This evening’s announcement by Dunfermline Athletic that they no longer expect to receive timely receipt of the £80,000 ticket money Rangers FC PLC (in administration) owe them will heighten concerns at Inverness Caledonian Thistle, who have a stock at tickets with Rangers right now, money for which will be received by the administrators in advance of their game later this month.
The administrators have yet to decide whether to retain high-earning players or make more funds available for existing creditors, and future creditors, like Inverness. As ticket sales for the Inverness game are on-going, the administrators will need to be aware of their legal position before retaining a premium squad.
One final push (this week) for the Vanessa Riddle Appeal. We have a Celtic top signed by the first team squad available to auction on eBay. You can bid on the auction and help send Vanessa for the treatment she needs by clicking here. Thanks to Penfold for the donation and to Taggsybhoy for organising (yet again).
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Introduced laws to protect people against sectarian and racist descrimination, as opposed to destroy sectarian statistics and introduce a law to protect sectarian racists.
Saint Stivs says:
16 February, 2012 at 00:16
tonight is a bad night on this sacred blog.
we take a great 48 hours and we manage to dilute it into a Labour, SNP, parochial, wee scotland, big scotland distorted polarised view.
please, take a moment and really listen to what Alex Salmond said.
stop putting words in the Hearts supporters mouth.
stop looking at it as some sort of benefits cheat.
let the mans words speak for themselves.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rDZLIaFVUPE
****
Well said! I think he’s plain wrong – if the govt gives RFC support, they have to support all companies going into admin – but get things in perspective!!
I am certain that RFC PLC (in administration) should be liquidated forthwith.
Guilty of tax evasion, and they persist in trying to excuse what they did.
I even suspect criminal activity and hope that John McFall’s request for an FSA enquiry becomes a reality…soon.
Does anyone have the complete picture of the debt, the penalties, the interest, the vat, the paye, the moneys owed to other SPL clubs, to Rapid Vienna etc?
In other words what is the totality of their crime/debt?
I saw that Top Corner was asking for anything from the 9-in-a-row period, but I mean everything from the whole Murray and Whyte reigns.
Anyone?
HH
RWE CSC
again and again and again and again and again ad infinitum…….
Two things:
Saw but did not hear the STV Scotland Tonight ‘debate’ on tv in the hostelry I was attending. Looked the most infantile unbalanced piece of hunguffery ever to air on Scottish television channels. Trevor Steven (??) Oliver Hardy, a criminal ‘politician’…Nobody in my company needed any volume to know the gist of it; in fact some of the ventriloquism was genius. STV take a bow.
Secondly: got a call from a relative around about my 5th pint. Said relative very well informed, not a Hun nor Tim – not a huge football fan – thought I might be interested to know the liquidation is a certainty. Next week? Before end of month, came the reply.
Apologies if others have heard and posted this trickle of gold thread amid the tumble of well-worn hunnic sackcloth on the ethernet; I’m off to kip without reading back.
Hmm. We wait with jelly setting and ice cream chilling.
Then it will be over to Peter Lawell and the celtic PLC board to exert their muscle and dictate the terms and conditions of Zombie Huns Fc’s re-entry into Scottish football next season. If there IS a Zombie Huns Fc at all…C’mon the dogged hounds of HMRC…Teeth in and NEVER let go.
.
(Courtesy The Scotsman)
Michael Kelly: Celtic can gloat… but not for long..
Rangers fans voice their anger at owner Craig Whyte. Picture: Getty Images
MR DAVID Murray – as he soon will be again if the vast majority of Rangers’ fans have their way – must be held responsible for the state his club is in today.
He accepted as much yesterday when in an otherwise mealy-mouthed statement attempting to swerve responsibility for the Ibrox debacle he recognised that the tax tribunal proceedings have stemmed from arrangements put in place during his ownership.
But the Rangers’ fans who are now calling for his title to be removed, if not his head, should remember the delirium they enjoyed under his early ownership – signing the English captain and goalkeeper, winning trophy after trophy, competing effectively in Europe. And his media critics should be reminded of how they hungered for any words of wisdom he might deign to impart. For when Murray was in charge, there was little talk of how a weakened Celtic might be bad for Scottish football – least of all from him. He was out to create as big a gap between the two clubs as possible. He told me that himself.
