A Tory councillor has written a truly deranged piece for The Scotsman today, in which he has levelled a quite abysmal allegation against Celtic supporters.
I’ll get to it in due course, but the entire piece is deserving of the full line-by-line treatment, as it so loaded down with deplorable nonsense that I don’t feel like I have any choice in the matter.
If have read some abysmal apologia for the Ibrox fans in the last week, but it is by far the worst article of the lot of them, and at the heart of it is the suggestion that their supporters are victims not villains.
It is the ultimate expression of their pitiful whinging modern mentality; the world is out to get them, whilst simultaneously claiming they are superior to us.
So I’m going to cover this dreck section by section, because it’s honestly bewildering how blind it is, how hypocritical it is and, at times, how it howls at the moon.
The reasons why the paper printed this diatribe are obvious; Andrew Smith’s fearsome denunciation of Ibrox and its culture which appeared earlier in the week.
This is an attempt to present the “other side” of the debate … and when you consider how erudite and on the nose Smith’s article was, how internally consistent and logical, it is a wonder to me that the writer of this trash ever thought he was doing himself, or the club, a favour.
And it raises some political issues too, of course … but we’ll get to them in a follow-up later.
Let’s Start With The Title.
Let’s start at the beginning, with the title.
The writer, John McLellan, probably had no part in writing it, but I’d say it broadly reflects the content of the article well enough.
It is called “Rangers: Campaign to turn club and its fans into social pariahs ignores plight of young working-class white males.”
The headline is everything here; it contains every rancid argument that the writer will make.
It reeks of paranoia, for openers.
What is this “campaign” it talks of? Who is trying to turn their fans into “social pariahs”?
It’s their own actions that have done that, and most writers who’ve tackled this subject properly – a handful of them – have made it clear that this is not about the entirety of their support … but it’s not about a small number of them either.
The really interesting thing is the focus on “white working class males.”
This focus on whites is such an obvious red-flag that I’m amazed the paper didn’t spot it a mile away … or maybe they did.
This is profoundly right-wing and forms part of an argument that is familiar to anyone with a scintilla of interest in politics; an argument against multi-culturalism and liberalism , an argument you can hear aggressively promoted by the likes of Farage, but also by the likes of Robinson and Trump. It has overtones of racist ideology.
Now, before McLellan and others get hysterical, I’m not saying he’s a racist. I’m saying that the focus on whites only has overtones of racism, and is part of a gamut of ideas being actively pushed by extremists. If you lie down with dogs you get fleas, and in promoting that in an article which essentially makes excuses for loutish behaviour, I think the writer does himself no favours.
What follows will not in any way contradict any of the above.
Indeed, he doubles down on it.
“We Are Good Peepul Too …”
“My cousin Iain and his family left Scotland 24 years ago for a new life in New Zealand and never a week went by without him phoning home to catch up and check his mum was fine. A quiet, hard-working, family man he never came back; tragically, he died this month from complications following heart surgery, aged just 60.
“We watched his funeral on Monday night, a full Scottish send-off, with bagpipes and his coffin draped with a Saltire as befits a proud Scot. It also carried a familiar-looking red, white and blue scarf because, as a former Ibrox season ticket holder, he remained a proud Rangers supporter.”
This is how the writer chooses to open up, with a tug at the heartstrings … he’s saying “we are people too …” as if even the most uneducated of us didn’t already know that.
I find it curious that he chooses to open on such a note, not because it is mawkishly sentimental but because he mentions watching the funeral on Monday … in another world we might not fully understand that, but in this one we understand it too well; the virus. In another world he’d have been able to fly over there for it … not in this one.
It’s an odd start to a piece which in the very next paragraph blatantly ignores the restrictions that were in place explicitly to prevent sickness and death and suffering.
Already you may be getting the impression that the writer is never going to be on Mastermind.
Happy Peepul At Play … Heedless Of The Risks To Others.
“Like thousands of the club’s followers, he would have been thrilled by the unbeaten league season he didn’t quite live to see, he’d have chuckled at the “Bouncy Bouncy” celebration on the Squinty Bridge over the Clyde, and he’d have been utterly aghast at the violence and vandalism ? and appalling reports of intimidation of church-goers the following day ? which besmirched the celebrations and the club’s reputation.”
