Hadrian’s wall, Culloden, the poll tax, Jacob Rees-Mogg: yes, England has inflicted an awful lot of angst and pain on Scotland down the centuries – but, look, we still don’t want you to leave.

1 Sorry for calling every last one of you “Jock”. We now know it’s offensive, especially if you’re a woman.

2 So sorry for the years of heartless Conservative governments that you never voted for that ripped the heart out of the Scottish mining, steel and shipbuilding industries, butchered public services and imposed an unwonted, dismal neo-liberal ethos on a land to which such a callous political and economic philosophy was inimical.

3 And for making you guinea pigs for Margaret Thatcher’s disastrous poll tax, inflicting it on you a year before England and Wales, and then – somehow! – forgetting to backdate the rebate for the tax when it was abolished in the early 90s.

4 Sorry for the 1746 Dress Act that banned tartan, part of a sustained attempt by the British government in Westminster to ethnically cleanse the Highlands and eliminate Gaelic culture.

5 Sorry for thinking Culloden and Flodden were the same battle.

6 Sorry that some of us lift your kilts up at weddings. You know, to check. That’s not on.

7 We’re sorry for describing Andy Murray as Scottish when he was rubbish and British when he won Wimbledon. It’s just that we don’t win much.

8 Did you know the multiple Olympic medal-winning British cyclist Sir Chris Hoy is Scottish? You did? Sorry for only just realising that.

Culloden … sorry. Photograph: Getty Images

9 We’re so sorry for Claire Forlani’s “Scottish accent” on last year’s Dewar’s whisky ads. Even we can tell her accent’s more Twickenham than Murrayfield. To be fair, she is married to Dougray Scott, who is Scottish, and you’d have thought could have given her basic lessons. We’re just saying.

10 We’re so sorry we keep calling you Scotch. Scotch is whisky, Scottish is what you are. We get it. Finally.

11 So sorry we didn’t call in the US ambassador to complain about disgraceful depictions of Scottish people in American popular culture such as Groundskeeper Willie, Scrooge McDuck and WWE wrestlerRowdy Roddy Piper. We should have told them that Scots aren’t all mean, violent weirdos with mental health issues. But we didn’t. Sorry.

12 Sorry for Private Fraser in Dad’s Army. His depiction as a dour, mean, whiney undertaker was not the positive role model you deserve.

13 Sorry too for Mr Mackay, the prison warder in Porridge. And for Jim McLaren, the prisoner in the same sitcom who suffered lots of racist abuse for being black and Scottish while in HMP Slade. We didn’t mean to suggest that Scots are either neurotically officious or violently criminal. But somehow we did. Sorry.

14 Sorry for David Cameron stressing his Scottish ancestry to belatedly ingratiate himself with you. Even we thought that was embarrassing.

15 Sorry for letting the Americans put their nuclear submarines in Holy Loch thus making Greenock, Dunoon and other blameless Scottish towns primary targets in any nuclear war.

Mr Mackay in Porridge … sorry.

16 Sorry, too, for putting Trident nuclear submarines at the Faslane naval base, thus once more transforming blameless parts of Scotlandinto a nuclear target. Perhaps in retrospect we should have put them nearer London.

17 Sorry, too, for that whole Balmoral thing. Bad enough for the Westminster government to ban the Highland tartan and try to eliminate Highland Gaelic culture. Worse to have your proud highland culture reappropriated and commodified by Queen Victoria who, with her consort Prince Albert, visited Scotland and liked it so much that she took one of the nicest parts of it for a royal residence. Apologies for the bitter irony of that.

18 So sorry for David Cameron’s speech calling on Scotland to remain part of the UK. Perhaps in retrospect it wasn’t a brilliant idea for an Old Etonian MP for a safe Tory Oxfordshire seat to speak at the Olympics velodrome in London rather than, you know, making his case for continued Union north of the border.

19 So sorry, what’s more, for the 2012 Olympics. We know you paid for quite a lot of it and that most of it took place in London or nearby. With hindsight we can see that taking billions of the nation’s taxes and paying them to huge civil engineering firms that build luxury flats that push up London house prices and fatten profits for property developers and local estate agents wasn’t fair. If we’d been Scottish, we’d have been quite annoyed.

20 Sorry for Buckie, which was mentioned in 6,496 crime reports from 2010 to 2012. Even though monks from Buckfast Abbey in Devon say it’s not fair to blame their tonic wine for crime in Scotland, we can’t help but feel partly responsible.

