Sketch: Not a lot of sound, and very little real fury

On Tuesday, in the Commons, the decibels had been cranked up as David Cameron and Ed Miliband spat barbs at one another on the subject of the strikes. Yesterday, as Alex Salmond and Iain Gray kicked off where their London counterparts had finished, the atmosphere was that of a church during prayers. Even the clink of the glass from which the First Minister took sips of water as he waited to give his answers could be heard up in the Gods. The place is just too big. And so the politicians get swallowed up within the acres of Ikea pine (including even MSPs like Labour’s Hamza Malik who, resplendent yesterday in white waistcoat, pink patterned tie and red tartan shirt, was doing his very best yesterday to stand out from the crowd).

Whether or not it was this strange peace that led to it, the stately exchanges all felt a little unreal. This was the week two million people had stayed at home on strike, that households were warned their incomes were dropping like a stone and when the light at the end of the tunnel of austerity Britain was well and truly snuffed out. The politicians know this. There is no getting away from reality. It has to be confronted at some point. But as with Westminster’s exchanges the day before, Holyrood opted to stay locked in the blame game. Mr Gray naturally wanted to blame Mr Salmond for passing on the cuts to Scottish families. Mr Salmond naturally opted to blame the Tory-Lib Dem government for giving them to him in the first place.

There didn’t seem to be an awful lot of point in the entire thing. Apart from Mr Salmond’s clear steer that public-sector pay will have to stay curtailed for the near future, the most useful piece of information that emerged was the latest update on Rest and Be Thankful, closed due to a landslide. Outside the parliament, the earth was moving; but inside, it remained eerily calm.