Bluedell

Was the debt not transferred to newco as part of Greens buy-out? If so, the the liquidators would have no claim to it.

So who's the new pope going to be?

Page 27 of the report states: "This is an important finding, as it means that there was no instance shown of Rangers FC fielding an ineligible player."

We didn't disclose the payments and that is what was done wrong.

There's a difference between not disclosing a £100 Christmas bonus and £47.9 million of payments. The onus was on Rangers to disclose them, hence the fine, but questions have to be asked why the SFA/SPL didn't pick it up sooner, given that they were clearly disclosed in the club's accounts.

£25,000 per year, given the size of the payments, doesn't seem too unreasonable.

The payments weren't against the rules but they should still have been disclosed, which they weren't, hence the fine.

"This is an important finding, as it means that there was no instance shown of Rangers FC fielding an ineligible player."

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- THE RT HON LORD NIMMO SMITH, NICHOLAS STEWART QC and CHARLES FLINT QC the Commission appointed by Resolution of the Board of Directors of The Scottish Premier League Limited dated 1 August 2012 in relation to RFC 2012 Plc (now in liquidation) andRangers Football Club __________________ Summary [1] For the reasons which are set out in detail below the Commission has unanimously decided: (1) Between the years 2000 and 2011 The Rangers Football Club Plc (now known as RFC 2012 Plc (in liquidation) and referred to in the decision as “Oldco”), the owner and operator of Rangers Football Club (“Rangers FC”), entered into side-letter arrangements with a large number of its professional players under which Oldco undertook to make very substantial payments to an offshore employee benefit remuneration trust, with the intent that such payments should be used to fund payments to be made to such players in the form of loans; (2) Those side-letter arrangements were required to be disclosed under the Rules of the Scottish Premier League (“SPL”) and the Scottish Football Association (“SFA”) as forming part of the players’ financial entitlement and as agreements providing for payments to be received by the players; (3) Oldco through its senior management decided that such side-letter arrangements should not be disclosed to the football authorities, and the Board of Directors sanctioned the making of payments under the side-letter arrangements without taking any legal or accountancy advice to justify the non-disclosure; (4) The relevant SPL Rules were designed to promote sporting integrity, by mitigating the risk of irregular payments to players; (5) Although the payments in this case were not themselves irregular and were not in breach of SPL or SFA Rules, the scale and extent of the proven contraventions of the disclosure rules require a substantial penalty to be imposed; (6) Rangers FC did not gain any unfair competitive advantage from the contraventions of the SPL Rules in failing to make proper disclosure of the side-letter arrangements, nor did the non-disclosure have the effect that any of the registered players were ineligible to play, and for this and other reasons no sporting sanction or penalty should be imposed upon Rangers FC; (7) As noted in the Commission’s earlier decision made on 12 September 2012 there is no allegation that the current owner and operator of the club, The Rangers Football Club Limited (“Newco”), contravened the SPL Rules or could be held responsible for any breach by Oldco; (8) In all the circumstances the Commission has imposed a fine of £250,000 on Oldco.

For us to have basically won the BTC, there would need to have been payments that were not disclosed. I guess there's an argument to say that the payments were loans and did not need to be disclosed but can't get too upset at the decision. The non-disclosure was an administrative issue, as I've been saying for quite a while now and given the period that it covered and what was involved, I guess that the size of the fine sounds about right. I previously quesioned Nimmo-Smith's objectivity but it sounds as if he got it right. I wonder if they would have come up with the same decision if we'd lost the BTC?

The football can't be that bad given you sit and watch it each week.

Are the SFL really going to vote for this? Are they going to be happy with a 18 team league whereby there are loads of meaningless games for a majoroty of clubs? I know that the SPL are motivated through hatred of us but surely many of the SFL clubs would be looking after their own best interests?

They have said that they now will.

That is correct and if you omit "fuck" you will apparently be fine.

No, I'm not saying that. I am saying that the singing has generally not crossed any boundaries as set out by the SNPs crazy act.

Some of the new songs ARE difficult to join in though unless you're jumping around like a daftie

It's possible but unlikely. They don't join with the Rangers songs at the moment and I doubt that they would suddenly join in if Derry's Walls was dropped. There's a number of reasons for this, but possibly the biggest one is the season ticket system whereby people's seats are fixed and any new blood find it difficult to sit beside a lot of like-minded people. There's a lot of people who are in the 40s and 50s that may have sung when they got their season tickets in 1987 but they're now a bit older and less likely to join in and they're scattered throughout the stadium.

We would also need to do away with the wonderful Loving Cup ceremony.

If you reread my post carefully you will see that I used the word many and not all. Many of those who are not singing are trying to impose their views about political songs on those who do sing. It's similar to the post that GA makes above. I'm not saying it's not a valid opinion but it just seems that some who are happy to sit back and do nothing in respect of the atmosphere but try and dictate to those who who do - I'm not going to sing but I'm going to tell you what you can and can't sing.

You asked why sing songs that will get the club hammered and why I/someone (not sure who) needed to be offensive. So what is offensive about Derry's Walls? Why will we get hammered by singing Derry's Walls?

I guess it's kinda ironic that many who agree with your view are not doing much singing to support their team and those who they are criticising are the ones who are managing to both. Personally I'm terrified of independence and I don't think that there is anywhere that people should be prevented from expressing their opposition to it. You disagree, which is fair enough. There's not much more that can be said on this strand. Neither are going to persuade the other.

I don't see anything wrong with it. Surely people can express their views? We live in a democracy. Some may not like it and they are entitled to express their alternative views.

It's being left to the PF's office to interpret the law and they are refusing to enter discussions with supporters so it's currently impossible to put a case forward.

I'd agree that support of paramilitary groups and mentions of the pope should not be sung. I can't see why people shouldn't be allowed to sing about politics. If you think that politics shouldn't be mentioned then fair enough, but others disagree, incluing myself, and football would become very sterile if free speech is banned. I haven't a clue why people would want to ban 3 litle birds or penny arcade but neither have anything to do with football and could be bastardised in the future and as such by your previous logic, there may be a storm about them and should be banned.

Wow. That's an accusation. I'm not deliberately doing what you accuse me of and I could throw about accusations about you given your claims about me, but I'd prefer to stick to arguing the issues. Why not answer post 11 rather than being insulting?