John Mason is an eejit.
Let’s not try to sugar-coat this and if it reads like I have it’s only because Newsnow won’t let me say what I really think of him.
When he was emailed by a disabled Celtic fan on Glasgow City Council’s astoundingly regressive parking plan for the area around our ground, his answer was about as dismissive, ignorant and scandalous as you could have got without his writing Why Don’t You Go Home? at the bottom.
The suggestion that the emailer should find another club to support is just disgusting. As Celtic very pointedly said, in their statement yesterday, Glasgow as a city benefits from the large numbers of supporters who travel to watch our games, often from different parts of the country. The casual dismissal of their contribution which is implied in this response is astounding. The arrogant, cold, contempt for the gentleman who sent it is beyond belief.
John Mason self-defines as a Clyde fan. I find that easy to believe.
Like a lot of supporters of small clubs, he has a clear-cut and obvious disdain for those sides which have a greater social and cultural reach. His comments about finding a “smaller local club” to support are spiteful in the extreme; it’s almost as if he’s calling our supporter some kind of glory hunter and punishing him as a way of striking out at the rest of our support for not all cramming into Broadwood every other week.
It’s so highly personal, and so crass, that it takes your breath away.
It might well be one of the most unprofessional and arrogant dismissals from an elected official that I’ve ever seen.
And that’s where he’s going to have a problem because Mason, in his moment of personal satisfaction, has forgotten what he ought to be acutely aware of; he serves at the pleasure of his constituents.
He is not some bureaucrat who can say and do as he likes protected by an iron clad contract and a civil service pension.
Mason is three years away from his re-election.
He holds the Shettleston seat by 7000 votes.
And believe me when I say this, John Mason needs all the help he’s going to get in keeping that seat.
Because in 2017 he was embroiled in a controversy where he praised IRA members as “freedom fighters” and thus marked his card with Scotland’s unionist fringe.
They will go all-out to whip that seat from under him, which means he’ll face a tactical voting pattern that on its own could turn his lights out. We were the last constituency that he could afford to alienate; we might have been the only friends he had left.
So remember this.
Remember that casual dismissal.
Remember our disabled fan.
Remember what John Mason thinks of us, all of us, as Celtic supporters and how he would have us treated.
Remember that he thinks he’s better than we are … remember that if you’re a Shettleston based Celtic fan and hold this guy’s future in your hands.
And don’t worry … just in case you forget, I’ll remind you a little closer to the time.
But just in case you’re angry enough to spit and you think that this guy is unfit to hold any office at the present time, there’s a way you can channel that feeling in the here and now. Incredibly, Mason is actually a member of the Scottish Parliament Cross Party Group On Disability … I don’t think his remaining in post is acceptable, and I intend to write the group a letter to that effect, and I suggest that you all join me in doing the same.
You can view their contact information at this link. I hope you all get writing.