Sign the petition against the 'Anti-sectarian Bill'

To: Scottish Government
We believe that introducing a law to imprison people for up to five years because of offensive sectarian chanting or online comments is extreme and illiberal.

Sign the petition at:
http://www.petitiononline.com/1967a/petition.html

'Sectarianism Bill' debated in the Scottish Parliament

See the 'Sectarianism Bill', debated on 6 September 2011 in the Scottish Parliament, on the BBC 'Democracy Live' website with, Stuart Waiton, Pat Nevin, Graham Spiers and Graham Walker.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/democracylive/hi/scotland/newsid_9582000/9582406.stm

Celtic And Rangers must unite to beat the ‘Sectarianism Bill’

Statement from Take a Liberty (Scotland) to Celtic and Rangers Supporters Trusts, Organisations, Fanzines, Bloggers and Supporters.

To register your support for the statement email s.waiton@btopenworld.com

The protest by the Green Brigade opposing the Offensive Behaviour at Football Bill at Celtic Park is to be supported. The opposition to the Bill, to police surveillance and to the over regulation and criminalisation of Celtic fans was brilliantly organised and had a significant impact at the Inverness game.

In the Green Brigade statement the point is made that the proposed legislation denies football fans the right to freedom of expression, something that is already a problem for many fans.

The Green Brigade rightly called on all Celtic fans to take a stand against the disproportionate policing of supporters at games. They are right to call for this, Celtic fans are already being arrested and charged for little more than singing songs and if the Offensive Behaviour Bill goes through the likelihood is that policing will become more intense.

Many Celtic fans, and especially the Green Brigade believe that their songs are political, not sectarian, and should not be targeted by the police, but that is not the point.

The point is that NO FAN SHOULD BE IMPRISONED FOR SINGING regardless of what the song is about.

Rangers and Celtic fans may dislike what each other represent and sing, they may even hate each others’ traditions but do they, and do the supporters associations think their ‘enemy’ supporters should be locked up for singing songs they find offensive?

If they do they should come out and say so.

If not they should recognise that they have a lot more in common than they might like to think – they both have an interest in supporting freedom of expression at football.

We should all demand tolerance.

Tolerance does not mean we are ‘non-judgemental’. It is all about judging. We should say what we think about one another, about what their fans and what our own fans are saying. That is what a free, tolerant society is all about. Genuine tolerance means we judge, say what we think, but also accept that others who we disagree with must also have that freedom without the threat of arrest.

I MAY HATE WHAT YOU SAY
BUT I WILL DEFEND TO THE DEATH
YOUR RIGHT TO SAY IT

If Rangers and Celtic supporters, bloggers and associations came out in support, not of their own right to sing what they like, but their opponents’ right to do so, the case against the Bill would be strengthened immeasurably.

There are two options open to Celtic and Rangers fans and associations, either tolerate one another (while hating each other if you so wish) and defeat this Bill and start to change the way football fans are being targeted and criminalised. Or remain in your shell, defend yourself and give two fingers to your ‘enemy’ and watch as the Bill is passed and football fans across Scotland are regulated and imprisoned even more than they already are.

Stuart Waiton

Sign the petition against the 'Anti-sectarian Bill'

Sign the petition at: 

http://www.petitiononline.com/1967a/petition.html

The Offensive Behaviour in Football Bill is a ‘Snobs’ law’

Abertay University academic and founder of Take a Liberty ( Scotland ) Stuart

Waiton is giving evidence today (6^th September) at the Scottish Parliament

Justice Committee addressing the Offensive Behaviour in Football Bill.

Alongside Dr Waiton will be Pat Nevin, Graham Spiers and Professor Graham Walker.

Waiton will be arguing that this bill has been driven by a form of political

grandstanding that is more about publicity than politics. What he labels a

‘snobs law’, Dr Waiton believes will undermine the moral legitimacy of the

law and help to create a new division amongst football fans who will spend

their time telling tales on one another for ‘offensive’ singing at matches

or blogging online.

The statement that Stuart Waiton hopes to present to the committee meeting

is printed below:-

The first thing to notice about this bill is that it specifically targets

football fans and nobody else. It appears that this creature ‘the football

fan’ can be treated as somehow different from everybody else, or as George

Orwell might have said, ‘Four rugby fans good. Two football fans bad’.

In this respect the bill follows on in the fine old ‘crusty’ conservative

tradition of fear and loathing of the ‘great unwashed’ who attend matches,

and continues in the vein of criminalising these fans, using up incredible

amounts of police time watching and listening out for ‘rowdies’ shouting and

singing linguistically incorrect songs.

