How the world works
If you’re a banker in a small country and you criminally destroy the entire national economy out of personal and corporate greed, you go to jail.
If you’re a banker in a large country and you criminally destroy the entire national economy out of personal and corporate greed, a laughably small fine is imposed and you get to keep everything your fraudulent actions helped you line your pockets with.
If you’re a small Scottish football club and you field an improperly-registered player once, by accident, you forfeit the match and are disqualified from the tournament.
If you’re a large Scottish football club and you field numerous improperly-registered players, repeatedly and deliberately, to gain an unfair advantage, a laughably small fine (which will never be paid) is imposed on a completely different and bankrupt company, and you get to keep everything the unregistered players in question helped you win.
We all clear on that? Splendid.
The BBC’s Alasdair Lamont just tweeted:
“The judgement from Lord Nimmo Smith’s independent commission will say no unfair competitive advantage was gained on the field.”
Which does rather raise the obvious question, “What the hell were they all being paid for, then?”
That explains why all the frauds, cheats, Westminster MPs, bankers, wealthy, powerful and greedy think we’re “better together” in a larger country very neatly. Thanks Rev.
Basically, the lesson here is: don’t just break the law – absolutely SMASH it.
Doug, there used to be a saying (coined by someone like the Queen Mum or Terry-Thomas) – £1,000 in debt? You sweat. £10m in debt? Your bank sweats.
Not unexpected but still a sickening decision. The high heid yin ludge members have closed ranks once again,
Craig: You’re thinking of John-Paul Getty.
link to brainyquote.com
“If you owe the bank $100 that’s your problem. If you owe the bank $100 million, that’s the bank’s problem.”
Shame Rangers (indeed any Scottish football) keeps getting dragged
into this website; it will only serve to drive certain people (i.e. Rangers
supporters who are ‘undecided’) away.
The dark doings of Scottish football are well served on more than enough other sites.
We all share a vison with W OS and this subject is not it. ( although a more fair & just society is).
I have to say football bores me comatose, but look at the history of this blog. Posts about the Rangers affair were getting huge viewing stats and being deluged with comment at a time when the political pieces were lucky to get into double figures of comment. Actually, it’s only recently that the Rangers posts stopped heading up the “most read posts” list.
These pieces drew a lot of readers to the site, and many of them stayed. It has been an integral part of the blog all along. Don’t knock it.
So let me get this right…..Rangers (Sevco) are not liable for the actions of Oldco (Rangers) yet Sevco retain all the history, trophies won etc by Oldco. Run that one past me again……..
Come on now, you are starting to sound like the unionist mob with the “abide by electoral commission rules”. It wasn’t long ago Rangers supporters were berated and told to man up and accept the findings of Lord Nimmo Smiths independant enquiry. Now yous don’t like the decision he is connected tae the lodge. Laughable guys and girls. Just because you don’t fancy the findings doesn’t mean it’s a conspiracy . Come on that’s above the intellect shown on this site.
Doug Daniel says:
28 February, 2013 at 12:03 pm
Basically, the lesson here is: don’t just break the law – absolutely SMASH it.
Unless you’re a rioter, then you go to jail.
Thanks Rev.
I wish it *had* been Terry-Thomas!
When I am elected First Jeannie of an independent Scotland, I’ll be banning football altogether, on the grounds that football talk does my head in. Just so you know.
It’s quite amusing that those who have never seen the evidence or indeed the rule book now question the eminent Lord Nimmo Smith and two highly respected QCs when they have taken the time to assess the matters at hand and considered their judgement.
Do they not properly comprehend the concepts of justice and due process?
@Jeannie. Careful though – when I end up running the world, the first thing I’ll do is ban Nickelback, tattoos and cricket. Then it’ll be the Kardashians and Dundee United. Then Fife. By the end of the week it’ll be me alone on a ruined planet. It’s a slippery slope, the banning thing.
Anyone who doesn’t want to read about Rangers, or any other football posts, stop clicking on them. They’re quite clearly about Rangers, often with pictures of people you don’t recognise. This is a big hint not to click on them. I like football, and I like Stu’s articles about Rangers as they are often more insightful than the Bland media from other sources.
