Recently this blog guided you through how to become a conspiracy theorist. Hopefully in the couple of months that have passed since then your eyes have been opened to how the world really works, you’ve managed to amaze your friends with your secret knowledge and made a whole bunch of new on-line friends to replace the aforementioned real-life friends who abandoned you when you wouldn’t shut up about your secret knowledge/listen to reason.

Now it’s time to move on to the next level and build your own conspiracy theory. This can seem daunting – peeling back the layers of deception that cloak the world like an iron shroud and hold it in an invisible fist seems like a big job to tackle equipped with only 4 GCSEs, an ability to blindly trust badly designed web-sites and a copy of Structural Engineering for Dummies – however help is at hand.

Even though it’s the very model of lizard-serving, Zionist controlled, false flag waving Mainstream Media the BBC has produced a series of programmes telling you exactly how to build the perfect conspiracy theory.  Naturally they can’t broadcast them as such – because then people would know – so it’s quite possible that you’ve already watched some of them and not realised.  I refer, of course, to…

Every episode of Jonathan Creek has the same three key elements, which align exactly with the three key elements of a good conspiracy theory:

Jonathan – Jonathan may be a poorly dressed, socially awkward, slightly pedantic, poncy-permed pedagogue who is, literally, unlucky with the ladies, but he’s also erudite and effortlessly the smartest person in the room. He’s the man who can see a tiny square of insulating tape and unravel a complex kidnapping or see through a “pact with the devil” and see, er, the royal protection squad.  Yes.  Jonathan never takes anything at face value, he fathoms the inner truth, he shies away from physical confrontation, but it the equal of any in an intellectual bout.  Go on, don’t be modest, you know that describes you.

Sidekick – Be it Maddy, Carla or Joey no Jonathan Creek episode is complete without somebody to act baffled and have the plot explained to them.  Strange as it may seem this sidekick represents the role of the mainstream media in the conspiracy theory.  They are normally the person who brings the mystery to Jonathan, but they will completely miss the clues that Mr Creek picks up on, be unable to explain events that are transparent to him and will take all explanations at face value.  They’ll be incredulous when Jonathan mansplains what’s really happening and, even though they haven’t set off the obvious answer klaxon on QI as many times as Creek, they’ll get angry with him for his deeper understanding of the world, just like shills get angry with you when you explain the real stories behind major news events.

Mystery – Every crime, so the iron law of fictional cliché has it, must have a means, a motive and an opportunity.  In TV detective land your Silent Witness or CSI may be all about digging around in the means, while Morse or Frost dig through obscured history to uncover lost motives, but Jonathan Creek is all about the clever villain creating an opportunity for themselves that disguises their involvement or makes their crime seem like something completely different.

This is central to every single conspiracy theory.  The motive for doing it is unimportant – it’s probably just oil, world control or money.  There’s no need to elaborate, or explain why people who already seem to have oil, control of the world and money would dream up such elaborate schemes to get more.  Means, likewise, are pretty unimportant; for example, David Shayler claims that the US used missiles disguised as planes with hologram technology to perpetrate 9/11 and he still gets taken seriously by some people!

Even when the argument revolves around whether the twin towers were brought down with planes or laced with explosives and demolished it’s not really the means being discussed – nobody ever doubts the guilty party have access to whatever means they need, just as they do in Jonathan Creek, be it a life-size dummy of themselves or a statue of an alien made from frozen mercury.

No, it’s all about the opportunity, about being clever enough to spot how the magician is performing the tricks, even if it means a sequence of events so unlikely or so impossible to achieve alone that everybody other than you must be in on the magic.  But that’s better than believing your crazy, mundane and irrational, right?  You really would be up the creek without the twaddle.

On the occasion of her 90th birthday I’m proud to present my in-depth and shocking interview with Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth.

Me: Your majesty, it’s an honour to meet you.

Queen [shaking my hand]: Hello, and what do you do?

