FIVE months ago The Herald Group wouldn’t even allow us to pay for advertising space in their papers if it involved Resolution 12.
We’ve recounted the story many times but for those who may have missed it, the Herald contacted CQN as they had read that we intended to book some advertising relating to Resolution 12 in newspapers in Switzerland and England.
Previously they had carried CQN’s New Club advertisement which outlined the facts surrounding the liquidation of Rangers FC ahead of the first ever meeting at Hampden in early February 2015. Celtic won the match 2-0 and CQN won the publicity battle, achieving worldwide attention for our refusal to buy into the same club myth, so shamefully being sold by those who run the game in Scotland.
Back in May this year The Herald now wanted the Resolution 12 business. Fair enough, they, like all print newspapers are in terminal decline and advertising money is hard to come by.
They had been chasing business from CQN on an ongoing basis since the New Club ad and now saw this as their chance to get some repeat business.
All very standard stuff, until what happened next.
CQN were informed that ‘the powers that be’ had decided that they would NOT be prepared to run a Resolution 12 advertisement in any of their newspapers. No-one at the Herald had seen the advertising copy. For the New Club ad we worked with their lawyers and advice was taken from the Advertising Standards folk in London, before the ad was passed for publication.
Objections were raised to the ad but were rejected by ASA who confirmed that we were correct in stating that Rangers were a new entity. Little was made of this in the media, predictably.
None of this happened on the Resolution 12 advertisement, which eventually appeared in The Tribune de Geneve on the morning of the SFA AGM in June.
That in itself did the trick and the SFA were forced to speak publicly for the first time about Resolution 12.
Much has been written since then online by the likes of The Celtic Blog, E-Tims, VideoCelts and of course Celtic Quick News.
All of these sites have taken the lead at different stages and have helped drive the campaign forward, always mindful of the position of the Res 12 guys themselves. 
But the newspapers, radio stations and television stations and their online outlets, remained silent.
Indeed it could be argued that there was a conspiracy of silence as far as Resolution 12 was concerned.
When they did write about Res 12 it was to tell us that Res 12 was dead, it had failed, UEFA had refused to investigate and so on. And this would be jumped upon by Rangers supporters on social media and their forums. Even yesterday prominent Rangers bloggers were at it saying that the Celtic board had closed down Res 12.
On 8 June the solicitor acting for the Res 12 guys received a letter from UEFA which stated, among other things, that the governing body of football in Europe regarded Rangers as a new club.
UEFA probably didn’t think that this was a particularly controversial point to mention, after all it was completely factual. However in Scotland it was dynamite.
You would have thought that journalists would be falling over themselves to get access to a letter which once and for all clears up the ‘debate’ on whether Rangers survived liquidation – corporate death – to remain the same club.
But they didn’t want to know.
Senior sports writers were offered an exclusive. None responded.
So it was a welcome surprise to read on E-Tims yesterday morning that the senior news reporter at The Herald had actually written a fairly detailed news story on Resolution 12. And so had the Scotsman.
Then came yesterday’s AGM and when the 2013 version of Resolution 12 was mentioned, the mainstream news could ignore the matter no longer. Resolution 12 was in the news.
Yesterday was a particularly bad day for the Twitter based troll known as the State Aid Nutter. Glasgow City Council had had enough of the trouble and the expense he was causing them and released a detailed statement in which they revealed the land Celtic purchased from the Council was valued at £200k and sold to the club for £600k. However it had cost the local authority £300k dealing with the bigot’s lies.
The State Aid troll also lied constantly about Resolution 12 – he even tweeted over 150 times on the day CQN and the Guardian came to blows on social media.
Res 12 could and would have been voted down in 2013 had it not been for the Res 12 guys playing the long game. The SFA had already given Celtic answers because Celtic had asked their own questions about the licence given to Craig Whyte’s Rangers to play in European football in 2011 despite having outstanding social taxes.
Celtic, having had an answer, reckoned that Resolution 12 was unnecessary. It has taken 3 years of Persistence to establish beyond reasonable doubt that Resolution 12 was necessary. It was essential.
And the Res 12 guys have the ammunition required to load the smoking gun.
UEFA’s correspondence, so curiously ignored all summer by the MSM, will make life very difficult for the SFA in the coming months.
UEFA explained to the solicitors acting for Res 12 guys – paid for by CQN’ers and other Celtic supporters and NOT by Celtic PLC – that they regard the current Rangers to be a new club. No one in Scottish football really believes the same club myth – other than those who are comforted by it. Thanks to the Res 12 guys it’s not going to stand.
And when we eventually get a decision from the Supreme Court on the Big Tax Case, then everything will start to fall into place.
We need to be clear. There are two Rangers clubs. The first one cheated and died. The second one was started in 2012 by Charles Green.
The cheating cannot be allowed to stand. Celtic have said that they are waiting on the Supreme Court decision, which is fair enough. Then they must act.
The new club has no legitimate claim on the trophies won by the dead club. This notion of keeping the good bits of the history (the trophies won) but shedding the nasty bits (the millions in unpaid debt) is fanciful nonsense.
The two are completely different entities. The current Rangers have no major honours to their name, none.
And the dead Rangers must have the trophies won while cheating stripped from the record books.
And when the dominos start to fall, Scottish football can be cleaned up once and for all.
