TARTAN ARMY TERRORISTS SHAME SCOTLAND AGAIN

TAM FERRY is not a name I know too well. And I'm pretty sure there are not many readers out there who recognise the moniker.

However, it seems he is some sort of  ''spokesman''  for the Tartan Army. Funny, I thought that was Hamish Husband. But we will leave aside any possible internal wrangling.

We all know the Tartan Army. They are the geezers who berate Old Firm fans for living in the past, harping on about, and singing about the Battle of the Boyne, the Potato Famine and  IRA terrorists.

Yet these kilted buffoons get kitted out in ridiculous psuedo military attire - many Scottish soldiers in the REAL tartan Army may find this offensive - while singing about a battle in 1314 and never getting more up to date than April 1746.

Of course, in this free and democratic society, that is their right. If they want to prance around like prize prats they are perfectly at liberty to do so.

What they have no right to do is shame Scotland with their rude, boorish and entirely un-Scottish behaviour whenever the national anthem of a visiting country is played at Hampden.

They were at it again last week when their boos, jeers and catcalls echoed around the old ground when the Liechtenstein anthem was played.

The following day the president and acting chief executive of the Scottish Football Association, big bluff straight talking George Peat took them to task. At last.

But, instead of showing  contrition, the Tartan Army fired back a reply through Tam Ferry which attempted to ridicule Peat for having the temerity to launch any sort of critical comment at them .

In many ways it is hard to blame Ferry and his cohorts among this wee band of deluded Jacobites. For, for years, they have lived a charmed life with hardly a word of critical comment written or spoken about them in newspapers, radio or television.

Jim Traynor of Daily Record and BBC fame is a noteable exception, and because he has told the truth about them, has been subjected to abuse by kilted clowns in airports, on planes, and in the streets of many a foreign town when on assisgment.

Not  wee Silly Billy though. He has even been spotted on at least one occasion - Copenhagen - out on the razzle with the feathered fools and leading them in that appalling dirge which goes back to laud a battle fought 376 years before the one Rangers supporters sing about, and which he finds so offensive.

I know among the press pack I am not alone in my views about the Tartan Army's behaviour, though, Traynor apart, I am on the only journalist willing to write the views so many of my colleagues express in private, but are too cowed to express publicly, perhaps by the stifling atmosphere of politcal correctness which stifles any decent debate in this country - and by country I mean the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

Therefore, I am indebted to a regular writer of letters to the Herald, Glenn Elder of Glasgow, whose latest rational contribution was published in that paper's Fans With Laptops, section on Friday.

Mr Elder wanted to know why Peat's condemnation of the Tartan Army booing the national anthem of vistors has waited so long? Why, he asked, did the SFA president not take them to task for their treatment of God Save The Queen when Northern Ireland were at Hampden?

It is a very good question.

 Mr Elder went on to remind readers that several years ago he wrote to the Herald over his embarrassment at hearing the German anthem booed while sitting with German friends at Hampden. He continued by correctly recalling, the following year both the French and Italian anthems were abused by the Tartan Army.

I have no doubt Mr Elder is a true Scot. A man with a partiotic pulse, but also the sort of Scot whose internationalism means he can never be as closed minded and self serving as those hordes of the Tartan Army in their psuedo militaristic uniforms.

Tam Ferry and any other so called  ''spokesman'' for them would be well advised to remember another, and much more proud chapter in this once great nation's history. It is called The Scottish Enlightenment.