Me: Well,I write a blog.  Now, the question everybody wants to ask you today is about Michael Fagan…

Queen [to somebody further down the line]: Hello, and what [inaudible]

Me [shouting]: Thank you, your majesty! It’s been an honour!

Congratulations on your new baby and welcome to the SNP’s brilliant new Baby Box™ that contains the essentials for raising a healthy, happy child.

In this box you’ll find:

SNaPpies – Yes, we have our own SNP brand of nappies – SNaPpies, each one made from sustainable, recycled SNP manifestos; scientifically proven to hold more shit than any other material.

Baby Grow – Smashing tartan sleepwear that will give your infant plenty of room to grow and move.

Baby Stunt – Smashing tartan MP3 player (128Mb) and headphones to help sooth your baby off to sleep with the white noise of a gentle Scottish lilt repeating, “We need independence”, “Yoons are bad”, and so on.  Will completely ruin your infant’s ability to grow emotionally or move on.

Dummy – Every box contains a tiny child-sized dummy.

Paddle – Discipline is an important part of raising a child, and there’s no better way to discipline your baby than with this hand-stitched leather paddle, embossed with an extra-stingy Union Jack.  There’s also a handy list of phrases to read out as you beat your child, such as “It’s the Tory’s fault you’re being punished!”, “Why aren’t Scottish Labour trying to stop me, eh?” and “I wish I could stop hitting you, but only full independence will give me the power to do that.”

Books – There’s nothing better than some state approved literature to help start your child on their journey into education.  As well as the SNP manifesto each box will contain Getting started in Scots, which will explain to your child that it’s fine just to make up their own words and spell them how they like, and Scottish mathematics, which aims to show them that the numbers mean what you want them to mean and that any numbers you don’t like can be ignored.

An introduction to your child’s named person – Telling you everything you need to know about them, what information they’ll be collecting about you and your child and what additional data and records they’ll have unsupervised access to.

Blanket – A lovely Saltire blanket to coddle your child.  If they wrap it around themselves it will feel warm and comforting, or they can duck their head underneath to hide from monsters and facts.

The box itself – The box isn’t just a container for all of these goodies, you can use it as your baby’s first cot (and the lid is soundproof, for those mornings when you just need ten minutes’ peace for your bangin’ heid).  You can also use it to dodge the 5p carrier bag charge, take your empties back for the deposit or as a giant ashtray that you’ll only have to empty once every couple of weeks.

Of course the most important gift of all is the gift of Scottish citizenship, and no box (or union*) can contain that, but when you first place your child in the soothing SNP-yellow box you know that you’re setting them the road to being a well rounded citizen and ,whatever the future brings, whether they end up protest camping in November or scrawling ridiculous notes in bars, the SNP will be there for them every step of the way, saying that they are helping them.

* Some unions are fine, essential even. Please consult your SNP representative for details.

 

Yesterday saw the launch of brave new libertarian web-site Heat Street, which aims to fill the public’s insatiable demand for a news outlet that lets right-wingers be as awful as they want and call it free speech.

The name is a virtually nonsensical pun suggesting that this is Fleet Street, only hotter, and forms part of the empire of the man almost single-handedly responsible for moving news production away from Fleet Street, 30 years ago.  Perhaps he’s forgotten that.

The site opened in glorious fashion with a story suggesting that the wife of presidential candidate Bernie Sanders may have committed a federal offence by lying on a loan application for Burlington College, during the period she was president of the college.  The article was branded as a ‘Heat Street Exclusive’, which meant that you had to wade through the leaden writing to discover that the story had broken in January, had been exciting enough to make the local news in Vermont and had died down as it was abundantly clear, even from Heat Street’s own article, that while the college may have overreached itself and had a spot of bad luck there was no evidence of fraudulent activity.

