I’ll be hon­est: I secretly love the Daily Mail. Not in a ser­i­ous way, or even in the same — admit­tedly slightly evil — way that I love watch­ing people get park­ing tick­ets, but in the way that some­thing goes so far bey­ond the bound­ar­ies of bad that it begins to tran­scend real­ity and become breath­tak­ing awe­some, in the true ‘worthy-of-amazement’ way.

If you’re from the UK, you won’t need a primer in Daily Mail Hate, and the quite wor­ry­ing trend of people read­ing a Daily Mail head­line or story and using that as an allegedly fac­tual basis for some form of pre­ju­dice. In fair­ness, the DM also does a good line in cute animal pho­tos and in quirky stor­ies that BBC News will steal the next day, although they tend to be some­what less con­ten­tious. But they have now pub­lished a head­line that goes wildly, enter­tain­ingly, bey­ond even the DM’s usual stand­ards: “Eng­lish pas­sen­gers forced to show pass­ports when arriv­ing in Scot­land”.

In short, we Scot­tish people hate you Eng­lish people so much, even though you pay for everything for us and we steal all of your money and give it to stu­dents and ill people that we now make you show us your pass­ports at the air­port. We think you are such a major ter­ror risk that you might do an incen­di­ary Mor­ris dance or foot­ball hoo­ligan­ise us all to death that we have decided to to incon­veni­ence you slightly in order to make our point.

So let me do all of middle Eng­land a favour and trans­late the head­line into actual fact: some pas­sen­gers, regard­less of where they’re from, are being asked to show their pass­ports at some air­ports for secur­ity reas­ons. This, strangely, will prob­ably also include some Scot­tish people, return­ing home to Scot­land in order to deep fry a Mars Bar and toss a caber or two before nip­ping back down to Engli­and to steal your votes. And so hor­rific is the abuse of our Scot­tish powers that the Mail end the piece with the news that “Met­ro­pol­itan Police, which cov­ers Heath­row and City air­ports in Lon­don, also use the powers on domestic pas­sen­gers. A Met spokes­wo­man said: ‘From time to time we to stop people and look at their travel doc­u­ments. It’s not that unusual.’” This would con­sid­er­ably under­mine the entir­ity of the Mail’s argu­ment but, erm, you know, that prob­ably doesn’t count as kilt-screening because, erm, ooh, look what Sienna Miller’s wear­ing today! And is that a baby duck without a mother?

I admit it: I’m a bit­ter Scot who some­times gets annoyed when Dorothy Per­kins in Sus­sex won’t take my 100% genu­ine Scot­tish £20 notes without first treat­ing me like a money laun­derer who’s put on a dodgy accent. I’ve had whole argu­ments with my Eng­lish boy­friend when he won’t accept that the word “juice” cov­ers all forms of drink­able flu­ids apart from water and alco­hol. The words “answer” and “dan­cer” do not — and can not — rhyme. But regard­less of that, even we money-grabbing, bagpipe-playing, mean­ies, who have sent our entire pop­u­la­tion to work in the Cab­inet, really couldn’t care less about look­ing at your pass­port unless we have to, apart from to laugh at  your photo.

After all, our time is pre­cious: we have chips we could be eat­ing instead.