Germinal

Definition of ratiocinate in English: verb Form judgements by a process of logic; reason. English is full of words like ratiocination, great lego-blocks where two or three chunks combine to form a user friendly, tasty Yorkie bar of a word. It's no surprise that ratiocinate is, according to the dictionary, a mid-17th century word, for its logical construction fitted a time when an insistence on empirically based reason and judgement would usher in the Age of Reason, away from the dark years of superstition. Alas, as with all things human such an ideal proved a disappointment: the Age of Reason led not to a planet peopled by creatures of pure intellect, but to ever more refined methods of killing and dominating, culminating in the great, clunking full stop of the atom bomb, the point at which even the most optimistic of souls stopped believing science had all the answers, or at least that it might have the answers, but some of them were too awful to listen to. Only the ever positive Gene Roddenberry, the creator of Star Trek, continued to believe in ratiocination and found a place in his stories for life forms which had evolved beyond even the physical sphere and become, instead, swirling clouds of gas, from whence emanated an English or patrician American accent like Gore Vidal's, chastising Kirk and the rest as being slaves to their primitive urges. Humans quite liking their urges now and again, it was only Spock who even considered the concept, and the crew's imprisonment would end only when the Queen of the Intellect People, as an idle amusement, assumed human form and was immediately subject to one of Kirk's primitive urges in particular. Her uncanny resemblance to a hot chick from the valley circa 1965 probably helped the brave captain in his knobular activities, but in any case, thus distracted by Kirk's attentions the alien death-grip would weaken and the Enterprise would race away at warp speed, perhaps pondering the TV truism that if you're in a tight spot with a lady, even one of pure intellect, whipping out the old trouser truncheon will soon bring them round. Creatures of pure intellect (or even reason and logic) are somewhat conspicuous by their absence on the football front, but it's to the high brow we must look if this never ending saga of Rangers and the tax man is ever to be sorted out. I may be more swirling cloud of gas than creature of pure intellect, as the fug of my boudoir will attest, but the situation doesn't actually seem that complex to me. Murray, in charge of Rangers, employed some highly questionable but - crucially - legal at the time tax wheeze which reflected no credit on him, the players or our club - but going beyond that into claims of cheating and looking for title stripping is rewriting history and attempting to enforce a retrospective narrative which simply doesn't stand up to logic. The syllogism that Rangers didn't pay tax on some players' contracts, therefore shouldn't have had player x, y or z, and therefore shouldn't be allowed to keep cup x, y or z is the painfully contrived thesis which needs examined, if only because it generally precedes a plaintive whine about stripping titles or cups and seems set to be the dominant motif of those who would be dispossessed. It's not that tough a concept, but remember we're dealing with the intellectual equivalent of Kirk's cock here, rather than the swirling cloud of intelligence. When David Murray signed player x, he agreed to pay him £x over x number of years. This is a contract. The point at issue in all this is how Murray arranged for £x to get to player £x, not whether he could have done so or not - the latter is a given, whether the steel tycoon paid it normally (if only), borrowed even more from the banks, or stood on Edmiston Drive selling The Morning Star to raise the shekels - it's a moot point because one way or another, player x was getting £x and was going to play for Rangers. The issue is HMRC feel they, too, should have got a cut, a position I think most sane observers would find fair enough but not, alas for HMRC, the position of the law at that time. But HMRC's claim is, despite its rather elephantine presence, neither here nor there in terms of title-stripping, because the logical fact we must never lose sight of is that the players were getting that money no matter what, ergo they would have been playing for Rangers no matter what. There is no empirical evidence anywhere which suggests Murray was using EBT's to save money; he was using it to lure players northwards. Had the EBT route not been open, everything in the man's history suggests he would have found another method - everything we can say with a reasonable degree of certainty says that every player who signed and agreed an EBT would have been there without the EBT anyway, the only difference being Rangers would likely have been several millions more in debt than they already were. It's a completely false flag, and that's possibly the reason informed onlookers such as ex-players and ex-managers, who may or may not have their own tax arrangements at the back of their mind, will have no truck with it. Fans, less concerned by ratiocination, are putting 2+2 together and coming up with 3, rather as Murray did with tax arrangements himself. Just as well there's no tax on intellect. I have no time to listen to the phone ins but have no doubt they're red hot with angst, anger and outrage, not useful qualities when one is attempting to come to a ratiocinated decision. Not being a great fan of the incestuous world of the law, where going to the right school or knowing the right people still seems to be a far greater qualification for a top job than being good at it, I have my concerns that what seems to me to be straightforward enough thinking on the subject of Rangers and titles will be used, with people involved preferring to play to the gallery and self-interest. If they do, they do, and there's not much we can do about it. But whatever the up-shot is, even some worst case scenario, it's surely telling that after a long running shambles in which our club behaved in what I believe to be an indefensible manner, it's we who, incredibly, end up on the moral high ground. If that's not reason enough for some people to try to think again, logically and with reason, there's no hope.

