Last night, to their shame and the disgust of their listeners, BBC Scotland gave former Ibrox player and former Notts County coach Maurice Ross a platform from which to defend his racist remarks to one of his own footballers over the weekend, an act for which the club correctly terminated his contract.
Allowing Ross onto their show to express his contrition, in an effort to rehabilitate himself and save what’s left of his coaching career, shows how seriously the BBC takes this issue … or rather how seriously they don’t take it.
In the months since the outcry over what a Slavia Prague player said to Glen Kamara on the pitch there has been much hysterical screaming about “enough is enough” and this site, from the start, said that much of it was hypocritical nonsense as racism of the sort we know well in Scotland had never been properly tackled and never would be as long as there was a code of silence applied to it.
That code of silence has been evident since the issue at Ibrox a few weeks ago, about which not one single word has been written in a national title.
The BBC, which wanted Slavia thrown out of the Europa League and which wanted the player banned for far more than ten games hasn’t acknowledged the incident at all.
The so-called “anti-racism charity” Show Racism The Red Card Scotland has had nearly a fortnight to say something and they haven’t uttered a word either.
Furthermore, their UK umbrella organisation has yet to even acknowledge receipt of the email that I sent them at the start of the week.
Right from the moment the hysteria reached its peak, I said something else too; that part of the outcry was itself darkly racist.
Always, there was an undercurrent of how the “foreigners” were the ones who had these nasty ideas and that UK based players never would.
At the weekend, it was one of Ibrox’s much loved sons who was guilty of the racist comment, to one of his own players no less. Notts County didn’t even hesitate before bagging him.
His self-serving statement in the aftermath was focussed not only on the apology but on how he intended to “learn” from the issue before carrying on with his career as if it hadn’t happened.
In short, that statement made Ross sound like the victim and not the perpetrator, and the same radio station which was outraged not only by the Slavia Prague player but the club itself for insisting that he be afforded the presumption of innocence before a hearing had taken place, allowed Ross a platform to aid in that rehabilitation.
You could not mark their necks with a blow-torch.
Ross hails from Ibrox, and that’s clearly one of the reasons for this rush to get his career back on track.
But he’s also pals with a lot of people in the press; when he went on one show earlier in the campaign and slagged Celtic he was an employee of Motherwell, who’s manager apologised to us on behalf of their club.
He was out on his ear not long after.
But Ross remains a darling of the media, and they couldn’t wait to have him on the show last night, where he was allowed to wail and whine and seek self-pity.
Imagine the Prague player had gone on the radio in his homeland and done the same; Radio Scotland would have been excoriating.
The whole of our press would have been up in arms.
It has taken a little over a month for Scottish football and those on its periphery to be exposed as charlatans over their stance on racism.
All the talk of zero tolerance and enough is enough was utter rot, exposed as such at the first sign of the issue rearing its head closer to home. This is exactly what many of us knew would happen.
All the talk was exactly that.
Last night, the national broadcaster gave a sympathetic platform to someone sacked for racism … that sums up their commitment to ridding it from the sport.
They do not care and they never have.