Get off the roads

THIS is excellent news (Grand Lodge plans event to showcase Orange Order, Evening Times, August 27).

At last, a recognition – albeit a small one – that public roads are not the place for spouting your propaganda or message.

As I have said ad nauseum, the roads are for traffic, not marchers. No one has a right to march on our roads. Legal organisations (as well as other groups of individuals) have a legal right to assembly, but this does not have to take place on our roads.

It should be welcomed that the Orange Order are now able to book private venues so that they can control who does and who doesn’t have to see and hear what they have to say.

T in the Park, TRNSMT, Glasgow Whisky Festival, BBC Good Food Show, Glasgow Comic Con and Celtic Connections are all major events and assemblies which have successfully managed to take place in Glasgow without the need to march on public roads.

Now all we need are Gay Pride, Ban the Bomb, the say Aye/Naw to Independence, the anti-Fascist league, Friends of IRPWA, Scottish Recovery Consortium, the Scottish Republican Socialist Movement and the Scottish Amalgamated Committee to do likewise.

Hire a venue and keep your message for those who want to hear it and leave the rest of us in peace. Senga Blairy, posted online