On the actual subject, I have to say, a £250,000 fine seems to indicate guilt. I’ve heard players were not eligible and I would have thought that should mean Rangers forfeit games and most likely lose trophies as well, but I think the SPL is complicit by it’s ineptitude in the matter and is most likely trying to find a happy middleground where they can look like hammering Rangers, but not really do it whilst at the same time avoiding any further inspection of thier own inadequacies.
In addition to all of that, it takes seconds to find “Rangers Against Independence” and “Rangers Against Alex Salmond” pages on facebook. I’m not saying every Rangers fan wants to preserve the union, I believe Rangers fans are a bit like Labour the vast majority want to continue the Status quo whilst some want to make thier lives better. Given promises made to the orange order by Labour before the local elections and NI Orangemen demanding a vote in the referendum for Ulster Scots, and close association between the order and the club, I think that makes it acceptable to report Rangers stories in a political blog.
Sour grapes, no more and no less.
“Sour grapes, no more and no less.”
Rangers were found utterly and unambiguously guilty of deliberate systematic cheating, and haven’t been punished, because of a ludicrous semantic technicality. That’s not sour grapes, that’s legitimate anger.
@Nairn Clark
Yeah, come to think of it, I’d ban cricket too – in fact any sport involving men playing with balls – I think that should just about cover it.
Jeannie says:
@Nairn Clark
Yeah, come to think of it, I’d ban cricket too – in fact any sport involving men playing with balls – I think that should just about cover it.
Yay. I still get to keep Moto GP and Darts and Wrestling and touring cars and rallying and er…synchronised swimming…
Rev,
Is this,
A: A go at corporate arseholes?
B: A go at lenient judges?
C: A go at Rangers football club and their supporters?
D: Another chance to poke your finger into the wounds of Glasgow once again?
Perhaps all 4….?
“Rev,
Is this,”
Hard to see which line would constitute an attack on Rangers supporters. And it’s nothing to do with Glasgow. So I’d have to say A, B and half of C. Funny how absolutely nobody’s commented on the bankers part.
@Rev –
‘Funny how absolutely nobody’s commented on the bankers part.’
Given what’s been on the news today about RBS, perhaps we’re all past the stage of having anything to say.
Hearing Hester blabbering on about how RBS is ‘recovering’ and will once again be fit for privatisation, perhaps year after next, it’s just staggering – the utter arrogance of these people is way outwith what normal citizens can comprehend. They ooze invincibility – can’t help rembering the scene in Braveheart where they bare their arses – that’s what the elites have been doing to us for years, and we’ve no arrows to dissuade them.
Mike Small has written about this over on BellaC more than once, also covered the Rangers saga for the Guardian several times, and received death-threats for his trouble. He refers to a culture of ‘deference’, where the behaviour of these people is, in effect, reinforced and rewarded. They can’t help themselves (if you’ll pardon the expression) – it’s what they do. And we let them. That’s what we do.
A swift reminder – no-one from RBS has seen the inside of a prison over LIBOR, despite cast-iron incontrovertible voluminous evidence that major crimes were committed and are, likely as not, ongoing. Most of the guilty – their names are known – are still working for RBS i.e. they’re 80% working for us.
Go figure.
Why the obsession with Rangers? Am I the only one missing the link to an independent Scotland?
It is not an obsession with Rangers the football club but rather an obsession with the ‘Scottish establishment’ and all that they represent. Particularly the blind allegiance of the vast majority of Rangers followers to this failed UK. A blind allegiance that puts a significant percentage of the populace firmly in the No camp, regardless of the merits of Independence. We even lose a lot of the Celtic / Catholic vote – with the North British Scotia Nostra firmly in control at Parkhead. A pox on both their houses!
Eion, yes, I think you are…
“it takes seconds to find “Rangers Against Independence” and “Rangers Against Alex Salmond” pages on facebook. I’m not saying every Rangers fan wants to preserve the union, I believe Rangers fans are a bit like Labour the vast majority want to continue the Status quo whilst some want to make thier lives better. Given promises made to the orange order by Labour before the local elections and NI Orangemen demanding a vote in the referendum for Ulster Scots, and close association between the order and the club, I think that makes it acceptable to report Rangers stories in a political blog.”
