Offensive behaviour

[johnnydun]

6 minutes ago, Dele said:

Therein lies the problem. Who has to be offended for it to become an offensive act?

Anyone that is targeted because of their background, beliefs, skin colour etc.. surely?

[Monkey Tennis]

1 minute ago, johnnydun said:

Yes, I agree that the main problem is sectarianism, however the rest is not a pretence as racism still exists in the Scottish game.

Well yes, I wouldn't be complacent enough to describe the other 'isms' as irrelevant or conquered.

What I meant though was that in the context of all the stuff that's blown up recently, largely thanks to Steve Clarke's welcome candour, these other types of prejudice aren't really the issue.  Obviously, they can be related, but they're not the point here.  

The point is that while massive strides have been made regarding for instance, racism, sectarian abuse remains a massively disfiguring, and largely tolerated, feature of our game, at its highest profile level.

 

[Derry Alli]

6 minutes ago, johnnydun said:

Anyone that is targeted because of their background, beliefs, skin colour etc.. surely?

I imagine this offensive behaviour act will be quite some size if that's the criteria.

[johnnydun]

9 minutes ago, Dele said:

I imagine this offensive act will be quite some size. 

Yes, and quite rightly so.

Why anyone would want to find loopholes in order to offend other football fans because of their background and not because their team is shite is beyond me.

[DosserDel]

All forms of offensive behaviour need stamped out of the game, there is no room for racism, homophobia or any other form of discrimination in this day and age. 

As a Motherwell fan, we have an element of arseholes in our support, the same as every other team up and down the country, and I would happily be in favour of punishments being imposed to weed out anyone who shames the club, but there's no hiding where the main problem lies. 

Sectarianism is an outdated and embarrassing concept, in an age where religion itself is falling off the radar. 

Church and Chapel going has dramatically fallen over the years, yet sectarian hatred is alive and well between the two largest teams in the west coast. 

Freedom of speech is one thing, hiding behind it to spout vile shite in support of any terrorist organisation, or other  divisive or religiously motivated 'cause' is shameful, embarrassing, scummy behaviour and deserves all the punishment that can possibly be imposed. 

No idea what the most effective way of dealing with it would be, but to sweep it back under the carpet just now when it is prominent in the news would be folly. 

*Action needs to be taken now when the spotlight is on this shite, if we are serious about eradicating it from the game.

A sad indictment on society in this part of the world that people still choose to discriminate and divide over events of the long gone past, and of countries to which most of them are multiple generations removed, or have no actual connection at all. 

Sad fucks. 

* Nothing will be done and we'll still be having this debate in 50yrs time ( well not me, I'll be dead ). 

 

[Guest Jedi]

Classic examples of why it is so difficult to eradicate this. Celtic fans will say its 'oor kulture' to continue gloryfying a terrorist organisation, responsible for the murder of so many people, over a 30 year period. Its just cultural ballads to point out what a fine fella Bobby Sands et al were. In the whataboutery stakes, the logic would then  have to follow that Rangers don't sing any 'offensive' songs either, case closed. Those who do then get offended are 'snowflakes' etc. 

Round and round in circles it goes. Imagine if the SFA ever did get around to producing a songbook of what was deemed acceptable and what wasn't? That would just drag on even more with both sides claiming/playing the culture card again. 

 

[The_Kincardine]

1 hour ago, DosserDel said:

All forms of offensive behaviour need stamped out of the game, there is no room for racism, homophobia or any other form of discrimination in this day and age. 

As a Motherwell fan, we have an element of arseholes in our support, the same as every other team up and down the country, and I would happily be in favour of punishments being imposed to weed out anyone who shames the club, but there's no hiding where the main problem lies. 

You are absolutely right - there is no hiding where the problem lies - the diddy scum on here whom I have to share pixels with.

One upside of the OBAFA was that it did try and quantify the problem.  They published stats on who was charged and broke it down by team affiliation and by age group.  You can read their workings here: https://www.gov.scot/binaries/content/documents/govscot/publications/research-publication/2017/06/charges-reported-under-offensive-behaviour-football-threatening-communications-scotland-act/documents/00520637-pdf/00520637-pdf/govscot%3Adocument

To no-one's surprise the biggest culprits are the wee fannies.  By that I mean anyone under 30.

A slight surprise is that fans of diddy teams are disproportionately guilty of what you call 'offensive behaviour'.  Of the 5 seasons quoted in that government review only in 2012/13 were most offenses caused by 'the cheeks'.  This despite Cheek Fans comprising at least 2/3rds of supporters in Scotland.  This is an incendiary indictment on the fans of wee clubs.  They are clearly Scotland's Shame.

So if you really want to deal with offensive behaviour, and if you take quantitative analysis seriously, the solution is clear:  Bin the diddies and ban anyone under the age of 30 from going to watch Us playing Them 38 times a year.