Oh where to even start?
Let’s go with this; anyone laughing at ten thousand people jumping on a Glasgow bridge during the current restrictions is frankly out of their nut. People watched that from all over the world in utter disbelief and alarm.
And it’s good that he would have deplored the violence and the vandalism … more people should be deploring them instead of making excuses for them. It’s good too that he would have been shocked by what the Catholic churches had to endure.
But the “celebrations” were a festival of anti-Catholic bigotry all day long, as every celebration involving the Peepul tends to be, and I don’t think it’s wrong to say that. In fact, it needs to be said more and more and more and more until it’s properly understood.
All through the week leading up to the last game, this blog and others predicted that the fans would gather and that they would sing sectarian songs and that there would be wanton destruction and even violence.
We might not have predicted the stand-offs with police that turned the city centre into a battlefield, but none of it surprised us.
None of it was a shock.
Because we understand the sub-culture which surrounds the club itself.
It’s the one that has been pandered to with the annual bigot’s beano in Linfield, complete with marching bands.
It’s there in the release of the orange strips.
It’s there in some of the people the club employs.
In the We Are The People slogan which is one of supremacy.
In short, this is the club’s reputation.
This is what its reputation is built on, inside and outside Scotland.
Nobody could reputationally damage the Ibrox operation if they tried.
“No Intelligent Person …”
“But as the anti-Rangers rhetoric ramped up ? one prominent Edinburgh commentator claimed no intelligent person could support Rangers ? he’d have been infuriated by what became a widespread demonisation of an institution he held dear.”
There are many “institutions” which people hold dear, and which the Ibrox support, and the club itself, has not been shy about taking shots at over the years.
One institution many in Scotland hold dear is the Catholic Church.
One of the most troubling aspects of being a Catholic in the past 20 years has been the way some inside the church have behaved, and I am not alone in being glad for the big light of scrutiny being shone on it, all the better to clean house.
That’s how it’s supposed to work.
For too many of these Peepul any form of criticism or scrutiny is looked upon as a crime.
There are underlying reasons why much of Scotland loathes the Ibrox operation, and it has damn all to do with naked hatred or jealousy; it’s because people are genuinely repulsed at the venom of its supporters and the way in which the institution panders to them.
It’s not demonising anybody to tell them they’ve got real problems and to urge them to get their house in order; it’s pointing out the bald facts.
The piece he’s referring to from the “Edinburgh commentator” was harsh in places but there was a point even to that “no intelligent person” line … this is a club which badly needs its non-sectarian fans to stand up and be counted and to fight for its soul.
No intelligent person who supports that club can ignore what’s going on there, and if they disagree with it they have an awesome responsibility to try and fix it.
If the writer cared about that, he would welcome the past week … it’s a chance to rally the good fans and drive the nutters and the bigots away. Why hasn’t anyone in their support focussed on that?
Deny, deflect, deny, deflect … and that word I used the other day; acquiescence.
To consent by silence.
You’re either part of the solution or part of the problem.
The writer clearly has no interest at all in being part of the solution.
And Here Come The But’s …
“Nothing excuses causing fear and alarm amongst shoppers and church-goers, the assaults on police or the wanton destruction, and Rangers do not help themselves by having possibly the worst media relations in Scotland but, in the rush to pile the blame for last Saturday’s dreadful scenes on the club and to isolate it and its supporters as social pariahs, there was little reflection on the underlying causes.”
There ancient wisdom is that in a conversation nothing before the word “but” matters, and so it is here with the writer going through the gamut of criticism before he arrives at the point; “all these thing are wrong, but …”
And so begins the excuse making, but not before he throws in another reference to “isolating” the club and making its supporters “social pariahs” as though we were going to force them to carry ID cards or to wear their status openly so that people could shun them.
This is honestly ludicrous, and desperate.
If he really believes this he’s a few sandwiches short of the full loaf himself, it is paranoid nonsense.
