Campbell Ogilvie’s appointment as president of the SFA was always controversial. As general secretary and director of Rangers, Ogilvie was the club’s chief administrator during the final 11-year period they refused to employ Catholic footballers. In many other walks of life, this background would make him an embarrassing relic of a former era, but in Scottish football it was enough to see him promoted to the ultimate honour position.
He remained in position at Rangers long after the new regime of Sir David Murray arrived and set aside the decades-old sectarian employment policy but left the club in 2005, joining Hearts as operations director two months later. All of this puts the SFA president in central position regarding the on-going tax tribunal, which is charged with deciding if Rangers illegally evaded tax from a period starting in 2000 and going on well beyond Ogilvie’s departure.
If the First Tier Tribunal finds against Rangers the SFA must ask for Ogilvie’s immediate resignation. The association cannot have a president embroiled in a tax evasion scam which, even before a verdict has been decided, has already caused untold harm to his former club and the reputation Scottish football. The scale of the damage to public finances has yet to be definitively established but it will not make good reading.
The SFA has just embarked on its first proper investigation into whether directors of a football club, in this instance Rangers, are fit and proper persons to hold such a position. Office holders at the association cannot exercise power over the game if they are not subject to the same standards they demand from clubs. Pending this investigation, and the outcome of the tax tribunal, Ogilvie should temporarily step aside. Scotland is not yet a banana republic, public bodies must have robust ethics and must not allow the shadow of contagion to be cast over the body charged with ensuring legal and moral standards are adhered to.
The SFA has some enormously important months ahead. Its president is currently in a position to influence which course it takes and, if the tribunal verdict falls against Rangers, could be implicated in the scandal which precipitated the crisis. While I am sure Campbell Ogilvie will be shown to have acted with impeccable ethical standards, the SFA must quickly establish a structure clear of contagion.
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Am I the only one who thinks that the presenter on Clyde is enjoying this HH
Craig Whyte is the saviour they deserve.
Well done to BBC Scotland website on at last updating their website.
SPL table is now right.
9 thossiant…oh dear
The last few days have been amazing as we have seen the result on continuous cheating south of the river. The old media were in their pocket and we needed the new media to see what was going on.
I gave a link to an article which asked what kind of society we would have if we used this strength to highlight other abuses – here it is again:
What do Fred the Shred and Sir David Tell us About Scotland?
Posted on February 17, 2012
By Gerry Hassan
This is not another article on football. The Rangers crisis has filled the airwaves and media this week. For the second time this year Scotland has gone international and viral, spreading across the globe connecting the diaspora and other interested parties.
Many people ask how this came to pass with Rangers. All kinds of reasons and conspiracies are proposed: pro-Rangers bias, anti-Celtic opinion, Protestantism/anti-Catholicism, and the carve up of ‘the Old Firm’ duopoly.
We need to lift our heads from thinking of football on its own and see this in the context of Scotland. For what the Rangers story tells us is that Scottish society has a problem with power, its relationship to it, and how they hold it to account, scrutinise and inquire into its actions.
This can be seen across Scottish public life from football to business to politics. The Rangers saga has festered for many years. David Murray’s massive overspending and the bludgeoning of the club’s debts were very public and known to be unsustainable. Craig Whyte’s credentials were widely questioned when he took over.
What was missing from mainstream Scotland, from politicians, business experts and media, was a detailed questioning, calling to account and forensic examination of what was going on.
We have seen this before. The banking crisis and collapse of RBS saw a once powerful global institution and the leadership of Fred Goodwin go unchallenged, be feted and revered by our political classes and elites. There was an even more pervasive silence on RBS before the crash, and after, it hasn’t been much better, with little systematic analysis north of the border, beyond pillorying ‘Fred the Shred’.
Then there is how we do political scandals and corruption. In the last two years there have been a series of episodes that bubbled away in Labour North Lanarkshire and Glasgow City Council which burst into public view after the resignation of Stephen Purcell. And then silence, despite the murky lid being lifted off a world of dodgy property deals, land sales and council activities.
Some say this is the fault of the mainstream media and a lack of resources, courage and imagination in investigative reporting. In this account, with its power and status a particularly guilty culprit is BBC Scotland which hasn’t broken a major news story or challenged institutional power for years.
