The Times ready to attack Union Flag display...

[BLUEDIGNITY 33,745]

You have been getting told for years by myself and others, penny just dropped ? Now these cunts are running the show and lennon after all that has happened still thumbs his nose at all and sundry at the end the game on Sunday and nothing is done about it. Speaks volumes.

[GF John 169]

Anyone able to copy and paste the article?

It's in this thread twice, one of those being the OP.

[FlippinEck 3,751]

I think what is the most aggrevating for me is this statement "The provocative symbol of tribalism" - That's the flag of this country, if people want to be offended about it, let them, and fuck them.

And it goes back to the old adage, if you are so offended by it (it being the union jack flag and britishness as a whole)... then LEAVE (or go home... but we cant say that)

[50ShadesofBlue 667]

It's in this thread twice, one of those being the OP.

Didn't realise he had updated his OP

[BRITNEY IS NOT FEELING IT 8,293]

Email sent to The Times.

Hope you get a reply nicely put .

[SteveJ 743]

Email sent to Times and Rangers FC

REF: http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/sport/columnists/mattdickinson/article2998570.ece

Dear Editor,

During a week of untold pride for a Nation, I wonder why this article has been allowed through the editorial checks, that have normally been decent, within your newspaper? The Nation is currently readying itself for a Royal Wedding, the biggest since Princess Diana and Prince Charles and many British country folk are brimming with pride, that one of their favoured Royals, is about to settle down with a lady that can be compared fondly, to Diana.

If there was ever a time for points scoring within the media, in relation to Football fans and traditional rivalries, this has to be the worst I have witnessed and coming from such a highly esteemed newspaper as The Times, makes it even worse to digest.

There are arguments out there, as to why Rangers FC should be permitted to bear the Union flag at Ibrox and any other football ground around the World but again, this is not the time nor place to discuss this. What I will say is that Rangers FC are a British football club, playing in its home nation of Scotland. As Scotland are part of the United Kingdom, the fans of Rangers FC are fully entitled to be proud of the Union flag, which combines its home nation flag, with the rest of the sovereign members.

I fully expect Rangers F.C. to defend their fans and the clubs' right to display the flag on the Govan Stand at Ibrox and will not be doing so in this communication, but I reckon, you the editor, have dropped a clanger by allowing this article to go to the nation - especially in such a proud week for them!

Regards,

I am not having this one, no fucking way!

[McBoyd 355]

Hope you get a reply nicely put .

Thanks mate, I look forward to any response I get too. I doubt I will though to be honest, their inbox will be chocka-block.

[BLUEDIGNITY 33,745]

Fuck them all on Friday there will be eighty odd Union Flags flying in my garden. Long Live Prince William and Kate !

[FlippinEck 3,751]

Has the article been removed?

[Ferdasyn 431]

I honestly can't believe sometime wrote that article.

[BRITNEY IS NOT FEELING IT 8,293]

Thanks mate, I look forward to any response I get too. I doubt I will though to be honest, their inbox will be chocka-block.

They might have to find time or even retract the article and publish an apology

[MisterC 12,455]

Email sent to The Times.

Cap doffed Alex

[bluepeter 5,627]

Email sent to The Times.

Your 'correction' about the Union Flag v Union Jack isn't necessarily true, by the way. There's no real historical evidence for naming them as you suggest. It seems to come from a "jack" being a national flag flown on warships, but that's far from the only possibility of why it was named the Union Jack. I tend to agree with you and always call it the Union Flag, but I'd hesitate to correct anyone who used it 'wrongly.'

Good letter though

[Dunny_01 2,007]

If this is true, the journalist not only should be sacked out his job, he should be deported and done for treason !! nutcase !

[McBoyd 355]

Your 'correction' about the Union Flag v Union Jack isn't necessarily true, by the way. There's no real historical evidence for naming them as you suggest. It seems to come from a "jack" being a national flag flown on warships, but that's far from the only possibility of why it was named the Union Jack. I tend to agree with you and always call it the Union Flag, but I'd hesitate to correct anyone who used it 'wrongly.'

Good letter though

Thanks mate,

I was just going by what I was taught in history at school with regards to 'flag' rather than 'jack', my teacher obviously had an opinion on the matter and decided that he'd teach us all 'Union Flag' was the correct term

I'll see what they write back, if anything.

[bombaybadboy08 15,660]

What follows is an in-depth summary of why the article is such a fail:

"It was the game of zero tolerance against sectarianism, when the police snatch squads would target troublemakers at Ibrox in the aftermath of the bomb sent to Neil Lennon, the Celtic manager. A day when Rangers and Celtic would stand united against any form of bigotry or intolerance and instruct their supporters to focus on the football. Enough was, finally, enough. So what did Rangers do? They allowed a small Union Jack flag to be placed in every seat of a home supporter. There were 40,000 of these flags, supplied by Rangers Supporters Assembly, and every one approved by the club hierarchy."

