Both written by Chick Young, someone who has a greater grasp on sarcasm and irony than even myself.
Frankly, I don't know how to break this news to you. But it would appear that Fifa plan to carry on with the World Cup this summer despite Scotland's decision to snub the tournament on the basis of non-qualification.
Scandalous, but there you are.
This, of course, has not stopped supermarket giants like Asda cashing in by the flogging of fashion items which would have you boast temporary allegiance to Italy or Brazil. Or indeed England.
But they overstepped the mark when they tried to market a t-shirt which claimed that England invented football, about as ridiculous a claim as the Dutch copyrighting mountaineering.
It was the kind of notion which had my Caledonian blood frothing with indignation.
I was as open-jawed with shock as I was when my tickets to see Neil Sedaka arrived to my house, addressed to Glasgow, England. Raging, I was and I told the girl in the booking agency that Neil Sedaka or not, this could be our last song together.
But I digress. There is no proof at all that the English invented soccer.
Nor is there concrete evidence that the beautiful game is the fruit of Scottish loins... although I would point out that the first international football match was played in Glasgow in 1868.
And of course Scots took the game to the world.
The English though have hi-jacked the sport. Or tried to, with songs like "It's coming home" the 1996 European Championships anthem by Baddiel and Skinner - a jaunty wee tune, I admit, but scandalously historically inaccurate. Three lies on the shirt.
Still, it would be juvenile to rant on about it in a column such as this.
Of much more interest is to whom the unemployed Tartan Army - demobbed until the launching of the 2008 European Championships qualifying campaign - will lend their support this summer. And who they think will win the tournament.
Several branches of the Scotland Travel Club are decanting to various points to enjoy a holiday on which they will view the tournament.
Some are going to Aviemore and preparing in classic Scottish fashion for the tournament. They're buying new television sets and filling the fridge with beer.
Others are attending Germany and backing, just for fun, other nations. Trinidad and Tobago, Paraguay and Sweden - for no apparent reasons - seem to be among the favourites.
Me? I'm a Francophile and have always bathed in the warmth of the Auld Alliance, the centuries long relationship between Scotland and France.
Zidane's retiring... it will be sad moment for all of us who enjoy a croissant of a morning.
And what of England? I think they will do well actually because in Wayne Rooney they have a player who is the genuine article when the bar-room talk turns to World class players.
I actually intend to bet them for a semi-final place and will cheer them robustly until the first over the top comment by one of their media. That should take me five minutes into the opening fixture.
Furthermore, it is an old tactic to back those you fear might win something... because then if they do then at least you have the consolation of a financial windfall.
Anyway here's to a great World Cup. We Scots are just jealous and that's a fact.
I'll put my t-shirt on it - but not that one from Asda.
Deep down I suspect that Uefa would like it if God would just drag Scotland westwards a couple of thousand miles into the Atlantic. Then this little troublesome spot on the face of Europe wouldn't be their concern any more.
They think we're nuts, you know. And worse still, I think they may have a point.
The only thing is, the recent actions of European football's overlords have been similarly bizarre.
First they allege that Rangers, in particular, have a problem with sectarian chanting, an issue with which few of sane mind would argue. And, in a move which threatened to drag a percentage of their fans kicking and screaming into the 18th century, never mind the 21st, Uefa threatened to throw the book at them for their behaviour in the Champions' League games against Villarreal.
But that book turned out to be about as thick as a slice of Ryvita.
Now they may appeal their own decision to clear Rangers who nearly fainted at the not guilty decision which was delivered on the charges.
Confused? I don't blame you. This unfolding of events would baffle a professor of logic.
But let's cut to the chase here. It's time for Scotland to order a taxi to the real world.
Don't cloud the issue in a fog of semantics about what songs are offensive. If you're drawing up a list I want Agadoo on it. But that hardly helps.
Don't give me gobbledegook about the real meaning of "Fenian" or "Hun" or any other noun, adjective or verb which relates not at all to the football club concerned.
We're small minded, pathetic, wrapped up in the past and worse still one of the most powerful bodies in world football has given up the ghost because they reckon that songs that chorus praise about "the Billy Boys" are related to a problem in Scotland which has gone on so long it is part of our social and historical background.
In short, we are beyond help.
For the moment, Uefa will leave us to stew in our own juice of sectarian madness, but this is not going to go away.
Don't blame Rangers for this - at least not the current administration.
I honestly believe that after decades, more than a century in fact, of dogged intransigence that the David Murray stewardship of the club has made real inroads into this madness.
From the moment he and Graeme Souness first swallowed hard and decided to press on with the signing of Maurice Johnston, the club has been stirring from a dark age.
But the supporters are going to have to realise that this won't wash any more.
At Rangers, at Celtic, at Hearts or even Partick Thistle who have a curious terracing hymn in which the Pope and the Queen both get it.
And what on earth has a banner asking me to remember 1690 doing at a football match as it was at Villarreal? I can't even remember what I had for my lunch yesterday.
The world has changed. The once acceptable isn't acceptable any more. Race, religion, colour or creed doesn't dictate what kind of person you are.
Not that it ever did, but once upon a time society believed it to be so.
Lunatics are exactly that and the colour of their skin or the church which they attend - or more precisely don't attend - won't change that fact.
The Scottish game needs to clean up its act and if supporters of Rangers and Celtic think Uefa won't be recording events at their next little get together then they can discuss it at their next meeting of the Flat Earth Society.
