Priorities: A Rant

Alright, so this might make no sense whatsoever but I feel the need to expel a little RAEG at the government right now.

So Strathclyde Police and government officials are discussing closing off-licenses on Celtic v Rangers days to prevent folk from drinking while watching the game.

It got me thinking - at some point in the last few months, the situation around Scottish football has turned from a serious one to a... well, a political football. A means for people to say "Look! We're doing things!" without actually, y'know, doing anything.

As much as this country does have many problems around its national sport, there are bigger factors at play here. Much bigger. And people in positions of influence just aren't seeing that. Alcohol is a source of chaos here in Glasgow on a daily basis, not just when Celtic play the Big Bad.

Now, I don't go to off-licenses on derby day so this would be unlikely to effect me. However, I still say that it's time for police and government to take a step back from this ridiculous campaign and reconsider exactly what they're doing here. In particular, they need to change their focus from the symptoms and scapegoats (football) and begin dealing with the mitigating circumstances, the real problems.

Scotland consumes double the UK average amount of heroin. Scotland is the biggest user of cocaine in the world (we're a nation of 6 million people; let that sink in). It's not because these things are easier to get than anywhere else, so why is it like this?

Murders have gone up by 40% in Strathclyde in the last year. Why?

And why, when you look at those facts, are the police blethering on about football? Why are our priorities so... wrong?

It's true to say that Glasgow has a problem with football related violence. It is even more true to say that Glasgow has a problem with violence in general. But we don't need more legislation - violence, street drinking, sectarianism etc are already crimes. We don't need pointless gestures like closing offies on match day.

That is putting our priorities in the wrong place. That is the lazy way to go, the way that involves only pretending to be doing something. We need, instead, police and Holyrood to start looking at and dealing with the mitigating circumstances behind these problems - the poverty, the desperation and the social and political isolation that affects the majority of the population.

Watching Wimbledon the other day, I saw a fella on TV happily drinking a cold pint as he watched the tennis. No one tried to take the drink off him, no one perceived him as a threat and no one expected him to suddenly attack someone. Who is that man? Probably a middle-class Londonder with a stake in society, with things to lose - unlike the kind of person who would stab another person on derby day in Glasgow, who has nothing to lose.

So Holyrood and Strathclyde police could continue to treat football like the cause of all our problems. But they will still be left with a city full of poverty, drink, drugs, violence, hopelessness and anger, all things that aren't on the political agenda. All because they can't get their priorities right.

I will never understand what is up with people in the Isles taking their sport so seriously.

Not that I understand people from other nations taking other sports so seriously either.

Perhaps you guys just need a good war to vent all that aggression, perhaps start a purely Scottish Foreign Legion for all those folks without jobs.

I never understood why people, in general, take sport so seriously.

What's an off-license?

Ah, a liquor or package store then.

Weird names they have for things overseas!

edited 26th Jun '11 10:41:44 AM by blueharp

Alcohol shop basically. They tend to sell that and little else, and are specifically licenced to do so, though no consumption is allowed on the premises (hence, different from a bar or a pub).

@blueharp: I'm an American and I had to Google "package store". Weird names everywhere... ;0

Yeah, like "trunk" or "diaper" or "eggplant". Bizarre.*

OP: Certainly seems like Holyrood is more intent on trying to suppress the symptoms rather than fixing the cause.

No, I'm not overseas to myself. If I were, that'd be...confusing.

You could use up all of the internet trying to explain how football works in Glasgow. Let's just say that in Scotland football teams have been major community focal points for well over a century and go with that.

But again it comes back to the social situation. Look at my club, Celtic: founded in the 1880s as a means of directly raising money to feed the poor disenfranchised by anti-Irish and anti-Catholic attitudes of the day. So yeah, I think there's a recurring theme here about the relationship between football and the disenfranchised. But no one's willing to tackle the fact that so many people are disenfranchised.

Ah, sorry, I forgot to explain that.

Because politicians like to look like they are busy doing something, without actually working at doing something.

It's easier for them to blame a scapegoat and go after it then actually look at all angles of a problem and then solve it.