So the Union Jack is bigoted and intolerant? The author may also like to note that, when in the mid 1900s, the SFA were going to make Celtic take down the Irish tricolour that still flies in Celtic Park today. Who were the club who sided with Celtic, and encouraged the SFA to back down? Oh yeah. Rangers.

"I rang Rangers yesterday to ask why, exactly? The Union Jack is not an official symbol of Rangers FC. It is not part of the club badge, not on the shirt. It is not to be found on any page of the Rangers website. A shirty spokesperson, dismissing the inquiry as a nonsense, said that it was the flag of his country and the British Isles. But there a dozens of British clubs and none of the others ever hand out Union Jacks. If Rangers wanted to give the team a show of support, why not simply hand out regular club flags and scarves? Why endorse a provocative symbol of tribalism, on the very day when both clubs were meant to be going out of their way to calm their fans?"

Did the author watch Match of the Day? There were a fair few Union Jacks flying around EPL stadiums this weekend. I suppose we're meant to assume that they were all being waved as 'provacative tribalism' too? I mean, it's not like there's a royal wedding or anything.....

The spokesperson could not wait to get off the phone, although, before he did so, he pointed out the Rangers had no intention of complaining about the tricolours flown by Celtic supporters. As if that made everything all right. Apologists will say that the Union Jack is only a flag, a common one, and not an incitement to send parcel bombs to football managers. But it has nothing whatsoever to do with football. In the context of the Old Firm, it has been hijacked as a sign of lasting enmity, of division, entrenching the idea that the club, for now and evermore, will represent the Protestant sector of Glasgow and the other the Catholic.

So the nutjob sent the bomb because he perceived Lennon to be anti-British? A bit presumptuous, no?

Protestantism is linked to Rangers. So is Unionism. That doesn't necessarily mean that Unionism and Protestantism are interchangeable, just because they are both linked with Rangers. Would the author like to see John Greig barred from Ibrox then, seeing as he will forever be linked with Rangers, and will therefore always be a 'sign of lasting enmity'?

"One club handing out Union Jacks cannot possibly take us closer to the day, however far away it may be, when Rangers against Celtic becomes a "normal" sporting rivalry, defined by geography, not historical or religious baggage. A day when the Old Firm becomes like Red against Blue, City against United, Milan against Inter, rather than the poisonous stirring of an ancient religious divide.

Here, in a bizarre twist, the author is attempting to argue that a 'normal sporting rivalry' is bereft of 'historical baggage'. He uses Manchester United and Manchester City as one example of such a rivalry. The same Manchester City who taunted their city rivals about the Munich air disaster 40 years ago.

The other example is the Milanese derby. Now, as a reminder, Dickinson is arguing that a 'normal sporting rivalry' should be 'defined by geography'. AC Milan and Inter both share the same stadium. The derby is renowned for not having any geographical ties. Yet, in 2005, a flare was thrown at the Milan goalkeeper after an Inter goal was disallowed. Of course though, this derby has no 'religious baggage', so it's ok.

"The bomb intended for Lennon has focused attention on the murderous imbeciles, but there will always be extremists. The battle is surely more importantly won over the centre ground, the reasonable majority. This is the job of driving sense into the "90-minute bigots" as they were described in 2005 by Lawrence Macintyre, the head of safety for Rangers at the time, when he talked of fans with Catholic friends and workmates who became filled with hatred on a Saturday afternoon at Ibrox.

"If we can get the person that doesn't mean it then we'll isolate the real racists and real bigots in numbers that are manageable to deal with, " he said.

Does anyone seriously believe that the best means of education is for Rangers to hand out Union Jacks?"

First of all, why would you need to educate '90 minute bigots'? By definition, they're only bigoted for 90 minutes, then they go back to their home and make light hearted banter with their Celtic supporting friends afterwards. Let's just remind ourselves that less than a third of a percent of all murders in the past 20 years have been due to sectarian motives.

"To make such a point to the club yesterday was to be brushed off like an idiot. But then I met the same dismissiveness when I went to my only Old Firm derby at Ibrox a few years ago and expressed amazement that a giant Union Jack was being waved in the centre circle before kick-off.

It seemed bizarre then and, given the tensions around Lennon, the ritual seemed even more extraordinary on Sunday."

It's always waved before the match, alongside the Saltire. Rangers are both British and Scottish. The club and its supporters are generally proud of the club's identity as both. Does the author 'express amazement' when Barcelona wave the Catalan flag, or when Bilbao wave the Basque flag?

"There seems to be an acceptance that these two clubs will always represent a sectarian divide, and the best that can be done is to contain the worst violence and the worst chanting rather than to eradicate the problem altogether. But it has to asked whether such an approach will ever make sufficient progress. Many well-intentioned campaigns and initiatives have been launched in recent years, only to flounder."