Interconnected to this old form of snobbish conservatism, here we find a new

form of hyper intolerant conservativism being expressed through the

‘tolerant’ political, media and cultural elites. Illustrating the

fantastical world of this new ‘tolerant’ elite, Roseanna Cunningham,

Minister for Community Safety and Legal Affairs argues that sectarianism is

undermining the very fabric of a tolerant Scotland – a tolerant Scotland

that she believes can be enforced by imprisoning football fans for singing

offensive songs for up to five years!

At one level of course football and football fans behaviour should be

understood as different. Where else do you find grown men and women

shouting, swearing, pointing, singing, wearing ridiculously coloured

clothes, hats and scarves, jumping up and down hugging the nearest stranger

with tear filled eyes as part of an impassioned tribal display of hate, love

and impreganable loyalty.

This is football, it is unlike any other public arena, and up until

relatively recently we have been worldly enough and indeed genuinely

TOLERANT enough to realise this fact. Indeed for many, there is no need to

‘tolerate’ football fan’s behaviour, because the passion, gallows humour,

and even the offensiveness on display in football grounds is what helps make

it the greatest game in the world.

While this bill is focused on ‘sectarian’ behaviour at football it does in

fact target any form of offensive behaviour that can be said to potentially

lead to public order offences. Depending upon your interpretation this could

result in almost any rowdy fan being arrested and imprisoned for behaviour

that has been going on at matches for generations.

Some people clearly will be offended by certain songs and behaviour at

football matches that have previously been outside the remit of the law. But

there is a problem. Part and parcel of fans behaviour towards one another

and to the opposing team IS TO BE OFFENSIVE. Offence is part of football fan

behaviour - you may not like it, but that does not mean it is or should be

criminalised. I am offended every time I sit down at a ‘ West End ’ dinner

party and listen to the prejudices about the white working classes who it is

assumed are on the verge of a racist or sectarian pogrom but I don’t expect

these hate filled intolerant individuals to have laws used to silence them.

It is worth bearing in mind that within the pantomime of football what

appears to be sectarian is not necessarily all it appears, as fans go home

to their Catholic wives, Protestant drinking mates and nondenominational

neighbours. The reality is that Scotland , especially for the younger

generations, is a largely modern secular country where religious ideology

and dogma has little or no dynamic. This is in fact why it is almost always

football that is targeted as the place of sectarianism, because it doesn’t

exist anywhere else. And if it doesn’t exist anywhere else, the reality is

that it doesn’t exist in football either.

In other words, what we are witnessing at Celtic and Rangers games is an

ersatz form of 90 minute sectarianism. It is a tribalism based on football

not religion, despite the religious association of both teams.

The political grandstanding by Alex Salmond is not the act of a conviction

politician, but the opposite, the act of a politician who has few genuine

convictions, big ideas or issues that can carry the people of Scotland .

Sectarianism has consequently become a safe moralising issue (after all, who

argues FOR sectarianism?) which feeds into the trend to ban, regulate and

control more and more areas of everyday life.

Unfortunately, one of the worst possible outcomes of the proposed Football

Bill is that it will actually create a new breed of thin skinned chronically

offended football fan; a new ‘sectarian’ divide of fans who trawl fanzines

and monitor the terraces to find opposing fans who they can report to the

police.

A recent opinion poll suggests the Scottish public are against sectarianism

and rightly so. It does not however explain what people understand by

‘sectarian behaviour’ nor does it suggest that most Scots think fans should

be locked up for five years for being offensive at football games. On the

other hand, if the poll is to be believed, the ‘fact’ that, ‘85% of Scots

believe that sectarianism should be a criminal offensive’ is not something

that Roseanna Cunningham should be excited about, as she appears to be, for

this would reflect a profound loss of tolerance within Scotland – a nation

once built upon the Enlightened and Liberal traditions of John Locke and

John Stuart Mill.

Making ideas or thoughts into crimes is the height of intolerance and the

hallmark of a profoundly authoritarian regime.

As it happens, with much that is associated with the issue of sectarianism,

one suspects that this survey obscures more than it reveals about a topic

that has become a moralising football for the various conservative forces in

Scotland . More interesting than the dubious figures in the survey is the way

in which Cunningham appears to be unaware of the anti-democratic, illiberal

and authoritarian consequences of arguing that certain thoughts or ideas

should be illegal.

