flyingrodent

That performance was the funniest event so far, way better than the Big House guy; more hilarious than Mr Custard; even funnier than the Ramsden's Cup exits. I've never seen anything quite like it - the club in Phoenix Nights was run with more dignity and professionalism. I wouldn't be at all surprised if you told me it was all a huge prank.

Arrange a time and place and then just f**k, and get it over with.

Today's papers spent page after page, in publications across the entire UK from London to Aberdeen, laying out in precise and painstaking detail just how much of an appalling clusterfvck Rangers FC is. And the best part is, it was all true - the board hate the manager, the players are clueless, the fans hate the board, there's no money to pay for anything and what little money there is, is being sucked up for non-football reasons immediately. The authorities hate the club because it won't pay the money that it's due, the club doesn't know if it's a club or a company, the manager hates the board and the fans are all disgusted by the manager's remorseless personal greed and are split on supporting either the manager or the board, and absolutely everyone in Scottish football knows that the club will go tits up without further Sugar Daddy intervention. Speaking as a Celtic fan who went through the nineties with a very similar, although not as drastic, scenario playing out at my own club, I just want to say - Get It Right Up You. Edit: Sorry, I revised this. I stupidly hit Post while the Mrs was distracting me.

Not a co-ordinated campaign, I would've thought. Just lots of people seeing the flashing red danger signs for the NewCo and scrambling to get back some of the cash it owes them ASAP, in case it goes bust and screws all of its creditors all over again. Edit: Although now I think of it, it's a canny game the SPFL are playing here right enough: Pay the DeadCo's fine and keep your dubious claims of continuity, or fight us all the way by telling the world that you're a different club. The latter is inevitably going to involve some high-profile figures at the NewCo arguing no connection, which - regardless of what you think about the "same club" stuff - is going to be very, very damaging to them with the fans.

Just seen that result from last night - a well-deserved pumping off Queens, with the non-resigned Ally standing glumly on the sidelines. Ibrox is like a clown car these days - comedy horn honking, doors falling off, engine exploding, boot flapping madly open and closed, with a ridiculously large cavalcade of capering fools pouring out of both sides. McCoist should do his media appearances wearing a red nose, a ginger wig and a pair of massive shoes.

Hmmm... Almost a day after publication, and nobody else is carrying this story. That's odd in itself. Translation of this one IMO: "Somebody has told the Record that the cops interviewed Murray". That person was willing to speculate on why the cops interviewed him, but clearly wasn't willing to let them quote him or her on the topic at all. Interesting that they'd speak to Murray mind, since he seems to be a post-takeover appointment. Still pretty thin though, and doesn't really chime with much else we've heard from press or blogs.

AFAICS, all this relates to the initial takeover of Rangers - Whyte saying he had money when he didn't and agreeing to take on responsibilities that he couldn't or wouldn't take care of. I'll happily own up to it if I'm wrong - it certainly wouldn't be the first time or the last. I am biased after all, and I could just be horrified by the very suggestion that destroying Rangers FC could ever be seen as a crime in and of itself.

That may well be true, but I'll be surprised if it is. I've seen nothing except that vague claim on the BBC's website to indicate it's correct but then, they've clearly got access to the documents. Edit: Ignore this - see previous post.

That's a bit of an odd assertion by the Beeb - they've clearly had a look at the charges and they lay them out in full, below the bit you're quoting.... The fraud charge Mr Whyte faces span from January 2010 to February 2012. Legal papers claim he pretended to Sir David Murray and the board of directors that he had "sufficient funds to acquire controlling shareholding" in Rangers. This is said to have "induced" the board to agree to the sale to Mr Whyte. He is then accused of pretending he would provide £5m to buy players, that he would pay £2.8m for a tax liability and use £1.7m to settle "agreed capital expenditure". Other allegations listed in the charge include an accusation that Mr Whyte was part of a claim to the Ticketus firm that David Murray was aware the purchase was being funded by selling season tickets. Ticketus are said to have then entered into an agreement to acquire three years of season tickets. It is further alleged Mr Whyte pretended to the SFA that he had not been disqualified from being a director leading them to believe he was a "fit and proper person" to take control of a club. The charge concludes that Mr Whyte got the shareholding by fraud and that he failed to provide contracted funds for the "continued operation" of the club and withheld payment of VAT, PAYE and NI contributions from HMRC. It is said this caused the club to enter into administration. The second charge under the Companies Act is over a number of days in May 2011. It is claimed funds from an agreement with Ticketus were used to "to meet obligations as purchaser of the club" - in particular £18.2m was paid to Lloyds Bank. The charge also states funding of the "acquisition of the controlling shareholding" was made by "selling an asset of the club" - the income from the sale of season tickets." Mr Whyte was in court after four other men appeared in the dock last week in connection with the case. David Whitehouse, 49, Paul Clark. 50, David Grier, 53, and 50-year-old Gary Withey also faced a charge of being involved in a fraudulent scheme. Mr Withey also faced an allegation under the Companies Act http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-glasgow-west-30242028?print=true The charges as laid out in full include everything previously claimed by the Sun but don't, as far as I can tell with my limited understanding, relate at all to non-payment of tax. Maybe the BBC know more than they're letting on. Edit: Nope, missed this - here's the relevant part: The charge concludes that Mr Whyte got the shareholding by fraud and that he failed to provide contracted funds for the "continued operation" of the club and withheld payment of VAT, PAYE and NI contributions from HMRC. But that's clearly relating to the initial takeover, isn't it? It's Whyte agreeing to do something, then not doing it. So again, it's about misrepresenting his cash and intentions in the takeover.

