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Of interest will be this piece from Professor Stephen Tierney. In 2012 he was the prominent lead of a group of Scottish legal academics who said that the legality of an independence referendum (absent a section 30 Order) was an “open question”. He now thinks it would be clearly ultra vires. So does Aileen McHarg and so does Chris McCorkindale (all three part of the original group who said it was an open question). Obviously this will come down to what a court actually says, but: (a) the signs on a generous interpretation, especially in Lord Reed’s court, is not good (he was pretty scathing of “generous” interpretations in the recent UNCRC Bill Reference) (b) even if a Bill doesn’t get referred to the UK Supreme Court (and it totally would be) the Scottish courts hinted that they were unsympathetic to the arguments in the Keatings case. My own view for some time now was that the argument was closed off when the UK Supreme Court adopted a plain conception of “purpose” in the Imperial Tobacco v Lord Advocate case in 2013.

Whether it’s binding or not is irrelevant. What matters is whether the legislation “relates to” a reserved matter. When assessing that you “have regard to its purpose” taking into account the effects “in all the circumstances”. The balance of legal opinion is now that an independence referendum would be unlawful in the absence of legal cover from the Westminster Parliament. Most of the academics who said it was an open question last time now think the law isn’t on the Scottish Government’s side. Case law since 2012 hasn’t helped the more “generous” interpretation. For more information, read this (excellent) briefing from one of my colleagues. Some may have beef with him but this paper was peer reviewed (a) by me and (b) by a prominent pro-independence legal academic so you can trust it is impartial…

Arbroath's racist stewards utterly humiliated at Forfar Sheriff Court today. Found to be as credible as Boris Johnson and case dismissed without the defence having to proffer any evidence. I hope your club sacks the knuckledragging jobbers in question.

I think Morton should be deducted 40 points for this drivel. Neil Doncaster, do your thing.

Now almost 600 Jags fans have signed the open letter calling on Three Black Cats to get the fan ownership situation back on track. Phenomenal response.

“Fan reps” from the PTFC Trust that has failed to hold elections in accordance with its trust deed. Instead of holding said elections, the Trust had its deed varied to extend their terms. All the while basic key information about the PTFC Trust is missing from the Club’s website (things like the trust deed, information about membership criteria, election rules etc). A supporters association where the majority of its board are employees or directors of the actual club. Worth remembering all of this when Three Black Cats sets out its intentions in the coming weeks.

It’s not a statement made by or on behalf of either the Club or TJF though, so that would be misleading. We are a group of independent minded fans.

Beasty Barins.

There's a very important difference. McKenna has not been found by any court to have committed a sexual offence. Goodwillie has been found by a court, on the balance of probabilities, to have been a vile raping shite-bag. If you sign him you will forever be known as the Beast Banter Bairns FC.

In 2015 I may have lost the battle but my brand of politics won the pandemic.

No they aren't. It depends entirely on what the sanctions are and against which individuals or organisations within an under-developed nation they are targeted at. For example, sanctions can be directed exclusively at individuals in a regime, freezing bank accounts and the like. Thos are not "cruel and murderous collective punishment".

In principle I support the use of sanctions against tyrannical regimes, including the Taliban in Afghanistan. On the specifics, I think the sanctions that have in fact been imposed on Afghanistan do not strike the right balance, and unduly restrict the availability of international aid. Several Western Governments appear to be coming around to that position, and have acknowledged their previous approach got it wrong.

You said "the government [Ad Lib] works for" not "the state [Ad Lib] works for". I am no more morally or practically responsible for the foreign policy of the UK Government than you are. Just as public servants who worked for the National Assembly of Afghanistan bear no more moral culpability for the rise of the Taliban than the average 12 year old girl in Kabul. Whether or not you support sanctions, the justification that Western countries offer is not that ordinary Afghan functionaries are morally culpable for what the Taliban does. Their argument is a utilitarian one: that it is impossible to influence the Taliban's behaviour without rendering parts of Afghan civil society non or less functional. If you think it is necessary to cripple the House of Commons Library in order to change the foreign policy of this Government, good luck to you. But in adopting that position you'll look like a fucking moron.

I don't work for the Government. My job is quite literally to provide the opposition and backbenchers with information with which they can scrutinise and hold to account what the Government does. You're giving it big licks like you've hit a strike but your bowling ball is in the gutter of three lanes left of your own.

Dad passed away this morning. 58. I was back up in Scotland in time, and he was comfortable and at home, but it doesn’t make it feel any less shit. Brain tumours are fucking horrendous. Get them in the sea.

We should put an actual 5G chip in Piers Corbyn and link it up to an alarm that goes off whenever he's closer than 6ft to someone's phone.

Excellent, now do the other Cobyns and the other Piers.

Delicious relegation fodder.

I mean not really. I don't have to defend our Government being an international basket case.

No. I already adjusted for that. Germany spends 1.4% of its GDP on the military. If we spent 1.4% of our GDP on the military, we would spend £35 billion. It actually spends only $7 billion or so less than the UK.

In-service costs for Trident are about 6% of the defence budget (so about £2.5 billion). There are additional costs associated with the project to renew the nuclear deterrent but, since 2015, that has averaged about £1 billion per year. Most of that is front-loaded, however, and the ongoing cost for the deterrent is expected to remain about 6% of the overall defence budget.

Yes, nonsense. You were overstating military expenditure by £12 billion, or almost a quarter of the entire budget. No, not really, not if it meant dismantling a significant part of Western Europe's defence infrastructure and made it materially easier for the Russians to undermine the continued independent existence of Ukraine, Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia.

The Ministry of Defence spent £54.5 billion in 2019-20. Your figure is nonsense. Even if we spent the same proportion of our GDP on the military as Germany (an equivalently sized European country) we would still be spending about £35 billion. If we spent what France spends on the military as a proportion of GDP we'd still be spending £52 billion.

To the Raith Rovers fan who told me to “f**k of you jakie b*****d” when I confessed none of us saw the goal, have a merry Christmas.