DESPITE what the Scottish Tories in their not-so-occasional outbursts might have you believe, Scotland and England are different countries.
There are different histories and different legal systems, different education policies and different police forces.
Those are things which the BBC’s crack team of researchers might want to take into account.
Had a little more attention been paid, then one embarrassing error might not have made it onto our screens.
Eagle-eyed viewer Jim McLean noticed while watching the hit cop drama Shetland that there seemed to have been a distinct lack of Scottish consultation in the set design.
“SCOTTISH NATIONAL POLICE” the force’s logo reads on the detective show. “UBIQUE SEMPER”, its presumably latin motto says, under the cypher “EiiR”.
But that royal cypher, as the set designers probably should have known, isn’t used in Scotland. The current Queen Elizabeth is the first one Scotland has ever had, after all.
The Jouker, from painful experience, understands that the odd EiiR postbox can slip through the net ... but this appears to have been intentionally designed especially for the show.
The BBC declined to comment, but such concerns go to the very top.
An FOI release answered by the Scottish Government earlier this month revealed how the Tories down in London had to be reminded of this fact.
Giving feedback on the Jubilee book the Conservatives wanted sent to every child in the UK, one [redacted] in the Scottish Government had to point out: “The draft content refers to Queen Elizabeth II.
“In Scotland, Her Majesty is referred to as ‘Her Majesty, The Queen’ (She is not the second Queen Elizabeth here).
“It would be appropriate to note the differences of stylings in some way in the text.”
Perhaps if every child in England gets a book detailing the difference then this sort of thing will stop happening.
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