Aim Here

They've been doing exactly that to Heart of Midlothian football club for the past three years. It could be that they intend to help Hearts with this money in a more indirect way, by either using it as a last ditch attempt to influence reconstruction, despite the 'no strings attached' statements by Queen Anne, or, failing that, to at least keep Hearts' Championship rivals alive long enough to keep the league going next season (and throw some crumbs at Leagues One and Two for appearance's sake).

Rockstar are clearly Hibees. There's a reason why the Grove Street families' colours in GTA:San Andreas were Green while the enemy Ballaz gang wore maroon!

No. He's very Hearts-centric, and very thick, while seeing fit to harangue other folks here about their grammar and spelling (something he's not exactly great at himself). It's far better if you avoid his posts and just think of him as a random mystery man who dots you if you disagree with Ann Budge; seeing him actually say something disabuses you of the mystery and the reality is a lot less interesting than your imagination.

The Premiership season only ended about 2 weeks ago, with the unanimous consent of all the top tier clubs. 'They' weren't exactly in a rush to end it.

It's unlikely that it's 'free'. There might not be money changing hands, but remember that the league owes the TV companies money for the 8 matchweeks of unplayed fixtures, so any 'free' sponsorship is just payment or part-payment for the debt. As any businessman knows, payment in kind is always a better option than paying them out in cash.

What's the betting that something comes up in a matter of, oh, hours after the league reconstruction talks formally break down, which means that the mystery investors somehow can't pour any money into the league?

You can see 8 3/4 of millions in their last 3 published sets of accounts; it is just treated as ordinary income, the same way that gate receipts and competition winnings are, and spent on whatever it is Hearts spends their money on. Something like 2-3 million was earmarked for player costs, so they kept Christophe Berra in the style to which he has become accustomed.

And why go through Budge to go to the SPFL? Why do these guys need two middlemen?

I know you're not a good faith participant in any online argument, but I'm feeling stupider than usual, so I'll bite. As Partick Thistle's lawyers point out in the earlier linked document, the SPFL articles of association don't consider any such thing as 'no' votes in the first place, so there's no facility for revoking them. You vote to affirm a proposal. Once the time is up, anyone not voting for it is counted as a 'no'. 'Yes' votes are irrevocable to make this system work. There's not really any such thing as a formal 'no' vote, outside of an abstention. I'm sure it's helpful when organizing the ballot to have clubs say 'no' before the time is up if they don't intend to vote for a proposal, but it's neither binding, nor irrevocable, nor indeed a formal thing at all.

Depends on how space time causality actually works. Maybe the future isn't alterable, but you have to do the rigmarole of doing the time travel business to get the better future. Like you know your own actions in advance, but only because you know what they're going to be because you watched them. Alternatively, the reason I picked the penalty shootout option is that it's the final stage in a game, so you could avoid altering the past until it's time to do the one alteration that matters - and it's one with a sequence of more or less discrete events so there's a reasonable chance that the result of one kick doesn't affect the future ones, unlike with open play.

I suspect it's more like his definition of 'rigged' is not the legal definition of 'rigged'

It would be a huge help. You could have two instances of your best player on the pitch, and what's more, one of them has already played the game and knows what's going to happen - and telepathically knows what his teammate is thinking and going to do. Or goalkeepers could watch the game from the stands, see which way the strikers are hitting the penalty shootout and then play out the game to win the shootout. Like that Hladky bloke did against Dundee United in last season's playoffs. There's tons of ways it could help.

Did you catch the word 'exactly' in the post from @johnnydun ? There's a distinct lack of specificity about what cause of action Hearts could conceivably win a lawsuit with. There's lots of fantasy powerwank stuff about delaying the league with lawsuits and injunctions and forcing teams to go bust, and extracting £10 million quid from the SPFL, but not a lot of what specific legal wrongdoing that Hearts can write down in lawyerspeak that could actually make it's way into a courtroom without being laughed straight out again. So far, I get the impression that Hearts fans are imagining the behind closed doors legal conversation is going to go something like: Hearts: "We want £10 million quid for what you did to us and the law should prevent you all from working until I get it, or you go bankrupt whichever is first" SPFL: "Good grief. What did we ever do to you?" Hearts: "I dunno. Some Companies Act stuff, I would think. Something something Restraint of Trade something maybe" SPFL: "Blimey! It's a fair cop, guvnor, you've got us bang to rights. We definitely are guilty of mumble mumble *cough*Duty of Care*cough*. Tell you what, here's £5 million quid and a Get out of Relegation Free card" Hearts: "Haha, In your face rest of Scottish fitba! We really a mighty, and powerful Establishment Club and not a bunch of shrill hysterical chancers after all!" <Hearts fans proceed to gloat insufferably for next 25 years>. Would that be a fair characterization of your line of thinking?

Seems that the police have finally gotten around to arresting the cop.

Whose friend did he decorate his saloon with this time?

It's worse than it looks, from other angles, you can see that there are two cops behind the car also restraining this guy, so he was going nowhere, knee or no knee.

If that's really the worry, isn't there more likely to be a 10-team championship than a 14-team one; making the leagues smaller makes it more likely to have a quorum of teams able to finish playing any given league. Is the Budge reconstruction an attempt to sabotage the Championship while keeping Hearts out of it?

Depends. On technical matters of Scottish criminal jurisprudence, I'm sure he's as good as almost anyone. On when is the best time to have a good ol' fashioned sash bash, not so much...

M'learned friend ought perhaps to acknowledge that the prevailing opinion of the Scottish legal fraternity appears to conflict with his on most of the salient points of contention being discussed...

If you read Kickback, you'll find your fellow Jambos are primarily interested in using the courts as a means of causing delay, expense and hassle to the rest of the SPFL. They're much less clear on an actual legal theory over which they could win some supposed court case.

Going into tinfoil hat/shitstirring Hibs fan mode, it might be that that Budge is expecting to do something that alienates the fanbase in the near future and is trying to pre-empt a run on season ticket refunds when whatever it is kicks in. We are seeing a fair amount of desperation right now from both fans and club. It's probably not the case, and more likely Budge misjudging the fans like she's apparently misjudging everyone else, but I'll mention it in case I get to pull a sneaky 'I told you so' in a couple of month's time...

After latching onto Ranger's fantasy dossier of weak pish claiming that the SPFL board were the Svengali puppetmasters of Scottish fitba', she now wants to use the SPFL board to overrule the club votes, using some ad-hoc emergency powers. Relegation is far too good for these whining chancers. Reconstruct Hearts out of the League and doon to the Juniors!

Most of the teams they'd be playing against would be the ones they were playing against the season they got 'promoted', so it's pretty much no promotion at all.

If his dad's anything to go by, that's the modus operandi. Buy struggling teams on the cheap, do them up and punt them on. However, it looks like it's going to be FoH that gets to hold the bag instead. Presumably after Budge has done what she can to bump up the team's market valuation by, say, keeping them in the top tier and keeping the top tier income stream. I'm sure nobody would want successful businesswoman Ann Budge to take a loss by moving on the club at a low-point in it's financial situation... Come to think of it, wasn't the handover date this month sometime?

Seems there's a 10% refund on next season's season ticket. Which is admittedly better than the £25-off voucher that the Rangers fans will get. https://www.edinburghlive.co.uk/sport/football/hearts-confirm-season-ticket-refund-18324096