OK, John, fair enough – personally couldn’t care less about the round-ball game and find it’s link to Scottish politics tangential at best. It wouldn’t surprise me if similar FaceAche pages could be found for many clubs, it’d just be better in my view to see the debate rise above their nonsense – per the division of the electorate in the article the other day, folks on this sites are firmly in the ‘will-never-be-convinced camp’ and are better left to their own thing. Must be more productive topics for us to focus on tho?
Rev, comments such as the following do you absolutely no credit:
“Rangers were found utterly and unambiguously guilty of deliberate systematic cheating, and haven’t been punished, because of a ludicrous semantic technicality.”
This is entirely at odds with the established facts. I see your article was written, it seems rather too hastily, in response to an STV story that was published before the commission actually made its ruling public. Perhaps you should read the ruling before commenting further.
“Perhaps you should read the ruling before commenting further.”
I’ve read the ruling. What part(s) of it are you referring to?
I’ve commented before with regards to Rangers. I am a season book holder at Ibrox and I am passionate about my team NOT the baggage.
I am even more passionate about Independence and the ramifications if we vote NO.
I as a supporter paid my money each year in good faith to watch David Murray’s signings on the field. How is it my fault or Unionist Rangers fans fault that contract dealings may or may not have been within the law. If anyone has been cheated in this it is myself and others who paid £500 + a year to watch what we thought was a footballing revolution and it has many similarities of Fred Goodwin wanting to be the CEO of the biggest bank in the world from Scotland(which he was for 24hrs) and ended in disaster.
Just one other point, I support the right of this site to have a go at Rangers and some of the recent images and the songs that are still sung disgust me as a fair thinking Scot. However, we have to be careful not to alienate potential YES voters, e,g if Anas Sarwar, roused support within Scotland’s Indian and Pakistani communities to march every 2nd week in favour of a NO vote, would we be commenting saying every Asian Scot will vote NO as we keep seeing images of them with Union Jacks? Of course not, I and many other Rangers Fans support my team but want to better our society by voting YES.
“How is it my fault or Unionist Rangers fans fault that contract dealings may or may not have been within the law.”
It isn’t, obviously, and I didn’t ever say it was.
@john Lyons, had a quick look at the sites you mention, they are a strange bunch, but you do yourself a disservice not pointing out that there is identical site from the other half of the city
link to facebook.com
what are we all about in Scotland, it’s a bloody game, yes I like to watch it, but Rangers don’t feed my kids.
@John Lyons
Ok then…you can keep them…….but you must only speak about them in a tiny whisper
Rev, well, if you’ve read the ruling, perhaps you can point me to the part that backs up your statement:
“Rangers were found utterly and unambiguously guilty of deliberate systematic cheating”
While you’re at it, could you also tell me where the ruling confirms your view that Rangers fielded ‘unregistered’ players?
“Rev, well, if you’ve read the ruling, perhaps you can point me to the part that backs up your statement:
“Rangers were found utterly and unambiguously guilty of deliberate systematic cheating””
Um, all of it?
“the scale and extent of the proven contraventions of the disclosure rules require a substantial penalty to be imposed”
(Page 1)
“”If it had not been intended that the player would directly benefit from the EBT arrangements then there is no reason to believe that the player would have agreed to accept the overall financial package offered by Oldco.””
(Page 24)
“”Oldco’s failure to disclose the side-letters to the SPL and the SFA was at least partly motivated by a wish not to risk prejudicing the tax advantages of the EBT scheme”
(Page 31)
“There is no evidence that the Board of Directors of Oldco took any steps to obtain proper external legal or accountancy advice to the Board as to the risks inherent in agreeing to pay players through the EBT arrangements without disclosure to the football authorities. The directors of Oldco must bear a heavy responsibility for this… the non-disclosure must be regarded as deliberate”
(Page 32)
“(1) We find the breaches in Issue 1, Issue 2, Issue 3 (except Issue 3(c) and the concluding passage of Issue 3(b)starting with “such that Rangers FC . . . .”) and Issue 4 proved against RFC 2012 Plc (in liquidation), formerly The Rangers Football Club Plc. “
Eion, Must be more productive topics for us to focus on tho?
Fair comment, but this isn’t the only article of the day, although the EU thing has been done to death.
