The National:

OH my god, it's so confusing. Walking the dug today for his early morning ablutions, there was nothing between me and being totally lost except a small bag of dog mess that had to make it to the bin somehow. Is this Scotland? Is it somewhere else? It must be all those Gaelic road signs.

Sorry. I was just channelling a British nationalist there. If they're not confused by the bilingual road signs on the way to Fort William (hint: look for the big mountain), they're confused by the fact that the Scottish Government sometimes gives different advice on the pandemic from a British Government which only has responsibility for England. That's the same government which is doing a very good impression of deeply resenting the fact that its public health writ doesn't extend north of Berwick or east of Chepstow.

READ MORE: Blogger claims she couldn't find Fort William because of Gaelic road signs

Clearly, the confusion of the Conservatives about the extent of their authority can't be their own fault. It's all down to those pesky nats insisting that Scotland is actually a different country. This leads them to the curious assertion that people in Scotland might be confused by Scottish public health advice which differs from English public health advice because we've been so misled by the vile separatists that we don't realise that we're actually living in Scotland. This generally only happens the morning after a massive binge on mind altering substances, and to be fair this is sometimes helpful insofar as it allows you to forget that we're living in a universe where Boris Johnson is actually the Prime Minister. However, apart from that, this is a special kind of stupid which is generally only displayed by the likes of people like Annie Wells who forget to sign out of their Conservative MSP Twitter account to use a troll account in order to praise themselves.

Their confusion is shared in abundance by a London-centric media which for years has lazily not bothered to distinguish between England and the smaller northern end of the BBC weather map. Naturally, being at the centre of the known universe and the city around which the entirety of creation revolves, any mismatch between their perceptions and the perceptions of some hairy legged natives in the northern provinces can only be due to difficulty that the natives have in comprehension.

The latest bout of confusion transference comes from the Conservative Transport Secretary Grant Shapps, who has previous for being confused about what his name is. He repeatedly denied that he had gone by the name Michael Green, until it was established beyond doubt that he had. More recently he has also appeared to be terribly confused about where his private jet is registered. Because the guy in charge of public transport needs his own plane. Grant's as much a man of the people as his boss is.

READ MORE: Why 'we shouldn’t be' confused over UK quarantine rule differences

Anyway, Grant is now terribly concerned that Scotland and Wales have imposed quarantine restrictions on people returning from Greece but England hasn't. Scotland has jumped the gun, he said. Which is another way of saying that he thinks that the Scottish and Welsh governments should only take action when the British Government has given them permission to do so.

In Grant's book this is a bad thing because it means that people from Scotland are going to be confused, despite the only confusion on display here seeming to come from Conservative politicians. Although to be fair that's nothing new. We should be kind here and suppose that since Grant only really comes into contact with Scottish people when he has conference calls with Scottish Conservatives, then it's hardly surprising that he has a low opinion of our intellectual abilities. But even then it's still very simple. If you live in England, you follow the English guidelines. If you live in Scotland, you follow the Scottish guidelines. The Conservatives have such a low estimation of your intelligence that they think you're going to struggle to grasp this.

The Scottish Government has decided to reimpose quarantine restrictions on travel from Greece because a number of cases of coronavirus in Scotland can be traced back to trips to the Greek islands. This is a public health decision, not a political one. However, throughout this pandemic, the Conservatives have shown that they're far more interested in protecting business interests and in playing politics with public health than they are in protecting human life. What Grant Shapps is really concerned about is that people in England might see that the Scottish and Welsh governments are being far more cautious and taking far more care to protect the lives of citizens than the Conservatives who govern in England are.

Even more than that perhaps, what preoccupies the Conservatives is not keeping us all safe from Covid-19. They are far more worried that the people of Scotland might come to the conclusion that we'd be a lot safer and a lot better off without having to deal with a Conservative Government in London, where ministers are chosen not for their talents or abilities, but for their blind loyalty to the shambling incompetent performance artist who goes by the stage name Boris Johnson. Every day that this crisis lasts, more and more people in Scotland are coming to the conclusion that the Conservatives fear so much. Far from being confused, we're seeing the British Government all too clearly.