Rule Britannia

I can’t tell you how pleased I am to be part of Great Britain.

I really can’t.

Everyday, I wake up and wonder what I ever did to deserve such bountiful benefactors. I thank god that he saw fit to bless me with the advantages I have in being ruled by Britannia.

When I think of how too wee, too poor and too stupid we are here in Scotland I despair at how we would ever have managed as an independent nation left to our own devices.

Can you just imagine what it would have been like to have to have lived under the privileged king or queen of Scotland? Imagine having had to support a royal family and kowtow to their hangers on! It doesn’t bear thinking about. Painting all that grass green because Queen Mary or one of her descendants was popping by for a visit. Maybe even having to learn French to impress her. Hell’s bells, quelle nightmare. And all that infighting that would have been going on until her favoured legions had settled into their hierarchy? Lord Muck of Clabber Castle jostling his way into position before Tam the Bam ousted him. That would have been too much.

And as for all that clan-bitching that would still be going on! Every Cameron, Blair and Broon squabbling with each other, over who owned what, what belonged to who and whose name mattered more than the other’s. Each one claiming that they had the best interests of the Scots at heart. Desperate stuff that would have been.

Then there would have been all that awful governance malarkey to contend with. Having to decide who in the country should get what, if anything, and whether certain bits of the nation deserved more than others. Whether to build a rail service between the Highlands and the Lowlands and wondering whether to bother with the islands at all, at all. Imagine having to decide how much tax to raise to make sure we didn’t just chuck our elders in the bins that would need emptied, or working out how much it would cost to run an efficient and humane social services. That would have meant sums. Better just leaving that to the number crunchers at Westminster. Wouldn’t want us to go carrying into the wrong column and you probably need to know your times tables for some of the really hard ones. And all that arguing about priorities and scratching your head about how much to lay aside for jollies to furrin parts.

Then we would have to have talked to other folk when we got there! Dear god in Govan, we couldn’t have done that. Trade ne…go..ti…a….Sorry, you’ve lost me there. I’m just a wee Jock wi’ nae knickers tae ma name. Hence the bare arse under the kilt, I suppose. Imagine the humiliation of our accent abroad! What a riddy it would have been to send an embarrassment of a foreign representative out into that big world beyond the Borders.

Close shave with that one.

We would have to have thought about defending ourselves too. Jesus wept. That’s lamentable. How on earth has any other country in the world ever managed that one? I suppose there’s the possibility that we could have come up with some sort of workable system that would have protected us should the marauding hordes from some far flung, or nearer, parts have descended, enmasse, to steal our cattle and ravage our women. Maybe we could have had an army or something. I’ve heard they work fairly well in some quarters.

But, thank god, we don’t need too many soldiers because Britannia has very kindly lent us an enormous penile extension to scare off the non-English speaking enemy. I don’t know all that much about it, what with me being too stupid and all that, but apparently, just saying we have it ought to be enough. Maybe flashing it once in a while to flaunt its enormity. ‘Check this out, pal! Come and get it if you’re brave enough.’ That should see us alright.

I daren’t think what would happen to us if we didn’t have the deterrent of something that might work. If we wanted it to.

And it’s worth it, isn’t it? I mean, it only costs a few bob, in the big scheme of things. We’re loaded, you see.

We saved up for it. We did, you know. Britannia thought about it long and hard. Got quite excited at being first among equals and decided tally-ho.

I’m eternally grateful. You’ve no idea.

To have such a magnificent specimen of manhood parked within 40 miles of Glasgow is a turn-on beyond my imaginings. And they let us have it. I mean, how generous is that? I guess it’s because we gave them all our oil. Only seems fair, doesn’t it? Probably by the time Trident’s been upgraded it’ll work out about evens.

And it’s even providing more than five hundred jobs! That’s a big number, isn’t it? I think. Maybe not as big as five million. But five million’s still quite a piddling amount, isn’t it? That’s only a city in some places. And you can’t park a nuclear weapon in a city. Everybody knows that. That would be dangerous. Maybe even contemptuous of the lives of those in that there city. So, we’re holding it for Britannia, at the moment. We’re like that, you see. Generous to a fault.

I know you’ve probably heard about the mean and miserable Scot who created the Grand Canyon because he dropped a penny in it. But it’s not true.

How could it be? We give everything away. Even our freedom.

But, some of us are okay with that because we get to wave a special flag. It’s a lovely one. Better than a lot. Not as good as some. But it means so much to be able to drape our coffins in it.

I, for one, can’t tell you how grateful I am to be considered a special region of Britain.

I really can’t.

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