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/
greenockjack says:
June 9, 2013 at 11:37 pm
I think some are getting a little over excited about Charlottes recent offerings and showing a degree of naivity as to how PR people and the press go about their work. I´m surprised given how closely this site has examined their deeds in recent times.
I am curious to see the outraged reaction on here to the investigation into the background of FARE given that this is the first place to assemble as much circumstancial on individuals and groups that are deemed relevant.
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I would think that even very able posters on this site have little other than a skin-deep understanding of how PR and the MSM actually co-exist which is akin to a dog/flea relationship. As with most host/parasite relationships it it truly complex and I have no intention of attempting to describe it in depth.
However, I think you have missed the critical difference here and that is the difference between PR and the Dark Arts which are often involved in company crisis situations and where the likes of Media House operate. They don’t arrange by and large handle PR for flower shows or Church Guild but are at the real sharp end and paid top dollar for what they do.
Very very seldom is any kind of light shone into that world to see the practices and ethics at work and CF certainly has done that. Like lobbyists sometimes you will never know who a client actually is whose company is being ‘assisted’ because the work being done can benefit sectoral interests. I’m not suggesting that is the case here but more to try and get the complexity of the relationships across.
What the CF material has caused us to do is look at various connections of which little was known and follow an idea or plan of action through planning stages up until it appeared in print or was raised by an official body involved with football.
When it comes to the Dark Arts the success or failure of a campaign isn’t measured in column inches as might be the case with simple PR but in creating positive advantage for the client and similarly reducing negative factors. That kind of work tends to leave PR way behind and is much more akin to the work of lobbyists IMO. So I see the material as useful and also, if true, a barometer of what’s happening within the media industry.
In the old days this kind of stuff was done by a phone call to the editor who would speak to the department editor like say sports editor and suggest that a, usually specified journo, was either suggested to have a look at a particular issue or to back-off on an issue. Journos could never really be sure why these things actually happened and often weren’t even told to lay-off something but given an assignment to tie them up and get them out of the road for a while. And often the assignment was a plum job so it suited everyone.
What fascinates me about the CF stuff is how journos are being contacted directly and I won’t say more on that as it might lead me to bother but there appears to be a complete breakdown in management or perhaps the editors are being a bit more careful in this day of electronic trails and signatures to make sure their prints aren’t all over the ‘evidence’.
On the FARE issue I can only speak for myself but I find it grossly offensive that because a wife is of a perceived religion or supports a particular football team that she will be able to influence her husband’s professional role and an extremely sensitive and important role at that. I saw not a scrap of evidence to suggest that there was anything in the smear. And tbh I’m not sure about bloggers facing legal action but if I were the couple in question and his employer then I most certainly would be speaking to lawyers right now.
As a poster I have never been afraid of opposing positions on any blog site which I feel are weak or wrong. As to circumstantial evidence regarding Powar or his wife I have obviously missed that – I saw a scrap of gutter tittle-tattle but nothing further.
And then I think of Mather’s recent outburst – has one member of the SMSM asked him to identify who these enemies of Rangers are or how does he, who knows next to nothing about Scotland, manage to be able to identify them. It would appear to me that there is still plenty of poison being dripped into ears at Ibrox.
For those who hope to see a Scotland actually free of sectarianism Green was a major step-backwards and it looks as though his successor, who he introduced to Rangers, is already well down that well-trodden path and it’s a very bad sign.
According to The Guardian’s review of “Enquirer”, a performance play based on interviews conducted with figures operating in the prevailing media environment, well kent face Jack Irvine is “alarmingly unguarded about his time as launch editor of the Scottish Sun,” and openly boasts of bribing the police.
“I had a black book of cash payoffs,” he says, adding that payments were made to ambulance crews, social workers and royal staff. “Is it illegal to pay cops?” he asks, seemingly in all innocence.”
Police chief tells Leveson the Sun had ‘culture of illegal payments’ to sources
Sue Akers tells media ethics inquiry of newspaper’s payment systems that hid identities of ‘network of corrupted officials’.
David Leigh
guardian.co.uk, Monday 27 February 2012 14.23 GMT
Link to video: Sue Akers tells Leveson of ‘culture of illegal payments’ at the Sun
Hours after Rupert Murdoch’s defiant gamble of launching a Sunday edition of the Sun, the head of the police investigations into illegal behaviour by journalists spelled out startling details of what she called a “culture of illegal payments” at the title.
Deputy Assistant Commissioner Sue Akers told the Leveson inquiry that one public official received more than £80,000 in total from the paper, currently edited by Dominic Mohan. Regular “retainers” were apparently being paid to police and others, with one Sun journalist drawing more than £150,000 over the years to pay off his sources.
“The cases we are investigating are not ones involving the odd drink, or meal, to police officers or other public officials,” she said. “Instead, these are cases in which arrests have been made involving the delivery of regular, frequent and sometimes significant sums of money to small numbers of public officials by journalists.”
“A network of corrupted officials” was providing the Sun with stories that were mostly “salacious gossip”, she said.
“There appears to have been a culture at the Sun of illegal payments, and systems have been created to facilitate such payments whilst hiding the identity of the officials receiving the money.”
Akers’s reference to the systematic nature of alleged corruption, and its endorsement by senior executives, will be a clear signal to the US department of justice that her allegations, if proved, fall squarely within the ambit of the US Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. Rupert Murdoch’s US parent company, News Corporation, could face fines of hundreds of millions of dollars unless it can show it has co-operated vigorously with the authorities in rooting out malpractice.
Akers insisted in her testimony that, although she was dependent on News Corporation’s management and standards committee (MSC) to turn over incriminating emails, she was confident the co-operation was working well and the MSC was independent of News International.
She said the investigation into bribery, Operation Elveden, was following Crown Prosecution Service advice to focus on cash payments and not on “more general hospitality, such as meals or drinks”. These were specifically excluded from Elveden’s terms of reference.
Her testimony contradicts claims by some Sun staff that the paper’s journalists – 10 of whom have been arrested over corruption allegations – are being persecuted merely for buying lunch for contacts. After the arrests Mohan published a lengthy anti-police column in the Sun. Written by Murdoch veteran Trevor Kavanagh, it complained of a Soviet-style witch-hunt, and claimed vital press freedoms were under threat by the police raids.
Others claimed the MSC was endangering the sanctity of journalists’ sources by turning over information to the police.
Akers told the inquiry that the MSC was handling police requests for information “in a manner that seeks to protect legitimate journalist sources at all times. Our aim is to uncover criminality. It is not to uncover legitimate sources.”
The MSC was redacting information about sources before handing it over unless there was an “evidential base” to justify attempts to identify the public official concerned.
She said one police officer from the specialist operations division had been identified “who was seeking payments from journalists with the NoW”. He had been arrested last December. But the investigation of two NoW journalists suspected of bribery had so far failed to identify any police they may have paid.
Akers said the move to investigate the Sun as well as the NoW was the MSC’s idea. “This review had not been requested by the [Metropolitan police].”
Far from wanting to put the Sun out of business, she said, police had agreed to carry out arrests on a Saturday, when no daily journalists were working.
The emails turned over by the MSC had led to the arrest so far of 10 Sun journalists, two police officers, a member of the Ministry of Defence, an army officer and the relative of a public official “acting as a conduit to hide a cheque payment”.
Akers said the 61-strong Elveden investigation was still at a relatively early stage in trying to identify the recipients of illicit cash: “The emails indicate that payments to ‘sources’ were openly referred to within the Sun … there is a recognition by the journalists that this behaviour is illegal, reference being made to staff ‘risking losing their pension or job’, to the need for ‘care’ and to the need for ‘cash payments’. There is also an indication of ‘tradecraft’, ie hiding cash payments to ‘sources’ by making them to a friend or relative of the source.”
Murdoch gave a statement after Akers’s evidence saying: “She [Akers] said the evidence suggested such payments were authorised by senior staff at the Sun.
“As I’ve made very clear, we have vowed to do everything we can to get to the bottom of prior wrongdoings in order to set us on the right path for the future. That process is well under way.
“The practices Sue Akers described at the Leveson inquiry are ones of the past, and no longer exist at the Sun. We have already emerged a stronger company.”
Upthehoops
Everyone
Here is the deal. CF material was taken without owners permission. The owners, despicable as they might be, have the same privacy rights as anyone, like the folk whose privacy was violted by Murdoch’s folk.
The consequences of that are a media who are now super careful with regard to sources and the CF stuff to them is toxic and cannot be used on msm. That is as told to me by a journalist whom I respect and trust.
It is that old word agaim “trust: .
It presents itself as an everyday challenge and I’m presenting it now to you and other readers.
In doing so I’m taking the risk that a) you will trust me and
b) that what I was told was true and my reputation as a trustworthy person will not have been damaged by passing on a lie.