Exactly. Hey, don't think Edinburgh is forgetting you. Poservil... I mean London is forgetting that there are people who live outside the M25 island. I've already mentioned that urban metro councils and cities - some of which are bigger than a few of the London Boroughs - are getting on average more that 15% of cuts, whereas the Lon Bors are getting on average, around 5% cuts. Birmingham (the biggest city [by admin status] in Europe) is getting 8%, and Coventry is getting a whopping 20-odd%.

Whitehall treats the main problem of everything as people on benefits and drugs and no work. But there's more to that. Every time that Cameron spews some shit out, my dad groans. He works in the city council's Adults and Communities, so he knows that the main cause of urban ills is not being on benefits. Cutting everything that, ironically, is going to stop said urban ills is stupid. They've cut funding to vulnerable people.

So, to add to your council's misery OP, they're not gonna have the funding to tackle (no pun intended) any of the ills that you have discussed.

edited 26th Jun '11 4:23:45 PM by Inhopelessguy

Am now imagining a Scottish Scarface.

"Aye, this 'ole toon's eh pussy, jest weighting too get fooked!"

Why are the police focusing on so obvious a smokescreen when they should be focusing on...

Oh. Right. Stranger things have happened.

I would give good money to see Parliament picked up and moved to Barnsley, just to see the panic on MP's faces.

And yes, people frequently DO have priorities in the wrong order, going by "what looks easiest to fix" and then going "Well I'll deal with the hard stuff later" and it NEVER gets done.

They're having trouble moving a small segment of the BBC up to Manchester (why? Away from everywhere?). It'll be glorious to see our 'representatives' faces. I'm talking to you, guy who represents Birmingham Ladywood.

The Bat Pencil asks

Why is the government turning a non-issue into a media debacle and then solving it through meaningless measures, which are easy to enact, rather than actually trying to figure out real problems and apply good solutions to them?

Answer: You need the baseball bat of thinking applied to the faces of the politicians currently in charge.

Let's not forget though that in Glasgow, the domestic abuse rate rises 40% when the two main football teams play each other. Poverty is definitely the direct cause, no denying that. Parts of Glasgow have a lower life expectancy and higher rates of violence than Kabul (yes, there are places in Britain where the adult male life expectancy is 54). But the fact is, sectarianism exists, has to be stopped at almost any cost, and frequently expresses itself through football.

I'm a neutral, my allegiances nominally lying with Aberdeen, so I hate the rabid fans of both teams equally. On Old Firm days (Old Firm = Rangers and Celtic) I try to avoid leaving my city centre flat because I know it's going to be madness. Bat Pencil is a Celtic fan, and it's typical of Celtic fans to claim that only knuckle-dragging Huns (phrase used as an example to make a point, no offence intended) are guilty of sectarian violence. For the record, I've heard a similar sentiment expressed in another thread, and Rangers fans are just as happy to ignorantly claim it's only Celtic fans at fault. The fact that the subway goes through major Rangers areas/Hell holes such as Kinning Park does help convey the idea that this is true.

It's not though. There are Celtic-supporting pubs of equal horror to the notorious Rangers-supporting ones that some sub-crawlers have inadvertently wandered into (the kind of place that has a pile of broken pool cues in the corner - but no pool table). The stats indicate that the majority of sectarianism is anti-catholic, but still a good third of it is anti-protestant. Both denominations are at fault, and refusing to accept it does nothing to fix things.

Yes, football is probably overstated as a cause of sectarianism. But sectarianism remains a huge problem in Glasgow and measures to deal with it should only be applauded.

edited 27th Jun '11 10:39:03 AM by CaissasDeathAngel

Sectarianism, if that is even the right term, overwhelmingy manifests in anti-Catholic and anti-Irish sentiment in Scotland. The Orange Order is out marching every summer. A Catholic QC and an MSP have been sent parcel bombs while a certain prominent Irish Catholic football manager has had to move his family to a safehouse. Songs that encourage and celebrate ethnic cleansing get a free pass from a police force that, by it's own admission, is unwilling to arrest people over it (Tynecastle being the worst place for it, incidentally). And that's just the recent stuff.