Some think it is cultural and all part of ‘village Scotland’, of being a small country where movers and shakers know each other.
Another view comes from academic Jean Barr who argues that Scots have an absence of understanding what she calls ‘relational space’. By this she means where people come from, who is involved in a debate or decision, and who is missing. A typical example would be Andrew Marr blithely commenting that ‘all of Edinburgh’ was involved in the salon discussions of Enlightenment time; a comment which beggars belief.
Others including writer and campaigner Andy Wightman have made the case that we have a strange lack of curiosity over who has power. This seems inexplicable in a nation with its proud tradition of radicalism and land reform and which saw Thomas Johnston’s piercing ‘Our Scots Noble Families’ published just over one hundred years ago and sell thousands. Maybe it says something about what has happened to that radical imagination.
What we have seen with the Rangers case, and didn’t with RBS and political corruption, is the power of social media, bloggers and new sites of expertise and commentary emerging which have forensically asked difficult questions and dug up inconvenient facts. We cannot argue that some of our silences are mainly due to legal constraints as is often when individual bloggers and sites have little resources and could be shut down by those with money and power.
This seems to point to the beginning of a seismic change in society; football ignites emotions and passions and creates a community as well as creating divisions, that so many people are prepared to spend their time and skills challenging those in power. Perhaps we need to get as serious about some of the great challenges facing society as we do about what is after all only a game (plus identity, history, folklore).
There are also issues of leadership and how we revere certain kinds of authority, some formal, some charismatic. David Murray and Fred Goodwin were buccaneer capitalists loved by some as the good times rolled who brooked little dissent; and who are now conveniently scapegoated after disaster.
Yet Murray and Goodwin were products of their age, of the hurricane capitalism of the last few decades, short-termism of British business, and lack of checks and balances in corporate governance. It is convenient to just pretend it is about individuals, rather than cultures, values and structures.
If we were to broaden out what has happened we would see that this is a Scottish expression of a very modern condition: what the thinker Colin Crouch has called post-democracy, namely the collusion of political, corporate and media elites to support their inter-woven mutual interests.
Examples of this would include the British political elites and Rupert Murdoch’s News International’s incestuous relationship until last summer which saw successive Labour and Conservative leaderships demean themselves at the Murdoch court. In Scotland, all four of the mainstream parties could not contain themselves declaring the nation ‘open for business’ when Donald Trump declared he wanted to build his ‘world class’ golf course in the sand dunes of Menie (until the recent fallout).
If Scotland is to have a meaningful debate over the next few years, one of the central issues we are going to have to face is how to talk about, challenge and investigate power.
That means confronting some of the cosy assumptions of the people’s version of Scotland; it means opening the doors on clubland, establishment Scotland and it means questioning the kind of corporate groupthink which laid behind the felling of two of the great institutions of public life, Rangers and RBS. It means getting rid of the ‘too big to fail’ assumptions which prevailed in banking, and which can now be seen with Rangers; that corporate orthodoxy is actually anti-business and anti-competition.
Magnus Linklater wrote twenty years ago that ‘it would be very hard to talk about a Scottish establishment’. It is that kind of assumption in its many forms that we need to not let go unquestioned. Instead, we desperately need to care about who exercises power and how it acts across our lives, and inquire, challenge and excavate in areas other than football.
This is about something fundamental: it is about making self-government real, relevant and radical, and about starting to make Scotland the modern democracy which is so frequently invoked, but not practised across wide swathes of society.
http://bellacaledonia.org.uk/2012/02/17/what-do-fred-the-shred-and-sir-david-tell-us-about-scotland/#more-5386
On a related subject, what if I say to you that you could have had 30 years of unheard of wealth in Scotland? We could have been much richer than England and lending money to them. We could have been one of the richest countries in the world. My wife and I wouldn’t have spent 30 yrs in England just to get a decent living. But the UK government hid the evidence. Have you even heard of the McCrone Report from 1975? Could have changed your life! Have a look at this:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/this-britain/how-black-gold-was-hijacked-north-sea-oil-and-the-betrayal-of-scotland-518697.html
We need to regain power!!
What happens in Millport ..stays in Millport..
Am I right,or am I right…?
