bossy

It is bad enough having elected leaders of small fan groups claiming to represent us making unfounded allegations about our club, but now we have an unelected nobody doing the same. Very dissapointed with Sky for giving him the time of day.

So what do you propose?

You don't have TV's or bars in gentleman's clubs...

 

Just good butlers and ironed newspapers.

The voice of experience?

I think the short answer Frankie is NO.

 

Culturally we're just different, we don't have the same chip on our shoulder as they do. We're not brought up to believe that if we lose at something then it's rigged but if we succeed it's because you're simply better than everybody else. That's the psychological horsepower that's driven those in positions of inlfuence to get there in the first place and once they have that influence there's no question that they'll use it for maximum gain for their own agenda. If you question it, you ,must be a bigot.

 

They've been fighting a war while we've been enjoying a sport.

Yep, very succinctly put.

It isn't so much that they are 'anti-establishment' but rather that they wanted to become the establishment. And in the fields of politics, academia and sport I think to a large extent they have succeeded. I don't think they have enjoyed the same success in business but that is more because the main levers of economic power have deserted Scotland than anything else.

In a sense, Rangers is a symbol of the old establishment and, with us still around, they can never fully feel that they own the establishment even though - de facto - I think they do. For them, in some respects, Celtic is a unifying force. The glue that holds the different strands of success together. A common identity linking success in academia with success in politics.

For most of us, Rangers represents a football club rather than a cause and I think that is a key difference. So reclaiming old ground would actually take a significant cultural shift in how we think of Rangers and how we interact with each other. For example, would you deny someone a job on the grounds that they support Celtic? In my professional life I would never have done that. But I think that is the kind of cultural shift we are talking about. Because I think that the Celtic minded look after their own in a way that we do not.

I would agree with most of that; not all, but most. I think the difference between our supports is the social and/or intellectual level at which the bigotry starts or stops. In my experience of Rangers fans, the real bigotry tends to die out fairly soon after you leave the realm of what I used to call knuckledraggers before I got a row from Andy. The bigotry of Celtic fans goes way, way higher up the scale.

 

On a side point, I won't say more than this (cos Frankie doesn't like us bad-mouthing other sites) but if you have never visited other sites, you really should. It would open your eyes. This place is like a gentleman's club in comparison.

One of the reasons I am now spending more time on here than elsewhere. The quality of conversation is simply at a different level.

With regard to Celtic, it is quite clear that there are Celtic supporters who are clearly very intelligent and who have made it to high places in the media, academia and business but who have never managed to shed their deep seated hatred for Rangers or an underlying feeling of inferiority (justified or not) with regard to us. This latter explains, I think, the aggressive and vindictive agenda that so many of them seem to follow.

I would some up the article in three words .... "we wiz right"

(meaning the Record of course)

Boyd could have been top drawer - if he wasn't so lazy.

Or under a different manager .......

Boyd was a penalty box striker and he was very very good at that. A different manager would have played to that strength rather than trying to make him into a different type of player. For example, putting him up front with a big strong guy like Prso or Hately rather than asking him to play lone striker.

It was an agreed settlement. The whole judge and verdict thing is essentially a face saver for SARS who settled for 30% of what they were demanding.

It was King himself who claimed there was a mountain of email correspondence going back and forth between him and Craig Whyte which King could put forward as part of proving that he was indeed "fit and proper", just seems bizarre that none of it has come to light given how trivial and peripheral much of the releases have been.

I think that, if it existed, we would have seen some of it.

I suppose I would admit that events of the last few years have made me completely intolerant of anything other than Rangers getting back on top, coupled with a visceral desire to see certain clubs suffer, for decades, in revenge. I won't see that on the back of good intentions.

You and me both.

Rather bizarrely he barely rates a mention in all of the stuff revealed by Charlotte Fakes.

Dave King plays his cards close to his chest. I very much doubt that he is willing to shoot emails around right left and centre which could then become hostages to fortune. His experience with SARS will have taught him that the less information you leave around for others to exploit, the less vulnerable you are.

Any particular reason for that reservation or just a gut feeling?

First, he was quite happy to sit on David Murray's board for years while we were slowly going down the tubes.

Second, he has always had a somewhat dismissive perspective towards the supporters being engaged in the club. I fear he sees supporters as customers the same way Murray did.

Third, he has made it clear that he wants control and does not want to share control. That puts the club at risk of something going wrong elsewhere in his business dealings as happened with Murray.

