THE recent Olympics with team GB plastered all over the place, probably didn’t help, but long before that, UK governments old and new, plus broadcasters on all the airwaves would talk about “the country” or “the nation” and they’d mean Britain. Which is neither!

Now there’s chat (yet again) about having a GB football team compete at Los Angeles four years hence. Let’s hope the national football associations shut that one down pronto.

A rather more serious business is the publication by our own government of the annual Government Expenditure and Revenue statistics (GERS) allegedly for Scotland but actually including all kinds of costings which would be wholly irrelevant were we independent (Trident anyone?) and in any event are nothing more than guesstimates.

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Richard Murphy in The National, and the Common Weal think tank both ­scrutinised the latest fantasy figures (so we didn’t have to). According to Murphy “GERS are ­inherently and always biased against ­Scotland” given that the figures for ­expenditure include all manner of things which aren’t actually spent here.

Meanwhile Common Weal points out that the UK Government has enabled all ­manner of tax avoidance schemes dreamt up by the fossil fuel producing giants. Would be good if that nice Rachel Reeves turned her ­attention to that escaped ­revenue ­before hitting winter fuel payments.

The profits registered by these giant ­companies have been truly eye-watering and can be shuffled around various ­legislatures to suit/cook the books.

And how droll of Reeves to agree to ­devolve winter fuel payments to ­Scotland without attaching any money to pay for them. Small wonder that deputy FM Kate Forbes was spitting tacks the other day when she reflected that the Scottish ­Government were not even consulted ­before that particular smash and grab.

Common Weal points out many other ­discrepancies such as out of date ­population data, and the fact that VAT is still not ­collected here despite the promise of that – and much else – in the Smith Commission.

It also points out that three quarters of the huge social security expenditure comes from areas reserved to Westminster, and that the Labour introduced Private Finance Initiative cost us £1.4bn in years 2021 to 2022. (Tt apparently works out at some 14% of the total.)

Keir Starmer’s government is awfy keen on defence spending on which it plans an increase to a sum roughly five times what is promised on international aid. Does anyone really think that reflects the views of the Scottish electorate?

Or that an independent country would have the need of an independent ­nuclear deterrent which is assuredly not ­­independent and very probably obsolete anyway given the character of modern warfare.

So by a “judicious’ mix of estimates, modelling, and sleight of financial hand, every year Scotland is portrayed as some kind of innumerate basket case. And ­portrayed as such by our “own” ­Government. That would be the one whose civil service still reports to London overlords.

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Bit rich too to complain that Scotland didn’t think through its pay awards – ­positively tiny compared with Labour’s own recent deals.

You might think that the Scottish ­Government, having watched many ­millions of North Sea oil funds pour into the Westminster treasury these many ­decades would be at least sceptical about the latest wheeze to send our renewable energy down south at an undersea cabling cost of £3.4 billion and counting.

You might think that they’d at least demand a rethink on an energy pricing policy which costs some Scots living quite near to the energy mother lode a small fortune, whilst making bills cheaper in the south of England.

Hilariously, the suggestion is that this massive, and massively expensive, ­undersea saga will result in a two-way deal which might mean that England could send stuff up to us. Aye Right! Just as they do now. Annexing the oil fields is bad enough, but nicking the wind? ­Obviously they think our heids button up the back, and they may have a point.

What self-respecting nation is ­content to nod through another bout of grand ­larceny? Maybe one which is also ­content to let another country’s Supreme Court decide its future constitutional ­arrangements?

Every time we get shafted there’s an ­initial bout of hand-wringing and then a period of embarrassed silence. Well enough already.

The thing about having sand constantly kicked in your face, is it’s much more ­difficult to confront the perpetrator from a kneeling position. One more suited to a supplicant than an equal.

Not for the first time I find myself ­wondering if we will ever find the ­smeddum to stand up for ourselves. Not for the first time I wonder why we insist on stabbing ourselves in the front with the annual fantasy accounting of GERS.

We’ve been hit by a worthless “vow” and scores of unfulfilled promises in the Smith Commission’s report. Never mind the devolution of VAT, that Commission also promised that the so called “Sewel” Convention would become the law of the land.

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It said that no decisions on devolved matters could be taken without the ­consent of the Scottish parliament.

Now even the pretence of consulting that parliament has gone the way of all parliamentary flesh.

Now we’re all subject to an Internal Market Act, Michael Gove’s last present to the land of his birth, whereby Scottish decision making would essentially be the prerogative of London departments.

Now naked bribes are handed out to carefully selected dauds of Scotland in exchange, presumably, for the prospect of eternal gratitude to Westminster.

Now a bloated Scotland Office – ­hardly a necessity in a nation with its own ­parliament – is able to build ­expensive hubs in our major cities for ­purposes which escape me and pretty well ­ everyone else. One of the great “­selling points” was that it would have a room big enough to house the London-based ­cabinet on tour. Has any ­cabinet ­secretary’s backside every graced a chair there?

Answers on a very small postcard.

Anas Sarwar, Sir Keir’s representative on Scottish earth, talked a good game in the run up to election. About how there would be no more austerity. How Labour would be a very different government. How if we just lent Labour our votes, a new dawn would appear.

Show workings, please, Anas. A new style of government does not magically ensue because your boss pops up the road to sweet talk John Swinney.

A new style of government would have sufficient respect for a devolved ­government to consult it and have it share in decisions which will radically affect the Scottish citizenry.

Nothing that has happened since July 4 persuades me that Scotland is not a largely irrelevant consideration compared with the need to woo those English ­voters who switched from the Tories and the ­attendant need not to frighten any horses with policies which could be labelled in any way socialist.

Immigration is a case in point. We need migrants here in Scotland. You would hardly think so from the rhetoric coming out of the Cabinet Office.

The justice department too. I love that folk came out to mock the racists and ­assorted thugs. I can readily see why the UK Government wanted to send a stern message.

Yet we stick some other people in the pokey for even longer because they also wanted to send a stern message. That anyone who fails to accept that climate change spells wholesale disaster is not paying attention.

Scotland is not just a different country. It’s not just a proud and ancient nation. It’s a land which deserves a government which won’t roll over when bigger boys bully it.

We make a big thing about being more radical. Being more left of centre than ­Labour.

Long past time to back up pretty words with a larger daud of self respect.