They got well deserved stick and scrutiny for the first time in years. The idea that the country is trying to blacken their names – as if the goons in George Square needed our help to do that – is howling at the moon.
Honestly, I wish every neutral in Britain and throughout Europe could read Andrew Smith’s piece and then this one, and decide which they found more coherent.
Remember I Talked About The Far-Right?
“It is as if the liberal-left commentariat decided that if years of anti-bigotry campaigns still results in hundreds singing the Billy Boys, then the only recourse is to shame supporters into abandoning their club and either force it into a corner or out of existence.”
And here it is!
The first sure sign that we’re on the fringes here, and moving further away from the sane and rational debate … the throwaway reference to the “liberal-left commentariat”, the enemy of Trumpism and the liar Johnson and all those other cartoon characters who, God help us, have somehow wound up in positions of enormous power.
This is the first exhortation for his readers to embrace The Great Global Conspiracy … you know what comes next in this discussion, even if the writer doesn’t express those views openly or elaborate much beyond that one remark.
(He does, as you’ll see.)
You can also see that, having taken the shot at one of his own hate-groups, that he goes off on a tangent and a general rant. The reference to forcing the club “into a corner or out of existence” is just plain batshit.
In even the most extreme commentary I’ve not seen any of that.
What it is an effort to do is to get the club to confront this darkness at its own heart.
He freely admits that it exists; years of anti-bigotry campaigns have not shifted these Peepul.
So, yes, I think that the average fan who deplores this stuff has a choice to make about whether they still want to give allegiance to an institution inexorably tied to it … he can call that whatever he wants but I think it’s a choice that more and more of them will have to make.
The alternative is to do something about it … and I’ve never seen any sign that large numbers of their fans are sufficiently motivated to drive these lunatics away.
Indeed, the writer is not arguing for that at all … he’s not arguing for the club to make that cut.
Indeed, quite the opposite as you’ll later see.
Whatabouttary And A Slur On Our Support
“I don’t follow football closely, but Rangers has been my team ever since my dad took me to see them most Saturdays when I was small, and on the admittedly few occasions I’ve seen them recently, the aggression of some supporters is undoubted. But having stood in the Celtic end at an Old Firm cup final (I lost a bet) and heard fans talking about stabbing Protestants, don’t tell me sectarianism is a one-way street.”
Let’s start from the beginning, although I know we’re all tempted to get right to the end.
But let’s start from the first line and take it from there.
This guy “doesn’t follow football closely” but was somehow motivated to defend the Ibrox club from its myriad enemies. It’s a strange thing to do with your spare time, I have to say.
Could he not have done a jigsaw or some DIY or something?
Only someone irrevocably tied to this madness would even care. So excuse me if I’m calling “bullshit” even before this paragraph gets to its staggering and frankly ludicrous conclusion.
I am going to admit this; I read that line about our fans and burst out laughing.
It’s so preposterous and overblown and over-the-top that I thought instantly of Del Trotter trying to “chat up a bird” and not knowing where to stop with the embellishments.
Am I saying the guy made it up?
Haha. Let’s just say that in the piece where he levels an entirely false accusation against Hamza Yousef that he’s not beyond gilding the lily a bit. But I want to say something else as well, which warns against this sort of colouring.
I could have taken one big liberty myself in the course of writing this piece, but I haven’t first because the article didn’t need it and secondly because it would have been wholly dishonest to have done so whilst making the case I’m about to make.
He talked earlier on about the “Bouncy Bouncy” on the bridge; there a lot of urban myths about that song, but here’s something that’s not an urban myth.
It doesn’t matter what that song started out as; the story goes that it originated with the murder of a Catholic and a mindless lout jumping on his head. I’ve never cared whether that’s the truth or wholly fictional.
Anyone who does it within that mind-set is clearly a sick bastard, but the chances are good that they’re already up to their knees in fenian blood anyway … so it would be just another stop along the same road, which is why I’ve never actually cared.
I know some of my own guys do believe the urban myth … but I also know that some of those who do it believe it as well and that’s why they do it with such gusto and vigour.
