For a list of the current Friends of the Scottish Review, click here
Answers to citizenship questions:
I couldn’t help wondering last night, as I stopped chewing my popcorn to watch an ice-dripping James Bond zapping his latest near-nemesis with a neddy knife in a wee Highland church, what exactly we are going to do about intelligence if and when the tartan curtain comes down.
Would we actually need it? Some obvious defensive essentials are already covered. Big truck-resistant blocks have been erected around the entrances of our major airports – presumably to hold off Al Qaeda with more than just John Smeaton in clan warrior gear – and concrete bollards now surround the Holyrood parliament building; though why any villain intent on world domination should worry about the Numptorium is a worry in itself. We’re talking intelligence here.
But Trident or not, Scotland does have many vulnerable and inviting targets for terrorists – oil rigs, royal castles, a long and fragmented coastline – and it might need more than the occasional bollard to fight off someone of real evil intent.
So are we to have our own miniature version of MI6? Or just hope that our erstwhile Thameside friends might be willing to help out with shared information? Can we trust them? Maybe not. The last time we were separate, the English sent Daniel Defoe – pamphleteer, bottle tax inspector and author – to spy on our pre-union machinations. He then used his acquired grasp of the Scottish east coast accent to grill Alexander Selkirk and turn the sailor’s island tale into England’s world best-seller for 300 years: ‘Robinson Crusoe’.
And there are two sides to this espionage thing, of course. There’s the defence of the reduced realm (see bollards) and the getting out there, a la Bond, to keep the rest of the world in check a la the UK. Will we have to dress up Smeaton in a bow tie and line up some foreign eye-spy candy for him before he can pre-emptively blow the bad guys apart?
Come to think of it, that’s something we might be quite good at. I’ve often wondered, when thousands of people are dying at the bloody hands of some awful dictator like Assad, where James Bond is when you need him? Or, as we Scots might soon be saying, where’s our Pipe Bond? Licensed to skirl…
Well, maybe not. But let’s face it, we’re pretty good at instant aggression to get a party started (see Glasgow kiss) and then at the double-quick retreat.
An early surgical strike by a skilled agent-marksman could relieve the world of much protracted suffering and save many lives. Shedding his kilt dramatically like that 1981 Bucks Fizz Eurovision triumph, our man could then blend seamlessly into the shadows. Making his getaway in his underpants, he would dive down through damp, rat-infested cellars, get consumed by cracking ice, and struggle along head-high, cobwebbed sewers to fall fortuitously into a sleek speedboat driven by a pouting woman in a tartan bikini.
He wouldn’t need much practice. I don’t get out much, to the movies or whatever, but I’m sure we have some nightclubs just like that.
Rick Wilson is an Edinburgh-based writer and former editor of the Scotsman Magazine