Fourth, and just based on some of the stuff he has said, he clearly has an ego and prefers to keep as much info as possible close to his chest. I think the support will be kept very much in the dark in a Dave King regime.

I appreciate what you are saying bossy. But is the Dave King who perhaps will one day run our club going to do so with a mentality and attitude similar to the one he displayed with SARS ?

If it means he will be tough as nails and utterly ruthless towards the opposition then I hope so. And his attitude to SARS was 100% right. If he had not done that then they would have rolled him for a lot more money.

What we need is 1) someone with a genuine passion for Rangers, 2) someone who is a highly talented businessman and 3) someone who is utterly ruthless and street smart.

I have my own reservations with regard to King. But they are nothing to do with the morality of his tax affairs. My concern is that he is another David Murray.

At some point morality does come into it - I suspect even for you, andy - the only question is at which point do we, as a support, draw the moral line.

Dave King seems to have an issue with the SARS and his relationship with them is entirely adversarial to the point where he is happy to lie and deceive them. At the same time, other sources claim that SARS is corrupt to the core. Personally, I don't know enough about either King or SARS to say which is more trustworthy, but as far as I am aware, his relationship with the SARS is the only part of his operation about which questions of dubious morality and legality have been raised. That being the case, I have no qualms about him taking over. It's not like he is Nestlé or Monsanto.

Ones view of 'morality' is very different when you are on the receiving end of a 'shake-down'.

Lots of very reputable people and organisations have run-ins with the tax authorities. In some cases it is because they sailed a bit too close to the wind with regard to their interpretation of tax law and, in others, it is quite simply a 'shake-down' by the relevant authority. In very few cases is it as simple as a deliberate fraud. Had King been engaged in deliberate fraud then I rather doubt that SARS would have settled.

Thing is, tax law is highly complex and highly judgmental as we saw with regard to the EBTs. It simply isn't black or white and morality doesn't come into it (just ask Dermot Desmond). Tax payers take advantage of loopholes where they can to reduce their tax (anyone here got any 'tax-efficient' savings) while tax authorities regularly send in an inflated bill as a negotiating position (remember the EBTs).

Judges will always tend to side with the authorities so you have to look beyond their words at what actually happened. In this case, King settled with SARS and for a whole lot less than they were asking for. So the truth is probably in the middle. King was, no doubt, being a bit liberal in his interpretation of tax law while SARS were, no doubt, trying to shake him down for as much as they could get. And they settled much closer to where King was than where SARS were.

There seems to be a tendency to moralise over tax while, at the same time, doing all we can (legally of course) to reduce our own tax liability. A great many of us have tax 'efficient' ISAs, a great many of us have bought duty free booze and cigs and (probably) more than a few have paid tradesmen in cash to lighten HMRC's administrative burden.

So lets give Dave King a pass on the morality of his tax affairs and lets focus on the essential. Quite apart from having a ton of money, is he the right person to take Rangers forward?

Cheers bossy.

 

So, what's your take on why we need this guy in as an 'independent' non-executive director to chair a new investment committee "overseeing capital projects"?

 

Is it just a fancy way of saying that he's a name on a piece of paper with boardroom voting powers on behalf of an investor like Laxey?

He may be a good guy, who knows. I doubt he is there to represent Laxey. Laxey always seems to be pretty up front from what I have seen.

Not quite sure why the Board needs an 'investment committee'. I would expect capital investment requests to come from the CEO in line with a broad strategy approved by the Board. Requests over a certain amount would go to the Board for approval but not sure you need a committee for that.

I worry that this is another step towards the Board becoming the effective management of the club rather than being a supervisory and advisory body acting on behalf of the shareholders. I think you need a separation between the Board and the management.

I was meaning too late to win round the fans. For whats it's worth I doubt very much if our present board will go in hard on this. They should be asking for his removal from his SFA position, how can the SFA have someone like him in a senior opinion who insults a member club? Time will tell but I have no faith in our board.

The Board seem to have statement 'diarrhea' at the moment.

However, going after Lawwell hard would certainly work in their favour should they choose to do so.

Maybe Lawwell wants to see the current board in place rather than a more effective one. Maybe 'toxic Jack' put him up to it.

Conspiracy Theory Loyal

Any person who is being recruited for a CEO position is going to insist that he/she gets to run the club their own way. That includes getting to choose his/her own 'C-Suite' (e.g. CFO) as well as being given a high degree of freedom of action by the Board. That freedom of action would also imply control over the PR function.