It is certainly more difficult to trust simply from words on a screen but there are other factors that can help -the other persons record of being truthful is a start in the absence of personal contact but I’m prepared to take the risk.
Like it ir lump it the material is kryptonite to our msm supermen (<=== irony) or Supermen.
The way to get this material out there is under Qualified Privilege that is the equivalent of a lead box that MPs have access to.
We need to start writing to them on a Scottish and UK basis and I suggest we use the "tax avoidance by extension using insolvency laws" line to highlight the collusion between the administrators and the owner to suggest a public enquiry into the whole affair including the enabling part played by the national football association.
Any views or better suggested drafts on what could be said are welcome. From that we can form an example of the points folk can make. So I suggest that we park the journos and help them out by a campaign of MP contact.
Who knows even the fact that a campaign is taking place might be reportable without reference to CF material. Whatever Qualified Privilege is the way to go and if someone can find an online definition and paste it for me we can start helping journos and CF ny getting this stuff mainstream.
tomtom says:
June 10, 2013 at 7:00 am
Was there ever a time when the NOTW got their stories legally?
——————————————————————————————-
The NOTW had a fine record of campaigning journalism and breaking exclusive stories going way back and the tale of how it got to be where it eventually ended is quite complex. But many other publications I feel sure are breathing huge sighs of relief that they escaped the spotlight which was more to do with political and media monopoly issues than the culture which had grown at NOTW.
The same culture IMO existed in plenty of other places but compartmentalising it with a ‘Murdoch’ scene of crime ribbon around Pandora’s Box was an acceptable solution for many different interests.
Morning. This new site awfy fancy, good job.
Interesting comments for the NO campaign for league reconstruction……seems some bullying and misinformation going on as usual…………..
NO – Henry McLelland, Annan Athletic
I FEEL as if I am being treated as a villain for formulating objections by going through the fine detail. Or that I am some sort of dinosaur, or a naysayer. I am none of those things. At Annan we do not have the debt of some of the bigger SFL sides and that allows us to be open and critical of what is on the table here without reference to the financial position. Money isn’t the issue for us.
There are five key principles wherein there are red-line areas we simply cannot accept. The first relates to the new Scottish Professional Football League that would be formed if Wednesday’s vote sees 22 of the 29 clubs back it – which I am sure will not happen, despite the “for” camp curiously suggesting the opposition to it has weakened to the point where the split is 21-8.
The perception was that the SPFL would be a new body formed from the coming together of the 12 clubs in the Scottish Premier League and the 30 clubs in the Scottish Football League, and represent a fresh start. That is not the case. It would be incorporated into the SPL and have the same registration number. In business terms, it would be the SPL with a new name. When expressing our surprise over this, we were told it had to stay the same so that players contracted to SPL clubs could not walk away. What about the contract of players in the SFL? Where is our protection?
In reality, I have done some digging and discovered that the Companies Act of 2006 would prohibit the transfer of the SPL’s business and assets while they are involved in a £1.8m litigation with Harry Hood’s company Lisini Pub Management over the SPL’s ban on the use of foreign decoders to show their matches. This can’t be denied and I have highlighted it at open meetings. If this case was lost, what exposure would a 42-club league body have to future compensation claims? It could sink the new organisation.
Board composition is another red-line area. The 3-2-1 make-up means there will be three members from the top 12 clubs, the SPL, two members from the next ten clubs, the First Division, and one member covering the next 20 clubs, which equates to the entire Second and Third Divisions. This is not equitable. We know our place in the lower tiers but we put something back. We proposed a 3-1-1-1 composition of the board, which would have meant one representative from each of the Second and Third Divisions. It was a small gesture that would have given clubs at all the levels the comfort they had a voice but made little difference to decision-making since the top-flight clubs would still have been able to carry the day. Yet it was thrown out completely, illustrating to us that the bottom 20 clubs are to be marginalised in the “new” SPFL to the point of being irrelevant.
If any further evidence of that were needed it is to be found in the proposed voting structure contained in the new rules and articles. For a motion to be passed it requires 90 per cent of the SPL – the 11-1 – 75 per cent of the first two tiers, 17 of the top 22 clubs and 75 per cent of all 42 clubs – meaning 32 must be in favour. Yet, if 40 clubs wanted to pass a resolution but the two clubs against just happened to be in the SPL, the motion would fall. Instinctively, we feel that is simply not right. We understand that Celtic and Rangers deliver the television deals and the sponsors; we are not bloody stupid. But there is a fundamental flaw in 40 clubs being beholden to two. The scenario means that, if in the future it was decided to relegate four cubs from the bottom tier, for instance, this could be carried even if all ten teams in that set-up vote against it. Our problems with the distribution have nothing to do with the targeting of monies into the First Division. We would be delighted for those clubs to receive a real financial boost with many of them seeming to present that as a necessity after being conditioned to spend heavily in order to chase an SPL position. What has troubled us is the unwillingness to carry out due diligence from the SPL’s point of view. Now, it is understood we will be given some sort of information on these finances tomorrow, but why hasn’t that happened earlier when I understand the SFL offered to pay the £30,000 costs [of the due diligence]. Surely it is understandable that we know the organisation we are merging with is sound and stable… especially since last summer SPL chief executive Neil Doncaster told us Armaggedon awaited it if Rangers weren’t placed in the First Division.
Look, we have heard all about how the SPL and SFL combining isn’t Asda and Tesco getting together. We have no problems being no better off. We just don’t want to be altogether worse off. The play-offs between the first and second tiers are wholly positive and, despite conjecture to the contrary, at Annan our Third Division status doesn’t put self-interest ahead of us agreeing in principle with the pyramid structure. How could we be other than supportive of this change when we waited so long to make the step up to the senior game, and only did so five years ago because of the demise of another club?
Our only issue here is that, as it stands, there are few details and nothing underneath, with the Lowland Conference yet to formed. Too many proposals in the reconstruction are less than fully formed in a satisfactory fashion
http://www.scotsman.com/sport/football/top-football-stories/league-reconstruction-is-it-finally-time-1-2960522
Maybe the msm as mentioned above may treat the CF material as kryptonite, but they also could as Auldheid mentioned get this material out there under Qualified Privilege by contacting their MP’s. How many do you really think will go down this route. I may be wrong in my trust in most of the msm but I think kryptoshite will prevail.
Auldheid;
CF seems to confirm email address ownership –
(no idea of content)
Charlotte Fakeovers @CharlotteFakes 8 Jun
@Maldoon2007 @christtocs @TomEnglishSport @PeterC148 @Barcabhoy1 I own that email address. Tom is not to blame. I’ll explain why shortly.
Tommy Sheridan was mentioned in Jack’s email and is aware now…
http://kerrydalestreet.co.uk/single/?p=12269260&t=8817196
Auldheid says:
June 10, 2013 at 9:42 am
Everyone
Here is the deal. CF material was taken without owners permission. The owners, despicable as they might be, have the same privacy rights as anyone, like the folk whose privacy was violated by Murdoch’s folk.
The consequences of that are a media who are now super careful with regard to sources and the CF stuff to them is toxic and cannot be used on msm. That is as told to me by a journalist whom I respect and trust.
================================================================
I have to say that I feel you are totally wrong in equating the innocent victims of the Press as revealed by Leveson with the ‘owners’ of this material whoever they are.
However, leaving that aside: I used to know a number of journalists that I would trust implicitly. Most of them have left the industry and I’m not sure I totally trust any that are left as I am well aware of the horrendous pressures which most are under trying to cling to their jobs.
That doesn’t make them bad people but when they have a wife and family and a certain standard of living to maintain then their loyalties can shift.
I have raised a number of legal issues particularly relating to Scots Law as to whether stories can be run or not and I haven’t actually seen any response which alters my opinion. But I think the MSM are possibly hiding and attempting to evade their professional responsibility because this whole affair has got too big for them to handle.
I reckon that without doubt it is the biggest news story to have embroiled Scotland in view of the fact that its tentacles invade just about every profession and our level of governance at all sorts of levels and I haven’t even mentioned football. It is awesome and the SMSM are sitting on their hands.
CF points the way to where other copies of the documents and possible originals, in other ownership, can be found or where the information in her documents can be verified from legal sources. That IMO opinion is her usefulness and if the SMSM act then they can run big chunks of the stories free of any legal threat.
A ‘source’ to me isn’t necessarily just a person – it can be documents. It is then up to a journo to take the info revealed to build a story. It isn’t hard for an investigative reporter but IMO nigh impossible for a sports reporter. I have never quite understood why such a comples story involving finance, economics, accountancy, complex legal issues was left to sports people from the start.
Now I begin to think that this was part of the MSM ‘defence’ mechanism. And what are we to make of Spiers and his admission to CF which IMO substantiates the content of an email she has disclosed.
