We’ve been through all the papers and there’s still absolutely no Scottish politics news, so we’re going to take a moment out for one of our brief but always-popular tangential forays into the world of football. All the usual disclaimers apply.
Because the parlous state of current Scottish journalism can’t just be observed on the politics pages, with all their partisan spin, quarter-truths and hackery. Sometimes you get a better idea of it by stepping back and looking at the broader picture, and rarely is that picture more clear than when it’s a picture of “Rangers”.
The Daily Record devoted only a tiny corner of its back page on Thursday to the club’s latest financial reports, and the bulk of the text was devoted to Dave King enthusing about what great news it all was.
Pretty much every other piece of coverage to be found in the Scottish press was the same, shrugging the figures off as of no notable significance and all someone else’s fault anyway (in this case former manager Pedro Caixinha, even though one must suppose he didn’t spend any more money than the board told him he could), and we waited in vain for any in-depth analysis in the Sundays.
And we couldn’t help thinking we’d been here before.
While ploughing through hundreds of pages of hysterical drivel about Alex Salmond in the Scottish press this week, extra-alert readers may have also been aware of quite a stushie going on between the SNP-controlled Glasgow City Council (GCC) and a group of representatives and fans of Scotland’s newest professional football club The Rangers FC, such as Tory list MSP Adam “WATP” Tomkins (pictured below).
Most of Scottish Twitter has been enjoying itself greatly for the last few hours after England’s exit from the World Cup, but scattered in amongst the amusing memes has been a fair amount of angst about victors Croatia – a nation of 4 million people – being in the final when Scotland once again failed to qualify.
And while we’ll more than happily listen to any amount of criticism of the unbelievably incompetent, hapless clowns who’ve been in charge of the SFA/SPL/SPFL for the last several decades, that judgement is a bit harsh on the players and coaches and the nation as a whole. Because there really hasn’t been much in it.
Scotland’s qualification for World Cup 2018 hinged and ultimately faltered on a split second and a single badly-chosen pass in stoppage time.
One of the uglier facets of opposition to the hugely-popular but now-repealed Offensive Behaviour (Football) Act was the 100% uniform stance against it in the Scottish press. Despite the Act being backed by a large majority of voters across every demographic and political divide, not one print or broadcast journalist ever stood up for the public.
The reason, of course, is that bigots (and lurid stories about them) are a large part of what keeps the Scottish media’s life support machine functioning, and so the media panders cynically to the extremist sections of the Celtic and “Rangers” support who still buy papers for the latest transfer gossip and soft-soap interviews with ex-players.
And so it is with a remarkably mad front-page lead in today’s Sunday Herald.
The paper reports that “over half” – 44 out of 86 – outstanding OBFA charges have been “converted” into other types of offences and are still being prosecuted by the independent Crown Office, claiming without explanation that this is “an embarrassing move for the SNP Government”.
Much of central Cowdenbeath was closed down for several hours by the police yesterday to facilitate an Orange Order parade attended by DUP leader Arlene Foster. (Curiously, Ruth Davidson, who’d been vocal in her complaints about traffic disruption in Glasgow due to the recent Yes march, had no objections this time.)
Foster made an audaciously ironic plea for a nation “free from intolerance and hatred“, right before the next speaker stepped up to denounce large sections of the local population as “enemies of Christ”.
And no, we don’t even mean the FOUR spelling mistakes in this 42-word tweet.
We mean the bit that we’ve highlighted above in blue. Because what Scottish Labour’s lowest-watt bulb was gloating about earlier today was that Lord Bracadale concluded there’d been no gap created in the law by the Kelly-driven abolition of the OBFA.
And that’s… well, that’s not quite what Lord Bracadale said.
We could all do with some cheering up at the moment, so it’s with great pleasure that we can announce fantastic news for Scotland – the ancient plague of sectarianism has finally been defeated once and for all!
At least, we assume it MUST have been, because this week the Scottish Parliament is set to give its final assent – thanks to Labour, the Tories, the Liberal Democrats and the all-important Scottish Greens – to abolishing the Offensive Behaviour (Football) Act, against the wishes of the overwhelming majority of the Scottish population.
And as we can plainly observe from events yesterday, they would only be doing that if sectarianism was no longer a problem and it was safe to send out an encouraging message to the bigots that their worldview is now acceptable in Scotland again.
Not too many surprises here. (Except, perhaps, the 18% of respondents who claimed to be football fans yet also said they had no interest in the World Cup.)
Excluding the disinterested the numbers were:
England 24% England’s opponents 38% Others 40%
And for people actually born in Scotland the figures came out at
England 20% England’s opponents 41% Others 39%
And that’s pretty much the natural order of things. If you’re a “Rangers” fan and you cheer for Celtic when they play (let’s not say “compete”) in the Champions League, or a Celtic fan who backed “Rangers” in the Petrofac Training Cup, you’re the weirdo.
Deep in the summer news desert, the papers today are struggling for material again. The Sunday Herald has a shock-horror front-page exposé about some photos from an Orange Lodge party that turn out to be from 2010 and 2013, while the Scottish Mail On Sunday reaches all the way back to 1940 to fill a couple of pages.
Last week the walking monotone drone that is James Kelly MSP lodged a motion (an inescapably appropriate term for his output, it must be said) at the Scottish Parliament instigating his private members’ bill to repeal the Offensive Behaviour (Football) Act, having announced his intention to do so in February after putting together a ludicrously bogus “consultation” on the subject last year.
As ever, Kelly trotted out a mixture of baseless assertions and flat-out lies about the Act in support of his move, because apparently the most pressing issue currently facing Scotland, in the view of Scottish Labour, is that bigoted thugs must once again be free to sing about being up to their knees in Fenian blood, or lionise murderous terrorists, at sporting events without fear of prosecution.
