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The Real PapaBear

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Everything posted by The Real PapaBear

  1. Correct. This whole fiasco can be traced back to one man. David Murray. His mismanagement of the club in the latter part of his tenure is the whole reason we are where we are. Timmy took, and continues to take, full adavntage of our plight, like jackals on a wounded zebra - but we are the only ones responsible for getting ourselves into the situation which allowed them to do that in the first place. By the way. That flow chart graphy thing? Embarrassing.
  2. This may sound odd coming from someone politically to the left of Stalin and with the militaristic tendencies of Aung San Suu Kyi, but I don't think we celebrate rememberance enough. Rememberance Sunday should be (and due largely to football attendences, is becoming) Rememberence Weekend. It has become common practice for all football clubs to observe a silence on the weekend - well, all except one. The furore about hibs, Ross country, thistle and st johnstone was precisely because they did something which was felt to be unacceptable. They haven't done it before and I doubt they will do it again. No-one is talking about forcing individual to do anything. However, when a major event takes place on Rememberance Weekend, there should be a social expectation that the organisers of that event obey their civic duty and mark Rememberance. If they fail to do so, there should be an outcry. Thankfully, that seems to be becoming the case. That, my friend, is society's biggest problem. All it would take would be for the rest of you to change step and the world would be a happier place. Football is the new religion; it's where people gather in their tens of thousands and it should be under the spotlight. You're right in that it wasn't the norm when you or I were growing up. However, it clearly has become the norm now.Otherwise the media wouldn't be running headline stories on clubs who failed to do so. And you would be right. But that's not my point, which is that we need a way to, again, demonstrate the observance of rememberance. It's all very well to walk around with a poppy but unless you actually spend those two minutes in the company of others and take part in a demonstration of rememberance, then to my way of thinking, the point is lost. I don't wear one. I'm uncomfortable about the almost exclusive focus on the uniformed victims of war that the poppy has come to represent. We forget that the vast majority of casualties are civilians, the bulk of those women and children.
  3. But that's not the point. The point is that we, as a society, have to have a way in which we can clearly demonstrate the observance of rememberence. By doing so, in places like football stadia, where the biggest public gatherings take place, we emphasise to upcoming generations how important this is to us. The effect of a 50,000 seater stadium falling completely silent is unlike anything else and therefore all the more powerful. People do not gather in large numbers in churches or at war memorials. You can take all the people in all the churches in Glasow of a Sunday morning and do you think you'll reach the same numbers that are shopping at Braehead? Common decency. Cinemas, concerts etc all ply their trade on Sunday and have the opportunity to mark the event if they wish to. Football clubs, play once a week and it has become the societal norm that on what is now known as remembrance weekend, the people gathered at those clubs use the occassion of their congregation to show respect. This is an event too important to be left to one group to police. It's not the job of RFC or the Legion or MPs to tell Hibs or whoever - it's all our jobs. Remeberance doesn't belong to one group or one political philosophy, it belongs to us all equally, like the right to vote.
  4. Then where? Where else do people gather in such numbers? Surely there is a moral imperative for us to remember those who died in war? This is us, as a society, remembering those members who lost their lives in war. If opposition fans of ross county, Hibs or whoever want to start seeing the rememberance silence as a tribal, football issue simply because of how Rangers is currently celebrating it, then that is a reflection of their own ethical standards. If a club doesn't mark the silence, then I think it should be forced by public opinion to explain why. One of the ugliest things about football is this idea that normal societal norms suddenly no longer apply when there is a coloured scarf and a leather ball involved.
  5. Quite so. The police are refectly able and willing to use video recording to identify people singing sectarian songs and then bring them before a judge. There is no reason on earth they couldn't do exactly the same and lift every person found to be disrupting the minute's silence on the grounds of it being an action liable to cause a breach of the peace.
  6. I would refine that arguement even more (or nit-pick, if you prefer) and say that there is no better day than today to discuss what and who we are remembering. We as a culture have become enamoured with war, (almost certainly because we don't suffer from those wars in any tangible way) and at some point we really will have to examine this fetishistic relationship we have with militarism. Yes, by all means, let us remember those who died in the service of their country (among them my maternal grandfather who died fighting the Japanese) but let's remember, too, the other victims of war the great majority of whom are and always will be civilians. The poppy should, more than anything, represent a recognition of the waste and shamefulness of war and represent an apology to all of those who have died in them. Where I wholeheartedly agree is that the two minute's silence is *not* the time for this debate and anyone who desecrates those two minutes is committing breach of the peace and should be punished to the full extent allowed by law, imho.
  7. I swear to christ, if this kind of writing was in a newspaper, I'd break the habit of 30 years and buy one. Every word: - Agreed with: Check.
  8. If anybody knows that it can take time to bed-in to the Rangers striking role, it's Ally! I've always been one of those who has been willing to give Ally time and space to bed in to his job and learn his way. The only thing that would ever see me turn against him is if he didn't give other young players the same chance he had. For me, Clark is one of the top 5 players I see taking us back to the top of the SP whatever-it's-called. I have a feeling about this kid.
  9. This is quite a long article and many of us have places to be of a Sunday, so I'll attempt to precis Mr English: "It wisnae oor fault" (again).
  10. Clark will come good. He's in the right position every time he misses. At some point he'll be in the right position every time but not miss. When that starts to happen he could, like dB says, walk away with a few match balls.