My guess is that the Record's information is 3rd hand. In other words, he told someone who told the Record. That does not mean that the Record's information is necessarily wrong. Gardiner probably realises that taking the job with certain people in place and unmovable would make life extremely difficult given the extent of the dissatisfaction with those individuals amongst the support.

I doubt that he made the removal of certain people a condition of taking the job. The question was probably couched in more theoretical terms. Perhaps a 'for example' type of question …….

"for example, if I wanted to change the CFO and/or the PR consultants would the board give me that power?"

I find it curious that the press release spoke of "many constructive and friendly face to face meetings and phone calls with our PR adviser". Makes you wonder who is running the club.

Can anyone update us on how this guy began his career in 1990, moved to work for the Rothschild family in 1993 and went straight on from there in '94 to spend 5 years as a Senior VP at Merrill Lynch?

I had a look at his LinkedIn profile.

First it looks like he spent 5 years doing who knows what between school and University.

Second, he was only one year at Rothschild. That means he either got fired or was so good he got headhunted. You decide.

Third, his LinkedIn profile only claims VP at ML, not SVP. If you have niche expertise in your industry then getting hired as a VP isn't that hard. VP isn't all that senior.

To me he looks like a mid-level finance professional. Not the sort of guy who will be CEO of a blue chip investment bank but he will have done okay for himself.

http://www.linkedin.com/profile/view?id=13845930&authType=NAME_SEARCH&authToken=lEhZ&locale=en_US&srchid=223789731384479644366&srchindex=1&srchtotal=2&trk=vsrp_people_res_name&trkInfo=VSRPsearchId%3A223789731384479644366%2CVSRPtargetId%3A13845930%2CVSRPcmpt%3Aprimary

For the totally uneducated in these matters can anyone confirm if this statement sheds any more light (than was previously known) on the potential Easdales versus McColl & Co show of hands e.g. does it sway it in favour of the incumbents or is it still as unclear as ever?

I think it tells us what we probably already know. Easdale & Co. probably have around 30%, the requisitioners probably have about the same and 40% of the shares are still in play.

I am told that the requistioners are confident they have enough shares to prevail. I think we can probably identify some 20% of them from the list. Not sure where the rest have come from however.

Can you remind me how we know that Easdale controls 9.29% of the remaining 50.66%? I'm losing track, apologies!

In the announcement it says that he controls 23.79% of the shares. However, the shares proxied to him or owned by him from the named shareholders in the list only amount to 14.5%. So the balance of 9.29% must come from the 50.66% of shares which are not specifically listed.

This announcement only covers 49.34% of the shares of the company. Therefore, another 50.66% are held bt small shareholders. We know that Easdale controls 9.29% of that unaccounted 50.66% but that still leaves 41.37% up for grabs.

If the spouse of a member wants to attend along with the member, does she have to pay £5 ?

I think that remembrance is important but I am uncomfortable with its use as a point scoring exercise which increasingly seems to be the case.

As a society, we seem to be increasingly enamoured with extravagant public displays of mourning and sorrow and, it would appear, remembrance is following the same pattern. Those of us who prefer a quieter more reflective moment of remembrance are being shouted down in favour of the public display. My parents who lived through WW2 and my grandparents who lived through WW1 never really talked about the war. Their remembrance was personal not public. As those wars recede in history, so people seem to be more 'uber' about remembering them.

Obviously there have been wars since WW2. But are the participants in these wars pushing for public displays of remembrance or is this coming from others? And does it really matter that a couple of clubs did not hold a two minute silence? Is this a stick that we should be beating Celtic and their supporters with or are we just cheapening the memory of our fallen servicemen by using it as a tactic in the propaganda war?

I think that remembrance is important but I am uncomfortable with its use as a point scoring exercise which increasingly seems to be the case.

As a society, we seem to be coming enamoured with extravagant public displays of mourning and sorrow and, it would appear, remembrance is following the same pattern. Those of us who prefer a quieter more reflective moment of remembrance are being shouted down in favour of the public display. My parents who lived through WW2 and my grandparents who lived through WW1 never really talked about the war. Their remembrance was personal and reflective. As those wars recede in history, so people seem to be more 'uber' about remembering them.

Obviously there have been wars since WW2. But are the participants in these wars pushing for public displays of remembrance or is this coming from others? And does it really matter that a couple of clubs did not hold a two minute silence? Is this a stick that we should be beating Celtic and their supporters with or are we just cheapening the memory of our fallen servicemen by using it as a tactic in the propaganda war?