1:23 Woof!

I confess I find bleating about poppies to be about the most pathetic aspect of the 21st century to date. Either support it, or don't, but enough with the hijacking.

Curiously, this is how The Guardian's Ewen Murray reported the affair at the time. No wonder some people trip over into paranoia. http://www.theguardian.com/football/2014/oct/22/lukasz-zaluska-celtic-attack-faacial-injuries-europa-league Ronny Deila said Celtic’s second-choice goalkeeper Lukasz Zaluska was left shaken by a street attack in Glasgow in the early hours of Monday but the manager will have no problem including the Pole in his squad for Thursday’s Europa League visit of Astra Giurgiu. Police are investigating an assault on Zaluska that left the 32-year-old with facial injuries. He had been on a night out in the city’s Ashton Lane with his partner, a matter Deila has no issue with. “Hhe was a bit scared about this but everything is good now,” Deila said. “He has trained well the last couple of days, so is ready. I talked to him about what happened. It is a police case now, I hope they can make it right and we just have to wait and see. He hasn’t done anything wrong from our perspective. We just have to support him and feel sorry for him because that is a hard thing to go through. “It is not a problem if they want to go out for dinner and do something social. Of course that is OK. He hasn’t done anything wrong. He was out for dinner and that is perfectly right. That’s why you get frightened about this, it’s not fun to experience things like that and we have to take care of him.”

Dunno what's 'curious' about having to attend to a personal matter.

I haven't seen as much of Walsh as bruno55 but I don't see an especially outstanding player there yet. Plenty time though. Like the look of Jordan thomson, similar to McKay but that bit more direct, willing to take players on. I believe he's very young tho.

'are' two players involved in this. Grammatically incorrect as well as morally repulsive. Quite frankly I think LIvingston should sack Burchill. That's outrageous.

That is actionable, really, if true. As celtc fans as apt to comment, should one replace 'English' footballer with 'Jewish' or 'black' footballer, charges would certainly follow. Further, if Burchill that if he thinks that some kind of SNP card makes that kind of shite acceptable he's sorely, sorely mistaken.

Not really, surely. He didn't really say that, did he?

Whatever way I slice it I keep coming back to a contradiction, because vertical football just can't be done without the necessary quality. If Warburton is establishing a method of playing along the lines of the OP, then he better get ready to do it again in the summer as the team we have at the moment isn't good enough to do the business in the top league, and a good half dozen new, better players will be needed. The players we have now aren't good enough to pull off the system - they are trying but some just lack the ability, so if we don't change half the side for better players then the system will fail on grounds of talent. I'm all for it and hope W&W are following Rousseau's lines, but it seems like a hell of a lot of work. Luckily no-one at Rangers seems afraid of that anymore!

I'm stunned that anyone, even someone faced with the entertainment wilderness that is the East of Scotland, would listen to Radio Clyde (guessing that's where Gerry works). Life's too short! Apologies if Livi have been taken to task in the media. I genuinely don't read the Record or the Sun or any other paper anymore so will have missed it. Certainly, Chic and Derek Ferguson last night were bang out of order.