21 Sorry for Jacob Rees-Mogg. You send us superb single malt whiskies and top-notch salmon, and what do we send to you? A plutocratic chinless wonder to stand as Conservative candidate in the overwhelmingly working class central Fife constituency in the 1997 general election, where Rees-Mogg came third and actually reduced the Conservative vote, possibly because he went canvassing with his nanny in a Mercedes. Twit. Sorry about that.

22 Sorry for being terrible neighbours. We should have followed the injunction inscribed on John Knox House in Edinburgh, namely: “Lufe God abufe al and yi nychtbour as yi self.” To be fair we only recently learned what it means when translated from Early Scots to modern English: “Love God above all and thy neighbour as thyself.” If only we’d understood that last bit sooner!

23 On that point, so sorry for the three main Westminster parties saying: “Well, if that’s how you’re going to be you can’t be part of our sterling currency union. Ner ner ner ner ner!”. We’re just terrible neighbours. Sorry again.

The Queen in Balmoral … sorry. Photograph: Five

24 Sorry for beating your national team at rugby. We just thought fighting in mud over something that doesn’t really matter before getting bevvied would be right up your street. Turns out we were wrong. Apologies.

25 Irn Bru – did we mention we love it? Especially now we learn it’s not actually made from girders. Sorry – should have said so earlier.

26 Sorry about Hadrian’s wall. True, the Romans built it to keep you out but we could have bulldozed it rather than conserving it as a world heritage site and symbol of how civilisation stops – as if! – at Carlisle.

27 Sorry for incessantly satirising Sean Connery for being a Scottish nationalist who lives in the Caribbean. It’s not funny and it’s not clever. It is hypocritical of him, but sorry anyway.

28 Sorry for suggesting that there was a Scottish mafia in the Labour party consisting of Tony Blair, Gordon Brown, Alistair Darling, Charles Falconer, Derry Irvine, Michael Martin and John Reid. Apart from the obvious fact that this would be the most effete mafia in mob history, it’s unfair to suggest that there’s a Scottish conspiracy to ruin Westminster. Or (sinister face) is there?

29 We are very sorry for what happened at the battle of Culloden on 16 April 1746, when the Jacobite rebellion was finally crushed. Following the Duke of Cumberland’s “no quarter” order, hundreds of fallen Jacobite soldiers, not dead, were shot where they lay, others burned alive in human fire pits. Many were taken prisoner only to be summarily shot, one after the other. We shouldn’t have done any of that.

30 Sorry too for what happened on the road to Inverness after the battle. Many of the Highlanders headed for Inverness and were hunted down and killed without mercy by Cumberland’s dragoons. No wonder you call him “Butcher” Cumberland.

31 So sorry for our role in the Highland clearances that followed the defeat at Culloden and extended well into the 19th century, effectively erasing a whole way of life from the Highlands. True, Scottish aristocrats cleared their estates of crofters and other Highlanders to make more money from their land, but we were classic enablers. Sorry.

32 In fact, more than enablers. The Tenures Abolition Act 1660 ended the feudal bond of military service and the later Heritable Jurisdictions Act removed the virtually sovereign power the chiefs held over their clan. Both these acts made it easier for Scottish landlords to clear their estates of Highlanders, and those pieces of legislation became law thanks to votes in parliament at Westminster. Sorry.

33 Sorry for sending Prince Charles to Gordonstoun.

34 Sorry for blaming you for Tony Blair. Yes he is Scottish, but we voted for him.

35 Sorry for being unpleasant about Susan Boyle.

36 Sorry for William Camden’s 1586 book Brittania, in which he libelled you as a wild and barbarous people, writing: “They drank the bloud [blood] out of wounds of the slain: they establish themselves, by drinking one anothers bloud [blood] and suppose the great number of slaughters they commit, the more honour they winne [win] …To this we adde [add] that these wild Scots…, had for their principall weapons, bowes and arrows.”

37 Sorry for creating the legend of Sawney Bean, the head of a 48-strong incestuous lawless and cannibalistic clan from Galloway, who were claimed to have murdered and eaten more than 1,000 victims. He wasn’t that bad, really.

38 So sorry that the historian Edward Gibbon continued this cannibalistic slur, by illegitimately combining two distinct historical sources, and musing on the possibility that a “race of cannibals” had once dwelt near Glasgow.

