All it took was one man, Eddie Smith, who joined the referees strike a year ago as their body became embroiled in allegations of lying, bullying and sectarianism, to make it his business to report Celtic fans to Uefa and the SPL, and the support are besieged on two fronts.
After decades of the police turning a deaf ear to illegal and offensive chanting elsewhere this might appear opportunistic, but Smith’s motivations are irrelevant. We have endured ‘the songs debate’ here for years, the only thing universally agreed upon is that as long as a single Celtic fan sings political songs at a game, this day would come.
I sincerely doubt that Celtic fans sing anything illegal, which perhaps explains why the police encourage observers to ‘police’ the stands, but no one denies many people, including a number of Celtic fans, find such singing offensive. There is, therefore, scope to mount an attempt to discipline the club, and an easy route to inflict reputational damage on each and every Celtic supporter.
The Debating societies will be exercised on the freedom of some to sing racially-hostile God Save the Queen, or the militaristic, Flower of Scotland, and wait for the reaction to what is euphemistically known as ‘the marching season’. In this vein I would encourage the Celtic delegation who meet Uefa next month read aloud a transcript of La Marseillaise, which becomes a logical target if Uefa prosecute our club.
I predict Uefa and the SPL will reprimand Celtic with a cease and desist-type warning which will include specific instructions to remove and ban ‘offenders’. Efforts will be made to prosecute ‘offenders’, which I expect will fail, but not before a few individuals are brought before the court.
Neil Lennon, Jock Stein and since Fergus McCann, the club, have asked fans not to sing political songs. Many agreed but some will not waver, so it would be an act of vanity for lesser mortals to suggest restraint. The slow train-wreck will happen.
Don’t take the notion that attempts to prosecute are likely to fail as legal advice. In my experience, lawyers become a lot less certain once proceedings are underway.
On a separate note, I was pleased to read Iain Blair of the SPL differentiate pro-IRA chanting from sectarian chanting. Lazy jounos everywhere take note.
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Por Cierto says:
15 November, 2011 at 16:27
Scottish domestic football in the local parlance is a black sheep
Eddie Smith had to wait until Kenny Scott was in position.
read this below and you will see what I mean
Graham Spiers Commentary
Last updated March 21 2011 12:01AM
Another week, another excruciating example of the problem Rangers have with a large section of their support. Walter Smith’s team, going into Sunday’s Co-operative Insurance Cup final as underdogs, won quite a few admirers for their gritty 2-1 win over Celtic.
Alas, no one who was at Hampden Park as a neutral, and who had any understanding of the type of songs that were being sung, could have found anything remotely appealing in the antics of the Rangers support.
For fully 120 minutes the Ibrox legions belted out stuff about the Pope, Fenians, and some of their other favoured subjects.
Quite a few of us have become used to “the Rangers problem” over the years but Sunday at Hampden was still quite an eye-opener. It was the consistent, incessant nature of the bigoted chanting that was truly shocking.
One of the problems we have in tackling bigotry in Scottish football is the sheer ignorance of the subject that we have to put up with. For instance, Kenny MacAskill, the Scottish Justice Secretary, clearly didn’t have a clue what he was talking about, to judge from the fatuous statement he released after attending the match at Hampden.
After the prejudiced chants had boomed out, the following was MacAskill’s take on the whole spectacle. “This was the showpiece everyone wanted to see — it was a great advert for Scottish football,” he said. “The players, management and fans contributed to a memorable occasion, and I urge that their positive example inside the ground is replicated outside it over the course of the evening and beyond. Football is a force for good in society.”
Given the nature of what was chanted inside Hampden, this was an utterly ludicrous statement. MacAskill, clearly, is totally unfamiliar with the sort of problems given an airing at Hampden if he thinks that the sort of chanting which the Rangers fans kept up apace represented “fans contributing to a memorable occasion.” This is risible.
I didn’t expect a Rangers statement yesterday on the shocking tone of their supporters’ singing, and nor was one forthcoming. Rangers’ preferred position on their problem is this: let’s just have a general media silence on the subject, and let’s keep any fuss to a minimum. From Rangers’ point of view, the fewer headlines there are about their problem, the less need there is of any requirement to act.
