WEDNESDAY saw the state opening of the new Parliament. But the nation’s attention was centred upon Aliestair Carmichael, the dishonourable member for Oh-Are-You-Still-Here-Then.

Aliestair is still refusing to resign – after all, he only abused his position of trust as a Government minister for personal and party advantage, caused a diplomatic incident, smeared the Scottish First Minister in an attempt to influence the election, allowed an expensive and lengthy investigation to take place using public funds, and then lied about it.

That’s nothing in comparison to what Mhairi Black has done. That Mhairi Black, she had a packet of crisps before entering Parliament, and they were the expensive kind, not the cheapo ones you get in a multipack from Aldi. And Natalie McGarry clapped a dog. MPs aren’t allowed to clap. There’s SNP hypocrisy for you.

But Aliestair must be allowed to remain in post as otherwise Scotland will become a one-party state, and this would be a very bad thing. It doesn’t appear to have occurred to the metrocommentariat who complain about Scotland becoming a one-party state that Scots are voting SNP precisely because we were fed up with Scotland being a one-party Labour state. But that one-party state wasn’t a bad thing, because it didn’t involve putting beach towels on Dennis Skinner’s seat. Actually the SNP have no need to put a beach towel on the bench, as Dennis’s seat is haunted by all the dead people he allowed to vote in the 1979 referendum when he supported the infamous 40 per cent rule.

The State Opening of Parliament is a glittering occasion when democracy is celebrated by the ceremonial Leaking of the Government Memo. The other ritual, the ritual heckle from the honourable Beast of Bolsover, didn’t happen this year because the beast had to get up early and put his beach towel on the front bench before the SNP tourists got there so he was too knackered to think of any witticisms. But not to worry, this still allowed the other, other ritual, the ritual smearing of the SNP in the British press.

THE centrepiece of the day was the Queen’s Speech, when an elderly multimillionaire dripping with eye-wateringly expensive jewellery, which even a rap singer would think a bit over the top in the bling department, waltzed into a palace surrounded by flunkies in costume, then sat on a throne and gave a speech about austerity.

As is the custom, she didn’t write the speech herself, it was handily written for her by her Government – those men and women that Malcolm Bruce assures us are compulsive liars. The richest woman in the country tells the rest of us that there’s no money to pay for poor people’s needs, but no need to tax rich people. We’re getting those lies in early this year. This prospectus has been agreed by about a quarter of the electorate of the UK, and about a tenth of that in Scotland. And then they wonder why the public are losing faith in the Westminster system.

The headline was the Tory plan for an EU referendum and what the Tories call a programme for social justice. No, really. Social justice is what the Tories call demonising poor people and blaming them for the mess the unregulated financial industry got us all into.

An essential part of Tory social justice is welfare reform. That’s reforming the benefits system in the same sense that when you undermine a house’s foundations, rip off half the rooftiles, tear out the wiring and pipes and flog them off to a scrapyard, and demolish the bedroom, then you are engaged in renovations. Tories don’t like to talk about benefits, they prefer to use the American term and speak of welfare, a word which is associated with mental images of charitable handouts without any rights or entitlement. The only entitlements in the UK are those enjoyed by politicians and the rich. It’s language which the Labour Party has also adopted. They’re trying to reform public attitudes to the poor, and sadly succeeding.

THE speech was more notable for what it didn’t contain rather than what it did. Somewhat like Davie Cameron’s moral principles really. The foxes got away for another day, and the bonkers plan to abolish the Human Rights Act was quietly brushed under the Queen’s million-quid sparkly hat.

The speech mentioned devolution for Scotland eventually, but only the absolute minimum of devolution. Even then we first had to listen to promises about devolution for England and HS2, so it’s nice to know where we stand in Davie Cameron’s list of priorities. We mustn’t complain, as he did announce on the day after the Scottish referendum that the real lesson the UK Government had learned was that it had to think about English votes.

However on the positive side the speech did also include a promise that the UK Government would work with the Scottish Government on a basis of common respect. There’s another of those lies that Malkie told us about, that didn’t take long then did it. Probably they mean common respect in the Aliestair Carmichael sense.

During last year’s independence referendum we were told that if we voted Yes then the super-dooper high-speed railway line wouldn’t come to Scotland. This week we were told that it won’t be coming to Scotland because there is no business case for it. Presumably this must also mean that there is no business case for Scotland remaining in the Union. When the Channel Tunnel was built we were promised that it would eventually be possible to travel from Scotland and the North of England direct to Europe by high-speed train, but that turned out to be another of those lies that Malkie told us about.

Transport is supposed to be the means by which different parts of the UK are joined, but there is no joined-up thinking in UK transport planning. HS2 won’t connect with HS1, which goes from St Pancras to the Channel Tunnel.

There’s not much evidence of any joined-up thinking in the Tories’ Queen’s speech either, which is why Scotland is growing ever more disconnected from the Union.