A Blog by James Forrest for TSFM
I am a socialist, and as a socialist I believe in the fundamental goodness of people. Some people find that hard to believe when they read the stuff I write.
I published my first novel recently, on politics and the corrupting nature of it, and it is a deeply cynical book, a book where no-one has clean hands come the end. What has surprised some of those who’ve read it is that I didn’t focus on the lies and smears of the right, but the hypocrisy and deceit of those who claim to be of the left.
Corruption, you see, doesn’t respect political boundaries or points of view. It’s like rainwater. It finds every crack, and gets in there.
My political beliefs revolve around two apparently paradoxical elements; the belief in the inherent decency of people and the need for a strong, and powerful, state. I believe the second underpins the first, and this brings me into conflict with a lot of people, some on the left and some on the right. Too many people see the state as inherently evil, as something that interferes too much in the lives of ordinary people. As something suffocating.
Yet the state exists to protect us. It exists to provide a safety net. It exists to regulate and to oversee. If the state is made up of bad people, if the gears of society are captured by those with malicious or selfish intent, the results are obvious; war, corruption, chaos.
The vast majority of our problems in the modern age can be neatly summed up in two lines from Yeats’ poem “The Second Coming”, which I used to open my novel. “The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.”
We live in a time when those who are protecting their own interests have assumed such power that they’ve cowed the rest of us. They have become a law unto themselves. They have changed the nature of the game, because they have sapped our will to the extent some barely put up a fight anymore. The weak get weaker, and the strong use their strength to crush the rest even more. It is a vicious struggle, a downward spiral.
Society is held together not only by the endeavour and common interests of its citizens but by a collection of laws. We elect the people who make those laws. They do so in our name, and we can remove that right every four years. That is a powerful thing, and we do not appreciate it enough. The present corruption exists because we allow it to exist.
The people around me continue to puzzle over my uncommon interest in the affairs of a football club on the west of Glasgow. My own club plays in the east end. I tell those who ask that my primary interest in the goings-on at the club calling itself Rangers is no longer about football; how could it be, after all? With promotion this year they are still a full two divisions below us, emasculated, skint, weak and unstable. If we were fortunate enough to draw them in cup competition the match would be over, as a tie, by the halfway point … in the first half.
In footballing terms they are an utter irrelevance.
Rangers is more than a football club to me. They are a symbol. Their unfolding calamity is an on-going outrage. What is happening there, what is being allowed to happen, is an offense to decency. It is a stain on the face of our country.
In short, it is a scandal. It is a scandal without parallel in sport.
Yet it’s not just a sports story either. If it was, I might not be so focussed on it. What is happening at Rangers is a colossal failure of governance. It is a damning indictment against the very people who are supposed to oversee our game. It is a disgraceful abrogation of responsibility from those at the top, those who claim to be “running things.”
If this is not a failure of governance it is a result of corruption at the heart of our national sport. It says they are bought and paid for, and I will say no such thing here.
So let’s give them the benefit of the doubt. We’ll say instead that what they are is weak, indecisive, inept and disconnected from reality.
It reminds me of our political class, which has become insular and ignorant about what the public wants, and what it needs. It’s not a wonder parties like UKIP can achieve national vote shares of 25% at local elections. Nigel Farage strikes me as a dog-whistle politician, the kind who knows how to appeal to a select group of voters. He is little different to Charles Green, the man who beguiled Rangers fans into handing over large amounts of money, because he was “standing up for the club.” It is easy to do what he did, easy to do what Farage is doing.
Real leadership requires toughness. Say what you like about the Tories, but they have that in spades. Yeats was right about the worst being full of passionate intensity. Green was. Farage is. Cameron and Osborne personify it in their political outlook.
It is easy to be cowed by blunt force politics, and by “tough talking Yorkshire men” and venomous speeches about “strivers and skivers.” The politics of divide and conquer is the oldest form of politics there is, and it’s no surprise to see it practiced by some of the vested interests in the game here in Scotland. Yet, lest we forget … something significant happened last year. The maligned and the ignored, the weak and the voiceless found something they never realised they had. They discovered that, in a very real sense, the power was in their hands.
Last year, the fans rose up when the governing bodies and the media went all-out to save Rangers from the self-inflicted wounds caused by a decade of cheating, malpractice and ineptitude. I have no problem calling that what it was.
What happened at Rangers seemed incredible, but it was all too predictable, and some of us had been talking about it for years before it hit. The Association seemed caught in the headlights but it would amaze me if they really were as insular and ignorant as they appeared. They must have known how bad the outlook was for Rangers. They just chose to ignore it.
They were aided and abetted by a thoroughly disreputable media, a collection of cowards and compromisers, charlatans and frauds, masquerading as journalists, but who long ago laid aside any claim to be bold investigators and settled for commenting on events as they unfolded. More often than not, with their ill-informed opinions, sometimes due to weaknesses in intellect and others wilfully ignorant, they failed even in that.
Entire newspapers became PR machines for crooks and swindlers. They aided in the scam because they didn’t do their jobs, some because they were lazy, some because they were incompetent and others because they wanted a seat at the table and were willing to sacrifice whatever integrity they once had in exchange for one.
That all of this was embraced by the Rangers fans is amazing to me. They trusted when they should have been asking questions. They closed their eyes, covered their ears and sang their battle tunes at the top of their voices so they wouldn’t have to hear anything they didn’t like. As incredible as I found it then, and still find it now – and now, even more so, when they have already seen the results of it once – I find it pathetic too, and I do feel pity for some of them.
A lot of these people are genuine football fans, and nothing more. They have no interest in the phony narrow nationalism, or the over-blown religion, or the notion of supremacy which manifested itself in a ludicrous statement from McCoist when interviewed recently on Sky.
Some of the Rangers fans look at their team of duds, kids and journeymen, they look at a boardroom of cowards and crooks, they look at a failing manager in his first (and last) job in the game and at a dark future and are not in the least bit impressed by, or interested in, the chest-out arrogance espoused in those ridiculous words “we are the people.” They know full well that their present crisis was made by men like McCoist, and they understand that pretentious posturing is not an act born of strength, but a scrambling around in the gutter, and a symptom of weakness.
They understand their position, and they hate it. And because they care about Rangers, because they value the club, because they cherish those things that made it a great Scottish institution, they want that back. They understand that before the Union Jack waving, Sash singing, poppy wearing, Nazi saluting, Orange element became the public face of their support Rangers meant something else, and that, above all things, is what pains them the most.
People do not hate Rangers. When the country appeared to turn its back last year, they were turning the back on favouritism and the bending of rules. Yet it would be a lie to say that there is not an element of dislike in the gleeful mockery of many rival fans.
But they don’t hate Rangers either. They hate the version of it around which a certain section of the support continues to dance. They hate the version which hates, and so too do many, many, many Rangers supporters, and they definitely deserve better.
David Murray chose not to openly challenge that version. Indeed, he encouraged certain strands of it to flourish and grow, with his “Britishness Days” and his effort to turn the club into the “team that supports the troops.” Other clubs have done as much, if not more, for the British Army than the one that plays out of Ibrox. Other clubs have given more money. Other clubs have lent their support to those on the front lines. They just chose to do it with respect, and with class, and with dignity. They chose to do it in private, understanding that there eventually comes a tipping point between looking after the ends of the soldiers and using them to promote your own.