But that is a tough scenario to hope for. The Ibrox club have already been censured by Uefa over bigotry, and more than that, a number of Rangers supporters’ songs have specifically been banned by European football’s governing body. So it is asking a lot for every newspaper to turn a blind eye (or deaf ear) towards songs which have repeatedly been outlawed.
What is more galling for those who want to be rid of this poison is the seeming ignorance — such as was revealed by MacAskill — or inability in government or police circles to be able to fix it.
Hampden on Sunday rang out to bigoted chanting from the Rangers end, yet the police statistics for “sectarian-related crimes” were paltry, never mind MacAskill’s absurd words about how wonderful it all was.
This isn’t government action. On the contrary, this is inaction, and even incompetence. The truth is, we are getting nowhere today with the problem of sectarianism in football. In fact, we are regressing, Edinburgh summits or not, at an alarming rate.
Rangers, in trying to fight their own specific problem, have lost ground. Indeed, if you were at Hampden on Sunday, with bigoted chant after chant ringing out, you would think that the club had gone back ten years in their quest to solve the problem. And for many others, meanwhile, it actually means very little.
OK, so there is sectarian chanting, they say. So what? What does it matter? Just let it go, let’s just concentrate on the football.
Rangers lack the guts to truly take on their own support on the issue, and the same applies for the Scottish FA.
The docking of points really would force the bigots to stop their chanting, and the SFA has the power to do this, but it is too scared to.
Meanwhile, too many other people won’t touch this problem with a bargepole, claiming the accompanying aggro that comes with such debate simply isn’t worth it.
So Scotland just goes on living with its embarrassing bigotry problem. Ignorance, incompetence and cowardice ensure it.
Row101
I knew that one day youngsters who were still only fleeting urges behind the signal box in Langloan, would eventually triumph. Thankyou. I can go to Sharkeys now and celebrate! :-)
Hail Hail
Estadio
Perspective:
We are being “hauled up” in front of UEFA for alledged “illicit chanting”.
Likely outcome: slap on the wrist or small fine.
We accept our punishment, clean-up our act and move on.
Our neighbours are being hounded by HMRC and others through all the courts in the land.
Likely outcome: administation or liquidation.
We can only guess at the pain they will suffer.
Believe me, I’m going to savour THEIR slow train crash.
They wouldn’t hear your music and your paintings they pulled down,
they wouldn’t read your writings and they banned you from town.
But they couldn’t stop you thinking and a victory you’ve won,
for you’ve sowed the seed of freedom in your daughters and your sons.
Chorus:
In your daughters and your sons, in your daughters and your sons,
sowed the seeds of freedom in your daughters and your sons.
Your weary smile it proudly hides the chain marks on your hands,
as you bravely strive to realize the rights of every man.
Though your bodys bent and low, a victory you’ve won,
for you’ve sowed the seed of justice in your daughters and your sons.
Chorus
I don’t know your religion gut one day I heard you pray,
for a world where everyone could work and children they could play.
Though you never realized a victory you’ve won,
for you’ve sowed the seed of equality in your daughters and your sons.
Chorus
They tortured you in Belfast and they taunted you in Spain
and in that Warsaw ghetto they tied you up in chains.
In Vietnam and Chile they came with tanks and guns,
It’s there you sowed the seed of Peace in your daughters and your sons.
Chorus
Now your music’s playing and the writing’s on the wall
and all the dreams you’ve painted can be seen by one and all.
Now you’ve got them thinking and a victory you’ve won,
for you’ve sowed the seed of freedom in your daughters and your sons.
Chorus
Ernie lynch
Do you believe that the sectarian killing of Ronan Kerr was justified?
BontyBhoy – So I heard your favourite singer is Tony Bennetts…. (thumbsup)
And now for something completely off topic.
15 November 2011
Article written by Douglas Fraser
Business and economy editor, Scotland
Songs from the digital news campfire
Johnston Press, owner of The Scotsman along with more than 250 other titles around Britain, has announced more grim figures for the third quarter of the year.
Advertising revenue is down 8% on last year, when it was already falling. That’s not as sharp a fall as the 10% at the start of this year, but it’s still a big gap in the company’s finances.
