AS if you needed another illustration of just how arrogantly out of touch the Windsor family is, this week we have learned that Prince Andrew, the former friend of deceased sex predator Jeffrey Epstein, is to be awarded a Platinum Jubilee medal.

The shamed prince, or at least he would be shamed if that was an emotion he was capable of feeling, is currently holed up in Balmoral out of sight of the media and using a series of legal technicalities in order to try to wriggle out of facing allegations in a New York court that he had sex with a young victim of Epstein's sex trafficking.

Prince Andrew strongly denies the allegations, and claimed in a now notorious interview with the BBC that the recollections of the alleged victim could not possibly be true because she had described him as sweating in the night club where she'd claimed to have met him and he had lost the ability to sweat due to an overdose of adrenaline caused by all the heroics he'd performed in the Falklands. 

Anhidrosis (the inability to sweat) can be a very dangerous and even life-threatening condition. Medical science does not recognise an excess or continual exposure to adrenaline as causing a lack of sweating in humans. Hyperpraerogativa, the state of possessing a surfeit of entitlement, is not recognised as a medical condition, but it's one that Andrew and his family have a chronic case of. 

Symptoms include strutting around in fancy uniforms bearing a chestful of medals you haven't earned but which were given to you by yer maw, and expecting Nicholas Witchell to ooze sycophantically about you on the News at Six. Sufferers are blissfully unaware that they have a problem, it's the rest of us who have to foot the bill. Happily there is a cure, but it will only become available on NHS Scotland after Scotland becomes independent.

This piece is an excerpt from today's REAL Scottish Politics newsletter, which is emailed out at 7pm every weekday with a round-up of the day's top stories and exclusive analysis from the Wee Ginger Dug.

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