IMAGINE

Like all great statesmen of the world one needs some precious time to unburden oneself from the daily travails of leading a nation.

To that end I have an unbreakable morning routine here at Bute House.

At 7.30am precisely one of my underlings brings me a bowl of piping hot porridge and copy of The Racing Post. I eat my porridge and then retire to the presidential cludgie to read up on the gee gees and rid myself of yesterday's concerns, as it were.

My underlings know that during that 20 minutes I am under no circumstances to be disturbed.

So, you can imagine my fury when 5 minutes into my cherished routine there is a sharp knock on the toilet door.

"Oh, Mr President," the underling whined "I'm so very, very sorry to disturb you, but I have Professor Alex Kemp on the phone. He's insisting that he talks to you immediately."

Wobbling with rage I fired back: "Tell him I can only deal with one shit at a time."

"Yes Sir" replies the trembling voice on the other side of the door.

"No, wait. What the bloody hell does he want?"

"He wants to talk to you about Fergus Ewing's speech at the Offshore Technology Conference in Houston. Ewing has claimed that North Sea oil will never, ever run out."

"What!!" I explode, for the third time in the space of 5 minutes.

"Yes, Scotland's pre eminent oil experts are furious. They say that you know full well that oil production will fall to around 125,000 barrels per day in 2050, from an output of 155 million barrels per day last year. They say that you and Ewing are completely aware that shortly after 2050 extracting North Sea Oil may not be worth the production cost. By the time our grandchildren are reaching adulthood North Sea oil will  have gone the same way as coal mining did in the 1980's."

Now I know this. You don't.

But I do and and I certainly don't need a balloon like Ewing raising the topic at a time when Big John Swindly is still smarting from being caught fiddling £ 1.8bn of pension liabilities and the polls suggest that the proles remain wholly unconvinced of our arguments for a New Mediaeval Scotland.

"Sir" the underling continued.

"What?!"

"It gets worse. Princess Nicola saw the latest IPSOS poll putting support for the Yes campaign at only 31% and she's gone completely do lally. She's wandering around barefoot in the grounds of Holyrood with daises in her hair muttering something about a natural majority of Scots being in favour of independence."

"Oh Christ!" I exclaim, "There's no press about are there? Not after the last time."

"No Sir"

I did indeed find Princess Nicola as my man servant had described. It was a sad sight indeed.

She wandered up to me and, as if lost in a trance, said: " Oh Great Prince Bravebelly, I don't believe the polls. I am convinced, from talking to people across the country, that there is a natural majority in Scotland for independence. What do I mean by that? I don't really know what I mean by that. I suppose I mean that people will vote Yes if we can all just imagine. Imagine that independence opens the door to a wealthier and fairer country."

I dripped words of comfort into her troubled ear. "But it doesn't love, I've told you that before. It's about emotion and resentment and, well, frankly, all about me. It not about economics. That bit doesn't work as well as what we've got within the UK."

She continued: " But Boss, I may be a dreamer but I'm not the only one. I believe that Scotland should be governed here at home, from our own Parliament, and not from Westminster; that we should hold the powers in our own hands to shape a nation that lives up to our ambitions of fairness and prosperity; that we should have no one else to blame if we fail to do so; and that we should have a new relationship of equals with our friends across these islands. Imagine all the people, living life in peace. Why don't they join us? "

Yoko has clearly gone loco and I'm getting slightly bored with this toon loon. It was time for a wee dose of reality. Time for her to take off the rose tinted spectacles: 

"Because they want to keep their jobs and their pensions to be honest. Now pull yourself together woman. We need a new strategy and we need it fast"