The army has not battened on to Rangers. Rangers has battened on to them, and although it is unclear when an altruistic motive became darker, what started out as a gesture of solidarity is now used to entrench division and promote a notion of superiority.
Craig Whyte took over from Murray and immediately understood the lure of the “dog whistle.” He knew too that the media would accept whatever he told them, without question, and as he spoke up for “Rangers traditions” he made sure the lunatic fringe was well onside. He met face to face with the hard-core extremists in the support first and made them his praetorian guard. They spoke up for him until the day the club entered administration.
So, whereas Murray pandered to them and Whyte used them to further his own ends, it was only a matter of time before someone suggested to Charles Green that he could use the same tactics to win over the support. He went even further and blatantly promoted and encouraged this mind-set, and stoked the hate and nonsense to frightening new heights. The same people who cheered Whyte to the rafters jumped on board the Big Blue Bus and the results are clear.
Through all of it, the ordinary Rangers fan has seen his club buffered against the rocks, battered, broken, smashed to smithereens and sunk. Now there’s a big hole in the side of the lifeboat, and they are terrified that further tragedies await.
They are right to be concerned. Much of the media is still not telling them what they need to know. The people in charge of their club – the owners who have lied, the former hack who covered up the truth about Whyte and now acts as a mouthpiece for Green, the “club legends” who are content to sup with the devil and take his greasy coin when they should be standing toe-to-toe with the fans – are trying to silence those members of the press who do have facts to present.
How many times now have media outlets been banned from Ibrox for daring to report the truth? The manager who demanded the names of a committee last year defends those inside the walls who are desperate to keep secret the things that are going on. He is either an unprincipled coward, or he is, himself, bought and paid for. The fans suffer for it.
The “inconvenient truth” is still being kept from them, and this denies them any chance to play an active role in their club. Indeed, it is all too possible that they’ve passed a point of no return, and that their club is heading for a new liquidation event and it can no longer be stopped.
In either case, their power has been eroded to the point at which they must feel they have nothing left to do but stand back and watch what happens next.
They are wrong. I am a socialist. I believe in the inherent good of people. I think the ordinary decent Rangers fans are the only people left who can save their club … and the means by which they will do it is as simple as it could be.
They must stand up for “big government.” They must embrace the need for a “strong state.” They must lobby the SFA, and they must trust the SFA and they must get the SFA to follow its own rules and thereby save them from any further harm.
There is a tendency amongst some Celtic fans to see our governing bodies as pro-Rangers. If it is true then those running our game are ruining Scottish football without benefiting the thing they love more. The incalculable harm that has been done to Rangers in the last 20 some months is a direct result of the subservient media and the willingness of the football authorities to be “deaf, dumb and blind.” Those who believe this has actually helped the Ibrox club have not been paying attention in class. It has irrevocably scarred them, and it may yet have played a hand in destroying them once and for all, as a force if not as a club entirely.
For years, the SFA sat and did nothing as a club in their association operated a sectarian signing policy. They did nothing whilst the fans sang sectarian songs. In their failure to act they strengthened those elements of the Rangers support, instead of isolating, alienating and eventually helping to eliminate those who saw that club as a totem pole of division and hate. Their failure over EBT’s, and their lack of scrutiny, led to one of the greatest scandals in the history of sport, and I say that with no equivocation at all. The testimony of their registrations officer in the Lord Nimmo Smith investigation was a disgrace and in years to come it will rank as one of the most disreputable and damaging moments in the association’s history.
The most egregious failures of all were the failures in the so-called “fit and proper person” tests, which allowed first Whyte and then Charles Green to assume controlling positions at Ibrox. They will pass the buck and say the responsibility lies with the club itself, in much the same way as they are content to let the club investigate itself at the present time, but any neutral who looks at this stance knows it is unprincipled and spineless. It’s like letting the defence set the terms at a trial. It is foxes investigating the chicken coop.
It is a blueprint for corruption, and a recipe for disaster.
It is now too late for the SFA to declare Green “unfit”, as it was too late when they finally slapped that title on Craig Whyte. He and his allies own Rangers, and they control its destiny. They can push the club to the wall if they choose, in the final extremity, if that gets them what they want. The time for changing that is past. The damage has already been done. The barbarians are not at the gates. They are inside the walls, and sacking the city.
The SFA will be forced to punish Rangers for the sins of the owners, for the second time in as many years, and whilst it is right that the club face up to that, all the better to send a message to other clubs and other owners, the SFA cannot be allowed to slither off the hook here as though this was none of their doing. Green will skip off into the sunset. Craig Whyte has yet to pay his fine. These people never cared about Scottish football and they don’t care now.
The SFA are supposed to. Our governing body is supposed to govern, for the good of the whole game, and not as a support system for a single club. What they have allowed to happen on their watch is absolutely shameful and if the people responsible were men at all, with any sense of accountability, they would resign en masse.
They can pretend ignorance, but only the truly ignorant would accept that. Craig Whyte was not inside Ibrox a week before RTC and other sites were dismantling his entire business history, with some of the people here doing the work the SFA would not. Whyte himself claims to have made the governing bodies aware of the scale of what was facing the club, and they did nothing at all. Heads should have rolled a year ago.
In October of last year, on this very site, I posted an article in which I wrote:
“Which isn’t to say the due diligence matter isn’t worrying, because, of course, it is. Again, no-one is going to convince me that the SFA has conducted proper due diligence on Charles Green and his backers. No-one will convince me they are satisfied that this club is in safe hands, and that the game in this country will not be rocked by a further implosion at Ibrox. They failed to properly investigate Craig Whyte, because of lax regulations requiring disclosure from the club itself, regulations which are just a joke, but they can be forgiven for that as the press was talking sheer nonsense about him having billions at his disposal, and a lot of people (but not everyone!) were either convinced or wanted to be convinced by him.
To have witnessed what Whyte did, to have witnessed the Duff & Phelps “process” of finding a buyer, and having Green essentially emerge from nowhere, with a hundred unanswered questions as to his background and financing, for the SFA to have given this guy the go ahead, only for it to blow up in their faces later, would annihilate the credibility of the governing body and necessitate resignations at every level. There would be no hiding place.”
There are times when it is fun to be right, but this is not one of them. It is dispiriting and disquieting to have been so on the nose. It scares the Hell out of me, as someone who loves football in this country, to have seen this matter clearly when the people running our game apparently either did not or chose to ignore very real, very obvious, concerns. The Internet Bampots had no special insight or access to information that was denied those at the SFA. We just weren’t prepared to ignore it and pretend that it wasn’t there. There was too much at stake.
I have become convinced that things will never change until the Rangers supporters join us in demanding the full and unabridged truth here. They need to come out from under the bed, and confront their fears. They need to be willing to take the consequences, so that their club can emerge clean from this, and start again, with all this behind them.
And it can all happen with one simple thing. The application of the rules.
