Read on Twitter
Thread - Skye has become massively more popular in the last ten years. Has this made is any easier to grow up there, make a life, buy/rent a home and and raise a family if you choose? The comodification of the Highlands and Islands is turning it into a wet desert. https://twitter.com/mollycnolan/status/1345788375593312257
2nd homes drive up prices, and people out. There may be a place for holiday homes, but we are so far past that. People making a living servicing holidays homes can't afford to buy homes at inflated prices. The H and I could be so much more than a glorified scenic service station
Proliferation of 2nd homes and over-reliance on tourism is a scam that keeps the Highlands easy to buy in to and impossible to live in, unless you have already established a base somewhere else.
No culture/language/community can survive in this environment. Status quo makes people with wealth wealthier but at horrific cost to the viability of communities. Soul destroying looking out across a village in the dark and seeing no life in half the homes.
There are masses of resource / potential in the Highands and Islands that we will never be able to tap while this continues. All of Scotland loses, with a stunted and empty H and I. Something needs done to shore up population. Rural areas dying while Inverness grows doesn't count
I am sure that most that grow up here feel that deep sense that things are not right - it shouldn't be so empty, my friends shouldn't all have to move away, we should know what the place names mean and who our neighbours are. There should be lights on in the Winter.