It's maybe slightly hypocritical for a fan of the club which gave Ian Black a wage for four years to complain about excessive physicality in football, but hypocrisy has long been a central pillar of the game, and anyway Black failed to enforce anything much during his (mercifully ended) spell at Rangers, except perhaps the all pervasive sense of gloom hanging about the place. So it without a shred of irony that I type an attack on LIvingston's backward tactics in last night's game and the media's failure to chastise it as they surely should. I've seen Livi a few times, playing Dumbarton. I nip over the Erskine Bridge quite often if not at Ibrox, primarily because I like the drive there and back but also because I find Dumbarton's 'stadium' endlessly fascinating, in much the same way that TV's Time Team found wrecks and ruins interesting. Which is appropriate enough, since wrecking and ruining was plainly Livingston's tactic last night. And this is not usual for that team. Burchill's Livingston generally play decent passing football, and have beaten Dumbarton on the occasions I've seen them qute easily. Completely missing from their play was the brutality we saw last night, so it can be inferred without fear of contradiction that Burchill sent his side out with the clear idea of harassing and niggling Rangers out of their stride. Nothing wrong with that, except for a minor detail: the harassing and niggling went straight into assault. Anyone of a Rangers persuasion will already feel that the ref let down not just Rangers but football itself. But like Scotland's rugby side, there's nothing we can do about refereeing mishaps. What we can do, though, is call out the people who decided bringing the WWF to Govan on a dreich Tuesday night, to wit, one Mark Burchill. It's bizarre that a slight and nimble striker such as Burchill was should decide that brute force would be the option to choose - we saw when his side played a bit of football that they could get in behind us quite easily. Perhaps, bored by their reign as Petrofac Champions, Livingston had decided to perform a Gregor Stevens tribute act., and in any case, given Ally's reign at Rangers it's possible strikers just make crap managers. Whatever the reason, the people who can hold Burchill to account signally failed to do so - the broadcasters. When Radio 5 started covering the EPL, one of the best things about it was that Alan Green, whatever his other faults, ripped any player who couldn't pass or control a ball live on air to millions. Not wanting to be so slaughtered, the players improved. Had the pundits last night politely but firmly slated LIvingston's approach for what it was - backward, completely futile, bad for the game - they'd have done the game a service. Instead, they bottled it, protected their pal, and shat all over Scottish football, the very thing from which they earn their living. Burchill should have been castigated, as should his clobbering 'players'. Deeming their tactics acceptable as brave, or spirited, just leaves us standing still while the rest of the world gets ever further ahead. No doubt the same people who didn't see anything wrong with the studs up challenge, the forearm smash, or the continual, haven't-seen-that-since-primary-school shirt tugging will be handsomely paid to mull over why the National team keeps failing. Holding a mirror up on radio might not be very interesting to listen to, but it would be, in part anyway, an accurate answer as to why Scotland is crap at football. Gutless, cowardly, lickspittles! First to the mic when a disgusting foreign type takes a dive or kicks out, strangely silent when it's someone they may have known for a few years. They do no service to the game. Burchill did no service to Livingston. Shame on the lot of them.

Hugely interesting post which I've been pondering instead of working for several hours now. Many thanks indeed.

This is basically my huge post in one sentence. Food for thought for the long winded poster right enough.

I think he's got things a little backwards - Waghorn is more of a stepping stone for Rangers, that is he's a decent striker who will certainly do a fine job at this level but I would certainly hope that in the top league, and beyond, we would be playing better strikers.

