flyingrodent

Can you ask again, except in English this time? To be fair, Peter Lawell probably should issue an apology to Rangers, although I'm not sure whether it should go to the tribute club or to the dead one.

I'm stunned to discover that there are idiots on Twitter. Astonishing, if true. Perhaps you and your pals should get together and submit a complaint about it?

Serious, organised and intentional rule-breaking but "no advantage gained on the field of play" again, I reckon. Like Homer when Marge tells him to punish Bart, I expect the authorities to announce that New New Rangers have learned their lesson and hey, why not let's buy them a present?

I would be astounded if it turned out that New Rangers had been intentionally breaking the rules and concealing their behaviour, for their own benefit. If true, could Old Rangers sue the New boys for stealing their business model?

Gravity is the most astounding and spectacular thing I've ever seen. Go and see it in 3D while it's at the cinema or you will kick yourself when you see it on TV. It's incredible.

Time to put Private Eye on the list after this piece in this week's edition... Planet Football Rangers One of the great mysteries almost a year ago was why institutional investors backed the flotation of the Glasgow club with £17m when it emerged from administration. Artemis Investment Management, Cazenove Capital Management, Legal & General Investment Management and Insight Investment Management all took stakes of 3-7 percent, buying 1.9m-4.3m shares at 70p a pop. Along with unit trust clients of Marlborough Fund Managers, who were put in for just under 5m shares, institutions acquired a total of 42 percent of the club. Today, the shares are 48.5p, having been as low as 41p. But these masters of the investment universe have been strangely silent. The share price collapse is not surprising, as all but one of the directors at the time if the flotation have resigned - as have some who joined since, such as chief executive Craig Mather, who left two weeks ago. Now there are only two directors. Furthermore, Rangers are on their third nominated adviser. Cenkos, who floated the club on AIM, left in July, and then Strand Hanson lasted only until the beginning of October, to be replaced by brokers Daniel Stewart. Former chairman Charles Green and his broker ally Imran Ahmad, who helped him put together the flotation, have both been big sellers. Green had 5m shares and Ahmad 2.2m at the time of the flotation, for which they may have paid as little as 1p. Both now have less than 3 percent, or 1.8m shares - or none at all. There was a six-month lock, or 12 months for directors, but Green was not a director when his stake went below 3 percent in September. Director Alexander "Sandy" Easdale, who was not on the original board, now owns or controls the votes of almost 24 percent of the shares, having acquired support from two major offshore owners whose true beneficial identity was not disclosed in the prospectus. Meanwhile, some shareholders are seeking to have a new slate of directors elected - a move resisted by the club. Perhaps it is time L&G, usually a champion of intervention over poor performance or behaviour, and the other institutions pressured the AIM authorities at the London Stock Exchange to step in and enforce something more resembling good governance for a public company. "Slicker"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Night_of_the_Long_Knives

Believe it or not, CPS have some pretty strict guidelines on when to proceed with prosecutions and when to drop them. They're based on the viability of a case, i.e. The available evidence. The idea that a CPS lawyer would drop a sex offence prosecution because it might be perceived as racist is quite fun, but in reality it would be very hard to do without being at very least censured by your bosses.

If that's true, it's a bit odd that it didn't come out at the trial or in the enquiry. A lot of hacks made noises about this in opinion columns without ever being specific. Note that "Knowing there were a couple of allegations and following procedure" and "knowing there was an organised crime ring operating and deliberately shielding criminals" are two different things. Also worth recalling that any time some horrendous crime happens involving a bunch of folk from ethnic minorities - usually Muslims - a bunch of flatulent idiots announce that it can only have happened because Tha Librulz Police and Courtz and Governmentz are too soft on the ethnics. The evidence for this is usually pretty weak, but that never, ever stops them.

Odd comment from McCoist yesterday.... "One of the biggest results for us this year was Morton beating Celtic in the League Cup". http://www.heraldscotland.com/sport/football/mccoist-disappointed-by-strange-easter-road-choice.22580762 On Traynor, I was at a supporters club Q&A panel thing he attended about three/four years ago, and he spoke at length about Rangers' dire financial situation. He refused to go into detail beyond saying the debt was far bigger than was being reported, and that Rangers would be in a position where they could no longer compete with Celtic "within a couple of years". Not that he ever said anything on the radio or in the paper, mind, but it shows me that some hacks must've known more than they were letting on, and said nowt. Presumably they didn't want to incur the Wrath of Sir Dave.