The existence of laws comes down to a simple principle; they protect society from those elements within it who are interested only in their own selfish ends. We may cry out at those rules and regulations we see as “restrictive”, but the law was not made to restrict our freedoms but to protect them. Had the SFA years ago acted against Rangers sectarian signing policy, and the songs from the stands, the club would not have mutated to the point where there was no help on hand when they needed it the most. Let’s not kid ourselves about this; Whyte and Green were only able to grab control because the club itself has a dreadful image which put off respectable and responsible buyers. The SFA could have helped change that perception years ago and did nothing.
The SFA could have conducted its own investigation into who Craig Whyte was. They could have asked David Murray for full disclosure when he was running up £80 million of debt, a sum of money that is beyond belief for a single club in a small provincial backwater league. Had they had the guts to do that the club would never have spent itself into oblivion and forced the hand of Lloyds, which led indirectly to their ignominious end.
The SFA could have fully investigated Charles Green and the means by which he took control, instead of rushing through a license. His emergence at the last minute was transparently suspicious and designed to force them into a quick decision, but they did not have to bow to that pressure by making one, without being in possession of the facts, as it is now 100% clear they were not.
Had they asked for every document, had they insisted on legal affidavits and personal securities from investors (and this would have been perfectly legitimate and is common place in other licensing areas) none of this would have come to pass. After Craig Whyte they had a moral responsibility to the rest of the game to get this one right and their failure is without parallel in the history of Scottish football.
As the club hurtles towards a new abyss, names are cropping up which should send a shudder down the spines of every honest, genuine supporter of not only Rangers but every team in the land. The SFA claims that a strong Rangers is essential for the sake of Scottish football, but they have been extraordinarily lax in protecting that club, and therefore the game, from destructive elements. Craig Whyte and Charles Green had dubious personal histories, and the acquisition of the club itself was mired in controversy and scandal. Yet it was allowed.
Neither Green nor Whyte were known to have operated outside the law, yet neither was worthy of trust or stood up to scrutiny. Neither man should ever have been granted the status as fit and proper persons to assume a role in our national sport, and if it is true of them what can we say about the three men who are, presently, being touted as the Great White Hopes for a bright, new Rangers future; Dave King and the Easdale brothers?
King recently cut a deal with the South African government over an on-going dispute over taxes. In other words, he pled guilty and accepted the central plank of their argument; that for years he was engaged in wilfully with-holding vast revenues from their Treasury. The media does not like to put it like that, and the SFA seems willing to ignore it utterly, and this would be scandalous enough. But it does not stop there. HRMC rules – as well as the SFA’s own governance documents – actually bar him from serving on the board of the new club.
Last but not least, aside from being an admitted tax cheat, King is also awaiting trial in South Africa, having been indicted for corruption, forgery and fraud – 300 charges in total. Yet as recently as last week, we were told that the Association was willing to look at him and consider representations from his lawyers. This is almost beyond belief.
If Dave King’s position is untenable, and he is yet to be convicted of a crime, what can we say about the position of the Easdale’s? One of the two brothers, Sandy, has already served jail time. He is a convicted criminal, a fraudster nonetheless, who’s “victim” was the same Treasury who are appealing one case involving the old club and liquidated it entirely over another. This is precisely the kind of “businessman” the fit and proper person test was supposed to weed out, and if the SFA holds its nose here the reek will stink out the halls at Hampden for decades. If King or the Easdale’s are judged fit and proper, then who exactly is the test for? What exactly do you have to do to fail it? How do we explain the existence of laws, when these are not applied?
Pascal says “Law without force is impotent.” The SFA’s weakness has allowed one version of Rangers to destroy itself, and has allowed an existential risk to another. If the next power at Rangers resides in South Africa or Greenock I can say with some certainty that the Association is engaged in an even more dangerous roll of the dice, because the surfacing of fresh scandal will be an ever present risk, and will be of the sort no-one will survive.
The damage to Scottish football will take years to heal. The Scottish game has been through enough trauma. It does not need more. It barely survived the last calamity to hit Rangers. The rest of us should not be forced to pay the price of the next one.
The greater damage will be done to Rangers itself. If the Green crisis ends in another collapse – as it well might; another administration event is a certainty, and another liquidation is a much more likely prospect than it was before 14 February 2012 – the club will once again have to start from the bottom, and this time the reputational damage will be impossible to repair. The club faces internal strife, sporting sanctions, and criminal investigations. The last takeover might be declared a fraud. the Whyte takeover will almost certainly be. The share issue might be invalid, as well as criminal, and the people involved may well end up in jail. Lawsuits could follow from investors, there could be as yet unknown consequences from the Upper Tier Tax Tribunal (thank you Brogan Rogan for pointing out what those might be) and a host of other issues.
Rangers fans must be the loudest voices here. How do you want the world to view your club in years to come? Do you want one to be proud of, or one forever associated with the shame and disgrace of these days gone by? The one which bailed out on its tax obligations. The one with supporters who disgrace your very name. The one which allowed Whyte and Green to take you to the cleaners and send you to the wall. The one which handed over control to one convicted criminal and another awaiting trial. Do you want to be reborn clean, or mired in the muck?
David Murray destroyed your financial stability. He made it so no bank would issue you a line of credit and no investor of note wanted to buy. Craig Whyte liquidated you. Charles Green has cast the future of the Newco into doubt and acted in a manner which has annihilated your credibility with the financial markets for decades to come.
Between these three men, they have taken everything from you, and the press and the people who run the game here, as well as some of your own blindly ignorant fans, have allowed them to do all this and more. Now they conspire to hand the keys to Ibrox to other men of questionable character, who will wreck further havoc on the reputation of the club.
The Scottish Football Association has damaged the game it was supposed to protect, but above all else their greatest failure of governance was a failure to protect one of its biggest clubs from its own excesses and those of its owners.
Rangers fans, the SFA have betrayed your trust, more than the trust of any other club. What you must insist on now is full disclosure and transparency from the powers that be in Hampden. The SFA has to end the charade of allowing your club to handle this in-house. They must hand everything over to an outside agency – whether a legal one, or a footballing body like UEFA – and they must demand co-operation and answers, and threaten to withhold the license if they don’t get them.
You must not be afraid of that. You must embrace it. The men with their hands on the gears at Ibrox are motivated by money, and nothing more. If the license is withdrawn their “investments” are worthless. They cannot risk that.
You must demand that the rules on fit and proper persons are applied, and where necessary even made stronger, to prevent your club falling into unclean hands. You must demand that they protect your reputation from further damage, by getting this all out there and acting accordingly, even if that means your club does not play football for at least a year.
You must be willing to suck it all up, knowing that what will emerge is a Rangers which has been cleansed and moves forward with honour, and dignity, led by custodians who treasure it rather than those who know the cost of everything and the value of nothing.
The Rangers Standard has recently emerged as a genuine voice for those in your support who are sick and tired of what Rangers has become, and want it restored to something that is worthy of the love and respect in which you hold it. On that website, there are discussions about the kind of club you seek to be and about whether the institution of Rangers is about more than just football.
If that’s how you feel about it then you know it is about more than how many titles the club can claim, about more than just results on the park, about more than just the game. Rangers, like Celtic, is an idea. It has to be something you are proud of.
I am a socialist, but one with a fevered imagination and a tendency to write very dark things. This piece won’t have been good reading for some of you (perhaps all of you haha!) but I think there’s more hope in here than in other things I’ve written.
