Today’s Government Update Now Gives Celtic License To Fight For Its Fans.

Contrary to what you might have read, or seen, elsewhere and particularly in the tabloids which are desperate to get their headlines, no decision was taken today on fans being allowed back in grounds.

But this is the moment where Celtic can stop being passive on the issue.

Today the Scottish Government announced that it is cutting the self-isolation time for those who have registered a positive case. It echoes moves in England and Wales. The science behind this change is virtually non-existent.

Some scientists believe it is dangerous.

It’s a political move designed to keep the economy on track and to keep public services running. I understand why it’s been done, but the message it sends out could not be clearer. We’re no longer really interested in mitigation measures. We’re no longer seriously trying to reduce the numbers. We have set out our priorities and they are clear.

And those priorities are not about containment or control. They are about government public relations and that now takes precedent. Nothing they are doing is keeping us safer; indeed, almost every act now increases the chances that this thing will sweep through the country.

Pubs and clubs remain open. All hospitality does.

We are in the laughable position where the only restrictions that matter are that people are encouraged to sit at tables only with people they know, but I’ve been in two restaurants and a pub since Omicron was discovered and that’s for show, and everyone involved knows it.

Airflow in most of those places is stagnant and dreadful.

If someone across the room has this everyone is vulnerable. If Omicron moved as quickly as they estimated at the start it’s almost certain that every person in a pub or restaurant would catch it from just one case.

Schools went back today.

Classrooms are filled with students and teachers again. Regular testing might help if everyone did it, but that’s not a habit people want to get into and whilst the high number of positive results is largely because a lot of us are testing right now, all the time, we’ve already seen that this causes problems with the testing regime and that availability of kits.

The policy is now an utter shambles and it was always going to become an utter shambles as we moved out of this thing and towards the next phase. But the governments in Holyrood and Westminster did not have to so spectacularly undermine their advice at every turn.

Football has already suffered for this all across this island.

The Westminster government could have turned the game off down there, but they chose not to. Major events are still going ahead regularly; the darts finals, shown live on Sky, was a classic example of the sort of super-spreader event which would be first to be shut down in a sane country that was determined to stamp down the numbers.

The argument for shutting football stadiums in Scotland, when events carry on as before in England, no longer exists. The government in Holyrood took the decision to allow potentially infected people to leave their quarantines and lockdowns early because the number crunchers told them that the buses would continue to run on time.

There is not even the slightest pretence that football stadium closures, on their own, can make the least bit of difference when everything else is open. Those who have been waiting for Celtic and the clubs to go on the offensive have their moment.

Football resumes for us in 12 days. For fans to make arrangements, we need to know the situation within the next week.

This is the time for football to mobilise, at last.