And I am unclear what is meant by this material being ‘toxic’ to the MSM – I think if it’s ‘toxic’ then that is towards those who are operating under the radar and in darkness to keep their work secret and hidden from the eyes of the general public and, in particular, football fans who hand over their hard-earned cash.
The MSM are supposed to be there to expose this and truly if they don’t then they will be destroyed at a faster rate than they are currently facing and, on the evidence, they deserve to be cast into oblivion as they are unfit for purpose.
DS John “McSporran”
18 Jun 2012
Editor’s blog – Article 10, protection of sources and police pressure to reveal them
It is worth quoting a recent ECHR fact sheet on the protection of journalistic sources in detail, given the disturbing events of today, when it has emerged that it is by admission “normal practice” for Strathclyde Police to browbeat journalists in an effort to pressure them into revealing the sources of news stories that may cast them in a negative light.
“The European Court of Human Rights has repeatedly emphasised that Article 10 safeguards not only the substance and contents of information and ideas, but also the means of transmitting it. The press has been accorded the broadest scope of protection in the Court’s case law, including with regard to confidentiality of journalistic sources,” the fact sheet begins.
It then quotes the landmark Goodman case, which enshrines the Article 10 entitlement of journalists to protect their sources.
“The protection of journalistic sources is one of the basic conditions for press freedom,“ it says.
“Without such protection, sources may be deterred from assisting the press in informing the public on matters of public interest. As a result the vital public-watchdog role of the press may be undermined, and the ability of the press to provide accurate and reliable information be adversely affected. An order of source disclosure … cannot be compatible with Article 10 unless it is
justified by an overriding requirement in the public interest.”
The Goodwin case, perhaps unsurprisingly, originated in the UK.
What has emerged through The Firm’s reporting of on Operation Rubicon, the Scottish investigation into phone hacking, police corruption, breaches of data protection and matters arising out of the Tommy Sheridan trial is that Strathclyde Police’s major investigation, backed by significant resources, is beginning to look like nothing more than an elaborate smokescreen, concealing a less than half hearted effort by the police to investigate themselves. Whilst in England, numerous Chief Constables, Deputies, Superintendents and all manner of major figures have been obliged to resign due to the findings of Operations Elveden, Weeting, Tuleta and the Leveson Inquiry, the only action that has arisen from Rubicon in almost exactly a year of activity is the arrest of Andy Coulson for perjury, a matter which could have been dealt with at the conclusion of the Tommy Sheridan perjury trial seven months before Rubicon was initiated. All in all, not much to show for a year’s work, in this reporter’s view.
The Firm reported this afternoon that the officer leading the inquiry, DS John McSporran had, according to sources, stated that Rubicon was not looking into police corruption or phone hacking, contrary to the extensive remit provided by the Crown Office. The police were made aware of the claims before the story went to press, and in due course DS McSporran provided a carefully hedged statement which was also duly reported, and as far as the public interest function of journalism is concerned, all was more or less right with the world.
And then the phone went.
A “media manager” from Strathclyde Police called and asked The Firm repeatedly to disclose the source of the original story, seemingly unaware that there is not a court in Europe that would support the notion of the police obliging a journalist to do so.
The inappropriate nature of the request was of course duly pointed out, but the officer in question said that they “did not see a problem” in being told the source.
“I need to speak to the Chief Constable about this,” I told the caller.
“No, you don’t.”
Hmmm.
“Who do you report to?” I asked.
“I report to the Deputy Chief Constable”
“I need to speak to the Deputy Chief Constable immediately please.”
“No you’re not [sic]” I was told.
“I’m not putting you through to the Deputy Chief constable. Why can’t you deal with this with me? You are being utterly unreasonable.”
The identity of the media manager has been established and the entire issue is now subject to complaint raised with the Deputy Chief Constable who, one would anticipate, would immediately disavow such a prima facie breach by the state of the ECHR protections afforded to journalists, and confirm that he supports the protection of journalists’ sources fully throughout the organisation, including its media managers (whatever they are…).
Public interest has prompted me to publish this blog and open the debate out to those elsewhere in the media or public life who may have insight into what ought to be a rogue incident, but which may in fact be more widespread.
You see, the practice of applying pressure to seek sources from journalists is evidently routine, something the media manager was prepared to confirm in writing by way of email follow up.
“I am writing to request that you confirm where the comments attributed to John McSporran came from. I deal with journalists every day and most will be good enough to confirm where they have got their information in order that we can answer their enquiry as accurately as possible,” a subsequent email read.
“I would reiterate it is normal practice for us to ask journalists where they have got their information from. They are not obliged to tell us however most usually do in order to assist us in answering their questions and confirming or otherwise if that information is in fact correct or incorrect.”
One finds it hard to believe that most journalists would be “good enough” to confirm the identity of their sources under any circumstances. If applying this pressure is indeed “normal practice,” perhaps Lord Leveson may want to ask another question or two of Chief Constable Stephen House, to ask him why. Lest we forget, House also told the inquiry in the full glare of planet Earth that Strathclyde Police officers were “taking money”, something that has not resulted in any subsequent arrests by the officers of Operation Rubicon.
Another news outlet today reported that Liberal Democrat leader Willie Rennie has claimed that Scottish Government phones have been hacked, less than a week after the First Minister told the Leveson inquiry that he believed illegality was rife across many, many newspapers. The evidence in the public domain that attests to the possibility of police corruption is everywhere. According to The Guardian’s review of “Enquirer”, a performance play based on interviews conducted with figures operating in the prevailing media environment, well kent face Jack Irvine is “alarmingly unguarded about his time as launch editor of the Scottish Sun,” and openly boasts of bribing the police.
“I had a black book of cash payoffs,” he says, adding that payments were made to ambulance crews, social workers and royal staff. “Is it illegal to pay cops?” he asks, seemingly in all innocence.”
If such alleged corruption is capable of discovery by any member of the public enterprising enough to visit the theatre, yet has not been unearthed by a significantly resourced team of police who have been at it for a year, the actions of a police force that not only trample over the basic protections of the free press, but are also confident to do so in writing, warrant further scrutiny. One also has to look afresh at the low arrest rate arising from Rubicon and ask what exactly is happening there.
I understand that Rubicon personnel will shortly be subject to redeployment to cover the Olympics, and if that is the case there may not be much more fruit to be borne from its labours. If its sole legacy is the new practice of hunting journalists’ sources, the present, far less the future of journalism in Scotland is fragile indeed.
Steven Raeburn
Postscript – 12 July 2012
This is the text of an email I received from the “Professional Standards Department” of Strathclyde Police, in response to my concerns addressed to the office of the Deputy Chief Constable on 18 June, the day this piece was published;
“Unfortunately the email dated 18 June 2012 was not actioned due to an administrative error for which I apologise.
“However, you will wish to be aware that an officer from this Department has been appointed to examine the matters raised and will make contact with you in early course in order to progress same.”
The Exiled Celt says:
June 10, 2013 at 10:03 am
Interesting comments for the NO campaign for league reconstruction……seems some bullying and misinformation going on as usual…………..
NO – Henry McLelland, Annan Athletic
========================================================
I can’t see anything in the Annan position that I would take objection to. IMO a lot of the problem here is the speed to get it through for next season.
But there are structural issues on simple Democratic Principles which could make acceptance of things as currently on-the-table turn into festering sores or be downright dangerous for some lower division clubs.
Eco
Whilst I called Media House a PR company, I well apreciate the waters they tend to navigate and agree with your opinion that they are more akin to lobbyists.
I think or sumise that the ‘wow’ type of reaction CF´s links are receiving from those with any type of realistic handle on the world in which we live in today, is not so much at the MO but to actually see the personal communications between those involved.
Today it is incumbent on the new social media and whistleblowers to highlight and educate the masses on how society and lives are shaped/exploited by the relationships between politicans, lobbyists, the corporate sector and large mediagroups.
For those with children it would be the best investment you could make on their behalves.
Back to Charlotte, I still think one of the potentially most interesting e-mails was back at the beginning. It had Jack Irvine getting in touch with Craig Whyte in August 2009 with the results of a LexisNexis search on the latter. It obviously raises all kinds of questions which include SDM.
She has increased output of late but the media (including AT) refuse to acknowledge even the new tapes, previously The Herald had mentioned tapes leaked by Charlotte.
Tends to indicate doubts as to it´s legality and that those who wield influence think the ‘wee people’ talking about it amongst themselves will come to nothing.
Wrt FARE, if there is circumstancial evidence that they have friendly and/or commercial links to a direct rival or someone with a link to them, don´t be surprised when questions are asked about them. Do we not believe in transparency ?
