I have recently become concerned that Scotland may not be a proper country, after discovering a group of Scots who spend an extraordinary amount of time explaining why it could never manage to become one.

They are Unionists, although I should immediately distinguish ordinary Unionists, who simply believe Scotland is better off within the United Kingdom, from the more committed specimens who appear to demonstrate their love of Scotland by explaining how completely useless it is.

Scotland, I discovered, is too small, too poor, too dependent and incapable of surviving without England, which was worrying because I live here.

I started with population.

Scotland has around 5.5 million people, but unfortunately Norway, Denmark, Finland and several other countries have similar populations and appear to have slipped through the international community’s minimum size regulations.

I looked for the regulations anyway.

There aren’t any.

I moved on to resources and found oil, gas, whisky, food, fisheries, tourism, financial services, universities, enormous renewable energy potential and rather a lot of water.

This was disappointing.

Fortunately I found GERS, which shows Scotland with a substantial fiscal deficit and appeared to confirm we were doomed, until I discovered that Scotland does not actually have a conventional set of national accounts and significant elements of revenue are estimated from UK figures.

I then found the McCrone report.

In 1974 Professor Gavin McCrone examined what North Sea oil could mean for an independent Scotland and produced conclusions sufficiently cheerful that they were treated as confidential government advice rather than something likely to brighten up a wet Wednesday in Lochaber.

The report did not become publicly available until 2005, although McCrone himself later rejected claims that it had deliberately been suppressed.

I was beginning to suspect Scotland’s finances might be slightly more complicated than Facebook had suggested.

Then something else bothered me.

If Scotland is costing the rest of Britain an enormous amount of money every year, why does Westminster want to keep us?

This seemed particularly odd because the British Empire has considerable previous experience of countries leaving and, historically, has not always responded to the suggestion with a complimentary carriage clock.

I therefore began looking for the Union itself.

Instead I found Loyalists.

Then I found the Orange Order.

Shortly afterwards I was reading about King William III, Protestantism, Catholicism and the Battle of the Boyne, fought in Ireland in 1690, none of which appeared in Scotland’s latest economic figures.

I had begun by asking whether Scotland could afford pensions and was now studying a Dutch born king on a horse.

This is how investigations get away from you.

The Orange Order is openly Protestant and Unionist and represents a very particular strand of Unionism rather than the millions of perfectly ordinary people who support Scotland remaining within the United Kingdom, but by this stage I had come too far to turn back.

Armed with my concessionary bus pass, a notebook and considerably more knowledge about seventeenth century European monarchy than I had possessed that morning, I crossed the Irish Sea.

The bus pass was less effective during the wet bit.

Eventually I reached Portadown, where the long running Drumcree dispute has again centred on whether an Orange parade should travel along the mainly nationalist Garvaghy Road.

I had travelled from Scotland trying to establish why my country could not operate independently and had reached Northern Ireland, where part of the answer apparently involved who was entitled to walk down a road.

At least the road existed.

I checked.

For an evidential benchmark I returned to the Official Loch Ness Monster Sightings Register, where reports of a large unidentified creature living underwater continue to come with dates, locations, witnesses and an identifiable Registrar of Sightings in Paige Daley.

Nessie was beginning to look comparatively straightforward.

I returned home with my bus pass, my notebook and one question still unanswered.

There are perfectly rational reasons for supporting the United Kingdom, but I remain fascinated by the Scots who defend it by insisting Scotland is too poor, too small and too incapable to survive without it.

Because if Scotland really is an enormous financial burden, Westminster has been remarkably reluctant to get rid of us.

And if Scotland is sufficiently valuable that Britain cannot contemplate losing it, I may have misunderstood the meaning of burden.

I started this investigation trying to discover why Scotland needs the Union.

I finished it wondering why the Union apparently needs Scotland.

If you have any conspiracies you would like Aye to investigate, email conspiracycorner@thehighlandtimes.com