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calscot

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Everything posted by calscot

  1. calscot
    We can also get it wrong here. We generally say "AC Milan" and "Inter Milan", but I'm reliably informed that in Italy, it's just "Milan" and "Inter".
  2. calscot
    With respect, I personally don't see what a mission of increasing fan ownership of the club has to do with statements slagging off our detractors. They are two different things. If one group wants to do both, then good for them; but I can't see how that means it should be compulsory for everyone. I don't see a Gersnet statement either, nor a Vanguard Bears one. SoS make lots of statements but aren't raising fan ownership, similarly with UoF. The thing RST highlights is that we have enemies elsewhere to deal with, so if you agree with them, why focus an attack on your own just for getting on with a job they set out to do without moonlighting into public statements irrelevant to that goal? I get you're an RST fan, that doesn't mean you have to hate RF or have some kind of bitter rivalry. I don't personally support either organisation but I can see a place for them both, and a few others.
  3. calscot
    I think this shows why it would be folly to try to merge the two. For me, we probably need a few more alternative schemes so that people have a broad choice. I've continually said I'd prefer one that represents a forum where myself and other posters can give input and also vote on things quite easily. The way to do it would be for forum could set up an simple way for buying your own shares (or giving a page on clear guidance) and proxying them to the elected representative. If it finds a way of reducing the cost of buying the shares, that would be even better. That way it would also be easy to unproxy your shares and take them to another forum if you start to disagree with general philosophy of the first forum. And as a last resort you could sell up if you're desperate for cash, or gift them to family etc. I don't particularly like either scheme at the moment as although they are a form of fan ownership, I wouldn't really feel like I personally own anything - they seem more like a rental, and having your voice heard doesn't seem easy.
  4. calscot
    I won't disagree as I'm not really sure what wages we *should* be paying - it's something that probably needs some research or someone in the game in the know. Obviously the more we offer the more quality we can attract but at the same time it has to be affordable and in budget. One of the problems is that even forgetting all our troubles which will put the majority off at the moment, we're in an unattractive league and so will generally have to overcompensate with wages. Even if we're lowering our sights just to winning the SPL slightly more than every other season then we should at least be looking to match Celtic - or be skilled at finding someone better than theirs for a lower salary. Spotting an up and coming Scottish manager could possibly achieve that as you could treble their wages and also giving them the incentive of managing Scotland's most successful club (and if they are exceptional, a stepping stone to a more lucrative league). Don't think that works for foreigners - especially as you don't know how they will take to the Scottish game and the more usual two sided competition, along with the goldfish bowl that comes along with it.
  5. calscot
    You can structure the wage any way you like but the reality is that it has to be attractive to those you seek to employ - if your targets keep turning you down due to other clubs offering a larger basic then you will have to aim lower. I've always said that in football all wages should be more results based - not so much on individual games but end of season success. For instance I've thought for a long time that football would work better if there was a rule that all basic wages were affordable based on the the worst case scenario for income and therefore affordable even if the team performs incredibly badly. Bonuses should come from the extra income that comes from success - in a profit sharing kind of way. A lot less clubs would be deep in debt if there was such a rule. A lot of players for the also rans would end up being paid less but it would obviously be more commensurate to their real worth. It would also mean they would have to think about how successful a side is going to be before signing rather than just signing a big contract to then be an underachieving mercenary. The way things are going there is a huge football credit crunch waiting to happen that could do lasting damage to the game. The bubble has to burst sometime and unless they find some way to even up the income for the big clubs outside the big 5 countries, I can see the popularity of the European game start to shrink in the less well endowed countries which will be damaging to football as a whole.
  6. calscot
    I think what some people need to learn is that when you raise your profile in some position, broadcasting on twitter is not much different than something like a newspaper interview. And in fact it can spread a lot quicker to those indignant to what you say due to the nature of social media. No matter what you think privately, you have to be careful what you say publicly; even more so if you are incumbent in a publicly elected position. Twitter is not an appropriate medium for off the cuff communication with your mates, it's your public address and public relations medium. That's why at the extreme, so many people are falling fowl of the law. IMHO Tweets should be carefully worded and measured.
