IT'S THE little things about BBC Scotland that tell you all you need to know. The way Jeremy Paxman repeatedly crashes the junction between the UK Newsnight and its Scottish "opt-out", forcing Newsnight Scotland to stagger uncertainly on air as if it doesn't know what time it is. Hitting junctions is largely what presenters are paid for, and the fact no-one tells Paxo to fulfil his job description shows just how little clout Scotland has in our "One BBC".

There is a quality to BBC Scotland output that says "second rate". It has a lot to do with subliminal factors, such as the lighting of BBC Scotland programmes, which is often flat and harsh. It gives the output a distinctive "regional" feel, which is helped by the inattention to basic production values. Last time I did an interview on BBC Holyrood Live - which I used to present - I discovered they had sacked their make-up lady.

That may not seem all that important - why flatter the vanity of politicians and hacks anyway? But an hour-long studio-based television programme without any make-up is not television - it is something else, something BBC Scotland has made its own: Jockvision, the benchmark of broadcast mediocrity. At the very least it betrays an astonishing lack of concern about how BBC Scotland programmes look.

This doesn't happen by accident, and it isn't the fault of the people making the programmes, many of whom are dedicated beyond reason. It is a structural issue; to do with BBC's budgeting and editorial policy. It is all about Scotland's place in the corporation and keeping it there. BBC Scotland is made to look regional - it doesn't happen by accident. I presented BBC Scotland political programmes for many years, and share the blame for their mediocrity. But when you know what goes on in there, you realise how the system works. The programmes were deliberately made to a lower standard than their London "network" equivalents.

Scottish viewers loathe what they see on screen because it makes them feel bad. There's metropolitan orthodoxy that "provincial" Scots lack the talent. This is said quite openly by media folk such as Michael Grade of ITV, who told a conference last year that the reason there weren't more programmes made in Scotland was because Scotland just couldn't make them of sufficient quality. But there is nothing in the gene pool that makes Scots bad at TV - most of the media in London is run by Scots. The real question is why Scots broadcasters are there and not here.

In the 1990s, I presented Westminster Live, a low-budget vehicle for televising parliament, but low budget means something very different in London. In 1999, I came to Holyrood to present the equivalent programmes from the Scottish parliament. The staffing was less than half that of its Westminster counterpart, there was no dedicated graphics output and it was broadcast from a radio studio. Well, I was told, Scotland has a tenth of the population so we get a tenth of the budgets. This was absurd, and I said so. Why should programmes from the Scottish parliament be made to an inferior standard to shows from Westminster? The answer was: "Well, nobody's watching and the bosses don't care so why should we."

This air of cynical resignation is prevalent throughout BBC Scotland, and it is getting worse. Morale in the organisation is lower than I can ever remember. Anyone who can is getting out. Radio Scotland is becoming so dumbed down it is losing the capacity for speech. BBC Scotland has retreated in fear from the new constitutional agenda and the questions posed by a nationalist government.

The only thing BBC Scotland seems interested in is promoting Gaelic through the launch of the first Gaelic television channel next year. This is admirable, but no substitute for proper English language broadcasting.

BBC Scotland has been a running sore in Scottish society for as long as I can remember. But at last there is a changed political environment since last May's Holyrood elections. A bomb has been put under the shiny bottoms and cultural cliques at Pacific Quay.

The Scottish Broadcasting Commission under former BBC head of news and current affairs, Blair Jenkins, has finally given Scots a chance to say what they think about their television, and focus their thoughts about what a national broadcasting service should do.

On Tuesday evening the Sunday Herald is sponsoring an event with the Scottish Broadcasting Commission at St Andrews in the Square, Glasgow, titled Democracy and Broadcasting: Is Scotland Being Served?, to explore how BBC Scotland should be responding to cultural and constitutional change. In the six months or so since it was set up, the Scottish Broadcasting Commission has already delivered important changes. After revealing how the BBC had failed to honour its responsibility to commission network programmes from Scotland, the director-general himself, Mark Thompson, came north to promise a tripling of network commissions. This £40 million will help revive Scotland's moribund broadcasting sector.

But it's not just a question of getting a better share of the budget. It is about how Scotland is revealed in its own media. The cultural importance of broadcasting is immense - it is how a nation talks to itself. And we cannot go on contributing so much money in our licence fees for such a poor representation of our national life; for the absurdity of having supposedly "national" news bulletins and current affairs programmes like Newsnight dominated by stories about English education, English health, hospital trusts, grammar schools and London transport.

The BBC has completely failed to come to terms with devolution and failed to register the new constitutional priorities. Scotland's subordinate status is embedded in the very architecture of the programmes, and the 15-minute opt-out from Newsnight is a constant source of irritation.

BBC Scotland suffers from a toxic combination of inadequate funding, poor morale and leadership failure. It is, I am afraid, a function of the increasing "localisation" of non-metropolitan broadcasting. At a time when the commercial stations are retreating from public service broadcasting altogether, the BBC is more important than ever.

The principle of "One BBC" is supposed to unite the people of the UK in one common television family, but everything the BBC does confirms the suspicion Scotland is the poor relation. It's time for BBC Scotland to grow up.