Regular followers of me on social media will know that I have been trying to get a memebr of the SNP to come on the podcast to provide a counter position on the OBFA.  We have had James Kelly MSP who is proposing the repeal of the Act and we’ve had people from FAC on a couple of times but depsite a couple of fallen through promises no-one from the SNP…until now.

Anyone with a passing interest in the legislation and online will be aware of John.  He’s an abrassive character online but was not at all like that when I met with him. 

As you will hear on the podcast I decided to keep with my regular conversational style on the pod to get to the motivation behind the act and I found John far more conciliatory in accepting the faults than expected.  Indeed I was never going to have a chat where he would have a St Paul moment and suddenly see that those against the act have been right all along but his acceptance that the Act was rushed, is ambiguous, has may faults and doesn’t embrace all aspects of prejudice in Scotland - espcially walks, suprised me.  What frustrated me was that despite accepting ALL of that he will still be voting to keep it.

Enjoy…

The Offensive Behaviour At Football act - a more useless piece of legislation I’ve yet to come across, but that’s not my opinion, that’s the view of lawyers, judges, civil liberty campaigners, minority rights groups and of course the evidence of our own eyes and ears and the evidence of government statistics.  If it was meant to stop a problem it has completely failed. 

Regular listeners will know my issues with OBFA - one is that the legislation was not needed - we had laws for dealing with racism and sectarianism and behaviour likely to cause trouble.

It’s not very good - we’ve had to train the police what is and isn’t offensive so that they can arrest people and they are the only people being offended.

It tries to wrap up societies ills - if we have offensive behaviour at football it will exist in society as a whole so why try to wrap it up in a nice bundle and say the issues are all a football one.

I could go on but surely better to have someone at the heart of matters discuss so we have Paul Quigley from Fans Against Criminalisation.

Enjoy and then please take action… www.celtictrust.net

It’s January and the winter break so sureley we’ve got nothing to talk about….DON’T YOU BELEIVE IT!  We’ve got loads and loads so who better to get on than the man who could start a fight in a telephone box Mr Lawrence Donegan. 

Lawrence is a man of many talents  and many of you will know him from his role as the argumentative host of the ByTheMinCeltic podcast whilst others will know him simply as the guru of the ByTheMin empire.  For some he’s a great golfing journalist and for others he’s the basist who made Lloyd Cole and the Commotions and the Bluebells were never the same after he left.  For others he’s just that Celtic guy on twitter.

Whatever you know him as, I know him as a guy passionate about the hoops and so I thought it was about time he came back on the podcast for a state of the nation discussion so between us we take 90 minutes to discuss the Rangers game, the season so far, the transfer rumours we’ve heard (which are mainly about sales) and then our expectations for the rest of the campaign, oh and there is a bit of “In my day” but it’s in an ironic fashion…honest.

Enjoy…

Today, Friday 5th January, Celtic completed their second signing of the January transfer window with the capture of Lewis Morgan.  The 21 year old former Rangers youth player has signed on a 4.5 year contract and will stay at St Mirren for the remainder of this season under the guidance of Jack Ross.

A two footed winger, Celtic have high hopes for the youngster who becomes the first Scottish player to sign for Brendan Rodgers.

Enjoy…