It’s painful to see how far Scotland has fallen

In this reckless trade of comment the non-specialist stands outside, innocently boggling, contemplating facts and asking questions too naive for experts more deeply engrossed in politics, arts or sciences. Occasionally this impertinence is rightly slapped down, but maybe human understanding needs the occasional outsider saying “Whaaat?” Even so, we all have topics we shy away from. One of mine is Scotland. But maybe it’s time.

It’s emotional, painful: as if some proud piece of identity has been kicked about by oafs, inverted and cheapened. It is only a quarter of my heritage, the rest Irish and English, but my father was a lowlander from Cupar, Fife: a draper’s son who made it to St Andrews in the 1930s. The high road of Scottish education took