flyingrodent

Thomson's tainted by his hate for Rangers and his shameful taunting of dead supporters, remember? Which means that nobody needs to answer either of these questions, or any others he might raise. Strictly laughing smileys and accusations of obsession on these topics, from now on. (Hey, don't blame me - I didn't invent the rules).

I'd love to see how Rangers intend to claim ownership of a free-floating abstract concept like "titles". Once we've had fun with that one, let's see 'em explain how these titles belong to Rangers, rather than being awarded at the discretion of the football authorities.

The horse test holds good here - if you hear approaching hoofbeats, do you think "Aha - here comes a zebra?". Because most people would think, "those hoofbeats mean that there's a horse headed my way", and the word "zebra" wouldn't occur, because there just aren't many zebras around. Same thing with this - the obvious, horsey explanation is that it's a reference to the universally-recognised Men at Work sign, a symbol that would be recognised by all, even by small children. The oddball zebra explanation is that it's a highly obscure reference to the IRA. Well, it may be, but you really would have to think of the Celtic View as a bunch of mental republican fanatics sitting around an office inventing devious codes, rather than as a bunch of boring PR flacks pushing a commercial enterprise, which they are. I mean, it could be either the zebra or the horse. But it's probably the horse.

Aye, largely true and something to bear in mind in future. On the other hand though, I would've been *surprised* if it turned out that the Rangers Tax Case guy had been posting boxes of his own sh*te to various football figures and journalists. Leggat, not so much. I wouldn't be surprised if that guy has a locked cellar in his house that nobody else is allowed to enter, ever.

Leggo - "...it appears to me that a climate of fear exists within the Daily Record, for suddenly many friends who I have known for years and who I have spoken to regularly, broke off all communications. One of them even went pretty far down the line of actually attempting to avoid me at a match". Yes, I can't think of a reason why any human being would stop talking to Leggat, or try to avoid him. Must be a conspiracy.

Open admission of talking endless sh*te, there. And I wouldn't need to harp on making obvious points at such length, if you didn't insist on filling the place up with ludicrous claims, outright lies and nonsense. Otherwise, I'd stick to ^^^^ Seething LOL

So, did we get an explanation for any of the wild allegations that were flying around yesterday? Is there even the slightest evidence to suggest that Peter Lawell is personally pushing the Nimmo investigation for his own purposes, to pick only the biggest, silliest and most hilarious example? I mean - do we have any kind of documentary evidence - letters, emails, recordings? Any reliable eyewitness testimony or reports from inside sources? Do we know *how* Lawell would go about orchestrating such a scheme? Did he strong-arm the other SPL sides into going along with the inquiry, or did he bribe them outright? Have the other clubs tacitly agreed to keep any evidence of these dealings secret? If so, do we have any concrete evidence to back this up - any letters, emails, recordings, witness statements? And have we been told *why* Lawell would be so keen on grabbing Rangers' titles? I mean, leave aside the fact that he's a big Jungle Jim, and thus is *obviously* just desperate to steal those trophies... What concrete benefits would either Lawell himself or Celtic generally gain from having five historical titles handed over? Bragging rights? Well, we already have them, since practically nobody in the whole of Scotland believes that you're innocent of cheating, whether you like it or not. So, what? What's the motive - general, free-floating malice? Or is this basically all just based on the assumption that Celtic *must* want to steal your titles for themselves, because it's the kind of thing those tinks *would* do, and a single unsourced, unverifiable rumour that an unidentified official CONFESSED TO THE ENTIRE FOUL SCHEME at a non-specific, undated SPL meeting? Because you have to contrast the Rangers' fans' attitudes to the case against Rangers, where we have a vast sum of highly incriminatory evidence, and their attitude towards these insane and paranoid conspiracy theories about convuluted, many-tentacled Catholic plots to undermine their team. When there's loads of evidence against them, they endlessly caution us all against jumping to conclusions or prejudging guilt, harping on and on and on about innocent-until-proven-guilty until the rest of us are so damn bored, we lose the will to live. But when there's no evidence at all of a Celtic plot, they just say - well, it's Peter Lawell. Of course he's a crook! Prove that he *isn't* a crook! (By which I mean, they're talking shite).

These comments, from guys who have spent half the year complaining bitterly that their football team has been "pre-judged" as guilty of tax cheating. Compare and contrast the evidence available that suggests Rangers are tax cheats, and the evidence that proves the football authorities investigation of EBTs is an anti-Rangers conspiracy orchestrated by Peter Lawell. Then, laugh.