In spite of everything that’s come to pass, I still believe. I believe in Scottish football. I believe in our system of football governance, even if those who are working in it are failing on some level.
In society, as much as we strain against them, laws exist for our protection. To fail to enforce them is to leave us at the mercy of those elements who would do us harm. The rules of football ensure the protection of all clubs, not just a few.
The failure to enforce the rules has never had graver consequences than here in Scotland. The irony is that bending and breaking them has hurt the one club those violations were designed to help. It cannot be allowed to happen again.
The rules must be applied without fear or favour.
The best must find their conviction, and their passionate intensity once more.
James is a co-editor of the On Fields of Green Blog http://www.onfieldsofgreen.com/
Cap doffed James
OMG and I’ve been talking about Leonard Cohen!! James, magnificent!!
jean7brodie says:
Tuesday, May 14, 2013 at 00:03
J7b – huge mince flying around – no idea who what is true – best to assume all guided rotten characters
Let’s give`em rope – see what’s betrayed in time
JF – First Class!
I had a mate “like rainwater”. I decided not to use the next sentence on James piece 🙂 you’ll get the picture
Well said that man.
I am almost lost for words James. That is the most inspiring thing that I have read in a long time.
It is time to rise!
Come on James. Don’t sit on the fence. Tell us what you really think of the MSM 🙂
A Blog by James Forrest for TSFM
”……Entire newspapers became PR machines for crooks and swindlers. They aided in the scam because they didn’t do their jobs, some because they were lazy, some because they were incompetent and others because they wanted a seat at the table and were willing to sacrifice whatever integrity they once had in exchange for one….”
——–
Possibly for many, and certainly for me, one of the key statements in this excellent post, referring as it does to the great evil of the covering-up and protection of wrong-doing.
As said before, what RFC did , and what RIFC are doing, is horribly wrong.
The protection afforded to these by the Footballing ‘authorities’ is scandalously evil in its potential for destruction..
“If this is not a failure of governance it is a result of corruption at the heart of our national sport.”
The result is still the same. The game is still bent in favour of one team. Why would ANY football fan in this country pass through the turnstiles to help perpetuate this sham?
“I am a socialist…”
___________________________________
Excellent blog. You have my vote should you ever decide you need it.
Great article James, if a tad overlong. My fear is that one of these days someone is going to start reading this whilst the present Rangers is still in existence but by the time he or she is finished, the club may well have gone bust again.
But it sums up what has been wrong all along, since the day the old club was placed into administration. That is, Rangers is dead; until everyone accepts that, we can’t move forward. So far only two entities have accepted that, UEFA and the Scottish football supporters.
The others pretend that it was just some sort of transplant – an incubator job if you like – and that Rangers is back in business, tending to the sporting needs of The People. Those others include Rangers fans not surprisingly – any football fan in their shoes would do the same if so encouraged – but the most shameful ones perpetrating this myth are the Scottish sporting press including the publicly owned national broadcaster which continued this week with its unending series of biased programmes – Sportsound Extra – which featured two Rangers fans in Kenny McIntyre and Graham Speirs plus an Irishman called English who is always welching on the game he loves in the Scotsman.
Where is the balance in those sorts of programmes where supposedly neutral and educated men take huge offence at the truth (“unbroken history”) and say not a jot about the white supremacist rallying cry “We are The People” ?
Even tonight we have Alasdair Lamont on the BBC Website talking up the two Welsh clubs in the EPL next season and talking down the league he is supposed to be writing about.
All of these guys should front up and be honest – “our jobs depend on getting Rangers back in the top flight” should be how they start and finish every single article they write/post/broadcast. Then at least the interested sports fan can know what vested interest these people have when they do so.
Rangers, too big, two fails
Not sure who’s posts are longer yours or BRTH
A wonderfully written piece James…a piece I made add that is deserving of a wider audience…
therampantbaron says:
Tuesday, May 14, 2013 at 00.54
“Rangers, too big, two fails……”
——-
Nice one.
‘McCoist has held a series of meetings with interim chief executive Craig Mather to thrash out his player budget, but money is tight.’
‘With the club losing £1million a month there will be no big-money arrivals in Govan for the foreseeable future, so the manager knows he will have to do some wheeling and dealing in the transfer market.’
‘McCoist, above, will be forced to cut costs by ditching big earners such as Doran Goian and Carlos Bocanegra, while other squad players including Sebastien Faure and Anestis Argyriou could find themselves surplus to requirements.’
‘The days of the likes of Emilson Cribari, Ian Black and Dean Shiels arriving on big money are over.’
‘Rangers will not be able to register any new faces until their SFA transfer embargo ends on September 1, but a pre-contract deal has already been agreed with Kilmarnock keeper Cammy Bell.’
…And how do they propose to deal with haemorrhaging £1m per month? That’s right folks…
‘Now McCoist plans to bring in another eight players to strengthen the Light Blues’ challenge in the Second Division and the three domestic cup competitions.’
http://www.express.co.uk/sport/football/399432/Ally-McCoist-must-work-in-bargain-basement?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+daily-express-scotland+%28Daily+Express+%3A%3A+Scotland+Feed%29
Bravo.
Simply Bravo.
If only the true Rangers fans could find a unified response to reject the exploitation of the spivs, money grabbers, corrupt regulators and compliant MSM. As a Celtic fan every word resonates with me, great piece.
bhoyant says:
Tuesday, May 14, 2013 at 01:10
” If only the true Rangers fans could find a unified response ….”
——–
They have nothing and nobody to focus on as unifying force. They have been shafted by not only yorkshire and/or M’well born shysters and Del-boy types, but by their very own people , and continue to be shafted by the brown brogues and tight collar brigade who tell them nothing but untruths.
They have no Fergus McCann, for example, who in a straightforward, absolutely up-front, no nonsense, business-like manner produced his plan, showed the money, exercised tight control of every penny, bashed a few heads together, and got a really positive response when people saw that he was genuine, and no carpet-bagger.
When those Celtic fans who were opposed to him look at what happened to the now dead RFC they bow their heads in personal shame, and lift them again to salute Fergus in gratitude.
Excellent post James, MSM hacks should be forced to read it before submitting any more of their sycophantic ill informed pish!
Just finished The Believers on Kindle and I can recommend it to all. Look forward to more from a fine Scottish author.
Excellent piece James. More later on harnessing our anger and frustration at the SFA but in the meantime a philosophical look at events from a heightened Rangers perspective.
And a woman spoke, saying, “Tell us of Pain.”
And he said:
Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding.
Even as the stone of the fruit must break, that its heart may stand in the sun, so must you know pain.
And could you keep your heart in wonder at the daily miracles of your life, your pain would not seem less wondrous than your joy;
And you would accept the seasons of your heart, even as you have always accepted the seasons that pass over your fields.
And you would watch with serenity through the winters of your grief.
Much of your pain is self-chosen.
It is the bitter potion by which the physician within you heals your sick self.
Therefore trust the physician, and drink his remedy in silence and tranquillity:
For his hand, though heavy and hard, is guided by the tender hand of the Unseen,
And the cup he brings, though it burn your lips, has been fashioned of the clay which the Potter has moistened with His own sacred tears.
