Wrong. Even accepting that when you talk about the content of the song(and I don't) you didn't actually mean the content of the song, the song is not about any proscribed organisation. i am not disputing that you and others find the song offensive. My experiences of the Celtic support are different to yours so I would dispute your claim to be in the moral majority, although not on this site. I am contending your appraisal of the content of this one song. I have challenged you on this and even with a skewed view of what the word 'content' means then you have still failed to justify it. Not many people want to hear it is a justification for your assertion that the content of the song is offensive.... This is not credible.
So of course you will appreciate my frustrations at having to offer a response to the same ridiculous argument presented with different protagonists.
They don't want to hear it because they find it offensive ergo it's offensive. There is no mass (sic) popular report for the hunger strikers in Scotland. I'm simply telling you what I know to be the case, and although It may be incredible to some it remains a fact whichever way you wrap it. I invite you to Glasgow and walk down Sauchiehall Street or Argylll St or walk into a random pub and start singing Roll of Honour or the Sash, or BOTOB or any of the Irish party tunes and I can 100% guarantee there will be trouble. People might not take offence per se, but that would be scant consolation in the face of a stabbing or other such Hi Jinks. Ask anyone from the West Coast on these boards, from any fanbase, I doubt anyone would disagree. The law states that if a song that a reasonable person would be likely to consider offensive is sung, then the singer is breaking the law. The problem is it's not the reasonable people the singer needs to concern himself over, it's the unreasonable ones.
The failure to differentiate between songs commemorating the Irish War of Independence, which has strong similarities to the American War of Independence, and the Troubles songs is my main bone of contention. We have no idea how the Hunger Strikers will be recorded in history. Forty years ago Mandela was regarded as a terrorist.....not so today. One mans terrorist is another mans freedom fighter, however we live in the UK, where anything associated with Republican paramilitarism is regarded as criminal and with some justification given Warrington etc and as such breaking the law carries consequences. It should not be forgotten either that the recent prosecution of a British Paratrooper for the murder of an insurgent in Afghanistan, yet we await any prosecution for the murders of ten innocent Catholics in Derry on Bloody Sunday. Such facts are an insult and antagonistic to the Irish diaspora globally. Shame on the British establishment for institutionalised condoning of the ten murders on Bloody Sunday in Derry. It would be interesting to see figures for arrests for sectarian singing at Berwick, when a national broadcaster had to apologise to a global audience for the songs of hate, or the number of arrests against Falkirk for fans singing sectarian songs. Answer......nil to both. This is all about evening up the figures so that the Scottish Government can claim this is solely a football problem, instead of admitting that Scotland has a racists ant catholic social and institutional problem, witness Dallasgate.
I know what the law says and I know how it is being applied. The fact remains that you have made an assertion about the content of the song. Since making that assertion you have addressed everything but the content of the song despite being challenged on several occasions about it. The only defence you have put forward is to compound one untruth with another. MTS posted the content of the song and invited posters to identify the offensive content. The number of credible responses remains at a great big fat zero. There is a very good reason for this. So i'll invite you again to identify the offensive content.
Atmosphere today was poor. Maybe just Xmas, but got a feeling that the absence of the GB section was the main reason. Even dull games this season and last were kept going by their constant contribution. PL should talk to these guys reps and try to encourage them back minus the stuff that gets the club fined. Btw of the 128 apparently no one had been banned. Were the club looking for an excuse?
That's fine. I don't think we are going around in circles though. I think i have asked a question of you and you have repeatedly not offered an answer. I said at the start I wanted to nail this point down and I think that I pretty much have. You aren't going to explain why the content of the song is offensive because the content of the song is not offensive. That is the long and the short of it.
Only one thing wrong with this post Alba, 13 people were murdered on Bloody Sunday, another died later. Agree with the rest,
This is a false argument, the whole song is offensive. Breaking it down line by line is meaningless. Thats why I didnt bother.
No, what is meaningless is making erroneous assertions and failing to offer anything to back them up. Just like your comment about Bobby Sands at the passing of Mandela. It just doesn't stand up to any degree of scrutiny. The content of the song cannot by any sensible appraisal be considered offensive. If it could, you would have offered it, but it isn't, so you haven't.
What exactly is the "Content" of a song? The Lyrics, the instrumentation, the message or story contained within it like a political statement? We seem to be focusing on the lyrical content so let's deal with that first. There are offensive lyrics in the song, they are self evident or so I thought. "England you Monster/Bastard" Harmless enough some would say but it's hardly friendly and in today's climate. It is clearly aimed at another Country and therefore could be viewed as Xenophobic at best or racist at worst. I think that's offensive. The end of the song tells people to fight on. I would say that's incitement and apparently so does the law, so the lyrical content is dubious to say the least, let's say Not Proven in favour of the lyrical content and concentrate on the message the song has. To me it's a song which is gloryfying convicted criminals, some of whom were members of proscribed organisations. Whether that's true or not is another argument entirely (one I have no intention of getting involved in). The perception remains that the men whom the song is about were criminals and members of the IRA. That is offensive to Joe Sixpack. Remember the outcry about the made up story about our fans singing about Lee Rigby? I read a lot of comments on a lot of fan forums in the days of that story, doing similar (no doubt) digging as you did. If as I suspect you did then you would have seen plenty of fans up and down the country giving Celtic an absolute slating, it was venomous and the depth of contemp Celtic were held in was palpable. Our name was in the gutter again, because of previous events people wanted to believe Celtic fans were capable of it and they had good cause. A lot of people were offended about something that did not actually happen, whether they had any right to be is a moot point. They heard no lyrics, no tune, no message, all they heard was a rumour about a song "Celebrating the murder of Lee Rigby" and they were offended because the content of the imaginary song was self evident. There remains to this day (as far as i'm aware) no song about Lee Rigby, if one did suddenly appear it would be offensive to any reasonable person, and i'm as I said, a reasonable person. Do you think people would be any less offended by a song whose subject is the Republican cause (and some members of the PIRA) than they would be about Lee Rigby songs? I don't think they would.
