I don’t get the flares thing. It’s not a part of my going-to-see-Celtic tradition. But if it was my thing, I’d have the courage of my convictions, I wouldn’t hide the fact.
There are consequences of bringing flares to football games, always has been. By not having the courage to openly ignite them, those consequences are not personalised to the individuals who regard this as an integral part of what they do at a football game, they are visited upon everyone in the vicinity, as well as the club.
The problem with flares at Celtic games is those who bring them hide the fact – as they clearly know there are consequences, and presumably aren’t too interested in taking responsibility for them. ‘Keen on flares, not keen enough to stand up for them’, is why the issue persists.
I get the attraction to bright, shiny, things, but this isn’t a campaign to bring the vote to disenfranchised people against a force who will execute the offender on sight. It’s about bringing a flare to a football game. If it’s so important, do it openly. If you think Health and Safety are simply wrong, find the evidence and use it in court. Have the courage to change something. I know lots of Celtic fans who have had the courage to put their name to something they believed in, in recent years. It’s seldom easy, but it has been done.
But in the years of this debate no one has ever pointed to evidence that igniting flares in a football ground is a clever thing to do. It’s just a ‘look at me’ exercise, ‘But don’t look at my face’, of course.
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Episode 5 of ‘A Celtic State of Mind’ finds Paul John Dykes and Kevin Graham discussing a variety of topical subjects concerning Celtic Football Club, including:
* What now for the Green Brigade?
* Dedryck Boyata – Are reinforcements on route?
* Virgil van Dijk – The windfall cometh;
* Emilio Izaguirre – Moving on.
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James
I’m only setting out the logical conclusion if legal advice that stands scrutiny is used as a reason not to sanction a dead club.
How could that be argued against and who would argue for more and how? Rangers aren’t dead?
If cheating declared does it really need a symbol as opposed to a short statement?
JAMES FORREST on 24TH JULY 2017 8:03 PM
I’m sympathetic to the view that the club had to wait until the Supreme Court thing ran its course.
One thing no-one will ever be able to accuse Celtic of is acting precipitously, or trying to exhaust every possible avenue short of aggressive, remedial action.
JF – I posted this on 22ND JULY 2017 10:23 PM …
On the subject of silence on “title stripping” , “improper registrations” etc …
It took HMRC 7 years to exhaust due process and all levels of appeal available to the parties to get the Supreme Court decision they sought in the ‘Big Tax Case’ (EBTs).
The Supreme Court decision was made public on 5th July, just 17 days ago, and a detailed document substantiating the televised decision was also made available.
The SPL got the LNS review spectacularly wrong (through self interest ?) as they should have waited until all appeal options had been exhausted before setting Terms of Reference for any such review.
Any reputable professional organisation would have waited until such an irrevocable legally binding decision (i.e. SC) had been made before reviewing findings and referring to legal experts before instigating any proceeding they think fit.
If there is to be a challenge to LNS etc, then preparing a watertight case takes more than a few weeks, even if there was preparatory work prior to SC decision. And apart from making a brief statement which referenced both Supreme Court and LNS decisions, they would certainly not show their hand before any such proceedings.
I’d be amazed if the Celtic board, with its fiduciary responsibility to its shareholders alone, have not taken or are taking serious legal advice which may eventually lead to a very strong case being led in the appropriate legal forum at the right time.
Even the SFA / SPFL say they spoke to a senior legal representatives they know and he said they were ok !!! (Compare that to the transparency of the Supreme Court decision).
As I said , HMRC play a 7 year long game – and got exactly what they wanted
After Wednesday, we may see such an opportunity for a suitably motivated interested party …
Can someone set up a wee CQN poll. It would be interesting to see the results from the following question
What would satisfy you in regards to the EBT cheating years
1. Sevco AKA ‘ The Rangers FC’ officially acknowledged as a new team and as such no punitive actions in regards to title stripping can be taken as oldco ‘Rangers 1872’ committed the crimes and no longer exist. Sevco officially listed as having won 0 titles.