(The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran)
James
As I scrolled through your piece I did have a feeling of ‘when is this going to end’. Yet still I scrolled and read and recognised the passion in your words as well as the frustration. You’ve provided a suitable underpinning of why we come here to read and exchange ideas and the potential that this has. More, you’ve painted in a backdrop that might make all this not just pertinent to ardent football supporters but humble fans like myself and others with only a passing interest in ‘fitba’.
Eventually, when I seen I was nearing the end of the piece, you enlisted your pretext to make the salient point. This is not a fight with the Rangers fans, it is a fight for them.
You note that perhaps the tide is turning and there is some hope that something can be snatched from the jaws of defeat, be it victory or at the very least, survival. There may still be the opportunity, however unpalatable, for Rangers to save themselves. For at the end of it all there will have to be a reconciliation. If we condemn others irrevocably we fail to recognise, to use the well worn phrase, ‘There but by the grace of god, go I’.
Charlotte Fakeovers (@CharlotteFakes) says:
Monday, May 13, 2013 at 15:16
Charlotte, I hope you will understand my and others scepticism. The subject matter dealt with by this blog and its predecessor has been complex and convoluted. The characters involved have sought to obscure their actions and deploy tactics that make us critical of any information we acquire. This is the nature of the environment you have entered.
Your contribution is recognised as valuable.
Events will unfold themselves and this blog has and will play a role in how they are played out. This may appear a presumptious remark but I beleive it to be true. However perhaps you can assist in making that conclusion satisfactory.
Like you, we (whoever ‘we’ are) do not have a neatly ordered cache of information. It exists among many contributors who act singularly and in concert for what they beleive to be a noble end. So ‘we’ cannot interact in a manner that is straightforward. Instead our enquiries are varied as are the skills we possess in processing information. So requesting information from you may benefit from a simple protocol.
We will ask you one question at a time, then await a response. We will then discuss and digest that response before asking the next question. Different people will ask different types of questions and each response will alow them to build up their own personal understanding. Bit by bit we can assemble the jigsaw of pieces into something that is comprehensible.
So I’ll go first by restating an enquiry made to you earlier. Do you know the approximate date when the audio clip you posted was recorded and if so, what was that approximate date?
Would that be James ‘Tolstoy’ Forrest? 😉
Interesting piece – and it would be even more interesting to get a ‘journalist’ response.
In reply to earlier query about my source for Darryl Broadfoot quotes – was on BBC website on an articke by Stuart Bathgate and Tom English and in quotation marks. I am on smartphone and can’ t copy and paste or link to original
Great read James, not one thing in there that i’d disagree with!
regarding the good ol’ MSM, when challenged on all the information available online and why they aren’t aware of it, they usually tell you ” I don’t read blogs online” or “Internet Bampots”?? It’s as if the whole of the SMSM is determined not to utilise this great info tool called the internet?? How a supposed journalist can state this is baffiling to me?
I would bet taht nearly all Celtic fans, infact most Scottish football fans, would tell you that the MSM and SFA is where their real anger lies not with rfc,rifc,trfc, at all?
Get this out to as many people as possibloe!
Cheers and Hail Hail
Brilliant post James and very apt to use Yeats ‘The Second Coming’.Perhaps a couple of other lines from it also have resonence in the Sevco saga.’Things Fall Apart,The Centre Cannot Hold’ and for all who read/contribute to TSFM, Surely Some Revelation Is At Hand’.
jean7brodie says:
Tuesday, May 14, 2013 at 00:21
OMG and I’ve been talking about Leonard Cohen!! James, magnificent!!
————————————————————-
Jean, I give you Cohen’s song for any good people (not sure who they are, but there will be some) who are involved in bad things, who I hope at some point will find the courage to do the right thing in all of this
I smile when I’m angry
I cheat and I lie
I do what I have to do to get by
But I know what is wrong, and I know what is right
And I’d die for the truth
In my secret life
Traynor,Spiers et al will stop reading TSFM what with Yeats and Kahlil Gibran featuring. Pure class by the way!
TW(@tartanwulver)
Been to see the great man a few times in the last couple of years. Still going strong at nearly 80 years of age!
Good to hear you are Cohen fan Jean B.
Saw him in Brisbane a couple of years ago. He was on stage for nearly 3 hours with only a couple of 10 minute breaks. Easily the best concert of my entire life.
Excellent blog from James Forrest. Keeping to the political theme it’s sad to say the Big Hoose Must Stay Open Party are still way out in front in the opinion polls.
It all reminds me so much of middle England at the time of the Falklands crisis. As long as the rest of the world was told in no uncertain terms Britannia still ruled the waves, they remained largely blind to the industrial wreckage taking place in front of their very eyes.
The Audio Clip provided by @CharlotteFakeovers has been picked up by the Herald. http://www.heraldscotland.com/mobile/news/home-news/green-and-whyte-audio-clip.21076330
StarOfStein
James, excellent read . In summary , SFA=Rangers = FUBAR.
People create change , the SFA because of the above and it’s personnel are incapable therefore will be sidelined to run semi-professional and youth football. The only hope is for an expanded SPL with a strict rule book which is enforced, the SFA are a busted flush.
The Ramgers support are blighted by forelock tugging tendencies to their owners in the big house , which when fronted by an atrocious media, you have the seeds for self destruction, which is what we are witnessing at the moment.
There is no hope for the SFA and Rangers , I believe that the SPL clubs recognise the failed organisation that is the SFA and will do more of their own thing in the future.
James, absolutely ,bloody fantastic piece. Well thought out, well written and well done sir.
One would hope that the SPL clubs who read this and the Journo’s who also visit this blog will take the positive thrust of James’s piece and decide there does need to be a different approach from the SFA…SFL..the clubs and the MSM to this debacle at Govan…
The thing is, will any RIFC,TRFC supporters take heed of this post? IMHO the answer is no. So it’s full speed ahead and hurtling towards oblivion they go.
@James
“They understand their position, and they hate it. And because they care about Rangers, because they value the club, because they cherish those things that made it a great Scottish institution, they want that back. They understand that before the Union Jack waving, Sash singing, poppy wearing, Nazi saluting, Orange element became the public face of their support Rangers meant something else, and that, above all things, is what pains them the most.”
At one point I think you refer to ‘many, many, many’ Ibrox fans who are against the above. To be honest though, I’m really not sure how many are in favour of dismantling the apparatus of sectarianism. The Union Jack waving is justified with, ‘it’s our national flag’; Sash singing is labelled, ‘celebrating our Irish heritage’ and invoked in Glasgow whataboutery; naming poppy wearing would be used to identify you as an unpatriotic Rangers hater; Nazi saluting has been interpreted as the supposedly more ‘benign’, Red Hand salut (more Irish heritage); and the Orange element as a celebration of still more obscure, Dutch-English-Irish history. So, it can all be cleverly disguised behind another label.
It’s all completely bonkers, including sadly, the modern abuse of the Poppy Appeal which the powers that be have re-branded as something altogether different from the tribute to the fallen in The Great War. But that discussion has been run and re-run.
Yes, the SFA, and the club itself, should have stopped this decades ago. How on earth any genuine football supporters reform their club back into a sports club is beyond my ken. The recent reports of the horrific violence meted out to a few innocents in a so-called Rangers Supporters Club across the Irish Sea only shows what normal people are up against.
