Salmond's Law- PR or purpose?
Some harmless phrases look like becoming victims of Salmond’s Law but what will the legislation prove or change in Scotland?
First of all, the new law seems to suggest that if anyone uses offensive language, they are a bigot and therefore can be punished by the courts.
So what exactly is deemed offensive? Who decides and how do they decide? When these decisions are made, do we as fans, get a list of what is and is not offensive?
Of course I don’t think we can get a list or words/phrases, I am asking to illustrate how difficult it will be to define and enforce such a law.
People will and do get offended by different things.
My thoughts are that simply banning a word or certain words will not make one bit of difference. If someone has a deep rooted hatred of someone based on their religion, nationality or football team supported, then banning a word is hardly going to change that persons mind set.
Take for example someone who dislikes Asian people, if they use the work P**i because they dislike people from that part of the world, they wont have suddenly started liking people as soon as that particular word is deemed to be racist and offensive.
In the past, I have been called various f****n something or others, but because I don’t respect the opinion of people who have called me that, it doesn’t bother me at all and certainly doesn’t offend me.
However, In the eyes of the law, it is offensive.
We can then move on to the chants of Paddy McCourts f****n army which can be heard sometimes when Paddy plays for us. Is that chant now going to be deemed illegal?
If so, why? Who would get offended by such a chant? And if someone does get offended by it, maybe it’s time to have a look at themselves and to get a grip.
Another thing that I have heard as being a potential reason for bigotry in this country is the fact that there are Catholic and non Catholic schools. I do not buy into that train of thought at all. I grew up going to a Catholic school – well two of them.
Part of the religious lesson taught was to treat all people as equals so how that can cause bigotry is beyond me.
Having never been to a non Catholic school, I can’t say for sure what the kids are taught there but I doubt very much that it would say anything that your religion/ethnic background defines you as a person.
Now I apologise if this sounds cynical, but the new laws are pretty much a result of the so called old firm shame game – the cup replay at Parkhead last season. Does that mean that the people who called the summit think there is a problem with Celtic and us as fans?
The summit was called in the build up to an election of some sort. I’d like to make it clear that I have virtually no knowledge or interest in politics and I don’t even vote but to me it just looks like the politicians thought we better look like we are doing something.
When you take the behaviour of Celtic fans over the past say 10 years, we pretty much travel all over the place and get on fine and rarely cause any trouble so why, I’d like to know, are we even being targeted?
Is it perhaps the case that politicians and some reporters etc do not or can not be seen to favour Celtic or Rangers so it’s much easier just to tar us with the same brush ?
As a Celtic fan, I don’t feel that I have anything to worry about with regards to the new laws. We support a club that has always been known to be open to all and since the days of Fergus McCann and the ‘bhoys against bigotry’ campaign we really have not had a particularly big problem with bigotry.
Yes, there will be some bigots amongst our support – it would be ridiculous to suggest otherwise, but surely if the bigots’ kids were educated to understand that religion etc doesn’t matter then the bigoted generation will die out and a new generation of people will grow up and not be bigots.
The most publicised bigotry stuff must be the fact that a lot of songs that Rangers fans sing are punishable by UEFA so with the new laws coming in, we will probably have more songs deemed as bigoted and so will they.
All I can see this new law doing is giving more people criminal convictions without actually addressing the reasons for bigotry and how to stop it.
So the new laws, from what I can gather, are going to be very difficult to enforce. As a collective group, Celtic fans don’t really have anything to worry about anyway so here’s to the hoops, on and off the park, in the season ahead.
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