Doesn't take a law degree to read the front page of the Sun a week or two ago, Benny. That paper's style guide requires articles to be written in language that an eight-year-old can understand, so there's a chance that even you could grasp it.

If you can believe the papers, correct. That's a big "if", of course.

You'd think not, but that does appear to be the current working theory. I wonder if it'll turn out to be more complicated than that.

I think it's pretty clear that the legal system is quite interested in the Rangers takeover, given they've arrested all the main figures involved in it. All the Murray stuff can wait for another day.

It may very well do, HB, but who knows? What we have at present isn't exactly edifying, but let's wait and see.

Also, for folk who are paying attention, this would mean that Whyte is on trial for his dodgy financing of the Rangers deal, but that he isn't liable for e.g. - Sir Dave spending Rangers into the grave, on the taxpayer's credit card - Sir Dave's very dodgy tax remuneration schemes - Sir Dave deliberately frustrating the HMRC investigation with everything at his disposal - Sir Dave deliberately withholding player contracts to scam the old SPL, an act that later caused the OldCo to incur a quarter-million pound fine for deliberate "rule-breaking" - Not paying tax/PAYE bills or - Putting Rangers into liquidation. Basically, if the Sun reports are to be believed, Whyte is up for the basic sin of acquiring Dead Rangers FC dishonestly, a horror that occurred all the way back when he was being near-unanimously cheered through the gates of Ibrox, and subsequently defended to the hilt.

Basically geezer, it's totally legal to buy a club from people who want away from it by basically borrowing against the club's finances, if both parties are willing. The Glazers didn't pay a penny to buy Manchester United - they basically offered e.g. £600m cash and then put that debt on the club, and not on their own current accounts. Craigy seems to have done the same to Rangers, but with the Ticketus money, without Sir Dave knowing that was the source of the cash. That is, Craig Whyte previously agreed a deal with Ticketus, then used the theoretical money from that deal to underwrite the Rangers deal. And that's illegal. Which would mean Craigy is on trial for scamming the OldCo's shareholders. That is, if the Sun is to be believed. Perhaps it isn't. Edit there to use the word "underwrite".

The Sun have claimed to have a copy of the charge sheet and they're saying the big fraud is Craig Whyte using the Ticketus money for future ticket sales to finance the takeover, while claiming the Ticketus money was actually existing finance. That amounts to - screwing over the OldCo Rangers shareholders for large sums of cash. Which is basically an utterly illegal version of a leveraged buyout, which is what the Glazers did to Manchester United legally. The Glazers openly made Man Utd pay for their own takeover. Craigy hid it, and thus broke the law. Edit: Sharp-eyed P&Bers will note that if the Sun is correct - and they've got a good track-record on obtaining embargoed documents - Craigy is only charged with scamming some OldCo shareholders.

I'm off out, so I'll answer my own question here - the tax/PAYE money was withheld because there wasn't enough to pay salaries, and keep the lights on, and pay the tax/PAYE bills. Why wasn't there enough money? Well, there may be an out for you here if it transpires that Craigy had to make a payment to Ticketus. If that's not the case, then we're left with the following as the sole reason why there wasn't enough money: Because Rangers didn't qualify for the group stages of European competition and couldn't call on any credit, because you were an infamous basket-case.

Why was that money being withheld?