Meanwhile the site’s co-leader, and living antidote to the Midas touch, Louise Mensch, presented her own interview with beleaguered Tory minster John Whittingdale. This interview opened with Mensch praising his fearlessness and mastery of his brief and then demonstrating both by pitching him soft-ball questions on subjects that the interviewer and interviewee clearly agreed on, with painfully obvious pre-scripting to set up his factoids.

 

It’s certainly terrifying to see the ugly truths that suppression of free speech and the creation of safe spaces have been sheltering us from.

Speaking of free speak and safe spaces, issue 1 of Heat Street (which, I note, did not come with a free gift, unless you count sudden crippling regret that you’d ever learned to read) also included an interview with arch-libertarian and person most likely to appear in future history books under the heading ‘Causes of the revolution’, Milo Yiannopoulos.

Unfortunately Heat Street’s budget doesn’t stretch as far as employing writers good enough to disguise that Milo is human garbage – although, in fairness, there’s no evidence that writers that good exist anywhere – and Milo doesn’t help the situation by saying words from his brain for them to write down.

Unfortunately there’s not space in the pages and pages of self-indulgent tripe for Milo to explain why a free-market libertarian like himself ended up whining in a government briefing room that a private company was restricting his free-speech, somehow, by not putting a little tick next to his name.  Maybe they’re saving that for the point when this flaming site gets round to asking somebody a difficult question.

Where this site fails, apart from the awful, awful writing, terrible choice of subjects and choosing a pun three decades past its sell-by date for a title, is that it keeps going on about free speech and the elimination of safe-spaces, but is actually aiming to present the most sanitised view of the right that it can.  That it fails to even offer the functionality to comment on the articles reveals both its lack of commitment to ‘anything goes’ discussion and its desire to keep those who agree with them hidden from public view.

Ultimately if you want to read a site that promotes the views on offer in Heat Street then there are better written, better sourced sites where you don’t have to keep reading Murdoch’s whiny brats complaining, in puff-piece articles on a site owned by the 2nd largest media conglomerate in the world, that they don’t enjoy free-speech.

I imagine that a lot of their traffic yesterday was driven by their political opponents going to the site to see how badly it would fail, and who, satisfied that it was just as terrible as they dreamed, will not revisit.  The future of Heat Street is cold and traffic-free.

I’m going to rant.  I’m sorry, but sometimes something I read on-line will get under my skin to the extent that I can’t stop mentally picking away at it, and this week has seen one such article.

It was written one year ago today. but the author, Abi Wilkinson, re-posted a link to it this week because it is pertinent to the debate about the tax-affairs of MPs.

You can read the original article here, but if you can’t be bothered then, in summary, it argues that there should be no familial inheritance and that, upon death, the estate of the deceased belongs to the state.  The basis for this argument is that the inheritors have done nothing to deserve the windfall that inheritance can bring and that inheritance actively blocks the transfer of wealth from those who have money to those who need it.

The article centres around two children, Jemima and Edward, who are going to receive an inheritance of £1,000,000, which they are going to fritter away climbing the housing ladder, buying a new Merc “that is a little bit out of [their] usual price bracket” and going on holiday somewhere sunny and posh.

I like the sentiment behind this article and I agree that we live in a vastly unequal society and pretending that this inequality is the natural and sacrosanct order of things is a terrible and inhumane attitude.  In fact I only have three objections to the system described in the article…

1. It’s unworkable
2. It’s wrong
3. It dooms us to an eternity of Conservative governments, each more terrible than the last, as they revel in the capitalist joy that comes from knowing that the left will never be in a position to regain power

Aside from those three things it’s fine.

The clue to the first two problems with the system proposed lie with Jemima and Edward and their inheritance.  They are, respectively, a barrister and an accountant – solid middle/upper-middle class careers, that lend credence to the supporting argument that they’ve both already benefited from their parents’ wealth by enjoying a good education.  They both have London homes in their early 30s – an increasingly rare experience – so they probably got a little parental help with deposits as well, the lucky bastards.  The little dig about Edward’s Mercedes seals the deal…we’re not meant to like Jemima and her brother, and if we don’t like them then we’re happier for their inheritance to be spent on the 60 special needs teach assistants that the article, incorrectly, asserts we could alternatively funnel the £1,000,000 into.