Strange Days have found us, right enough. The bizarre spectacle of English football and rugby tearing into themselves over the last few weeks has been a grimly fascinating sight. Why anyone would want to manage an English sports team at the highest level is beyond me - maybe I'm just not ambitious enough. But even the most driven of bosses must know in advance that, like politics, all careers end in failure. That, probably, they can live with. It's the weird, existential stuff which goes with the territory I, and surely they, struggle to understand. Both football and rugby down south are awash with cash, far outstripping almost all - if not actually all - of their peers. And yet there's been a persistent rebellion, a rebellinho, quietly but insistently forecasting the end of the world is nigh, if not because these bodies will run out of cash, but because they have forgotten what they are for in the first place. What explanation is there, outside the psychiatrist's walls, for Jose Mourinho and his explosive narcissism? Or the howls of primal anger directed at the fuddy duddies of the RFU whenever England fail to win a trophy? The England rugby world looks into itself after their exit from the World Cup and finds that there's nothing there after all. England's Champion's League representatives, Manchester clubs (only just) excepted, run complex analyses to ascertain why they are consistently losing to 'weaker' sides from 'weaker' leagues and find an empty space where the beating heart should be: fans alienated or priced out, corporations grovelled to as their substitutes. In truth I think the heart is the wrong organ to be examining here, it should be the head. Psycho-analysis may have kept every dodgy mittel-European with a beard in well paying business for the last 100 years, but if there's a reason for the actions of England's super rich super under-achievers it should surely be looked for in the psyche, not the heart. England's football teams have danced to the tune of the Treasurer since the advent of the game; anyone surprised that they still do may be equally distraught if I reveal Santa Claus isn't real. Freud, Adler and the rest would have a field day, though, with the rejection of the native which has been inherent in English football, and is now also to be found in rugby, which has marked both games since the first Scots professionals went south for a lucrative contract in the 1880's. The only change now is that better communications means players can be sourced from anywhere on the globe to anywhere on the globe, rather than Ayrshire players to, say, Lancashire. Why do they consider themselves inferior to foreigners? It's a strange concept which doesn't appear especially prevalent in other areas of English life, after all. Freud and Adler...let's not forget their contemporary, Carl Jung. In Scotland, of course, he'd have been called Chic Young, an alarming thought if ever there was one. Never mind 'tell me about your mother,', it would have been 'tell me what school you went to'. But it just goes to show that for all the presumed moral superiority of sitting smugly watching elite English sport have a rotten time, the reminders are there that 'there but for the Grace of God go I', or that what goes around comes around, although Chic Young coming back around in another life as a world famous psycho-analyst can only be the stuff of nightmares for Buddhists around the globe, to say nothing of his patients. 'I'm cured, I promise! Just no more exclusives!' The point I'm struggling toward here is that instead of having a chuckle at our southern neighbours I should maybe be having a look closer to home to see whether or not I, or Rangers, run the same risks of extinguishing my self in the search for success. Being perennially skint, I am in no danger of losing my soul to filthy lucre. No, it's the starving artistic life for me, forced to take on menial job after menial job while failing to sell my elegantly constructed, witty epistles, of which this is so demonstrably not one. What about our team, though? Surely the events of the last few years mean we're hyper vigilant when it comes to the ethos of The Rangers, on our guard for anyone who would besmirch it? I'm not certain. Mark Warburton is nine league games into his reign at Ibrox and people are moaning already. We don't win by 4 or 5 anymore. We only play for 20 minutes. We're open at the back. Other than this last, which was plain from the start and should come as no surprise to anyone who calls themselves a Rangers fan, these are fantastic gripes, in that they are the stuff of fantasy. If, come the end of the season, we're still at the same level then fair enough. But to be able to forget that Warburton's team was assembled in July - that's three a half months ago - will likely need tweaking and is anyway in its infancy in favour of moaning doesn't suggests a strong grip on reality. we've always had an element of fan for whom Rangers exist largely as a means to complain about everything - probably why I've always felt so at home at Ibrox - but even by their super-critical standards this is too much, way too soon. As Jimmy from South Park said, come on. I mean, come on. If your level of tolerance is so low that only perfection, instantly and constantly repeated with no deviation or hesitation will do, you might end up on the shrink's couch yet. If your standards are so high that nothing short of a footballing Olympus on the sou'side, with only games played out by a Pantheon of Godlike Blue Shirts good enough, you're constantly going to be disappointed. Then it's constant self criticism and analysis and you end up eaten from within, a hollow shell with no strong foundation to rely on. Do builders not bother with keystones anymore? I bet they do, and so should Warburton. Lay the foundations, improve the building year on year. We're in a good place and hopefully, getting better, Not everyone can say that in this strangest of sporting autumns.

I know the FA and the EPL are separate entities, but the way the FA went out of their way to try not to offend the IRA - not Ireland, not Irish people, not Irish culture but your actual IRA - when England played the Republic doesn't suggest English authorities would be that bothered by the likes of the Old Brigadier.

Missed a chance there. "I don't know the history as well as some of you but I know Rangers went through a hard time recently, and to talk about going somewhere else would be a pretty disrespectful way to treat the leagues that welcomed them in when they were ejected from the SPL.' Doesn't matter if you don't mean a word of it, it would buy you credit - while lessening celtc's - with other, vote carrying clubs.

No question about it. But the teams in the top division would have to be dragged kicking and screaming to see the bigger picture, despite their bullshit about being community clubs, sporting integrity, etc. In fact there would probably have to be a stand off to the extent that teams in divs 2,3 and 4 would have to refuse to engage with top level teams in Cups or anything at all, and then you're looking at another split, and it all goes round again. Football in general seems to attracts total wallopers - we should know - but Scottish football really gets the creme de la creme, les boabbies par excellence ,as they say in France.

How do you get an image or an attachment into a post?

