Agrieved Requesters of Silence,

After yesterday’s excellent Bellyaches article, Jim Murphy MP and Secretary of State for Scotland was a guest on BBC Radio Scotland’s Off the Ball. He came across as a decent guy and credit must head in the direction of presenters, Stuart Cosgrove and Tam Cowan, not only for their humour but for the range of guests they invite onto their show.

I listened to the show on the road to the Celtic match, a buzzard almost flew into my windscreen, a routine victory was witnessed, the referee was too harsh on Motherwell but the linesman was too harsh on Celtic, I wish I could say that these things even themselves out, but that cliché is wrong. There’s also a stooshie about Celtic replacing the minute silence with a minute of applause and a bunch of ruffians who decided to protest against any sort of act of war remembrance. I think that politics and football should never meet. For the soldiers of the World Wars, they didn’t really have a choice, they did what they were told, and it was their duty. I would have objected and ran away to Peru. Today, only the men and women who choose to enrol in the armed forces ever have to become involved in our country’s wars. Those who never had a choice should be regarded as highly as possible.