Welcome to TRF David! You live in an area I would sorely love to visit one of these days. Where I live now in West Virginia, USA has a lot of Scottish immigrant history around the area as, from what I've heard, it reminded them of Scotland a lot.
There is just about anything you want to know about with the BRF here in the various forums. If you're aiming for a MBE, check out the Honors thread. A lot of discussion into who gets honors and how they're selected and what they've done to earn an honor. Its quite an extensive thread as it was started in 2005 and is still ongoing.
Grab a cup of tea and a favorite snack and enjoy!
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