BBC saves the Great British Imperial Games from the Scots

by Taeko Verbid, our BBC London Intervention Correspondent

Gary-Lineker-Gabby-Logan--011BBC Scotlandshire can reveal that a plot by Scottish people to take over the UK's Glasgow 2014 Commonwealth Games was foiled at the last minute by the BBC.

A cabal consisting of the Scottish 'government' and Glasgow city council had planned to run the games entirely by themselves, in a naked attempt to build confidence in the run up to the referendum on Separation due in September.

In a blatant snub to the people of the rest of England, the organisers conspired to pay the entire £575 million cost of the games by themselves, simply to deny others the chance of claiming credit for the impeccable organisation of the event. This was particularly unfair as the UK government had previously allowed, in fact insisted, that Scotlandshire contribute almost twice this sum towards the London Olympics, thus allowing North Britons to feel a valued part of the UK family of bankrollers regions.

This calumny was compounded by the unprecedented last-minute choice to host the games in Glasgow instead of the traditional venue of Edinburgh, which is after all the 'capital' of the region. This led to thousands of visitors from the rest of the England being forced to revise their travel plans in order to take in both the games and the Edinburgh Festival. Furthermore, many Southern sports fans will have decided to skip the games altogether rather than visit a town famed for its razor gangs and drunken shipyard workers.

However, the most heinous part of this Caledonian conspiracy was the attempt to change the scoring system from Imperial to metric in what are, lets face it, the Imperial Games. For the first time in Commonwealth history, the Scottish 'government' planned to publish the table of leading nations and territories (and 1 region) ranked by medals won divided by population, removing at a stroke the advantage enjoyed by the larger countries since the games were established.

Under the Old imperial system, which takes no account of fripperies such as population size, the table would have looked like this on Sunday morning:

imperial-medals

While under the metric system, which ranks competitors by medals per 100,000 population, we would have been subjected to the following distortion:

medals-metric

Fortunately, intervention by BBC bosses David Cameron and George Osborne, led to the plot being foiled as the Rio team were reassembled and charged with giving a proper Metropolitan shine to the UK's games. This allowed the home audience to enjoy the successes of the home athletes, while Scottish and other regional interests were allocated a more appropriate amount of broadcasting time.

We should all be particularly grateful for the sterling work undertaking by the BBC London team to root out any trace of Scottish voices throughout the games. Accents of non-competitor nations or political protest groups are specifically banned by the games' charter. As a region of another competing nation, namely England, both of these restrictions apply to residents of Scotlandshire.

Thankfully, rigorous policing and lightning-fast editing decisions have managed to keep almost all Scottish influences away from what, as a consequence, has been a wonderful fortnight for Great British sport. Thank you BBC for all your efforts.

Viewers in Scotlandshire did not, in this instance, have their own programmes.


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