His policy which created that initial medium-term success was what put the Celtic board – of which I was a member – in difficulty. We simply could not match his spending. And he never hesitated to rub it in. While that was irritating in the extreme, I could not fault his approach. We were rivals and he was out to crush the competition. He realised that owning a football club gave him the responsibility not to balance the books, but to succeed on the field. He went for European success and very nearly pulled it off. Sadly for him, he wasn’t quite rich enough and had to pull in his horns. He might have got away with it, but for the too-clever-by-half scheme to avoid tax by paying his players through this murky trust.
So, along with all other Celtic fans I am enjoying a period of pleasant contemplation at the discomfiture of Rangers. Those who thought they were “the people” and “simply the best” have to face the fact that their Establishment club, which based its appeal to a certain kind of fan on blatant discrimination, is now gone. “Sashes to Ashes” and “Nae Readies” will now be the new slogans if the Celtic social networking can have a say.
I just hope Alex Salmond’s anti-football law allows us to sing about it at the next Old Firm game. Chanting “schadenfreude” – a sentiment if not a word familiar to all football fans – would, given its Germanic root, certainly attract the attention of the thought police. But we can surely still all laugh at Rangers without being huckled?
However, for the serious Celtic fan this amusement cannot last for long. Celtic chief executive Peter Lawwell is correct in saying that we do not need a strong Rangers to carry on. But that is like saying that an independent Scotland could manage to scrape some sort of a living on the international stage. It does not recognise that the standard of football would be even lower than we suffer today.
Five years ago, Celtic set out on a programme of austerity – to reduce debt and ensure that running costs were kept under strict control. Those objectives have certainly been achieved with the club well managed financially and the balance sheet, as results announced this week showed, in a healthy state.
But that has been reflected in the quality of players Celtic have been prepared to sign. Early exits from Europe indicate that this is a sub-standard squad. In negative correlation with this sound financial strategy, the playing ambitions of the club have been reduced to the lowest point in its history. If Celtic are not spending money on players now, they’d spend a lot less without Rangers – because they wouldn’t need to. Scottish football would be even more mediocre and embarrassing. On the other hand, Celtic would be guaranteed automatic annual entry into the highest level of European competition that Uefa would allow impoverished Scottish football. So that would boost income. But the value of the television deals would collapse.
Celtic and Scottish football need Rangers. There may be a lot of hoops to jump through – financial, legal and football. But soon, probably before the March deadline for qualifying for European football for next season, Rangers will be reborn. And in the Premier League. They will not be relegated, or asked to start again in the lowest division, even if they do emerge as a new company.
Rangers will carry on. The support is too strong, the worldwide appeal so great, the potential to be exploited so appealing that it must make business sense for the phoenix to rise. Owner Craig Whyte appears to have put himself in a very strong position vis-a-vis many of the assets of the club, so he will have a big say in how things are eventually resolved, as will HMRC. But Whyte cannot be part of the final solution.
A man whose evidence a sheriff found wholly unreliable does not have the credibility with the financial institutions necessary to any new deal, never mind among the fans whose ticket money he has mortgaged for years to come.
But a club purged of many of its debts will be an attractive proposition. Rangers’ fans just want their club saved. For the rest of us, the interesting question is what kind of saviour will appear? If they are taken over by a bunch of sensible local businessmen who are able to run the club on the same conservative basis as Celtic, then we can look forward to the usual intense rivalry as two poor teams fight for domestic honours.
But if someone with the wealth of an Abramovic and the ambition of a young Murray were to appear, then we would see quality return to Scottish football. How would Celtic respond? Initially, the present owner would refuse to join what he would see as a suicide pact. But continuing Rangers’ success would, again through inexorable fan pressure, force him to do so or to pass ownership on to some prepared to dig into deeper pockets. From a Celtic point of view, this is beginning to look exciting.
Summa
drove past this busker outside Ipox……
conact the Tories ?
tell them that its a disgrace that Alex Salmond should advise HMRC to go easy !!
http://www.conservatives.com/Information/Contact_Us.aspx
Summa of Sammi…. says:
16 February, 2012 at 01:30
****
I’ve read some crazy stuff over the last day or two but that is the most ridiculous opinion I have read. The man was, and remains, a fool. A self-serving, remote, anachronistic fool!
Rashers Tierney says:
16 February, 2012 at 01:42
Agreed.
Chock full of unwarranted assumptions.