2. All titles and cups won by Rangers 1872 during the EBT years declared void and struck from the football records.
3. Move on, it was all in the past.
Oglach
2
HH
Oglach
1 & 2
Don’t buy away tickets for the collaborators, simple stuff.All away games on TV , set out Celtic pubs on a rota system, so they all get a turn, have a collection for Mary’s Meals. Or as i said earlier , give 2 years notice to leave Scottish Football.
Oglach
All 3
Oglach- they are a new club, so 2…
MOONBEAMSWD on24TH JULY 2017 7:48 PM
Now where did you hear that? :)
We got it from the horses mouth but had to stay silent for obvious media reasons etc.
Has it happened to today’s time frame?
No idea but fingers are crossed.
AULDHEID:
The dead club broke the rules. They cheated. Title stripping follows cheating, at least everywhere else. That is not merely symbolic, that is why the rulebook exists.
And don’t underestimate symbolism. It has its value. People have won posthumous awards, been posthumously pardoned and convicted.
You know what history is? What it really is? It’s what people remember when we’re gone.
And Rangers cheated. People will remember them as cheats.
The “legal position”, if that’s what they try to fob us off with, is cobblers. After years of them ramming the Survival Lie down our throats and us calling it bollocks, we’re now going to accept what we know anyway, as the price of buying us off?
The titles MUST go. Leave the dead club without a name … it’s all history will remember.
SETTING FREE THE BEARS FOR RES. 12 & OSCAR KNOX on 24TH JULY 2017 7:48 PM
Just a wee poll.
how many of those advocating an away game boycott, actually attend Celtic away games currently on a regular basis?
——–
I would wager few on here. I would also wager that we will sell our full allocation for Pittodrie, Ibrox and Tynecastle as well as any cup finals. So if you’re only hitting some smaller clubs with partial boycotts, what’s the point? It may receive some coverage, but not anywhere near enough to force a change in position.
A home boycott? Would never happen. And if it did. How do you think the manager would feel about that? If he’s already pissed about having to speak out against the support, he may be wondering if it’s worth the hassle.
There is next to no chance that the wider support will do anything that hurts the team, and depriving them of fans falls under that category. The only way it works is a league wide boycott, and I very much doubt that could be successfully organised.
We should continue to campaign for transparency and answers surrounding what LNS was asked to investigate, and of course res 12. We should look into whether a judicial review is a) feasible and b) affordable.
It’s time for calm heads. Our dominance is our revenge. It may not be perfect, far from it, but it’s better than destroying ourselves from within.
James Forest/Auldheid. But you know nothing will happen. Celtic have stood by and said nothing.. Bill Clinton when running for President had a team that jumped on lies and misinformation the minute they surfaced.. its the old ” a rumour is halfway around the world before the truth has tied its laces” type of thing While SMSM were pumping out lies everyday for 5 years especially the BBC. Whyte was brough ti n to wipe out debt then have SDM or a pal come in re-sell a few time then he could pick it up again.. plan slightly askew but still on trackThey will, after wednesday have a nicely washed club who did nothing wrong in the eyseof Scottish football, and that includes you and me. PS listen to fans of other clubs they don’t care and say it was Rangers …they kowtow to them..something I anm sure none of you two ever do. but that is what we are up against..
1 and 2
EMBRAMIKE SUPPORTING RES 12:
Excellent post brother, 100% agree.
WOW Reggie appears again WTF!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1
SFTB
I think that if all the facts were laid out those attending games home or away or paying for CTV would have to think what rather than who they were supporting and make a choice for self or greater good.
Theirs would definitely be the sacrifice but what a prize for missing 90 minutes. An honest game.
SFTB,
I know you posted your question a out how many on here go to away games as an “observation” ? But with respest its not relative Imo to the suggestion of any away game boycott.
Thousands D’s of Celtic fans can’t atte d home games for many reasons beyo d their control, never mind away games ?
