Yes Badges

[mrD]

So thistle fans should not concern themselves with politics? That's a bit Jehovah's witnessy position imo.

[ChewinGumMacaroonBaaaz]

So thistle fans should not concern themselves with politics? That's a bit Jehovah's witnessy position imo.

 

Do you have a problem with "Jehovah's witnessy"? Perhaps not, but some most certainly do.

 

However you illustrate well how people form opinions on individuals and groups based on what they already beleive or have knowledge of, as much as what the individual or group has actually said or done, and categorise them conveniently into their own known parameters.

 

My point questioned "emphasis" and priorities and I imply marrying Thistle colours with "Yes" or "No" branding dilutes the notion that we are a club and support focused solely on footballing victory. It's written on the official site "together we can build this". I think they mean a competitive team and a club to be proud of, not a modern rich new nation or a stronger union.

 

While the majority in the city can not resist attaching their sectarian persuasion to their footballing faith, we stand firm and clear as a non-sectarian club. I think when it comes to playing politics at a sporting occasion it might be wise also to retain a poker face, and enjoy the game.

Edited July 12, 2014 by ChewinGumMacaroonBaaaz

[mrD]

Fair enough - I understand this need by some jags supporters to define ourselves as apolitical in juxtaposition to the old firm. But my argument would be that this is still a formulation of an identity based on the overall cultural mores of Scottish football which is based on a mutual othering by old firm supporters in order to define themselves. The apolitical jags stance comes about exactly the same way - they are other by virtue of being political/religious etc whilst we are different because we are not that.

 

Should also add that there is a tendancy of thistle fans to identify themselves as 'scottish' instead of rangers being 'english/british' and celtic being 'irish'. probably just as many thistle fans assent to that notion of what it means to be a jags fan as assent to the idea of being apolitical or anti sectarian. (although a fair few thistle fans dont seem immune to sectarian stuff that goes on round here as recently evidenced by that glentoran troll thread) - guess those different views about what it means to be a jags fan shows that there is no essence of what it means to be a jags fan.

 

Don't think we can situate football culture in abstraction from the rest of what goes on around it - thus its probably inevitable that political identities and football identities will overlap.

 

Edited to add. The Jehovah's witness statement was in reference to their pposition on not engaging in politics.

 

Done more editing because i wrote this original post on my phone and now i am on a comp thought i should elaborate my points a bit..

Edited July 12, 2014 by mrD

[mrD]

Should also add that I agree with the sentiment expressed about club over country. Hence why I have often argued on here that our clubs best interests would be best served either via an amalgamation of Scottish and English football or via us making an application to join the English pyramid at the unibond north league. The main barrier I think within the support towards entertaining such a proposition is an attachment to the national team - despite the fact that Scottish football is designed around the interests of two clubs - who happen to be our main rivals here in Glasgow. Since I hold no nationalist sentiment there is no conflicts of interests for me when trying to think of what path would suit us best. Hence my signature

Edited July 12, 2014 by mrD

[Jaggernaut]

Should also add that I agree with the sentiment expressed about club over country. Hence why I have often argued on here that our clubs best interests would be best served either via an amalgamation of Scottish and English football or via us making an application to join the English pyramid at the unibond north league. The main barrier I think within the support towards entertaining such a proposition is an attachment to the national team - despite the fact that Scottish football is designed around the interests of two clubs - who happen to be our main rivals here in Glasgow. Since I hold no nationalist sentiment there is no conflicts of interests for me when trying to think of what path would suit us best. Hence my signature

 

MrD, Do you honestly think that a "Team GB" would suit us best? In what way would it benefit Scottish football? If I understand your position rightly you would basically like to see Scottish football disappear, amalgamated with (i.e., swallowed up by) the English structure. In that case there would be no representation of Scottish teams in European competitions, no national team, and probably no Scottish players playing at international level ever. So how would it benefit us?

Edited July 13, 2014 by Jaggernaut

[mrD]

Starting with partick thistles interests alone at this juncture, id say our best interests would be best served by making an application to join the english pyramid. Why? Firstly, scottish football in general is designed around the needs of the old firm. The fact that even in the fallout of rangers going bust, the reforms that were made within scottish football in terms of league structure remain pretty much the same asides from an extra playoff place (despite bigger leagues being wanted by most supporters of non old firm clubs; the 11-1 voting structure remains and so on. Scottish football would rather die, rather than become built around the needs of non-old firm clubs. Scottish football overall always has had and continues to have one of the largest per capita attendance figures, but if one reads the (amazingly geeky) book the roar of the crowds which details the stats of attendances since before WW1 to the 2000's a trend has developed since the 60s where the distribution of such crowds has gone towards the old firm. There is nothing is on the horizon of football set up that will reverse that trend. Once rangers get back up to the top division it will be buisness as usual.