Mather or more accurately those behind him on his side of the boardroom will say what they deem is necessary to further their cause and would do an about-turn the following day if they thought it´d benefit them.
The combination of Media House and Green was potent as the latter enjoyed hijacking issues so as to endear himself to the support and thus widening divides.
What society needs is more independent journalism and a public awakening of how spin-management is effecting our lives. It is the soft soap that allows the really bad to passby relatively unchallanged.
Not consuming MSM would be a start.
ecobhoy says:
June 10, 2013 at 10:31 am
The Exiled Celt says:
June 10, 2013 at 10:03 am
Interesting comments for the NO campaign for league reconstruction……seems some bullying and misinformation going on as usual…………..
NO – Henry McLelland, Annan Athletic
========================================================
I can’t see anything in the Annan position that I would take objection to. IMO a lot of the problem here is the speed to get it through for next season.
But there are structural issues on simple Democratic Principles which could make acceptance of things as currently on-the-table turn into festering sores or be downright dangerous for some lower division clubs.
*****
I thought he was absolutely spot on!
One thing that the last year has shown me is that there are many intellectual chairmen in the lower leagues who do it for the love of the game above all else.
To those folks – chapeau!
greenockjack says:
June 10, 2013 at 10:39 am
Wrt FARE, if there is circumstancial evidence that they have friendly and/or commercial links to a direct rival or someone with a link to them, don´t be surprised when questions are asked about them. Do we not believe in transparency ?
****
I understand your point but the problem I have is that being “passionate about Celtic” does not inhibit my business or professionalism to my job – I have in my years dealt with RFC-NIL players/family along with other teams players/family as well as my own team in the banking industry – I saw many details of their affairs that are and remain confidential – all of them received the same respect and treatment I would give to anyone who walked into the office requesting my service.
My problem with Irvine was he suggested because the head of FARE had a wife who was “passionate about Celtic” meant that he would imagine racism just to get one over on the poor innocent club, is not only demeaning to all of us who can separate business from pleasure, but also feeds the bears that the haters are all out there….
That is paranoia – the very same charge they made at me when anything was questioned….
Will the day come when the money that Media House earn from Rangers is outweighed by the negative publicity they get ?
Could social media help hasten the arrival of that particular day ?
greenockjack says:
June 10, 2013 at 10:39 am
——————————————————————–
I am in agreement with much of what you say regards what happens in the real world rather than whether it is desirable or not.
However to return to FARE I made no comment about any investigation into commercial links that might exist with that organisation or people employed by it as there has to be complete transparency in these matters with such potentially pivotal organisations.
However, I cast a jaundiced eye when the reason is not so much to ensure that any organisation is acting within its remit as possibly more to find something which can be used to smear it as sometimes just the proposed investigation of an entirely innocent organisation can achieve this aim even when there is no intention of carrying out any investigation.
You appear to miss the main thrust of my comment on FARE which was in response to what I regarded as a slightly OTT remark by yourself as to the reaction of posters here wrt the alleged football allegiance of the Glasgow-born wife of a senior FARE official affecting his judgement and decision making.
That is gutter material and actually says a lot of what the people involved must think of their own partners IMO and if that’s the case then I don’t envy their home life. Suffice to say not a shred of actual evidence nor circumstantial was produced IMO.
Believe it or not I have always believed that senior Board members of Rangers, like Celtic, have a duty to work towards reducing and ultimately seeing sectarianism defeated in Scotland. Not an easy task but one which I believe was succeeding. Things have not only got worse under Green but would appear to be set on the same course under the ‘new’ management.
And I repeat my question – when will the SMSM ask Mather who the enemies of Rangers are and who provided the list of the guilty. We really do deserve to know that. I have never ever had a problem defending Rangers when I thought it was justified. But over the last couple of days I have been pondering the warnings of my long-dead Irish grandad that they would never rest until we were again slaves.
I truly thought as a society we had moved way beyond that but now I actually wonder whether the mirror and smoke screens involved have just become more effective at hiding the reality of what a significant section of the Scottish Establishment is all about and what is all-important to it.
THE FAX BEHIND THE MOST SENSATIONAL TRANSFER IN BRITISH FOOTBALL
Football writers are reluctant to reveal their sources, but here JACK IRVINE tells the details behind the exclusive story of the ground-breaking transfer of former Celtic striker Mo Johnston to Rangers.
By JACK IRVINE
The Sun has been a potent force in Scottish journalism since its launch in 1987.
However in the first couple of years under my editorship there was always a degree of resistance to this “English interloper” into the cosy world of Scottish newspapers then dominated by The Daily Record.
That all changed on July 10, 1989 with a Sun front page headline that read simply “MO JOINS GERS.” Since that day it’s the one story that I am repeatedly questioned about and the one surrounded by myth and misinformation. Did I pay Graeme Souness £100,000 for the story? Was it Rangers owner David Murray or Maurice Johnston’s agent Bill McMurdo who delivered the goods? Why did the Daily Record fail to pick it up when it hit their desks on the evening of July 9?
Well, the truth is much simpler and at the same time an example of good old fashioned journalism and gut instinct tinged with the wee bit of luck that every reporter needs
At the end of June I had attended a Press Fund Charity lunch at the Marriot Hotel in Glasgow. To my delight I won the raffle which was a week for two in Majorca. That evening I showed the hotel details to my wife who said: “What a dump, I’m not going there. Take one of your golfing pals.” I arranged to do just that.
A couple of days later Graeme Souness called me. I had got to know him and Walter Smith because of the number of stories we had broken about Rangers and we had always got on well.
Souness indicated that he had heard about my win and he would be visiting his kids in Majorca following the breakdown of his marriage. His former wife was staying with her parents, who had been resident on the island for a number of years, but he would only be able to see the children for a couple of hours a day and would have a lot of time on his hands.
“How about we team up when I’m there? “said Souness. “And we can play golf and soak up some sun?”
Sneakily I then up upgraded our run of the mill hotel to the five star Sheraton Son Vida where Souness would be staying. Naturally I didn’t share that information with Mrs Irvine.
The pattern was the same every day for the next week. Lying by the pool (oddly the place was deserted), lunch, golf for me and my mate (Graeme didn’t play in these days) then out for dinner every night to the island’s finest restaurants where Graeme was instantly recognised from his days with Liverpool and Sampdoria.
Round about the third bottle of Rioja, Souness would always ask the same question, “Should Rangers sign a Catholic?”
Now remember Souness was married (or about to be unmarried) to a Roman Catholic and as an Edinburgh lad he had never really experienced sectarianism until he joined Rangers in 1986 as player/manager.
He knew only too well that things had to change at Ibrox if only to give them access to top continental players, but I must stress that the questions and the conversations were non-specific and extremely general.
However, I had observed that every day as we lay by the pool Souness was repeatedly approached by a waiter to be informed that a “Mr Rodger was on the phone from Scotland.”
Mr Rodger was the legendary sportswriter Jim Rodger of the Daily Mirror. I say “sportswriter” but to be perfectly honest the then 66-year-old was probably the worst writer in the business. However his contacts were legendary and he had access to every leading football manager in the world, not to forget The Pope and Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher who he insisted on calling “hen.”
Souness kept his cards close to his chest and I assumed that Jim was talking to him about some future transfer because the Daily Mirror man was notorious for acting as a go-between between managers and agents. Whether the Mirror ever benefitted from this inside information is a mute point. They were certainly going to miss out in a few days time.
I flew back to Glasgow on the Saturday July 8 to be informed by my wife that we were buying a new house. I think that was my punishment for the Son Vida. Souness was flying back to Edinburgh on the Sunday.
As I’d been skiving for a week I felt obliged to give my deputy the Sunday off and take the editor’s chair. Early in the afternoon our young gofer, a 16-year-old schoolboy called Keith Jackson [now a respected sports writer with the Daily Record] nervously popped his head round the editor’s door and asked if he could speak to me.
The conversation was surreal.
“Mr Irvine, I was round at my girlfriend’s house last night.”
“Mmm, interesting.”
“I saw a fax on her dad’s machine.”
“Yes.”
“It had Mo Johnston’s name on it…”
“Yeah, so?”
“Oh, I should have explained, her dad handles all the insurance for Rangers players.”
The world stopped on its axis. “Bloody hell,” I shouted or maybe something fruitier.
I dialled Souness’s mobile and as luck would have it he had just stepped off the plane at Edinburgh
“Graeme, remember you asked me if you should sign a Catholic? It’s Mo isn’t it?”
Souness, a man of few words simply said: “Call you back.”
About 20 minutes later he called: “Print it” was all he said.
The Sun went into meltdown on that Sunday afternoon. The sports desk, under the brilliant Steve Wolstencroft, teamed up with the news boys and it fell to Derek Stewart Brown to write the front page splash which was quite an achievement considering he had virtually no hard facts apart from the Souness confirmation, Keith’s sight of the fax and my endless conversations in Majorca.
