By BBC Scotland's Westminster Correspondent David Porter

Politicians are fond of telling us that devolution is a process and not an event.

This week, further signs that the process, and indeed the individual events, do not always go to plan. People, whether they be in Westminster or the devolved administrations have a habit of putting a spanner in the works.

The prime minister knows that better than most that when Westminster, the mother of parliaments, loosens the aprons strings, the offspring can have a nasty habit of running off and getting themselves into constitutional scrapes.

Playground raspberries

In Cardiff that became evident when Mr Blair's favourite child, Alun Michael, was forced to resign as the first secretary of the Welsh Assembly.

That didn't prevent the other kids in the playground deciding they would blow raspberries at Mr Michael by minutes later passing a vote of no confidence in him.

To rub salt into Mr Blair's wounds at Prime Minister's Questions which was going on at the same time in Westminster, opposition MPs seemed to know about the resignation before Mr Blair did.

Downing Street later assured us that the prime minister had been told by Mr Michael earlier that he intended to go, but if he did know, Mr Blair did a very good job of hiding the knowledge about Mr Michael's intentions. It didn't make for a very good day for the government.

To add insult to injury, Mr Michael has been replaced by Rhodri Morgan, the man Mr Blair fought tooth and nail to prevent becoming Labour's leader in Wales in the first place.

Downing Street, however, now says Mr Blair recognises that Mr Morgan is the best person to lead the Welsh Assembly.

Thoughts of London

Parallels with what's happened in Wales are now being drawn with another part of the devolution project, the plans for an elected mayor for London.

At the moment Labour is going through the process of choosing its candidate before the contest later in the year.

There are three of them:

• Former Cabinet minister Frank Dobson, (Mr Blair's favourite

• Actress and former minister Glenda Jackson

• Ken Livingstone (definitely NOT Mr Blair's favourite).

Following events in Wales, people are now asking what will happen if, when the votes are counted at the end of next week, it's Mr Livingstone and NOT Mr Dobson. At the moment Downing street would prefer not to think about that.

In Northern Ireland, no-one is exactly sure what will happen and no-one is under illusion of just how serious the situation could become.

Fluid situation

Now the legislation to suspend the Northern Ireland assembly has been passed the province will once again be ruled directly from London.

It's a very fluid situation and everyone is at pains not to do anything to exacerbate the problems.

Suspension of the assembly and the devolved government is seen by many in government circles as the least worst option following the impasse over arms decommissioning.

Putting the situation on hold at least offers the chance of reviving the process in future.

By contrast with the above, Scotland has not been causing too many problems this week. The parliament has been getting on with its work relatively quietly, but that doesn't mean everyone has been behaving themselves impeccably, there's still been a spate of name calling between London and Edinburgh.

The announcement that the Scottish Grand Committee, comprising of all 72 of Scotland's MPs at Westminster, is to be revived caused a bit of a flurry.

Making the announcement, the Scottish Secretary John Reid said with so many issues affecting Scotland still being decided at Westminster it was only right to provide Scottish MPs with a forum to question ministers.

Turf war talk

His political opponents didn't quite see it like that. They argue the committee isn't necessary any more and accused Dr Reid of trying to stoke up what they call the "turf war" between London and Edinburgh.

As is the way of these things, challenges and accusations and counter-challenges and accusations flew off the fax machines as the various political parties wanted to put their side of the argument.

But compared to what else is happening in the wider devolution project, this week's Scottish row is fairly small beer. No doubt there will be further squabbles, the process is continuing.

At the moment the main concerns are not between London and Edinburgh, more focus is being putting on what is happening in Belfast, Cardiff and indeed in London itself.