 

We all know this has a detrimental impact upon all the non-old firm clubs in terms of there being an inability to grow our market/crowd share within the scottish set up, but for us in particular we feel it all the more acutely by virtue of being in the same city as the old firm. The non-glaswegian clubs can at least (to a very limited extent) exploit local identity - an option we simply do not have at our disposal.There is one factor that used to benefit us for potential growth at firhill - for people who were fed up with the old firm duopoly and all that that stands for and would thus be inclined to move towards the great glasgow alternative. I'd argue that that element no longer exists for two reasons 1) Celtic since the mcann era have cleverly gone about marketing themselves in terms of being a non-sectarian open club who has an irish element but is open to all type mantra. This is backed up by them becoming part of a signifying chain of 'goody' teams throughout europe ie barcelona, st pauli, liverpool, etc - ive said a lot about this in other posts elsewhere but i wont go into any detail here. 2) the rise of the premiership, la liga and sky tv. One only needs to have a walk down a busy street in Glasgow to see that there are as many if not more kids wearing premiership and la liga tops now than even old firm tops now.

 

This trend towards other leagues within our domestic market is what makes the oldfirm salivate at the propsects of going down south. They know that there is no potential for growth as a scottish team - the equillibruim that once existed between them and the non-old firm teams that generated good players that kept our teams competative at the top of europe has long past, and europe has changed towards only teams from big leagues with big money circulating within it can sustain themselves at the top. For us at the bottom of the scottish football spectrum we are confined to a set up where we can play the likes of livingston 5 times a season, or if we are lucky - like we are just now - we can get to play kilmarnock 5 times a season.

 

If we were to join the english set up we could replace that scenario with depending upon our league position and our growth potential, we could be playing against port vales, huddersfield, leeds, meaning more interesting 'away-days' for our support - us being situated in glasgow will provide a good away-day fixture for clubs down south meaning bigger travelling support to firhill than we currently get; we will have bigger budgets to play better football through better tv money and sponsorship potential and we could face off against the likes of liverpool and man u via cup competitions. In short we as a glasgow team outside of the stagnant scottish football set up have growth potential. We have none whatsover here.

 

So it is clear that for partick thistles interests as a club - if the point is growth then looking elsewhere is the way forward. The league swapping of Gretna has shown that there are precedents to be exploited in making a strong case to join the english pyramid. The alternative is managed decline - yes we have just been promoted and our crowds will go towards the upper limits of what is possible within the scottish football set up. But those are limits nonetheless, and they are limits that will declne in correspondance to the long term decline of scottish football.

 

Now if we were to undertake such a move, and it were successfull, then yes the writing would be on the wall for scottish international football. FIFA would love to have the home nations unfair voting block cast asunder. However, that is not to say that in the mid term we could not develop players capable of being picked for a team-GB. We certainly produce great athletes under the banner of the UK - Andy Murray, Chris Hoy etc. The conditions would be there in a less provincial set up for the development of better football players no doubt. For me who doesn't have a romantic nationalism floating under the surface it wouldnt bother me if scotland ceased to exist as a national team - the decline means that scotland being a part of international tournaments is a bygone era.

 

As a last note, if scottish independance was to happen, then fair play id have to accept us being locked into the scottish football set up - but i think we could probably use the scottish political infrastructure to make appropriate interventions into our football governing bodies to make it a better and more equal set up. In that case we could probably develop our sport better - have more healthy crowd distributions, and have a better international team as a result. But if we vote NO, then my mantra has to be YES TO TEAM GB!!!

 

Edited to add - as for european representation - one, if not both the old firm could probably rise to a level to get some European involvment as part of the english set up. There is perhaps potential for teams like aberdeen as single city teams akin to leeds, with the right investment to go to that level too.. so really as far as european representation would go not much of a difference than now...

Edited July 13, 2014 by mrD

[Jaggernaut]

A good, thoughtful reply, thanks. I disagree with most of it, but appreciate your explanations.

[mrD]

No worries- as far as I am aware it is only myself and my father that hold such opinions as to what needs to be done to grow the team- so no real prospects for there being pressure amongst our support base to make the club consider doing that as an option. I would say though it logically follows from the standpoint of club over country and many seem to utter that statement on here. So I suspect that as Scottish football declines further and us with it that there is a likelihood of seeing that opinion growing amongst that contingent.

