Perth’s bid to attain city status is firmly fixed on winning the 2012 Diamond Jubilee competition, but a Fife man’s online petition also asks for Scotland’s other historic cities to be recognised.
Robert McEwan (81), a historian from Dunfermline, has set up an e-petition at Holyrood asking for 10 towns that were formerly cities to be returned to their former status.
Mr McEwan wants all towns that called themselves cities before the 1707 Act of Union including Perth, Elgin and Brechin to be able to adopt the title again.Find his e-petition at the Scottish Parliament website here.Scotland has just six official cities Glasgow, Edinburgh, Aberdeen, Dundee, Stirling and Inverness and only the monarch has the power to award the honour.
Perth was a city until government reorganisation in 1975 and has been backed by The Courier in applying for a return to that position under a competition being run for the Queen’s Jubilee next year.
On hearing of the petition, Perth’s provost John Hulbert said, “Perth is very much focused on the competition to celebrate the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee in 2012 and will be entering this in a bid to restore its city status.
“One place in the UK will receive the civic honour of city status when the result of the competition is announced early next year.”
Mr McEwan said, “Over the years in England and Wales, towns have been upgraded… to city status based on the ancient prescriptive usage and we simply want that to be the case up here, too.
“For people who come from these towns, the fact they are not automatically included in the list of Scottish cities is annoying because that’s how they view them, and always have.”