Also, as far as the article ever details, this £1m is in bundles of cash, ready to dish out.

Always beware of any new system that is worked through with only the simplest possible example.  ‘The devil is in the detail’ is one of life’s great truisms for a reason.

What if Jemima is a school-teacher, suffering a long commute from wherever in London you can rent a house on a teacher’s salary…Coventry, I assume? What if Edward is a theatre-nurse who is still living at home?  What if that £1,000,000 represents not a bulging portfolio of off-shore interests, but a modest life insurance policy and a London house bought in the 70s?

Maybe Edward reduced his working hours (and his pay) to spend more time at home with his dying mother, rather than have her packed off to a home somewhere. After 2 years of looking after the day-to-day needs of his increasingly frail parent, yes, he’d quite like a holiday, but he’s also going to bung a couple of grand to a charity that helps the elderly.

Are we so happy for the government to swoop in and take the estate in that scenario?  Sure, that million pounds might only be benefiting 2 people, but it’s somehow harder to say they’re “undeserving” of it and, ultimately, tax-law cannot be written to use virtue as a yardstick.

What about George? The bulk of the estate he’s receive from his parents is the village pub that they’ve run for 30 years.  George has worked there since he was 18 and has managed the place since his dad retired 6 years ago. A big brewery chain has offered £1.2 million for the pub, with plans to turn it into a family restaurant, catering primarily to tourists.  George doesn’t want that, but he doesn’t have anywhere near the resources to make a competitive offer.

Susan, who is 8, has lost both of her parents in a car accident. They had both paid insurance premiums for years to ensure that she would be provided for if something like this happened, and the government will thank them for that.  Susan’s grandparents will take her in, but the money that her parents specifically intended for her would help make her childhood a lot more comfortable.  Unfortunately Abi Wilkinson’s article argues that the wishes of the dead don’t impact on the living, so the money from Susan’s parents will go towards making other children in care more comfortable, or buying army equipment, or something; it’s all good, right?

David wants to know if the state takes everything, as he’d rather like to keep his deceased parents’ wedding rings, as a reminder of them.  Brian wants to keep hold of his grandfather’s war medals that have become a family heirloom.  Lily’s earliest memory of her father is him showing her some paintings he owned and proudly telling her they were genuine Rembrandt’s, so it’s OK for her to keep those, yes?

What about company shares, can they be passed on?  Is the intention of this law to stop family owned businesses being handed down?  If company shares can be passed on then can parents sign over their assets to a company to dodge the 100% inheritance tax?  It might be a bit of a hassle, but if the alternative is having literally everything they own taken by the state the minute they flatline then it’s probably worth the effort.

Are spouses allowed to inherit? Do they lose half of anything that’s in shared-ownership? How about bequests to charity? That’s a major source of income for many of them; and I’m sure that when the state is reaping (almost literally) all of these estates there’ll be a lot less need for charities…and I’m equally sure that charities won’t believe you when you tell them that.

Is this new law truly egalitarian?  When the Queen dies will Balmoral and Sandringham be placed on the open market?  Can Charles inherit the properties, such as Buckingham Palace, that are held in trust by the Crown Estates? Can I put my house into a trust before I peg it? If so the new law is toothless, if not then it’s inequitable.

For that matter, can Charles inherit the title of ‘King’? Has he done anything to deserve it? It, along with any other titles, is a commodity that could be sold for national gain, after all. Is it the intention of this change in tax law that the idea of hereditary peerage and monarchy be ended?  It’s certainly not a problem for me if it is, but it is for other people, and that’s where the real problem is.