That’s an undeniable fact, just as it’s an undeniable fact that there are some proper halfwits in our support, the kind of people who make me honestly angry and who every Celtic fan I know shuns and would drive out of Parkhead if they sat within yards of them at a game.
Here’s the question I asked myself;
Do I believe that the writer, someone who claims he doesn’t bother much about football, somehow attained a cup final ticket, for a game between what I presume to have been Celtic and Rangers (as opposed to the more recent Celtic v Sevco one), when they are so hard to come by, and for the opposite end of the ground … and then, in another remarkable switch of fate, found himself sat next to, out of all the many thousands, the handful of our fans who have forgotten the hundreds of our players who were Protestant, including Stein, Dalglish, McGrain and others and who were so consumed by that hatred that they openly, surrounded by others, many of whom would have been of the Protestant faith and almost all of whom would have been furious at such remarks, then talked about stabbing folk?
Let’s just say I find it hilariously … improbable.
Aside from the already aforementioned Del Trotter reference, it reminds me a lot of what, in Silence of the Lambs, Hannibal Lector calls the seemingly random dumping grounds of the victims; “the elaboration of a bad liar.”
No-one ever said sectarianism was “a one way street” … but anti-Irish racism is a one way street, and instead of trying to spread the blame everyone should be focussed on how they can put a stop to it.
And The Excuses Are Flowing Now …
“While intimidation is far from rare at big football clubs, whitabootery can’t excuse sectarianism and violence, but it won’t be tackled by reinforcing a siege mentality amongst all supporters which gives extremists under the influence of alcohol and drugs – or as a friend put it, “a bunch of bigoted neds out their skulls on electric soup” – the excuse to plumb the depths of anti-social behaviour.”
A ludicrously convoluted sentence which seems to blame the rest of society for making the Ibrox mob paranoid.
And for someone who doesn’t want to make excuses for “anti-social behaviour” doesn’t that read – when you spoon your way through the thickness of the soup – an awful lot like someone doing exactly that?
It’s not the fault of the Peepul that they act out … it’s the fault of others for making them feel like they have no choice but to act out.
What a deplorable piece of work this article is, honestly.
The Peepul created their own siege mentality, weaving it through their already lunatic mind-set and interlacing it with conspiracy theories and other such nonsense … which he then, of course, goes on to repeat himself not too long afterwards.
The next bit is priceless. Brace yourself for it.
God Save Our Gracious Queen …
“There is a broader context, most obviously the association with unionism, and although there are SNP-supporting Rangers fans, the Queen’s portrait in the home dressing room spells out the club’s traditions.”
There is literally nothing I can write which better sums up the prevalent attitude which caused all this trouble in the first place than to point that fact out the way he’s done it.
Hanging in their dressing room is a picture of the hereditary monarch, head of the Protestant church and tied inexorably to the lodges both Orange and Masonic, symbol of unionism.
How did we get here, for God’s sake?
That, right there, an embarrassment, an anachronism, a mixed up mentality which at once preaches supremacy whilst also being slavishly subservient to an outdated and outmoded idea which has no place in the modern world.
The club’s “traditions” could not be spelled out in more plain language than that, and it undercuts every other bit of his argument.
He doesn’t have a clue, but he’s just torpedoed the whole thing with that single barmy paragraph.
“Tinfoil Hats On Please Folks …”
“Rightly or wrongly, Rangers is about more than football and for 14 years the Scottish government has been run by a party which traduces the symbols and denigrates the country in which most supporters have been brought up to believe. The First Minister, remember, decreed the Union flag must not fly from Scottish government buildings other than on Remembrance Day.”
Now that, right there, is a barmy paragraph.
Let’s start with “Rangers is about more than football” … that’s the problematic mind-set right there.
That’s where all the trouble starts … this is a club with an ideology …
What in God’s name does any of this have to do with the behaviour of their fans in George Square and across central Scotland on the day in question? The SNP are evil? Is this a party political broadcast?
Did Brian Wilson step in for a session on the word processer?
Right here is the central thrust of the piece; their fans feel alienated from their country.
Because their country wants to destroy the things it believes in.