Good Morning Scotland
Due to fly out on holiday today and still some things to do ,but went onto the TSFM for a quick read ,and what a read that was James ,worthy of the whole of Scotish football to give the longest standing ovation ,if ever the Rangers fans needed to know what or where the ancedote to their everlasting pains was going to come from ,it arrived this morning through this brilliant discection of their ailments and the medicine might not be nice ,it never is when something is so bad ,but they only have to screw the cap of the bottle and swallow that first spoonfull,to the good Rangers fans ,enjoy your recovery.
Excellent post.
Good post for the most part, but I find myself a bit uncomfortable with the introduction of politics into the post.
I don’t care if James is a socialist. I care that he is a football fan who cares about the integrity of the game and a well informed and talented writer.
I have no love for the tories, but this site is supposed to be for all football fans and this post could discourage a lot of fans from getting involved here.
A football fan is a football fan. As long as they support the principle of sporting integrity and get behind their club for the sake of the club only, that’s enough. Nobody has the right to bring politics into football.
Linking the support of football clubs with politics has caused enough problems in Scotland. We need to break that link completely and not just water it down to non-violent differences.
Well done, James, an excellent read.
And so we wait with fresh hope for the emergence of what is good in the society to which you speak.
Is this article finished yet so that the unrelated stream of comment can recommence?
Good Morning,
Excellent article by James Forrest which covers a lot ( Briggsbhoy James’ post are longer than mine– hard to believe but true lol ).
A couple of points stick out for me.
Over the course of the last couple of years I have seen many people being classed as Rangers haters for merely commenting on the position at Ibrox.
For a start most comments are not actually about the position at Ibrox– but the position of the MSM or the SFA when it comes to the situation at Ibrox.
Whether deliberately or otherwise, many pressmen cannot avoid the fact that they wrote articles that were completely misleading and are now shown to have been designed to misinform the readers– and in particular Rangers fans.
Craig Whyte was not a Multi- Billionaire and could be easily shown not to be.
There was no money available for any “war chest” for players.
Administration was never going to be short, sharp and successful.
The EBT scandal– was that there were in fact EBT’s in play and they were kept hidden and not fully disclosed– AND– that their very existence — legal or otherwise — put the football club in jeopardy.
Lastly– and perhaps biggest of all— there was total reluctance to accept that David Murray imperilled and played financial Russian roulette with the hopes and aspirations of a football club and its support. In truth, Murray was ably aided and abetted by the crazies who were in charge of the Bank of Scotland at the time– but don’t get me started on that– as we are all still suffering from their ineptitude and lack of foresight– as well as their desire to cover up the warnings they were given by many in the financial know.
However, what does make sports fans angry, is the underhand way the SFA and others tried to bend the rules and so reverse the natural order of things once the calamity at Ibrox was discovered.
Had they came straight out and said ” We cannot allow this to happen to Rangers” or ” We don’t want this to happen to Rangers” and had been plain about it and put it to a vote voluntarily then that MIGHT just have been ok as the clubs would have voted and had their say.
Instead, however, what happened was that they tried to enforce the desire to save Rangers from a pre determined course accepted by all clubs, by attempting a dirty wee deal behind the scenes– and surprise surprise— people didn’t like that!
Oh People didn’t like Whyte or his business tactics and obfuscation. They didn’t like Green and his repeated ludicrous claims and boasts which appeared to be without substance and they didn’t like Murray’s cavalier use of the Bank of Scotland’s money to essentially “fix” Scottish Football in the short term.
All of that is very different to hating Rangers and the clubs fans.
The press have been very poor at times– maybe they will be better in future– who knows?
Jean B has made more than a passing reference to the wonderful words and lyrics of Mr Leonard Cohen who is as lyrical a mystic as there is. Cohen,despite a reputation for the dirgeful, is a very funny and amusing man– often poking fun at both himself and the failings of humanity.
He has a deep religious outlook in life, and when he consigned himself to a monastery for a few years to meditate and recover from illness, his long term agent took the opportunity to follow his own religious experience by breaking his trust and stealing all his money!
When it comes to his lyrics, he may just have inadvertently penned some words which spell out the fears and concerns the rest of us have about the attitude of the SFA and perhaps Campbell Ogilvie in particular when it comes to dealing with all of this in a fair minded open and transparent manner.
I set these out below:
If you want a lover
I’ll do anything you ask me to
And if you want another kind of love
I’ll wear a mask for you
If you want a partner
Take my hand
Or if you want to strike me down in anger
Here I stand
I’m your man
If you want a boxer
I will step into the ring for you
And if you want a doctor
I’ll examine every inch of you
If you want a driver
Climb inside
Or if you want to take me for a ride
You know you can
I’m your man
Ah, the moon’s too bright
The chain’s too tight
The beast won’t go to sleep
I’ve been running through these promises to you
That I made and I could not keep
Ah but a man never got a woman back
Not by begging on his knees
Or I’d crawl to you baby
And I’d fall at your feet
And I’d howl at your beauty
Like a dog in heat
And I’d claw at your heart
And I’d tear at your sheet
I’d say please, …………please
I’m your man
And if you’ve got to sleep
A moment on the road
I will steer for you
And if you want to work the street alone
I’ll disappear for you
If you want a father for your child
Or only want to walk with me a while
Across the sand
I’m your man
ptd1978 says:
Tuesday, May 14, 2013 at 08:22
It was a bit too self congratulatory for my taste, but I’m sure it plays well with the target audience, assuming they managed to finish the article.
For the sake of clarity I’d rather the same article by the same author was edited to half the length. James Forrest has put out some cracking pieces in the past, but I found any good points made within this one are strangled by numbing length, superfluous moralising and irrelevant politics.
Since Night Terror gave me a cue………
On the CharlotteFakeover issue, I tweeted last night that we should be extremely careful about the information being offered up – and here’s why.
CF mailed me in confidence with some information. A couple of anomalies, one in particular, arose which called into question the provenance if not the veracity of the information. I have asked CF to clear that up.
If wrong I am happy to admit it, and I will if necessary, however at the moment, I think the information should be treated with extreme scepticism.
Was exactly the same on RTC and that seemed to work. If it ain’t broke…
Fantastic post. When this is all over, it will be clear that it was only possible because of the collusion of the SFA. In retrospect, this will not be not surprising: the president is not only a ‘Rangers man’, but was a key player in setting up the scandal. A strong SFA that was not fundamentally corrupt would have nipped this in the bud years ago.
Humble Pie says:
Tuesday, May 14, 2013 at 00:35
OK.
You’re inspired by the article, inspired enough to comment that it is time to rise.
What do you propose?
If you believe in the fundamental goodness of people, why the need for a strong state?
And why are your personal politics in any way relevant to the RFC scandal? Does one have to be a socialist to be outraged at what has and is still going on?
Sorry, James, I usually like your stuff but this feels a bit indulgent and not particularly relevant.
New information is just emerging in the form of new recordings and what looks like a panicked and unintentionally revealing response from the SFA director of comms…
…with the greatest respect I think a post analysing these new developments might have been better- shorter perhaps, but more relevant in terms of moving the story on.
An excellent blog James. It reminds us of two major facets of this saga.
