SENTINELCELTS

Morning,all.
Interesting weekend,you might say. The weekend of course is when politics and world events take a back seat to relaxation and recreation,particularly the sporting calendar. Not this weekend,oh no. This weekend was all about the politics and world events,and sports were virtually wiped out. 

The reason? A tiny wee virus previously confined to horseshoe bats in South East Asia apparently,now known to us as COVID-19. 

https://yubanet.com/scitech/scientists-are-still-searching-for-the-source-of-covid-19-why-it-matters/https://theconversation.com/why-its-important-to-study-coronaviruses-in-african-bats-131592

It has put the world’s financial markets into a state of panic bordering on hysteria,put politicians and reserve bankers the world over to centre stage as they frantically try to stop a worldwide recession. Hospitals are rapidly becoming overcrowded,martial law declared in Spain and similar restrictions also in Italy. Many countries have closed their borders entirely,others will insist that new arrivals are quarantined for fourteen days. Ireland is even closing its bars!

Scotland,meanwhile,is concentrating its energies on the one thing that matters. Robbing Celtic of their title. 

I wasn’t the least surprised yesterday to see the BBC publishing a Press Association release that one club in Scotland is demanding that the season be declared null and void. I think we can all guess which one that might be! Time was when media outlets competed for the scoops,the big exclusives that sold newspapers. Dummy early editions,designed to put the opposition off the scent were not unknown. The spiralling decline in print sales has led to a similar fall-off in quality journalism,and these outlets routinely regurgitate content from elsewhere with a nod to the original source. I can only assume it is a gentleman’s agreement to keep costs down. Hardly surprising when you consider that The Daily Record which once sold 800,000 copies a day,while The Sunday Mail and Sunday Post were approaching seven figures are all seeing sales inexorably head towards sub-100,000. 

Every news outlet takes an RSS feed from the Press Association. If you want to put something into the mainstream,it is the go-to enabler. And the last time I recall this particular employee of the PA released a story to the world,it was rapidly picked up and disseminated. That was the story that became Inch High Private Eye,remember? Yet to hear any follow-up from that,strangely enough.

I think Mr PA guy might be better advised to go out and do some work for a change,rather than simply rely on calling a friend. The friend is clearly using him for his own ends,and that after all is his job. It is the job of a journalist to question information received before putting it in the public domain. It’s time he gave it a try. 

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It has also been an interesting weekend too on the site,after a fashion. Mahe and I set this site up,with considerable help from others,with the simple intention of giving Celtic supporters a place to freely discuss their thoughts on events at Celtic,and thereafter whatever they felt like saying at the time. It has been much more successful than any of us envisaged,and we know that is down to the quality of the comments from the site members. 

But it is also down to the simple fact that we have always asked everyone to argue their case with civility and respect to others,and to be honest,that has been IMO the major success of the site in our eighteen months. 

Sadly,not everyone feels that way,so Mahe and I will now delete any comment which contains personal abuse to other members or to bloggers elsewhere. We will also delete any post which we consider to contain wilful or dangerous misinformation. Other deletions will be made if they are considered to breach the ethos of the site. 

There will be no exceptions and no appeals. 
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Above article by BMCUWP. This enforced shutdown means that more than ever we will be looking for you guys and gals to step in with a contribution for Article of the Day. There’s a good chance many of you will be working from home anyway,so there’s no excuse! Mail anything that springs to mind to Mahe
sentinelcelts@gmail.co