Vaccines Passports Are Not Celtic’s Fault. Anyone Blaming The Club Needs To Get A Grip.

I see a lot of utterly stupid commentary from our own side right now on the probability that Celtic will have to initiate a scheme involving the use of vaccine passports. The club does not deserve criticism or condemnation for this. The club is not doing this willingly.

I can tell you right now that Celtic doesn’t support this policy.

There may be individual directors and persons associated with us who understand the need for it and are more or less ambivalent about having to do it, but the general consensus on the board is that it’s a bad move and difficult to police and will create logistical problems for everyone.

I, personally, actually do agree with the policy, and with respect to those arguing against it, I’ve considered all the debate points and fundamentally disagree with them.

The “human rights” arguments are the worst; they come across, to me, as insulting because the internal logic behind them – “I’ll take my chances but you’ll take them right alongside me” – isn’t credible or tenable in the real world.

This is a deadly virus, and only the true lunatics believe it’s overblown or some form of government “control” experiment.

I’m not even debating with those people.

To the rest, you have the right to decide this for yourself, and nobody is depriving you of that right.

Vaccines aren’t being mandated, nobody is forcing you to get one.

Indeed, if you’re willing to risk your health and even your life that’s surely up to you … but your choices cannot be allowed to endanger others.

That’s where the “human rights” argument ends.

I have rights too.

In additon, nobody is preventing you from attending Celtic Park.

But you will need to be vaccinated in order to do so.

You will need to have taken seriously your responsibilities to other people.

Attending the football is a luxury, not a right.

Stadiums are licensed premises.

The government has always been able to legislate what goes on in them and who gets to attend.

Is it unfair on those who, for health reasons, are unable to get vaccinations?

Yes, of course it is, but they are disadvantaged either way.

Attending games alongside thousands of people, very few of whom will wear masks and where many might be sick, is dangerous and they didn’t ask to be subjected to those risks either.

Besides, you can’t argue in their favour from a position of refusing to do something that would actually help them.

Their lives will return to normal when the numbers drop and that won’t happen without preventative measures of some form or other.

This is one of those measures. So is another lockdown.

That’s on the cards unless some other mitigation starts driving the numbers down again.

I wrote weeks ago about how refusing to wear masks was making something like this more likely … worse is coming if we keep on getting rising hospital admissions, especially edging into winter.

But Celtic won’t make that decision either way.

That’s the long and short of it; this will be done, if it is done, by government fiat.

Elected officials will decide whether or not this passes and if it does then Celtic has no say in it at all. 

Celtic has to comply.

You cannot blame the club for following the law of the land.

If you’re angry I get it.

I don’t agree with your position but I understand why you might be pissed off.

But there are people you can direct that anger at if you so desire.

None of them work at Celtic Park.

None of them are responsible for making this decision.

Celtic will have to implement it though, and I can already foresee that the people who are charged with that job are going to get abuse for it.

If you think that’s legitimate then I suggest you don’t belong at Celtic Park in the first place.

Those people don’t deserve a hard time for following the law any more than a pub bouncer does when he turns away somebody who’s already had a few too many.

They don’t have a say in this stuff either.

Everyone needs to approach this rationally.

This law is almost certainly coming and you can blame the SNP if you like, but what the Tories up here don’t want you to notice is that Johnson’s government is driving the same policy south of the border.

Labour might be vocal in its opposition but I can assure you that theirs is a cynical, political calculation … and as per usual blatantly at odds with public opinion, which is massively in favour of it.

(60% of people favoured vaccine passports in the last major poll, taken last month.)

If Labour was in office it would be doing the same damned thing, because the data doesn’t lie.

To be blunt, this is one of these circumstances which none of us enjoys being in and which, really, is nobody’s fault.

The government is scrambling to keep this thing under some kind of control.

But they, at least, will be the ones who have to make the call.

If you really feel like you must vent your anger at this idea then that’s where you should do it.

But leave Celtic out of it.

The club can no more control this than it can the weather.

This will be imposed on us, it’s not something our directors are imposing on the supporters.

Give them a break on this one, and have some respect for those who will have to carry this out.

Theirs is a truly dreadful position to be in, but they have no choice in the matter and shouldn’t have to take the flak for it.