[DosserDel]

1 hour ago, The_Kincardine said:

You are absolutely right - there is no hiding where the problem lies - the diddy scum on here whom I have to share pixels with.

One upside of the OBAFA was that it did try and quantify the problem.  They published stats on who was charged and broke it down by team affiliation and by age group.  You can read their workings here: https://www.gov.scot/binaries/content/documents/govscot/publications/research-publication/2017/06/charges-reported-under-offensive-behaviour-football-threatening-communications-scotland-act/documents/00520637-pdf/00520637-pdf/govscot%3Adocument

To no-one's surprise the biggest culprits are the wee fannies.  By that I mean anyone under 30.

A slight surprise is that fans of diddy teams are disproportionately guilty of what you call 'offensive behaviour'.  Of the 5 seasons quoted in that government review only in 2012/13 were most offenses caused by 'the cheeks'.  This despite Cheek Fans comprising at least 2/3rds of supporters in Scotland.  This is an incendiary indictment on the fans of wee clubs.  They are clearly Scotland's Shame.

So if you really want to deal with offensive behaviour, and if you take quantitative analysis seriously, the solution is clear:  Bin the diddies and ban anyone under the age of 30 from going to watch Us playing Them 38 times a year.

You see, folks who want to play down sectarianism and deflect it by way of producing skewed statistics in even a jovial manner are part of the problem. 

You're post is obviously slightly tongue in cheek (hopefully) , but the element within both Rangers and Celtic's supports that spout their shite is across all ages. 

Just like Orange and Republican marches have their elder hierarchy, within their respective supports it is a cancer passed down through generations of bigoted, knuckle dragging dregs of society. The Green Brigade or Union Bears or whatever may be seen as the main protagonists, but I've seen guys in their 60's and probably older with their faces contorted spitting out their vitriol. 

By marriage I have one side Catholic and the other Protestant, although I myself care f**k all for either.

There are people on both sides who can conceivably go to a match in the afternoon , spout their shite at each other, then hug and embrace each other at a family gathering later the same day. 

What's the point? If you hate each others beliefs and teams they support so much, why would you want to be in the same room as each other? 

It's mindless bigotry, for bigotry's sake. 

Why not go to games, and by all means sing and chant anything you want against each other in the name of the game, because that's exactly what it is. 

Leave all the religious and political shite aside, it's f**k all to do with the game. 

[The_Kincardine]

7 minutes ago, DosserDel said:

You see, folks who want to play down sectarianism and deflect it by way of producing skewed statistics in even a jovial manner are part of the problem. 

You're post is obviously slightly tongue in cheek (hopefully) , but the element within both Rangers and Celtic's supports that spout their shite is across all ages. 

My post was, of course, tongue in cheek, but there was a serious point to it:  Offensive behaviour is not just a Celtic and Rangers problem whatever the denizens of P&B like to say.

BTW I didn't 'skew statistics'.  I simply summarised what was in the ScotGov document that I linked to.  That you may feel uncomfortable with its conclusions is your own problem.

Oh and save me the "My wife's maw's cousin was married to a whatever" bollocks.  We all know that Motherwell fans have a long history of 'salty songs' and, historically, you're part of the problem.  That you fail to recognise this and do the cheap posting thing of blaming Us and Them is sad.

[GordonS]

10 hours ago, Sergeant Wilson said:

It would constitute a Breach of the Peace, it always has. 

Dunno if anyone else has picked this up, but not necessarily and in fact usually not. Breach of the peace requires that the behaviour would be likely to, or is intended to, cause fear and alarm to someone. With most pitch invasions I don't think anyone could be expected to have fear and alarm. So goal celebrations are almost certainly not criminal offences (though the club could ban you), but anything confrontation would be. The Hibs cup final stuff is tricky, because of the numbers it's riotous behaviour and that's another thing, and those approaching the Rangers support almost certainly crossed the line.

My favourite case for what counts as fear and alarm was the unsuccessful prosecution of protestors at Govanhill baths:

"Sheriff Warner said the Labour MSP had "completely blown his credibility" by claiming intimidation.

The sheriff went on: "Frank McAveety's evidence of events was all over the place and it is fair to say he over-egged the pudding.

"If this was the most frightening thing he has experienced in his career then he must live a very sheltered life."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/3813485.stm

Happy to be proven wrong but I've never heard of anyone prosecuted just for going on the pitch.

[GordonS]

10 hours ago, geo87 said:

I have extremely well educated Celtic supporting friends (appreciate the irony) who are lawyers, teachers etc who see absolutely no wrong in the shite they sing or their “morals”. If a whole stand was to sing about a black b*****ds they would the first to be in uproar (and quite rightly so), yet when you sing about an *********** or the IRA they can’t comprehend what the problem is.