Job advertising in its papers has been particularly hard hit, down by 30% on last year in the first half of this year, and 19% in the most recent quarter.
Digital ad revenue is on the rise, but by less than 5%, and that’s nowhere close to closing the gap left by declining newsprint revenue.
It would be reassuring if those lost job ads were being placed online instead. But because they’re not being attracted into the print editions, neither are they being sold in what’s called “digital upsell”.
Story of decline
While total revenue has fallen by more than a third between 2006 and last year, the big pressure is to get debt down, declining to £357m by early this month. But that remains a focus, particularly as the company renegotiates its bank finance for renewal early next year.
That helps explain why the share price has fallen from £3.60 less than five years ago to bounce around the 4 and 5 pence mark. The total market valuation is around £30m, which ought to make Johnston Press ripe for takeover, except that there’s not much appetite for taking on either its debts or its assets.
The headline figure that advertisers watch is in circulation, and that continues to tell a sorry story of decline. The audited industry figures for The Scotsman were down to 38,800, the third month they’ve been below 40,000.
The average circulation for May to October this year was nearly 9% down on the same period last year. Not good, but not as bad as the decline for The Guardian, The Times, the Financial Times and The Herald. The Glasgow title was down nearly 11% to a six-month average of 47,900, with a 2% dip in October to 45,800.
For The Scotsman’s stablemate, Scotland on Sunday, circulation is down 7.8%. It’s not much consolation that the magazine-style re-design of the Sunday Herald, published in Glasgow, has been a circulation disaster. It continues to fall, with the October figure just below 29,000, and the six-month average is 27% down on the same period in 2010.
Highfield high five
The decline will surely force change to the market at some point, though none of the papers has yet found the solution that makes adequate money out of online news journalism.
But Johnston Press has one new source of optimism – its new chief executive.
Ashley Highfield, aged 46, is not from a newspaper background. He’s been big in Microsoft UK and was director of new media at the BBC when it brought us iPlayer – rather successfully, too.
A couple of weeks into the job, he’s not talking to the outside world just yet, but he has talked to Johnston Press’s in-house website, with much talk of apps and targeted online advertising.
“I’m not one of those who subscribe to the theory that we are on an inexorable glide path into oblivion,” it quotes him as saying. “There’s no reason to believe we have to accept ever-declining numbers of readers. There comes a point at which you become relevant to a new audience. One of the exciting challenges is how you educate a younger audience, who only consume online, and get them to fall in love with newspapers.”
He’s citing the way cinema survived despite the arrival of videos and DVD, reinventing itself as a place people wanted to go, to get new experiences.
Local voices
What of the vast stable of local papers, and a couple of national ones for Scotland? “The big question is what could they be?” Highfield is asking his workforce. “How can they be more of the digital campfire around which the voices gather in a community?”
“We’ve hardly started down the road of apps and one of the reasons I took this job is because I see local media becoming more important, not less important. As more and more people access the internet through devices like iPads and smartphones – which know their users’ location – I think we’re at the beginning of a point in history where really local content becomes more relevant, more useful and more used.”
That’s also the area where the BBC has retreated, under pressure from local publishers.
And here’s someone with a vision, that goes beyond cost-cutting, of how publishers can exploit that local niche.
Paul67,
it is an opinion, an opinion I have reached through careful consideration he is low life. I see plenty of personal abuse being meeted out here, but then again thats not aimed at anyone you consider important I suppose. There is nothing litigous about the opinion so not sure what te problem is.
But then again I expect some greetin face cowards have been greetin tae there mammy that bad boy is no being nice because he doesnt respect money or position as the mark of a man.