Alex, you’re right, I also found that page and one other, but one page has 44 followers and the other has 6. Hardly worth mentioning to a backdrop of umpteen pages on the Rangers side and those having hundreds of followers. The Rangers fans also have anti Alex Salmond and Anti SNP pages. I also do not believe you have to mention Celtic just because you mentioned Rangers.
Jeanie, can we also keep Rugby? I know they have a ball, but it’s a funny shape and I quite like Rugby, especially this year when we are actually winning games.
Rangers/Celtic. Celtic/Rangers. etc etc etc.
No matter how you look at it these two teams have absolutely nothing to do with Scotland. They both represent imported Irish bigotry and one is as bad as the other.
We don’t need them. I really wish they would bugger off to the English League and get out of my face.
@John Lyons
Rugby? A game played with a strange-shaped ball by men with square-shaped, Michael Moore-type heads – yeah we’ll keep it so we can point and laugh.
The Rough Bounds,
“Anyone who doesn’t want to read about Rangers, or any other football posts, stop clicking on them. They’re quite clearly about Rangers, often with pictures of people you don’t recognise. This is a big hint not to click on them. I like football, and I like Stu’s articles about Rangers as they are often more insightful than the Bland media from other sources.”
Now get out of our faces.
“So let me get this right…..Rangers (Sevco) are not liable for the actions of Oldco (Rangers) yet Sevco retain all the history, trophies won etc by Oldco. Run that one past me again”
Well, it’s just like how an independent Scotland will be a successor state to the UK as far as liabilities are concerned (national debt, etc), but will simultaneously be a completely new state as far as privileges are concerned (EU membership and so on). Except backwards.
My advice would be to leave the football out of it. It’s just a business and there’s a whole load more of them that are corrupt. This is not a football site so don’t lower yourself please.
“Um, all of it?”
I see, does “all of it” include one of the headline conclusions?
“Rangers FC did not gain any unfair competitive advantage from the contraventions of the SPL Rules in failing to make proper disclosure of the side-letter arrangements, nor did the non-disclosure have the effect that any of the registered players were ineligible to play, and for this and other reasons no sporting sanction or penalty should be imposed upon Rangers FC” (Summary, page 2)
The commission did not find Rangers guilty of “deliberate systematic cheating”, nor did it find that Rangers had fielded ineligible or “unregistered” players, however much you wish it had done so.
“The commission did not find Rangers guilty of “deliberate systematic cheating””
Yes it did. It just didn’t use those exact words.
You don’t need to be a small club to suffer at the hands of the glasgow bigot mafia.
Hearts have been fined more for Vlad speaking out against the corruption in Scottish football than the slime at ibrox for being part of the biggest scandal in World soccer history.
You can claim to be a rangers supporter and innocent of bigotry and extreme unionist hate, but then you could be a member of the nazi party and claim to really love jews. Wouldn’t make it true.
The money Hearts have been cheated out of by rangers is bigger than the current debt.
Being killed twice over is too good a fate for the evil that rangers represent.
Football?
A truly sickening parallel…Bankers/Rangers.
@ Jeanne; No football, no cricket,you seem to be anti-ball games. You’ll be advocating celibacy next.
Nothing will change for the better in the Scottish establishment until independence.
Structural corruption in just about every established Scots (and British for that matter) authority has been proven to exist, with the possible (only possible mind) exception of Holyrood and for the simple reason that it is not old enough yet!
The Law, The Papers, The Broadcasters, The Church(s), Universities, Political Parties, The ‘Honours ‘ system, Councils, Big Business, Small Business, The arts, Football…….. etc etc etc.
The only focus now should be on harnessing a YES vote in 2014! If Rev Stu feels that this kind of article draws an audience to hear the truth of our ‘modern’ Scotland, then I go with his judgement (for now).
Rangers (and Celtic) are box office at the moment and exemplify all that should be great, but that has been allowed to rot and canker in Scottish society, through a simple lack of normal and continual social oversight.
We are living in a ‘modern’ country run through ancient institutions that have no tradition or understanding of the concept of democratic oversight, other than to pay lipservice to the idea. They have enjoyed their protection from evolution so long now, that they forgot they were being protected.
