GENTLE ATTACK ON CELTIC - BUT CREEP ROUNDS ON RANGERS

ROSE GENTLE has added her impressive and influential voice to the growing number of people of all faiths to stand up to the fascist bullies of the Green Brigade and their Bloodstained Poppy banner.

While Tom English, writing with passion and perception in the Scotsman, has launched a well aimed attack on the way Celtic have reacted to the whole affair.

Meanwhile, back in cloud cuckoo land - or the Scottish edition of the Times as it is officially known - an Odious Creep has used the row to turn on Rangers, and attack them for inviting military personnel to Ibrox.

Rose Gentle is of course the mother of Gordon - a Celtic supporting soldier - killed at the tender age of 19 while on active service in Basra.

Her campaigning vigour has made her a national figure throughout Britain, and her renown has spread to Europe, the Commonwealth, and across the Atlantic to America.

According to her, as quoted in the Daily Mail, Celtic chairman, The Baron Reid of Cardowan, should be writing to all the families who have suffered a loss to apologise for the infamous Bloodstained Poppy banner.

The subject of the investigation Celtic have announced through a club spokesman, with the promise of life bans if the culprits are discovered, has been what has caught of attention of the Scotsman's, English.

Now English has never shown any overt anti Celtic bias over the years he has worked in newspapers in both Ireland and Scotland, but he clearly feels the Parkhead club have failed to react with same speed and vigour to the Bloodstained Poppy banner as they have a number of times in the past three weeks to their perceived bias against the club by referees and the Scottish Football Association.

English, like Rose Gentle, wants to hear from either the Baron Reid of Cardowan, or Celtic chief executive, Peter Lawwell.

He also shows an impressive grasp of Irish history, pointing out the Sean South of Garryowen song which is a favourite, home and away, of the Green Brigade, pays homage to a man who had much in common with Adolf Hitler in his attitude to Jews. And that he didn't come from Garryowen.

Sean South that is. Hitler didn't come from Garryowen either, though he had plenty of supporters there.

Unfortunately no amount of rationale or historical fact will influence the terrorist supporters and zealots who sing in praise of the IRA and sully the Poppy.

The Poppy has never had any political significance. Or at least it didn't until these zealots highjacked it.

When it was adopted, the Poppy was - and for many continues to be - seen as a symbol to remind us all of the human cost of war.

And when it is worn, and when we join together in a silent and respectful act of Remembrance, what we are doing is paying heed to the words Rabbie, wrote about man's inhumanity to man making countless thousands mourn.

And so we move on to the one newspaper to try, in a tawdry way, to implicate Rangers in an affair which has nothing to do with them.

In the fast fading and increasingly obscure and marginalised Scottish edition of the London Times, their well known Rangers hating correspondent - known in the inky business as Odious Creep - produced an astonishing piece.

Now I know few people will be aware of this, due to the plummeting circulation - now in freefall - of the paper on this side of Hadrian's Wall since he joined it.

And as it is now behind a paywall, viewing it online costs cash few folk are willing to splash out to read Creep's drivel.

However, I am indeed indebted to an old Fleet Street colleague who now works for the News International organisation in London, for passing on Creep's witless words.

This is what appeared under his real name in Wednesday's Times.

"Rangers can sometimes hardly await their next opportunity to have military personnel parading on the pitch at Ibrox in full regalia. It doesn't take much calculation to know what's going on here."

Note the use of the word REGALIA, a description I have never heard used about what military personnel wear. It's UNIFORM,

However, to hoist Creep by his own petard, it doesn't take much calculation to know what's going on here.

Or to wonder why he made no mention of the fact the FA in England chose to have representatives of the three Armed Forces paraded on the pitch at Wembley and be presented to the England team before a recent international.

But more of Odious Creep and his flaccid organ - at least in Scotland - at a later date.

For the moment, the most powerful and relevant voice to join the debate about the Celtic supporters' Bloodstained Poppy banner, belongs to Rose Gentle.

And the angriest, but nevertheless sane and erudite pen, is that wielded by Tom English.