Did ALL the cheating only effect AWAY games ?…. NO.
OK I too will wait til after Wednesday, and also wait to see what Celtic say thereafter. However, even if Celtic DO in fact strongly react, I would not o ly advocate for an away boycott, but also a boycott of ALL cup games at Celtic Park also.
Furthermore, with immediate effect I would love to see EVERY Scottish player at Celtic to tell the SFA that they do NOT wish to represent the corrupt SFA by ever weari g an SFA Scotland jersey EVER again ?
This would be a choice for the players to make alone, but obviously with the players agreeing collectively. This would deprive the SFA of their best players , and Celtic could not be punished.
The previous cheating by the guns, and the ongoing corruption with the blazers MUST be addressed !
HH
Will Celtic publish 5 way agreement? It would shock most football fans who know nothinga bout. An agreement with people who have just bought a rundown stadium a few players and old kit. And they don’t have to play by the same rules as everyone else… about as legally bibding as any secret agreement ie not at all..
Maradona.
You don’t know nothing will happen any more than we know it will.
But if you think the former you will get what YOU think.
If we get what we think then mines a bacardi and coke as you are glad you were wrong and are eternally gratefull for folk like the Resboys who didnt know anything.
REGGIE :
It’s sacrifice a few away weekends for the greater good … or accept that everything we’ve done, and not just in the last five years but way back through the EBT years, all that pain, all that suffering, all that “good governance” was just a joke and the joke was on us. Because cheating prospers after all.
I just posted, on Facebook, a scene from the movie All The King’s Men, it’s the one where candidate Willie Stark goes out to “visit with his fellow hicks” to tell them the facts of life; “If you don’t vote you don’t matter … no-one ever helped a hick but a hick hisself, and if you don’t do that then you ARE as ignorant as they say you are … don’t got nothing, don’t deserve nothing …”
And that’s the choice here. Do nothing, and you never get to complain about the country we live in, or the corrupt football governance, about Sevco wearing the shroud of Rangers and pretending to be it, none of it. Because if you don’t act, you don’t matter.
Then our fans really are deserving of the contempt in which they hold us.
And I don’t think that’s true.
Bada Bing! Boycott all colaborators..well that includes Celtic PLC
2
If i was Scott Brown I would have walked out at first game they played at Parkhead with a pennant…the normal thijg you do to a club visiting for the first time
ETims tweeted Les Gray of Accies on SPFL board. Sheesh… He makes Charles Green look like the Bill Gates of the fitba world!
Horrendous.
2.
They are a new klub. No amount of revisionist guff can hide the financial physics of liquidation.
If nothing substantive, definitive and punitive is done to the Rangers Group of franchises I’ll have an insatiable appetite for reasoned rebellion.
If, as expected, the sfa and spfl are going to do their pontious pilate impersonation then the fans have to get organised.
We need to clarify the other clubs stance on 10+ years of systematic cheating. They either want justice or would prefer to just skulk away and “move on”
The clubs wanting justice’s fans can then decide what action to implement, whether choosing boycotts or whatever.
My feeling is that the football authorities are trying to ignore everything and hope we all go away.then they can just carry on their normal duties of running Scottish football for the benefit of one club. A bit like that old Dallas episode where Bobby wakes up in the shower and everything that’s happened in previous programmes was just a dream.
Remember sevco advocating a boycott of a Dundee Utd cup tie. What punishment did they receive for bringing the game into disrepute? Over to you Peter.
#ApplyTheRules
James
I’m not arguing any of your points
All I said was if no sanctions were applied because Rangers were dead how would anyone argue that was not the case?
For years we have said they are. If we get official recognitition of it how could we dispute in large enough numbers to have a cause to fight.
The right decision should be Rangers did gain an advantage by an illegal means not open to other clubs and trophies won by those means are expunged from the record books.