If memory serves me correctly there were 14 news pages alone devoted to the story and sport must have done almost as many. My Daily Record spies told me the next day that when the early editions of The Sun landed on the Record sports desk at Anderston Quay they almost collapsed before phoning star sportswriter Alex Cameron who was in his bed.
When the late man on the Record sports desk explained that The Sun were claiming that Mo was about to join Rangers, Cameron grumpily said: “They’re just taking a flyer. Don’t wake me up again with crap like this.”
The Record boys promptly went back to sleep and have remained that way ever since.
The next morning, Monday, Rangers called a press conference. Sun sportswriter Jim Black told me later that day when the media pack all arrived they were heaping derision on The Sun and at the head of the detractors was one Alex Cameron. Suddenly David Murray and Graeme Souness were followed into the room by Maurice Johnston.
Jim told me: “Alex turned chalk white. It was as if his life was flashing in front of them.”
Apparently when I had called Souness he was on his way to David Murray’s home where Mo and Bill McMurdo were waiting for him. He told them that I had been on the phone and had guessed what was happening. I knew all of them and they agreed that Souness could confirm the story.
From that day on we knew we had broken the Record’s spirit and every big story dropped into my lap.
How much did it cost me? I gave young Keith £500 to go on holidays and that was the end of it. How he ended up on The Day-late Record after such a promising start I’ll never know.
So sorry to disappoint the conspiracy theorists. No bungs. No phone hacking. Just old fashioned journalism.
Oh, and of course, an editorial genius at the helm.
Tags: Bill McMurdo, Celtic, David Murray, Graeme Souness, Ibrox, Jack Irvine, journalism, Majorca, Maurice Johnston, Rangers, Sands charity, The Daily Record, The Sun, Walter Smith
Cortes says:
June 10, 2013 at 12:56 am
“…despite being a lifelong SNP voter and activist, I shall vote NO to independence…”.
—————-
Strong stuff Cortes. The fiasco has got out of control and is spilling out onto the streets but amid all the heat you need to view the light. Politicians are eternally compromised but one glimpse should not colour a judgement you have held for so long. I am not sure how I shall vote. Perhaps between now and the election I will be persuaded by events.
I feel that in this battle against vested interest we should be wary of taking sides too easily. If the debate becomes too polarised it is not a debate at all, just a flag waving exercise. Although it now seems to be about much more, this is a football blog and we are considering the governance of football primarily. This may illicit wider allegories but a resort to grandstanding is not where we want to be right now I believe.
The Exiled Celt says:
June 10, 2013 at 10:03 am
Interesting comments for the NO campaign for league reconstruction……seems some bullying and misinformation going on as usual…………..
NO – Henry McLelland, Annan Athletic
========================================
Interesting stuff indeed.
If Mr McLelland is correct then reconstruction may not happen next season.
Where does that leave TRFC?.
Any attempt to shoehorn them into an SPL2 will be rejected by the fans and to be left in Div 2 with Ally signing players who are over 21,with Bocanegra and Goian possibly returning?.
Sky high wages for these 2 along with good deals for Daly,Clark etc whilst playing amongst the SFL cast-offs cannot be good for business.
ExiledCelt
I agree with your basic premise of professionalism, more especially within the financial or legal and would expect a very high percentage of those involved to act in a responsible and proper manner.
However with this specific example, I think you have to take into account that we are viewing personal communications that were never expected to go public or have the same terminology used when put forward.
I´d also point towards the other issues that were discussed wrt to the same matter (see Charlotte link http://i.imgur.com/bhYeHwZ.jpg) and that lifting the “passionate about Celtic” line alone is being a little selective and doesn´t present all the reasons behind the request for transparency.
We can thus look at two different perspectives wrt approaching the FARE issue.
1. Ex- Scottish Sun Editor, somewhat sensationalist.
2. Rangers chairman, with a more objective line in questioning.
it is always suggested that there can be to much misinformation and untruths on the net and the people writing articles are “not journalists” . I tell you what the past few days have shown that what is often in the papers and the press in general is not always the facts and can be no more a cynical manipulation of the truth to suit an agenda. You are now more likely to find the truth on the internet
greenockjack@11:22am
Ok – however, I don’t see the difference from Irvine and the points from McClelland – those too seems to be a bit disrespectful for same reason.
His first question relate to an ex-football player who was very vocal in all his days regarding racism – that would be the connection not Celtic.
The others relate to if a brother or Desmond owned shares etc at same time etc – so if Desmond owns shares in IBM and I am in the IT industry or worked for IBM, does that make a connection? Does that mean I cannot do business fairly?
Again the implication is all Celtic fans are connected and all fans are haters and willing to do anything to stop the march of the Peepil.
Now if they had been seen meeting or had their phones bugged so Jack knew it, that would be different.
Incidentally, Jack and his crew told us that there is no issue with this anyway – Jim Ballantyne had shares in RFC-NIL whilst chairman of Airdrie and also whilst he was president of SFL – am sure McClelland also was aware of this.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Ballantyne
However now I can see why the Chris “waiting for things to pan out” Graham and his park Mark Dingwall now get fed this nonsense. We are all obsessed and unable to do a single thing at work that does not stick a pin into TRFC/RFC-NIL……….
If only I had the power or that much time on my hands!
Incidentally – the reason I mention Jack maybe knew something due to the phones bugged – its not exactly beyond reality….
http://www.heraldscotland.com/sport/spl/aberdeen/ex-celtic-chief-s-home-bugged-1.204044
Sam says:
June 10, 2013 at 10:29 am
“Editor’s blog – Article 10, protection of sources and police pressure to reveal them”.
————
Thats interesting stuff Sam and some may not have read it already. If I recall correctly, a link to this article was posted a day or two ago.
Eco @ 11:10
I seem to have provided at least part of a reply to your last in my post directed to ExiledCelt (11:22).
I would add that Green and his fellow spivs will probably be bought out by the turn of the year and hopefully a degree of normality will return to the boardroom.
Mathers won´t last for long and IMO can´t be called ‘new’ management, the boardroom is currently fighting between itself, there is no defined management and things may be said that are designed to endear one side of boardroom conflict to the support or damage the opposition. There is currently no real policy or strategy coming from the board and hence the warnings of your late Irish Grandad, IMO don´t have any relevance to the current situation.
As a society there is obviously still a division, this will be exploited temporarily for material gain by those we have talked of rather than any great campaign that will come to anything.
I don´t want to get further involved in the political as it´s not permitted on this site.
ecobhoy says:
June 10, 2013 at 11:10 am
“…the warnings of my long-dead Irish grandad…”.
—————
ecobhoy, I empathise entirely. However there are some things that need to remain unsaid without being unknown. You more than most would insist on proof over perception. Your analysis is too thorough and valuable to allow it to be coloured by instinct, however well divined.
To Castofthousands;
Can you confirm when the link was posted?
Keydata founder Stewart Ford blames FSA for investor cash losses
Stewart Ford, the founder of collapsed investment firm Keydata who is under scrutiny by the Financial Services Authority (FSA), has hit back at his critics by claiming the regulator was partly to blame for the losses thousands of policyholders are facing.
Keydata was forced into administration in June last year by the FSA after being declared insolvent because of an unpaid tax bill. Some 30,000 people now face the losses because the bonds they bought were not FSA-regulated and so not protected by the industry compensation scheme. An investigative team employed by Mr Ford are looking into “the thought processes behind the FSA’s aggressive action when they must have realised their actions would disadvantage thousands of policyholders”.
Keydata is understood to have been close to coming to an agreement with HMRC, through which the firm would have settled to issue by paying a near-£1m fine, before the FSA stepped in. The fine was standard procedure, with Freedom of Information requests demonstrating that 39 companies came to a penalty agreement with HMRC in 2009.
The investigators ask: “Did the lack of a tax settlement prompt the FSA to manufacture a tax liability, thus imposing administrators on an otherwise solvent business?”
The team appointed by Mr Ford, who lives in Switzerland, is made up of Media House International, a crisis management business led by Jack Irvine, a former newspaper editor and Aegis Tax, a tax investigation firm led by Chris Chipperton.
Keydata invested in “life settlement funds”, which buy and sell US life insurance and generate high returns. However, the FSA applied for Keydata’s closure “to protect investors” after it became clear that income payments were not forthcoming, saying it was concerned about “potentially missing assets”.
It emerged that £103m of life insurance policies managed by a Luxembourg business, SLS Capital, and sold to Keydata investors as Secure Income Bonds 1, 2 and 3 had been “misappropriated”. SLS was controlled by David Elias, who died in mysterious circumstances last year and is now the subject of a Serious Fraud Office investigation.
