Football Association's stance on Tottenham Hotspur fans' use of the Y-word could create a bigger problem The Yid Dilemma has grumbled away like a dodgy appendix for years, but 10 short months after the Society of Black Lawyers's Peter Herbert demanded the prosecution of those who chant it and its variants - whether to celebrate their Jewishness or to show solidarity with Jewish compadre - the FA has taken the sort of decisive stance one expects. To its credit, the statement acknowledges that "language is a complex issue," and that "the use and meaning of words is constantly evolving." How very true this is. Once, the adjective "awful" was universally regarded as derogatory. In the light of Gary Lineker's clarification of his tweet about England's performance in Ukraine on Tuesday, it now means "really rather good." Equally, as some who attended this year's Professional Footballers" Association dinner struggled to comprehend, the use of the "n" word by a black American comic such as Reginald D Hunter is a little different, in context and intent, to racist abuse tripping from the mouth of John Terry towards Anton Ferdinand's ears. So it is with Tottenham fans and "Yid." It is by no means to all tastes, and not especially to mine. It makes uncomfortable listening for some, and I would (as I have done before) gently discourage its use out of sympathy for the parent pressured to explain historical anti-Semitism to a curious seven-year-old. Little interrupts the flow of a game like a lecture on the Cable Street riots. Whether mine is too diffident an attitude, and whether the threat of bans and court appearances is the wiser course, will soon become plain. When the FA warns Spurs fans that this is potentially a criminal offence, we must assume two things. Firstly, infantrymen in the "Yid Army" will cussedly meet this challenge to their honour by chanting more often and loudly than before. And secondly, the FA, interpreting that response as a challenge to its authority, will exert whatever pressure it can on the police to remove chanters from the ground and charge them under public order legislation. The ensuing show trial of between 18,000-25,00 defendants should have the late Josef Stalin slavering with envy. I suppose, being charitable, that the FA thinks it means well, although thinking is no more its strength than comprehending the meaning of language. The pedant, for instance, might take issue with the statement's contention that, by shouting the Y-word, "fans may be clouding the issue by making it harder to differentiate its use by these fans and by those who use the term in an intentionally offensive manner." Here we are back on Reginald D Hunter ground. If someone is incapable of discerning the tonal difference in racial nomenclature when spoken by 1) a black man from Georgia in the American south and 2) a white man from Barking in the county of Essex, what can you do for them? The answer to this unrhetorical question, it appears, is find them a sinecure at the FA, composing statements which anyone in possession of a double figure IQ appreciates are guaranteed to exacerbate the problem they are designed to alleviate.