andy steel 0 Posted March 20, 2014 Share Posted March 20, 2014 Voted Labour all my life!!! Fair enough - I shouldn't have said that, each to their own. My apologies. 0 Quote Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
BrahimHemdani 1 Posted March 20, 2014 Share Posted March 20, 2014 It's by no means certain that Scottish Labour would form part of the next Government in 2016. If it was as a minority Government or as part of a coalition, the promise to repeal this Act could very well prove to be a priority that they would drop as being impossible to effect.As it stands just now, this is merely a transparently cynical attempt to appeal to their traditional Celtic/IC vote, which as we remember, deserted them in droves last time around. Given that the likelihood of them having an overall majority is thankfully less than zero, I'm not so worried about this just now. It's just a small part of their overall policy development. Given some robust evidence out there I'm not sure how they would approach a repeal if they tried. http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Topics/Justice/law/sectarianism-action-1/football-violence/bill http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/S4_JusticeCommittee/Inquiries/Charges_reported_under_OBFTC_Act.pdf Obviously the pro Celtic/IC media would whip up a storm - as they did prior to the Act being rolled out! However, I think the consensus is that many in the Celtic/IC camp did not foresee the Act coming, and had expected their lobbying to result in more one-sided action. Perhaps this is another attempt to readdress the even-handedness of the Act, and replace it with something more akin to non-legal anti-Rangers witch hunts which have historically proved to be much more effective. The analysis in the report is very limited and in partiular statements like "A substantial proportion (42.2%) of the total charges occurred in Glasgow (113 charges). This is likely to reflect the fact that Glasgow is home to the three largest football stadiums in Scotland." must be open to challenge. Could it not be that it reflects the fact that Rangers and Celtic have the most supporters? It is interesting to note that the match with the most arrests was Hamilton v Falkirk and that Hibernian were invloved in two of the other four, one at home and one away. It would be intersting to see the figures compared with number of fans either per match or per average attendance and some attempt made to compare "home" behaviour with "away" behaviour. If Hibernian fans accounted for 10.4% of the offences then it might be the case that pro rate the number of fans they are actually the worst offenders. 0 Quote Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
bluebear54 0 Posted March 20, 2014 Share Posted March 20, 2014 The analysis in the report is very limited and in partiular statements like "A substantial proportion (42.2%) of the total charges occurred in Glasgow (113 charges). This is likely to reflect the fact that Glasgow is home to the three largest football stadiums in Scotland." must be open to challenge. Could it not be that it reflects the fact that Rangers and Celtic have the most supporters? It is interesting to note that the match with the most arrests was Hamilton v Falkirk and that Hibernian were invloved in two of the other four, one at home and one away. It would be intersting to see the figures compared with number of fans either per match or per average attendance and some attempt made to compare "home" behaviour with "away" behaviour. If Hibernian fans accounted for 10.4% of the offences then it might be the case that pro rate the number of fans they are actually the worst offenders. I'm sure that there'll be an update for the following year (in due course.) Some kind of pattern may start to emerge, but I'm not convinced. 0 Quote Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
BrahimHemdani 1 Posted March 20, 2014 Share Posted March 20, 2014 I'm sure that there'll be an update for the following year (in due course.)Some kind of pattern may start to emerge, but I'm not convinced. I think I'm right in saying that Stirling University are doing the analysis after the period ended 31 March 2014. Of course we would have to accept that the results are skewed somewhat because there are only two old firm games at the beginning (season 2011/12) and none in football seasons 2012/13 and 2013/14. 0 Quote Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
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