flyingrodent

Mark Daly (@MarkDaly2): Revealed: the emails which set out the deal between Craig Whyte & Duff & Phelps in the days leading up to administration. Online at midnight Edit: Jesus, you have to be fast with the scoops around here...

Similarly, if you stick your boaby into a blender, it's the Health and Safety Executive's fault for not plastering stickers marked "Not for genital use" on household appliances.

All in good time, sir. We have to watch Rangers' hilarious CVA pantomime play out first, but nothing's sure in this world except death and taxes... Or in your case, non-payment of taxes and death. Now, where's my twenty quid?

Rangers have won a minor court victory: the Big Tax Case and the EBTs/double contracts fraud are the Tyrannosauruses in the living room here. Today's court case is like that bit in Saving Private Ryan where a bullet spangs off the soldier's helmet, and his mate shouts "You lucky b*****d!". Half a second later, POW! Brains all over the camera.

So, it looks like the Buns have won the bingo on the Titanic. What are they going to spend their winnings on, at the bottom of the Atlantic ocean? The only question here is, when Rangers go under, are they going to pull the national team and the CL/UEFA Cup teams down with them? The choice for the SFA looks like being "Hammer Rangers, who deserve significantly worse than the puny punishments they've already had... or drop everyone else in Scotland down the toilet". Good God. If nobody liked them before, as their song went, they're going to lose popularity contests to Ian Huntley, Harold Shipman and the Yorkshire Ripper after this one. It was bad enough when their long years of fraud and cheating only meant that we all stood to lose out on a bit more cash than we did when they were stealing trophies. This situation makes that look like shoplifting Mars bars.

I remember it well - did the Pars not switch to Calderwood's genius 2-4-4 all-out attack formation after they conceded the third? The same formation that got them a brutal gubbing at Tynecastle earlier in the season - they switched to it against Hearts after going 3-0 down, if I recall correctly, and wound up losing about 7-0 or so. I understand why Sutton was such a dick about it at the end of the game, without condoning it. It was a dickish performance. It's no fun getting squeaked to the title, and he hadn't seen the Rangers-Dunfermline game. Nonetheless, I like to think that if you asked him now, Sutton would say he was deeply embarrassed about making those comments. Mind you, I've heard rumours that Sutton is a bit of a dick all the time, so maybe he wouldn't be.

The fiends!

I'd love to think this would happen, but I think they'll just start on Hearts instead. These fuds are a minority in the support, but Being Fuds is all they're about, unfortunately.

Sucking up? You are mistaken, sir. I, for one, hope your next jobby's a hedgehog. A lot of daydreaming going on here, isn't there. I'd love it if someone ran a book on this - twenty quid on Celtic to be just fine, please.

Fuxache. Every time some damning piece of evidence emerges to demonstrate that Rangers are a criminal enterprise of fraud and theft, some joker starts arsing on endlessly about how Celtic have to go. We may have many walloper fans and suck up whacking great chunks of TV money. We might be smug and belligerent and paranoid, but last time I looked it wasn't Celtic who were trying to suicide bomb the entire Scottish game to cinders and ash after cheating and doping the league for a decade. Sense of proportion, eh?

I did wonder about Marvs comments as he's a stand up guy. Given the number of financial improprieties Rangers are already guilty of I wondered if its possible that some of the recipients of EBT's didn't know they were recipients of EBT's - and it was used as a mechanism to syphon monies out of the club and onto er....a mystery benefactor, I really doubt that many of the players realised how dodgy the EBT situation was. I barely pay attention to my payslips, and I'm 34 and far older than most of these guys were, and think about yourself at that age - if someone offered you £200,000, would you say no? Now, the agents - they're seasoned professionals, and cynical professionals at that. They should've known something smelt fishy. Look at the BBC list... http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-glasgow-west-18148818 I'm no tax expert, but I'm guessing that every player who has a "Yes" under "Side letter seen by BBC?" had a shit-hot agent who knew his stuff, and all the ones that didn't had crappy agents who didn't question it, because they didn't know how to tie their own shoelaces. Like I say, I'm no expert. It just seems likely that's how it was.

