As winter looms, the heart is always warmed by the continuing finger-clicking attempts of MSPs to demonstrate themselves au fait with the workings of the worldwide interweb. Usually, they can’t figure out how to fax their e-mails through the letterbox properly.

One of this breed, though, must have heard his grandkids discussing the social networking site Facebook and, lo, PlaceBook was born.

“What’s PlaceBook?” I can hear you ask. Well, it’s a site where you can upload pictures, anecdotes, music and grainy bits of mobile phone footage about your favourite areas of Scotland. It’s the brainchild of Mike Russell, the Scottish environment minister, a man I once saw lecture on salmon sustainability for so long that the suit he was wearing was back in fashion by the end of it.

Will PlaceBook, which launched this week, catch on? Well, it’s difficult to picture a youth leaving his crew loitering outside a shopping centre and, when asked where he is going, replying: “I’ve got some wicked shots of the Falls of Shin I gotta upload — later, dudes!” It’s a dubious scenario, but not quite as dubious as the one in which this patronising bit of nonsense was no doubt dreamt up.

What is it with remote communities and acrimony? Two old duffers in Achiltibuie need only have a small row about the best way to birth a ewe and the papers start reporting that the Community is Bitterly Divided in Ovine Maternity Row.

Highland communities are like amoeba, forever separating and sub-dividing. This week’s huffy strop in the back of beyond involves golf.

On South Uist there is a course allegedly designed at the end of the 19th century by Old Tom Morris, an Open winner who was the focus of much public acclaim about 100 years ago. Old Tom came up with the idea that courses should have 18 holes.

The course lay forgotten and overgrown until 2005, when developer Gordon Irvine spruced it up; although in a concession to the local populace, he allowed sheep to continue grazing on the greens. Not good enough, though.

A gaggle of locals have taken it upon themselves to take their grievances to the Scottish Land Court and are set to receive the verdict.

They don’t believe Old Tom ever set foot on the course and they’d like their cows as well as their sheep to be able to treat the course as an al fresco buffet.

Until the court delivers its ruling, the community is split, both figuratively and literally: at the local hotel, golfers drink in the lounge, while crofters quarantine themselves in the public bar.

“That’s what those bastards are trying to take from us, security of tenure,” scowled head refusenik Willie Macdonald. “If Old Tom had come here, people would have remembered”, overlooking the fact that Old Tom died in 1908, well beyond the recollective limits of anyone, even those as thrill-starved as South Uistians.

Stornoway black pudding is the Ricky Gervais of the food world: a decade ago, nobody was in the least bit bothered about it, now you can’t avoid the stuff.

If you’ve never had it, you should. It’s sweeter and silkier than the bitter pucks that usually go by the name of black pudding. If anything can divert your attention from the fact that you’re eating congealed porcine haemoglobin and oxtail casing, then Stornoway black pudding can.

Stornoway black pudding is now so popular that bootleg black pudding is appearing in shops. Hence MP Jim Murphy’s attempt to have the foodstuff registered in Brussels as being exclusively Hebridean. “It’s important that these foods are sustained and developed to the benefit of local communities, particularly in areas such as the Highlands and Islands,” he said.

Give Stornoway black pudding protected status by all means, I say — but get ready for the outraged Lancastrians who’ll argue they actually invented the stuff.

Fiona McCade is away