Oh, how far thou art fallen

So much unrighteousness in a land! Error so wanton and unrestricted! Infamy so exalted and universal… It was once remarked that Britain, alone of nearly all nations, had for centuries been blessed not to see the campfires of an enemy army upon its shores. But I am afraid that almost every night, Britons huddle by their television sets, and in their light see just as much the glowing announcement of dreadful peril to come. The horizons of our very rooms smoulder with reports of advancing enemies, missives of conquerors, manifestoes of tyrants. The only thing that does not hold true, is that they are not often foreign, not anymore. It is instead our establishment, preaching disestablishment - the powers that be, loosing anarchy. The news is desperate, and regular, in this vein. I suppose it is so across all of the English-speaking nations - the whole world, even. But it seems worse here.

It has happened again most notably, just a few days past, with the Scottish Executive releasing the Lockerbie mass murderer - a man responsible for one of history’s most prolific dynamite outrages, accomplished in the air above a quiet Scotch town.

Whilst one of Scotia’s fair kings had Mr Fawkes and his conspirators hung, drawn and quartered, so heavily was felt their heavy wickedness, one of modern Scotland’s Arbitrary Democrats (ruling by divine right of the aggregate of those who can be bothered to vote) had other ideas. “The Scots are a compassionate people. We are different. We are better.” So they released him. He had served 11.56 days per victim slain. There were over 250 such souls he drowned in flame and fire in the heavens. He expressed, and expresses, no sorrow - no remorse.

And so Scotland died something of a death earlier this week. Or rather, the corpse, which one suspects has been decomposing some time, had at last more than just its ankle coyly displayed to the world. She was rumoured to be and has become a monster. Everything vital in her is evidently gangrenous; and honest men must be in a terrible division of mind. Either we would be well to conduct some engineering experiments as to the viability of pushing this cankered country (with the highest murder rate in Europe, incidentally) out into the north Atlantic, there to drift with whales and Greenland fishermen, the society of whom she could less readily corrupt. Or plans ought to be drawn up, or perhaps recovered from some 18th century archive, for her capture and subjugation.

Reports say that the Saltire of St Andrew was flown in Tripoli to welcome the unrepentant mass murderer home. Every British flag is less, now, for having this newly dirtied symbol as part of it. I do not advise split on the back of it. I advise the judicious repositioning of an aircraft carrier just off the Firth of Forth, and its solemn employment.