Football, the government and ‘Oh, I forgot Day’

Celtic have apparently asked the Scottish Government to take a common sense look at their Covid restrictions for football players, but I don’t know if I have ever imagined a greater waste of energy than to appeal to this Government’s common sense.

Yesterday they shuttered the hospitality sector for most of the country, while locking down rural areas after 6pm, claiming this sector was prevalent in the rise of Covid’s second wave.  You don’t say, Sherlock.  Since August they permitted football fans to gather in enclosed pubs to watch games, while prohibiting games at open air stadiums, contrary to all scientific evidence.  We have repeatedly discussed this folly here.

Encourage people into pubs, then blame pubs for the second wave, if only they were prepared to deviate from the policies of a Westminster government, scientific evidence would have had a chance to influence political policy.

Thousands of fans attend games across Europe, all outdoors, all socially distanced, all with strict travel, entry and egress protocols, mandated by governments who are not following Boris Johnson’s cabal.  There has been no related increase in contagion – because, as we all know, this is not how contagion happens.  It happens indoors, where there is no monitoring.

The hospitality sector needed to be thoroughly monitored (just as the football sector would have been) when it opened.  Spot checks should have taken place many times each week, with licences pulled immediately for those who allowed unsafe practices.  If it was monitored, social distancing practices would be sufficient to keep people safe.

I saw plenty of venues that had clearly spent a small fortune on partitions, with staff permanently wiping and cleaning handles, and others which looked little changed from the pre-Covid era.  There was no consistency, which means there was no enforced monitoring, which means responsibility for the rise in contagion from the hospitality sector lies largely with the government.

If you do not monitor compliance and close offending venues, you know you are contributing to the problem.  Despite this, you can continue watch afternoon games in a Dunfermline pub, with as much alcohol as you can consume, without any change in government monitoring policy.

Unusually, this wave of restrictions came several days ahead of Westminster’s planned move.  Don’t get me started on it grabbing the headlines on ‘Oh, I forgot Day’.  We are bereft of competent leadership in Edinburgh and London.  The former can do what they like because their opposition is even less competent than they are, and the latter can do what they like because they have another four years before they need to care about you.

It is thoroughly depressing; our government co-joined twins care nothing of the game, do not expect any amount of evidence to bring about change.  As long as they keep their legions of cognitively dissonanced fan boys (CDFBs) on side, competency will not improve.  I buy none of their bull, self-promoting careerists to the last.  Green and white are my only colours.