If they say that I’ll be happy although I’d rather they started at zero than 49. I think that would tell them to be careful what they wished for.:)
Oh in an earlier post you disagreed 100%. I cannot find it, but either I didn’t state my position properly which was I’m open to an argument that stands up (although I seriously doubt one could be provided.)
It’s a question based on a possible result not an advocacy for it.
An earlier poster mentioned how we were being pished on. Not only that, we’re being told it’s raining. This is what happens when you ignore shite like this for years, a lie that has been undermining our club and the whole Scottish game.
“We don’t like those unhelpful words ‘incorporation’ and ‘liquidation’, so we’ll change their meaning to ‘separation’ and ‘continuation’.”
The farce goes on.
http://spfl.co.uk/clubs/rangers/
Meanwhile back in 17th Cent Belfast. From BBC news website.
The Orange Order has asked its members to stop using the term ‘RIP’ to express grief or sympathy after a death.
It said the phrase is unbiblical, un-Protestant, and a form of superstition connected to Catholicism.
RIP is an abbreviation of ‘rest in peace’ or in Latin, ‘requiescat in pace’.
In a publication marking the 500th anniversary of the Reformation, the order called on Protestants to stop using the phrase.
Wallace Thompson, secretary of Evangelical Protestants Northern Ireland, wrote a Facebook post on which the article was based.
‘Prayers for the dead’
He told the BBC’s Talkback programme: “Observing social media, we have noticed that the letters RIP are used a lot by Protestants, and by some evangelical Protestants.”
Mr Thompson explained that for him, ‘RIP’ is a prayer and he did not encourage prayers for the dead.
“From a Protestant point of view, we believe, when death comes, a person either goes to be with Christ for all eternity, or into hell.
“That’s what we believe the gospel to be and in this 500th anniversary year of the Reformation, I think Luther, when the scales fell off his eyes, realised that it was all by faith alone, in Christ alone, the decision is made during life, on this earth, so that when death comes it has been made and no decision has been made after death,” he said.
=====
RIP Rangers 1872 — so unbiblical, so un-Protestant
AULDHEID:
I could argue it easily.
If we found out Third Lanark had bribed refs to buy one of its titles I’d want them stripped.
And I can’t think of a single person in Scottish football who would offer that argument in mitigation.
Big Jimmy
“I know you posted your question a out how many on here go to away games as an “observation” ? But with respest its not relative Imo to the suggestion of any away game boycott. ”
My question remains relevant in my opinion because to be effective it needs to carry numbers.
I repeat that I am NOT opposed to the suggestion just hugely aware of the practical difficulties in organisng it and then making it work.
There have been regular calls, over the past 10 years on CQN for botycotts, demos etc; on a variety of subjects that had annoyed a number of posters/ The vast majority of these were just venting with no hope of practical implementation.
CQN, for all its power and widespread readership, is an untrustworthy medium for organising logistical operations. Now if the CSA does its canvassing, and reports a high level of agreement to prepare a limited boycott, I will be the first to rejoice.
But, I will reflect again that I have been asked to sacrifice nothing- merely asked others to forego something they enjoy.
That is why your suggestion of boycotting home cup games has some sense. Given the low levels of attendance when we enter the draw at 4th round stage (SC) we might be boycotting a home tie against minnows which is usually poorly attended or turning down a percentage of a small away location for a low capacity ground. And, if it is a home tie, those of us on the HCTS will already have paid and be counted as attending a match we may boycott. If it is a LC fixture, we only play 4 games (last 16, q-f, s-f and final) hopefully so we could be asking people to boycott crunch matches for honours.
I am making logistical points here rather than ethical ones but I would commend us all to listen to Praecepta who has hard won experience on these matters from the Celts For Change era.
JAMES FORREST on 24TH JULY 2017 8:39 PM
Mate if I thought it would work I’d be right behind it. One or two games by Celtic fans only isn’t going to get it done. If it gained any sort of traction the huns would be right in with a counter boycott putting it back to the status quo.