Ideas we disagree with cannot be policed out of existence. But let’s get

real and recognise that for the vast majority of fans, even Celtic and

Rangers fans, their shouts, screams, songs and insults are not part of an

impending sectarian pogrom, but part of the pantomime that is FOOTBALL.

The Offensive Behaviour Bill should be kicked into touch.

Sign the petition at: 

http://www.petitiononline.com/1967a/petition.html

Index on Censorship & the Old Firm Anti-Sectarianism Bill

Click here to read the Index on Censorship article about the Old Firm Anti-Sectarianism Bill
 

The Offensive Behaviour at Football Bill

Sign the petition
http://www.petitiononline.com/1967a/petition.html

The Offensive Behaviour at Football Bill, or what became known as the Anti-Sectarian Bill, aimed to reduce offensive sectarian behaviour at football matches by allowing a charge that could see somebody imprisoned for up to five years for such behaviour or for offensive blogging online. Take a Liberty (Scotland) oppose this Bill that will potentially be passed later this year, and sent a letter of opposition to the Scottish Parliament expressing their concerns.

Articles written by signatories of the petition against the Offensive Behaviour at Football Bill.

Kevin Rooney No free speech for football fans
http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php/site/article/10627/

Stuart Waiton Anti Bigot Bigots
http://www.thefreesociety.org/Issues/Free-Speech/the-anti-bigot-bigots

Tom Miers Censorship enters the terraces
http://www.thefreesociety.org/Columnists/Tom-Miers/censorship-enters-the-terraces

Sign The Petition Against The Offensive Behaviour In Football Bill

(and leave your email open for the organiser of the petition at the petition site if you want to be contacted about events that will be organised to stop this bill).

http://www.petitiononline.com/1967a/petition.html

Articles written by signatories of the petition against the Offensive Behaviour at Football Bill.

Kevin Rooney No free speech for football fans
http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php/site/article/10627/

Stuart Waiton Anti Bigot Bigots
http://www.thefreesociety.org/Issues/Free-Speech/the-anti-bigot-bigots

Tom Miers Censorship enters the terraces
http://www.thefreesociety.org/Columnists/Tom-Miers/censorship-enters-the-terraces

Alex Salmond’s proposed new ‘anti-sectarian’ laws

Take a Liberty ( Scotland ) has launched a campaign against Alex Salmond’s proposed new ‘anti-sectarian’ laws. A statement and petition (see below) is being circulated around the UK to challenge what Stuart Waiton, from Take a Liberty (Scotland), believes is, ‘an almost unbelievably reactionary and authoritarian proposal’, being put forward by the Scottish government.

The statement reads,

We believe that introducing a law to imprison people for up to five years because of offensive sectarian chanting or online comments is extreme and illiberal.

Signatories so far include.

Stuart Baird, Scottish Secondary School Teacher, Rangers fan and Take a Liberty ( Scotland ) supporter.

Dr Carlton Brick, Sociology of Sport, West of Scotland University, co-author Key Concepts in Sports Studies.

Eamonn Butler MA PhD, Director Adam Smith Institute, author of Milton Friedman: A Concise Guide to the ideas and influence of the Free-Market Economist.

Dolan Cummings, cultural commentator and contributing author of It's Rangers for Me?

Stephen Field, author of Prison Law Index: The Definitive A-Z Index of Prison Law.

Dr Chris Gilligan, Senior Lecturer Sociology, University of the West of Scotland, editor, Northern Ireland Ten Years After the Agreement.

Dr Donncha Marron, Sociology Lecturer, Robert Gordon University and Take a Liberty ( Scotland ) supporter.

Tom Miers, Editor Free Society

Brian Monteith; former MSP, political columnist and writer.

Steven Purdie, Principle Teacher Humanities, Calderhead High School, Celtic fan and Take a Liberty ( Scotland ) supporter.

Kevin Rooney, teacher, writer and Celtic season ticket holder.

Jonathan Simon, Professor of Law, University of California, Berkeley, visiting professor of law, University of Edinburgh, and author of Governing through Crime.

Dr Craig Smith, Scottish based moral philosopher.

Dr Stuart Waiton, FRSA, Sociology and Criminology Lecturer, University of Abertay Dundee , Co-founder of Take a Liberty ( Scotland ).

Graham Walker Professor of Political History, Queen’s  University of Belfast .