What’s wrong, deeply wrong, with this proposal is that it represents the very worst of the po-faced, nanny knows best, what’s yours in mine excesses of the left.  It represents a vision of socialism that the UK electorate has rejected time and time again. Although the author attempts to the use the right’s arguments of not expecting something-for-nothing and being prepared to work hard against them what she actually creates is a stick for the right to use as a weapon.

Politics in the UK has to be a fight over the centre ground.  Where that centre ground is can be changed, but it changes gradually.  A paradigm shift like this is a gift to the right; “They want your house!”, “They want to stop you leaving YOUR money to YOUR children!”, “They won’t be happy until the Queen is on the council house waiting list!”.  That is the sort of rhetoric that scares people away from the left and gives the centre-ground, and election victory, to the right.

The author struggles to understand why some many people oppose inheritance tax, when it affects only 6% of the population…it’s for the same reason that the lower socio-economic groups vote for the Tories, even while having their benefits eyed up for cost savings, it’s ultimately why people by lottery tickets, even though the maths says that doing so will only make them poorer.  It’s better to spend a couple of quid and have the hope of riches, it’s better to risk a benefit cut if it comes from the party that’s promising (however falsely) to stimulate the economy and get you a job, it’s better to oppose the inheritance tax and hope that you one day need it.

It’s that aspiration, even if it’s hopeless aspiration, that the far-left don’t understand, which is strange – when they’re proposing ‘fairer’ systems that are fundamentally flawed and doomed to be roundly rejected by the electorate are they not dreaming of inheriting the kingdom?

It’s shocking to think that in 21st Century Britain many millionaires go to bed every night, and awake every morning, hungry for more money.

 

They are stuck in a living nightmare, where the accumulation of money has moved far beyond the means to satiate even their wildest excesses and has become an unquenchable addiction.  Although the millionaire may consider themselves a world away from the heroin addict in the street they too will lie, steal and cheat in order to feed their addiction.  The junkie risks jail buying a stash with the proceeds of a stolen car radio so the millionaire runs the same (although much, much lower) risk by stashing their proceeds in the Caribbean.

In both cases the answer is not punitive jail terms, but rather sympathy, understanding and help.  This is why a special charity has been set up to help the wealthy who feel imprisoned by having piles of money and the ability to literally go anywhere or do anything they want.

We offer a bespoke service that allows the rich to go on accumulating wealth, but then give it to us.  Yes, the answer is, literally, to throw money at the problem, hence our charity’s name…

Not only is the HWO dedicated to helping those caught in the wealth trap, but we also promise to use the money we raise to combat social issues.  Yes, literally every penny we take from the wealthy will (after we’ve paid expenses, salaries, “miscellaneous”, etc) be spent on…I don’t know…combating poverty, donkey sanctuaries, whatever.

You can sign up now.  A direct debit of just £3k/month could make a huge difference to somebody’s life – mine, if nobody else’s – and we have different levels of membership for any amount up to £∞/nanosecond.  This simple gesture is your chance to help a loveless old billionaire, trapped in a cycle of endless hatred and wealth accumulation and put a smile on their face. When all is said and done, can you really put a price on that?

My road to Damascus moment came on the road to Hexham, when I saw a sign.  Literally. It was this one.

And I realised that the all the time I thought that sign had been saying this:

It had actually been saying this:

What a difference that ‘r’ makes! I slowed down to 50 so that I could read Northumberland’s history on Wikipedia.  The country – the Kingdom – of Northumbria once stretched from the Forth to the Humber. A mere 1,200 years ago wasn’t just a place where you complained that the main road from London to Edinburgh is still bloody single-carriageway for miles and miles, it was a proud sovereign state!

The land where my forefathers roamed has been appropriated by the Scottish bastards to the North, the Yorkshire bastards to the South and the miscellaneous bastards to the West.

At once I was transformed from a middle-aged white bloke with 3 ‘O’ levels and unresolved anger management issues into a member of an oppressed people with a legitimate grievance and a solid historical reason for believing that somebody, somewhere owed me reparations…and hopefully in sufficient quantities to pay for damages caused by the “sheep” I’d just hit.

