It's not even August yet, but the silly season has started early.

Following the opening ceremony of the Paris Olympics on Friday, there has been controversy and outrage from Christians, the right wing, and socially conservative commentators over a supposed parody of the Last Supper by Leonardo da Vinci during the ceremony, which featured drag queens, a transgender model, a child, a plus sized woman, a black man and a scantily dressed man painted blue - sacre bleu, even – who was depicting a Greek god.

It has been alleged that the scene was mocking Christianity.

The Bishop of Paisley issued a statement condemning it. Edinburgh Labour councillor Stephen Jenkinson took to Twitter to express how appalled and offended he was by this "mockery of the Christian faith" and demanded people write letters of complaint to the French Consul General in Edinburgh. If there was an Olympic gold medal for pearl clutching Councillor Jenkinson and the Bishop of Paisley would have won.

Stephen, I'm more appalled and offended by Labour MPs voting to starve kids, but you do you.

There are a number of points to address here. The first is that parodies of the Last Supper have been a staple of entertainment for decades. The painting has been referenced and parodied countless times. Off the top of my head in recent years, we've seen renditions of the famous scene in The Simpsons, Futurama, Lost, House, The Sopranos, M.A.S.H., Battlestar Galactica, and one depicting Jesus blessing a bucket of KFC, amongst many others.

None of these depictions prompted anguished articles in the press by socially conservative commentators, statements from the Bishop of Paisley, or pearl clutching by Edinburgh Labour councillors. Neither did any of them lead to right wingers calling for a boycott of KFC or Matt Groening cartoons.

The second point is that few of those who are so exercised about drag queens dancing in the Olympics opening ceremony where they could be seen by, gasp, the general public, had very much to say about a convicted child rapist participating in the Olympics as a member of the Dutch volleyball team.

Apparently, the priority is to protect children from the sight of drag queens but not so much from heterosexual cisgender male child rapists. Steven van der Velde, 29, was sentenced to four years in prison in 2016 for a sex attack on a 12-year-old British girl two years earlier when he was 19. He was released after serving just 12 months. Now he's participating in the Olympics.

The third point is that the organisers have pointed out that the scene in question was not a reference to the Last Supper at all. The iconic scene is from a painting by the Italian Leonardo da Vinci, it is housed in the refectory of the Convent of Santa Maria delle Grazie in Milan and as such has no special connections to either France or the Olympics.

The scene in the Olympics ceremony was in fact a reference to the Feast of Dionysus, the Greek god of wine, music, and festivity, the clue being the man in blue representing Dionysus, who was not present at the Last Supper, whether that's the real one venerated by Christians or the fictionalised one depicted by Da Vinci in which Jesus and his disciples decided to occupy only one side of the table.

A feast in honour of the gods was traditionally held when the ancient Olympics commenced in Greece, and that's what the Olympic opening ceremony was referencing.

But none of this will prevent the outrage of people determined to find something to be outraged about, even when what they're outraged about wasn't about them after all.

'Labour are going to hurt the poor again'

Today in the House of Commons Chancellor Rachel Reeves made a statement to the Commons about a £22 billion shortfall in public funding. Labour spent the weekend pretending to be surprised about the state of public finances, blaming the Tories for covering it up.

The Tories covered it up so well that no one knew about it except John Swinney, Stephen Flynn, Owen Jones and the IFS, all of whom warned about it during the election campaign and were accused of scaremongering by the Labour Party for their pains.

The Office of Budget Responsibility had set out the figures. They were no secret. Flynn and Swinney called Labour out on it during all the debates, and Labour denied it. The electorate was lied to. Don't expect BBC Scotland to hold Anas Sarwar to account for it though.

Jones predicted that when Labour got into office Reeves would pretend to “discover” the funding shortfall. That is exactly what happened today.

Labour cancelled several major infrastructure projects in order to deal with the shortfall, this is likely to have a knock-on effect on Barnett Consequentials, reducing the funding available to the Scottish Government. Anas Sarwar will then complain about “SNP cuts”.

On Sunday the official Labour Party Twitter account tweeted: “After 14 years of the Tories, our public finances are in their worst state since the second world war and our public services are in crisis. This Labour Government will take the tough decisions needed to deliver real change.”

The real tough decision would have been to collect the unpaid taxes of billionaires and millionaires then make sure they pay in future. They could seize the billions paid for undelivered services during Covid, that would be a big help. But they’re going to hurt the poor again.

We have fallen into a time warp and ended up back in 2010. Government spending is a household budget once more. Rachel Reeves’s claim that “there’s no money left” in public finances is the same claim made by Tory Chancellor George Osborne in 2010, and both use it to push damaging austerity. It was nonsense then and it’s still nonsense today.

On June 11 during the election campaign in a Scottish leaders’ debate broadcast by BBC Scotland, Sarwar told Swinney: “Read my lips, no austerity under Labour.”

That clip ought to be in all BBC Scotland news bulletins today which report on the cuts introduced by Reeves. It won’t be shown at all.