Every right wing lunatic of the past 70 years and counting has believed this kind of pish … it’s virtually the calling card, the dog whistle, of the lunatic fringe; our culture is under attack! We must defend it!
This is an open justification for more of those scenes. It is grossly irresponsible.
You expect this stuff in an election year; the Tories have never been shy about playing that card in Scotland and in Ulster, but we’ve just had an election … this sets us up for dangerous times.
The writer should be ashamed; but if the writer had any shame he wouldn’t be turning out this junk in the first place.
“The Unseen Fenian Hand Did It …”
“This season represented the full return from a collapse many supporters believe was driven by an establishment hostile to everything they represent. They recall a crippling and inflated tax demand which sent the club into liquidation in 2012, the malicious 2014 prosecution of its administrators David Whitehouse and Paul Clark, which could yet cost the Scottish government £100m, and the trial and acquittal of the ex-owner Craig Whyte of fraud charges in 2017. Now the police blame manager Steven Gerrard for waving at fans through a window.”
We’re off to the races now, folks, with the fully-fledged lunatic showing through.
Scotland killed Rangers. That’s the thing.
That’s what he’s arguing here.
A “hostile” establishment. What a crackpot this writer is.
Let’s have a look at this because it bears going over once again for the idiots who think his piece is right on.
The Scottish Parliament exists on Westminster’s say-so. The Parliamentary system is built around the hereditary monarch who is head of the Protestant church, and the paraphernalia of unionism. The union itself is not based on consent – if it was we could have held the referendum already – but on London’s say-so. The “establishment” he’s talking about; the judiciary, the police force, the hereditary peers … almost overwhelmingly unionist.
Even the stupidest first grade Modern Studies student knows all this.
But not wanting to stop there, the prosecution service is also named as party to the conspiracy. HMRC are included too, of course, because why should the taxman have the right to collect his due?
“Crippling” it might have been but overinflated it was not … and even if it had been, a tax bill half of its size would have finished the job on its own.
Think of how stupid someone has to be to accept that it was the tax-bill that killed the old club but to then blame it on some conspiracy. How do those pieces fit together in his mind? How do they fit together in any of their minds?
Why bring up the Craig Whyte trial?
It was a jury who found him Not Guilty, not some big grand conspiracy … unless the jury was in on it as well?
Which would be amazing.
And it absolutely reeks of tinfoil hat to even obliquely suggest it, which didn’t stop him.
Which brings me to the last part of the paragraph, his dig at Police Scotland for daring to suggest that Gerrard and his players bear some of the responsibility for what happened in the Square.
They do, as is basically obvious to any sentient being.
It isn’t something that even the stupidest person can fail to comprehend, and to tie that in with all of that other stuff really does elevate this piece to the level of a Hidden Hills style communique.
“I Blame The Schools …”
“Nor is the alienation of a whole class of people a figment of anyone’s imagination, and it is being felt in communities across Britain and beyond. It would be wrong to paint young working-class white males, such as those who make up a large chunk of the Rangers support and the majority of those on the streets last weekend, as being entirely homogenous, but the fact they are less likely to go on to higher education than any other demographic group except travellers and Roma is now the subject of a parliamentary inquiry.”
Did he just, quite literally, blame the schools?
You know what? I think he did.
My problem with what he’s written there – and it’s a big problem – is that it wasn’t white working class youth en masse rioting last weekend, which is what you’d expect if that were the cause of this, and nor are these kind of events commonplace in other cities.
And it’s not peculiar to football fans because this didn’t happen when Spurs lost in the cup the other week, and triumphant white working class Leicester fans didn’t rampage through the streets fighting with the police … this is unique to one set of supporters.
To those of Ibrox.
And it is unique to one subculture … to the Loyalist, unionist fraternity, who are the only people in what’s referred to as the United Kingdom, who frequently riot and lash out against the perceived injustices in the world around them.
They, too, feel persecuted although they live in a geographical entity with artificial borders which once guaranteed them a permanent majority.
The writer thinks that we’re stupid in putting forward such an obviously fraudulent argument.
“Please Sir, Can I Have Some More?”
