So Inverness is in the running to have its civic leader styled “Lord Provost”
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I really can’t understand all the fuss because I’m not a fan of any of these vacuous titles and forms of address that have far more to do with style and perceived status than with substance, and have no practical significance
Next month the Queen will have reigned for 70 years, but is this really an excuse to create more cities and extra labels for local politicians, while making no difference whatsoever to their performance or to people’s lives? We just don’t need another vanity project.
This viewpoint is no reflection at all on councillors in the short-listed cities. It’s the principle and the process that I’m not comfortable with.
Britain is full of arcane appointments and forms of address and it’s high time we phased most of these out rather than extended them.
I’m not sure how you’re meant to address a Lord Provost. Maybe it’s just “Lord Provost”, but English Lord Mayors, despite apparently ranking below Scottish Lord Provosts, are often deemed “Right Worshipful”. In Scotland, the Lord Provosts of Glasgow and Edinburgh are even prefixed “Right Honourable”, the same as Privy Councillors. And (thank you Google!) did you know that a Scottish Baron is considered to be “Much Honourable” while peers’ offspring are simply “Honourable”? So does this leave the rest of us entirely without honour?
Then, but only if the Right Honourable Lord Lyon approves it, certain chiefs and lairds are entitled to be “Of That Ilk”. Meanwhile, the fuss about Tony Blair’s “K” reminds us that grown men are still putting on fancy dress to get a bit of cloth tied round their left leg.
This allegedly modern but status conscious land still adopts bizzarely anachronistic and hierarchical pecking orders. Despite the best endeavours of something called a Modernisation Committee in 2010, we’re still treating people like part of some medieval feudal system.
There are already enough council robes and bling to supply a Gilbert and Sullivan comic opera, so do we really need any more?
Prompted by one or two deeply unpopular issues, I also sense a tide of unease at council performance running through Inverness residents of late. Enough, perhaps, for any Lord Provost to be dismissed as the Emperor’s New Clothes?
Lord Provost or Less Potholes, anyone? (I do realise that it should be “fewer” potholes, but that doesn’t alliterate so well!)
Although born and bred here, I’ve never really espoused the notion of Inverness even being a city. This simply came up with the rations at the millennium just as further labels are up for grabs this time. We’ll soon be just like the Americans, so watch out for the cities of Tomatin and Cannich, with their Lord Provosts.
I’ve never heard locals speak about going “duwwn (or ovar) tha suttee”, but like many Invernessians, I still go “ovar tha tuwwn”, while others go “duwwn tha tuwwn”?
Might the former possibly originate, as I do, from west of the Ness where residents go “ovar tha ruvvar” to get there, while the latter was possibly more a feature of the east side, where people have to descend a hill to access Inverness’s metropolitan splendour?
Whatever its origins, the concept of township will resonate in Inverness for a very long time yet, irrespective of whether or not this city has a Lord Provost.
