An official of the Scottish Government – the National Clinical Director Jason Leitch – has slammed the Ibrox Five in the sort of condemnatory language that has become familiar enough to Celtic fans that many believe the Holyrood administration has an agenda against us.
Regular readers know that I don’t subscribe that to that notion, but there has certainly been a difference in the tone which is used in relation to the two clubs since this crisis began; that’s not even up for dispute.
You could mitigate it slightly by pointing out that there are different circumstances involved in each case, but that would be let them off the hook slightly.
Whilst I don’t believe this is done with any nefarious intent, it’s ridiculous to pretend that it’s not the case.
Leitch’s comments today do not redress our major concern, but he did not miss the players involved, as the criticism they deserved from the top of government hit home.
“I think that story from (Ibrox) this week is another indication of our frustration,” he said. “It goes to the house party point … let’s remember whenever there’s a breach the first thing you’re doing is putting yourself at risk … ‘who else have they put at risk?’ So let’s think about everybody in that house, who they live with, who they’ve met since, and that’s what contact tracing does. You get to big numbers pretty quickly. Whether it’s a house party with footballers, or a call centre with a positive case. And then you get to the wider population measure that we’ve just decided. And I think it’s a bad example … my head cannot understand why those guys did what they did.”
I can answer that question for him, as many of us can; they come from a club where is their third major offence, their third major banging up against the regulations and they haven’t issued as much as an apology for having done so, because they simply don’t care.
This is a problem for the Scottish Government if, as some surmise, they determined not provoke the ire of the Ibrox idiocracy.
You cannot appease these Peepul.
In going easy on them you only encourage them to greater extremes of behaviour.
Anybody in public office who was stupid enough to believe that indulging this lot would end in other than disaster is frankly too stupid to hold office in the first place, because when the Government ignored the testing protocal breach it beget the first house party.
When they went easy on them over the first house party scandal it virtually assured that there would be another.
That’s what they do over there; they push and push and push until someone acts decisively and gets them to stop.
You don’t continue feeding a mad dog in the hope that it won’t bite you, do you?