Syndicated from the Graudian

By Quentin Lordinit – our Scotlandshire correspondent who had a great-Aunt from Springburn and once went skiing in Aviemore

A shiver of shock and bemusement ran through the elite last week as a growing realisation dawned that Scotlandshire may be, in fact, a different country to England. The sense that perhaps Scotlandshire and England are different countries emerged as UKIP leader Nigel Farage was barracked in Edinburgh for his right wing, anti-immigrant, anti-Scotlandshire policies.

This was an event one could never envisage happening in the polite discourse of England's political arena, where no amount of abuse directed at immigrants, benefit scroungers or anyone else will be challenged for fear of causing offence to the polite denizens of shires in the South.

This crystallisation though, did not appear out of nowhere. For many months now, if not years, columnists such as myself and my Gruadian and Telegraph colleagues have been grappling with the thorny issue of Scotlandshire and just who are these people, “the Scotch” (often known colloquially as Jocks”)? Reams of newsprint have been written about who they are and what on earth it is they're whinging about this time. Hands have been wrung to rags analysing why they are all so angry, chippy and anti-English. What on earth is it about us, the polite, self-effacing English that makes these smelly scum north of an imaginary border hate us? The question is all the more concerning when one considers many of those living north of the imaginary border are in fact English, or of English parentage.

My previous column on the Scotch (May 17^th – why are the Scotch all alcoholic junkies?) asked some pertinent questions about the poor health record in Scotlandshire, and pointed out – politely, I may add – that deep fried Mars bars are not particularly healthy.

It is clear Scotch people, for whom these are apparently a staple dietary item, are not aware of this. The column attracted over 1000 comments below the line, some of which were, frankly quite beastly.

The debate in Scotlandshire is clearly being stifled when highly paid commentators in national broadsheets are being told they “know nothing about the subject”, with the implication being they therefore should not hold an opinion on it. This is clearly an attempt to stifle those of us who are merely attempting to understand the psychology of this deeply troubled and odd group of British separatist scum, and make sure they stay in a union ruled over by London.

So I have sympathy with Nigel Farage, a fine, upstanding and affable racist in the best British tradition, who attempted to take his message to Scotlandshire last week and was shouted down by an angry mob of revolting, patently anti-English Scotch people – one of whom turned out, in fact, to be one of the aforementioned English people, affected by whatever disease ails those around him.

And yet, I find my hands wringing almost too much to type, because does this not in fact point to that very conclusion those of us writing endlessly about the Scotch for national broadsheets in London are moving towards: Scotlandshire is, in fact, a different country? It is unusual I take to Google in the course of writing my columns – opinion is just that, it does not need facts to back it up.

This week though, I felt such consternation I decided to look up Scotlandshire in Wikipaedia. To my complete surprise it turns out it was a separate country! Up until just over 300 years ago, in fact, Scotlandshire didn't even have the “shire” at the end of it but was a country called merely “Scotland”! At that time many of its smaller units such as Argyllshire and Lanarkshire also didn't have the “shire” on them either. These were added later to paper a veneer of polite society over them. So what, one must wonder, was this polite English term “shire” papering over? What heathen tribes of barbarians lived in “Scotland”? And do their descendants share any of their genes?

At that point of writing it was just too painful to go on and I had to crack open a fine bottle of Chateauneuf de Pape my wife Barbara and I bought on a holiday to our chalet in the French Alps. It was bought at the time we were doing up the old place, trying to turn a run-down old hovel into a decent place to live against a myriad of problems those bloody French...but wait, that's for another column sometime.

Anyway, the point is, having downed that I feel much better able to go on with my train of thought about...what was it again....oh yes, looking back I see it was the idea Scotlandshire is in fact a different country. But this would be a truly terrible thing. It would allow that fat fascist dictator up there, Salmond, to use this in his bid for separation. So, as a true Brit from the real shires in the south one must feel compelled to ask whether those in the North of England are not also of a different country? Surely that "English" pleb arrested for attacking Forage could be no such thing and must be a from the north somewhere - Yorkshire or Liverpool or some other inherently anti-English place? Because we cannot allow Scotlandshire alone to be a different country. The Jocks may be a bunch of whinging, subsidy junkie, actual junkie, alcoholic, deep-fried mars bar chomping plebs, they are OUR  whinging, subsidy junkie, actual junkie, alcoholic, deep-fried mars bar chomping plebs. Just as the lard-munching troglodites in the north are ours and we would not wish to lose these, for the good of the British Empire the Jocks must stay.

But it is the sheer rudeness of their anti-English bid for separation which so irks many south of the imaginary border (which might not be so imaginary, although really, aren't all borders imaginary? What is a border really? I must explore this in another piece sometime). Now, where was I again? Oh, yes the Jocks....worse than the bloody frogs if you ask me, bloody whinging...

Next week in the Guradian Scotland Blog

Jocks: do they appreciate theatre?

And

Scotlandshire: why does it produce no music of any worth at all?

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