Mr Ford is working with the Keydata Action Group to establish what happened and whether the funds can be recovered.
Sam says:
June 10, 2013 at 12:11 pm
“Can you confirm when the link was posted”?
————-
TallBoy Poppy (@TallBoyPoppy) says:
Sunday, June 9, 2013 at 00:06
http://www.firmmagazine.com/features/1143/Editor%27s_blog_-_Article_10,_protection_of_sources.html
Auldheid,
Qualified privelege, parliamentary privelege etc. Does this help?
http://www.parliament.uk/documents/commons/lib/research/briefings/snpc-02024.pdf
It is my understanding that Tomorrow at the SFA annual general meeting clubs will be asked to vote for a new SFA President. Campbell Ogilvie is standing for re election. The same Campbell Ogilvie who has admitted participating in an EBT scheme whilst at Rangers.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/football/article-2116686/Rangers-crisis-Campbell-Ogilvie-received-95k-EBT-cash.html
Who in print and television stated that he had taken a step back from discussions regarding Rangers,
http://www.scotsman.com/sport/football/top-football-stories/campbell-ogilvie-to-stand-for-sfa-presidency-re-election-1-2673906
http://www1.skysports.com/watch/video/sports/football/8307286/ogilvie-considered-standing-down
Yet only a year earlier had been having secret dinner meetings to hold discussions with said club,
http://www.scribd.com/doc/146504920/Licence-Issues
The opportunity to elect a new president occurs once every 2 years, I have no knowledge of who if anyone is standing to oppose Mr Ogilivie, but it is my opinion that the clubs we all support will have failed us all if they vote to re elect him. This is there opportunity on behalf of us to say we are not accepting your previous behaviour and show him the door!!
The CraigieLeaks revelations cast a light on the shameful connivance of Scotland’s media in avoiding the biggest story in the history of Scottish sport.
Does anyone think they will ever admit this willingly?
There are careers and reputations on the line here if all their cosy back-door deals, gifts and free holidays are ever exposed.
The only prospect of them being undone is if the BBC, Guardian or Private Eye get involved in a major way.
Or if an Internet Bampot writes a book.
Now, there’s a thought . . .
Media House called in to handle Glasgow council leader Steven Purcell’s resignation
Gemma O’Reilly, prweek.com, Tuesday, 02 March 2010, 1:51pm, 1 Comment
Glasgow council leader Steven Purcell has called in PR support to help manage the media attention surrounding his shock resignation.
Called in: Jack Irvine
Media House International executive chairman Jack Irvine is handling the media following Purcell’s resignation. He was called in last night to handle Purcell’s announcement this morning. Purcell revealed he has resigned due to ‘exhaustion’.
Purcell had been tipped as a possible future leader of the Scottish Labour Party and was instrumental in Glasgow winning the 2014 Commonwealth Games.
He was elected, unopposed, as leader of Glasgow City Council in May 2005 at the age of 32. During his time as Glasgow City Council leader, he clashed with First Minister Alex Salmond over the Scottish government’s decision to cancel the Glasgow Airport Rail Link project.
1 comment
Vipp Vopp
How not to run a 21st century PR campaign: time to go, Jack
Scottish PR expert slams ‘media hysteria’ over Lockerbie bomber story
A Scottish PR expert and former newspaper editor has played-down the media hysteria surrounding the controversial release of the Lockerbie bomber last week.
Under fire: Holyrood, home of Scottish parliament
The former editor of The Sun in Scotland and chairman of Media House International Jack Irvine said: ‘We need to get this into perspective. Opposition parties are claiming that this is the most cataclysmic event ever to have happened to the new Scotland and we are led to believe that the US media are going potty. However, by Saturday it was way down US editorial schedules and I predict it will soon be forgotten. Americans have short attention spans.’
The Scottish Government has come under fire after releasing Lockerbie bomber Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi back to Libya on compassionate grounds. The story has continued to dominate the press over the weekend and features on most of today’s national papers’ front pages.
Scottish parliament is today being recalled to allow Scotland’s Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill to explain al-Megrahi’s release.
‘The SNP can now show that under the current law governing terminally ill prisoners, Kenny MacAskill had no choice but to do something or face the wrath of the European courts,’ said Irvine. ‘No action was not an option. They need to explain this rationally and rise above the media and political hysteria.’
Insight Public Affairs account director Amanda Stuart said: ‘I think it shows that Scotland is naive and should have secured stronger support from Libya before releasing him. Scotland should now highlight its compassionate stance. It will have to weather the storm and try to get assurance that al-Megrahi will not be part of the 40 yrs celebrations.’
Wolfstar MD Stuart Bruce added that the Scottish government’s main mistake was a lack of communication. ‘The lack of clarity before his release contributed to the rumours and speculation that are circulating. The various ‘conspiracy’ theories might not have developed so quickly had the Scottish government been more forthcoming.’
However, Bruce said the damage to Scotland’s reputation is not irretrievable. ‘The Scottish Government can’t afford to ignore the US media and must put lots of emphasis onto talking to broadcasters and news agencies from other European countries,’ said Bruce.
Sam says:
June 10, 2013 at 11:13 am
4 0 Rate This
THE FAX BEHIND THE MOST SENSATIONAL TRANSFER IN BRITISH FOOTBALL
=================================
The fact that Mo Johnston was going to Rangers was well known those within Celtic football circles in late May. I was told on the Monday after the cup final that he was signing. Doesn’t say much for Irvine’s “ear to the ground” approach
pilgrim1888 says:
June 10, 2013 at 1:23 pm
The opportunity to elect a new president occurs once every 2 years, I have no knowledge of who if anyone is standing to oppose Mr Ogilivie, but it is my opinion that the clubs we all support will have failed us all if they vote to re elect him. This is there opportunity on behalf of us to say we are not accepting your previous behaviour and show him the door!!
++++++++++++++
Well there we have it folks. I’m emailing the chairman of “my” club to point out those facts, and to ask that he does not, under any circumstances, cast a vote in favour of Ogilvie. I am also asking that he should, in the interests of transparency, post a note on the club website setting out how he cast the club’s vote, and why.
If everyone, from whatever club, who visits this forum does the same, we might at least get some transparency, if not the correct result. I assume that even the “Rangers” fans, who express themselves to be outraged at the SFA’s performance over the last 2 years, will fully support this suggestion?
Media House to bolster Edinburgh Airport rail plan
EDINBURGH: Transport initiatives edinburgh (tie) has appointed Media House International to assist it in gaining the necessary legislation to push ahead with the £500m proposed Edinburgh Airport Rail Link.
Tie is a private company set up by City of Edinburgh Council. The rail link involves construction of a tunnel under the runway and realignment of existing track, and promises to provide ten trains an hour linking the airport to the rest of the Scottish network.
‘There will be widespread public consultation with a host of people and organisations that will be affected,’ revealed Media House executive director Jack Irvine.
The proposal is seeking to achieve Royal Assent in 2006. Construction would begin the following year with the link scheduled to open in 2010.
Media House won the business after a competitive tender.
Charlotte Fakeovers @CharlotteFakes 1m
This is what a Ticketus deal looked like in Murrays final year 2010-2011 £5.3 million. http://www.scribd.com/doc/146867089/Ticketus-Deal-Sir-David-Murray …
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I phoned Hampdem this morning, Mr Regan wasn’t available so I was put through to Head of Communicartoons a Mr Broadfoot who assured me that as the debt in question (the wee tax bill )) hadn’t crystalised at the time of issuing the license then the SFA are on solid ground.
So there you have it i can rest easy and stop being an internet bampot our national game is in safe hands.
John clarke says:
June 9, 2013 at 11:35 pm
‘Re my ‘bounced’ email to Magnus Linklater, I think I’ll send him a hard copy to his postal address. Apart from anything else, That will allow me to use my real name -maybe’s.’–
—–
Lest my credibility be blown, I posted off a letter to Magnus Linklater ,with the text of my email in full, at 12 noon today.
Although he is, as far as I know, no longer working as an editor, I’d be very surprised if he is so out of the journalistic loop as not to be already generally aware of Charlotte.
But now that he will see that his own name has been mentioned, his interest might be aroused.
pilgrim1888 says:
June 10, 2013 at 1:23 pm
It is my understanding that Tomorrow at the SFA annual general meeting clubs will be asked to vote for a new SFA President. Campbell Ogilvie is standing for re election. The same Campbell Ogilvie who has admitted participating in an EBT scheme whilst at Rangers.
…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….
I read the Sunday Times yesterday and saw two very positive SFA pieces.
Amazingly positive and upbeat and praising the SFA for the money IMG have negotiated for future Scotland internationals and also Regan’s commitment to anti sectarianism and also the new pyramid system.
