Jim Sillars is now, to all intents and purposes, opposed to an independent Scotland

I think that's fair comment.  It's rather like Gordon Brown's famous "five economic tests" for joining the euro - they were intentionally designed never to be met, because for whatever reason Brown had decided in advance that Britain should retain the pound, but he knew he had to go through the motions of looking open-minded about it.  Jim Sillars is not a fool, and he knows that the threshold he has just suggested for holding a second independence referendum (a 60% Yes vote in the polls for a sustained period of six months) is not likely to be anywhere close to being met at any time in the next twenty years, let alone in the next five.  He also knows that independence is essentially impossible if a referendum is not held, so it's reasonable to conclude that kicking independence into the long grass is now his conscious objective.  It's significant that even Pete Wishart felt it necessary to distance himself from Sillars' impossible threshold.  (Although of course that does beg the question of what Wishart's own threshold would be.  Don't hold your breath for an answer.)

So why would Sillars of all people want Scotland to remain subject to London rule?  Quite simply he got a pleasant surprise when Britain voted to leave the European Union, and he's now emotionally tethered to the idea of Scotland leaving European institutions when the rest of Britain does.  What's about to happen is a dream come true for a Eurosceptic, and he can't bear the thought of independence getting in the way of it.  That has led him to take what is a perverse position for any Scottish nationalist by denying the legitimacy of Scotland's own democratic decision to remain in the European Union. Essentially he agrees with the grotesque Richard Leonard doctrine that by voting No in 2014, Scotland empowered a neighbouring country to take a decision on European membership on our behalf, and that we are now honour-bound to abide by the decision made for us even though we disagree with it.

For anyone who actually prioritises independence over Brexit, it would be an extremely good idea not to follow Sillars down this latest rabbit hole.

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As you know, I was extremely hurt the other day to discover that Pete Wishart had blocked me for refusing to agree with him that the hard-won mandate for an independence referendum should be allowed to expire.  I hadn't said anything that could be construed as abusive or insulting towards him, so it seemed clear enough that the blocking was simply because he couldn't tolerate any dissent.  However, I've now had an explanation of sorts for his decision, and it is nothing short of extraordinary.

What that means in plain language is that he blocked me because of just one tweet.  This is the one....

As you can see, there is no insult in that tweet.  I just accurately described what we can all see with our own eyes - that Scotland in Union had used him as a poster-boy.  If he's so thin-skinned that he can't bear someone to state a fact when it's a wee bit embarrassing for him, then I suppose I just have to say "fair enough" - it seems a bit bloody silly, but people can make decisions about who to banish from their own social media space for the silliest of reasons, and that's up to him.  The problem is, though, that the blocking wasn't the end of it - not even close.  You've probably seen the gleeful articles in unionist newspapers such as the Daily Record that pick up on his complaints about abusive comments from his own side (ie. the pro-independence side).  You've probably also noticed that one of the two main examples he offered of this "abuse" was the fact that he had been referred to as a unionist "poster boy".  Incredibly, then, it appears to be the case that my totally innocuous tweet above is being cited by him as an example of vile Cybernat abuse.

That, ladies and gentlemen, is a stunt.  His pride has been hurt by the reaction to the poster, and he's getting revenge by deliberately conflating genuine abuse with a comment that he knows perfectly well is completely non-abusive.  This is the second cynical stunt I've been on the receiving end from him over the last week or so (ie. after his so-called "right of reply" to me that was not a reply at all, and that just used me as a pretext to essentially regurgitate his original "let the mandate expire" article and get a second round of free publicity for it).  As someone who has received a large amount of anti-Irish and anti-Catholic online abuse over the years, I find it an absolutely sick joke to see an innocent comment of mine being ridiculously cited as an example of the worst abuse.  It trivialises genuine bullying and intimidation.  I must say that once I wised up to the game Pete was playing, I stopped feeling hurt that he had blocked me, and realised that it would be entirely appropriate for me to block him.

I'd also just like to note in passing the slightly sinister 'thought-police' aspect of Pete's suggestion that it is somehow 'unacceptable' to retweet certain ideological undesirables or to state certain facts.  Thank heavens he wasn't a TV censor during the original run of Catchphrase.  Roy Walker's famous exhortation of "say what you see!" would have had to be replaced with "say what you see unless it's a poster featuring Pete Wishart, in which case give us a pretty lie instead".

One thing I do agree with Pete about is that we should be taking Scotland in Union on.  But what I don't understand is how voluntarily adopting huge swathes of their programme and rhetoric is supposed to help us do that.  Yes, they were being mischievous by using Pete's image on their poster, but there was a sort of inescapable logic to it as well.  For example I'm struggling to see a huge difference between Ruth Davidson's stated reasons for opposing a referendum, and Pete's own views about Scotland supposedly being "weary of big constitutional decisions".