Quintin Jardine's blog

You’re missed Inhuman Remains. Oz is dead; get over it. (But so was Bobby Ewing, wasn’t he?)

Just about to do an email interview for the Courier newspaper, in advance of my Dundee visit next week. One of the questions is about Sepp Blatter; that should be fun.

Checked in already for the flight home next Monday; my Ryanair boarding pass is on my desk. They are so keen on cost-cutting and speedy turnarounds that travellers are expected to partly tear off the slip that’s retained at the boarding gate. I guess that gives them more time to tell you that your cabin bag is a centimetre too wide and that they’re going to charge you thirty quid to put it in the hold. Either that or they tell you that it’s a little overweight, then stand by as you take clothes from it and put them on over those you’re already wearing and stuff smaller items in your pockets. Yes, I know, the same total weight goes into the cabin, but don’t laugh, because I’ve seen them do that. And have you ever noticed that however carefully you weigh your bag before you leave home it always manages to put on a kilo or so during the journey to the airport?

As regular blog visitors must know by now, I’m a fervent supporter of a fully independent Scottish government, within a United Kingdom and the European Union. But that doesn’t mean I believe that everything my party’s leadership does is correct by definition. For example, the threat by the Scottish Justice Secretary to withhold funding for the UK Supreme Court is a piece of bombastic, blustering nonsense. Kenny McAskill has a reputation for shooting from the lip that extends beyond Scotland, but normally he thinks issues through more clearly before  pushing the ‘intemperate’ button. From what I’ve read of the judgement of the Nat Fraser case he’s chasing the wrong hare. Jurisdiction is a side issue, and not the first that should concern him. The unanimous finding of five Supreme Court judges, who included two last holders of Scotland’s highest judicial office, was so obviously correct that not a single voice has been raised against it since it was handed down. The question that the Scottish public are entitled to ask is; why did Mr Fraser’s lawyers have to go to London in the first place? Why didn’t our senior judges reach the same conclusion?

Alex Salmond, our First Minister, has a point when he expresses concern that the UK Supreme Court appears to have backed into criminal appeal matters that were meant to have been reserved for the Scottish Bench, and he has done the right thing by asking people who know what they’re talking about to consider the issues and report back to him, prior to a Scottish parliamentary debate. But he would be helped by two things, the first being, a clearer recognition by Scottish judges of the implications of European human rights provisions, the second being that Kenny McAskill should stop chasing headlines.

We’ve been in Spain for two weeks now, doing the things that grandparents do. For all of that time it has been unseasonably hot, but not any more. The Tramuntana, the north wind that drives men crazy, is blowing hard from the Pyrenees, touching 80kph, and that’s interesting. Forecast is that it will remain with us until Wednesday, but they can never be quite certain. The local sages reckon it either lasts for three days, seven days, or eleven days, but I’ve known it go on for a hell of a lot longer than that.

They tell me that The Loner is due for release in Canadian bookstores this week, with the mass market version following in August. I’m pleased, for I’m a regular visitor to that friendly and civilised nation, and hope to be heading there again in the not too distant. Globe and Mail readers should keep their eyes open for a QJ presence in the next couple of weeks, under  the  auspices of my good friends Martin Levin and Jack Kirchhoff.