No wonder Michael Kelly was a dud as a director of Celtic FC.
He doesn’t get it. What rubbish he spouts.
“But if someone with the wealth of an Abramovic and the ambition of a young Murray were to appear, then we would see quality return to Scottish football.”
Then he suggests that Celtic would follow suit so as not to be left behind by the resurgent RFC surrogate club.
He forgets that Celtic tried this and it was a disaster. The strategy earned us some success, but was shoving Celtic down the same road as RFC –
to oblivion!!!
In addition, he is actually recommending that we do precisely what led RFC to this point in their history, but instead of being in hock to the bank, we’d be in debted to American or Russian billionaires.
Hows that working out for you Jambos?
In his opinion, if RFC were saved by non billionaires then it would be more of “two poor teams fighting for deomestic honours.”
This man is an idiot and we really dodged a bullet when he was deposed in 1994.
Memo to self: Michael Kelly took Celtic FC to within hours of Administration so clearly he is qualified to advise others how to avoid it!!
Plain to see that old wounds are still raw for wee Michael. He still wants his revenge for losing his directorship in 1994.
God son, just grow up and move on. It’s not just their board that has loose cannons causing chaos.
Our board has enough to deal with without you trying to start another brushfire over your bitterness.
HH
RWE CSC
Craig Whyte – “He’s not the Messiah……….he’s a very naughty boy”
Paul McConville…
“I am reluctant to criticise professionals, and especially those as experienced as the gentlemen appointed to deal with the administration of Rangers but I am frankly astonished by some of the statements made above.” (by the Administrators !)
early warning signs, following on from last night’s quote by Paul Clark of Duff n Phelps – RFC is a “magnificent institution”
DODGY DEALING ALIVE AND WELL today and yesterday at Ibroke !
After Salmond’s cretinous lickspittle utterances & revelations (that he’s been pleading The Unclean’s case to HMRC) I can only assume he has sunk his party’s hope of re-election?
Anyone for Smoked Salmond?
@ralphwaldoellison
Are you using common sense and logic again? It will never catch on. I am expecting S. McCall to come out with some ( we need rfc, ally is a good guy) excrement in the coming days. The news cycle is pretty predictable for the next while – we need rfc, what will we do w/o them, blah blah. We need to beat hibs. We need to stay on message and let HMRC do the queens work. The talking heads are so far out of their depth, they need a life jacket. It would be a heck of a party at ibrox in March if the stars aligned. \o/
re Michael Kelly
does he once again under-estimate the sense of feeling within the Celtic support ? we will “help out” in any way we can to stamp out malpractice, cheating, fraudulence and general hunguffery washing over hunland these very days
AtYourServiceHectorCSC
ncmjc
Doh! There’s that common sense again rearing its head again.
We need to stay on message true enough, and we don’t need the sideshow from the Hootsman and Michael Kelly ..despite his fetching last name ;-)
Top Corner
This guy Kelly was never ever in touch with the feelings of Celtic fans and that’s why he was such a disaster on our board in 1994 etc.
He alludes to the glee in Timdom about the carnage at Ibrokes and then suggests that our joy would be shortlived etc
He knows best is what he’s really saying. We are fools today and we were fools in 94 in his eyes.
He makes no real mention of the cheating, fraud, tax evasion, insider type trading crap and the rest at Ibrokes, but instead sets himself up as a voice in the wilderness.
Just like back in 1994 really.
Night guys
HH
RWE CSC
.
Since its the Nightshift I’ll retweet this..Interesting what the ‘Others’ think..
.
Summa of Sammi…. says:
15 February, 2012 at 23:21
.
Courtesy Wings over Scotland..
Why Scotland doesn’t need Rangers
Posted on February 15, 2012 by RevStu
Scottish politics seems to be having a wee holiday this week. The First Minister has a little chat with the Scottish Secretary over the referendum, deciding nothing, the Unionists demand “answers” to questions on a completely different subject, Jim Sillars witters on about something or other in yet another bitter rage about how well the SNP’s doing without him, and the Scotsman quietly admits that its previous scare stories (this time the ones about Scottish membership of the EU) were cobblers and hopes nobody notices. In other words, business as usual.