It's the same now - the rule-breaking wasn't Rangers' fault (Sir Dave); the over-spending wasn't Rangers fault (Sir Dave); the criminality and fraud wasn't Rangers' fault (Whyte & Green). "Rangers" - the Deadco - was just a wee innocent flower, unsuspecting of the horrors lurking in the boardroom, totally powerless in the face of a series of cartoon supervillains. So now, the creditors are massively out of pocket for the liquidation; the authorities are out of pocket for the investigation and the public are hugely out of pocket for the prosecution, all of it multi-millions in expense directly incurred as a result of the RFC casino football the 90s and 00s that's been transferred away from Rangers and onto someone else. Sir Dave, Craigy and Green get all the blame for the bad stuff, and the Newco retains the on-field successes that resulted from their malfeasance. Or at least, it does if you're daft enough to buy the big club/company dodge, anyway. Everyone else in the game can smell the rank stench coming off Ibrox a mile away.

Not when they're being prosecuted for their own crimes, no. When they're being held accountable by tens of thousands of people for at least a decade of financial jiggery-pokery, sleazy stonewalling of official inquiries, deliberate rule-breaking, running up expensive successes on what turned out to be the public's credit card, and a general avalanche of lies, corruption, deceit and bad faith, then yes.

"Simple" is probably the word I'd use for this analysis, yes.

Yes, of course you are. Sir Dave deliberately broke the rules on player registration for gain; Craig Whyte was a fraudster; Charles Green may have been up to no good, and on and on and on. And you know, any and all of these might be correct, but you don't have to be Sherlock Holmes to spot that investigations into these matters are only supported insofar as they absolutely do not have any possibility of concluding that Rangers deliberately broke the rules on player registration for gain; that Rangers were involved in fraud, or that Rangers may have been up to no good. And maybe Rangers weren't involved in any of these schemes and frauds. Perhaps the old club/company was entirely composed of blushing innocents who were aghast to discover the crimes of this roster of super-villains, from the board of directors right down to the tea lady. But again, let's just note that your support for investigations into malfeasance at Rangers is utterly contingent on those investigations restricting themselves to the activities of only a few people, who can then be scapegoated for the entire debacle. There are strong similarities here with the current round of excuse-making for the team, which would obviously be storming the Championship right now but for the incompetence of one man, Mr Ally McCoist. Because that one man is the excuse for everything on the pitch, much like SDM, Whyte and Green are your excuse for everything else off it.

I can believe that you want this but with respect, this isn't even bourne out by the P&B Teds' attitudes, far less those of the wider Rangers support. We can all remember the level of enthusiasm shown for the BBC's investigation into Whyte's dodgy dealing. Every one of us remembers how your fans reacted to a series of investigations by HMRC, the football authorities and their commission, amongst others - the very, very best that can be said is that your fans regarded them as misguided, although far more were very blunt about detecting these investigations as the malicious work of Timothy and his endless conspiracies against The People. And now there's wide support for prosecution of Craig Whyte and Co, and that's laudible. But let's observe how utterly contingent support for any such investigations are. Dead Rangers exploded in a fireball of criminality and fraud, deliberate rule-breaking and vast amounts of bad debt. Thanks to the hard-worked club-company fantasy, the huge debt can be palmed off to somebody else. Thanks to the malfeasance of your various owners, the fraud, criminality and rule-breaking can be offloaded onto Murray, Whyte and Green. I don't doubt that you're honestly glad to see Whyte et al get their come-uppance, and I think you're quite right to welcome it. OTOH, it's very, very obvious which types of investigation are welcomed by Rangers fans, and these are, exclusively, inquiries that will help you to shove all the blame onto particular individuals, so that you can pretend to be the victims of crime, rather than active collaborators. (And this is before we get onto the irony involved in folk pre-judging Whyte's guilt, after two years of whingeing about folk pre-judging the DeadCo).

I can quite believe this, and there have certainly been consistent calls for full investigation of Craig Whyte from the P&B Rangers fans, after the club went into liquidation at least. On the other hand, pretty much every other investigation into malfeasance at Rangers, no matter the source or the level of justification, has been angrily attacked by a majority of Rangers fans and supporters groups as a "kangaroo court", aimed at nothing other than highly suspect persecution of the club/company, kicking it while it's down. So I expect the current enthusiasm for prosecuting Whyte will last exactly as long as it's only him and his mates incurring damage from it. Investigations into "individuals" good - investigations into the Deadco, bad. Much like the current cries of "We're shyte because of McCoist's poor management", there's considerably more appetite for scapegoats at Ibrox than there ever is for "the truth".