Submarine dodgems and Scotland's gift to England

So a French nuclear submarine collides with a British one in the middle of the Atlantic.

Ah well, the seas are so crowded these days. Difficult to avoid the traffic in what is, after all, only the second biggest ocean.

But was it really an accident? Or is this a new and far more exciting variant on the game of chicken? Were the two captains heading for each other to see which of them would blink first and swing out of the way of the other?

Or it could be something simpler still. Maybe the French were simply keeping to the right while the British were trying to keep to the left. Which side are you supposed to be on when creeping along the bottom of the Atlantic?

Fascinating, anyway, to see what can happen when you’re just passing the time with 600 times the power of the Hiroshima bomb along with you. Perhaps what was really going on was an ingenious, indirect blow for the nuclear non-proliferation cause. After all, if they’re going to start playing bumper cars with submarines, I for one would really appreciate it if they could take the nuclear warheads out first.

Totally unrelated postscript

What a boon Andy Murray is for English sports fans!

Murray has always been at pains to make it clear that he is a Scots tennis player, not an English one. He declared that he would ‘support anyone but England’ in the 2006 football world cup.

As an Englishman, I find that kind of statement profoundly liberating. It means that when Murray wins I can bask in the reflected glory of a victory by a fellow Brit. When he loses, it’s just another well-deserved humiliation for an arrogant Scot.