PERTH — Amid talk that Angus, Dundee and Perth and Kinross councils could be merged in a Scottish Government shake-up, local officials this week declared a state of Municipal Emergency Level Beige, the highest level of alarm permitted under the council's own colour scheme.

"We will not go quietly," said Deputy Assistant Head of Continuity Graeme Lennox, 54, standing on a filing cabinet. "We will not go loudly either, as that requires a noise permit. But we will go, if we go at all, extremely slowly and following a twelve-week consultation."

Staff have reportedly begun stockpiling essentials, including tinned soup, spare lanyards and the full architectural drawings for the £74 million PH2O swimming pool at Thimblerow, which one officer described as "the only thing holding this building up emotionally".

Asked what would happen to the pool project if the council ceased to exist, a spokesperson confirmed that contingency planning was "well under way", before producing a single Post-it note reading 'Plan B: Swim faster?'

Merger opponents in Perth have raised concerns about shared identity. "Dundee people say 'pehs' and we say 'pies', and some of us say 'Perth' as if it has three syllables," said retired bus timetable collector Ina Robb, 81. "You cannot simply put that under one chief executive. There would be bloodshed at the bakery."

In Dundee, residents expressed broad indifference, with several asking whether Perth was "the one with the big roundabout" and others confirming they had "always assumed it was part of Fife."

At press time, the council had unveiled a compromise proposal under which Perth and Kinross would agree to merge with Dundee, provided the new authority was headquartered in Kinross, named 'Greater Perthshire (incl. Dundee)', and banned from ever mentioning the 2012 city status vote.