“Lower education standards, limited job opportunities and Third World life expectancy in Glasgow are as much an influence as anything football clubs do or don’t say.”
What absolute bullshit. As excuses go this is the worst.
The riot was a response to poverty?
So really, it had nothing whatsoever to do with The Peepul and their need to rub the rest of our faces in their first title triumph?
You know who he actually sounds like coming away with that?
Like one of the “liberal-left” journalists he decried in the first section, which can’t be right as this guy is a Tory.
On top of that, if you’re wondering, perhaps, when the Tories started giving a shit about education standards, jobs for the working class and life expectancy you’re not alone.
Can you imagine someone on the left making this argument for minority rioters?
Can you imagine the scathing response from this geezer and folk like him?
As a leftie I absolutely understand what poverty can do to people and the impact it can have on their psychology and their lives. I’ve lived in Easterhouse and Darnley growing up; I bet you I know more about that kind of poverty than he does.
But I say it again; this was not a riot over the closure of a job centre or a food bank (or indeed the need for food banks in the first place) it was football fans getting mobbed up and attacking the police in “celebration”.
You could be forgiven reading him that Ibrox had the only white working class football fans in the country.
Who does he think has been following Celtic all these years? 50,000 prawn sandwich fans?
Hey, it’s not our club’s supporters who are paying for MyGers memberships and bailing out the club with phony share issues before they’ve even bought season tickets.
All that paragraph does is excuses the club for not doing enough.
For not doing very much of anything, to be honest.
Not bad for someone who doesn’t even really follow them.
“The Bigger The Lie, The More They Believe …”
“Former Justice Secretary Humza Yousaf said strict liability for supporter behaviour for all clubs should be considered, but it’s Rangers he had in his sights.”
As I said earlier, the article which tells what sounds, to me, like a highly embellished account of an alleged incident at a cup final contains at least one blatant untruth and this is it right here.
Please note, that whilst Yousef went out of his way last week not to make an allegation against Ibrox players for the sectarian singing video, the writer throws caution to the wind.
He is suggesting that the former Scottish Justice Minister is writing a law deliberately targeting the fans of one football club. It is a dangerous accusation to make.
Here’s the truth; if strict liability is passed and it enforced in all probability the Ibrox club will suffer more than most from its effects, but that’s not the fault of the law it’s the fault of those who break the law.
If we didn’t have a law against petty theft and the Scottish Government said that it would pass such a law would this idiot be screaming on behalf of pickpockets and minor shoplifters?
Don’t break the law and you’ve nothing to fear from it; simple as that.
Now, in general terms I’m against strict liability but as I said in an earlier article I’m waiting to be convinced.
I know there are risks to my club, and those are a concern to me but not because our fans are bigots or sectarian or racist.
Ibrox fans have been all of those things, which is why this proposal scares them.
He makes an idiot of himself making this argument, but then that’s in keeping with the whole piece.
“Get Your Sick Bucket Ready …”
“But where is the liability for the failure of an education system to ensure values of tolerance are understood and adhered to by all? Where is the liability for condemning thousands to live in grim estates with few amenities and scant attention to proper maintenance which destroys community pride?”
Again, the temptation to just jump to the second part of the paragraph is almost overwhelming when you consider the political party the writer belongs to, but let’s focus on the first part.
It is not the job of the education system to teach values of tolerance, although it tries to. Part of the problem is in the home, where intolerance can is seen and heard every single day. That’s an issue which he doesn’t mention.
There is no problem with “understanding” the idea of tolerance; everyone can understand it. There are people however who believe they are special and superior … the slogan which lies at the heart of all this is We Are The People; separate, unique, better than the rest. It is, at its foundation, at its core, blatantly discriminatory and intolerant … and that wasn’t taught in school (certainly not the one I went to) and it can’t be untaught there either.
And of course, yes, if you want a laugh then you need only listen to a Tory lecturing people on the scandal of entire communities shorn of all amenities and lodged, permanently, in a downward cycle of deprivation. It’s called austerity and it’s been the policy of the UK government for over a decade. Nothing has done more to create those conditions than the ruthless cutting back of the social safety net. If he’s suddenly in favour of an interventionist, distributive government I suggest that he check himself in the mirror because he’s in the wrong party.
