Warns Minister
by Wagril Slane
It has emerged that, should Scotland leave the UK, it will automatically lose the rights to a major figure of speech.
Any SNP celebrations of a future 'Yes' vote would be subdued due to a new blow dealt by one of the UK's regional assemblies.
“If the Scots are going it alone, then going it alone means going it alone,” said Junior Welsh Minister Caerdydd Canalog. “And that means forfeiting the right to use metaphors about the rest of the UK. And yes, this will, I'm afraid, include ‘the size of Wales’”.
Statisticians all over Britain have long relied on ‘the size of Wales’ as a universally recognized unit of area, to describe everything from rainforest loss in Africa to the size of storms on Jupiter, to African rainforest loss. But continued use of the term would be illegal in an independent Scotland.
Mr Canalog told The Gaudie: “It’s all very well you Scots wanting independence, and you’re a bloody sight more likely to get it than we are, but you needn’t think you can cherry pick your semiotic lexicographical signifying tropes on the way out. You may have enjoyed measuring things in comparison to our homeland for centuries, but you can bloody well stop all that if you bugger off out, I can tell you.”
The Gaudie reached out to Dr Eilyke Maarps of Aberdeen University’s Department of Geography, a world-renowned authority on vague and inaccurate comparisons, revered in the academic world as the person to compare the first pictures from the Mars Rover’s landing to “somewhere on Earth with a lot of rocks, but a bit redder". He said we should not despair over the ruling since an alternative can always be found.
“The sensible thing to do," he said, "is invent our own uniquely Scottish vague unit for something that is quite large. And what could be more Scottish than the large marine mammals I regularly see basking in the sun off Aberdeen Beach, especially after a prolonged lunch? So instead of ‘the size of Wales’ why not ‘the size of whales’? I mean we are all familiar with how big whales are, even if we've never seen one, or know how big they are."
Not everyone is happy with Dr Maarp's idea however. “Maarps is a dick,” said Professor Archie Meades of Aberdeen’s Department of Mathematics. “He has no knowledge of Euclidian geometry. As Euclid would have said, perhaps while noticing how apples fell downwards from a tree, Wales is a measurement of area, whereas whales are three dimensional – thus ‘the size of whales’ would be a measure of volume instead. Also, whales come in all sorts of sizes, there are those really, really large whales, or to give them their Latin name, whalus largus reali reali. Then there are ones that are smaller sizes. Also, even the really, really large whales must be smaller when first born, otherwise how would they fit in their mother’s pouches? Maarps should stick to boring his undergraduates with his PowerPoints of inaccurate medieval maps."
“That bloody Archie Meades is talking out of his arse, to use the Welsh term,” retorted Mr Canalog. “The last time I looked out of my office window, Wales was as bloody three dimensional as you like, in fact, it’s a lot more three dimensional than bloody Aberdeen however much you may put pictures of mountains that aren’t anywhere near Aberdeen in your bloody prospectus. Oh, and while you’re at it Scotland, if you are leaving the UK, you can bloody find a new location for your bloody sheep jokes too.”