Failing to understand the purpose and practice of tribunals, and not accidentally either - deliberately misunderstanding. If you're ever hauled up before the beaks for a speeding ticket, no doubt it'll be because the Sheriff and the Crown are just gagging, desperate, to endorse your licence with three points, because they hate you. Right?

Well, why not lay it out for us, Bendarroch? Rather than ask leading questions, why not explain to us all why, when and how Lawell executed this supposed masterplan? If you can come up with credible a) Motive b) Opportunity and c) At least two pieces of evidence that build a convincing case that Peter Lawell is pushing the case against Rangers, because he wants your titles, I'll gladly concede the point.

No doubt. On the other hand, it's about as credible as your insistence that Rangers' current woes are all part of a Lawell-driven title-pinching campaign.

(I originally posted this back in September, but it holds good to this day for imagining how, exactly, this incredible conspiracy to cheat Rangers must have worked, in the minds of throbbers like Bendarroch). SCENE - SPL HEADQUARTERS, SUMMER 2012 STUART REGAN: Right lads, let's take a vote - are we going to destroy the Rangers Cause by offering The People a chance to admit to their cheating, take their punishment and then get back to playing football? Peter, how do you vote? PETER LAWWELL: I vote yes. I want those titles - those sweet, precious titles. NEIL DONCASTER: I vote yes, too. But why are you so keen on stealing Rangers' titles, Peter? PETER LAWWELL: Because I'm the Celtic boss, and this is exactly the type of sneaky, underhand thing us Jungle Jims get up to in our spare time, as part of our conspiracy to undermine Protestantism and Unionism. Plus, I'm Catholic, so obviously I eat babies and have giant, Satanic horns. STUART REGAN: But why are you so keen on stealing Rangers' titles, Neil? You're English and you've only been in this job a couple of years. So how did you wind up joining our plot to undermine Rangers, Protestantism and the Union? NEIL DONCASTER: Because Peter's boaby is so far down my throat I can barely speak. Just ask Ralph Topping! He's the same! RALPH TOPPING: Mmmmf! Mmmm mmmf! STUART REGAN: Ha ha, okay. Phil McMadeUpName, citizen journalist extraordinaire, what do you think? MAN IN ARMY FATIGUES AND BALACLAVA: Aontaím leat! (Gunfire) STUART REGAN: And you, Rod Petrie? ROD PETRIE: Speaking as the representative for Hibs, nothing would make me happier than seeing another team who happen to play in the same colours as mine do getting awarded Rangers' titles. As you can understand, I'm desperate for other teams to be awarded retrospective titles. It gets me hot and aroused, because I'm crazed with anti-Rangers bigotry and hate. STUART REGAN: Lord Nimmo, how do you vote? LORD NIMMO: Guilty! I pre-sentence them to be hung by the neck until they are dead, even if they're innocent! Especially if they're innocent! (Everybody laughs evilly) STUART REGAN: I guessed you'd say that... Lord Nimmo, if The People somehow squirm out of admitting to cheating, would you be willing to set up a biased and fraudulent panel to strip their titles anyway? LORD NIMMO: Of course I would! I'm crazed with hatred for Rangers, just like everyone else here. Obviously, if we were that determined to steal Rangers' titles, we could just ignore the issue for now and have a tribunal later on, but that would make far too much sense. I say, let's make them an offer now so that The People get very angry, send us bullets and death threats, and we get lots of horrible headlines calling us crooks. STUART REGAN: That's the plan, Lord N. I love it when we get lots of death threats from The People and loads of horrible headlines calling us crooks. NEIL DONCASTER: Don't we all! I hope The People send me a parcel bomb or two. If I was horribly mutilated by an improvised explosive device, that would make The People look terrible, which would make it all the easier to steal their titles. Those lovely, lovely titles are all I care about. ROD PETRIE: Exactly. I'm sure every one of us here would gladly put our families at risk of death and/or injury at the hands of The People, if it helps Celtic. Hell, even if it doesn't help Celtic. STUART REGAN: Alright lads, we've decided - We're going to steal Rangers titles, purely because we're corrupt and bigoted. All we need now is permission from a higher power. Do we have your permission, Holy Father? POPE BENEDICT XVI: Ja! Schtrippen der titles, schnell, schnell! STUART REGAN: Excellent... Well, that's everything gentlemen. Would one of you send in Charles Green on your way out? (Everyone troops out. Enter CHARLES GREEN, wearing a bowler hat and an orange sash). STUART REGAN: Hi there, Charles. I'm afraid we've decided to declare war on The People and strip your titles, because we hate you and because Peter Lawwell is controlling our fragile minds. Do you have anything to say in your defence? CHARLES GREEN: Big Jock knew. STUART REGAN: Thank you, that will be all. (I exaggerate, but you get the idea. It's lunacy and idiocy).

