Here’s a teaser. Imagine a helicopter takes off from the most northerly point in the UK and flies in a straight line to the most southerly point. Exactly half way through this flight it stops to refuel. What country is it in? It’s still in Scotland.

It took off from Muckle Flugga on the Shetland island of Unst, headed for Land’s End, and stopped half way, near Lockerbie. Surprising? Now you might say that this is a bit of a cheat, to include such far flung islands. But their very remoteness is a significant factor in Scotland’s natural assets. Their position affects Scotland’s oil and gas resources and fishing grounds, and determines their strategic significance to Europe’s northern defences. But it’s not just Scotland’s geographic reach which is surprising. We have also been trained to underestimate Scotland’s size by the media’s lazy approach to graphics. The map of the UK with Shetland in a little box somewhere off Aberdeen became a recognised cliché. (The T-shirts available in Shetland with those islands in centre position and the UK mainland in a little box to the right of Yell are a splendid response.) But the BBC constantly exposes us to a more blatant misrepresentation. And the insidious nature of this visual deception is totally inappropriate in the lead-up to the independence referendum.

Maps have a power to shape our perceptions. And the maps which we see more than any other are the weather maps on TV. Take a look at those on the BBC.

The virtual camera floats above the north of France, looking down diagonally at the UK. The south of England looms large, while Scotland diminishes in the distance. Surely we can interpret that, you might think. That was the response of the BBC when the maps were first introduced in May 2005. There were over 4000 complaints. Responding in the Scotsman a BBC spokesperson explained why we were all misguided in our objections. That’s how it would really look from space. But I’ve done a bit of 3D graphics modelling over the years, and could see that the underlying issue wasn’t obvious to those debating the perspective. I wrote to the Scotsman pointing out that the BBC was being disingenuous. When you model a virtual 3D scene you have the freedom to put the camera wherever you like, and also to choose the virtual lens. Looking down from a great height with a standard lens would result in a faithful representation of the land masses. But what the BBC’s modellers had done was to use a wide angle lens and move the virtual camera position much closer to the south of England. This has the effect of making the nearer land masses bulge larger, and those further north to taper off rapidly in perspective. The maps changed significantly two weeks later. (Yes – they were even worse at first! Check out the original map here)

There’s a further problem. The land mass is not just seen from an angle. It is also on a sphere, so Scotland, further away from the camera, is also disappearing over the curve of the earth. None of this is evident. We cannot interpret what is happening, because no lines of latitude and longitude are shown. To make matters worse the temperature numbers and place names do not get smaller when they apply to further places, further undermining our ability to understand the perspective and see the true size of Scotland.