Ernie,
by the way you haven’t answered how you would justify your actions to if you stood on their busiest shopping street shouting “up the Ra”
Hello bhoys and ghirls. Like most of us I feel totally deflated with the going ons of the past week or so. My stance on it is , just dont give our enemies any more ammo to shoot us with , we need to be smarter and wiser. However the most galling thing for me in all this is that we have absoloutely no leadership within the club. We as fans and the club are being slaughtered , we need a leader / spokesman to speak out and defend the club and fans. Our “leaders” dont seem to have the stomach for a fight so ,( maybe I am being naive here) what about some kind of online petition to send to the club demanding they stand up for us and make some kind of statement. Even better Lawells email address where we can let him know we aint happy about the inaction of our current custodians. I genuinely fear that with this whole “singing legislation” and Them possibly going into admin / insolvency that there is a powderkeg brewing. An Independent Scotland?? Now that is a very scary scenario indeed for our “type”
roddybhoy
Kojo
Personally, I do like Paul McBride but I feel he didn’t need to comment on this issue and if he did he didn’t need to slate the Green Brigade :)
HH
Matt just off the phone to the oldyin
he spoke hilee of you
The Honest Cover-up:
Pathetic question. His murderers in all probability were, themselves, Catholic and if they weren’t doesn’t that make it, in your view, the first time Republic Protestants have murdered someone just because he was a Catholic? Absurd question in every way.
And I am sure you don’t NEED it being pointed out, but the organisation which carried that despicabe – yes despicable – act out are not the IRA, and for you to ascribe that killing to them is a disgraceful tactic.
Awe Naw
McCartney had Give Ireland Back to the Irish banned and Hi hi Hi banned, in between them he issued Mary had a little lamb.
The mans a genius
greenjedi
agreed an unmitigated genius along with messrs Lennon and Harrison
Hail Hail
WDH
Anyone would…after 28 Gin and Tonics!! He told me he needed then for his malaria. It seems there is quinine in the tonic. The gin is just to make it palatable!!:-)
Hail Hail
Estadio
JAMES FORREST 1623
Harsh words to bontybhoy.
Even I have never been so confrontational towards him.
Not that you’re wrong though.
Your posts today have been first-class,don’t let yourself be sidetracked.
Not one backward step.
Once a year on CQN I recommend this site
If you have a tuned guitar you can literally lose days on it
http://celtic-lyrics.com/forum/index.php
Hail Hail
I was going to buy a wee CD on Amazon entilted “16 Favourite Irish Drinking Songs”
It’s advertised at only £3.95 but apparently there’s minimum pricing in Scotland and it’s £8.00 plus a fixed penalty.
James Forrest is Lennon at 16:36
Sorry but the murder of Ronan Kerr was sectarian. He was mudered simply because he was a Catholic who happened to join the PSNI.
We’ve suffered a lot over here, but for me, that was one of the worst things to have been committed in the name of Irish republicans and did absolutely nothing to advance the cause.
I find it difficult to condemn everything these splinter organisations do, as for the most part, they are continuing on the struggle in their own way even if the vast majority of republicans on this island have moved on and wish to see no more of it.
Mort
Just again if anyone missed Pauls piece
QC Paul McBride has urged Celtic to take sactions against members of its Green Brigade section of fans who continue to glorify the IRA in song.
McBride, who has advised Celtic manager Neil Lennon, was reacting to news that Uefa is investigating alleged “illicit chanting” by the club’s supporters.
“The particular organisation who tend to be involved singing this are called the Green Brigade,” said McBride.
“Education has not worked and now it is time for sanctions.”
European football’s governing body in April fined Celtic’s city rivals, Rangers, £35,000 and banned their fans from their next away European game for sectarian singing in a match against PSV Eindhoven.
Now Celtic face an 8 December hearing over chants reported by Strathclyde Police’s match commander at their Europa League game against Rennes on 3 November.
“To be fair to Celtic, they do have, generally, a very good reputation with their fans in Europe,” said McBride about the club he supports.
“But we can’t ignore the fact that, for a number of years, there have been a small section of the Parkhead crowd who sing songs about the IRA and the provisional IRA and they dress it up by saying that it’s political and not religious and it’s not sectarian.
“But it misses the point entirely. It is offensive.
“What do you say to a 10-year-old child who asks his father why people are singing about killers at a football game?”
While McBride pointed out that the case against Celtic on this occasion had yet to be proven, he expected that it would result in tougher action from chief executive Peter Lawwell.
“Celtic, on the face of it, may have a case to answer and it may well be that, as it is the first time it has been drawn to Uefa’s attention, they will be simply given a warning,” he said.
“But it’s a warning shot to Celtic that they will have to deal with it as an issue.
“To be fair to Peter Lawwell, he has been doing that for the last couple of seasons.
