Before last week, I had high hopes of a big Creative Scotland grant for my origami installation project, The Smith Commission:

Folding Made Easy. Then some Renfrewshire councillors with a dodgy lighter ruined things. I'll be lucky to get damp kindling from 28 generously spaced pages.

This will identify me as a Nazi, of course, or the next worst thing among the bagmen for war criminals and - much the same thing - the Daily Mail. The report by Lord Smith of Kelvin's commission turns out to be a sacred document, the post-­devolution apocrypha never to be sullied. Anyone who fails to treat a piece of cheap party haggling with appropriate reverence is to be footnoted in the Unionist Daemonologie. Oh, dear.

Poets are the worst. The question "Are you now, or have you ever been, a Nationalist?" has become the only consideration where scribblers are concerned. Liz Lochhead, Scotland's Makar, has been tested and found wanting. James MacMillan, a piano player, has questioned her ability to ensure that 41% of her verses lean in one direction; 29% in another; and the rest are distributed equitably in a representative manner. The horror.

I'll stop with the bad jokes when they tell me they're kidding. Vetting the politics of poets? Finding the lower slopes of dudgeon because people don't actually believe that Smith offers a good deal, far less one that's done? The determination to ensure that anyone who voted Yes on September 18 must now shut up, once and forever, has become a tiny sociological phenomenon. Did I mention that it does Scotland no credit?

No matter. It won't work. No sooner had the invisible ink begun to pale beneath Smith of Kelvin's name than George Osborne was on his feet with an Autumn Statement on the UK's behalf. See the corporation tax that could never be entrusted to Scotland? London might - if Belfast behaves itself - give that to Northern Ireland instead. Do proud Scottish Unionists have a view on this?

This story isn't new. The province has had to contend with the Republic of Ireland's race to the bottom in tax for a long time. Osborne, like Gordon Brown before him, has hacked away at the impost only to see the big corporates stick a £35 billion windfall in their bank accounts while "investing" pennies in the UK. It's a bad, stupid tax. But ask why Northern Ireland can have a power denied to Scotland and the Chancellor is liable to answer with a couple of manicured fingers.

Powers that might be handy for Scotland are being reserved simply to shore up the Union. Why wouldn't Scotland have control over the starting rate of income tax? Why shouldn't rights over the minimum wage be devolved? The answers have nothing to do with the betterment of Scots, or their democratic say in the matter, and everything to do with keeping the branch office in its place.

Grant Osborne this much: he doesn't lack a vindictive sense of humour. The proposal that parts of the north of England might enjoy the benefits of a "sovereign wealth fund" should the fracking fun begin is almost beyond parody. Last week, the Chancellor kept a straight face. Let the Scots squabble, said his eyes, over their piddling Barnett consequentials. The idea that their mineral wealth might be their possession is too silly for words. Corporate power is significant in Scotland, but our parliament is forbidden a single word on the matter. "Use the powers you have," cry Unionists. OK: where's our power to create the sovereign wealth fund now being promised by the Chancellor to the north of England?

I am hissing - I can spell - into the wind. The people who make a controversy over the urge to torch his lordship's 28 pages are busy about their work. This winter, they seem less than keen to boast of the benefits of Union in a UK with a £1.45 trillion debt burden than to talk about whether a poet's views are "appropriate". Not for the first time, the good of a nation is secondary. The people of a country matter least.

I haven't actually burned my copy of the Report Of The Smith Commission For Further Powers To The Scottish Parliament yet. I'd need to book a poet, a Daily Mail snapper, and a Chancellor, and those photographers aren't cheap. Smith of Kelvin has done his best to broker a deal among people whose adherence to good faith can be measured in seconds. Behind his glib, managerial grin is a tale, nevertheless, of party above people. It remains depressing, as usual. Or just inflammatory.

Now you have a choice. You can either buy Jim Murphy's snake oil and regard mere proposals as a transformative event settling Scotland's desires once and for all, or you can reach for your lighter. You can treat the incoherent bunch of bits and pieces as the basis for devolved government, or you can ask who reserves economic powers, and why? What poets get up to might ordinarily count, in any real country, as another matter. But this, suddenly, is the world we are in; there's hysteria in the air. Why is that, exactly?

To me, it sounds like fear. Osborne might grant corporation tax to Northern Ireland for the simple, patronising reason that he doesn't think Belfast could ever matter. Give such a power to Holyrood, however - or any other serious revenue power - and nationhood could be demonstrated by fact and deed. And that, of course, would never do.

The Autumn Statement had exactly nothing to say, specifically, about Scotland. This was a bit of a giveaway. Osborne's General Election scheme is to let Scotland stew amid chatter over powers promised and powers to come. This, too, won't work. Come next May, a couple of dozen MPs - my bet - will begin to extract a price. Corporation tax will be the least of it, I hope.

Demanding loyalty oaths of poets might not be the best place for a stout Unionist to begin negotiations, I'd have thought. Telling me which bits of bad, bland prose I can stick on the fire for kindling really isn't going to work. Picking on Liz Lochhead is a deeply stupid idea. But that's not my choice.

Some stout British art would be fun, at this point. They have the famous piano player; where's the chorus? I recommend an ancient Groucho Marx song. It goes, Whatever It Is, I'm Against It. And I'll see those nice Brits at the back of the bonfire.