FALKIRK 1298

Remember when we got gubbed 5 - 1 by England at Wembley in 1975?

Well, my tartan epsilons, that's what I've had to endure over the last 24 hours.

Despite my explicit order to my Head of Wasteland Security to silence those pesky economists at the Institute of Fiscal Studies, we at Project Fib, have just taken a right good hiding.

The IFS have projected three forecasts for my monocratic Scottish Nirvana and even in the best of these scenarios I'll have to increase VAT to 28% or cut public spending by 8% per annum. My deficit will be around £ 10m pa and the interest on my borrowing for my share of the UK national debt will be completely unfeasible unless I hand over all the tax revenue from the dwindling supplies of North Sea Oil. What an indyshambles.

It got worse my friends. Today I had to join my financial Masterchef Big John Swindly in Dundee to present our riposte. It was to be our Bach-like manipulation of the levers and pedals of the Free Calbanian economy.

Now, ordinarily,  when it comes to financial projections Big John is analogous to Gordon Rangers in his culinary skills and so, as I sat in the back of my limousine on the way to Dundee, I was looking forward to something really tasty, something spectacular. Oil revenues escalating to 2150 perhaps; corporation tax at the same rate as my permanently recessioned Celtic brothers in Ireland; a guaranteed index linked pension for Scots who have worked all their years and simply look to an affordable retirement.

And what did I get?

I got a load of twaddle about how we'd have been £ 900 per person better off if we'd been independent in 1997. Well for Willie Wallace's sake Johnny, if Ian St John had been playing up front with Denis Law and Bill Shankly had been managing the team then we wouldn't have got hammered at Wembley in 1975. Any daftie can play that game! I wanted a vision not a backward looking moanfest! That just sounds like sour grapes. The past is over! That oil has gone! I needed a get out. Anything to take the voters' minds off the huge economic price they will have to pay to ensure my personal legacy as the successor to Robert Bruce and William Wallace. Bravebelly, the new Liberator of Scotland.

Well. It didn't happen. We got done good and proper and here I am staring at economic defeat. My financial inadequacies laid bare and my plans in tatters.

Sure, I can always rely on you, my loyal, unquestioning followers. But how do I convince the massive majority of Scots who'd happily see the SNP consigned to political obsolescence?

It has to be the White Paper.

I have to get that right.