THE UK Government has published the Bill to give Scotland more powers, or so they’re saying. Unfortunately, and entirely accidentally, the Bill itself is harder to read and comprehend than flat-pack furniture instructions written in Japanese by a dyslexic computer programmer whose sole knowledge of the Japanese language derives from a Yo! Sushi menu. So we just have to take Davie Cameron’s word for it that the Bill fully implements the recommendations of the Smith Commission and makes Scotland the devolviest devolved country in the history of devolviness.

However, based on Davie’s previous interventions in the devolution debate, it’s quite likely that his understanding of Scotland also derives from a Yo! Sushi menu. This accounts for why he thinks he can get away with fobbing us off with a slap across the face with a small bit of raw fish in lieu of a lasting devolution settlement.

We can have a little morsel, but it’s not going to quench the appetite. Within the Union Scotland is doomed to remain the poor wee orphan saying: “Please Sir can I have some more?”

It’s not beyond the wit of even the Westminster Parliament to produce a draft devolution bill that can be read and understood by an interested punter. Instead the Bill has been drafted in such a way as to make it impossible to understand unless it is carefully cross-referenced with previous devolution bills, papers lodged in the basement of the Palace of Westminster, and the horoscope page of a tabloid newspaper. What this tells us is that Scotland will only get proper devolution from Westminster when Mundell is in conjunction with Uranus.

None of this should come as a surprise of course. These are Tories we’re talking about here. That’s the party whose Scottish leader posed on a tank in the hope of scaring opponents into forgetting that her Scottish policies consisted of resurrecting the ghost of Thatcher, who was also fond of posing on tanks.

The opacity of the Bill is not unrelated to the fact that with this Tory government we’ve got a man in charge of social security who wants to strip all sociability and security from the social security system, another who is bent on stripping the country of human rights protections from injustice in charge of justice, a woman who voted twice against gay marriage in charge of equality, and a fluffy party balloon who is a dedicated opponent to devolution in charge of a new devolution settlement.

The UK Government doesn’t want to publish the Bill in clear and simple language because then the likes of you and me would understand it, and we won’t be happy. If they honestly believed that Scotland would welcome the Bill with an outpouring of grateful relief and that we’d hold all those street parties we couldn’t be bothered to hold during the Royal Wedding then they’d publish the Bill in Ladybird Book format and get Dale Winton to announce that every lottery ticket sold in Scotland would come with a free Barnett subsidy.

Instead we’ve got a supposedly democratic government publishing a document that the demos can’t understand. There’s always a reason for that. The centrepiece of the Bill is an attempt to neuter the Scottish Government. It’s a con, a sleight of hand performed by the cack-handed. No one has ever looked upon David Mundell and accused him of being deft, except perhaps in the leafier suburbs of Edinburgh where they famously believe that sex are something that coal is delivered in.

With these new superdooper devomaxiest powers that we were promised with the last desperate Unionist draws on the fag end on the referendum campaign, Scotland will be granted highly limited powers over benefits. In theory the Scottish Parliament could rule that it was going to protect vulnerable people whose incomes have been slashed by the sanctions vampires of Iain Duncan Smith, but Scotland will only be able to implement any of these protections by raising income tax.

No other substantial taxation powers are being given to Scotland, so we won’t have the full range of tax-raising powers available to Westminster. No Scottish control over National Insurance, VAT, corporation tax, or the rest. Just the tax that directly affects ordinary working people most immediately in their pay packets.

The playing field is perfectly level, it’s just vertical, and it’s Scotland’s poor and disabled who will fall off the cliff while Labour and the Tories tell Holyrood that it has the power to stop it happening. They’ll blame the Scottish Government for not catching the wheelchair when it’s them who took off the brake and gave it a shove over the edge.

Scotland is going to be given 10 metres of rope in order to rescue people who have been thrown over a 200-metre cliff. But we still won’t be able to do anything to stop those who’re throwing the people off the cliff in the first place. Meanwhile the Unionists will blame the Scottish Government for the pile of splattered and bloody bodies piling up in the deep chasms of poverty and exclusion and hope to hoover up the votes from the devotees of poverty porn on the undevolved telly.

It’s funny how broadcasting never managed to make it into the Unionist definition of “most devolved administration ever”. The Basque Country, Catalonia, Greenland – even tiny Gagauzia with its population of just 140,000 in the poorest corner of Moldova, the poorest country in Europe – have control over broadcasting. But not the supposedly most devolved country in the history of devolviness. And then you remember BBC Scotland’s coverage of the referendum and you realise why.

The price for these non-protections dressed up as substantial new powers and no Scottish media platform to debate them will be stripping Scottish MPs of their power to vote on key parts of the UK budget under the guise of English votes for English laws. Because if you sincerely believe that Scotland depends upon subsidies from England, then you’re also going to believe that Scotland has no right to have a say on the overall UK budget. Scotland is just another wheelchair for the Tories to push over the edge.

This is exactly the kind of underhand sleekitness that has destroyed Scotland’s faith in the Unionist parties and the Westminster Parliament to begin with. They just keep doing it. They can’t help themselves. They don’t know any other way of being. Their image is as toxic as Fifa’s, but they’re not being investigated and no one is going to resign. Alistair Carmichael is still with us – just pointing that out. The day is getting ever sooner when Scotland calls that the gemme is a bogie and goes to play in an independent league.