What’s shocking is that me and my fellow Northumbrians have been oppressed by the English for so long that there’s not even a political party campaigning for independence for Northumbria.  I resolved to start one immediately!

Thereby, I proudly announce the formation of the Party for Northumbrian Sovereignty – the PNS.  And I resolve that the PNS shall never be one of those parochial and divisive nationalist parties.  Our motto shall be “Everyone Included” and the PNS will fight as hard for those Northumbrians in Edinburgh, slaving under the hated yolk of the Scotch, as it does for those in York who find themselves insultingly called ‘Yorkshireman’ (or the Y-word, as we’d prefer non-Northumbrians to say)!

“Everyone Included” is so central to the PNS that it appears on our flag (which, though you might find it hard to believe, I designed myself)…

Reading more, while I waited for Green Flag to tow me out of a ditch, I was delighted to discover that the Scots language started life as Northumbrian Old English.  It was the authentic voice of the hardy everyday folk of Northumberland, as opposed to the Gaelic spoken by the toffs and nobs at Scottish courts.  Therefore, PNS strongly supports efforts to reintroduce Scots -or, as we will call it, Northumbrian- and to have it recognised as a distinct and culturally rich language.

PNS is also putting forward a comprehensive white paper showing how an independent Northumbria would work, economically.  Basically Northumberland alone has 3½ times the land of Greater London, but only 4% of the population.  If just ¼ of the Greater London population can be persuaded to move to Northumbria and pay just ½ of what an average London house costs, and if just 10% of that purchase price goes in tithes to the newly formed kingdom then we’re looking at a windfall of, according to Excel, £5.34E+010, which certainly sounds like shit-loads!  And that’s before we consider tariffs on the use of the A1, the tourism boost caused by our new royal family and the one-off payment for us ensuring that Berwick-Upon-Fucking-Tweed never bothers anybody ever again.

Between now and the 2020 General Election I shall be building a team of core PNS-lovers and ensuring that the party is ready to fight for seats in parliament to advance our cause.  We’re also hoping to get Mel Gibson on board to make a film about the historical cruelty suffered by brave Northumbrians at the hands of…whoever.

So I’ll leave you with the first draft of my election flyer (hence the typo, sorry), and I hope that when you think of nationalists you’ll think “PNS”.

Author’s note: Credit for the map of 9th century Northumbria belongs to Finn Bjorklid – detail from Wikimedia Commons file, Northumbria 802, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=25766987

 

 

 

For too long the author of this blog has kept a secret.

In my defence I have kept it for reasons of (I kidded myself) friendship.

But now I must admit that I made a mistake. Matters of state hinge upon this.

Spanner must be unmasked!

This is Paul Crosier, of 11 Kirklee Terrace Lane, Glasgow, pictured outside his award-winning entertainment establishment.

Paul is, of course,  better known as notorious Internet troll @BrianSpanner1

As this blog has previously covered Spanner came to international attention because of his friendship with unduly famous anti-Scottish propaganda writer and enemy of freedom, J K Rowling.

Paul is happy to laugh and joke about those events.

Yeah, me and Julie [Rowling] go way back. We first met at a glam rock concert in the 70s, sharing a wrap of what later turned out to be Yorkshire Terrier dandruff behind a badly parked Vauxhall Viva.  We had a laugh, hit it off, I said “Boy, Wizzard are incredible”, and next time I saw her she owned a helicopter and Mull.

People say that she shouldn’t be friends with me because I’m a misogynist, but that’s nonsense.  At my club apart from me, Pete the barman and Dave who breaks legs all of the staff are female.  We tried men, but it changed the tone completely.

Paul, who says he’s married to his work – and also screwing other parts of his work, behind the back of the bit of his work that he’s married to – doesn’t see himself as a troll.

No, I don’t see myself as a troll.