Edited July 13, 2014 by mrD

[ChewinGumMacaroonBaaaz]

Fair enough - I understand this need by some jags supporters to define ourselves as apolitical in juxtaposition to the old firm. But my argument would be that this is still a formulation of an identity based on the overall cultural mores of Scottish football which is based on a mutual othering by old firm supporters in order to define themselves. The apolitical jags stance comes about exactly the same way - they are other by virtue of being political/religious etc whilst we are different because we are not that.

 

Should also add that there is a tendancy of thistle fans to identify themselves as 'scottish' instead of rangers being 'english/british' and celtic being 'irish'. probably just as many thistle fans assent to that notion of what it means to be a jags fan as assent to the idea of being apolitical or anti sectarian. (although a fair few thistle fans dont seem immune to sectarian stuff that goes on round here as recently evidenced by that glentoran troll thread) - guess those different views about what it means to be a jags fan shows that there is no essence of what it means to be a jags fan.

 

Don't think we can situate football culture in abstraction from the rest of what goes on around it - thus its probably inevitable that political identities and football identities will overlap.

 

Edited to add. The Jehovah's witness statement was in reference to their pposition on not engaging in politics.

 

Done more editing because i wrote this original post on my phone and now i am on a comp thought i should elaborate my points a bit..

 

If one buys a car, predominately the decision to purchase a vehicle is to get one from A to B comfortably, successfully, reasonably enjoyably, to reduce one's problems or improve one's opportunities. Make a good choice and it's helpful and positive addition to one's life.

 

Of course that purchase is effected by politics, road tax, insurance.. etc. The choice of manufacturer might be criticised, the vehicle's green credentials might be frowned on, but if one then decides to use it to publicise one's support of another political issue by plastering slogans on the paint job or putting posters on the windows... I reckon it's fair to say one is significantly improving the chances of having the windows tanned, tyres slashed, and paint work keyed.

 

Maybe in this analogy, one might argue that the car is shared and there's nothing to stop the co-owners with alternate views posting their slogans on the vehicle too. True, but how does one know that one's co-owner is not removing this balance when cruising alone?

 

Can we not just agree and appreciate, we got the dope ride, as is, and leave it alone?

 

The distinction between us and the old firm is that, we are not different because we are not this or not that. We are proud of being what we certainly are, a football team. There is no further identity required or creed to follow.

 

Right now, maybe we're cruising about like a no bad Ford. Someday, we'll be tearing it up like a Ferrari. It won't make us any less American or any more Italian.

Edited July 14, 2014 by ChewinGumMacaroonBaaaz

[mrD]

I'm getting the feeling you are just being deliberatly obtuse here or something. Partick thistle are many things - a member of scottish football association; a buisness; and a collection of people termed supporters. All the teams in scotland are those 2 first things (although some can be be a different buisness model say Ltd company or PLC). In that sense there is nothing qualitativly different between partick thistle and its neighbours. What you have said about partick thistle being defined as a football club is exactly the same as what someone could say about rangers or celtic. The qualitative difference arises amongst those collections of people that choose a football club , giving themselves identifying traits to set them apart from other collections of people, and there will be a level of correspondance between how a club defines itself within its buisness slogans reflecting something about those collections of people, which in turn attracts more people to join said collections of people based on those predicates.

 

I think you are being disengious here because you know fine well that a football culture is generated, developed and sustained by those groups of people we call football suporters. For some people this is where football identiy lies in its entirety, hence many rangers fans are not perturbed by people slagging off the fact that they now operate under a different company, they will retort that a club is in essense the fans.

 

You have tried to establish some 'essential' fan trait without evidence that it is simply by virtue of being a football club that we support the jags. I have already given you arguments about two different conceptions of partick thistle supporter that pops up from time to time ie the 'we are a football club and nothing else' and/or 'THEY define themselves as british, THEY define themselves as irish, WE are scottish", i could waste more time finding posts on here to evidence a multiplicity of defining what it means to be a partick thistle fan from this forums but i can see that this wont be worth my time.

 

So ill use some indisputable evidence so that you can understand how what it means to be a partick thistle supporter can mean different things to different people, in differeing contexts.

 

1) the song hello hello - does this not contain slogans of an anti-sectarian nature, defining us in contrardistinction to the sectarian Other?

