Yeah - they should really have done this as a more general decentralisation of powers to avoid this kind of opposition. I generally think this would be a good idea so I'm biased, but I feel like it would have been more politically shrewd and made the debate a bit more mature - either you're for councils having more powers or you're not; have the debate about individual councils at a local level rather than fearmongering across the whole country.
There's an argument (not being made by any of the usual suspects, of course) that the specific-powers approach essentially rewards the loudest (and perhaps most party politically aligned) voices in cities - see AirBnB licensing, tourist tax, WPL - while overlooking local problems in more rural areas like Skye. I suppose some of these are applicable to the tourist-pressured Highlands, but I don't think they're necessarily as much of a priority as they are in cities. A more general approach means this would be less of a problem - local solutions for local problems etc etc. But maybe there's other measures proposed that I'm not seeing cos I'm not close to the action.
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