The dreadfully stultified pageantry of the British state has been on full display the last couple of days, all mouldy ermine, fraying gold braid and musty velvet. But forms which evolved as a vibrant display of Imperial might have transmuted into rituals of obeisance, as the nonogenerian Prince Philip stumbles behind the Chinese President along lines of men wearing decaying bears on their heads. The sickness of Britain’s monarchical system was never more bluntly revealed than by the rictus grins of the aristocratic clowns balancing their tiaras at the state banquet.

The Chinese are the imperial masters now. Cameron begs them to build a nuclear power station for which the British state guarantees it will pay double the market price for electricity produced, for twenty years. And a government which has just announced the extension of thought crime to the expression of non-violent or anti-violent thought deemed “extreme”, has no locus to talk about human rights, a concept at least as alien to Teresa May as it is to the Chinese Communist Party. Britain has its own war criminals like Blair and Straw running around, immune and very wealthy.

The British state is an immoral entity which I view with disgust. That is what drives for me the imperative to early Scottish Independence to be rid of it. Every day as a British citizen is like bathing in sewage.