I wrote a bit on this at the time... http://flyingrodent.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/cashin-in.html The short version is that, when almost every news outlet in the country reports on a story while simultaneously shouting about how they won't be silenced by the PC Brigade, in papers that sell millions of copies every day, you should smell a rat. The Rochdale case got ten times as much coverage as the one the year before in Edinburgh. Did the PC Brigade just do a better job north of the border? Or do we think that maybe, just maybe, the hacks were indulging in a bit of grandstanding so that gullible readers would believe they were being terribly brave by covering a story that every paper in the country was reporting, without any interference at all, in the UK's top selling publications?

Pretty crazy stuff - you'd think that there wouldn't be a single person in Scotland stupid enough to defend a straight-arm salute, but apparently there are many. I mean, how hard is this? Just say, those guys are idiots, nothing to do with our club.... But naw. That would apparently be "giving in" to the hardcore Republican ideologues at the, uh, at the Daily Mail. Also, bonus stupidity points to the guy on Rangers Media saying that the Romans gave straight-arm salutes, and that calling the Romans "fascists" would be PC Gone Mad. Clearly written by a guy who knows nothing about the origin of the word "fascism".

I think King could make New Rangers competitive and successful, if he's planning on a McCann style cash and infrastructure investment. Is he planning that? I have no idea, myself.

Astounding stuff there, one humiliating display of servile, ball-gargling sycophancy after another. No doubt we'll discover that these embarrassingly thick Rangers fans aren't representative of the wider support, just like they aren't whenever Rangers fans riot or sing proscribed songs en masse or swallow obvious lies. For now though, it's worth recalling that the Teds lined up to give Craigy Whyte a series of Dyson-strength sookies the second he issued his first press release, not least because they're about to do the same to Dave King.

Seriously? I can't recall much wariness at any point, and I'm 35. As a support, they've always been willing to take all kinds of outrageous gambles on any number of dodgy businessmen and risky financial outlays, provided there's a chance to win and get it right up everyone else. Not so good at dealing with the consequences of failure but then, serial debtors and binge blowout enthusiasts rarely are.

This club/company nonsense is about as convincing as a desperate vegetarian claiming that pigs are plants so he can have a bacon roll. Look, it's got leaves! And stalks!

They should put the money in a Rangers Persecution Fund, to pay for even more kicking when they're down IMO

This AGM is shaping up to be one of the comedy highlights of Rangers' protracted death. I'd love to be a fly on the wall. Prediction: Where's wur money Where's wur orange away taps Can we sue the BBC How come Timmy hates wur sodjers Which players are we going to buy with that £11m Four of these questions will get in-depth answers.

Yet more BBC bias from the sounds of things.

Agree. I quite like Chick as a person and his meltdowns are usually hilarious, but his defence of Smith was comically woeful. You could hear the presenter's embarrassment for Young boiling out of the speakers.

It's going to be a long time before the Newco will trouble the top six of the SPFL at this rate, champ.

To be fair, nobody ever lost money by underestimating the rank stupidity of many Berrz.

So let me get this straight: The shysters who run New Rangers have milked the club/company/whatever dry, and are now holding out the begging bowl to a known shyster whose involvement with Old Rangers resulted in its liquidation. It speaks volumes, that this state of affairs is being reported as good news. You can imagine the headlines, if this was happening to any other club/company/whatever in Britain.

Tom is, if anything, too gentle with Smith and McCoist there. Both have been right at the heart of both the Old and New Rangers catastrophes; both have profited greatly throughout, and both have come out and claimed they have no clue what happened to all the money. Twice.Hacks could maybe forgive them filling their pockets while the whole infrastructure collapsed around their ears once, but to do it twice and then shrug their shoulders and say, dunno mate? You get the feeling that many hacks wouldn't smell a rat on this pair even if they were drenched in half a bottle of Eau Du Rat each.

Aye, but as we've been repeatedly told, the RM goons aren't representative of the wider support.