COVID has exposed the idiocies from the delusion of areas of the UK being capable of operating with a degree of autonomy associated with a state. If ever there was a time for a unified policy of pandemic management across the whole nation, it is now. However, rather than rising to the challenge of coming together for the good of all UK citizens to combat a common threat, the devolved ‘nations’ have used it as an opportunity to grandstand their imagined independence, grind their own particular axes, and extort taxpayers money.

Nichola Sturgeon in particular, it seems to Grumpy, has implemented alternate procedures for COVID management firstly because she presumably couldn’t bring herself politically to accept any policy coming from Westminster, and secondly as a demonstration of her irrational contrarian independence.

The idea that there can practically be one government edict in the Newcastle Arms in Coldstream, Scotland, and another in the Cornhill Arms, Cornhill, Northumberland (1.5km away) is bizarre in the current times. Even more so with Sturgeon’s floated plan to restrict travel across the River Tweed… it’s not exactly the border between the US and Mexico.

Wales followed a similar “to hell with simplicity and conformity for the populace, we’ll show our independence’, which is even less rational. In 1997, the majority for setting up a Welsh Assembly (a sort of neutered parliament) was less than the capacity of the Burton Albion football ground. (And if, dear reader, you have never heard of Burton Albion, that proves the point.)

The Welsh, at great cost to the taxpayers in duplicating government papers in Welsh, would have us believe that a majority of the population greet each other with “bore da, Taffy”. One can Imagine the SNP playing catch-up with the Scots language, and indeed, the evidence of a push to embrace this officially is clear.

What next ? A push to make Pictish, spoken by 7 goat herders on the island of Pabbay a government official language?

The fact is that to survive outside of the EU, we need to think in terms of 67m citizens of the UK, not 3.3m Welshmen, 5.4m Scots, 1.9m Northern Irish and 56.3m English. Consolidation, integration and evolution, not devolution is what the country needs.