Glasgow - Scotland with…

Being a fairly left-wing, anti-racist, liberal, homosexual atheist hasn't been easy these past few days here in Glasgow.

I am envious of the Muslims, the Pakistanis and the Indians - at least they know they need to watch out for themselves and can expect to be discriminated against, shunned, ignored or worse in the street.

Envious too am I of the idiots that have made a certain baggage handler a hero. For they know who to cheer for and who to boo for like children of the 40s and 50s watching a Western at the cinema.

From my perspective I really don't know who or what to cheer for - in fact I suspect there is no-one who deserves to be cheered and there is much more to be booed in the wake of the shoddy attempt at a terror attack last weekend in Glasgow.

I shall start with John Smeaton, the arsehole baggage handler, who now very much gets my sympathy for he knew not what he created when he opened his trap on Saturday evening.

He may well now regret his exaggeration of events on Saturday afternoon. I am convinced this tale of his own heroism was that of a blowhard. I am as certain as someone can be he did not hear either of the two attackers shout "Allah." I look forward to finding out if Strathclyde Police will put Mr Smeaton forward to the London Metropolitan Police's enquiry as a chief witness to the events of Saturday afternoon at Glasgow Airport - somehow I very much doubt it.

As a former journalist I personally wouldn't have touched Smeaton's quotes with a barge pole until I could have got them corroborated and to date no one has.

The mass wave of praise for Smeaton that has followed is bizarre but typical of our age. I believe Mark Tortolano who launched the original Smeaton fan-site did so with his tongue firmly placed in cheek, having recognised the arsehole element to Smeaton's over dramatisation of events.

Now Mr Tortolano seems to be awkwardly playing along on TV that the setting up of the website was an act of genuine appreciation and sentiment as he now has a battalion of readers on his site who clearly missed the irony - or rather chose to.

The reason for Smeaton's popularity is two fold and appeals to two different types of Glaswegians.

Smeaton is a useful caricature. He is what certain Glaswegians have as a romanticised view of themselves or at least where they think they came from. An ordinary working class guy in a job that requires manual work that gets your hands dirty - real work. A guy that likes to think he can handle himself, is willing to have a go, someone with a bit of schtick and swagger (or "gallus" as Glaswegians would say) and can be fairly humorous - whether intended or not.

Rather than acknowledge what Smeaton is - someone who fancied blowing their own trumpet or bum their chat on the telly - there has been a clamour to laud him, hold him up as your typical Glaswegian - as a warning to the world that Glasgow is still a bit mental - when really it's not anymore.

To hail Smeaton gives the suited and booted Southside Glaswegian guy sipping a nice Starbucks' tall skinny latte, working in the city centre as an inbound sales agent in a call centre some of his masculinity back.

The other Glaswegian who is happy to call Smeaton their hero is the worst of all. It is the Glaswegian who has always lived with a bubbling undercurrent of racism who has now found new justification to air their views freely.

These people believed Smeaton's tale unquestioningly, and joke about how lucky he was that he got to "smack a Paki" not only "while the cunt was burning" but also "right in front of the polis." And best of all he's a hero for it. The quotes are from an over heard bus conversation.

Since Saturday Strathclyde Police have had reports of 38 racially motivated crimes - apparently a huge surge in what they would normally have dealt with in four days. Eight of these crimes the police have been able to say occurred directly as a result of the Airport attack.

On Sunday, I myself witnessed an Asian door steward, who was wearing a turban, having to refuse some punters entry to the Glasgow Carling Academy and then call the police due to the level of racist abuse he was subjected to. Later that night I saw three Asian lads being refused entry, without question, to a gay nightclub too.

This is not mentioning some of the racist bile, snide comments and generally racist jokes that have been pouring fourth quite unashamedly over the past few days. I had believed for quite a while there was a horribly racist underbelly to Glasgow. Now I fear the city's lying on it's back letting anyone see it's true colours at the minute.

My awareness of how racist this city could be was whilst I went out with a Muslim lad for around six months - we were an odd looking couple, granted, I'm 6'4" and he was a whole foot shorter than I so we did attract some attention - being both mixed height and mixed race.

Out on Glasgow's gay scene there were constant sniggers, jibes and conversations stopping whenever you approached a bar as folk failed to change the subject in time. It was horrible and hurtful but obviously more so for my partner at the time because at the end of the day - it was him they were talking about - I just happened to be with him.

I realise this type of latent and overt racism exists throughout the UK and at all levels. The Celebrity Big Brother scandal earlier this year proved that - sadly - I think that was an opportunity missed. Had C4 shown the whole nasty affair in graphic detail we might actually have got a proper debate on race in this country - rather than everyone having their conscience salved by the fact Shilpa Shetty won. "See we're not racist - our favourite reality TV contestant is Asian."

To air your non-racist views in Glasgow at the minute - you do get a kind of curious look. Almost as if I'd just confessed to driving the Jeep Cherokee myself. Then - imagine, if you will, trying to explain the next part to the John Smeatons and fans of this world.

"I'm anti-racist but I'm anti-Islam too." The assumption is that if you don't hate the skin colour you don't reject the religion - which is of course tosh.

But then I'm living in a city where people can still be beaten or killed because of a divide within the shared religion of Christianity. So if many Glaswegians can't see they are pretty much exactly the same - then someone with a different skin colour and different religion has no chance.

Even though Scots Asians are doing their very best to fit in by picking up habits which are a source of great national pride. Seems male Scots of South Asian descent are 45 per cent more likely to suffer a heart attack than your average male of the same age in Scotland. How's that for integration - out doing the deep-fried Mars bar and Irn-Bru brigade. (Source BBC Scotland http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/edinburgh_and_east/6271786.stm)

But being anti-racist and anti-Islam, or more accurately anti-religion, makes you feel like you have few allies and sometimes don't know who you should be debating with first.

Do you debate with the racists so as to make sure an innocent Muslim doesn't get a kicking because it is believed they might be linked to al Qa'ida and terror plots? Or do you debate with the Muslims and the nasty, vindictive and cruel edge to their religion (as there is with nearly all religions) which readily preaches against me and my sexuality?

A religion that saw my young Muslim partner blackmailed into his second arranged marriage aged just 24 when his mother refused treatment for breast cancer until he agreed to go ahead and "stop all this gay nonsense."

As I said at the start there are more folk to be booed in the present scenario than cheered. Scotland, and particularly Glasgow, needs to look at its' race relations and figure out how to eradicate some deeply nasty and strongly held attitudes on race.

Racism seems to have been allowed to fester away throughout the generations in the West of Scotland as the Catholic community and Protestant community struggled to get along together.

The Catholic Church's outrageous stance against Catholic and Protestant children being educated together surely can't have helped to build an inclusive society in any way, perhaps not just exacerbating sectarianism it may well have distracted from the problems of race relations and for that they must hang their heads in shame.

The Muslim community and it's leaders need to look at teaching a softer, diet version of its religion which perhaps doesn't call judgement so harshly on those that do not conform to Islam.

Strangely there is a common bond between many racists, followers of Islam and the Christians - both Catholic and Protestant - each would all happily condemn me and my sexuality.

It is ludicrous for any sector of society to ask for protection from discrimination whilst it continues to preach against others itself.