39 Sorry for calling Scotland “northern Britain”.

40 Sorry for Paul Merton suggesting on Have I Got News For You that Mars bars would become the currency of a post-independence Scotland. He was trying to make a joke, we suspect, relying on the lame racist suggestion that Scots are so proverbially unhealthy that they like their Mars bars deep fried. Not funny. At. All.

41 Sorry for Ray Winstone saying on the same episode of Have I Got News For You that “To be fair the Scottish economy has its strengths – its chief exports being oil, whisky, tartan and tramps.” Obviously he forgot Tunnock’s Caramel Wafers.

42 Sorry, that last one was a cheap shot. You don’t export tramps. And even if you did, they’d be lovely.

43 Sorry for not accepting Scottish banknotes as legitimate currency south of the border. We all know that RBS is the worst bank in the history of banking, but the Clydesdale bank’s notes are OK.

44 So sorry for Kelvin Mackenzie calling you “tartan tosspots” in a column in the Sun and rejoicing in the supposed fact that you have lower life expectancy than the English.

45 So sorry for Kelvin Mackenzie later going on Question Time and saying “Scots enjoy spending [money] but they don’t enjoy creating it, which is the opposite to down south.” To be fair, the audience was booing him. And that was in Cheltenham, which just goes to show that his loony anti-Scottish sentiments don’t go down well even in middle England.

46 Sorry in general for creating the racial stereotype of Scots as mean.

And dour.

And whiney.

And violent.

And having terrible cuisine.

And speaking incomprehensibly.

And drunk.

47 Sorry for the films of JK Rowling’s Harry Potter books. In particular that one of the most imposing pieces of Scottish architecture, the railway viaduct at Glenfinnan, is now called the viaduct from the Harry Potter film. Woeful.

Faslane … sorry. Photograph: Getty Images

48 Sorry for Sherlock, the BBC retooling of Arthur Conan Doyle’s novels. Yes, we know that some of the episodes were written by Steven Moffatwho is a Scot, but he does live down here now and so has probably been corrupted by English ways.

49 Sorry for implying Gordon Brown was surly because he was Scottish rather than because he was Gordon Brown. It’s not because he’s Scottish that he sucked at being prime minister.

50 So sorry for Samuel Johnson’s remark: The noblest prospect which a Scotchman ever sees, is the high road that leads to England.” Rude, really, particularly when you consider howobliging his amanuensis James Boswell was and how much hospitality he sucked up on his Scottish tour.

51 Sorry for what PG Wodehouse wrote in Blandings Castle: It is never difficult to distinguish between a Scotsman with a grievance and a ray of sunshine.” To be fair it’s not difficult to tell anyone with a grievance from a ray of sunshine. And your reputation for grumpiness, let’s be honest, was compounded when Alex Salmond said that Scotland “yearned to be a good neighbour, not a surly tenant”. The SNP leader seemed to be confirming what you are not, namely, surly. Or maybe you are? If so, probably our bad. Sorry!

52 Sorry for not recognising that the “English” industrial revolution was unthinkable without Scots engineers – Thomas Telford, James Watt, John Loudon McAdam, Lena Zavaroni and Wee Dougie McSporran.

53 We were only joking about Lena Zavaroni. She is a late, great Scottish entertainer obviously, but not an engineer. Sorry for the misunderstanding.

54 Also there was no Scottish engineer called Wee Dougie McSporran. Or maybe there was. We haven’t bothered to check. Sorry!

55 Sorry for Barry Cryer and Graeme Garden’s Hamish and Dougal: You’ll Have Had Your Tea on Radio 4. We thought it was hilarious. Sorry for that.

56 Sorry for making you speak English. To be fair, you could always stop if you become independent. The Americans didn’t when they went independent, but you could make your national language Gaelic if you go it alone. We’re just saying.

57 Sorry for laughing when Alex Salmond said an independent Scotland’s fiscal future was secure because you were sitting on £1tn of North Sea oil and had a long-standing budget surplus. Maybe he’s right. After all he is an economist, albeit one at the worst bank in the history of banking, namely the Royal Bank of Scotland.

58 But, while he was making that speech and you were distracted we were laying down pipes in the North Sea so we can siphon off the oil to Newcastle rather than Aberdeen if you do go independent. Sorry about that. It probably undermines the fiscal basis for independence. But we’ve always been sneaky, as you know. Sorry!

