Over 10 million have been assembled in the Caithness village of Castletown.

The business began life and won international acclaim as Norfrost and it is difficult to exaggerate what it meant to the self esteem of Caithness – a successful manufacturing business located pretty close to where the British mainland runs out and becomes sea.

Pat and Alex Grant were feted for turning a small electrical shop in Castleton into something that could hold its head high above the ebbing tide of Scottish industry.

He had travelled to Perth to see St Johnstone play Dundee United. A draw or a win for the home side would mean that Ross County would be assured a top six finish in the team’s first season in the Scottish Premier League - quite an achievement in anybody’s book.

It was already complicated enough, but it now transpires that the 2010 Crofting Reform Act has inadvertently managed to deny around 3,000 crofters the opportunities they previously enjoyed.

It has emerged that the act removes the ability of those who own their crofts, to “decroft” or remove from crofting regulation land normally to create house sites for themselves or sell to others.

It is always somehow sad to see what has been left behind by the progress of the modern age.

That is certainly true of the railways that used to provide the vascular transport system of much of rural Scotland.

According to the ‘Disused Stations’ website in 1955 the British railway system had 20,000 miles of track and 6,000 stations. By 1975 this had shrunk to 12,000 miles of track and 2,000 stations, roughly the same size it is today.

The ruling body the Camanachd Association is facing a structural crisis every bit as challenging as football’s, when it meets in Fort William tonight ahead of play starting on March 2.

This follows Lochcarron Camanachd deciding to withdraw from north division one, and restart the club as a single team in north division three which is normally the preserve of reserve teams, where younger players develop.

In the ugly parlance of football punditry it is truly “a big ask”, given there are just over 18,000 crofts at present. The figure hasn’t changed very much for well over half a century as legislation was used to specifically prevent the creation of new crofts on most other land.

But the 2007 Crofting Reform Act lifted the prohibition. However since then only approximately 70 have been created, so we will be going at some speed to get another 10,000 in the next seven years.

But Glasgow’s annual folk, roots and world music festival this month is not your run of the mill gathering and the University of the Highlands and Islands (UHI) certainly is a bit different.

So staff and students from Scotland’s newest university will be taking to the stage at Celtic Connections this month. Featuring a mix of music, language, history and archaeology, UHI sees it as a chance to showcase its students and academics to audiences gathered in Glasgow from all over the world.

She was carrying 85,000 tonnes of crude oil, twice as much crude oil as the Exxon Valdez which ran aground off Alaska four years earlier. The Braer was blown on to the rocks at the southern end of Shetland on January 5 1993.

The first reports at about 5.30am that morning were that it is was in no immediate danger. The crew members were taken off and then some were put back on with the master as the anchor handling vessel tried unsuccessfully to attach a heaving line.