All clues and no solutions…
fanadpatriot says:
21 February, 2012 at 18:33
‘Am I the only one who thinks that the presenter on Clyde is enjoying this HH’
He’s luvvin it.
THIS JUST IN: David Murray in Hong Kong to release his new wine ‘Brokefast’
Slumdog Poundaire has brought them to their knees quicker than Thatcher destroyed the Steel industry and that is some going from Motherwell boy.
Shortbread hinting at much worse to come…really? Nice of them to catch up.
”The suggestion the Rangers takeover was funded through financing arrangements on season tickets is categorically untrue” Whyte PR on Jan 31… Bit of a change of tune today, eh?
It just keeps coming!!!
fanadpatriot says:
21 February, 2012 at 18:33
‘Am I the only one who thinks that the presenter on Clyde is enjoying this HH’
Mark Guidi? Oh aye, he’ll be enjoying it alright.
twists n turns says:
21 February, 2012 at 18:33
9 thossiant…oh dear
—
LOL! Aye, he wasn’t half bumpin his gums, wasn’t he? I was dying for them to remind him it’s mullyons, nae thoosants…
My dear,dear,dear,friend…GoogyBhoy
Hiya,pal?
Nice chattin’ wi’ ye.
Millport?
Sorry, aboot that.. Jeez!.. it’s gettin’ tougher and Toughier.. tae
NO be controversial..oan here!
Ah figgered,at foist…. tae use..Largs,instead.. but.. Na.. Ah reckoned that thur wur Too miny.. Folk oan here who had a soft spoat fur.. Nardini’s.. so Ah Backed aff.. and picked…Millport..
Who his even Hoid of Millport?
Right?
WRANG.. you hiv jist gien the lie tae That!
Anywey.. again?
Anywey…
Ah am Sorry aboot that, pal..
Jings!!!
Even..Talking… aboot Nardini’s
Maks Ma Mooth Waater!
Oh! Those.. Marvellous Tasty Chips o’ theirs?
Hmm Hmm Goood!
Especially, in the springtime.. when they made them Wi
New Ayrshires!
Heaven in a Poke.. they wur.. Man o Manichevitz!
Thur Ice Cream Pokey Hats wiz Good an awe..
Is Nardini’s Still Aroon?
Anywey.. again..
Nice chattin’,palomine.. Nice chattin’
Kojo
yer pal…who likes ye mair and mairer.
Gordon FudDalziel
Rangers will bring revenue and money to other clubs!!!
Buffhun
Ice Cream sales up 42%..
Jelly sales (packaged,concentrate) up 71%
Maybe we should spread the wealth around some other sectors of the party industry.
Mr. Vol Au Vent
Pastry Street
Bakewell
Malc
and said it a few times too.
Priceless
Just watched the rep from the Rangers supporters association who asked ” Does Craig Whyte think that Rangers supporters are buttoned up the back?!!”
This is like Desperate Big-Hoosewives.
Tim Delahunt is like a dug with two tails.
Know how he feels. It’s so hard these days not to smile wider than something that smiles wide a lot.
This is the latest from Joe O’Rourke at theCSA
Clown’s like Leckie and Leggat can be Dangerous.
I said in my blog yesterday that I thought we were entering into a very dangerous time as Celtic supporters; there appears to a reaction to our obvious enjoyment of the present financial predicament facing our rivals.
The fires have also been stoked by the usual suspects; led miserably as usual by Bill Leckie and Alan Pattullo of the Scotsman; they seem to think we should not be happy because the EE have been cheating us and the rest of Scottish Football for over a decade; would they like us to have a collection for them instead?
Can you imagine in any context Leckie accusing us of lacking dignity? I was going to call him a Muppet; but I think I would be insulting Muppet’s; as for Pattullo; has anyone ever heard of this clown?
Add to them the maniac that is David Leggat; and you get a fairly decent picture of what the Scottish Media is like; and how they think and operate. I wonder at times if that guy has had any education at all; probably went to Loonyversity.
The thing about these people and their anti-Celtic comments is; it puts people’s lives in danger; we all know what Neil Lennon has went through; and indeed continues to go through; other officials at Celtic have also received threats.
Even Big John Hartson has had to abandon his Twitter account because of the abuse he takes; and believe me; I’ve seen some of it; these people are not human. Even Dundee Utd chairman Stephen Thompson has been threatened.