59 So sorry that the English writer Daniel Defoe served as a secret agent in Scotland to do what he could to secure Scottish support for the 1707 Act of Union. “He was a spy among us,’” wrote one leading unionist but not known as such, otherwise the Mob of Edinburgh would pull him to pieces.” And with good cause.

60 Sorry, incidentally, that the BBC wiped all four episodes of The Highlanders, part of the fourth series of Doctor Who. Apparently, it was a time-travelling revisionist critique of the aftermath of the battle of Culloden, so might have been worth seeing. Patrick Troughton’s Doctor even yells at one point: “Down with King George!” Shame it doesn’t exist any more.

61 Sorry for what we did to Mary Queen of Scots. True, she was trying to topple her cousin, Elizabeth I of England, and install herself on the throne but executing her was a bit rich. Especially that bit when the executioner held up her decapitated head and her wig fell off.

62 So sorry for killing your king James IV at the Battle of Flodden in 1513.

63 So sorry for trying to blow up James VI of Scotland when, as James I of England, he was visiting the Houses of Parliament.

64 So sorry for what we did to Robert the Bruce. We know he’s an arachnophilic national hero and all that, but when he came to pitch the movie of his life on CBBC’s Horrible Histories, we shouldn’t have been so dismissive. It would make a great film, though, please God, not starring Mel Gibson or Liam Neeson.

65 So sorry for what we did to the great Scottish warrior patriot, William Wallace, on Monday August 23 1305. He was, as you know, dragged by horses four miles through London to Smithfield. There he was hanged, but cut down while still alive. Then he was disembowelled and probably emasculated. His heart, liver, lungs and entrails thrown into a fire and his head chopped off, and his corpse cut into bits. His head was put on a pole on London bridge, some part sent to Newcastle, and other remains to Berwick, Perth and Stirling (or perhaps Aberdeen), as a warning to the Scots. A good ticking off might have sufficed.

66 So sorry for not liking Braveheart. We thought it was supposed to be a comedy. Turns out it wasn’t. Sorry.

67 So sorry for the way Gazza volleyed the ball over the despairing Colin Hendry before stuffing it in the proverbial Wembley onion bag at Euro 96. That must have hurt.

68 Hugh MacDiarmid, Robert Burns, Kathleen Jamie, Alan Warner, James Kelman, Ali Smith – these are great writers and we haven’t appreciated them enough. Sorry.

69 Sorry in that list of great Scottish writers for not mentioning lots of other great Scottish writers too numerous to mention.

David Cameron … sorry. Photograph: PA

70 Sorry for not mentioning lots of great Scottish film makers, painters, composers, musicians. We don’t mean Texas or Big Country, though. They’re rubbish.

71 Sorry for being so unfriendly when you arrive at Euston or King’s Cross.

72 Sorry for encouraging Frankie Boyle. Turns out he isn’t funny or clever. Same goes for George Galloway.

73 Sorry for putting the saltire at the background of the union jack. Perhaps if you stay in the Union we could move it to the front, unless it ruins the composition. Let’s talk, yeah?

74 Sorry for laughing at the prospects for your army in an independent Scotland. Of course you could always use it to invade the Faroe Islands if nothing else.

75 So sorry for being, as the smackhead Renton puts it in Irvine Welsh’s novel Trainspotting, “effete arseholes”. What was the full quote again? Oh yes. “Some people hate the English, but I don’t. They’re just wankers. We, on the other hand, are colonised by wankers. We can’t even pick a decent culture to be colonised by. We are ruled by effete arseholes.” Perhaps the greatest analysis of a national character in literature. But that’s not the point. We have tried to stop wankers, but it’s really hard! That’s just how we are. But we realise that we have thereby contributed to your tragi-comic national psyche. Our bad. Sorry!

76 Ultimately, so very sorry for taking so long to say sorry. It’s just that we’ve done so much bad stuff that we’ve had to say lots of other sorrys before we got to you. If only we’d been more like Ireland. They only had to apologise for Jedward. Oh yes, and Chris de Burgh. But look. Tell us what you’d need to stay. A no-peeking-under-the-kilt law? Done. The outlawing of “jokes” implying Scots eat only deep-fried Mars bars and scorn salads by means of a Proscription of Hate Speech (Scotland) Act? Done. A 25-0 start in future rugby internationals? Nae bother. Let’s talk. Anything is possible. Except you going. We couldn’t bear that.