The first is how what started as a crisis at a football club became far wider reaching. Who would have imagined when they first read RTC’s forensic analysis of the tax risk faced by Rangers, towards the end of 2011, that the story would end up raising fundamental questions of not just those governing our sport but also of those responsible for administering the law, of those governing this country and of our MSM and their failure to query and challenge those in power. Not only the reputation of Scottish football but also Scotland itself has been sullied by this saga.
But if that was unforseeable then so was the reaction of the Rangers fans. Their club received the benefit of a “soul transplant” from the authorities, an approach to the rules unprecedented and unprincipled. The only punishments have been either meaningless or as near as damn it (fines on bust companies, transfer embargoes expiring before transfer windows close) while findings of law have seen judgments extraordinarily sympathetic to the club (FTT, LNS).
Despite all this assistance, their fans have appeared willing to accept propaganda peddled in the MSM. Their club has been given a kicking. Not by those obviously culpable, SDM, Whyte, Green but by other clubs, simply because supporters of other clubs were not prepared to accept a travesty where a club could break the rules, go bust and still end up in the top flight.
What does a club stand for? What do Rangers fans think of as the “brand values” of their club? Is it supremacy, entitlement, bigotry, ideology imported from a bitter dispute outwith Scotland? Or do they wish a club that stands for decency, honesty, transparency, for upholding the rules, for a word the Traynors of this world mock because they have no respect for it, namely integrity? There is an opportunity for Rangers fans to see a club emerge from the ashes that is a far, far better club than the one it has been in the recent past. To start, they simply need to ask what do they want, what are they prepared to accept? If they speak loudly enough they will be listened to. Even those who struggle to have any principle will not ignore one. Money talks.
Thank you James you have showing how to write an article of great substance without fear or favour. The fans of the old rangers should read this without fear and act on it.
Night Terror says:
Tuesday, May 14, 2013 at 08:40
3 3 Rate This
ptd1978 says:
Tuesday, May 14, 2013 at 08:22
James Forrest has put out some cracking pieces in the past, but I found any good points made within this one are strangled by numbing length, superfluous moralising and irrelevant politics.
__________________________________________________________________________
NT
I suspect most people prefer the company of frailty to perfection any day.
Cut him some slack.
Cheers
Some people just fail to read a situation correctly,if you go fishing and do not catch anything one day and return the next and the next and keep using the same bait come the end of the week you will still have caught the same as on day one,what should you have done after day one,clue here is this is now no longer just about football it might have been on day one ,from day two the politicians got involved ,fact.
” who are content to sup with the devil and take his greasy coin when they should be standing toe-to-toe with the fans”
They should be fighting the fans??? Surely you mean shoulder-to-shoulder, not toe-to-toe?
myohmy1 says:
Tuesday, May 14, 2013 at 06:18
“Still going strong at nearly 80 years of age”
I think the fact that you are still going to concerts at your age is fantastic. 🙂
Brogan Rogan Trevino and Hogan says:
Tuesday, May 14, 2013 at 08:38
On length of pieces you could be right there.
On another note why is it when reading the lyrics from the LC song that I find myself each time I get to I’m your man” I end up in the tune associated with a Wham song. I can’t get it out of my head and there is another song !
Night Terror says:
Tuesday, May 14, 2013 at 08:40
8 6 Rate This
For the sake of clarity I’d rather the same article by the same author was edited to half the length. James Forrest has put out some cracking pieces in the past, but I found any good points made within this one are strangled by numbing length, superfluous moralising and irrelevant politics.
———
Not many feel a huge need to turn the structure and composition of the guest blogs into an issue. Or perhaps most are too polite to mention that this one seems a bit long-winded? I’m a fan of brevity myself. But I doubt anyone posting a blog on here has had the benefit of a trained editor with a big red pen. As for the stream of consciousness stuff, it still makes better reading than most of the sports journos 🙂
Briggsbhoy
Leaonard and Wham should never be mentioned in the same sentence!!!
Here is big Len— at damn near 76 doing his thing– he is still doing it at 78!
Full of Irony and hidden humour.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tKjSr1zOTq0
Excellent article. Deserves to be read by as wide an audience as possible.
Q: What’s the common denominator in the Charlotte drip-fed links?
http://i.imgur.com/x3EKdQr.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/VwYGGmd.jpg
http://scottishfootballmonitor.wordpress.com/2013/04/13/scottish-football-and-the-case-for-a-bismarck/comment-page-76/#comment-49531
A: The email recipient and, moreover, with two different addresses. Of course the clandestine recording of conversations is also popular with one particular guy:
https://soundcloud.com/charlotteandthefakes/cg1
So I think we can deduce where this information has ultimately come from, but how was it obtained? Therefore, TSFM’s warning should be heeded I think. Caveat Emptor.
Superb James, just superb. As other posters rightly state, deserving of a wider audience
Brogan Rogan Trevino and Hogan says:
Tuesday, May 14, 2013 at 09:46
Briggsbhoy
Leaonard and Wham should never be mentioned in the same sentence!!!
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
I know, what was I thinking of, I mean George Michael is such an Icon.
I recall in my early teenage years listening to all my elder brothers records and he was and still is a massive Cohen and Dylan fan. I can still recall my late father shouting upstairs shouting “Cohen & Dylan will no get yi yir Highers son, get that shite aff”
I personally never admitted that I enjoyed either of them but when everybody was out the house I would sneak into his room and play tracks such as Suzanne.
Sorry for going OT
Interesting point about not hating Rangers and the fans but hating all the other stuff. However, I am not convinced that you can hate the other stuff and not hate the Club.
I’ll be honest, I do hate Rangers and I’ve hated them for a long time. I don’t know when to date it from though.
It could have been when Willie Johnston stamped on John McMaster’s head.
It could have been their fans rioting at Motherwell to get a match they were losing abandoned, a match that they eventually won and the points gained being the difference between them winning the title and us winning it.
It could have been when Derek Johnston feigned injury in a cup final and got Rougvie sent off
It could have just been the feeling of menace when, in my formative years, I attended games as an away fan at Ibrox or Hampden (not a neutral venue for a non-OF team).
However, whatever the root cause that Club have certainly made themselves easy to continue hating, even without the fiasco of the last 3 years or so.
The pies, coins, coffee and p**s that ended up on your head in the bottom of the broomloan
An atmosphere at Ibrox for away fans that could not have been more menacing and intimidating without adding machine gun turrets
The disgusting scenes at the 1980 Cup Final
The continued sectarian chanting
Or*nge day
The Souness years
The financial doping
Referees
The treatment of Neil Simpson
McCoist breaking Snelders face
Wallace doing likewise to Leighton
Hately’s (unpunished) assault on Michael Watt in the title decider
The disgusting scenes in Manchester
Etc, etc
If I am being honest I have complete disdain for everything that club stands for, for their actions on the pitch and their actions off the pitch. I’m no lover of Celtic either, but I don’t hate them in the same way that I hate Rangers. I do hate the concept and reality of an “Old Firm” and everything that represents, particularly the way they have strangled the life out of our game
I do feel some sympathy for the decent Rangers fans but sorry I do hate the Club and everything about it.
Yeah, I’ll dip my toe too.