I would warn everyone now, wearing Celtic colours will make you a target; even kids; if you read the blog yesterday from the European Examiner; that will give you an idea of what to expect; Celtic supporters on the way to and from Celtic park tomorrow night should be very careful; and choose your route with that in mind; and that goes for the coming weeks and months.
The parties will continue whenever and wherever Celtic is playing; the atmosphere at Eater Road was brilliant apart from a couple of chants I would prefer not to hear. I am absolutely delighted for the fans who travel every week; their dedication and support is about to be rewarded.
I also think great praise should go to Peter Lawwell; he has stood up for the club during this recent furore; he has made it abundantly clear that we don’t need the EE; I hope the other clubs were taking heed.
I would certainly say this; if the EE go into liquidation; I hope they will be treated appropriately with the proper punishment; if chairmen think they can’t do without the Rangers support; do they think they CAN DO WITHOUT THE CELTIC SUPPORT?
Jabba now calling them Newco-does he have any language of his own? Still saying they’ll be straight back into the SPL though. He just can’t let it go.
Matt McKay is away-good signing Ally!
Jabba on shortbread speaking as if newco going straight back into SPL is a certainty, seems to think all of the clubs will vote for it (us apart)
Oliver Holt on Brian Kennedy…….shhhhhhhhhh keep this quiet………
This is how a football club dies.
This is how, more specifically, people kill it.
This is how they take it away from its town and make it so that, half the time, it can’t even play on its own ground.
This is the story of Stockport County, who have lost 11 league games in succession, who have been in administration for eight months and are facing liquidation.
They’re my local club, the club I grew up supporting, the club closest to the place I grew up in.
But if you support a club anywhere outside the Premier League, it could be your story, too. Probably, it soon will be.
I’m bored of being sanguine and fatalistic about what is happening to County. That’s what the men who seem to be doing so little to save the club want us to be.
That includes Stockport Metropolitan Borough Council which is distinguishing itself only by its inaction.
And it includes administrator Leonard Curtis, a company appointed in April this year when the club was £300,000 in debt.
Listen to this: in the first six months of dealing with the case Leonard Curtis ran up fees of £314,511.50 in time costs, charged at up to £395 an hour.
Beautiful, isn’t it. They’re supposed to be trying to help find a buyer for the club. They didn’t even start returning calls from the press until recently.
Brian Kennedy wouldn’t return my calls, either. He’s the owner of Sale Sharks, the man who installed a rugby club at Stockport’s Edgeley Park ground six years ago so that County are now second class citizens in their own home.
It’s important not to forget the favours Kennedy has done Stockport in the past. He invested £4million into the club when he owned it and then sold it to the Supporters Trust for £1 in 2005.
I accept all that and I also accept that plenty of other people bear responsibility for the state the club is now in.
But let’s be honest about Sale Sharks. They’re squatters, basically. They’re squatters who have, perfectly legally, moved into somebody’s else’s home while they’re still there.
Edgeley Park isn’t theirs. Not really. Money says it is, of course. But they don’t have any real affection for it. They don’t have any history there.
Why do they want to clamp themselves on to Stockport’s ground like leeches? Why can’t they build their own ground?
They’ve only played at Edgeley Park for six years. Stockport County have played there since 1902.
And yet time after time this season, Stockport games have been postponed because it can’t stand up to the demands of rugby and football being played on it.
I went to Stockport’s FA Cup second round tie with Torquay United ten days before Christmas.
It had already been postponed twice. Edgeley Park was in such a state, they had to play it at Macclesfield Town’s Moss Rose ground instead.
It was one of the most depressing games I have ever been to. Not because County lost 4-0 but because not even being able to play a home game at Edgeley Park made it clear how close the club was to extinction.
Kennedy gets awfully upset when he is criticised by County fans and points out he makes a £1m loss from Sale Sharks.
He says he’s in to sports ownership, not for profit, but because he wants to put something back into the local community.
Well, I’m sorry Mr Kennedy but County aren’t exactly thriving under your idea of philanthropy.
We’re so skint, the players turned up for work before Christmas to find a ‘For Sale’ sign planted on the training ground.