Honestly, it is darkly hilarious reading that kind of stuff from a Tory.
It frankly makes me want to vomit.
“A Limited Gathering …”
“Where is the liability for allowing a drugs epidemic and demoralising, low-level crime to flourish? After last Thursday’s mass protest in Pollokshields, where is the liability for condoning some gatherings while condemning others? Where is the liability for rejecting the club’s sensible suggestion to permit a limited gathering?”
So much wrong here it’s hard to know where to begin.
First, again, the pretend liberalism of this guy is insulting to our collective intelligence.
I particularly liked the reference to allowing low level crime to flourish; that’s rich coming from the guy who spent the early part of the article making allowances for it on a grand scale.
I knew Pollokshields was going to come into this, although he doesn’t mount the full-throated defence of the illiberal, ghastly, frankly evil immigration policy forced on this country by Westminster.
And whilst I wouldn’t exactly condone other gatherings I applaud those which are in a socially responsible cause because I know the difference between them and naked triumphalism mired in hate.
The Scottish Government accepts liability for rejecting the club’s “suggestion.”
Their press release when the story broke summed it up; football is not special.
Which to be fair wasn’t Ibrox’s argument; their argument was that they were special.
This “limited gathering” by the way was for 15,000 fans … and God knows how many more would have turned up outside.
What a ridiculous point to make.
“Let The Mob Decide Their Fate …”
“Sure, the SNP can be voted out, but accept liability for failure? Not in a month of Saturdays and no wonder thousands of supporters stuck up two fingers.”
Ha! So it wasn’t poverty or lack of educational attainment, it wasn’t because their team had won and they wanted to rub our faces in that … it was because the SNP ran for and won re-election instead of letting someone else have a go.
It was a gesture of political anger.
And you’ll notice that he either intentionally or otherwise has just legitimised that sort of behaviour if you disagree with the direction of this government; I presume he doesn’t extend that invitation to leftists who might disagree with the way Westminster runs things.
I reckon that his party has a damned cheek to accuse Hamza Yousef and others of being reckless in this debate when he takes such an abhorrent position.
The election may be over, but the war goes on, is that it?
And he’s what, dragooning the mob into it now?
Because that’s what it reads an awful lot like to me.
“F@@@ The Pope And The Vatican …”
“The condemnation of Rangers as a club was in full flow after the vandalism which followed the league clincher in March. I thought it would make matters worse and it didn’t take long to prove that right. The club’s song is Follow, Follow and my dad and cousin did so to their graves, and no mindless hooligans, partial politicians or sanctimonious commentators will stop its supporters doing the same.”
What a rousing finish! “The song is Follow Follow …”
That’s the one about “If you go to Dublin we will follow on”, right? It has a somewhat controversial add-on as well, doesn’t it?
This was his big finale, unrepentant, just like the Union Bears and the rest of the assorted trash who turned Glasgow into a battle ground. The article contained no apology, no remorse, no expression of real regret, just some mealy mouthed platitudes.
On the whole, it reads very much like a piece justifying violence and disorder in the name of disagreeing with the government.
It seemed to me as if it said that poverty, injustice and a punctured sense of superiority gives you an excuse to riot and vandalise and terrorise people … it equated the Ibrox operation to a cultural institution hanging on for dear life as it is pounded on all sides in a country which hates it, run by a hostile establishment.
As a paranoia stoking piece of propaganda, it is first rate.
As journalism … well, what can you say?
Did you notice how it suggested that we were wrong to criticise in March and that he “knew” that this would result in even greater criticism here? Do you think it ever dawned on him that if the Peepul obeyed the law like everyone else there’d be no issue?
Overall, I think this is one of the most hysterical pieces I’ve seen published in a national title in a long, long time.
As an apologia for riotous behaviour it is a beauty.
I am quite sure that he has only reinforced our view of that club as follow followed by too many lunatics and nutjobs … and The Scotsman allowed one of them to write that piece.