If Scotland votes for independence next year Edward I, the Hammer of the Scots, will rise from his tomb in Westminster Abbey and devour the first born of every family resident north of the border – if the plague of locusts don’t get them first.
This is one of few scare stories that have not been put about to frighten us not to vote Yes – but there’s plenty of time yet.
In recent weeks we have heard that mortgages would be more expensive if we go for independence.
We’ve been told that we will have to pay through the nose for insurance and for pensions without the rest of the UK – rUK – to look after us.
We won’t be allowed in to the European Union and we might have to invent a new currencythat no one else recognises because we can’t have the pound.
And even if we vote no but only by a narrow margin we are threatened with the prospect of it all coming back to haunt us again, and again and again – the dreaded “neverendum” with Scotland somehow caught in a constitutional time warp which will condemn us to generations of navel gazing.
And this week we have been told we will probably lose our British passports if we dare to go it alone.
The Home Secretary Theresa May dropped a pretty heavy hint when she told MPs: “Decisions on UK citizenship remain with the UK Government, but if the vote in the referendum is for a separatist vote then Scotland will become a separate state it will not be part of the UK.”
C’mon Tess, you’re having a laugh. You’re not seriously suggesting we the first inhabitants of a newly independent Scotland couldn’t have dual nationality?
The Home Office didn’t quite say that, but what they did say was that the Scottish Government cannot promise us that, if Scotland became independent, people would retain the option of dual Scottish and UK nationality.
See what they did there? Clever and a bit scarey.
Not surprisingly Alex Salmond is a tad miffed at all this negativity and accuses the unionists of spreading “fears and smears”.
Well what did he expect?
Did he really think that he would trundle along with his masterplan for breaking up Britain and that those who didn’t fancy it would say: “Oh, go on then.”
The truth is that this was never going to be a fair fight.
Those who want independence have to convince us that everything will be alright if we leave the UK.
The other lot only have to sow the seeds of doubt.