“He has been discussing it with their so-called leaders, I am not sure their leaders are actually in control of all of them, but he has been discussing it with them.
“He has been making it clear publicly and privately, he doesn’t want this kind of activity and, in a crowd at Celtic Park of say 58,000, we are talking about no more than 500 people.
“So it can be done and I think, Peter, he won’t be embarrassed, he will be angry that the club’s otherwise excellent reputation is being diminished by this kind of activity and I think we’ll see fairly firm action over the next few weeks from the Celtic board.”
Celtic blogger Paul Brennan, though, suggested it was an insignificant problem at Celtic Park and did not know of any such singing at the match against Rennes.
“If the police have a matter that they want to act on then it’s the police’s responsibility to do so,” he said.
“And it’s certainly the police’s responsibility to alert the club there and then as to what’s going on.
“It does the club, it does the fans and our reputation as a nation no good for the police to go behind everyone’s back, take no action whatever on the day but raise it with an external body.”
However, Piara Powar, executive director of the FARE anti-racism network that has previously reported Rangers to Uefa, insists it is right to target sectarian chanting by both sides of the Old Firm.
“The extent of the problem we have seen in Glasgow has been around for years and years, but it’s only in the last 12 months that the authorities have really begun to get their heads around it,” he said.
“I think Scottish football had fallen into a place where there was a sense of ‘we don’t like what happens but the whole city is caught up with it’.”
The Honest Cover-up says:
15 November, 2011 at 16:33
‘Ernie lynch
Do you believe that the sectarian killing of Ronan Kerr was justified?’
I would say that the motivation for the killing was political rather than sectarian, in the sense that the reason for killing him wasn’t that he was a Catholic per se.
Either way I don’t think his killing were justified.
I understand that SF, who used to be the political wing of the IRA before they disbanded, condemned the killing.
James Forrest for someone who can string a sentence together (not altogether common among the mad crew on here) you really are a moron.
First I didn’t say I had sung IRA songs – I was young but even then not as much of tube as you’re proving to be.
Second my father wasn’t at the games with me.
Third, what the fek is your point? Can you actually read, or do you just see a name and assume a whole lot of p!sh.
I’ve had some childish and stupid reactions in my time, but that was pretty much the dumbest… extremely disappointed.
I’m remotely intimidated by your passionate powerplays, that are as senseless as they are predictable.
Do others require a more careful explanation. Does everyone who supports the extremist view need every single subtlety explained ad nauseum… actually, of course, they do that fits perfectly with their moronic starting point.
So James, I said that the IRA affiliation influenced me as a youth. It did. I was non-catholic/Irish and like any child was having a devil of a time understanding why the Irish, cheeky chappy neighbours of ours were bombing us. Repression/N Ireland etc… I got it, the underdog, fighting the good fight. I was easily persuaded and a massive fan of Celtic which tied together nicely. It meant next to nothing until later on when I did start thinking about these things (and I did start thinking James, and I’ll keep out-thinking you) and started applying morals and ethics and logic and coming up with different conclusions and solutions. Losing a little respect for the IRA stand point and then working out why, and then finally feeling very sorry for the Irish and the Brits whose lives had been ruined by this intemperate organisation.
You really outdo yourself sometimes James. I think angry is the word… and that’s certainly a first.
The PLC’s appeasement policy, with it’s 10 grand donations to the poppy appeal and such like, whilst stating that politics be left at the door of Celtic Park, leaves me shaking my head in disbelief at their sheer naivety.
Do the PLC want to change the ethos of the club so much that it’s unrecognisable to us as fans for the reasons we loved it in the first place. That is, as a cultural outlet for a certain social grouping who have always felt themselves struggling to stay afloat in a sea of denial of the Irish in Scotland as a legitimate cultural identity (It is no secret, for instance, that Glasgow is the only City in the world with a strong Irish Culture but no civic celebration of St. Patrick’s day).
This is self-harm death by a thousand cuts, having had the razor handed to you by those who wish to see you snuffed out.
When will anyone running this club, with it’s uniqueness based on Scottish/Irish heritage, open their eyes to this blatant anti Irish agenda, stuff the PR, and call it for what it is?
