The Incredible Unionist Cap...

Incredible to see today that the Sunday Herald, Scotland on Sunday, Sunday Times and the Sunday Telegraph haven't bothered to cover or comment upon the news, publicised by the Herald yesterday that the Liberal Democrats failed to stitch together their submission to the Calman Commission on time - and that the Conservatives weren't bothering their posteriors either way on the issue.

Willful wall-to-wall silence about the ostensibly incompetent spirit ruling what is often presented - in my view erroneously - as the key engine of constitutional change in Scottish politics today. Imagine, if you will, a symmetrical Scottish Nationalist screw up on a similar scale - or if the government behaved with the bland indifference towards their own policy which the hopscotch Conservative and Unionist Party seems to be indulging in - would a discreet press cap be placed over the dangling embarrassment? Think at least of the cost. If the Tories were contented well enough with the prevailing legal framework - why spend all that money to find that out? One does not need a squadron of dozy Commissioners to manage the inertia.

So why leave all of this unsaid? Whatever one's position on Scotland's "place in the United Kingdom" - etcetera - shouldn't the public be informed, considering that we pay for the Commissions activities and it was constituted under the auspices of the Parliament? It is difficult to see how the absence of coverage cannot be construed as a conscious silence - a generous gift to proponents of continued Union - and something of a fraud on the public.

Could it be that yon chapeau - its editorial ticket tucked jauntily beneath the brim - gingerly conceals its silky Union-Jack-stamped lining?