Arrest made after Aberdeen fans fly sectarian banner at Ibrox

[ian1964 10,418]

 

[Sutton_blows_goats 4,221]

Good news. A step in the right direction. Now, will they actually face the music over this or will the prosecution be dropped/deliberately sabotaged. Time will tell.

[Gonzo79 13,660]

The Police will probably misplace the evidence.  

 

In all honesty, I'm not remotely offended by the banner.  I wish we could get back to acting like grown men (giving and taking stick) but alas, that lot started it, so we just have to play along.

[ascender 352]

They've actually done something about it?!

 

I think we've had this chat before - it was quite normal within my circle of friends that the terms "hun" and "tim" were used as good natured banter between both sides, but society has changed a lot and its really not difficult to see why so many Rangers fans feel like we've been unfairly targeted over the years by various individuals and organisations when it comes to use of Sectarian language, images etc.

Edited November 11, 2022 by ascender

[compo 6,147]

Silly Billy's the lot of them 

[Scott7 5,179]

The bloke is 33. Should be done for failing to grow up.

[Bill 13,717]

2 hours ago, Scott7 said:

The bloke is 33. Should be done for failing to grow up.

Well said - but I agree with @Gonzo79 that this silliness doesn't offend me at all. I hopee the arrest was at the instigation of Sturgeon's Gestapo and not some whining Rangers fans joining in the usual victimhood game.

 

 

[26th of foot 5,838]

The 33 year old will appear in court, confirm his name and address then, plead Not Guilty.

 

He will be given a date several weeks hence for trial. In the meantime, the PF Office will lose all the gathered evidence and when the 33 year old traps again at the court, his case will be dismissed. The current Justice Minister, Keith Brown will instigate a full investigation and, promise to publish the findings.

 

Five years past, six Yahoos were charged with hanging two effigies from the north stand roof at Sellik park. One effigy was replete in a Rangers scarf, the other wore an orange collarette; both had their hands tied behind their backs. The effigies(strange fruit) twisted in the breeze until nearly half time during the game. Below the effigies, a dozen flags flew, all proclaiming KAH(Kill All H-u-ns). They appeared in court, registered pleas of Not Guilty and when re-appeared several weeks later, the PF Office dropped all charges because ALL EVIDENCE had been lost. The then Justice Minister, Humza Yousaf promised a full investigation and to publish the findings.

 

To this day, the report has NOT been published. I suspect the CalMac Ferries on the stocks at Fergusons Yard in Port Glasgow will be sailing, plying for lifeline island trade before the report is published?

 

The 33 year old Aberdonian has nothing to worry about.

[Gonzo79 13,660]

They never did get the yahoo that chucked a lighter at Ricksen, did they.  

[JohnMc 2,473]

I suspect his defence will be "but it can't be sectarian cause I'm a Proddy too". 

I've some sympathy for the posters who are neither offended by the phrase nor see much point in escalating the tit for tat 'I'm pure offended' that often dominates online discourse. Like all words the person using them and the tone in which they are delivered makes a huge difference to that word's meaning, whether intended or not. As Ascender says up thread being called a 'hun' by a friend or acquaintance in a friendly conversation rarely causes any offence and neither is it meant too. However a complete stranger shouting Kill All Huns at you on a dark night might elicit a different response, and again I suspect that would be deliberate. I imagine this Aberdeen fan's defence will be along the lines that he feels 'hun' has no sectarian meaning, to him it's simply a derogatory term for Rangers supporters. I also suspect he'll be able to show numerous examples of this, maybe he'll ask Stuart Cosgrove to give evidence in his defence, it's a term he's used a bit in the past after all. It'll be an interesting defence and assumes that bringing a banner saying 'kill all Rangers fans' to a ground holding nearly 50,000 Rangers fans is otherwise perfectly acceptable behaviour of course. 

 

From a personal perspective, like all of us, I've been called a hun on numerous occasions. Often it was jocular and delivered by someone I knew, no offence was meant and none was taken. On others I was fairly sure the person was intending to insult or intimidate me, it was meant aggressively. Sometimes it was said in my company by someone who forgot I was there and their reaction when they realised I'd heard was often telling as to their intention and meaning. I'd a girlfriend many years ago who described me as a 'practicing hun' to members of her family when the subject of football inevitably came up. That relationship wasn't destined to last. 

 

The meaning of words changes. That's simply a fact about the English language. No matter how much we might wish it otherwise, the meaning behind how we say something, or these days type something, isn't always the meaning that someone reading it will take. On a return trip to Belfast a few years ago I noticed the term 'KAH' sprayed close an intersection where Unionist and Nationalist areas joined. Graffiti and murals have long been used in Belfast to designate territory and I found them a very helpful navigation aid when I first moved there. For those unaware KAH stands for 'Kill All Huns', and it was sprayed as a territorial marker, letting everyone know what area you were entering. Do we think the person responsible meant 'Rangers supporters' when they left that mark? We can only speculate, but personally I'm in no doubt at all that in that context it meant 'Protestant' or at the very least 'Unionist', although those terms are often interchangeable. 

Whatever that Aberdeen fan's intention, it's naive in the extreme to think that some people who use that word don't see it as a derogatory catch all term for Protestants. Like a number of other words that were once fairly commonly used it's probably advisable to avoid using it at all now.