FOR my money, the trouble with the United Kingdom today is - we've got too many lawyers. At school, half a century ago, I was an A pupil - that I have since learned, meant I had a particularly good Qualifying exam, nothing more, nothing less.
Maybe I did have a few more functioning brain cells than the rest of the gang in my Primary Seven class, but, back then, a kid's chances in life were greatly enhanced, or permanently blunted, by how they did in that single exam.
Any how, in my 1A class at the local Senior Secondary (Scotland's much-superior equivalent to the English Grammar Schools), there were 35 pupils - so much for the 30 pupil maximum. We have a reunion every five to ten years and at the last one, held as we began to retire, we boasted: 1 university professor, 1 retired senior RAF officer, 1, retired senior civil servant, 1 guy who runs his own automotive consultancy, 1 IT millionaire, 1 retired and loaded merchant banker, 2 more retired bank managers, 2 journalists - both published authors, 1 retired engineering firm manager, 1 retired police Inspector, 1 senior manager for a big fashion chain, 2 mid-ranking civil servants, 2 mid-ranking charity managers, 8 teachers, 3 nurses, 1 accountant, 1 vet and 2 girls who married well and young to husbands who inherited big farms - the other 3 class members, sadly died young.
You will notice - not a lawyer amongst us. The only lawyer to come out of our year was in 1B, the next class down; he's a great guy, but the saying amongst us has always been: "If you need a good lawyer - see Bob, he knows one or two".
Nowadays we are awash with lawyers, there are so-many, they need to find ways of passing their time, so they stick their noses in where they aren't really wanted and the result has been the rise of various "industries", whose only benefit is, they create work for lawyers.
In particular, lawyers have almost invented and advanced the race relations industry. Now, I appreciate, I might be entering choppy and dangerous waters here, but having been exposed to 60-years of what passes for religious tolerance in Ayrshire, I think I can navigate my way through it.
I hold great store in the wise words of the Bard's great work 'A Man's A Man' - I have no time for those who abuse others because they are, to use the common language of the West of Scotland streets a H bar steward or a F bar steward; such people (the verbal abusers) are not worth bothering about.
But, that said, in the adrenilin-and testosterone-fuelled world of football, inhabited as it is by lots of guys who wear their IQs on their backs, I would have supposed that even a lawyer would have been able to differentiate between "banter" and racial abuse.
After all, in one of my jobs a work mate and I would, every morning, greet each other as an Orange bar steward and a F bar steward, and our line manager never felt the need to pull us up for it.
In another job, I had to go through a full stewards' enquiry after I suggested awarding someone a modern equivalent of the old Robertson's Golden Gollywog as a prize. It appears, in saying this I was a racist. Still don't see how, but, I have never been right-on PC and only used that particular childhood item as shorthand for an all but worthless prize.
So, where do I stand on the issue currently dominating English football - I refer to John Terry's loss (again) of the England captain's arm band whilst he prepares to defend his alleged racist slur on Anton Ferdinand.
I don't know too-much about Ferdinand Minor; he seems a reasonable Premiership journeyman. However, his elder brother Rio, Ferdinand Major, comes across as a bit of a twit, sharing that standing with his England co-defender, the afore-mentioned Mr Terry.
To me, Terry is a nasty piece of work; between his alleged involvement with Wayne Bridge's partner, the stories about him selling access to certain places to businessmen, his pique at being stripped of the England captaincy before and his unashamed efforts to have the post restored to him - had the FA had a shred of dignity and decency about the place, they would long ago have instructed Mr Capello to not merely strip him of the captaincy, but to kick him out of the squad.
Given his other failings, Terry may well be a racist - he may equally well not be, however, in the world of the working class, which football still is: it is not uncommon for insults to fly around when the going gets tough. The C word, the more common form of bar steward, the exrament word, quite often, in Scotland, preceded by the H or F words or Orange or Irish is far from unusual.
I would imagine therefore, in England, that the player being spoken to's skin tone might also enter the exchange. However, it's all in the tone, the context and how it is perceived.
I am assured by a distinguished former Scotland captain from some years ago that the Scotland squad which he led, one dominated by Old Firm players, and which performed an awful lot better than their 21st century successors was a very tight-knit, happy and friendly one. That didn't stop the Celtic players from addressing the Rangers ones as Orange or H bar stewards and being responded to as F or Irish bar stewards. It was all in the mutual understanding.
Of course, they didn't have lawyers telling them what to think; they knew what was banter and what was, very occasionally, abuse - and dealt with accordingly.
Get rid of the lawyers and let common sense back in. Mind you, I still think English football would be better-off without JT.
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