Well the Gibbons have landed link to youtube.com and the Tree Kangeroos are fucked! link to youtube.com Sorry Niko.
The Austerity Allstars Present – A bit of fun for all!
http://www.buggerthebankers.com/
@Braco –
Hear hear.
We need to try and view the bigger picture, even if it’s a scene Hieronymus Bosch would’ve balked at depicting in all its rancid detail.
Can anyone point to an area of contemporary life which hasn’t been more or less polluted by capitalism?
Just wondering…
@ Ianbrotherhood: Man’s inhumanity to man. The terminology may change over the centuries but the core issue continues.
I’m untouched by the coming bedroom tax but by God I find the very idea appalling.
@velofello-
I don’t want to push my luck as Rev has been tolerant of me using WoS to flag-up SSP activity here in Ayrshire, but seeing as you mentioned the Bedroom Tax, I’m grabbing the chance to tell anyone who’s interested that last night, in Irvine, we had 80 people turn out for a public meeting on that topic.
80. On a cold foggy evening in February?
It got heated, voices were raised, and a couple of well-lubricated hecklers made it the kind of evening one would associate with political meetings of twenty, thirty years ago. No mistake about it – this Bedroom Tax is focussing anger, and that anger is real. I’m not sure if people went away any more or less enraged than they were when they arrived, but they certainly left the Vineburgh Community Centre armed with clear information, contacts, and some measure of reassurance that the most vulnerable in our communities (and many of our North Ayrshire communities regularly top the least-coveted league tables when it comes to deprivation) are not alone in facing this vicious ‘tax’ – aside from any party-political point-scoring, the turnout last night proves that there’s no substitute for street-work and talking to people face-to-face. That’s what we’ve been doing on this subject since the New Year.
@john lyons
Now get out of our faces….
Shouldn’t that be, ‘Now get out of our faeces?’
“Which does rather raise the obvious question, “What the hell were they all being paid for, then?”
Playing footbalI I would imagine?
Doing it rather well, winning all those Titles and trophies.
You hate the Club because they are successful …………simply that.
Are all these photographs of smiling Rangers employees meant to enrage the viewers?
Stick to the Independence debate Stewart ………you’re much better at that.
““Which does rather raise the obvious question, “What the hell were they all being paid for, then?”
Playing footbalI I would imagine? Doing it rather well, winning all those Titles and trophies.”
You seem to have somewhat missed the point. Of course they were being paid to be good at football, which is why the idea that Rangers received no sporting advantage from their presence is so laughable.
“You hate the Club because they are successful”
I don’t hate success. I hate cheats. Rangers already had advantages any other club in Scotland would give their eye teeth for, and STILL cheated.
@velofello
Don’t worry, I’m banning celibacy, too. I’ve got to get votes somehow!
“Yes it did. It just didn’t use those exact words.”
There are no doubt many valid criticisms you can make of the commission’s ruling (I certainly have a few of my own), and of its conclusions, but this just won’t do.
If it were true that the commission found that Rangers were guilty of “deliberate systematic cheating” then it would not have concluded that “Rangers FC did not gain any unfair competitive advantage from the contraventions of the SPL Rules in failing to make proper disclosure of the side-letter arrangements”. I suspect if it had found Rangers guilty of “deliberate systematic cheating” that their conclusion would have been something along the lines of “Rangers FC did gain an unfair competitive advantage from the contraventions of the SPL Rules in failing to make proper disclosure of the side-letter arrangements”.
In a similar vein, if the commission had found Rangers of guilty of fielding ineligible or “unregistered” players it would not have concluded that “the non-disclosure [did not] have the effect that any of the registered players were ineligible to play”. Instead it would no doubt have concluded that “the non-disclosure had the effect that the unregistered players were ineligible to play”.
The substance of what the commission’s conclusions actually are is a matter of fact, not of opinion. To insist, as you have done, that the commission’s conclusions are, in fact, entirely contrary to the conclusions that they actually reached, is utterly perverse, bordering on dishonest, however much you may disagree with the conclusions drawn.
I enjoy your blog and I am glad to see that your indiegogo campaign is going well: I would certainly be glad to see you engage in “professional journalism from a fair and honest perspective” at all times, even when you stray, somewhat unwisely I would say, into the world of football.