SIGN THE PETITION AT http://www.petitiononline.com/1967a/petition.html

Oppose the ‘anti-sectarian’ authoritarians

‘No one should be subjected to intolerance, prejudice or violence in 21st Century Scotland’. So reads the Scottish Executive website discussing Banning Orders, introduced in 2006, orders that can ban abusive or bigoted fans from attending any football game anywhere in the world for up to ten years. Ironically, as the authoritarian discussion about how to rid Scotland of sectarianism rumbles on it appears that the Scottish Government are illustrating their own far more worrying form of intolerance, prejudice and violence.

Tolerance, it appears, today means not tolerating views that we don’t like. Not too long ago this was called authoritarianism. Now there is talk of making sectarian conduct at football matches a specific criminal offence punishable by five years in jail, with similar powers to target bigotry on the internet. Not too long ago challenging bigotry and sectarianism was seen as a political challenge, today, like many other things, it has become something to be policed out of existence. But then even this is to take the reactionary approach of the SNP and today’s pundits too seriously. Any serious analysis of sectarianism in Scotland would have to conclude that it is largely a fiction. In fact if we take Rangers and Celtic out of the equation - where is this sectarianism? We can no doubt find some stupid kids fighting and call it sectarianism, but previously sectarianism was a powerful force in society, something that meant people would be denied jobs, houses, would never inter-marry, or associate with the ‘other’ side. Today none of this holds true. Celtic and Rangers fans may shout IRA or Fenian this and that, but they then troop off home to their Protestant wife or Catholic mates. Today ‘sectarianism’ is a 90 minute game and the main reason we are aware of it at all is because politicians and pundits are grandstanding, attempting to look tough and purposeful by doing their ‘thing’, which today means being ‘outraged’, standing up for the ‘offended’ and introducing all sorts of draconian law and forms of policing.

Strangely, this whole furore has erupted largely because of a few extreme acts – the sending of a bomb to Neil Lennon (for which there are already laws to send these idiots down), the scuffle between him and Ally McCoist (which actually wasn’t extreme at all but was portrayed as such), and the ridiculous assault (another criminal act) on Lennon at Hearts.

These events have magically been tied into the hundreds of thousands of everyday Old Firm fans who shout and sing at football matches. Here we find the prejudice of the Scottish elite about football fans, with their own comments filled with bile and hatred about this imaginary sectarian force in society, backed up with serious violence in the form of imprisonment for up to 5 years for singing a song that someone somewhere finds offensive.

No one should be subjected to intolerance, prejudice or violence in 21st Century Scotland, except that is for Celtic and Rangers fans. This is the real shame on Scotland.

John Stuart Mill

The below article, 'The great liberal John Stuart Mill could have told the Scottish Government that its approach to drink is wrong headed and highly likely to fail', appeared in The Scotsman on Tuesday 24th May 2011.

 

http://news.scotsman.com/politics/Stuart-Waiton-SNP-tack-on.6773214.jp

Sign the petition

The below petition is now online at:
http://www.petitiononline.com/TALS/petition.html

To: Scottish Executive
We the undersigned believe that any action taken by the Scottish government to increase the price of alcohol is illiberal and patronising and should be opposed. Using extreme examples of violence or alcoholism to justify increasing the price of alcohol for everyone is irrational and ends up treating all adults, and especially poorer people whose drinks are generally targeted, as children.

Alcohol Alchemy: Opposing the increased price of booze in Scotland

Take a Liberty ( Scotland ) opposes any increase in the price of alcohol in shops and supermarkets. We believe that any action taken by the government to increase the price of alcohol is illiberal and patronising and should be opposed. Using extreme examples of violence or alcoholism to justify increasing the price of alcohol for everyone is irrational and ends up treating all adults, and especially poorer people whose drinks are generally targeted, as children. Blaming an inanimate object or drug for social problems is infantile and is illustrative less of a political elite with a sense of purpose than one that lacks depth or a serious belief in developing society or the individuals in it. Increasing the price of booze and assuming this will change society is a form of alchemy. Worse than this it degrades the public and undermines further the idea that people must be free to make decisions and take responsibility for themselves.

Snobbery of Prospective Booze Price Rise

This article was written following the last attempt to increase the price of alcohol in supermarkets.


Stuart Waiton

The Scottish media correspondent Iain MacWhirter, discussing the killing of the alcohol bill in the Sunday Herald summed it up well, ‘The smoking ban showed Holyrood at its best, this showed our Parliament at its worse’. For Iain and many like him the more bans and regulations the better – after all – while we can expect ‘responsible’ people like Iain to make correct choices with their lives – for the hoi polloi – well that’s a different story. Poor Iain even shares his pain of having to get his ‘clothes dry-cleaned after going for a pint’ in the bad smoky smelly old days when smelly people used to smell around him. One wonders how Iain coped.

