodification of everything that doesn’t move” and also notes the “chainifying of emerging urban food quarters”. Of course, Edinburgh is not the only major tourist centre in the world to suffer such a fate. The impact of ever-more fervent tourism upon communities lucky enough to find themselves attractive is now a hot topic across Europe.

Edinburgh might find itself suffering uniquely from “tartanising”, as Mr Irvine calls it, but small (if increasingly large) businessmen in many countries have seen the profit to be made in playing up to national stereotypes, generally in a light-hearted way. On the face of it – and the problem is precisely that such establishments are on the face of it – this presents unavoidable friction with the gravitas and dignity that a national capital ought to have. When Scotia stern and true is presented as a kilt-lifting gewgaw, the more sensitive native is bound to get restless.

But Mr Irvine’s remarks are aimed at the wider picture. Fortunately, tat shops remain fairly small establishments, and none has aspired to become a supertatmarket. Generally, they are encountered along Princes Street or the Royal Mile, wedged among other, ostensibly more respectable shops, though many of these will be chains that one might encounter anywhere.

The city’s genuine character, therefore, is being squeezed between the rock of over-the-top “Scottishness” and the hard place of universally accoutred chains. In noting this discomforting phenomenon, we should be on our guard against snobbishness.

There is a place for the trinket and cheap souvenir, even one with a dubious sense of humour. Visitors can roll down the Mound after a pricey visit to the Castle and find something cheap and cheerful on Princes Street to remind themselves of a hopefully happy visit. Not everyone has the cash for full highland dress or a well-aged malt. And we can laugh at ourselves, right? Oh yes, sometimes to the point of choking. By the same token, the more timid tourist, tiring equally of castles and gewgaws, might feel comforted by the familiarity of a Starbucks. We do not think Starbucks should be taken away or banned, creating a Prigadoon in our own image, with every other establishment an art gallery or purveyor of authentic native cuisine.

But we do think that Mr Irvine has identified an important phenomenon, taking in not just the above but also increased advertising clutter and a growing feeling that we are killing the goose that laid the tartan egg. As Mr Irvine puts it, the Scotland we present to visitors is “an increasingly delicate and demanding responsibility”. He has called for a more creative response than just throwing our hands up about it and, in this, he has our support. Clamping down on tat as such is tricky, but dealing with clutter is feasible and, more positively, developing and encouraging a more tasteful and valid commercial sector to compete with the tat might be worth looking into.

A bit of tartanry is fine. But it has become out of kilter, so to say, and Scotland’s capital needs to rebalance itself.