2) the song - we hate rc we hate protestants too -their shite - again a rather crude but effective in its context defining an anti sectarian standpoint

 

Can you not see how standpoints uttered in songs like that might attract people to support the club and thus stenghthen that particular viewpoint as being a defintional statement of what it means to partick thistle supporter to people who subscribe to such a frame of reference?

 

3)you should like this one - since you like brand statements from the club from an earlier post you made on the thread... do you remember the bumper stickers that said "follow partick thistle - the great glasgow alternative" ... that word 'alternative' can signify many alternatives to what it is posited to mean being a rangers and celtic supporter including your conception, the scottish conception, and the non sectarian conception.

 

Which brings me back to this question of politics and football. Politics is the broad sense of the word is concerned with matters of power and authority. So now i'd like to ask you a question that concerns both politics in that sense on the issue of us as partick thistle supporters. What gives you the authority to say what it means to be a partick thistle supporter? What mandate do you have to tell other partick thistle fans what they should think about what it means to support this club? Are you David Beattie in disguise???

Edited July 14, 2014 by mrD

[ChewinGumMacaroonBaaaz]

I make no apology for being deliberately obtuse on some issues. I'm disappointed that I only give the impression of that rather than making myself abundantly clear.

 

I trust you are clear on the fact I am a proud jags fan. That is the only "trait" of importance to me when I walk through the turnstiles.

 

I have no authority over Jags fans. I have no mandate, and have expressed only my opinion on how best to support and represent, not delivered any orders for others.

 

If you accept the possibility that it might encourage an inaccurate opinion of the nature of Thistle fans as a whole, on whose authority are those who choose to link the club with a definative "yes" or "no" vote acting? If you don't accept that possibility I beleive you are being naive.

 

[mrD]

I make no apology for being deliberately obtuse on some issues. I'm disappointed that I only give the impression of that rather than making myself abundantly clear.

 

I trust you are clear on the fact I am a proud jags fan. That is the only "trait" of importance to me when I walk through the turnstiles.

 

I have no authority over Jags fans. I have no mandate, and have expressed only my opinion on how best to support and represent, not delivered any orders for others.

 

If you accept the possibility that it might encourage an inaccurate opinion of the nature of Thistle fans as a whole, on whose authority are those who choose to link the club with a definative "yes" or "no" vote acting? If you don't accept that possibility I beleive you are being naive.

 

 

Since the fans are the the progenitors of our culture there is no danger of them misrepresenting themselves. If a dominant tenancy is to have a certain sets of attitudes then this will become to be identified as being a 'thistle' trait. Many support bases hold a lot of contradictory changeable and contested opinions amongst them. It is a sign of a healthy large support. Trying to reduce a football trait to one singular ahistorical essence is the hallmarks of a narrow-minded provincial standpoint- in short a wee team mentality that isn't big enough to accept flux and diversity within its ranks. Thankfully it appears that you are in a minority here so there is a chance of us transforming away from being a wee cuddly toy ineffectual team at some point that can thankfully aspire towards that Ferrari metaphor that you were outling earlier.

Edited July 15, 2014 by mrD

[ChewinGumMacaroonBaaaz]

Is it a sign that you are coming round to my way of thinking that you choose to answer the question you have an answer for rather than the question put to you?

 

I have no problem with however they choose to represent themselves. However, I do have concern for how they might represent our club.

 

I embrace and welcome diversity in our number. I have no doubt, that one from an entirely different background, education, faith, race or political view to mine can have an equal love and passion for the Jags. However, it is those who cannot set aside our differences for the sake of Jaggy camaraderie, but rather choose to assertively celebrate the opinions which might divide us and graft them onto "what it means to be a Jag", that promote exclusion and narrow mindedness.

 

It is when the dominant tenancy of certain attitudes to matters outwith footballing endeavours is identified as a Thistle trait that is the provincial standpoint. I fear and reject that. In my assessment it is such an attitude which is, in large part, reason why two of the best supported teams on the planet have fallen woefully short of their potential. It is not necessary, it is avoidable. It may be profitable, it may assist, but it is in no way an obligatory feature of footballing success.

 

I'm disapointed that you still view our club as "a wee cuddly toy". A long way to go yet but, I think we are progressing steadily, and the improvements in the professionalism of our footballing efforts are surely evidence that we are to be taken seriously.

 

I don't fear being in a minority as the majority do have form for getting things very, very wrong.

 

See you at the Big Match buddy!

 

Edited July 15, 2014 by ChewinGumMacaroonBaaaz

[mrD]