When will anyone running the club realise that a successful appeasement policy will leave empty stands and empty coffers? THAT is the true agenda of those who wish us harm.
Paul Elliot
bucurdi fir me hic
Our greatest managers have asked the support not to sing certain songs and these songs largely disappeared for quite a few years,they have come back and are being sung mainly by a small but vocal minority of the Celtic support,as was pointed out by a poster yesterday there are other organisations were these songs can be sung.Do pro IRA songs really add anything to the atmosphere at Celtic Park?Our club should not be hijacked by people who don’t ultimately have the best interests of Celtic at heart,our club is being used by people who have legitimate grievances but it is easier to air them in a football ground rather than get politically involved.
Time to sack the masons on the Celtic board
Soukous,
what are the best interests of the club ?
Mort says:
Mate, you echo my point, which is that the murder was not commited by the IRA. The people who did that have never been commemorated in song at Celtic Park, nor to my knowledge anywhere else, and so to use that incident to justify a point is despicable, utterly despicable.
It appropriates the death of an innocent man for selfish ends.
For the record, I would hope I am never in the company of some of the people on here who lacerate their fellow fans, only for this song to come on the jukebox and they join in, because that would be “walk out the pub in disgust” time for me.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d2gHDIFLNUY
One thing has struck me over the past few days and apologies if anybody has picked up on this, It occurred to me that the 2 villains centre stage of this melodrama are either by admission or reputation Celtic fans / supporters!! It got my rather murky and suspicious mind to thinking that maybe the events of the past few days may not be part of a devilishly Machiavellian scheme being played out by an unseen hand!!
Let me expand on my theory, imagine, if you will that the greatest rivals in your business are currently panting and gasping for air to stay alive, reeling from one crisis to the next, then imagine that you have it within your power to keep them in business but in doing so, your own ‘customers’ would have such a reaction to your charity to your rivals as to bring upon your house a plague such that your income would at the very least be severely dented to a point where you, yourself would suffer severe retribution!! Then imagine the converse, if you don’t save your rivals, the symbiotic relationship which has kept your coffers mightily buffered would equally suffer, the market created by this relationship is so stifled by the lack of competition that you become a much lesser player than you already are in the bigger and emerging market!!
What to do, what to do? Neither scenario is easily contemplated but one has to do something!!! Is there a third way?????
Well maybe there is if, we can demonstrate that we and by association our minor market will be so badly effected by our rivals demise we might, just might, be allowed into a different playground with opportunities not only to maintain the coffers but to substantially enhance our income streams….now wouldn’t that be worth the bother?
So we start to talk to the big boys who happen to own the playground we want to play in and at first they see the sense of letting you play with them, and oh what joy you feel t wait there is but one request the big boys have before they let you in!!!
‘It can’t be money big boys, we’re as sound as a pound, look at our P & L, look at our balance sheet!!!’
‘Nay, nay tis not your balance sheet, tis these pesky fans you have and those little ditties they will persist in singing, in our playground, we simply cant have that and we wont let you in whilst they sing them!!!’
Dam says the handsome CEO, what to do, what to do?????
In a flash of brilliant strategic thinking, a plan is hatched, what if we have reason to ban the pesky fans that will persist in singing the ditties? What if we could rid ourselves of the menace??? Then there would be no reason for the big boys not to let us play!!!
But how to do the deed, if we ban them ourselves, without good reason, they would merely resort to the law!! I know says one bright chap, what if we get the big boys help, what if we are seen to be forced to deal with it and the legitimacy of our actions is widely acknowledged?? So what to do, what to do?
Why don’t we get some one to report the bad boys and then we have the platform to do it, but it cant be someone from our rivals or associated with our rival, that would just be seen as tit for tat, no lets get someone who can be associated with us, then its not a conspiracy, and then lets get one of our foremost legal eagles, again, ‘one of us’ to steam in support of the notion and telling all and sundry that we need to lance this boil!!
Not only are we now free to deal with the bad boys but we are also not getting as much flak from our own good guys, we can ‘bury’ our rivals and be in a fit and proper state to ask the big boys to let us into there play ground…. fait acompli!!!
