I HAVE been struck. (Readers’ chorus: “About time!”). If you will let me finish, I have been struck by the increasing degradation of city life.

And I’m not afraid to upset middle-class Marxist-Leninists and liberal see-gooders (liberals don’t see the world as it is but how it would be if everybody was nice) by making no bones about the most self-evident aspect of this degradation: neds.

If you live in the city, the phenomenon may have sneaked up on you gradually. However, if your visits to the metropolis are infrequent, you really notice how much it has grown in recent years.

I’ve made a couple of visits to the city in the past year for purposes of anthropological research and buying trousers, and I’ve been shocked and arguably appalled. And when I say “city”, I don’t mean proper big places, but these daft uppity toons in the provinces.

Again, I come right oot with it insensibly: provincial Scotland is hell. Riddle me this: why is Scotland so nedular? Other countries have no equivalent, except perhaps England with its chavs. It’s a British phenomenon.

Difficult to envisage neds in Norway or Switzerland. True, they now have soccer hooligans, but these are just bourgeois role-players only now catching up with Britain in the 1970s.

The point about the ned is that he (are there nedettes?) is wilfully abominable. Apart from being sartorially disgraceful, the ned is ugly, mean and nasty. There’s no sugar-coating this with bilge about being misunderstood or boasting an authentic sub-culture. They are bad people. Tolkien’s Orcs would look at them and say: “They’ve taken this nasty thing a little too far.”

In local papers around the country this week, one reads of random attacks on decent ratepayers and on other young persons. Always, these feral creatures attack in packs like wolves, picking on a lone outlier from the respectable herd.

Nevertheless, well-meaning saints call for society to cuddle its neds. What are these people having, readers? Correct: their cake. And what are they doing with it? Exactly: smashing it into their own faces.

If you are a Morningside Maoist having a fit of the vapours as you read this, then, fine, let’s broaden the point to say there is, undoubtedly, increasing brutalisation in our society. To my mind, neds are the most obvious manifestation of it but, even if they dressed properly and imbibed Early Grey from platinum cups, the nastiness would remain.

Let me point out too that neds have their mirror-image in toffs. Both wear uniforms. The toff in his green waxed jacket, the ned in his grey tracksuit bottoms. Both are ill-mannered and contemptuous of those outwith the group.

One awful event I attended was a Countryside Alliance festival on Edinburgh’s Meadows. Though not there in the line of duty, I’d been giving these posh, sinister, right-wing, urban-based, fox-mangling freaks a hard time in my important and authoritative newspaper columns.

I just happened upon this despicable jamboree by chance. Nobody recognised me or anything. But the vibe, the horrible role-playing clothes, the cliquey wickedness and some kind of peculiar stench made me gag. If neds held a similar festival, with information tents and charcuterie stalls, I’d find it just as harrowing.

As it is neds on whom we are picking, sorry focusing, this week, I offer the following stern measures to destroy the problem utterly. First, gentlemen’s outfitters must ask to see proof of athletic prowess when confronted by a customer asking for a pair of light grey tracksuit bottoms.

Second, bobbies on the beat must follow neds on the streets, keeping them under observation and occasionally throwing objects at them. Third, in court, sheriffs sentencing neds should make them attend classes in non-fortified wine appreciation and social etiquette, as well as confiscating their trousers.

These measures may strike some of you as illiberal and, accordingly, I commend them to the House.

Going green

LAST week, for our Sunday paper, I wrote an important and influential article about Shrek. While researching the computer-animated ogre, I became disturbed (reader’s weary voice: “Here we go”).

I read that, taunted and persecuted by humans, Shrek seeks solitude and peace far away from folk. Eh? What sort of loony does that? Hang on, this sounds familiar.

And it gets worse. As a result of his self-imposed exile, the ogre becomes cranky and misanthropic. At this point, I bellowed into the void: “Right, that’s enough! I’m getting my lawyers onto this!” Then I remembered that my lawyers taunted and persecuted me as well.

Worse still, they were imaginary. I only ever use lawyers pro tem when buying a house or pleading not guilty in court to impersonating a journalist.

Admittedly, the monster comparison with your correspondent was not total. At least Shrek has a donkey for company. But he tells it: “Look, I'm not the one with the problem, okay? It's the world that seems to have a problem with me.”

This is distinctly, disturbingly biographical. Is this what I have become? A monster in a tiny waistcoat? I must reassess my life. Is it easy to learn dancing? How do you apply to attend a party?

Don’t dread he droids

Artificial intelligence experts expressed slight concern that robots might destroy the human race. A poll found that 36% anticipated “a catastrophe as bad as an all-out nuclear war”. On the other hand, rather than wiping us out, perhaps the robots could just lock us all up to save us from ourselves.

Big Britain

Once more, as in days of empire, Britain is top country. But now it’s for obesity. Research commissioned by a firm that makes gastric balloons – boom industry – also found that we eschew food and veg, and couldn’t give a damn about our blood pressure or cholesterol. It’s this swashbuckling, devil-may-care approach that put the Great into Britain.

Cleaned out

Another thing Britlanders are good at is losing money. Not on the gee-gees or internet scams but in our washing machines. A study commissioned by bovine laundry service Oxwash found Britionians lose £800 million a year in their washing machines and tumble dryers. The shock news has fuelled moves towards a cashless society.

Watch this space

Swiss timepiece outfit Omega has developed a watch that astronauts can wear on yonder Mars. So they need never miss Match of the Day. The X-33 Marstimer, which you can pick up for £6,000 if you’re a nutter, withstands extremes of temperature, radiation and vacuums, ken? What happens if you accidentally put it in the washing machine?

Foot for thought

Prehistoric times were awful. There was no telly and you had to catch your own food. Now we learn folk also suffered bunions. It says here they got these by not wearing shoes. But we wear shoes and get bunions tae. The truth is that, thousands of years on, nothing much has changed toe-side.