Thus far, the author has been mostly talking about flags, and the Unionism ideology. To be precise, he mentions 'Union Jack' 8 times in the article. Exactly four times more than the amount of times he refers to either Protestantism or Catholicism. It appears that someone's confusing national identity with religion.

"The charity Nil By Mouth was established after the 1995 murder of a young Celtic fan, Sense Over Sectarianism, a joint-initiative, was launched in 2001, and Jack McConnell, the then Fist Minister, brought together a summit in 2005 that led to tougher legislation. Alex Salmond, the First Minister, says that anti-sectarian laws will be toughened further in the coming months.

We can add the Pride Over Prejudice campaign launched by Rangers, Bhoys Against Bigotry by Celtic and Bigger than Bigotry. No doubt there are others.

The treatment of Lennon, the victim of a street attack in Glasgow in the past as well as having the threat made on his life, suggests that this problem is no closer to being resolved and that the clubs have to take a stronger lead. Condemning the bombers is the easy part."

Condemning the bombers is indeed the easy part. The implied condemnation of anyone daring to wave a Union Jack on the other hand is pretty awful. The author is now implying though, that Lennon was targeted due to his religion. If the bomber was concerned primarily with religion, why have no priests, or anybody else working for the Catholic Church, been on the receiving end of any explosives? Why did the media list the three recipients as three 'high profile Celtic fans', and not three 'high profile Catholics'?

"Rangers will insist that they do plenty, but that has not been the impression given in the past 48 hours, on or off the record.

Does Walter Smith and Martin Bain publicly urging the support not to chant any songs perceived to be sectarian not count then?

"They should pay more attention to their manager, the wise Walter Smith, who talked last week of how the sectarian problem had been tolerated for too long, and his relief that he was retiring. "To be quite honest with you I'm quite glad to be getting out of it," Smith said, which was a terribly sad admission from a man steeped in Rangers since he was a lad. So that is one manager driven away and another who might have been killed. And an imbecilic club who think there is nothing odd, amid all this trouble, in handing out 40,000 Union Jacks."

Naturally, Smith wasn't referring to the pressures of managing a club with massive expectations on a microscopic budget. He was referring to the anti -Catholicism at Rangers. Despite the fact that Rangers have Catholics in the first team, in the youth team and on the coaching staff.

'Driven away' also ignores the fact that Smith was going to leave at the end of last season, but chose to stay. It also ignores the fact that he returned, of his own volition, in 2007. If the supposed sectarianism was such an issue with him, then why would he have come back in the first place?

I'd release this article as a response to his ramblings.

Great post

edit- McBoyd,your email is spot on as well

[delamonty 992]

This is a disgrace. Complete and utter disgrace. Hard to find the words to use.. I see some Bears have already written in about this. Well done!

Simply can't allow this? So.. at the wedding this week... are union flags being used at all? lol what a joke. Actually, it's no laughing matter!

[SteveJ 743]

Thanks mate,

I was just going by what I was taught in history at school with regards to 'flag' rather than 'jack', my teacher obviously had an opinion on the matter and decided that he'd teach us all 'Union Flag' was the correct term

I'll see what they write back, if anything.

Sunday School and a spell in the forces also taught me the same mate

[derekweir29 505]

That email was spot on sir I hope you get a reply.

Fucking joke this media witchhunt against our clu

I will be hanging a large Union Jack i have from my navy days proudly from my window.

Fuck them all and long live Prince William and Katie.

GSTQ

[McBoyd 355]

So.. at the wedding this week... are union flags being used at all? lol what a joke. Actually, it's no laughing matter!

A provocative symbol of tribalism mate, it's no longer the flag of this great and proud country apparently

[SteveJ 743]

I wonder if the Germans will be going mental at their fellow countrymen, who own Lidl, for selling such a provocative flag?

[caseyjones 3,009]

The biggest surprise is not that the article was written, but that so many are full of indignation, especially those who will be feeling guilty over their previous comments.

You made your fucking beds!

[McBoyd 355]

Kate and William in bigoted wedding shocker!

Considering the IRA threat about the Queen going to ROI recently, it's a horrendously stupid article to have published in the Royal Wedding week.

[blueben_d 40]

The biggest surprise is not that the article was written, but that so many are full of indignation, especially those who will be feeling guilty over their previous comments.

You made your fucking beds!

Is this a riddle?

[BILL.I.AM 18]

There is so much wrong with this article its unreal. If flying ur nations flag in your own country is provocative i'm santas wife.

People seem to think it's up to Rangers to dig Lemmon out the whole he dug himself with his IRA dealings and causing havoc to Scottish football.

Fuck Neil Lennon and fuck the media

Rule Britannia