It's open season on Celtic supporting Catholics. Thankfully, the same cannot be said of Protestants of any description.

And again, it's an issue that's not being dealt with properly. Rather than explore why these attitudes are so prominent in a certain section of the community, the matter morphs into "it's all Neil Lennon's fault for being a bit too Feniany". You know, the man who has spent the last ten years facing death threats, assaults and some maniacs sending nail bombs to his family?

The theme here - and it is a recurring one across recent Scottish history - is that the blame lies with the people who make the bigots angry, not the bigots themselves. It's classic blame the victim mentality - they were provoked by a man blessing himself, they were provoked into nearly beating a Manchester policeman to death, they were provoked into letter bombing a man because he made a face at them.

The most worrying thing is that those aren't just the excuses of some fringe nutter spilling Buckie on his Sash as he types his impotent rage on Follow Follow, but of journalists, pundits, police and politicians. It's like people are so accustomed to finding ways to absolve the perpetrators for so many years that they're not able to stop and consider the kind of twisted archbigot who comes up with these things.

edited 27th Jun '11 7:34:45 PM by TheBatPencil

Agree with you almost entirely - you don't appear to acknowledge that Celtic supporters/catholic are also at fault, and that those fights aren't a whole load of raging Rangers fans beating up Celtic fans begging for mercy. It's a two way street, even if lopsided (two thirds against one third according to Wikipedia's statistics).

Without wanting to give away my exact address, Bat Pencil you could probably work out where I live when I say I'm on a major junction on the Eastern edge of the Merchant City, next to a train station. Orange Walks pass here every weekend just about for 6 months of the year, and every time my urge to plaster my windows with "fuck off you bigoted sectarian cunts" rises.

I don't oppose the marches on principle. After all, freedom of speech, expression, religion, etc. But I do oppose the fact that they feel the need to march over 300 times a year in Glasgow alone. These marches ultimately celebrate the Battle Of The Boyne, whereby a load of protestants slaughtered a load of catholics 600 years ago. I really think it's time people stopped glorifying that.

I also really think it's out of order for me to be accused of bigotry and repressing freedom of speech when I say that the marches should be curtailed and that the Order should contribute to what must be ridiculous policing costs. I'm quite sure that on a Saturday morning there are better things for the police to be doing than baby sitting a bunch of people who insist they're not thugs. I see toddlers on these marches and I despair, fearing for the sort of views they're being raised to have. Why would people do this to them?

I get that the marches aren't innately sectarian, and that the Order are doing things to curtail the problems, but the simple fact is that they do incite such feelings, and engender a lot of negativity even when it doesn't specifically express itself through violence. Tighter restrictions are needed there. Freedom of Speech doesn't mean I can wander around Harlem pointing at people and shouting "nigger" at the top of my voice. Nor should it mean I can boast about centuries old religious genocide in a city that has long struggled with bigotry-related violence. And opposing its use that way should not in itself cause me to be branded a fascist bigot.

As for the victim problem...definitely agree. Neil Lennon is on record as having said that dealing with death threats, receiving anthrax-laden parcels and bullet-filled envelopes through his door is a normal part of his day to day job. As a fucking football manager. He should not have to accept this as reality! (though I did admire his guts for doing so). But when he stands up against it, he's considered to be spurring people on or inciting it. Those who abhor this idiocy are accused of provoking it, and giving people reason to do these things.

Fuck. Off.

I know a lot of impoverished people, a lot of rabid football fans (of both and neither allegiance) and a lot of very religious people. And yet, they somehow manage to avoid acts of what is no less than terrorism in the name of those things. Poverty should not be considered an excuse for these things, and it should not be reason to absolve people of blame. "I tried to kill a man, because I'm poor and bored. It's really his fault for not satisfying my selfish needs" is the story far too often, and it's accepted for reasons I cannot comprehend.

Something definitely needs to be done about it. Sorry, this rant may not be particularly coherent!

Playing the theme from "Gremlins" as they walk past makes the thing a lot funnier though, I must admit.

I need to find a song about religious freedom and tolerance that I can blare out of my window when they pass one of these times...