WHEN the solution to problem is a one size fits all quick fix, you know you don’t actually have the answer. Not really.

Yes, you can be seen to be doing something, anything, but by the time your plan is put in place and you realise it doesn’t really work, it is too late.

Where the Offensive Behaviour at Football Act led, legislation that implements strict liability could now follow if some, including James Dornan MSP, who championed it in SportTimes this week, have their way.

The last thing that the Scottish FA and SPFL need is interference from Holyrood, though.

Football supporters have little enough faith in the Scottish FA and SPFL as it is without a divisive Government sticking its nose in. Our game doesn’t need party politics.

The idea that the OBFA would transform Scotland’s issues with sectarianism was flawed from the beginning and the notion that punishing clubs will stop misbehaviour within elements of their support is equally as mistaken.

Lifting football supporters out of the stands or barging through their front doors at dawn won’t change attitudes on either side of the religious divide.

And shutting stands or docking points from teams won’t prevent the mindless and the moronic from embarrassing themselves or dragging the names of their club and their fellow fans through the mud.

Football may give a platform to imbeciles, but Ministers should be wondering why they have their mentality in the first place. Forget what colours they wear, what is it about their schooling, their upbringing, their lifestyle, that means they think it is acceptable to behave in such a manner?

The overwhelming percentage of supporters are fair and law-abiding and there is not suddenly a crisis in Scottish football. Penalising the majority for the actions of the minority through strict liability isn’t the way forward, but naming, shaming and punishing those that step out of line, within current legislative framework, is.

Look at Celtic. UEFA have handed down that many fines over the last few years that Peter Lawwell would be as well setting up a direct debit straight to Nyon.

The Hoops have been punished for everything from pyrotechnics to Palestinian flags to pitch invaders. Fans were fully aware of what would happen under those strict liability rules, but they still acted in a manner that ensured their club was in the dock once again.

If the threat of fines, deductions or stadium closures was enough of a deterrent, then UEFA would never have a case to look at because fans across Europe would behave appropriately week in week out.

The type of idiot that thinks it is acceptable to throw a coin at a linesman, manager or player shouldn’t be inside a ground. Neither should those who sprayed ‘hang Neil Lennon’ outside Tynecastle or hung effigies of Rangers supporters and Orangemen from the Parkhead stands.

The mindset that leads people to such cowardly and crass acts cannot be comprehended but they are society’s problem as much as football’s and the game shouldn’t suffer because of Scotland’s ills.

Calum Spence didn’t deserve to be attacked during Livingston’s game with Rangers, and neither did Neil Lennon or keeper Zdenek Zlamalat Tynecastle or Alfredo Morelos at St Mirren this week.

If you believe that the motive behind the assault on Lennon was racism, then surely there will be an equal condemnation of the incident involving Colombian striker Morelos? Was Morelos targeted because of his colour or, as is more likely and as many believe in the Lennon and Zlamal cases, because an idiot with a short fuse and nothing between his ears lost whatever modicum of sense he had and took it out on the figure he hated in that instant?

How about the shameful abuse that Nacho Novo has had to endure whilst he was at Rangers and in the years since he retired? Is that a bitterness towards the Spanish or a football rivalry taken to the extreme and to completely abhorrent levels?

Were all of those incidents just moments of madness and unhinged stupidity by people that should not only be banned from the game but feel the full force of the Law? Or signs of deeper troubles within our country that can’t possibly be addressed by taking three points off in the Premiership?

Scotland’s problems - with sectarianism, violence and alcohol – are real and serious but they won’t be solved by targeting football. There is only so much that clubs can control, only so many times they can condemn.

The victims in these incidents are the innocent parties. The perpetrators are the only ones that should be punished, though.