The reason everyone’s putting out a skeleton service operating on auto-pilot is, of course, that they’re all transfixed with the goings-on at Ibrox. And rightly so, because it’s an enormous story which reaches out and touches the entire population in a way that politics almost never does. For fans of Rangers, their entire world has fallen in. For fans of other clubs it’s either hilarious, or a time for rising above petty rivalries and showing solidarity with their fellow supporters, ie it’s secretly hilarious. For Rangers employees it’s a worry, for battered wives, social services and hard-pressed A&E staff it’s a blessing and for booze retailers it’s a catastrophe.
We also can’t ignore the possible political consequences. For decades Rangers FC has served as a weekly indoctrination service for the defenders of the Union – you can’t spend a large proportion of your leisure time waving Union Jacks and singing “Rule Britannia” with thousands of fellow loyal subjects of Her Majesty (she of the Revenue and Customs) without it having some sort of effect on your worldview.
But for the media, which for months on end has largely turned a blind eye to the scale of Rangers’ problems and left the blogosphere to pick up the slack, it’s a time of panic. If Rangers fall they’ll probably take half the circulation (and pagecount) of the Daily Record with them, and the tabloid media in general is desperate for the club to survive in something as close to its present form as possible.
So the story, told loudly and relentlessly, is that Scottish football couldn’t live by Celtic alone. Rangers, it’s insisted over and over, are vital to the continued health – nay, the very survival – of the domestic game. Their friendly, loveable fans, we hear, are the lifeblood of every other club in the league as they turn up twice a season to swell the stands and consume the Scotch pies and Bovril that pay the wages of the home side’s gangly centre-half. The TV riches that pour into SPL coffers would vanish too, without the juicy prize of four Old Firm games a year to tempt Sky into opening their gold-plated chequebook. All in all, take Rangers away and you might as well padlock the turnstiles from Inverness Caley Thistle to Queen Of The South and call it a day.
But is it true? No. It’s a load of balls.
This blog loves nothing more than a good delve in some stats, so we’ve been wading waist-deep in them this week. And the conclusion we’ve reached is that the collapse of Rangers would in all probability be the best thing to happen to Scottish football this century. Along with its Parkhead twin, the club is a giant vampire squid choking the Scottish game to death, and history strongly suggests that Scottish football can ONLY flourish if one or both of the Gruesome Twosome is in poor health.
Firstly, let’s look at some of the myths.
We’re told that the smaller clubs need the influx of cash generated by home games against the Old Firm every year. But how much is that really worth? Under the current SPL structure, there’s no guaranteed number of such fixtures each season. Aberdeen, for example, got just three last year (two against Rangers, one against Celtic), because they were in the bottom six of the league at the time of the “split”.
In season 2010/11, the Dons had an average attendance at Pittodrie of just under 9,000. For the three Old Firm games, the average attendance was 13,378. That’s 4,504 extra punters through the gates per match, or a total for the season of 13,512. In other words, having Rangers and Celtic come to visit was effectively worth the equivalent of about 1.5 extra home games a year. (1.52, if you want to be picky.)
Now, for a club on a tight budget like Aberdeen, 1.5 extra home games a season is a handy bit of cash. If we assume that the average spectator spends £40 on their ticket, programme, refreshments and whatnot, it’s over half a million quid in (gross) revenue. But it’s not the difference between life and death. It could be achieved just as easily by an extended cup run or qualification for Europe – things which are significantly more likely to happen if you take one or both of the Old Firm out of the picture.
Indeed, just a modest amount of progress in Europe can effortlessly eclipse a season’s worth of Rangers and Celtic ties. In season 2007/08 Aberdeen reached the last 32 of the Europa League, which is very much the poor relation of UEFA’s club competitions compared to the cash cow of the Champions’ League. Getting to the last 32 of it isn’t exactly spectacular success, but it nevertheless brought the Dons four extra home games that season, which drew a total of 74,767 paying customers.
Alert viewers will have noticed that even this humble adventure was therefore worth almost SIX TIMES as much to the Pittodrie club as an entire season of Old Firm fixtures, and that’s before you factor in the not-inconsiderable matter of extra TV money and participation bonuses, which would surely boost that multiplier to 10 or more. (It’s perhaps also worth noting that even the first-round first-leg tie against the unglamorous FC Dnipro of Ukraine attracted a larger crowd than any of 2010/11′s games against Rangers or Celtic, despite having thousands fewer away fans.)