And with his easy going nature, friendly laugh and half an eye on Dave who breaks legs it’s hard to be too critical of him. I asked him once if he was worried about personal or political retribution for the comments that he posts on-line.

It’s all a big pantomime, isn’t it?  I’m supposedly engaged in this epic on-line war with the ‘Cybernats’, but they’re all in on the joke as well.  We’re all just winding up this one bloke who sits in Southern England ranting about how great it is to be Scottish.

It’s an amazing laugh – he honestly thinks there’s dozens of people who support him. and that, eventually, he’s going to come up here and lead them in lynching me.

I’m really not bothered about politics; SNP, Labour, Conservatives, UKIP, Brown Shirts…they’re all basically the same, aren’t they?  I’m just looking for a bit of banter on Twitter and say whatever winds them up.  I don’t think I’ve even voted since ’79, when Thatcher got in. She was lovely, she was.

Last time we talked I mentioned, over the last of the Happy Shopper Ouzo, that I was getting nervous about keeping his identity secret and was thinking about ‘outing’ him.  He seemed unconcerned.

Honestly, mate, I’m thinking of packing in the Brian Spanner lark. The SNP have offered me one of their “unlimited expenses…wink, wink” jobs if I’ll go full-time writing an account that glosses over their failings, but attracts the same kind of high-profile punters as the Spanner account.  I know it sounds like selling out, but it’s 80 grand a year from an MP, a blind eye being turned to Paypal accounts being emptied and a 19 month head-start if the fraud squad gets involved.  I’d be an idiot to turn that all down.

Before going to press with this I phoned him on his premium rate number, told him about this blog and asked if he had any final comments.

I know a lot of people think there’s a ‘big name’ author or journalist behind Brian Spanner, and I think it will shock them to find out I’m just an average guy.  I apologise if they ever found me annoying, dishonest or misogynistic…I’m just a run-of-the-mill titty-bar owner with a receding hair-line, a £30/day doggy-dandruff habit, a warehouse full of ‘Skittish Resistance’ t-shirts and a Porsche Boxster that I got on a dodgy credit scam using a fake ID.  I’m no different to them, really.

Still, I guess this is the end for Spanner.

A leading cybernat, asked for a comment on Spanner’s retirement, tweeted only…

RIP, oaf! LOL

We’ve all been saddened today to hear that Tata intends to close its Port Talbot steel work, to the extent that it has become the cause du jour on Twitter.

Even Jeremy Corbyn, leader of the party that is 2nd only to the Conservatives in effectively opposing the government, jumped on to the Something-must-be-done bandwagon and prayed that he didn’t have to steer it towards what, exactly, must be done.

News of Corbyn’s principled, if directionless, stand was quick to spread.  Throughout the country town criers yelled out the news, causing thatchers, flint-knappers and gas-lamp lighters to pause in their work and give thanks that, once again, their taxes would be put to the noblest of causes…propping up an economically unviable industry.

Vox populi‘s appointed spokesperson, Pat Tishan, voiced the mood of the nation. “The Tories bailed out their mates at the banks,” he said – referring to an event that didn’t happen in 2008, or any other time – “so why can’t they do they same for these 5,500 people that I’d cross the street to avoid?”

Pat was speaking from his 4-bedroom house, which is in North London, and not a post-apocalyptic wasteland, he has a nice new car made from lovely cheap Chinese steel and a Labrador that he and his family haven’t had to eat, yet under further questioning he claimed to understand irony.

An Internet petition demanding that the Prime Minister returns from holiday immediately and reconvenes parliament for emergency discussion gathered 20,000 signatures in just a few hours, making it nearly as popular as the petition demanding that the Prime Minister be prevented from returning to the country and 20,000 signatures ahead of the list of people signing up to stump up the £1 million/day that the Port Talbot works is losing.

The Port Talbot workers and spokespersons for their community expressed their gratitude for the wave of support and looked for to it having a lasting impact right up until tomorrow morning, when Donald Trump or Kay Burley makes a tit of themselves.

