The Bill Is Passed, The Bigots Have Won.

 

Yesterday saw the Offensive Behaviour at Football and Threatening Communication Bill (aka Salmonds Law) get forced through parliament in an act of bravado from the flabby jawed self styled President Of Scotland.

The Bill has no support from opposition parties and it has been admitted by the Convenor of the justice committee – whose job it was to ensure that this Bill was past – that it’s being implemented to target one particular section of society as the current laws deem their behaviour as not being illegal.

In doing so the have made a one size fits all type law which on the face of it is unworkable and ludicrous. They have criminalised thousands of fans not just the ones they wanted to target.

I could spend all day pointing out the idiosyncrasies but in a year when the Queen recognised the Irish struggle against the crown, when a member of the IRA can sit in parliament and can attempt to become President of an European country we find the best wee country in the world willing to arrest people who mention those 3 letters within the shadow of a football stadium.

In fact you can now be arrested for singing songs readily available from good record shops and ITunes if you are attending a football game (whether or not the songs should be sung is not the debate here).

The Bill has been past to a back drop of destroyed Hate Crimes Data and a fudging of statistics which tried to show Celtic Park as a hotbed of sectarianism.

All it did show that 1 in every 789 away fans who attend CP will be arrested for a sectarian offence.

They also have attempted to pass this off as a reaction to what happened to our manager and the shame game last season (a game that saw 3 R*ngers players sent off and a mass brawl caused by the losing team).

A quick glance shows that the only person to be punished for last seasons events is Neil Lennon.

I’ll have a scoop of ice cream with my paranoia this Christmas while I’m clearing out my Ipod.