From this we can see that if a team like Aberdeen qualified for Europe just fractionally more often, as as result of the demise of one or both of the Old Firm making places more easily attainable – maybe once every five or six years – the rewards could easily eclipse the losses. But there’s more to it than that, because the Europa League jaunt had a knock-on effect on domestic attendances too.
When Hearts came to Pittodrie in the middle of the Europa run, the gate was 14,000. The corresponding fixture in 2010/11, at roughly the same time of year, saw just 9,100 show up. In other words, a tiny glimpse of success saw attendance over 50% higher – exactly the same sort of boost delivered in a normal season by the visits of the Old Firm. Even two months after the Dons were knocked out of the tournament by Bayern Munich, a home game against Falkirk could pull a crowd of 11,484 – a comparable late-season match (vs Hibernian) in 2010/11 managed just 7,400.
Of course, you could argue that the higher attendances in 2007/08 were a result of a better season in general (Aberdeen finished 4th that year, compared to 9th in 2011). But then, that’s the point – fans are much more likely to turn up to watch games in a competition where their team has a fighting chance of achieving something than in a league where they’re just making up the numbers. Take one or both of the Old Firm out of the league and you instantly make it far more competitive, which makes it far more exciting, which makes it far more attractive for people to come and watch.
This isn’t just an idle theory. Within living memory, Scottish football has actually experienced an extended period where one or other of the Old Firm was in dire straits, and the result was a far more competitive league with substantially bigger attendances for the non-OF clubs. While this era is often dismissed as a brief Alex-Ferguson-inspired flicker in the mid-80s, it in fact lasted for almost 20 years.
The first phase was around the creation of the old Scottish Premier Division, running from the tail end of the 1970s and right through the 1980s, before David Murray and his bottomless wallet turned up at Ibrox around the turn of the decade. Rangers were in a woeful state at the time, winning the league just once in a 10-season spell between 1979 and 1988, and with home crowds at Ibrox regularly dropping below 10,000.
(One 1979 league game against Partick Thistle brought fewer than 2,000 loyal Gers fans to the stadium, and no, that’s not a typo – we really mean TWO thousand.)
But it wasn’t just Celtic who took advantage – in four of the other nine seasons of that decade the league title went to other clubs (Aberdeen three times, Dundee Utd once), and it would have been five if not for the most infamous last-day implosion in Scottish football history robbing Hearts of the 1985/86 flag.
In other words, in a 10-team division fully 50% of the participants were mounting realistic challenges for the title – a feat probably never replicated anywhere else in the world in the history of football. The Scottish Premier Division was almost certainly the most competitive club league on the face of the planet, and such a healthy state of affairs was reflected on the broader stage.
Aberdeen won the European Cup-Winners’ Cup (with an all-Scottish team) in 1983, defeating Bayern Munich and Real Madrid to secure the trophy, and also beat that year’s European Cup champions SV Hamburg to join the illustrious list of winners of the Super Cup. The next season Dundee United got to the semi-final of the European Cup (with the Dons making the Cup-Winners’ Cup semis), and three years later Jim McLean’s men reached the final of the UEFA Cup, knocking out Barcelona along the way but losing the final 2-1 to IFK Goteborg.
The nature of Old Firm weakness changed between the late 1980s and the mid-1990s. David Murray had arrived at Rangers and was pouring money into the club, attracting big-name England internationals with the promise of European competition after English clubs were banned in the aftermath of Heysel. But while Rangers grew stronger Celtic weakened, and the Parkhead side hovered on the brink of bankruptcy for several years before being rescued by Fergus McCann in 1994.
As a result, the Scottish Premier Division remained competitive. Although that sounds a daft assertion in the wake of Rangers’ nine-in-a-row of league triumphs (1989-97), the fact remains that four different teams finished in second place over the period, with Celtic not managing to do it until 1996. Rangers’ average margin of victory in the league race during the nine-season run was under 7 points, which contrasts sharply with the typical modern-day gap between the Old Firm and the rest of 30+ points.
Indeed, over the entire 22-season lifespan of the old Premier Division, the Old Firm (in either order) took the top two spots just seven times, and five of those comprised the first two and last three seasons of the competition. Over a 17-year stretch in between, the Old Firm secured the 1 and 2 positions just twice. (Celtic-Rangers in 1978/79, and Rangers/Celtic in 1986/87.) In nine of the 22 seasons, the Old Firm couldn’t even both get into the top 3.