“The substance of what the commission’s conclusions actually are is a matter of fact, not of opinion. To insist, as you have done, that the commission’s conclusions are, in fact, entirely contrary to the conclusions that they actually reached, is utterly perverse, bordering on dishonest, however much you may disagree with the conclusions drawn.”
You misunderstand. Here’s what the commission found:
Rangers broke the rules, systematically and deliberately, for years on end.
Can I presume you don’t dispute any of that? Because those words ARE used in the report. Now, here’s what “cheating” means:
“to practice fraud or deceit; to violate rules or regulations”
link to dictionary.reference.com
Clearly, that is precisely what the Commission found Rangers guilty of. That it then chose to assert – ridiculously – that Rangers had gained no sporting advantage from it, and also to punish Rangers’ innocent creditors while letting the club off scot-free, is neither here nor there. What it unequivocally found Rangers guilty of doing was fraud, deception and violating rules and regulations. That is, cheating. And it found that they had done so deliberately and systematically.
It is therefore entirely fair, reasonable and accurate to say that the Commission found Rangers guilty of “deliberate systematic cheating”, because that’s precisely what it DID find. It just chose, for reasons we can only guess at, not to call it that.
I understand perfectly, thanks.
To cherry-pick parts of the commission’s ruling to attempt to justify your view that Rangers were “guilty of deliberate systematic cheating” is one thing, to say that the commission therefore found Rangers “guilty of deliberate systematic cheating”, when it, as a matter of fact, came to the contrary conclusion is quite another.
I have no wish to go through the ruling with you, point by point, but I will address your comment below:
“Rangers broke the rules, systematically and deliberately, for years on end.Can I presume you don’t dispute any of that? Because those words ARE used in the report.”
As a matter of fact, “systematically” does not appear in the report at all, while “deliberate” appears only once. It should be noted that deliberate here relates not to deliberate rule breaking, but to the deliberate non disclosure of sideletters:
“While there is no question of dishonesty, individual or corporate, we nevertheless take the view that the nondisclosure must be regarded as deliberate, in the sense that a decision was taken that the sideletters need not be or should not be disclosed.” (pg 32)
Now, I would say a better definition of cheating (from the Oxford dictionary) would be:
Cheating: act dishonestly or unfairly in order to gain an advantage
At the risk of repeating myself, you will be aware that the commission concluded that Rangers did not gain any unfair competitive advantage through their breaches of the rules. In the detail of the ruling, the commission rules out dishonesty.
There may be some clues there to explain why the commission came to the conclusion below, which remains entirely at odds with your version of it:
Rangers FC did not gain any unfair competitive advantage from the contraventions of the SPL Rules in failing to make proper disclosure of the side-letter arrangements, nor did the non-disclosure have the effect that any of the registered players were ineligible to play, and for this and other reasons no sporting sanction or penalty should be imposed upon Rangers FC;
“It should be noted that deliberate here relates not to deliberate rule breaking, but to the deliberate non disclosure of sideletters:”
Which is against the rules, and therefore “rule-breaking”.
“I would say a better definition of cheating”
Now who’s cherry-picking?
“At the risk of repeating myself, you will be aware that the commission concluded that Rangers did not gain any unfair competitive advantage through their breaches of the rules.”
Something which I noted in my previous post. The Commission’s conclusion, though, is plainly wrong, and contradicts its own findings. It notes that the players in question may well have not signed for the club if not for the secret side-letters. One presumes that these players were bought because they were better than the club’s existing players – unless the club was deliberately buying worse ones, which would be strange. Therefore the club was PLAINLY both seeking and acquiring an on-field advantage.
Breaking the rules and employing deceit is cheating. The Commission found the club guilty of deceit and rule-breaking. Therefore it found it guilty of cheating. That it pretended NOT to have done so despite acknowledging that it had, and punished the innocent victims of Rangers’ cheating rather than the guilty club (because there would have been more money for creditors had it not been paid secretly to these players), is why the report is a disgrace and a whitewash.
Let me ask you a simple question: given that the Commission found very serious wrong-doing, do you think it’s justice that the only people to be punished were the blameless creditors? Or do you not give a shit about justice so long as you can twist semantics to pretend that Rangers were found innocent?