This is all puffery designed to tell the clubs, our clubs, that they have never had it so good.
And despite the expert choreography it is outrageous.
The very same clubs who have suffered financial losses because the SFA covered up some discrepancies at the dead club to keep its revenue coming in (Until Mr McC lost in the wrong round) need to grasp the nettle and ask the proper and telling questions about questionable decisions by the SFA .
These decisions have prejudiced the revenue for them and their shareholders.
In fact they have a fiduciary duty to do this.
Our clubs must see through the endemic SFA corruption and nonsense and tomorrow is a good time to start the clear out.
It will only take one honest chairman who knows or senses what has really been going on.
An interim president should be elected a simple brief.
To create a transparent SFA that is fit for purpose.
So Peter, Rod, Stewart, etc please start the revolution.
You know (and we all know too) that the dam is about to burst.
Please do the right thing.
Ogilvie and Regan on “Gardening Leave” and a new interim team.
Sam says:
June 10, 2013 at 1:31 pm
Media House called in to handle Glasgow council leader Steven Purcell’s resignation
Gemma O’Reilly, prweek.com, Tuesday, 02 March 2010, 1:51pm, 1 Comment
Glasgow council leader Steven Purcell has called in PR support to help manage the media attention surrounding his shock resignation.
======================================================
In view of the background I am amazed it has taken so long for him to go – so little ‘shock’ involved.
LOL
Kipper done like.
chancer67 says:
June 10, 2013 at 1:52 pm
==========================
If HMRC had raised their assessment then it was an enforceable debt.
The only way out for Rangers and the SFA would be if there was an outstanding appeal against the debt. Not an interest or penalties, the debt itself.
Then it could be argued that it was not an outstanding debt at that time.
I don’t know what the position was when the licence was granted.
Sam says:
June 10, 2013 at 1:39 pm
————————————————————————–
Some of the links you post are interesting to me. But it would be very helpful if you quoted the source and date and first 1 or 2 pars so that I can go back if I’m interested and have the time to digest. I usually do this when posting info rather than putting up my thoughts.
I’m not trying to tell you what to do btw but in my short time here it is obvious that ‘tastes’ are certainly varied as regards posters. It just would be helpful as often I’m also trying to do some work so time can be tight sometimes.
callumsson says:
June 10, 2013 at 1:40 pm
“This is what a Ticketus deal looked like in Murrays final year 2010-2011 £5.3 million”.
————–
So the Ticketus association predated CW. He was just picking up on (S)DM’s revenue source. The proportioning is club specific. Would this be the away supporters only? Would Motherwell bring 1501 away to Ibrox and the others 2500? Can supporters of named teams provide an indication if these numbers could be for away fans only?
The turnover (£5.3M per half season) would see CW pay off ticketus in 3 to 4 years. European income accounts for half the total (in the first half of the season). Without European group stages income drops by 30%.
Does the continuation of the same financing structure suggest a continuity of ‘ownership’?
Not that I am excusing any of our footballing suits but it’s a thought as to who was whispering what in their ears which found voice in terms such as: Armageddon, social unrest, financial meltdown and all the other phrases which have become part of our language in jig time with the constant reinforcement of the phrases by the MSM.
And the magic potion which required swallowing was a strong Rangers in the SPL or maybe SFL1 or maybe – well we all know the story.
On the timesheet dated 23 Nov 2010
“Deflection of BBC Scotland’s Chick young – 1/2 hour”
A fly swatter round the lughole would have been cheaper 🙂
Charlotte is posting stuff up concerning Hay McKerron Media Consultants who seem to have been monitoring the press for CW back in December 2010. She’s indicating there might be a problem with the VAT payments but no details as yet.
Castofthousands says:
June 10, 2013 at 2:26 pm
Using the Ticketus arrangement is not uncommon for football clubs to assist in cashflow. It is basically the equivalent of a payday loan. They get their money as soon as it comes in to the club. So there is no interest per se
However it is normally based on advance payments for season ticket sales. Allowing a club to get the money in prior to the sales are made to the fans, but getting less as Ticketus get a discount on the tickest they buy (which are sold to the fans by the club on their behalf).
It is indicative of a club having financial problems and maybe having no overdraft, or having already spent it. It really is the “payday loan” end of the market.
Belbios BV is Whyte’s (now defunct?) Tixway business in the Netherlands, so presumably by billing the services there is a way of avoiding VAT?
tomtomaswell says:
June 10, 2013 at 1:35 pm
Sam says:
June 10, 2013 at 11:13 am
4 0 Rate This
THE FAX BEHIND THE MOST SENSATIONAL TRANSFER IN BRITISH FOOTBALL
=================================
The fact that Mo Johnston was going to Rangers was well known those within Celtic football circles in late May. I was told on the Monday after the cup final that he was signing. Doesn’t say much for Irvine’s “ear to the ground” approach
===============================================================
It is a common phenomenon that time distorts memory and also can influence the part that an individual believes they have played in a past event.
I know that the Mo story was about for at least three weeks prior to it appearing in the Sun – everyone knew it was going to happen but the proof and the date wasn’t there and, of course, as part of the deal Mo was required to do a sit-down and pose for pics.
I know for a fact that the DR was actively working with the person that could have brought the deal about but I am unable to add much more for professional reasons. It is also the case that the DR had the story confirmed from another well known and trusted Ibrox source the day before it appeared in the Sun and I believed then and ever since that the Sun was given the info from the same source before they contacted the DR. Reading Mr Irvine’s tale, which I have never previously seen until today, I obviously got it wrong and my memory must be playing tricks on me.
The DR also had the story confirmed from two Rangers players before the Sun printed but the story wasn’t used.
So there is much more to this story than it would appear that Mr Irvine is aware of. But credit where credit is due and the Sun did have the exclusive. However, as I mentioned yesterday when talking about ‘sources’ and serious investigative reporting, sometimes all it boils down to is you being the one to pick-up a ringing phone.
Obviously that didn’t happen in this case given the very detailed explanation Mr Irvine has provided. But sometimes the simple answer is the correct one but doesn’t sound as good and to be sure wee Derek’s slippers were well and truly buzzing on his big day and most other days too.
It’s an interesting question as to whether Chiefie had a clue as to what was actually going on behind the scenes and sometimes stories are wrecked when an Editor stops editing and thinks he’s actually a journalist – Mr Irvine will know that this comment doesn’t apply to him and least not in this particular scenario.
But I think perhaps the most curious thing about the Mo story was that few believed the story in the Sun and in pubs all over Glasgow serious and heavy debates raged which weren’t really settled until the Record confirmed the story next day. It was sort of reminiscent of when TV first started carrying Saturday football results which were never taken as gospel until checked against one of the two Saturday sports papers.
It was definitely known that Murray in common with lots of English clubs used Ticketus or similar companies to ease cash-flow.
But I always thought they got their money back from the ST sales. I wonder if Murray just did separate one year deals which could explain why the repayment seems to be geared to opposition fan ticket sales.
If you go into a longer term deal then that possibly is paid by ST money.
y4rmy says:
June 10, 2013 at 3:00 pm
“Belbios BV is Whyte’s (now defunct?) Tixway business in the Netherlands, so presumably by billing the services there is a way of avoiding VAT”?
—————
That’s what I was thinking. However I understand that goods and services sold from the UK would attract UK VAT rates. There used to be ‘duty free’ at UK airports but this privilege was removed some years ago. Only time VAT wouldn’t be charged was if goods or services were being supplied to a duty free zone which is basically offshore in international waters or possibly airspace. Need an accountant used to dealing with international transactions to clarify this.
Maybe Charlotte sees a bigger picture. Maybe she is barking up the wrong (of 150,000) trees. Maybe she is compromising the PR firm concerned. Need more info from an accountant (Essex!) before firm conclusions can be drawn by admitted bampots.
Ecobhoy 10.26.
I gave it to readers as it was given to me by someone I trust because of their record. The equation was his not mine and me, not being a journo in the trade believe him. As I said trust is a personal challenge and our experiences tempers our attitude when asked to do it.
Be that as it may it does not gather in the potatoes and in the absence of an alternative to getting CF out there have you any suggestions of a line to take in approaching MPs?
Do others have suggestions? Is extended tax avoidance using insolvency law a good line to take? For me it crosses the borders between Scotland and the rest of the UK and might get the wider public interest engagement required to make thngs happen.
Charlotte’s latest.
“So easily avoidable. The source of The Billion now also disclosed (p8)”
Darrell King reduced to the role of copy boy. A bit unkind, he did supply some facts, just not the important ones.
The last Charlotte tweeted document has received 2000 reads in 25 minutes. Its being guzzled down faster than the most red blodded of succulent lamb. Jack, where have all your sheepdogs gone?