I know that the scenario about is probably a lot of pish but who would put it past our business savvy board and CEO???? I wouldn’t put it past the ‘unseen fenian hand’!!!!
I’m a simple man, I have very mixed feelings and emotions on the whole songs debate, I myself do not for one minute believe that the songs about the old days of freedom fighting Irishmen are in the slightest way offending or certainly no more so that ‘our’ own National Anthem (Flower of Scotland) or the repulsive charge towards being a celebrity for being a celebrity our zeitgeist seems to espouse these days!!
These offend me but, as part of a tolerant and supposedly enlightened society, we have to be liberal on these things that offend or we really are heading towards a totalitarian regime! Having said that, I don’t really believe that in the 21st Century, we need to have these songs as part of the repertoire at our beloved football stadium. I understand and can sympathise with that part of our community who still feel strongly enough to want to sing the songs but on the whole I don’t believe we need to do so.
JF,
did you really say that hun sang IRA songs, looks to me like he has done a number on you me old son.
Songs that glorify the Provisional Irish Republican Army have NO place at Celtic games.
How anyone can argue with that and not be considered a nutter?
The No.13 Shorts says:
15 November, 2011 at 16:42
ABSOLUTELY BRILLIANT POST
I am waiting to see how they handle the death of Rangers. If they run to their rescue then I will turn my back on them.
HAil Hail
greenjedi says:
15 November, 2011 at 16:47
‘Songs that glorify the Provisional Irish Republican Army have NO place at Celtic games.’
Is it OK to sing a song commemorating Irishmen who were executed for murdering a British policeman?
BTW I seem to recall that you’re a member/supporter of the SNP. Is there any talk within the party of Christine Grahame being an anti Catholic bigot?
I said before, months ago, Paul McBride may have put up a stout defence of Lenny in that time of need but, bottom line, Paul McBride is a lawyer, trained, systematically indoctrined, to speak out of whatever corner of his mouth he is paid to speak out of.
It is how he earns his living. It is not a slur on the legal profession; I’m merely stating a fact of their existence.
When you ask someone conditioned as such to express a personal opinion you get the hinterland hypothetical vagueness which has emerged in the last couple of days.
Only the truly desperate put their trust or confidence in lawyers; it is the nature of the beast that they are not compatible with such.
Do not expect anything from Paul McBride to aid our cause, only his.
Summer of 65
great post too but truth is if we are playing all over Britain then it is the away games that will eb getting televised and that will be much harder to self police. Turkeys dont vote for xmas still applies there – nothing else.
Hail Hail
Por Cierto
League Cup Final match commander was
Chief Superintendent Andy Bates’s.
See
Daily Record
I recently attended the hibs game in Edinburgh with a good hibee friend,the usual banter between us about how his team hadn<t won the Cup sonce 1902,he to me that we stole the hoops from them.
We met for a quick pint and walked to Easter road together, we were filmed doing so by L&B s finest, I found it abhorrent and sinister being filmed going to a football match in the capital city of our so called progressive country,as did he…I said "welcome to our world"
So in the best looney tunes tradition heres The Tweetie Pie song updated…
I am a Glasgow football man ,Im Celtic till i die
I like to pass through Parkheads gates and sit way up high
I like to jump up and down and sing my celtic songs
But theres a guy thats after me and wont let me alone
I thought I saw a polis man a creepin up on me !!
I did I seen a polis man and now he’s filming me !!
I am dat great big polis man Eddie is my name
I only have one aim in life and that is very plain I want to catch that celtic guy and jail him right away!
but just as I get close to him this is what he”ll say
I thought I saw a polis man a creepin up on me !!
I did I seen a polis man and now he’s filming me !!
That polisman guy is very bad,he sneaks up from behind
I dont think I would like it if I knew whats on his mind
I have a strong suspicion that his plans for me aint good
I am inclined to think that he would jail me if he really could! Id like to jail that celtic fan when he leaves his seat!
but I can never catch him,it really makes me greet !
you bet Id jail that little guy if I could just get near
but every time that I approach this is all I hear
I thought I saw a polis man a creepin up on me
I did I seen a polis man and now he’s filming me !!
Altogether now!!!
I thought I saw a polis man a creepin up on me
I did I seen a polis man and now he’s filming me !!