Fantastic stuff in the Record today as someone collars Marvin Andrews - a decent geezer, in my view, and the one player I'd expect to put his hands up on the tax issue - and asks him about the EBT debacle. http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/football/spl/2012/05/25/rangers-in-crisis-marvin-andrews-denies-any-tax-evasion-during-his-time-with-ibrox-club-86908-23872430/ Notice - Marvin (BBC EBT figure - £316,025) denies everything, but only talks about tax paid on his "wages". His "wages" are separate from his EBT of course, and either nobody asked him about it or his answer was so incoherent that it wasn't worth printing. To be fair to him, they jumped him at one of these Show Racism The Red Card things, so maybe they didn't want to beat him up too badly. My favourite quote - "I can’t deny or hide the fact that I played for the club during the time in question but I got my salary like everybody else and I paid my taxes as normal". I wonder whether he would like to deny or hide the fact that he played for Rangers. He does have to answer to a higher power, after all, and I don't mean Neil the Cockwomble...

I'd understand the Rangers Media tools' attitude - "Magic, intae they SFA Rangers-hating scum", basically - if this action would do their club any good, any good at all. It won't. They were at death's door before, and this is the final nail in their coffin. It turns everone against them. Even RFC must have thousands of fans who can see this plain as day. It's mental, incomprehensible stuff.

If nothing else, this should serve as a big wakey-wakey for all our chairmen who have been vowing to decide on Rangers based on "the best interests of the club". A whopping ban from UEFA and becoming pariahs in Europe isn't in anyone's interest. This is now a matter of self-defence - it's us, or them. Total lunacy from RFC. They're forcing the other clubs to choose between destroying them or taking a baseball-batting alongside them. No sane club official is going to side with them over this.

Looks like the denizens of Rangers Media know full well this will screw the Scottish national and club sides, thus punishing us all for their cheating... and they are loving it. Unbelievable twunts, the lot. No mercy for these characters - the third division doesn't deserve to be afflicted with them.

This is a suicidal move - it forces the SFA to punt them down the divisions. Imagine the scenario if they don't - UEFA exclude the national and club sides from competitions. You'd have a mob of fans of half the clubs in the country burning down the Big Hoose in minutes. If I was a Bun, I'd be tearing my hair out. This is the nail in the coffin, surely.

In civil law cases like the Big Tax Case, all HMRC would have to prove is that on the balance of probabilities, Rangers probably defrauded the taxpayer. (Thinks about content of documentary) They're boned. That's a big flaming jobby parcel on the SFA's doorstep too, given how they reacted to Whyte spending the PAYE money. Can't see UEFA being that understanding either.

Bad news, everyone - the trumpets on Rangers Media reckon it's all made up by the BBC to destroy Rangers. So it's all bollocks, then. Just like it was the last time.

Never mind UEFA, it looks like it's Barlinnie these shysters need to be worrying about...

Let's assume that might even be true, just for the sake of argument. I'll risk it.

Bit of caution needed with that phone-hacking story, I reckon. Sounds suspiciously like the News of the World story, could just be some walloper on KDS speculating, getting turned into a fact. That said, pretty much all of the allegations swirling around Ibrox have turned out to be true - non-payment of tax, dual contracts etc. If it turned out Minty was having journalists bumped off, I wouldn't be 100% surprised.

Really choking on seeing this game, in a way I haven't been for a non-Celtic game since maybe Scotland v Ukraine. Both have potentially flash players who could have a blinder or get sent off in the 16th minute - really hard to predict. If there's less than five goals and one red card, I'll be disappointed. Beers in, feet up.

Rangers out, Spartans in. Everyone's happy except for the Buns, but they're never happy anyway.

And there was me about to say how happy I'd be to see Dundee replacing Rangers in the SPL, too.