js207: Nothing about appeasing Gadaffi, I note. As for the delegates to international events, I imagine that's motivated more by the desire to secure more international investment, or tourism or trade than to pretend to be able to negotiate binding treaties with other nations or pursue different policies from the British Government. I also have my doubts that the international events in question would accept the Scottish delegations if they did not believe they had something useful to contribute.

I agree that the Scotland Act is an English-language piece of legislation, and your point is well made to that extent: one would have expected the Gaelic name to be a more accurate translation. However, in a five minute skim through that Act, I did not see any provision preventing the Scottish Executive from changing its name, and, in 2007 it did so. As a consequence, Westminster proposes to amend the Scotland Act by changing all references to the Scottish Executive to the Scottish Government in the Scotland Bill (2011).

(I hate to be picky, but I feel bound to mention that Gaelic is not a foreign language in Scotland, even if it is a minority one.)

Now that you have explained that the visa was issued by the Home Secretary, and that the Scottish Government has no power to do so, then I do not agree that your foreign colleague's permission to stay in Scotland after graduating demonstrates any creeping assumption of additional powers by the Scots. If she is now living and working in England by virtue of a legal fiction, then the lie is an English one rather than a Scottish one.

I think you have failed to show both that Scotland is trying top exercise more power than it rightfully should, and that Scotland released Megrahi in order to curry favour with Gaddaffi.