JAMES MICHIE's "FRIENDLY FIRE"

The Scotch - what a verminous race!
Canny, pushy, chippy, they're all over the place,
Battening off us with false bonhomie,
Polluting our stock,
undermining our economy.
Down with sandy hair and knobbly knees!
Suppress the tartan dwarves and the Wee Frees!
Ban the kilt, the skean-dhu and the sporran
As provocatively, offensively foreign!
It's time Hadrian's Wall was refortified
To pen them in a ghetto on the other side.
I would go further. The nation
Deserves not merely
isolation
But comprehensive
extermination.
We must not flinch from a solution.
(I await legal prosecution.)

The "poem" above appeared in an August 2004 issue of the Spectator magazine. Innocent banter or blatant bigotry? Harmless repartee or rampant racism? We asked our MSP, Renfrew MacLudge, to look into the matter.