Letter: MacMillan's barbs won't foster debate

EMOTIONS are understandably running high in the wake of the terrible revelations about parcel bombs targeting individuals associated with Celtic FC.

This, however, provides only limited justification for James MacMillan's comments (Letters, 21 April). Previous interventions from Mr MacMillan have been characterised by hyperbole and distortion and have not been conducive to fostering the kind of debate and engagement required to transcend the sectarian problem. Unfortunately these tendencies were again evident. His comments regarding the "anti-Catholic heart of Rangers culture" are, at best, extremely offensive.

Comments of this nature simply serve to perpetuate ill-feeling and division when the overwhelming majority of Celtic and Rangers fans are united in utterly condemning this awful development.

Furthermore, making claims about, "significant sections" of Scottish society being animated by anti-Catholicism are unsustainable. His final comments about Catholic schooling, by implication, display a troubling attitude to non-denominational schools.

Alasdair McKillop

Comiston Road

Edinburgh

THE self-evident derangement of a letter bomber should not be anybody's reason to brand Scotland as an anti-anything society. The letters from both James MacMillan and Andrew Gray (21 April) are hasty and knee-jerk reactions and expose also a too-readiness to exploit the actions of what would appear to be a deranged individual as expressive of some larger underlying social malaise.

I suspect that a social psychologist would suggest a calmer explanation than that posed by both letter writers, that somehow when one person does something devious and dangerous that this illustrates some general resentment among the populace.

Behaviour exhibited by what we term the Old Firm has hardly lent itself over the years to social integration and too many have boarded the bandwagon focused on what can be described as embedded football sectarianism, including politicians, the sporting press, and far too many others too tolerant of this factionalism. The failures to accommodate the wider football interest in Scotland, that again registers in the current push to reduce the size of the first league to a mere ten clubs, are more indicative of an actual malaise. The one that attracts the bandwagoners. The one that exalts winning in sport above all else, including what many have experienced as the main purpose of sport - play and enjoyment.

Let us have some proportion in all of this. Maybe the real derangement is in having lost the proportion. Putting some pleasure and unashamed amateur enjoyment back into sport might be a good start.

Ian Johnstone

Forman Drive

Peterhead