The SPL era, on the other hand, has seen Tweedlehun and Tweedlydee cosily slice up first and second place in 12 of its 13 seasons (the only blip being Hearts pipping Rangers to the runner-up spot by a single point in 2005/06). Where the Scottish Premier Division was the most competitive league in the world, the SPL is now the least competitive, and therefore one of the least healthy.
(During the life of the old SPD the Scotland international side qualified for World Cups in 1978, 1982, 1986 and 1998, and for European Championships in 1992 and 1996. Since the advent of the SPL in 1999, with the Old Firm hurling most of their money at foreign players, the national side hasn’t reached a single tournament finals.)
Of course, the game has changed since the Premier Division. The SPL, Sky TV, Champions League and Bosman have all conspired – entirely by design – to make life harder for the smaller teams and cement the dominance of the bigger ones who can command higher TV audiences. Even this, though, is a slightly misleading picture.
Media pundits are fond of pointing out that Sky’s interest in the SPL would plummet if it no longer had Old Firm games to offer its subscribers, and this is undoubtedly true. What nobody points out, however, is that the OF hog so much of the Sky money for themselves that even a massively-reduced deal from terrestrial broadcasters would be more evenly distributed in a notional post-Rangers world, and so would likely end up with the smaller teams seeing fairly similar amounts of money to what they get now.
By way of illustration of the sort of sums involved, we examined the 2010 public accounts of Motherwell, who finished 6th in the SPL in 2010/11. Their total income from TV and radio was just over £1.2m. We’d imagine the bulk of that came from the Sky deal, but some will also be from elsewhere, eg the BBC rights to highlights packages and radio coverage. Arbitrarily, then, let’s say Sky is worth £1m a year to Motherwell, out of the total £16m that Sky pay the SPL every year.
A typical home game at the average 2010/11 Fir Park attendance of 5,660 will generate something very roughly in the region of £225,000. If Sky disappeared and nobody took up the live-TV rights at all, the club would need to either play four extra home games OR attract an extra 1300 fans to each game to compensate, OR reduce its annual wage bill of a startling £3.3m, or some combination of the three.
In a more competitive league with more chance of European football, that’s hardly an impossible dream – for reference, in 2007/08 when Motherwell finished 3rd their average attendance was around 1000 higher, at 6,600. The further 300 extra was achieved as recently as 2004/05.
But even beyond that, the data in the early part of this feature (which is broadly reflected for all other Scottish sides, not just Aberdeen, but we’d be here all day if we were to list every one) proves that the crucial core principle remains the same – a team with a better chance of even the mildest definition of success, eg qualifying for Europe or reaching a domestic cup final, will see a large upshoot in its attendance figures, and more than enough to compensate for the less-frequent visits of Rangers/Celtic fans or a drop in TV money. And the prime driver of that increased prospect of success is the weakness (or absence) of at least one of the Old Firm.
For all the commentators asserting that Scottish football would collapse – either in footballing terms or economic ones – should Rangers FC not make it out of season 2011/12 alive, the numbers simply don’t add up
Summa
McLeish appearing here this Fri night…
http://www.arabtrust.co.uk/current/?580-q-a-night-reminder
Rangers: HMRC could pursue Craig Whyte personally for club’s unpaid tax
HMRC may pursue Craig Whyte personally.
Published on Thursday 16 February 2012 00:00 The Scotsman
A LEADING insolvency lawyer has suggested Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs (HMRC) may be able to go after Craig Whyte personally for any unpaid taxes.
John Carruthers, a solicitor advocate who specialises in commercial litigation and insolvency, believes the Rangers chairman could be pursued for “wrongful or negligent trading”.
Mr Whyte has run up a £9 million VAT and PAYE bill since taking over in May.
Mr Carruthers said: “If HMRC can show that Rangers were effectively using taxpayers money to fund the day-to-day running of the club, when there was little realistic hope of Rangers trading its way out of its financial difficulties, then they can seek an order from the court that the directors have been involved in wrongful or negligent trading under the Insolvency Act and ask for a contribution from the directors towards the company debts.
“Similarly, the Social Security Administration Act provides HMRC with powers to recover unpaid National Insurance contributions, plus interest and penalties, from the directors and officers of a company.
“This little known provision is separate from any provisions under the Insolvency Act.”
HMRC declined to comment on the Rangers case yesterday.