  11. In large part through my bloody phone and broadband bill
  12. we've seen before that that club has a different view to the rest of society as to what is acceptable behaviour by management, players and fans.
  13. That game exposes them for what they really are; everybody's cuddly, new best friends, full of the craic and the song and the love-me love-me......until things don't go exactly their way. Then it gets nasty. Then the mood shifts like a bi-polar spouse abuser. Then opposition players and officials are attacked, on the field of play, in their own homes and via press releases and commissoned pyschologists reports from that club. I mean, seriously - we're supposed to be the violent underclass of scottish football - can anyone give an example of an opposition player or official ever having been physically attacked at Ibrox? I can think of 5 off the top of my head at Parkhead but I can't remember anyone being attacked at Ibrox (except Andy Cameron).
  14. Well, the video clearly show the Celtic fans were provoked. Did you see the colour of those trams?? Pure blue and white, so they were. Timmy was left with no option other than to throw beer bottles at them. I fully expect a UEFA award for the restraint they showed.
  15. Rangers fans in Manchester: 150,000 - 200,000. Arrests: 39 Celtic fans in Amsterdam: 7,000- 12,000. Arrests: 15 The BBC reporting? Interesting you should ask. The BBC reported it thus: "Police injured before Celtic match" - for non-grammarians, this is called the 'passive voice'. We use it when we wish to de-personalise and focus on the verb rather than the subject. It's a common rhetorical device for defusing a confrontational situation or, more commonly, avoiding blame. The active voice would be " Rioting Celtic fans attack and injure policemen". But the BBC didn't use the active voice. The active voice is used to focus on the subject. For example " Rangers fans attack police", as the BBC reported after Manchester. In the active voice. About us. One to keep in mind when reading about us or our fans compared to them and their fans, or just generally when reading BBC output. I look forward to Newsnight specials and doctoral thesis being written on the back of tonight's events. Or not.
  16. I see the topic header, I think "this'lll be good" I see who wrote it, I think" aw fuck, that's 3 seconds of my life I'm never getting back" Has Mcmurdo ever, and I really mean within living memory, written anything that has not been complete shite? Every time I read something of his, he's been promising earth shattering revelations, breaking news, sweeping arrests and free dental care for children with dyslexia which will all materialise within the following 6 hours. At some point people are going to have to a) have him sectioned under the Mental Health Care act or b) stop posting his drivel on the main boards. I've always felt we need a Bluenose Comedy Lounge.
  17. very good article Frankie; very balanced, very fair, very mature - and a number of the Dunfermline fans have let themselves down with their response. They seem to forget that their club got itself into difficulties over an extended period of mismanagement whereas ours was driven to the edge of extinction by criminal activity by persons known and unknown. They seem to forget that theirs was one of the clubs who did their utmost to kill us and they have clearly forgotten the magnificent gesture from Rangers fans, who paid them the debt owed to Dunfermline by the old company. If any club's supporters were honour-bound to show Rangers fans some respect, it's Dunfermline.
  18. I am arguing that very thing and seriously; man, I'm almost frowning. What has the BBC ever produced that can match The Sopranos, The Wire or Deadwood - despite having no commercial pressures and so able to take creative and artistic risks? What, seriously, was the last innovative, ground breaking thing the BBC produced? Fawlty Towers? No disagreement from me there. And that is the quality level that we have every right to demand across the entire network, not just the Natural History department. But we've headed off into the long grass here; my original response was about their documentaries (news and CA rather than nature) which lead into a debate on their drama production. BBC Scotland's amateurish behaviour towards Rangers plays no part in my regard of that organisation. My view of the BBC (news, editorial and CA ) was clouded -or should I say enlightened- long before last year. It has become an organisation, largely of dishonest, corrupt, talentless, uninspired, bureaucrats who are terrified of creativity and innovation almost as much as they are of their political masters. If you ever have a spare 20mins on your hands, I can strongly recommend having a poke about here: http://www.glasgowmediagroup.org. They have done more than anyone to catalogue BBC (and other media) bias.
  19. No it is not. The issue is that the BBC, despite being funded with wealth unimaginable for most other organisations has failed to produce TV of the standards being produced by commercial companies, such as HBO. The fact that the programmes I cited are in some cases 10-20 years old is, in fact, a further condemnation of the BBC for failing to produce anything that reaches even those 'old' standards. Now, you're being silly. The point, as you understand perfectly, is not the genre, it is the quality of those programmes. Furthermore, every other TV station and production company does not receive billions of pounds of free revenue every year. The average TV or production company can be excused for producing shit, since they are aiming at mass appeal to pay the rent. The BBC is under no such commercial pressure. It could and should be making programmes of the best quality at all times. It has no excuse not to be doing so. Ouch. You bitch! Bowl of milk and some catnip for my friend amms please!
  20. Yes, but on the bright side it could be a very Merry X-mas and a very happy new year.
  21. The age isn't really the issue, it's the quality of shows like that; quality the BBC couldn't even dream of despite being funded with billions of pounds Sums the BBC up perfectly; TV for people whose minds are not yet formed and for those whose minds are starting to go. Just kidding mate, I'm sure your mum is as sharp as an Oxford Don's letter opener. Dude, that list is international quality the way Barry Ferguson is "World Class" .
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