Thursday, May 3, 2018

Whatever happened to Scotland's "second government"?

The Twitter account of Kenny "Devo or Death" Farquharson is generally of most use if for some reason you enjoy being trolled on a slow-burn setting, but in fairness he came up with something genuinely intriguing and surprising today.  It appears that the Scotland Office has been quietly renamed as "the Office of the Secretary of State for Scotland", and its Edinburgh base is not even using that name - it's now just calling itself "the UK government".  The message appears to be that the former Scotland Office isn't so much a government department, but rather the UK government's "embassy" in Edinburgh.  That seems a distinctly odd way of selling the notion that we're all one big happy family and that London is in no sense the capital of a different country.

Under David Cameron the schtick used to be that "Scotland has two governments", and continuing to brand the UK government's presence in Edinburgh with the word "Scotland" seemed the ideal way of underlining that point.  But I suspect Theresa May's hardline British nationalism is getting in the way of strategic good sense here.  Everything British must be uniformly British with a Union Jack on it, and if that creates a Scottish backlash there's always "now is not the time" and "non-consent is consent" to fall back on.  The lack of a public announcement of the name change (which would generally be expected) is a strong clue that officials or ministers at some level understood that the whole thing wasn't really such a wizard idea.

Judging from the revision history of the relevant Wikipedia article, it looks like someone first spotted the change in early January of this year.  Before that, the department name was given as "the Scotland Office", and afterwards as "the Office of the Secretary of State for Scotland, informally known as the Scotland Office".

I do hope someone is going to ask the Prime Minister how much the pointless rebranding has cost hard-working families up and down this precious united country.

21 comments:

  1. I think the first person to notice it was was Dale Handy when he called up following up on Gordon Ross news that Fluffy was setting up a government within a government. He called up about one of the civil service jobs and was greeted by someone on the phone who answered it as THE UK government.

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    1. It is the UK Government... Holyrood is just like a local council that decides on the price of cider and wasting money on far too many MSPs...

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    2. State of this.

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    3. gwc2....You are doing really well and I know it is very hard for you to give an opinion without....you know. My influence is having a very positive effect on you. I understand your emotional pain and the inner conflict it causes...so well done.

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  2. You get there by going through Traitors' gate.

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    1. Sinn Fein IRA to stand candidates in Glesga East End!

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    2. State of this lying troll.

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    3. Irish tricolour more popular in Glasgow East End than the Saltire.

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    4. State of this pathetic bigot.

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  3. It is actually a good thing, I suspect, that they no longer make any pretence of representing Scotland or Scottish interests though.

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    Replies
    1. The EU do not represent Scottish interests.

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    2. As if the troll's Tory masters represent Scottish interests...

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    3. Tartan Tory boy always good for a laugh. So do the EU represent Scottish interests.

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    4. Far more than the troll's Tory overlords.

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  4. Strangely, the Fluffy one is still referring to us having two governments. This was at one of the 2 Holyrood committee meetings he attended today, where he did his best to avoid agreeing with Tomkins, Fraser and Stewart that Mike Russell is out on a limb and was over-ruled by the FM. I dipped into both meetings and everytime I looked he was droning on. There's only so much of that a human can bear, so I missed much of the questioning.

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  5. You have to ask how pointless it is having a glut of MSPs and MEPs. MSPs could be cut by 50%. MEPs are not required.

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    1. State of this.

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    2. Kangaroo says
      Agreed GWC2 we could ditch WasteOfSpace and be independent that would get rid of 600+ english mps and a whole host of wasters in the HoL.

      First time I have ever agreed with you, so well done you.

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    3. The MPs representing English constituencies are not all English. Your hatred of the English is clear when you have to use the lower case e. You appear to agree we have far too many MEPs.

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    4. Away back to the Dreary Heil with your manufactured outrage, troll.

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