POLICE SCOTLAND//A SCOTTISH PARADOX

It is a very plausible argument that the most basic requirement for a modern unified state is a common language.  Governments, local and national have, until fairly recently, turned this aphorism on its head.  Every G.P.`s surgery, council office, Citizens Advice Bureau etc was buried beneath signs and information leaflets in myriad languages from Arabic to Urdu.  And of course this language apartheid led to many immigrants, especially those no longer in the flush of youth, being disinclined and often unable to pursue any type of social discourse outwith the confines of family and others with their shared native tongue.  Somewhere in the bowels of Whitehall a light went on in the head of some bright young thing whose thought processes were considered essential to his Minister`s rise up the greasy pole. A new policy was born.  All these multi lingual information appendages would be abolished in the hope that a need to learn or improve English language skills would be forced upon all those over school age lacking in that department.  No such ruling was of course applied to this island`s indigenous languages.  The Welsh have long had a bi lingual approach to almost everything and this is how it should be.  The Welsh language is a direct derivative of the language spoken by Boudica  and the pre Roman occupants of these islands.  It is understood and/or spoken to some extent by almost a quarter of the population.  Contrast these figures with the other part of Britain where another localised version of that ancient tongue is still spoken.  The use of Gaelic in Scotland is confined in the main to small geographic areas mainly in the North West Highlands and the Western Isles.  It is spoken by fewer than 60,000 people of a population of five million.  With this information in mind................

Fact: The newly amalgamated policing force north of the border; Police Scotland, is facing a deficit of £25 million.
Fact: The Scottish government is preparing to rebrand Police Scotland bilingually English/Gaelic.

The cynic within me interprets this initiative with the SNP`s determination to eventually elicit by fair means or foul a "YES" in the next referendum irrespective of the price of a barrel of oil.  

The political paradox is that nationalism is on the rise everywhere in Europe brought about   by supposedly very wise but myopic decision makers who were determined to stamp it out by removing the differences between nations; their laws, their borders and their trading decisions.  The Scottish paradox is that those self same nationalists are minded to remain in or gain entry to the European Project.