Why are we so useless?

For centuries, Scotland has been exporting clever people all over the world. They run other folk's countries: Scots are to be found in many other countries' police forces, in politics, in business and industry, in the civil service, in diplomatic jobs, in medicine...

Since we can do all this in other people's countries, how come we're so absolutely useless at running Scotland?

I mean, look at our health service: falling to bits. Not enough doctors or nurses. Waiting lists that seem to grow every quarter. Long waits at A&E and even getting an appointment at your doctor's surgery can take weeks. Queues of ambulances line up outside hospitals because sick people can't be admitted to let the ambulance crews away to attend to other sick people.

Then there's our education service, slipping down the world rankings with every set of PISA findings. Undoubtedly due to dodgy teachers. Only 8 have been sacked for incompetence in recent years, which must mean that there are plenty of incompetents still in the job, mustn't it? And there's a national shortage of teachers developing before our very eyes, despite the short working days, long holidays and handsome salaries.

And what about the oil business? We've been gifted massive oilfields off the east coast and we haven't managed to put any money away for a rainy day and now we face redundancies and high unemployment in what was a very well-off part of the country.

It's all the fault of these politicians in Edinburgh, of course. Liars and con artists every one of them, too busy lining their own pockets to think what's good for Scotland.

And we can't stand on our own two feet. We constantly have our hands out looking for subsidies from the real parliament in Westminster.

No, it's no use. I need to take my tongue out of my cheek.

I've lifted all the comments above from newspapers and the BBC website, apart from the first paragraph. (You'll never find us getting that kind of recognition from the media).

Every day, I play a game: I try to guess what the Herald's front page headline will be before I take it out of the letterbox. I've discovered it won't feature any subject that appears in the rest of the media. And it will be bad news. Same with the BBC Scotland news website: before I switch on the computer, I try to guess how many murders, rapes and road accidents will feature. They get this 'news' from Police Scotland briefings and show a side of Scotland that makes me wonder if someone in the ONS is lying when they report year on year that crime in Scotland is down and violent crime down dramatically now that you can hardly walk 10 yards without being captured on CCTV. I also check the front pages of the other so-called Scottish newspapers. Big shouty print headlines bringing us relentless bad news.

And very little attempt to analyse what's happening in Scotland - or anywhere else for that matter - and why it's happening.

For example, we do have a crisis in the NHS and it's due to underfunding. Yes, there's a crisis in education: also due to underfunding. The crisis in the oil industry is due to central government's failure to make provision for lean times. But meanwhile the UK goes on spending. The UK has a 2 trillion pound deficit - and it's still growing. It's the Micawber approach to life: something will turn up.

And I haven't even mentioned Brexit.