Nicola Sturgeon, according to Iain made one of the best Holyrood speeches for years, and I must agree, if we are basing the speech on illiberal rhetoric it was a belter. The underlying idea used to support the case for pumping the price of cheap booze up is that too many people drink too much and kill themselves, too many people are alcoholics and too many people get drunk and fight and cause mayhem in communities. Or in a nut shell, ‘We can’t trust people. We can’t trust the poor working classes in particular. We need to protect people from other people and from themselves’.

In the past not trusting people to make the right choices and attempting to regulate society so that they could not make those incorrect choice used to be called authoritarianism. Today it is represented as an enlightened form of health and safety awareness raising: A kind of hippy with handcuffs protecting us from ourselves.

That the opposition parties were opportunistic is unquestionable in this whole affair. Labour after all has not a liberal bone in its ‘body’ and is only miffed that it didn’t ban booze first. While the Tories wittering on about how this will undermine Whisky producers suggests they are incapable of seeing an issue of principle and of liberty and freedom even when it is being poured down their throats.

The hypocrisy of Labour is useful to observe because the smoking ban and the various bans of drinking in public that they have overseen are a useful illustration of the trend to ban things today, to make everything about safety. Commentators like MacWhirter and politicians like Sturgeon act as if there is something particular about today that means ‘something must be done’ but it is not the rise of alcohol related problems that is new. What is new is the new depths of political life. As Steven Purdey a Take a Liberty colleague noted, ‘Since when did politics get so low that the government and elected members felt it was there role to debate the merits of buy one get one free policies in Tescos?’.

Farcical though this is, it is part of a trend in politics towards the regulation of people’s behaviour, indeed the ‘politics of behaviour’ has become an accepted new dynamic within government both North and South of the border, increasingly regulating increasing areas of public life. With most new laws developed in this way we are offered extreme examples that are taken as a bench mark for creating new regulations that impact upon everybody. Likewise with the booze ban promoters we get examples of 11 year olds turning up drunk in school, of dying alcoholics and of youth in Drumchapel ‘sucking on big plastic bottles of cheap booze’ and terrorising the community. The solution? Increase the price on cheap booze for everyone and hey presto all these various social problems go away (really?) and we all have to pay more for the alcohol we want to drink.

But even if increasing the price of booze had some impact should it be supported? Surely laws and practices should not be developed based on the lowest common denominator? But even here, let’s face it, the stereotypes being bandied about might not be fictitious but they are clearly one dimensional, simplistic and pretty patronising. As is the very idea that people need to be protected from themselves and from making the wrong choices. Like it or not making the wrong choices is part of being free and as John Stuart Mill argued, the greater good of freedom of choice far out weighs the harm done by people through drink.

Ironically one of the most powerful barriers to drinking excessively is self control, self respect and self discipline – all of which are products of a liberal culture and a culture that celebrates freedom and the ideal of the responsible individual – the very culture and freedom that is being drained from society by the likes of MacWhirter and Sturgeon.

Safety first dogma is poisoning our lives

What’s your image of Glasgow? Having lived there for nearly 20 years I’ve come across a range of images presenting the city as many things. When I first moved to Glasgow it had officially become the City of Culture, but for some it remained the ‘Workers City’, or it was a city that was ‘Smiles Better’. For me, all of these images had something positive about them (even the naff smiley faced one) compared to a more recent advertisement that read Glasgow: Safe City.

Believe it or not, in 2008 Glasgow was ranked the UK’s safest city, no doubt to the great joy of the city’s tourist board, but should we be so jubilant about this ‘result’, should we even be prioritising safety as an objective for councils and government? Or rather, should we not recognise that the myopic preoccupation with safety today undermines our freedom, chips away at liberty within Scotland and infantilises us all?