So skint that we’ve got 16-year-olds on the bench. So skint the goalkeeping coach Paul Gerrard has shelled out more than £1,000 of his own money for fitness equipment.
I can’t speak for other County fans but I wish Kennedy had never come anywhere near the club.
I wish he’d moved his rugby club to a rugby ground somewhere instead of taking over a football ground.
I wish he’d never had anything to do with us. Maybe County would have folded already if he hadn’t been involved but I doubt it.
And maybe this latest burst of criticism will prompt him to cut County loose and leave the club to its fate.
But what Kennedy doesn’t seem to understand is that among County’s many, many problems, its biggest is its association with Sale Sharks.
County’s identity is being eaten away by that association. The club is losing its soul.
That’s why there haven’t been any feasible offers for the club yet.
County needs a buyer who understands that. A buyer that loves football not rugby.
A buyer that puts the football club first.
A buyer that gives us our club back.
Ticketus “Craig, we would like Ipox as security”. Craigy boy “I,I, I, I, I, I, I, I can’t do that”
Ticketus “Craig, why not?”. Craigy boy “I, I, I, I, I, I, I- Where would I do my stand-up routine?”
Comedy Central :)
gsu
Gotta Go..
Seeya, Guys.
Oh…almost furgoat!
Tomorrow’s score.. Today..
Celtic 23 Dunfermline 0
Kojo.
Do you think at the end of it all that Craig just stands up and says “thank you all – you’ve been a wonderful audience” before disappearing in a puff of smoke?
amadeus says:
21 February, 2012 at 18:29
I hear also that Costa Rica could become a happy place for Whyte to run to…
Keep the Faith!
Hail Hail!
Dayell oan snyde: without the rangers celtic will be weak
Hibs will be weak
Hearts will be weak
Aberdeen will be weaker than they are now
At the end of the day everybody will be weak
The weaker will get weaker
And the strong will get weaker, maybe not as weak as the weak but they will still be weaker…
RogueLeader says:
21 February, 2012 at 17:47
I think he is in Costa Rica. Defintely not Barbados ;)
Well if it’s a great whyte shark your’e after this one costs 185 times Rankers
http://www.sharkcricket.com/the-great-white-shark-30-c.asp
A little ad as my son owns the company
From Rangers Media
“tbf i dont know what to think, however i believe admin wes inevitable and has been on the cards for 2 years.
the unwillingness of hmrc to deal with us, was killing the club.
i fully believe admin was 100% the best option and the only way to get hmrc to start playing ball.”
Don’t ye mean playin’ with yer b***s?
voguepunter says:
21 February, 2012 at 18:40
I read an alarming article copied on the RTC blog by Leggat about two weeks ago.
Not only was it unaccuratae and peddling lies ,it then associated Celtic supporting individuals by name with those lies. A very dangerous development.
Good to see Joe speak out.
wonkyradar says:
21 February, 2012 at 18:49
Dayell oan snyde: without the rangers celtic will be weak
Hibs will be weak
Hearts will be weak
Aberdeen will be weaker than they are now
At the end of the day everybody will be weak
The weaker will get weaker
And the strong will get weaker, maybe not as weak as the weak but they will still be weaker…
hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh
but the weak might get stronger and the stronger the weak get the less weak they become in fact they become stronger,
nurse! the screens!!!
Kojo,
I still cringe when I think of the last five minutes of the 2-1 win against Dunfermline in the previous home fixture. Right enough though, too many of the home games have us looking anxiously at the clock! :-)
Captain nimmo investigates…will he salvage SS Ibrox by submerging 40000 leagues under the sea…maybe thats where newco will begin in England- the 40000th kitty cat litter conference league?
Pattulo is a genuine Dundee supporter but perhaps his master at the scotsman influences his writing…..John Mclennan
wonkyradar
‘blessed are the WEAK! Oh, I’m glad they’re getting something, they have a hell of a time.’
(Monty Python nearly)
Can anyone tell me when the league cup final tickets go on sale?
Auld Neil Lennon heid says:
21 February, 2012 at 18:53
Leggat is not right in the head,last week he was praising
the Whyte knight,saying he was a berr who would lead
them to the promised land(big hoose).
This week he claims he brought Craigy down.
He is a delusional fool.
DJ: give ALLY another year, he deserves it!
if there’s any justice!!!!