THIS paper has long shone a light on the practice of “Union Jackery” - the phenomenon of brands slapping Union flags on Scottish produce rather than a Saltire.
New polling commissioned by The National now shows most Scots prefer to see the St Andrew’s Cross on their carrots, strawberries and potatoes over a Union Jack.
We take a look at the lowlights of “Union Jackery” through the worst examples we have found over the years.
Haggis neeps and tatties
In what may be the most egregious example of “Union Jackery” we came across, The National exposed Marks and Spencer as having emblazoned a haggis, neeps and tatties ready meal with a Union Jack.
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The retailer was taken to task over Jackifying Scotland’s national dish by this paper – but when we put the concerns of our readers to the retailer, they never got back to us.
Tesco in a muddle
In 2019, one of our readers got in touch to express his dismay after Tesco fruit was all over the place with branding.
Hamish Sellar got in touch after he was bamboozled by the inclusion of British strawberries and Scottish blackberries in the same home-delivered shop – despite both fruits coming from farms in Scotland.
The Angus-grown strawberries had a Union Jack while the Perthshire blackberries were branded with a Saltire.
Red faces over red, white and blue
Not produce this time but aprons, as we revealed that most goods sold by Scotland’s two top heritage bodies were produced outside the country.
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The National Trust for Scotland (NTS) and the quango Historic Environment Scotland confirmed to The National back in 2019 that while they try to source products in Scotland, they have to go elsewhere for 40% and 38% of their goods respectively.
It came after we revealed that an apron on sale from the NTS featuring an illustration of a highland cow was emblazoned with a Union Jack.
A tourism industry source told us at the time: “People will be shocked at these figures.”
Marks and Spencer promoting 'English whisky'
M&S at it again as a customer in 2017 was incensed after finding out that England got its own country of origin listing for whisky – but Scotland didn’t.
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Reader Dr Stewart Brown got in touch with us to share his correspondence with the firm.
He wrote them an email saying: “If Scotland only merits a listing under ‘Great Britain’, why does England not similarly fall within this ‘Great Britain’ category? Who on earth refers to whisky from Great Britain, or to British whisky when in fact the origin is Scotland and the spirit Scotch?”
A customer service operative got back by email, writing: “At the moment, it looks like our customers are happy with how the Whisky is currently catagorised (sic).”
M&S quickly relented when this paper got involved.
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