If you are going to do a boycott then you have to committed to seeing it through. Our first 4 away games are Thistle, Kilmarnock, Hamilton, Rangers 2012. Hand on heart do you honestly believe there is any scenario whereby 7000 Celtic fans aren’t in the Broomloan Rd on the 23rd September?
I get that doing nothing is not an option. But I think you have to be realistic in what is achievable, and what people will support. Box clever has been a term used for the GB this week. I think it applies in this case as well.
*btw I enjoy your blog regardless of whether I agree with your opinion or not
The problem with waiting for court cases to conclude is that the law is not and was never intended to be static. It is always developing, always throwing up issues that have not been considered or circumstances that have never been contemplated.
Thus far, we have heard that the SPFL have taken legal advice on what the SPFL previously did. Not on what it didn’t do, didn’t consider and didn’t know. No opinion has been given on what was not before Nimmo Smith by way of legal fact, evidence or legal argument.
There is no prospect of Rangers not gaining any sporting advantage by breaking the rules of the game because the owner of Rangers said that was precisely the purpose of the scheme — to sign players “we” could otherwise not afford and so field a team that was miles stronger than the one we could have fielded had “we” played by the rules.
Show me the part of the LNS judgement which even stops to consider the argument set out below which comes from the body of the CAS decision in the Chernova case. This is the law from the highest sports court on the continent, the one that UEFA bows to and so the one that the SFA should be bound to.
Here it is, in black and white and in plain English. Here is what you consider when determining whether or not to reduce previous results achieved by a prohibited method of operating in competition.
“However, not to disqualify results that have been achieved by using a prohibited substance or prohibited
method cannot be considered as fair with regard to other athletes that competed against the Athlete during this period.
The main purpose of disqualification of results is not to punish the transgressor, but rather to correct any unfair advantage and remove any tainted performances from the record (LEWIS /TAYLOR Eds.), Sport: Law and Practice, 2014, para. C.162, with further references).”
It does not matter of the transgressor is retired, or is dead, or has been replaced by a new corporate entity. What matters is that the record of competition is freed from unfair advantage and that tainted performances are removed.
In light of the supreme court ruling, in light of the evidence produced at Whyte’s trial and in light of other statements and info now available, Scottish Football has NEVER considered these matters.
Further, there is no doubt that Scottish Football Governance has failed, has been seen to fail and continues to fail by having allowed, and by continuing to allow, the EBT years to stand.
The question about what to do in such circumstances doesn’t just lie with the fans of Celtic FC or with fans in general. If all the other clubs, who have made no statement or gesture similar to that of Celtic, want to simply move on and forget, then that leaves Celtic PLC in a very difficult position which, in my opinion, can only be improved by somehow seeking a review outwith Scotland.
Even then that position may not be a sufficient remedy.
Moonbeams, you are correct. Celtic are having their legal people look at the position and all the evidence.
I believe others are as well.
SIONNACH ABU on24TH JULY 2017 7:48 PM
If Anne Budge pays attention to just one superb letter from a Jambo posted on SFM and Retweet ed frequently then she will know the issues at stake.
Hiding behind numbers does not address those issues.
REGGIE:
Thanks mate.
No, action from Celtic fans alone won’t get it done. That’s why it has to be a co-ordinated effort.
See, it’s not even important whether or not it costs clubs money enough to make them see sense … I think the problem is that a lot of clubs have it in their heads that fans are just blind fools, or sheep easily herded and to control. And I think a co-ordinated demonstration of the will of supporters to move the game in the direction they want would be sufficient, on its own, to snap clubs into reality.
There’s a saying in activism that only two things ever made a politician do something he didn’t want to do; fear or money. Once clubs realise fans are not messing about and that change isn’t something we light a candle for and make a wish, that it’s something we’re serious about wanting done, it will be.
They just need a demonstration of intent. They need to know fans can come together for the good of the sport and for the betterment of everyone … and that will move them.
I’m going for number 4 in the poll :0)
Now it feels like the day shift are howlin’ at the moon………….