She who pets the ‘poor wee pooch’ never gets rid of the Scottie

‘And that is called paying the Dane-geld;
But we’ve proved it again and again,
That if once you have paid him the Dane-geld
You never get rid of the Dane.’
D—Rudyard Kipling

Are you as sick and tired as I am of putting up with being pushed around by the Scots?

Don’t think about the question too hard; don’t apply apply your English logic, Irish romanticism, Welsh wishful thinking or good old British diplomacy to the question. Do what the caber tossers would do and let your heart rule your head, befuddled of course by several rounds of cheap whisky ‘n’ Irn-Bru.

Yes, I called them ‘tossers’. I’m a McMongrel myself, half-Scots from my mother’s side, and I’ve always been proud of my lineage. Until today.

Now, I’m as repelled by the never-ending threats and impossible demands from Scotland’s First Minister as I am by the Brexit-bound British Prime Minister’s sly determination to make bargaining chips of EU nationals living in the UK, hostages to fortune while the government wrings as weaselly an exit deal as it can out of Brussels.

I am told that, as we ‘all’ voted for Brexit (52-48 per cent, wasn’t it?) there is little I can do in the latter case to affect that course of events other than to sympathise with my retired British friends trapped in similar limbo in their sun-soaked Spanish villas (Roger Wood, John Yeats et al, you know who you are) while they nervously await HM Theresa Mayhem’s pleasure.

On the other hand, there IS something we can do about the odious Scottish blackmail demand that Madame Braveheart, the Sturgeon-General, and her braw lads and lassies routinely deliver, rolling their ‘Rs’ and showing their arses across Hadrian’s Wall at every opportunity: “WE WANT OOR FR-R-R-REEDOM!”

It is the plaintive cry the poor wee beggars take up whenever their Westminster-subsidised free universities, free prescriptions and free aged care make them feel like the over-patronised, pampered poodles that they are.

So, brothers and sisters of Great Brexit — sorry, Great Britain — let us help our ungrateful northern neighbours in their quest for self-determination.

LET US DEMAND A BRITISH-WIDE REFERENDUM SO WE MIGHT ALL VOTE ON FREEING THE SCOTS FROM THEIR 310 YEARS OF BEING SHACKLED TO  THE UK!

Let us do it along the lines of the recent EU referendum with the addition of a requirement that a simple majority be obtained in each of the four nation states for Scotland to walk free. What poor, over-fed and over-pampered imprisoned Pict could say nay to such a deal?

Forget 1513 and the slaughter of the Scots (king and nobles all) at Flodden, ye hard-done-by Hibernians! Believe again in Bannockburn (1314) instead, conveniently putting aside rather more difficult memories.

The Darien Scheme of the 1690s, for instance, a disastrous international commercial adventure into which thousands of ordinary Scots invested their hard earned bawbees to link the two great oceans of the world by establishing an overland trading route between the Pacific and Atlantic.

That grand plan, to establish a Scottish colony in Panama, was so poorly organised that it financially ruined the Kingdom of Scotland, led to a bankrupt nation seeking the 1707 Act of Union with England and caused even more upset, wailing and gnashing of Scottish teeth than did Scotland’s ludicrous 1978 World Cup humiliation in Argentina.

In the words of immortal drunk and womaniser Rab C. Burns, the Scots were “bought and sold for English gold” (after Panama, that is, not the World Cup!). And if we, the more sensible of the four nations, play our cards right they might well do it again.

After all, can there be any doubt about which way England, Wales and Northern Ireland would vote?