Kettling is needed to ensure majority of football fans are protected

It is claimed that the official attendance at Celtic Park on Sunday March 16 was 58,013 (which included Graeme), but minus those alleged “supporters” intent on disrupting the football match.

Reports vary as to the number of “fans” prevented from attending the match because they allegedly didn’t want their identities to be known or their pyrotechnics being taken from them, but it was reported that 90 fans were denied entry. That’s 0.155% of the total ACTUALLY in attendance.

READ MORE: Celtic ultras demand action against ‘heavy-handed policing’

Why all the complaints, moaning and gnashing of teeth by this miniscule minority?

I sincerely hope Police Scotland pass on the identities of those 90 denied entry to both Rangers and Celtic football clubs with a view to removing them from future entry to their respective stadiums (or even barring them for life).

That would be a positive step in cleaning up the undesirable element between these two clubs.

I would even go so far as to say that the use of Section 60 of the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994 should be extended to other clubs with a similar problem, and there are more football clubs like this than we care to admit (and not only in the premier league).

READ MORE: Celtic to speak to police after fans denied entry to Old Firm match

It’s the minority who wasted it for the majority and it’s time the balance was reset in favour of the majority.

In my opinion, NO action by the police is off limits in an effort to bring down people masquerading as “supporters”. They are a stain on the game in Scotland and the vast majority of Scots who follow their club.

I think “kettling” should become a regular “shock tactic” at targeted stadiums to finally clear out the undesirable element of our game.

Nobody likes to be told what they can and can’t do, but when it comes down to a very small group intent on the threat of injury to other spectators then needs must, and if “kettling” works then keep doing it until the rot is eradicated from our game.

Fly your flags and banners at football matches, sing the songs all you want to, but keep the violence and pyrotechnics off the stands and let decent supporters watch the football.

Jim Todd
Cumbernauld

AT the start of the illegal collective punishment of the civilian population of Gaza in revenge for the Hamas atrocities of October 7 2023, it was clear Netanyahu had no interest in a peaceful settlement. The West had taken its eye off the ball, as had he, hence the horrific breach of Israel’s fabled defences.

Initially the lone voice in UK leadership, the then First Minister of Scotland called for an immediate ceasefire. Humza Yousaf was followed by the First Minister of Ireland in her inaugural speech, and then the Welsh Parliament without the support of Welsh Labour. So much for UK democracy.

READ MORE: Scottish university students start hunger strike over Israeli arms funding

Did we need the added carnage of the latest 300 killed in Gaza to know that, like Putin, Netanyahu wants the war to continue? It was, after all, his alliance with the rabid right wing in the Knesset that kept him in power when he might otherwise have been heading to jail.

There are many Blair echoes in the UK of Starmer’s current administration but his inability to count Muslim lives as equal to those of Westerners is the most disturbing.

UK Prime Minister Starmer and his Foreign Secretary David Lammy will share an ugly legacy – that of knowingly facilitating the slaughter of innocents where Blair did it first-hand.

And while the world may not care much that along with unnecessarily dead hostages, Gaza has seen the deaths of nearly 50,000 civilians, more than 100,000 wounded and more than 60,000 presumed buried under rubble, history will, and this legacy, like Blair’s, will be what people remember.

Amanda Baker
Edinburgh

HAVING just watched interviews in which Labour and Conservative MSPs complained about Calmac/CMAL/Scottish Government failing to award the contract for new small ferries to Ferguson Marine, I can only imagine what their response would have been if the tender from the Port Glasgow yard had been accepted.

While it is indeed difficult to understand why an organisational mechanism couldn’t have been found to award a contract from one government-owned agency to another, the hypocritical opportunism of these opposition politicians is truly astounding.

Cameron Crawford
Rothesay

READ MORE: CalMac's MV Glen Sannox to return to service after hull cracks repair

THE reality is our heavy engineering capability has been lost from the 1970s onwards. While Poland, N Korea, Norway, Italy, Spain, to name a few, continually invested in new equipment, training and techniques, we laboured in underinvestment and blame culture.

The sad truth is we will never recover our position as a global ship builder because we don’t have the money ourselves and foreign investors can get better returns in other countries. That ship has sailed.

I Wilson
via thenational.scot