The Offensive Behaviour at Football Act has no Parliamentary majority.
It has zero support amongst football clubs. The judiciary hates it. Trust between the football fans and the police has collapsed in some places since it was imposed on us and it has turned into criminals people who never had, and never would have, committed any offence.
It was when it was written and passed and it remains a stain on Scotland that will finally be erased when James Kelly MSP’s Private Members Bill gets debate time.
The OBAF is a disgrace and it always was, and the longer the SNP fights for it the more ridiculous they look.
What exactly are they so desperate to hang onto? There’s not a single liberal commentator who doesn’t think this law is an affront to Scotland. It is hated and it’s cost them political capital that would have been better spent.
OBAF has criminalised free speech, that’s all it’s done.
As Celtic and others have pointed out, the law has done not the slightest good; the same songs are being sung everywhere.
At Fir Park at the weekend they boomed out of the away stand for almost the full 90 minutes.
I keep on hearing this question “Do you expect the police to arrest thousands?” and it isn’t a ridiculous one. No I don’t. But if not then the law itself is a joke, because if you start picking out individuals from a crowd of people who are all doing the same thing then you’re discriminating.
That’s one of the things that makes it laughable.
The other thing that makes it laughable, as Celtic have pointed out, is that the name of the law itself is ridiculous.
The “offensive behaviour” doesn’t even need to have offended anybody. As Peter Lawwell has asked “”Who is offended?” Someone must be, but do is this a country that writes laws because some people can’t keep their emotions in check?
This rancid law is finished.
Yet the media has focussed on Celtic’s stand above all others.
t’s typical of the press to advertise our opposition to it, in detail. As if we’re the ones pushing this.
And when you look at it that way, it’s tempting to see this is another brick in the wall, another effort to paint our club as being somehow extremist. Now we’re being made to look as if we’re leading a campaign to have an anti-sectarianism law abolished.
This is underhanded stuff … there are so many things not in that report which should be if it’s legit.
Rangers’ board was opposed to the Bill at the time, and Sevco still is. Their supporters are 100% against it; that’s not even in doubt. Where are the published statements from them? Nowhere. They’re not focussing on that.
But they focussed on statements from our club.
All the statements that were made during the initial consultation are now available to look at, but they pick ours?
Why?
Come on, you all know why.
Our club is leading the reform agenda, virtually on its own. The campaign to paint the fans as extremists is well underway. Now the effort has moved to our club. There was an article in the papers last week about how “The Green Brigade ban ends this week.” It’s an attempt to take the light off them and put it on the club itself … if the Green Brigade steps out of line – in the view of our press – then the club itself will be blamed.
You can read these people like a book. They have no shame.