We're doooomed!

I really have heard it all now. For those of you who missed this in the Herald yesterday, another of our ermine-bedecked superiors, aka Lord Fraser of Carmyllie, former deputy leader of the Tory party, has retched up quite the worst argument against independence that I've ever heard. And that's saying something.

It seems that if an independent Scotland decides to scale defensive capabilities back to a few fishery protection vessels then it is "asking to be invaded", and if some evil foreign johnnies decide to invade Scotland to gain a bridgehead for invading England (but of course, we wouldn't be important enough ourselves!), then under these circumstances England would have no choice but to "bomb the hell out of" Scotland's airports. So there you have it. Vote No in 2014 or else.

UK Citizenship Revoked

I just stumbled across the practice version of the United Kingdom Official Citizenship Test. Needless to say I thought it would be a laugh to spend 5 minutes having a go. Lo and behold...

You're barred!

Whoops! Quite a long way from the 75% pass rate needed. Have a go yourself if you're brave enough and let me know your score via the comments. NB there are some clues as to what to expect below, so if you prefer to go blindly into the test do so now!

Amongst the various questions that tripped me up were such vital pieces of information as...

• The year in which women gained the right to divorce their husbands
• The number of days each year that a school must be open
• The number of people in the UK under 19

The crazy part is that the last of those had 4 options from which to choose: 13 million; 14 million; 15 million; 16 million. Not the usual namby pamby, bloody obvious, multiple choice answers here matey! Oh no. We can't have answers of, say, 2 million, 15 million, 30 million and 14 juvenile hippos. Why, somebody might actually know only roughly the right answer. We can't let that sort in.

Amusingly one of the questions was as follows: Which of the following TWO types of people get their prescriptions free of charge? The choices were: Over 60s; Under 18s; Pregnant women or those with a nipper <12 months old; people on the minimum wage. I guess the mandarins that came up with this load of p*sh haven't been keeping up to date with developments in the colonies.