Exhibit A:

9 hours ago, Romeo said:

P&B is full if fucking hand wringing old women these days.

I've read enough of Romeo's posts to know that he's awright. Very few of the OF posters on here are fuds; if they were, they wouldn't be on a general Scottish football board, they'd be only be on a club board. In other circumstances I'm sure folk like Romeo would be among the first to call out totally unacceptable behaviour.

Unfortunately the tribalism is very strong. I sat in a bar full of Celtic fans in Stuttgart after Celtic had knocked them out of the UEFA Cup. The songs were fucking appalling. If they'd been singing the same songs about Jews as they were about Protestants, in that place, they could have been locked up for a long time. You could tell that none of our group liked it (actually, two probably did), or joined in, but I'm willing to bet all would have brushed it off later. We'd sat through it loads of times in pubs, on buses, at ceilidhs, at away games. It's just songs, words don't hurt people, stop being a hand-wringing old woman, it's all the fault of the young nutters, nowt to do with me gov.

What you permit, you promote. And we all permitted it, all the time.

Hey, it's only words. But before any group hates any other group, they talk themselves into it.

It took me until I was 33 years old to break out of it. I'd moved away from the west, got married and had a kid before I just couldn't be part of it any more. The cold hard fact is that you cannot be a Celtic supporter without, at the very least, turning a blind eye to prejudice and hatred, so I decided not to be a Celtic supporter any more. It was much easier than I could have thought it would be, though I'll always miss being part of a huge tribe. It's a lot easier to be in denial and stay in the gang than to lose the club your family supported and that you loved from the earliest time you knew what football was.

[Illgresi]

I voted for

A: The fans and the clubs. I would also add the individual player if they were culpable in inciting or potentially inciting anti-social behaviour.

B: It should be an independent body, international imo, as we simply cannot trust the systemically biased hierarchy we have in place.

 

[The_Kincardine]

42 minutes ago, GordonS said:

I've read enough of Romeo's posts to know that he's awright

Said no c**t.  Ever.

[Dee Man]

1 hour ago, GordonS said:

Happy to be proven wrong but I've never heard of anyone prosecuted just for going on the pitch.

My brother did a weekender and was up in front of the judge on the Monday morning for running on the pitch at full-time after our Scottish Cup Final in 2003.

[Dee Man]

1 hour ago, GordonS said:

What you permit, you promote. And we all permitted it, all the time.

 

I don't know if you've made that saying up but I've never heard it before. 

I was at an Eminem gig a few years back and there were people throwing pints of pish into the crowd. I turned round and there were five guys behind me who looked as if they enjoyed a few roids before heading to the gym, pishing into pint tumblers and launching them into the crowd. I was dying to say something but a desire to see the remainder of the show, and the rest of my life, plus a word in my ear from my missus told me to let them be. In no way was I promoting that behaviour. In the same way that if you were back in that pub that you wouldn't say anything to dozens of Celtic fans singing their pathetic wee songs. Avoiding confrontation is not quite the same as promoting something.

[GordonS]

1 hour ago, Dee Man said:

My brother did a weekender and was up in front of the judge on the Monday morning for running on the pitch at full-time after our Scottish Cup Final in 2003.

I take it he wasn't prosecuted though?

49 minutes ago, Dee Man said:

I don't know if you've made that saying up but I've never heard it before. 

I was at an Eminem gig a few years back and there were people throwing pints of pish into the crowd. I turned round and there were five guys behind me who looked as if they enjoyed a few roids before heading to the gym, pishing into pint tumblers and launching them into the crowd. I was dying to say something but a desire to see the remainder of the show, and the rest of my life, plus a word in my ear from my missus told me to let them be. In no way was I promoting that behaviour. In the same way that if you were back in that pub that you wouldn't say anything to dozens of Celtic fans singing their pathetic wee songs. Avoiding confrontation is not quite the same as promoting something.

I first heard the saying from my boss' boss' boss' boss, I don't know if she got it from someone else. 

You could have told a steward.

You can't grow up a Celtic or Rangers fan and not have plenty of times when people say sectarian stuff in front of you and you could say something about it. My example wasn't one of them, but I've got loads of those.

No, I wouldn't have said anything in that bar in Stuttgart, but I wish I hadn't stayed. I wish I had said to my pals that I wasn't going to sit and listen to that shite. By collectively ignoring it we collectively condone it. We send a message to each other, and especially to those singing it, that it's no big deal.

[Sergeant Wilson]

3 hours ago, GordonS said:

Dunno if anyone else has picked this up, but not necessarily and in fact usually not. Breach of the peace requires that the behaviour would be likely to, or is intended to, cause fear and alarm to someone. With most pitch invasions I don't think anyone could be expected to have fear and alarm. So goal celebrations are almost certainly not criminal offences (though the club could ban you), but anything confrontation would be. The Hibs cup final stuff is tricky, because of the numbers it's riotous behaviour and that's another thing, and those approaching the Rangers support almost certainly crossed the line.

