With these foreign consulates you're really spoiling us

YOU’LL have had your Ferrero Rocher, then? Edinburgh is filling up with foreign consulates as a result of Scottish devolution.

The city now has more consulates than any other non-capital city in Europe, with 47 foreign representative offices. Four have opened since the establishment of the Scottish Parliament. And Scotland is increasingly regarded as a popular post by foreign diplomats, especially those with a fondness for golf.

The number of new consulates opening in Scotland has come as a surprise even to some of the diplomats themselves, with Edinburgh beating many larger cities, such as St Petersburg, Munich, Milan, and Barcelona, which are major regional centres and may be further from their national capital than Edinburgh is from London.

Since devolution, Ireland, Ukraine, Jordan and Slovenia have opened offices in Edinburgh. Some of the more exotic and unexpected countries to have representatives in Scotland include the tiny central Asian republic of Kyrgyzstan, which, like Scotland, has a population of five million.

Paul Millar, the honorary consul for the Czech Republic and the secretary of the Edinburgh and Leith Consular Corps, said: "What it shows is that foreign governments think that Scotland matters.

"The other aspect is that the people they are sending here include some of the high-flyers, they are not being sent here as any kind of punishment."