Tremendous news for the rest of Scotland’s football clubs as Celtic manager Brendan Rodgers promises never to win the treble unbeaten again, even if his side score more goals than the other team in all their matches.
Aidan on And every day was exactly the same: “@Alf – the UAE has a GDP per capita similar to Scotland and achieves this significantly through its zero-tax regime…” Jan 5, 09:39
Hatey McHateface on And every day was exactly the same: “Near 1 AM, Scotland lies dark and silent, blanketed deep in snow, and Lochinvar’s musings turn, for unfathomable reasons, to…” Jan 5, 09:32
Hatey McHateface on And every day was exactly the same: ““the coloniser, always with great relish, endeavours to point out “the endless deficiencies of the colonised”” Every now and then,…” Jan 5, 09:24
Hatey McHateface on And every day was exactly the same: ““Guid dey” to you too, Northy. I thought I would reply to your post, as nae ither cant bothered. It…” Jan 5, 09:01
Hatey McHateface on And every day was exactly the same: ““still not informed us about your man” Oh but I have. Several times, at least twice in considerable detail. You’ll…” Jan 5, 08:47
Hatey McHateface on And every day was exactly the same: “2026 already shaping up as interesting. Both Xaracen and Northy now melding with James. Hail, Jorthacen! Possessor of the True,…” Jan 5, 08:41
DaveL on And every day was exactly the same: “Quite attached to the ‘rules based world order’ you say. That shows how attached you are to western hegemony/ideology because…” Jan 5, 02:04
Young Lochinvar on And every day was exactly the same: “Get a room you two! YOU are amongst the most prodigious creators of spoiler (going nowhere) BS AI reliant rubbish…” Jan 5, 00:54
Alf Baird on And every day was exactly the same: ““Oman, UAE and Singapore aren’t democracies …” The matter of economic success of ex colonies was the main issue, not…” Jan 5, 00:03
Northcode on And every day was exactly the same: ““Oh, get the fuck over yourself, you arrogant dishonest prick!” A tame exclamatory, Xaracen… you used the temperate obscenity “fuck”…” Jan 4, 22:58
Alf Baird on And every day was exactly the same: ““There is nothing in the least bit bigoted about ANY native wanting to defend his nation from unwarranted, unlawful, and…” Jan 4, 22:36
Fearghas MacFhionnlaigh on And every day was exactly the same: “KAFKA: THE TRIAL (Chapter 1 ARREST) « Somebody must have made a false accusation against Josef K., for he was…” Jan 4, 22:29
Jay on And every day was exactly the same: “Your comment 3:39 on 4th Jan. finds fault with Alf Baird’s comment (shortly preceding) by referring to the issue of…” Jan 4, 22:20
Alf Baird on And every day was exactly the same: “Yes James, the “hateful racism” of colonialism (Cesaire) inevitably shows through whenever the colonizer, always with great relish, endeavours to…” Jan 4, 22:08
DaveL on And every day was exactly the same: “Hi Hatey, you’ve still not informed us about your man Stepan Bandera. I noticed they had a torchlit parade in…” Jan 4, 22:02
Northcode on And every day was exactly the same: ““So there you have it, the ongoing oppression of native Scots is largely a consequence of privately schooled Anglicised sadomasochistic…” Jan 4, 21:54
Alf Baird on And every day was exactly the same: ““Dae masochism next” Kipling, brought up initially in India and then sent to private school in England, imagined British society…” Jan 4, 21:27
Andy Ellis on And every day was exactly the same: “And yet here you are for some strange reason giving us the benefit of your dazzling insight. I doubt my…” Jan 4, 21:13
Andy Ellis on And every day was exactly the same: “@ Xaracen 8.08 pm Wind yer neck in ya bigoted piece of work. I didn’t say ALL Scots were bigots.…” Jan 4, 20:58
Ross on List Voting For Cretins: “Which other pro independence party is likely, on current polling, to achieve more than the 1 list seat though? Every…” Jan 4, 20:49
Xaracen on And every day was exactly the same: “@Andy Ellis; Way to go to miss the point, prick. Your attribution of bigotry to Scotland’s people in the context…” Jan 4, 20:08
Hatey McHateface on And every day was exactly the same: “The greatest living half-Scot, President Donald J. Trump, continues to expand the American language: Trump said under Maduro, Venezuela hosted…” Jan 4, 19:54
Hatey McHateface on And every day was exactly the same: ““Note the curtness of my response (a single sentence) set dow above this observation” I’m seeing what you’re about, Northy.…” Jan 4, 19:18
David Holden on And every day was exactly the same: “Hard to wade through the comments at the moment as life is too short. Dr Ellis seems to be trying…” Jan 4, 19:14
Hatey McHateface on And every day was exactly the same: “Wow! Assertions, propositions, veracity, premises. Check out the big vocabulary on Brad, sorry, Northy. But tell us true, Northy, as…” Jan 4, 19:08
Northcode on And every day was exactly the same: ““…when you give someone enough rope…” It isnae rope ther needin, James, it’s mair ‘bullets’… fir ther nivver feenisht shootin’…” Jan 4, 19:00
Northcode on And every day was exactly the same: ““A wholly unsuprising lack of originality on your part.” This assertion has been noted and immediately dismissed due to its…” Jan 4, 18:50
Hatey McHateface on And every day was exactly the same: “Xaracen expressing his inner James there. Such lack of magnanimity and uncivil rudeness from someone forever telling us Indy is…” Jan 4, 18:46
