Freedom of speech
Lord Carloway has brought the judiciary into line with Parliament in a blatant example of why I’m beginning to doubt the independent status of sections within our once highly respected legal establishment. Apparently he has upset quite a few libertarians in the past with other controversial decisions. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/glasgow_and_west/8109359.stm
Politician or Judge?
I have been a Rangers fan all my life. I am not and have never been anti catholic or anti republican. I have however sung anti catholic and anti republican songs at matches (not recently though as a result of political censorship). In this blog entry I would like to try and explain why someone like me would sing songs of this nature. Football is an entertainment (using the word entertainment when refering to the Scottish premier League is a stretch i know) and our stadia is the theatre where the drama is played out. Fans have always had a role to play as the revered ’12th man’ and that is to generate as much atmosphere as possible, the only tool fans have at their disposal in this regard is their voices, this atmosphere can on occassion encourage your team and hopefully intimidate the opposition. We all know 99% of Rangers and Celtic fans live their lives outwith the stadium with no interest in bigotry or intolerence, most have partners or friends from the opposing side and they live in harmony. I myself have many friends and aquaintences who are celtic fans and or catholics. I do however defend the right of both sets of fans to sing whatever they like in the context of sport/theatre combined with our constitutional right to freedom of speech. This is simply a post 9/11 bandwagon that Holyrood politicians jumped on to be seen to be stamping out any form of of racism or bigotry but it was a knee jerk and vote winning strategy which has done nothing but create a problem that didnt even exist befor their meddling. Of course both football clubs have a small minority of trouble makers but no one believes for one second that censorship will any way disuade them from seeking out confrontations.
If Rangers and Celtic fans are banned from singing lyrics relating to charcaters or events from actual historical events (wether intolerent or not) then whay are the English allowed to sing ‘rebellious scots to crush’ in the sixth verse of the English national anthem. I’m Scottish and i find the idea of being crushed as pretty extreme/intolerant. So Lord Carloway how about it, a bit of parity, or would that be too much to ask for.