Recently a few libertarian nut-cases are getting themselves a bit worried about our new, flag-ship Scottish Named Official Overseer Policy (SNOOP), even though we’ve done a logo for it and everything.

To show that we here at the SNP Scottish Government aren’t afraid of answering questions – however crazy they are – we’ve put together a once only chance for you to have a little Q&A.

What exactly is SNOOP?

SNOOP is designed to ensure that all Scottish children are properly looked-after by assigning each of them, from birth, a ‘named person’ who will monitor their development and well-being.  While this can sound like the state intruding into private life don’t think of the named person as a scary official…think of them as the child’s friend, their mentor, their confidant, their protector, and the person who enters all of their details into a giant database to which the state has full access.

What sort of details will my child’s named person be gathering?

The purpose of SNOOP is to ensure that every child has a happy, carefree childhood that allows them to grow up to be a full and productive member of the Scottish State.

To this end we’ll be tracking basic medical information, such as their height and weight, recording how they do at school, asking about their home life and gathering some ‘fun’ facts; like asking them what their favourite book is…and if it’s by somebody anti-Scottish we’ll be explaining why they shouldn’t buy any more of her stupid magic books.

What sort of questions will my child be asked about their home life?

For many people this is the scariest part of the plan, that people fear is no more than invasion of privacy by the state…whereas it’s actually quite a bit more than invasion of privacy by the state.  But there’s no need to worry, we’ll simply by asking your child if they’re happy, if their home life is stable, if there’s anything they’d like to talk about, if anybody at home has, say, talked to them about “inappropriate” subjects – such the meaning of the GERS report – or if they suspect somebody at home doesn’t support an independent Scotland or doesn’t plan on voting SNP.

The scheme isn’t creating a Scottish version of 1984, where Parsons is turned in by his own child for shouting, “Down with Big Brother” in his sleep.  No, it’s not like that at all.

Is the scheme optional?

Absolutely.  If you want nothing to do with your child’s named person then you need never speak to them and they won’t tell you what they’re up to.

They also won’t tell you what they’re up to if you do speak to them, so it really is up to you.

But can I opt out of the scheme altogether?

Absolutely.  If you don’t want to be part of the SNOOP scheme then simply don’t have children.

No, can I have children, but not be part of the scheme at all?

Whoa, it sounds like you’ve got something to hide, fella.  We’ll be looking into that really closely.

How long will data about my child be stored?

As long as we need it, obviously.  If it looks like your child is going to be one of those unionists come IndyRef5 then we might ask if they’d still feel the same way if it meant people hearing about how they still wet the bed when they were 9.

If, of course, it’s you that needs pulling into line then maybe some police officers will pop round and start asking you about a bruised leg your child had 20 years ago.  Can you explain that? Where were you that night? Are the clothes you were wearing still available for DNA testing?  Oh dear, it’s not looking good for you, is it?  You better accompany us down to the station.

Is anybody who opposes this policy a paedophile who wants children to suffer?

Absolutely, if they weren’t why would they oppose the scheme?  It’s not like we could spend this money more productively by focussing on children living in poverty, or concentrating on those we know are at risk…only by spending money we could spend better elsewhere can we chase a fantasy where every single child-abuser is caught, while actually letting more of them slip through the net.

What if my child doesn’t want to speak to their named person?

Oh, they soon will.  We’ll be tying the SNOOP policy into the SNP material that we’re already distributing to schools and matching it to a range of TV programmes aimed at children of all ages.

That’s on top of the cool prizes and rewards your children can win by reporting breaches of orthodoxy…up to a top of the range mountain bike if their parent is, or knows the identity of, Brian Spanner.

Is all of this legal?

That’s enough questions for now.  The time for questioning has passed.  Your children will be taught that questions are for answering, not asking.  Now tell them to go outside and play…it’s a cold, bright day in April and the clocks are striking 13.