As we’re in Glasgow, let’s stay there a while and go for a drink. We can take a taxi into town, but perhaps we should ensure it’s a black cab – after all, as a female friend warned me – ‘these minicab drivers may not have been vetted’. If we avoid being abused by the taxi driver we can push past the smokers hunched outside the pub, but only after we’ve been checked out by the array of bouncers who are now on the door of almost every pub in the city centre. Once inside we will hopefully get a glass of whisky, but best drink it quick just in case the licensing board try to make us all sup out of plastics again like they did in 2006. But if they haven’t managed to make us all safe from being glassed, they can at least help us to be aware of the need to ‘Drink Responsibly’, or if we go the casino, to ‘Gamble Responsibly’. (Isn’t that an oxymoron?). Don’t worry about getting a bit drunk and starting some Glasgow football banter, the beer mats will reminding you to give the red card to sectarianism and help you to mind your language. Let’s take a trip to the toilet and be made aware of the latest risky sexually transmitted disease by the poster standing over us at the urinal as we look down at our endangered organ. And finally, after our safe night in town, we can take a taxi home outside Central Station where there is no need to worry about the other people in the queue anymore as we have the friendly taxi queue organisers, with their official luminous yellow waist coats waving us safely on our way to bed. What a night out we had in Glasgow: Safe City.

These examples may appear trivial, but it reflects a trend towards the regulation of everyday life that is spreading across Scotland and the UK, a trend that runs the risk of breeding a generation of young people who hardly know what it means to be a member of the public, indeed who hardly know what it means to be a free, responsibly individual – to be an adult.

Let’s stick with the theme of drink and take a look at the recent debate in the Scottish parliament about increasing the price of booze to get a taste of the illiberal attitudes that exist today.

The underlying idea used to support the case for pumping the price of cheap booze up was that too many people drink too much and kill themselves, too many people are alcoholics and too many people get drunk and fight and cause mayhem in communities. Or in a nut shell, ‘We can’t trust people. We can’t trust the poor working classes in particular. We need to protect you from other people and from yourself’. This used to be called authoritarianism, but today, with almost nobody making the case for individual freedom, it can pass as another enlightened form of health and safety awareness raising.

As with most new laws and regulations, remembering of course that the UK Labour governments introduced a new law for every day they were in office, here the booze barney fed off the most extreme examples to justify new regulations that would effect us all: Eleven year olds turning up drunk in school, dying alcoholics and stories of youth on estates ‘sucking on big plastic bottles of cheap booze’ and terrorising the community. The solution? Increase the price on cheap booze for everyone and hey presto all these various social problems go away (really?) and we all have to pay more for the alcohol we want to drink.

Even if increasing the price of booze had some impact should it be supported? Like it or not making the wrong choices is part of being free and as John Stuart Mill argued, the greater good of freedom of choice far out weighs the harm done by people through drink. For Mill the most important thing was not the choices people made, but the type of people making those choice – free choosing individuals. Ironically one of the most powerful barriers to drinking excessively is self control, self respect and self discipline – all of which are products of a liberal culture and a culture that celebrates freedom and the ideal of the robust, responsible individual – the very culture and freedom that is being drained from society by the safety zealots.

But if society has lost trust in us adults to look after ourselves and deal with one another, this is nothing compared to the Kafkaesque world of child safety. At a recent Scottish Parents Teachers Council, Caroline Stewart, of the Central Registered Body in Scotland, explained to the confused audience all the ins and outs of the new national disclosure system. ‘Do we have to vet Santa at our community event’, one parent asked. I can’t remember the exact reply but it ran something like this, ‘Oh if you know the Santa, on page 87, paragraph 12, clause three, of the guidelines, you’ll find that in this case, Santa does not have to be vetted’. Having listened to an array of questions by parents trying to understand all the technicalities of the new regulations, I had to ask Caroline, ‘Is this not insane?’. Most of the SPTC members laughed and nodded in agreement, but what can they do, ‘the rules is the rules’.

But like many of the safety regulations today, it is often the informal ones, the ones that don’t actually exist in law, the ones that the culture of safety encourage which often impact the most. So after we’ve all recovered from our hangover this Christmas and trip down to our children’s nativity plays, don’t be surprised if the headteacher patronises us all by telling us to put our cameras away – ‘just in case’.
Yes indeed, Glasgow may well be a Safe City, indeed Scotland may be a safe country, but it is a country run by experts and authorities who are dripping with distrust, and dominated by a culture within which adults are treated as vulnerable and incompetent.

But a vibrant nation cannot be built, and dynamic individuals cannot be formed within a climate where we are no longer expected to be able to deal with one another in a pub, or have the capacity to get a taxi home. Nor can a sense of independence or trust be built when we are all treated as potential alcoholic or potential paedophiles. Perhaps most importantly, none of us can become truly adult when we accept all these rules governing our own and everybody else’s lives.

This article appeared in The Scotsman on 7 December 2010