THIS week, our unelected head of state turned 90, and there was an orgy of sycophancy in the media that made the mediaeval writers on the lives of saints seem hyper-critical. It was hugely over-the-top for a woman whose greatest achievement, if we’re being honest, is still being alive at the age of 90.

Although, it is certainly the case that she is successfully keeping Prince Charles off the throne, and for that alone we must be grateful. Other rich aristos who know the Queen claim she does have an achievement – she can do an accurate rendition of an Aberdeen accent. Which is a bit like someone who doesn’t speak French claiming someone else speaks French fluently. Mocking Scottish people isn’t exactly the best method of worming your way into our affections.

Allegedly, she works really hard, and this would be true, as long as you define hard work as walking very short distances while waving at the lower orders and receiving the adulation of an uncritical press.

The only labour she’s ever known was when she was giving birth to four children who have equally failed to do anything constructive.

Except Charles of course, who has a full-time job writing crank letters to cabinet ministers. It says a lot about the sickness at the heart of the British constitution that the cabinet ministers have to reply to him, instead of filing his missives in the bin along with the other communications that they receive written in crayon.

If you were to believe the hype, the Queen is not only universally adored, but in her spare time, which she doesn’t have much of what with all those walkabouts and waving at plebs, she turns water into wine and cures leprosy with the touch of her gloved hand. This is of course when she’s not walking on water and exhibiting a wisdom that makes King Solomon seem like a bit of a dummy.

We were told it was a wonderful time for the royals and the country as a whole, and that joyful celebrations were the order of the day. Prince Harry got rat-faced and cavorted naked through the grounds of Buckingham Palace with a random model, and then someone told him it was his gran’s birthday.

The Queen’s legion of sycophants are so blindly loyal that she could trample one of them with a horse and they’d lie there broken and bleeding but still gushing about how marvellous she was. Although admittedly if she was to charge at Nicholas Witchell and run him over with the royal coach she would probably gain quite a few fans among republicans too.

There’s little data to go on, but I get the impression that republican sentiment is a lot stronger in Scotland than elsewhere in the UK. Unlike the rest of this so-called United Kingdom, no-one organises street parties to celebrate royal occasions.

Instead we organise raves in parks that are explicitly anti-monarchist and spend the day raising eyebrows and harrumphing at the sycophantic royalist excesses of a media that seems to be bent on enforcing a celebration of monarchy with no basis in reality, instead of reflecting the real lack of interest that does exist. Being Scottish during a royal-fest is a bit like being a wean upset that they’re going on holiday to a cold and damp Saltcoats while their mammy yells at them that they’d bloody better enjoy themself.

Yet the enforced gorging on bunting, bool-moothed minor aristos you’ve never heard of, and gushing platitudes is self-defeating. All it produces is increasing resentment at being told what to think and feel by an unthinking and unfeeling media. It puts into high relief that our media is not a mirror to this land but a propaganda movie directed by someone else far away. And they’re missing a trick; when the BBC is about to embark upon yet another hagiographic inane celebration of the non-achievements of a well-born non-entity, it’s the only time that people north of the Border would actually welcome the continuity announcer saying: “Except for viewers in Scotland, who’ll be getting indoor bowling from Coatbridge, presented by Dougie Donnelly.”

As far as the royal family and Scotland are concerned, less is more. The more they’re stuck into our faces, the more we resent them.

The royal family symbolises a British establishment that treats Scotland as a landed estate, a country that’s a possession. They come to Scotland once or twice a year to stay in a castle and shoot things. They know nothing about our lives, and then have the gall to claim to the world that they represent us.

The disconnect between Scotland and the rest of the UK is writ large in the royal family. There’s no chance of ever getting a republic while we’re a part of the UK. In the UK there is only ever going to be compulsory bunting and Nicholas Witchell’s sycophantic commentary. We’re stuck with them until we get independence, and then we might get a parliament that will allow us to decide whether we want a monarch.