Oh God, yes - of course Peter Lawell's behind this hearing. He can control minds with his amazing, hypnotic brain-beams, don't you know. Surely it's all a Machiavellian plot by Celtic to steal your precious, precious titles. As if it could possibly have anything to do with your club running a massive tax scam!

I'd say there's only one outcome that might end up with things actually blowing up though, if the last couple of years are anything to go by...

As the old saying goes - if wishes were horses, beggars would ride.

Eerily reminiscent of all those "Why must the awful Commie papers be so nasty about Jeffrey Archer" pieces you used to get in the Mail, before it turned out he actually had pumped that prostitute then lied about it. There's a very good reason why it's so easy to "paint Rangers in the darkest manner possible" - it's because you club was owned and operated by crooks, and because even the most charitable interpretation of events can't disguise that fact.

Whatever AIG was doing in 1949 surely isn't related to what it did in 2008, since it was bought over and re-bought-over again and again and again in the intervening period. You can take your weird Illuminati theories elsewhere, as I've said before. Your bullshit would be better confined to the Lizardmen (Who May Or May Not Be Jewish Geezers, Although Of Course That's Coincidental) Ruling The World forum, and the sooner P&B's admins chase you off in that direction, the better, if you ask me. You give me the boke.

This fatally misunderstands the nature of modern fraud, IMO. The sums involved these days are so large, they can't be transferred in brown envelopes or even in suitcases - they have to be moved electronically. Take the example of AIG - they sold financial investments to punters, claiming they were good investments. Secretly though, AIG knew they were terrible investments that would blow up and that their punters would absolutely, certainly lose all their money. But that didn't bother AIG, because they'd been paid a huge amount of money beforehand by a billionaire to set up the scam, and both they and the billionaire made a fortune off it. And the best part is, from AIG's perspective - it's dubious whether that was illegal, because financiers had already paid American politicians to change the laws to make it unclear whether it's legal or not. There were no brown envelopes - nobody snuck out the back door with money in their boots, and yet surely it was a clear case of theft and fraud where hugely rich geezers stole millions upon millions of pounds. If you tell somebody you're selling them gold but actually sell them lead, that's fraud. And so. The entire English-speaking world knows what a "loan" is. Rangers' case is entirely based on the idea that the word "loan" does not mean "loan", in the sense that normal humans understand it. And yet, lots of people walked out of Ibrox with millions of pounds in their back pockets. David Murray himself pocketed, what, one million? Two million? Three? He didn't put it in brown envelopes, which gives the public a clear, physical image of theft. And yet, he took your money, in vast sums. He still has it - he's living off it, right now! How handy would the money Murray trousered have been, when the creditors came calling? How handy would it be now, when your team is in the outer shitter of nowhere, when you really need it? I guess I'm trying to say, fraud in high finance is incredibly complicated for a reason. People like us can easily understand suitcases full of money being shipped out the back door of Paulie's Chicken Shack, or whatever. We find it very difficult to understand tax laws and financial instruments and exemptions and so on. And that's not an accident! It's not complicated because that's the way it is or because we're too thick to understand it. It's deliberately like that - it's deliberately difficult to understand, because that's how criminals get away with fraud these days - they deliberately make it very, very hard to grasp. That's how your former owner was able to cash out of Rangers with a small personal fortune in the bank, while your club was left stuck up Skitter Street without a pair of slippers. It's theft and fraud, just the same as shoplifting or nicking out of the till. And here we are. David Murray is rich - your club's fucked. I'm happy with that situation, but it surprises me that you lot are.

:lol: That gaggle of waggling wallopers would get beaten like a redheaded stepchild in half their games if they were in the SPL right now, as demonstrated by your frequent struggles to claim victories in the third division. Your owner is on record saying he needs to drop the wage bill, not increase it, and you're going to be coming back up to face a Celtic side that's fat as a turkey on Champions League cash. Prepare for another "barren spell", Bendy. The only way your mob are winning anything of value in the next decade is if you're bought over by Sheik Al-Bawbag of Bahrain and as we saw when your old, dead club was flogging its assets to any passing jakey willing to part with a few tins of special brew, nobody wants to chuck their cash down the gaping money-hole that is The Rangers. Them days are over for a long time, even in the very unlikely event that your mob are hauled out of the arse-end of the league by cash-hungry vultures.

