Dear Weather People...

...I'm not sure who makes up the weather maps: the Met Office, C4, the BBC website, STV, Sky? But there's something I want to know: how come the maps only give one temperature and one wee image of the day's weather for Scotland? And why are these readings for Edinburgh?

We've all got used to the vagueness of weather forecasts on TV and radio. It's part of the game to listen for the words 'in the north' and try and work out which 'north' they're talking about. The 'north' of England? The 'north' of the British Isles? Would that be all of Scotland? The north of Scotland? How far north? Or do they mean what we in Scotland think of as the real 'north': Orkney and Shetland?

We're resigned to the fact the weather map seems to show Scotland as a pretty small part of the British Isles. But only showing Edinburgh as a guide to the weather in Scotland is really a step too far. And here's the science bit. Get ready to be patronised. Edinburgh, you see, is on the east coast, quite close to the North Sea. They get a lot of their weather from the east and north. I live on the west coast, not that far from the Atlantic, and we get our weather mainly from that direction. Wet and windy is what we usually get in the west. When we get weather from the east and north, we start to look out the snow shovels. It's not the first time I've been sitting here in Glasgow in a balmy 8 degrees Celsius and got emails from people in Aberdeenshire telling me they're digging their cars out of the snow - and that's in April. I've also been sitting here in the perishing cold in November and got an email from Shetland telling me they're basking in glorious sunshine with the temperature in double figures.

Today, for example, Edinburgh is wall to wall sunshine, 23C and with a light breeze. Glasgow is 18C, intermittently overcast and blowing a hooly. The minister across the way is having a wee garden party complete with marquee this afternoon and I noticed as I came in that her man was having to hammer the tent poles back into the ground to stop it blowing away. Not a word about that in the forecast.

What I'm saying is weather in Scotland (as in the north of England) is important. less reliable and more varied than in the south of England and thus needing a wee bit more detail put on it. Why are we obsessed with the weather in Scotland? Yes, we are - don't bother trying to deny it. It's not because farmers and fishermen worry about it - though they do - it's because we are all more likely to find our lives disrupted by local conditions. And we need to know what the local conditions are going to be.

So either do it right or don't do it at all.