Ard Mhacha you advise to:

"Ask your local Scots Nat` how free you are, "

Why?? My freedom I have exercised and enjoyed for as long as I can remember. I don't have to ask anyone about it - If you feel you have to consult someone as to whether or not you are free - Then more fool you.

As to the bit that went before.

"I was well into middle-age when I had to run the gauntlet on more than one occasion, when confronted by uniformed football thugs from the Highlands to the Lowlands. It was in your best interest to avoid your "free" Scots in Britsh Army uniform on the streets of the unfree six north eastern counties of Ireland. "

If memory, plus a belated recent apology, are anything to go by. It wasn't "uniformed football thugs from the Highlands to the Lowlands", in, "British Army uniform" who were responsible for the indiscriminate planting of explosives specifically aimed at causing the maximum number of civilian casualties "on the streets of the unfree six north eastern counties of Ireland". As I've stated previously if any unrepresentative and unelected body ever told me that they were protecting me and fighting for my freedom by indiscriminently planting bombs in areas where my wife or family might have just cause to be - I'd tell them in no uncetain terms to bugger off and protect somebody else.