Hamish Gobson’s diary: the view from across the Uisge
5 February 2023
I SEE in my South China Morning Post today that the Reserve Bank of Australia is not going to put King Charles on its new 5-tinny note. That seems to shock them. What the Hong Kong journalists seem unaware of is the fact that the Senior Policy Co-ordinator in the Scottish Government, my old friend Jeff Luggidge, has already announced Scotland is going to beat the Aussies to it and put Jock Tamson on the new 5-dram note.
That at least was the plan until Saturday. At about 6 p.m., I texted Luggidge from the touch-line at Twickenham, telling him to scrap the Tamson plan and substitute a young South African called Duhan van der Merwe. He seems like a far more appropriate representative of this “welcoming” and “inclusive” country than Jock who, it must be confessed, has the disadvantage of being Scottish.
Furthermore, Tamson never played rugby, even though he has lived for many years in retirement near the hallowed Carshalton Wanderers’ ground, at “Holiday Snaps”, Mafeking Road, Purley. Jock always used to say he really preferred watching sport to playing it, but I suspect the real reason for his retirement was that he was so exhausted after fathering five million “bairns” that he was not fit for sport of any sort, let alone rugby. The rumour was that old Jock could no longer find his strap.
“Genetic capture” is the name of the game in international competition these days, and Tamson’s heroic effort at “import substitution” should be seen for what it was, a creative response to the rising tide of bachelors and spinsters. But he did not reckon with Nicola Sturgeon, who some believe is both at once. Jock reckoned if he filled the country up with his own bairns, there would be no need for all the Polish plumbers, Latvian nurses and Bulgarian IT specialists that Sturgeon says Scotland has to attract if she is to continue in power.
Tamson is a patriot—no doubt about that—but he is no politician. He did not realise that our First Minister had a completely different motive. In fact, she wanted to take in the continent’s “tired, poor, huddled masses who are yearning to breathe free…” and thereby earn the gratitude of the big smells at the top of the European Commission. They have been wanting to get rid of people with a spirit of enterprise for some time.
Their predecessors in the Concert of Europe did that quite successfully in the late nineteenth century, sending millions of Poles, Jews, Norwegians and other indigent undesirables to the United States. But the US has since changed its immigration policy. Now the rulers of Europe want Scotland to take up the slack. That was why they were so bitterly opposed to Brexit. What old Jock failed to understand about our First Minister is that these expense-account smoothies in Brussels have second careers and off-shore pensions in their gift. That is why she has adopted a policy of deference and discretion when it comes to European immigration.
Duhan, whom I have not yet had the pleasure of meeting, definitely had the look on Saturday of a man who could out-Tamson Tamson at the bairning. Not only does he have a “demographic” look about him, but he is incontestably foreign, which is why he had to self-ID himself into the Scottish dressing room.
Boris said Brexit would allow Britain to escape from the “old Europe” and embrace the wider Anglosphere. Duhan, who comes from the Eastern Cape, is a shining example of that. He first played rugby for his school, “Outeniqua”. That is the euphonious Khoi-khoi name for one of the most beautiful ranges of mountains I have seen south of the Cheviots. They knock the Ochils into a cocked hat.
As a One-Nation Citizen, I suggest to Luggidge that we allow old Jock his honour in retirement, and keep him on the 5-dram note. We could then offer Duhan the 10-dram note that is about to be issued by the Bank of Shred. If he keeps on playing as well as he did on Saturday, he might one day be in a position to buy it. He could then retire to Australia on the profits and drink tinnies in the sunshine with King Charles, who will soon be in a position to travel incognito due to the policy of discretion and deference being pursued by the Reserve Bank of Australia’s note issuing department.
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Hamish Gobson lives on the isle of Great Todday (Todaidh Mór) and features in Nicola Sturgeon, vol. 1, The Years of Ascent 1970-2007 – A Citizen’s Biography of a Driven Woman in a Drifting Parliament (Ian Mitchell, 2022) – available on Amazon.co.uk and also reviewed here by Tom Gallagher.
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