I'd agree, but I'd swap the football punishments for David Murray and a few of his cronies doing jail time for financial skullduggery*. That's more because I've got a bee in my bonnet about billionaire thieves cashing out of the financial crisis with fortunes in the bank, while millions of ordinary folk worldwide have lost their jobs and public services are getting monstered by the self-same politicians who were in bed with the thieves in the first place. David Murray is of a piece with those jokers that were nicking millions by manipulating exchange rates IMO, and the lot of them should get a holiday in HMP Barlinnie for it. Not jailing them leaves other wealthy rip-off merchants with the idea that they didn't do anything too wrong, and were only unlucky to get caught. If they'd stolen a fraction of those sums at gunpoint or made it by selling drugs, they'd be doing eight years each and the coppers would've emptied their bank accounts and flogged their motors by now. *If they're found guilty, Teds.

That surely would be a wet dream up Govan way, I'm sure. Speaking for myself, I'd probably get over it round about the seventh time my team horses yours six-nil on the bounce, just because you don't have enough money to compete. By the fifteenth time, it would be nothing but a distant memory. Oh no, wait - you're going to win the SPL, aren't you? Even though you don't want to participate in it. Sorry, I forgot.

Maybe so, but you probably don't need to worry - at that point, we'll probably all discover that both tribunals were kangaroo courts that had prejudged the issues, or that the court stenographer is a season ticket holder at Parkhead, or some such nonsense. Which would mean you were still not guilty, of course.

Well, that's the crux of the matter - Rangers say that massive cash gifts that were never intended to be repaid are "loans". Practically the entire English-speaking part of the human race disagrees, as does every English dictionary, but it's entirely true that Rangers' lawyers may be able to prove that, if you look under subsection c4) of section 3b) of the Hilariously Obvious Lying Scam-Artists Enablement Act (Scotland) 1989 with your eyes screwed up and assume that the word "loan" means "gift" , then these payments really were "loans". So clearly, using a highly technical and complex legal argument, your lawyers might be just able to squirm out of your club's blatant dodgery with both the football authorities and HMRC. Having watched them wriggle out of all your other responsibilities, I wouldn't be surprised in the slightest if your legal team manages to get you off the hook with the beaks. But it's still going to reek of cheating bullshit in the court of public opinion, and I'm afraid that that particular jury takes a very dim view of excuses based upon technicalities. So you're pretty much boned, in terms of how you're perceived in the eyes of the general populace, both those that follow Scottish football and those who don't. That's why so few people stick up for OJ Simpson, these days. And guess what? That's right and just, and it's not the public's fault. They're right.

Simple - pure expediency. Back in March, it was most convenient to say one thing. As soon as April began and the situation changed, and it was more convenient to say the opposite. Nothing more logical, moral or intellectual going on than that. To demonstrate how this works, here's an example from today's press - Derek Johnstone suddenly, miraculously changes his mind on the issue of Ibrox naming rights... http://www.eveningtimes.co.uk/rangers/rangerscomment/derek-johnstone-we-have-seen-darker-days-than-renaming-of-ibrox-fans-113661n.20003934 Short summary - 1) Derek Johnstone was not in favour of selling naming rights to Ibrox, and thought it was a terrible idea and a mercenary travesty. 2) Derek Johnstone has now realised that Charles Green is going to sell the naming rights, whether DJ likes it or not, and so 3) Derek Johnstone is now very much in favour of selling naming rights to Ibrox, and says it's an awesome idea. Has he been won over by the economic argument, or has he just realised he's going to be disagreeing with the rest of his easily-led supporter base? You decide... I know everyone else knows this, but really is worth repeating - if Ibrox was destroyed by an earthquake and drowned in a tsunami tomorrow, Rangers fans would show up the day after claiming that they'd always been in favour of violent tectonic upheavals and destructive inundations. It's in their nature.

I know what you mean. The father-in-law is a Bun: a good lad usually, although he's one of those ones that usually only remembers he is one after they've won an OF game. The last two months though, he's showed up at our place once a week and announced that Rangers had 45,000 bums on seats at Ibrox, or whatever. "Biggest crowd in the country", he keeps saying. You only used to get one of two bits of football chat out of him, back when his team were in the top flight: either "Your team got walloped the other day" if they'd just beat us, or "Scottish football is pure sh*te and I dinnae watch it" if they hadn't. And now, the mysterious obsession with turnout. Who knows? Maybe there's a poster on P&B who knows exactly what I'm talking about...