My favourite case for what counts as fear and alarm was the unsuccessful prosecution of protestors at Govanhill baths:

"Sheriff Warner said the Labour MSP had "completely blown his credibility" by claiming intimidation.

The sheriff went on: "Frank McAveety's evidence of events was all over the place and it is fair to say he over-egged the pudding.

"If this was the most frightening thing he has experienced in his career then he must live a very sheltered life."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/3813485.stm

Happy to be proven wrong but I've never heard of anyone prosecuted just for going on the pitch.

I know quite a  few people who have. I would say the least offensive was a friend who was persuaded to go on and plant an Airdrie flag on the pitch. It was at old Broomfield against Berwick. There would likely have been less than 1000 there. He was fined quite heavily for it.

 

Eta. I could give more examples.

https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/14665796.Make_pitch_invasion_a_criminal_offence_says_SFA_report_into_Scottish_Cup_final_tro

[DosserDel]

6 hours ago, The_Kincardine said:

My post was, of course, tongue in cheek, but there was a serious point to it:  Offensive behaviour is not just a Celtic and Rangers problem whatever the denizens of P&B like to say.

BTW I didn't 'skew statistics'.  I simply summarised what was in the ScotGov document that I linked to.  That you may feel uncomfortable with its conclusions is your own problem.

Oh and save me the "My wife's maw's cousin was married to a whatever" bollocks.  We all know that Motherwell fans have a long history of 'salty songs' and, historically, you're part of the problem.  That you fail to recognise this and do the cheap posting thing of blaming Us and Them is sad.

Again, classic deflection / denial. 

In the opening gambit of my original post in this thread I acknowledged the undesirable element of my own teams support. There have been a few examples in recent years of folk in 'Well colours playing sectarian tunes in orange halls or wherever, but I haven't heard a single song of that ilk at a game for a long, long time. There are a few twats, no doubt and I fully support this element being removed from my teams support as much as anyone else's, and the sooner the better. 

I also never inferred that you personally skewed statistics, it's the reluctance of the authorities to act against large groups in a hostile atmosphere that skews them. 

It's easy for the police to, rightly, lift a few dicks out of a travelling support of a few hundred Motherwell, Killie, Dundee fans etc., and I'm all for that if it's for these offences. 

When there's 5-10,000 visiting towns and cities on their away days, it's as much a case of tolerating their shite and herding them back out again as quickly, and with as little incident as possible. The bile spouted when away from their own grounds is far worse than it is when they're at home, and often the 'songbooks' seem to get sung for the entirety of matches, with almost as much emphasis on them as the actual game. 

I know grown men who are parents and grandparents, who give it the shite "Cannae wait for the bus up to Aberdeen, carry out and get the rebs on / have a sash bash, fuckin brilliant". Fuckwits to a man when with their respective brethrens, but seemingly normal sensible people outwith that environment, which is the point I was making with regards to family and friends being involved in this nonsense then mixing happily with the opposite side at home or work literally hours later. It's ridiculous, embarrassing and wrong. 

It really isn't cheap posting, it's being honest with the facts that You and Them are by a long distance the biggest problem. Every club needs to get their house in order, but yours both have by far the longest way to go, but how keen are they really to tackle the very divide and foundations on which they have been built for generations ? 

On the Celtic side, Rodgers was firmly in the denial and 'It's not just us' camp when things came to the fore recently, while Lennon, on the other hand , has been very vocal for some time about the abuse he's received over the years during his time away from Celtic. 

It would be a missed opportunity if he didn't continue in that vein by continuing to roundly condemn this shite by all supports, including his own as much as possible now that he's back in the thick of it in the East End, with the biggest platform in the Scottish sporting media. 

 

[The OP]

There are songs that are immensely more offensive to me than a sash bash or the rebs. Chants about Fernando Ricksen, paedophiles, stadium disasters and Jay Beatty not seeing 10 in a row - they are far worse than tunes about an armed struggle. The “orange b*****ds” chant is a bad yin but on Wednesday it was a direct response to Hearts supporters singing Rangers songs about paedophiles.

[RandomGuy.]

11 hours ago, johnnydun said:

Anyone that is targeted because of their background, beliefs, skin colour etc.. surely?

I don't think fans should have a part to play in what's considered offensive. Theres already Celtic fans on here who respond to "Up the RA is an offensive song" by claiming they're deeply offended by Flower of Scotland, youd just find fans of both cheeks desperately scrambling to find some way to get everything deemed offensive in the hope it gets abandoned.