NOT SO SOOPER

I think it's safe to assume that Sooperally's tea is well and trully oot. The Bisto Kids are up in ams, embarrassed, even though Ally isn't, that they could only beat a team of part-timers with the help of the referee. They're all calling for his head, even the 'Stand By Your Man' brigade on McMurdo's site. And Ian Black had better start watching what comes in the post after his comments in today's Daily Record.

Some of them have even realised that Sooperally has to take a lot of the blame for administration and liquidation after blowing a 15-point lead and getting pumped in every cup he was in. Of course, there are always those that take things to extremes. One insane individual on McMurdo's blog blames Sooper and his team for a decline in attendance at Orange Lodges! They're also realising that, like his mentor, Auld Dignity, Ally is nothing but a chequebook manager and will be hopelessly out of his depth when he comes up against professional opposition.

Even Auld Keevins gets in on the act, putting his postie's life in jeopardy with his column in today's DR. Then again, maybe he and his postie aren't really as brave as all that since he's said nothing against Sooper until he was sure that all the Bisto Kids would be on-side. Nevertheless, he lets Ally have it with both barrels; bringing up his support for every crook and spiv as well as his hopelessness as a coach.

So will Ally still be there next season? Probably. Like everyone connected with Ibrox, he won'd 'do walking away' unless it's with pockets bulging with a hefty severance pay! I doubt very much that Bisto can afford that.

Ian Black, the Bill Sykes of Scottish football, has also riled up The Peeppil by merely stating what used to be the old Rangers way of thinking. 'What mair d'yez waant?' he demands, 'Wur still in it, in't wae?' This harks back to the Rangers ethos of 'win at any cost.' The Bisto Kids haven't abandoned their old lack of principles along with their dead team; far from it. They're not looking for mesmerising, silky skills on the pitch. What they're scared of is next season. After all, getting a penalty or other dodgy decisions aren't going to be much good if you're getting beaten 5 or 6 nil, are they? They're also embarrassed at it being made public that their team is as crap, and their players as thick, as everyone thinks they are!

I watched a programme last night on BBC iplayer called 'EDL Girls.' It just confirmed everything I thought about this organisation, especially when you see the Bisto FC tops among the baying crowds. They plead that they're not racist and then come out with blatantly ignorant and racist comments. One guy complained about folk speaking a foreign language to each other on the bus, while a woman said that not being allowed to drink on the streets was so as not to offend Muslims! I heard another clown blaming the smoking ban on 'Sharia Law'! The erstwhile leader, meanwhile, accused Muslims of 'grooming our kids,' effectively branding all Muslims as paedophiles. (That one will sound familiar to anyone that reads McMurdo's blog!)

The fact is that Muslim immigrants to Britain, especially Pakistanis, have had a massive positive effect on parts of our culture. Some of us are still old enough to remember how, even in the 1970s, the country ground to a halt on a Sunday. Only newsagents were open, and they all closed at 1pm. During the week wasn't much better. All shops closed for lunch between one o'clock and two thirty! And then at five o'clock they shut for the day; even the supermarkets. If you were at work and you'd no bread in the house then you were screwed good and proper. There was nowhere to nip out to at lunchtime and when you finished work you came out to a ghost town. Your only option was to buy some rolls at the chippy at a vastly inflated price.

And then came the Pakistanis. They kept their shops open at lunchtime and stayed open until 8pm, sometimes even till 10! No longer did you need to worry about not being able to get bread, milk or fags. On Sunday it was still the case that only the newsagents were open, but the Pakistani-run ones sold bread and milk and stayed open till 6pm or later. Effectively this transformed people's lives and dragged us out of the Dark Ages.

The EDL and their fellow-travellers point to Lee Rigby as evidence of what Islam is all about. This kind of inductive reasoning, however, is wrong and dangerous. This takes you down the road of collective responsibility and, when taken to its logical conclusion, justifies and excuses the attack on the World Trade Centre since American soldiers have been guilty of abuses in the Middle East!

It's amazing how those with a right-wing agenda always employ this inductive reasoning to try to twist the facts to fit their thinking. In Scotland this takes the form of anti-Catholicism and anti-Irishness, as well as other types of bigotry. Stories of child abuse in the Catholic Church are inflated to mean that all Catholics are child abusers, while the Irish are all militant terrorists. There are folk with Irish-sounding names on Glasgow City Council so, of course, there must be a Republican, Catholic conspiracy to take over the whole country. They work it round the other way as well. If you attack the Orange Order they claim that you're an anti-Protestant bigot! And there's no arguing with them; inductive reasoning implicitly includes its own defence!

Another story in the Daily Record today made me even firmer in my resolve to vote YES in September. It was about some posh party at St Andrews University, where a German princess was arrested for attacking people and coming out with a string of racial abuse. At a time when Oxford and Cambridge are agonising over being seen as elitist and trying to get more ordinary people in their doors, our oldest university seems happy to be a playground for the spoiled, idle rich. This is a problem in general in Scotland; while these Hooray Henries and Henriettas are spending four years getting pissed and smashing up restaurants and the like, their mummies and daddies are busy blasting to hell anything that crawls, walks or flies on our Highland moors.

I'm not anti-English and am quite happy to see visitors to Scotland and students attending our universities and colleges from all over the world. What I do object to is this small, privileged clique using our country as its own, private recreation centre. Hopefully we can address this problem when we are independent.

 

 

"Hullo, Sue? It's me. Me! The guy ye said wiz the best shag ye'd ever hud. Naw, it's no' Cliff Richard, it's Ally. Ally McCoist. Surely ye remember. Ah used tae bae oan a Question-a Sport 'n 'at. Aye, that's right, the Cheeky Chappy. Listen, Sue, Ah need tae get oot-y here. Thull no' gie mae peace, callin' mae the worst manager ever 'n 'at. Is thur enny chance-y gettin' back oan yer programme? What d'ye mean Ah wiz shite..."

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