Chancer 67
If it hadnt crystalised at the time, which would be end March why did CW pay £500k towards it in early May and why did SOs call in Aug to collect the rest and where UEFA informed.
Ask him exactly when did it “crystalise”
Castofthousands says:
June 10, 2013 at 3:13 pm
1 0 Rate This
y4rmy says:
June 10, 2013 at 3:00 pm
“Belbios BV is Whyte’s (now defunct?) Tixway business in the Netherlands, so presumably by billing the services there is a way of avoiding VAT”?
—————
That’s what I was thinking. However I understand that goods and services sold from the UK would attract UK VAT rates. There used to be ‘duty free’ at UK airports but this privilege was removed some years ago. Only time VAT wouldn’t be charged was if goods or services were being supplied to a duty free zone which is basically offshore in international waters or possibly airspace. Need an accountant used to dealing with international transactions to clarify this.
Maybe Charlotte sees a bigger picture. Maybe she is barking up the wrong (of 150,000) trees. Maybe she is compromising the PR firm concerned. Need more info from an accountant (Essex!) before firm conclusions can be drawn by admitted bampots.
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As long as you have their VAT number you don’t charge VAT on any transactions between EEC member states. VAT is only charged on internal transactions or if the customer based in another EEC country doesn’t have a VAT number.
http://news.stv.tv/highlands-islands/228863-ex-rangers-owner-craig-whyte-arrest-warrant-in-housekeeper-trial/
y4rmy says:
June 10, 2013 at 3:00 pm
Belbios BV is Whyte’s (now defunct?) Tixway business in the Netherlands, so presumably by billing the services there is a way of avoiding VAT?
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Belbios BV is very much still a live and functioning company – used it many times for cinema tickets, as recently as two-weeks ago. Is it the same company – we know how wee Craigie likes to use similar business names to actual, profitable companies? VAT is payable depending on what is being purchased e.g. products or type of services being procured. ‘Consultancy’ services are usually VAT neutral on cross-border business, so in this case, probably none is required. VAT is included in price for buying goods via online retailers from different EU countries e.g. internet book retailers…
Auldheid says:
June 10, 2013 at 3:27 pm
Ecobhoy 10.26.
I gave it to readers as it was given to me by someone I trust because of their record. The equation was his not mine and me, not being a journo in the trade believe him. As I said trust is a personal challenge and our experiences tempers our attitude when asked to do it.
Be that as it may it does not gather in the potatoes and in the absence of an alternative to getting CF out there have you any suggestions of a line to take in approaching MPs?
Do others have suggestions? Is extended tax avoidance using insolvency law a good line to take? For me it crosses the borders between Scotland and the rest of the UK and might get the wider public interest engagement required to make things happen.
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Trust is a very personal thing and I have no probs with your position but on issues as ginormous as this unseen pressures can be truly enormous. It will all come out in the wash anyway of that I’m sure.
On the MP question I am sure that no Scottish MP will raise the matter in the House quite simply because of the possibility of losing votes. Galloway probably would – personally I think that could be an error but sometimes when there isn’t a choice you have to make do. I think a Tory English MP going on the tax issue is a possibility but at this time of the year could be difficult as the recess looms large in minds and does anyone actually care about Scottish Football which is a devolved matter anyway?
The key question to me is what does CF have in the way of nuclear or killer options – if she has them and uses them then the story will out and if she doesn’t we won’t get much further in terms of mainstream publicity.
I’m not being negative but trying to be realistic and the big problem is we don’t actually know what CF has and its value. We also don’t know her agenda and if she were working say for the likes of Ticketus then they have to be careful at controlling the amount and damage from the stuff leaked otherwise there would be no point in anyone paying them off to go away and shred the material.
And perhaps anyone considering putting up cash to make it all end might wonder what happens after they reach a settlement – could the stuff then go to the authorities in the shape of the cops/Hector. So what potential damage lies in wait.
Poker is being played here but we don’t know what cards are in play or the stakes or who’s even sitting-in. Sorry I can’t come up with anything more at this point.
Gaz says:
June 10, 2013 at 2:21 pm
chancer67 says:
June 10, 2013 at 1:52 pm
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If HMRC had raised their assessment then it was an enforceable debt.
The only way out for Rangers and the SFA would be if there was an outstanding appeal against the debt. Not an interest or penalties, the debt itself.
Then it could be argued that it was not an outstanding debt at that time.
I don’t know what the position was when the licence was granted.
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My recollection of the “Wee Tax Case” was that it was discovered by Whyte late on in his negotiations to buy RFC from Murray. At the time I think Murray was looking for his original stake (£6m) back but upon discovery of the tax bill he decided to cut his losses and gave Whyte the club for £1 on the agreement that Whyte would pay HMRC.
Whyte didn’t pay the bill and as an excuse to stall HMRC he then questioned its legibility.
tomtomaswell says:
June 10, 2013 at 3:51 pm
“Belbios BV is Whyte’s (now defunct?) Tixway business in the Netherlands, so presumably by billing the services there is a way of avoiding VAT”?
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That’s what I was thinking. However I understand that goods and services sold from the UK would attract UK VAT rates. There used to be ‘duty free’ at UK airports but this privilege was removed some years ago. Only time VAT wouldn’t be charged was if goods or services were being supplied to a duty free zone which is basically offshore in international waters or possibly airspace. Need an accountant used to dealing with international transactions to clarify this.
Maybe Charlotte sees a bigger picture. Maybe she is barking up the wrong (of 150,000) trees. Maybe she is compromising the PR firm concerned. Need more info from an accountant (Essex!) before firm conclusions can be drawn by admitted bampots.
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As long as you have their VAT number you don’t charge VAT on any transactions between EEC member states. VAT is only charged on internal transactions or if the customer based in another EEC country doesn’t have a VAT number.
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I believe the VAT number of Belbios needs to be on the invoice. In any cases these services are being delivered in the UK to Liberty Capital Ltd as per the contract implicit in the emails and sending an invoice to NL doesn’t stack up.
ecobhoy says:
June 10, 2013 at 3:09 pm
The money coming from season ticket sales is the norm. Pre-sale of tickets at a discount, with face value going to Ticketus when they are sold to the customer (minus a commission to the club).
It looks to me that Rangers might have had to advance sell some other tickets during the season because of additional cash flow issues. Which would suggest overdraft problems.
ecobhoy says:
June 10, 2013 at 4:04 pm
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What about Tom Watson as regards the email from Media House that talks about obtaining info from serving police officers. He has a special interest in media activity.
Reilly1926 says:
June 10, 2013 at 4:05 pm
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Whyte didn’t pay the bill and as an excuse to stall HMRC he then questioned its legibility.
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Whyte didn’t pay the bill on the basis it was too difficult to read? 😉
http://www.lse.co.uk/SharePrice.asp?shareprice=RFC
Rangers didn’t pay the bill after they had agreed to, hence HMRC getting the Court and Sheriff’s Officers involved. Leading to an arrestment of Rangers’ bank account.
Did they pay any VAT, PAYE or NI at all after Whyte took over. Or did they just stop paying after they had lost the prospect of any substantial European income.
jimlarkin – although lse.co.uk is generally accurate, the official London Stock Exchange site – http://www.londonstockexchange.com is the best to use.
Re the question of the “wee tax case” not having crystalised; is that really the relevant test?
As i understand it the following Uefa document sets out the licensing tests
http://www.uefa.com/MultimediaFiles/Download/uefaorg/Clublicensing/01/50/09/12/1500912_DOWNLOAD.pdf
Annex VIII (at p64) appears to have the applicable tests
subsection (d) appears to set the test as being that if a claim has been brought (as it was by HMRC?) then it has to be demonstrated that the claim is “manifestly unfounded” for it not to be included as an “overdue”?
Would welcome the views of others.
Gaz says:
June 10, 2013 at 4:32 pm
Rangers didn’t pay the bill after they had agreed to, hence HMRC getting the Court and Sheriff’s Officers involved. Leading to an arrestment of Rangers’ bank account.
Did they pay any VAT, PAYE or NI at all after Whyte took over. Or did they just stop paying after they had lost the prospect of any substantial European income.
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The “bill” would have arisen out of a contract settlement with HMRC – what was the date of that contract? and how does that date compare to the date on which the SFA signed of the Euro licence?
Arrest warrant issued for former Rangers owner Craig Whyte
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-highlands-islands-22845906
bogsdollox says:
June 10, 2013 at 4:44 pm
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I was under the impression that HMRC raised an assessment, rather than them coming to agreement with Rangers. The matter had been going on for some time. If I remember correctly the small tax case was for payments made about a decade earlier.
It was certainly outstanding when the relevant European licence was granted, the big question though was if there was a legitimate appeal in place at the time. Again as I recall when Whyte bought the club he agreed to pay the outstanding amount but never did.