However, it is not thought to be keen on such a course of action, viewing it as a “very convoluted process” which would need a strong case to have any chance of success.
HMRC is in talks with Rangers’ administrators.
@summa of Sammi
Thanks for posting that. imo, it is imperative we continue to bang this drum. We do not need rfc, scottish football does not need rfc. Our opinions will have no material effect on how this whole thing plays out, as that pleasure will fall to HMRC. However, we can have an impact in the world of social media, and we can frame the national conversation toward justice, criminal activity, cheating, where the outstanding tax money could have benefitted schools, hospitals etc.
Summa
interesting stats etc
useful in the debate
especially as “operation Smelling Of Roses” appears to be well and truly hunderway
kitalba
Whytey is hun public enemy no1 at the moment
so it makes good sense that the hunsman newspaper should attempt to play their two problems off one another i.e. CW and HMRC
not silly these establishment types (der Scotsman)
hence why they have been ye establishment for so long
what you think ?
@NoToNewco why don’t we keep Taxpayers Alliance involved in any feelings, views on this?
contact….
@the_tpa
___________
dear sir, i feel that David Cameron and Nick Clegg should be kept abreast of the TAX criminality at Rangers FC – they impact HMRC
off to bed
goodnight all
Stokes n Hooper on Sunday
intae them
PS ah’ve written tae Hibs Board to give us 10,000 tickets for that one – no chance, but got to try (it is easy money for them at hibs after all)
.
Graham Speirs now @ The Scotsman..
This is Part of His Article The Agony and The Ectasy For Rangers Fans..
Won’t post Full Article.. It’s a Bitte Rangersie..
I came from a split footballing family. My sister was a Celtic supporter and, invariably, as I recall it now, Celtic got the better of Rangers, home or away, in those early 1970s days. The intonation on Grandstand as the “classified results” were read out was solemn, painful and recurring. “Celtic 2, Rangers 0” or “Rangers 1, Celtic 2” seemed to be results arriving with a painful consistency. My first Old Firm game was actually in January, 1975, when Rangers, on a ploughed Ibrox pitch, hammered Celtic by 3-0. It was a dark, freezing winter’s day, but my euphoria that night was uncontainable.
Summa
RalphWaldoEllison
just read back and saw some of your points there
terrific common sense, as ever, haha
any news re the footy tournament
it all systems go ?
Summa
you can sense the fear from Speirsy
he’s not so happy to think he may lose out as, when and if SmellyCo pheonixify in days to come
gettin his excuses in early to retain
tickets for the ball
on that note, here’s to a bust baw !
off to bed this time
bwonnasarah
Summa
Whilst I have not read the article ……
Honesty,
No matter how misguided…..
Do not mock it.
It might lead somewhere…
You do not expect!
Truth CSC
Michael Kelly.
No-one has asked his opinion about anything for 20 years.
And he has just explained why.
.
PJBhoyNYC..
I Like Speirsy.. The Too Rangersie comment was for The CQN Haters.. Ha..
Interesting Times..
Summa
How many catholic schools can be built for £75m ? embdy?
In Dumbfermline?
Summa (& Maggie)
In Deed.
Summa of Sammi…. says:
16 February, 2012 at 01:30
That Michael Kelly article from the Scotsman does my head in. Saying that without Rangers “the standard of football would be even lower than we suffer today.” In fact the standard of football from Celtic’s team half made up of Bosmans has been bl**dy excellent this season, best for a long long time and a joy to watch. We don’t need no stinkin Rangers!
HH
Summa
Thanks for posting the Scotsman article.
Top Corner
Can’t sleep so I’m back on line.
Tournament is on for Saturday.
32 teams apparently.
Nice tshirts for the winners too.
Pauline and I are sponsoring the 4 personal awards (one in each age group)
A local jeweller is putting up th cups.
Night for second time
PJBhoynyc
Hope you’re doing well these days.
Maybe catch up another night. I’m off to try and crash this time.
HH
Morning Celts, I wonder if today’s the day that the administrators find the skeletons in the cupboard……. Cup board, poetic justice and has a nice wee ring to it :>)
V
Across this planet earth, Is there one, just one Celtic supporter who thinks Celtic need rankers to survive?
Get them gone, over 100 years of unsurpassed sectarian bigotry and there are politicians who would want them to survive at the expense of the taxpayer.
V
A Dignified Lady Warms Up to Spell the End of 140 Years of History