The Celtic Way’s “Points Deduction” Headline Was Idiotic, Just Like The MSP Who Inspired It.

I remember the days when clickbait was the province of a handful of sites, those on the margins, those scrabbling around for hits using whatever means they had to. A couple of things changed that, and one was the realisation that the fastest way to get them was to attack Celtic. The mainstream media did not need to be educated on that point, but what happened next was that any anti-Celtic story, no matter how ridiculous, started to be treated as news.

And when there was not news, they started to create it.

Today, John Mason MSP made an intervention in the Scottish Parliament which was as unwelcome as it was idiotic. I’ll get to the part about it being idiotic in a moment or two. But The Celtic Way – a publication which, need I remind people, is not a blog although it is occasionally mistaken for one – whilst reporting on it, has suggested that he called for a “points deduction” for Celtic over the scenes in the town centre at the weekend. He most certainly did not.

Their method of doing so has been to use one of the cheapest tricks in the book; a grabby, grubby, dishonest headline on the news aggregator NewsNow. The headline over the article reads “Celtic city title party blasted in parliament as MSP calls for points deduction.”

Not only did John Mason not do that, but the article itself doesn’t even allege that he did. The headline on the piece itself is entirely different to the one on the aggregator, which has flagrantly sensationaled what are already pretty stupid remarks.

“Celtic’s title party lambasted by MSPs as £34,000 clean-up cost noted” is the actual headline over the piece, and it should have been the headline NewsNow ran with as well, and why they allow such practices to occur when it’s obvious what’s going on here, I do not know. But when you consider what the blogs have to put up with to get onto that site, it is staggering how much utter rubbish they do allow on sites considered “primary sources.”

The Celtic Way’s publishing team are to be congratulated; their lie made it all the way to the top of the charts as the most viewed “Celtic” story on NewsNow in the past hour, and doubtless it will remain there for the rest of the day.

But it’s precisely this kind of practice which harms the good writers on that site and on others, and as my good friend Tony Haggerty is one of them, I feel especially bad for him that actions such as this sow distrust in the publication as a whole.

The greater media empire they belong to also publishes The Herald, and I actually thought that it’s writer, Matt Lindsay, might make the stupidest intervention on the issue of our title party … but I was wrong. Step forward John Mason MSP for that.

“It is unacceptable that a major road junction in Glasgow is completely blocked. The Tron theatre had to cancel its performances that evening… I myself walked in the area at 6.30pm on Saturday. [There were] people urinating in the pens, the closes and residents [were] afraid to leave their homes,” he said.

And there’s nothing necessarily wrong with those comments except that major road junctions in Glasgow are closed all the time, and especially in the summer.

You don’t need me to go into detail about that, since we discussed sectarian marches yesterday.

But he went much further than that, and to be honest, his comments are so dumb that he should want to hide under the bed when he reads them.

Addressing Siobhian Brown, the Scottish Government’s Minister For Victims And Community Safety, he said this:

“Looking ahead to the future … clubs need to take more responsibility for their fans, perhaps organising fan zones, and perhaps strict liability including partial stadium closures, points deductions and fines as happens in Europe should be considered. And can [you] give any reassurance that clubs will take responsibility this coming Saturday for their fans’ behaviour?”

I’ve got no issue with John Mason. I’ve written about him several times on this blog. But he’s not going to win Mastermind, let’s be honest, and those comments show exactly why. Before I tackle the absurdity in them, I’m going to be pretty blunt about what’s going on here.

First up, John Mason is pretty open about being a Celtic fan, and I laugh at the idea that he was just out randomly walking at 6:30 on Saturday night, in an area where everyone knew our title party was taking place. If I had to guess I’d say he was doing some celebrating.

Which he’s very entitled to do.

But it makes it absolutely ridiculous to find him criticising people for doing the self-same thing, and he can deny that until he’s blue in the face. It doesn’t take a genius to work this out. Like a lot of politicians, he’s under the impression that elected office confers greater wisdom on you than is found in the average citizen; in short, he must think we’re mugs.

That has more than the faint whiff of Matt Lindsay about it; last night, this blog exposed his hypocrisy in calling out “reckless and dangerous” street parties involving football fans when he’s approvingly re-tweeting video footage from Germany of … street parties involving football fans.

The smell that wafts off both of these guys is the same one; middle class curtain twitching moralising and virtue signalling. The need not to let any passing bandwagon pass them by. In a journalist that’s opportunism. In a politician it is called ring-and-run. We know at least that Lindsay wasn’t out amongst the crowds jollying it up with them.

But in getting to the general point, let’s go over what he actually said.

Clubs need to take responsibility and organise fan zones. How many people have suggested this over the last few days, in taking a shot at our supporters? It’s rubbish. It’s a red herring. First, where are Celtic supposed to set up this Fan Zone? Where in the Celtic Park footprint? Once you conclude that this will be difficult bordering on impossible, where?

Even if such a place existed in the Celtic Park surroundings – land we owned – we’d need council permission to do it. Any land outside Celtic Park would need, in addition to the permission of the owner, guess what? The council’s permission!

So, this idea that we should just get on with it, on our own, is just nonsense. They aren’t getting away with just handwaving this away as the responsibility of the club.

They have a role to play here regardless and you could not get a clearer sign that they don’t want to play that role than that they are parroting this ridiculous line over and over again.

And Strict Liability? Is he joking? If Strict Liability existed on the European model, you know how much we’d get fined? Or how many points we’d lose? The number is the same either way; zero. Nada. Nil. Nothing. Because as UEFA has made clear, and as this joker also knows full well, Strict Liability applies only to what happens inside stadiums.

How can anyone rational, anyone who has more than two braincells banging against each other and making noise, suggest that clubs should be held accountable for what tens of thousands of people do outside of their area of responsibility? It’s not like Celtic told us to go out and party, is it?

As to asking the Minister For Victims And Community Safety if she can “give any assurance” that clubs will be “held responsible” for what their fans do at the weekend, what a moronic question that is. What does he expect her to say to that? Offer her job as a hostage to fortune? Declare a state of emergency and put troops on the streets?

Once you accept that his comments are not only factually incorrect but intellectually incoherent you have to conclude that this is either a shameless individual chasing cheap headlines or a complete muppet; either way, this isn’t a good look and it should worry us a little bit that we seem to have a number of such people on the benches of our national parliament.

Thankfully, not everyone in that big building is as daft as he came across today. The Minister herself answered him sensibly and corrected some of his dafter assertions.

“We will continue to work with the footballing authorities, Police Scotland and fan groups to address issues and ensure football matches are enjoyable experiences for everyone during the game and afterwards,” she said. “We’ve never ruled out strict liability as an option for incidents at football within stadiums …” which is an obvious slap at his suggestion that it would be applied to situations such as this. “However, our preferred solution has always been that the footballing authorities themselves proactively shape and deliver a robust and meaningful solution to tackle any unacceptable conduct by what is a minority of supporters.”

And then, in the smartest and most welcome intervention of all, she offered this;

“I understand that Glasgow City Council has had discussions with football clubs to discuss organised celebrations, and I fully encourage such dialogue between football clubs and local authorities about conducting safe events for their fans which minimise the impact on the community.”

So do we. They are not before time.

And amidst such noise and fury and sensationalism and bandwagon jumping, not to mention irresponsible journalism, it is good to hear common sense being talked, and some sense of proportion brought to this whole situation.