THERE was a sombre start to FMQs, as Ruth Davidson reminded everyone to heed the travel advice and not square up to the beast from the east.

“Including, I am sad to say, Scottish Conservative activists who are preparing for our party conference - it is now off.”

Nicola Sturgeon sympathised. The thought of those tweedy gents and pearly queens shuffling round Aberdeen like Napoleon’s army retreating from Moscow was too much to bear.

SNP MSPs hid their grief behind a wall of grins.

Ms Davidson then asked about the SNP’s latest bank job.

How, exactly, did its new plan for a Scottish National Investment Bank differ from all its other unfinished banks?

Like the “Scottish Investment Bank, the proposed business development bank, the small and medium-sized enterprise holding fund or the capital acceleration programme—or, indeed, the half-billion Scottish growth scheme, which has barely released a penny.”

The FM said it was “very different” from any of those. It might even happen.

Not least because - wait for it - “of Brexit, which is being imposed by Ruth Davidson’s party.” Who’d have guessed.

Gruff Nat millionaire Ivan McKee, who reckons himself quite a biz whizz, asked for more amazing details on the bank.

The FM said she had been delighted to attend the launch of its implementation plan, “a copy of which is winging its way to Ruth Davidson as we speak.”

It was “an important milestone that brings us one step closer” to doing nothing again, she declared, more or less.

Mr McKee shot a dirty look at the Tory amateurs opposite.

“It’s clear to those of us who understand the investment landscape and the need for patient finance,” he sniffed, that this new institution was a very different kettle of cash.

Alas, gobbledygook is contagious. The FM charged at that investment landscape like Theresa May at a field of wheat.

“The bank will be mission-driven,” she panted. (Hooray, it’s got a purpose.)

“It will not be sector specific but will be designed to be transformational.” (Er, answers on a postcard please).

And to cap it all, “it will operate ethically”.

Ethical bankers? You’d have more chance of getting a hug from the beast from the east.