Swing, Hammer As my kids enter their middle teens, I find myself missing the time when we actually enjoyed each others company. Having been replaced by an electronic Dad in the shape of Bill Gates, I cling to the few things we still do together...eating, although watching a young man shovel food in his gaping maw while periodically grunting in response to questions has rather lost its charm, and...er, that's it. When they were younger, I loved experiencing things I had forgotten from my own childhood. The smell of Airfix modelling glue, the taste of Rusks, rolling plasticene worms and making Lego: maybe it's as well we don't comprehend the sheer scale of information the brain retains, since I suppose there's as much unhappy as happy memories stored up there. But they were nice days, even allowing for the triedness. The difference in energy levels between the very young and 30 somethings who have just gone through four years of sleep deprivation is something which cannot be described, only experienced. One experience I looked forward to sharing was going to Ibrox with my sons. Sadly, the eldest hates all sports but the youngest was happy to get kitted up and head up the motorway when he was younger. The size of the stadium, the noise of the fans, the smell of the food...it all came back, although admittedly the smells back in the 80's, when I started going, were less worthy of appreciation than today's clean ground filled with aromatic smelling fans. I'm not sure deodorant was widely used in the early 1980's, being seen as so effeminate that a grave suspicions were harboured about those who did use it. It was strictly soap in those days. Imperial Leather! Wright's Coal Tar! Shield! Like so many bars of soap, though, my boy's toleration of football played the McCoist way washed away to nothing after two seasons of it, and I am slightly ashamed to admit I was relieved to have an excuse not to endure it myself. Those were dark days, and despite Tuesday's reversal in the League Cup most Bears are surely still happy to head to the match rather than having to force themselves along as before. Not even I would wish what looks like being a chilly day in Greenock on my child, though. Greenock must have had something going for it once, to go by the high status Victorian architecture you can see as you hurry through to the nice bit that lies beyond, Gourock. Having worked there and in Port Glasgow during the 2000's the only industry on view seemed to be shop lifting and drug taking, a sad reflection on the decline of the heavy industry, primarily shipbuilding, which once put money in men's pockets and used up their energy in pursuits more worthwhile than sticking a needle in a vein. No doubt Greenock grandfathers of a certain age look back at their youth and wish they could share their experiences of the town when it was alive and kicking with their grandchildren, but in all brutal honesty revitalising the area will be a huge task. Far easier to breathe new life into a football team, and both Rangers under Warburton, and Morton under Jim Duffy, are taking strides in the right direction. Defeating Motherwell, as Morton did on Tuesday, may not be much of a coup but it was more than we could manage so fair's fair. Two clubs, then, rebuilding in the shadows of their pasts, looking to fire the imaginations of fans young and old. If Morton beat what is a swashbuckling, freewheeling Rangers side it'll live long in the memory of Morton fans, and it would hard to grudge them such a day, given they must bear the heavy burden of being associated with certain low rent omnibus operators - hard to grudge, that is, were they playing someone else. Because we have as much need to start building memories of our own. I'm just old enough to remember the Gers playing at Cappielow in the early 80's now and again, and while my memories are mostly of being freezing cold the point is that I have the memories at all. With mild chastisement ringing in their ears from Tuesday night and hopefully, a desire to make someone pay for the first defeat of the season, there's a good chance we'll see a good showing from Rangers on Sunday. The pitch at Cappielow, relaid in the summer, is in stunning condition which should suit the way we play. No doubt this will be seen as the usual Rangers arrogance but if we play as we can do, we could rack up another 5 or 6 goal win. What a memory that would be for some young fan! Let's go to work.

Ffs, there's breaking things down into small paragraphs and there's going too far. That's almost unreadably staccato. Edit: just seen its the Record, thought it was the Rangers website. That explains it.

Surprised there hasn't been some "Gough is a prick, he once failed to shake my hand/ wouldn't sign my kid's autograph book/chastised me when I drunkenly vomited on his dinner table/shoved in front of me in Woolie's for the last strawberry creams in the pick n mix" (delete as applicable) yet.

First thing to say is I'm not moaning that we're now playing actual football. I love it. But watching Arsenal getting bullied out of the game against Chelsea, not for the first time, made me wonder what it'll be like here, where refs are even more lenient of physical football. When we're in the top flight, will Warburton's teams be tough enough to play real football in the SPFL bare knuckle arena? I suppose it depends who he buys in the next two windows but I haven't seen anything to suggest an enforcer in on the shopping list. I'll need to make a decision between maybe losing some games to teams playing 20th century garbage or watching us go back to that style ourselves. Actually, there's no decision to be made, I hope we tough it out and keep on playing the right way.

I certainly view his teams as without question the worst ever Rangers sides, and contenders for worst ever football teams of all time. I also agree totally about unprofessionalism. But when you compare him to the 'boards who raped us' you're on your own. That doesn't mean I was ecstatic to see the pay he was getting for doing such a lousy job, but it's an accusation which goes way too far.