OK, it was long but I didn’t feel it was repetitive nor political – on length compare it to the tabloid nonsense about McCoist’s answer to cost cutting. A couple of paragraphs and they still manage to (deliberately) miss the point completely. But then, they’re out to sell newspapers to both sides, James is not.
James, a wonderful piece of writing, passionate and as balanced as you could make it, bearing in mind its singular purpose was to highlight precisely the imbalance that currently exists and where it has gotten us. If I was being completely cynical the only part that disappointed was the seemingly unnessecary “ha ha” at the end, but I maybe just read the context wrong.
All power to your pen sir.
TSFM Edit Sorry Timtim. Absolutely on the same page as you here, except not for this place.
I see a lot of comments regarding the length of the JF post, not sure why. If I want to read something short I will buy a redtop, comic or just read the comments. I judge a piece not on the length (my wife assures me she does the same) but on the content, in this case, the content easily masks the length.
As for the political slant, I thought there was something in there for everyone with a socialist reserving some praise for the other side. But I suppose the question was this; does this belong in a football blog?
My answer is yes! This is not about Rangers, it is about governance and how the politics of one club led to those authorities to ditch common sense and pander to one section of society while ignoring the wishes of all others.
There have been many types of politics played out here over the last 24 months and another very big one still sitting in the background, this situation and the fallout over the next 12 months could have a major influence on the 2014 vote so I would not be too quick to dismiss this in a footballing sense. It is very relevant as influence is about to be brought to bear, watch this space….
Go zero.
Zero,
I guess the flip side is this. I don’t have a problem with Celtic turning up with a Larson or a insert7figureplayer here as long as they do so sustainably. I don’t, at least didn’t, actually have a problem with Hearts turning up with the Lithuanian national team as long as they had some mug able to fund it, as long as he didn’t simply welch on it the second it went pear shaped. So in the entirely footballing context no I don’t hate the 11 men in blue that take the field, indeed I agree that wiithin this very narrow definition that their financial and sporting clout is being missed.
But that impact doesn’t need to come with all the unnessecary baggage with it. Unless of course it is actually built on the baggage, if it has its very foundations secured to the baggage. I believe James article is trying to weed out whether anyone has the balls to find out if that is the case.
Lions or Lemmings peepil (quite chuffed with that one!)
A gifted writer using his humanity to contextualise and deliver far reaching and hard-hitting insights.
Thank you James – what you say should be syndicated and like all good writing it makes us think and asks more questions.
So continuing in that vein.
If the humans (at the SFA , the MSM, BDO, the Politicians, Hector’s Mob, Mr House’s New United Constabulary etc. etc. are inherently decent ….
How do we help them do the right things for the greater good?
How do we reach out and help the start of an uprising by decent Rangers fans who want a new beginning and a sustainable club to support?
How do we tell our clubs that we know they have all been complicit in our failed governance and what they have to do to stop it killing the sport we all love?
How do we get the good guys at the SFA, SFL, SPL and UEFA to blow some whistles?
The answer is for people to start being honest and to blow away the secrets and lies and wee power bases that people are protecting.
As an example just think how honesty and decency between the SFA and its members would have changed this episode right through.
How much pain and anguish would that have avoided?
We can’t go back in time and save the old Rangers but honesty is the only way we can sustainably move forward for the benefit of all the clubs including the new Rangers.
It will only take one club, or individual to start the process and our wee corrupt country’s equivalent of The Berlin Wall will collapse – and quickly.
There will be blood and casualties and mess, yes but without a cleansing there will be more, much more over a longer period of time.
A starting point might be for a club, or an individual to demand or just to publish the 5 way agreement and take it from there.
Or it might be BDO to declare that the sale was invalid.
Ot might be something completely different.
Imagine if we had honest open and fair governance.
Meant to say zero, I was at or have experienced I think its 10 or 11 of the things on your list although to be fair “referees” is a bit random and a given on this site!
And you missed out McCoist backing in to Miller in the Skol cup. I was at that one too. Gawd I miss corporate freebies!
madbhoy24941 says:
Tuesday, May 14, 2013 at 10:23
How can your politics belong in football, but the more extreme politics that links Rangers/Sevco (and Celtic) to Ireland be kept out?
The Scottish footballing authorities were corrupted by their political views from the outset and while it is less blatant than in the past, there still appear to be a lot of blazers whose actions could be explained by the same corrupting motivations (though I think some – ie Regan and Doncaster – are now motivated purely by money).
Surely that is a reason to put in place people who will not let ANY politics get in the way of their doing a good job.
Their politics are bad, but mine are good sounds a bit Animal Farm-ish to me.
I’ll keep this short
Facts are usually presented in a short business like manner
Analysis takes longer, but the best analysis gets to the point quickly
Passion and emotion can take forever to write about
Each style is relevant and nobody is forced to read anything they don’t want to
ptd1978 says:
Tuesday, May 14, 2013 at 08:22
Good post for the most part, but I find myself a bit uncomfortable with the introduction of politics into the post.
A football fan is a football fan. As long as they support the principle of sporting integrity and get behind their club for the sake of the club only, that’s enough. Nobody has the right to bring politics into football.
Linking the support of football clubs with politics has caused enough problems in Scotland. We need to break that link completely and not just water it down to non-violent differences.
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I think you have confused wishful thinking with real life. I too would be delighted if politics weren’t involved in football but you admit yourself that politics and football are already linked in Scotland and we all know the negative effects that brings.
Therefore IMO before we can tackle and cleanse the ills and corruption – of a moral nature – facing Scottish Football then we have to fully understand the political mechanisms at work and the way in which the Scottish Establishment chooses to interface with football in the country.
Personally I see no problem in working towards a first stage of ‘non-violent differences’ and see that as a positive step rather than the negative on you suggest it to be, Changing any political ‘climate’ in football or any other sphere of human endeavour is a long process which requires enormous goodwill and energy from honest people on every side of the dividing lines. All advances, no matter how small, have to be welcomed as they help instill trust in the process and participants and make the next step that little bit easier.
I also have to admit to a wry chuckle at those attacking the excellent piece by James Forrest for being ‘too long’. I have no problem with anyone mounting a reasoned argument against the content or conclusions drawn by the writer but too long . . . dearie me.
I certainly know that I will need to read the piece a number of times and give it a helluva lot of thought because I regard it as one of the most important pieces written on the subject and quite possibly a seminal one. It’s real importance to me is that it has gone beyond the stage of just searching for scraps of information as to what has been going on and takes the debate and understanding to a new level. Obviously, there are still plenty of missing bits of the jigsaw and we will continue to unearth them and fit them on the board and further increase understanding.
But for now I hope journalists will read the piece by Mr Forrest and hopefully recognise the real, but as yet unanswered issues, which face Scottish Football fans. These journalists do have a job to do to reach a wider audience and help force the governing bodies and in particular the SFA to clean up their act or get on their bike.
And I have to confess that I am a life-long fan of Leonard Cohen and seldom a day passes without listening to him and being uplifted by his words – I have never understood those who mutter about music to slit wrists.
FACT
Those in charge of Scottish Football are useless.
ANALYSIS
I’ve thought about it for two seconds. Yup – they are still useless.
PASSION AND EMOTION
Someone please please help us, these guys in charge of Scottish Football are feckin useless.
(word count 40)
🙂