By Scott Fleg-Monger, Our WestminsterCorrespondent

Head mandarin, Fuk Yoo Eck, co-ordinating the output of the Whitehall Arguing Negatively, Keeping English Rule Supreme oversight group, said that they were merely “revisiting our implementation strategy with a view to more effectively demonstrating the underlying value of the Union to key stakeholders and important special interest groups.”

“Our initial analysis perhaps contained a minor omission in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office starter paper.

"Perhaps they should have considered that those resident in Scotlandshire should be one of the special interest groups to be considered - unlikely though that seemed”, he added.

“It was interesting that our first report – that separation would cost each Scot £1 per year – was met with hilarious laughter and thousands of Scots asking where they could pay their £1 to make us piss off”, said Fuk, “perhaps the input from the Department for Education, that since most Scots were educated at state schools, few of them could read, might have been influenced by the education we provide for the poor in England."

“When we said that a separate Scotlandshire wouldn’t be allowed to have nuclear weapons – we could hear the laughter down here in London, the poor Northumbrians must have been deafened by it.

"When we put up Professor Michael Clarke, director general of the Royal United Services Institute think-tank to say, ‘Scotland would have to accept top of the range boys' toys would be out of the question’, the separatists responded that real ‘big boys’ wouldn’t want them anyway. That kind of thinking is, we admit, wholly beyond our comprehension."

He continued, “When we released our devastating legal opinion – that Scotland had been extinguished in 1707, and a new Scotlandshire would need to renegotiate 14,000 treaties, and no one would want the smelly scum – we were jeered at, and people quoted lots of silly treaties at us. That we have had to withdraw that claim, because it had absolutely no foundation, is a minor embarrassment, but minor only.”

“We are beginning to suspect that we have a wholly distorted view of the wild people up there. They don’t seem to want to be bought off with strings of pretty beads, or the other well tried imperial tactics. We are now beginning to see why the Romans resorted to building walls.”

A spokesman for the Cabinet Office outlined their new strategy. “We plan to leak a possible draft of a report, then wait till we see what they laugh at, then cut that bit out. Our reports may end up a little on the sparse side. Actually, all our previous reports would have been blank bits of paper.”

“Frankly, our greatest difficulty is when politicians try to determine policy, instead of leaving things to England’s natural ruling class here in Whitehall. We tried to dissuade Osborne, and U-KOK head Alastair Darling from pushing the idea that Scotlandshire was protected by the UK’s AAA credit rating. It should have been obvious, even to those fools, that there wasn’t a snowball’s chance of that being retained.

“The separatists have said they want to continue to use sterling. When we said we wouldn’t let them, they pointed out that we couldn’t stop them, so we will say that they can have a fiscal union but under our control. George Osborne will do as he’s told this time and say such a currency union would require ministers in Holyrood to accept a deficit cap, to be policed from London.

“The change does involve the chancellor in a total U-turn on the issue. Last September, Osborne told the CBI: ‘It’s difficult to argue for establishing a monetary union while pursuing fiscal and political separation . . . I have seen no such credible mechanisms proposed by those advocating independence. I am not clear they exist’, but Westminster politicians U-turn so often that we are sure no one will notice – least of all Osborne.”

"We are suggesting that allowing a separate Scotland complete control over its own budget could lead to disaster if a totally incompetent government got in there, deregulated the banks and ran up a vast amount of debt."

Once John Swinney had recovered from a wholly unexplained near hysterical fit of the giggles he said, “The official line is that we acknowledge Osborne’s U-turn on the issue, without mentioning that the UK has conceded every damn thing we wanted! Scotland is used to having a balanced budget, and we have no wish to run up an unsustainable deficit. That’s what the Brits have done, and landed us all in the keech.

“A fiscal union means that every government has to have a deficit cap, so it will apply to Westminster too. Osborne knows that as well as we do, but daren’t say so publicly. Let’s not force the issue - yet. We have, after all won the entire economic argument.”

We believe that Finance Secretary Swinney has sent out an urgent and secret message to the cybernats, urging them not to laugh online. “Despite the dictatorship we live under, I know you people are wholly uncontrollable. However, it is essential that you avoid aiding U-KOK and Westminster by giggling too much at their latest ‘analysis’. Let them publish it unaltered before releasing the joke offensive and the offensive jokes.".

Sources were tight lipped as to whether Douglas Alexander's proposal that another Convention be set up, to think about delivering more devolution in 2025, was part of the Whitehall strategy, or just another politician being really, really stupid and gifting more votes to the Yes campaign - almost as if they were trying to lose both the Union and their Westminster careers.

When the UK strategy, and Swinney’s response to it, was slowly and repetitively explained to Ian Davidson MP, Chairchoob of the British Association of Scottish Tories Implementing Radical Toryism in Scotland, he exploded, “Swinney – Bastirt!”

Related Articles

Scotsman : Scottish independence : Scotland able to keep pound

Herald : Warning over military after independence

Newsnet Scotland : Treasury re-write as Triple A bombshell leaves No campaign in tatters

Herald : Alexander calls for national convention to shape Scotland

Comments

Due to the huge number of complaints, comments are no longer banned on BBC Scotlandshire News pages.

Comments or no comments, it's still OUR job to tell YOU what to think - NOT the other way around.