Dearie dearie me...

Professor Niall Ferguson in The Sunday Telegraph, on holiday in South Africa from his academic fastness of Harvard, is a wee bit critical of the best small country etc:

"1. Scotland is a small, sparsely populated appendage of England. Those who called it 'North Britain' in the 18th century had it right.
2. The weather is impossibly wet.
3. Most of the land north of Loch Lomond is barren rock.
4. Scotland lost its political independence 300 years ago and the creation of a Scottish Parliament, a glorified county council housed in a risible and over-priced folly of a building, has not restored it.
5. Educational standards in Scotland, once the highest in Europe, have - with a few exceptions - collapsed.
6. When it comes to sport - and I do not count the one decent tennis player - Scotland is the Belarus of the West.
7. In fact, when it comes to just about everything, it is the Belarus of the West.
8. That is why so many Scots emigrate. As I did.

This is not to say that there were not once things about Scotland that were truly wonderful. The country's transition from a theocratic Reformation to a bountifully creative Enlightenment was one of the great makeovers of modern history. The point is that (in the words of a mawkish song all Scotsmen know) "Those days are gone now / And in the past they must remain."
It's over. Over the way countries are sometimes just over. Over the way Prussia is over. Over the way Piedmont is over. Over the way the Papal States are over. Or, if you prefer, over the way General Motors will soon be over."

Dinnae be silly, laddie! How can you prefer the USA or South Africa to our wee bit hill and glen? OK, Scotland may be far from perfect, but some of us chose to live here and like it. Do you know what you're missing?

And, apart from its politics, what's so wrong with Belarus?