  7. calscot
    Paypal address sorted. Thanks to those organising it for their time and effort.
  8. calscot
    Was a PayPal option sorted out? There shouldn't be any fee for withdrawing lower amounts - I used it to collect for my work Christmas meal with no fees.
  9. calscot
    While the future of the club is at stake I'm hoping we don't fill the role permanently; I'd rather that happened after a takeover and an injection of cash together with a proper medium term plan that includes scouting and youth development. The last thing we need is another mediocre assignment on a long term contract that will need paying off. It's also difficult to sack a manager who is pretty average and unexceptional without actually having really poor results - which is what I think we can expect from the usual suspects of Calderwood, Nichol, Williamson et al. I'd rather wait for the takeover and then take time to find a reasonably exceptional coaching team - that obviously we can attract at our current level but also befits our aspirations and potential. While many baulk at the wages of McCoist and his back-room staff, it's the kind of level of wage we need to offer - presuming we can increase our revenues back to previous (but non CL) levels.
  10. calscot
    If we use a fitting analogy of a Bear I see Whyte as someone who hunts down a bear to kill it and sell on it's fur etc; Green as someone who buys a dying, pregnant bear, let's the mother bear die after the birth, then takes the baby bear and teaches it tricks before selling it to a circus which only cares about expoiting the bear for money; finally Ashley as someone who puts a tap into the bear's stomach to collect bile and sell it to the Chinese. Sarver seems more to be about taking the bear, bringing back to good health and then putting it in his safari park for people to pay to see and so make it pay its way.
  11. calscot
    Doesn't always need to take a long time to come in, turn a club around and win the Scottish title - just ask Jock Stein, Jock Wallace, Alex Ferguson, Graeme Souness, Wim Jansen, Martin O'Neil and Walter Smith. You can maybe count Eck too.
  12. calscot
    The Board of Rangers rejected the first proposal from Mr Sarver on 6 January on the basis that the Board felt it unlikely that the approval of shareholders holding sufficient shares would be forthcoming BECAUSE the proposal does not adequately value a controlling interest in the Company I agree the board are guilty of malfeasance and incompetence and their statements usually poor and inconsistent, but in this case it seems to me that the statements are compatible. You can even put them together, insert the word, "because" and you end up with a fairly logical statement...
  13. calscot
    See, there's already a huge can of worms in that simplistic description that pretty much doesn't answer ANY of the potential concerns I put forward. The first point just isn't even true - individual fans don't seem to have any tangible ownership, at best it's a one year rolling lease and only as a paid up member of one of two collectives run by random strangers. Second point just brings back the random strangers - again. Last says you don't get out proportionally what you put in. I doubt any of the three sit well with most people, it's not ownership in the usual way that people see ownership - especially when it comes to owning shares. To me that's the problem, and no-one seems to want to even acknowledge it. I don't think you'll convince many sceptics with that kind of sell - it's merely re-stating the three of the main things that I think may be putting many off, without even the slightest explanation. It might be pretty simple but it simply doesn't seem to be what many fans want to buy into.
  14. calscot
    The problem is that this is also reminiscent of what fan ownership appears to be - the guys running the club would still be random strangers with all the blazer chasing, machinations, politics and backstabbing that entails. The RST may be a fine organisation these days, I don't know, but to me and many others, it lost its credibility in a crucial part of its development and was then disappointing many times during the darkest days. I think the problem with both current models of fan ownership is that your average fan doesn't quite understand it or even understand how he would own any part of it. Both come across as donating your money for someone else to buy shares and own and run the club. Who do you trust with that? Fans probably agree with King, in that for investing, they want some kind of tangible control in relation to that investment. Neither model seems to offer them that. On a basic level, I doubt the current models will ever be popular as they don't come across as fulfilling the need that fans have, to simply OWN the shares they have paid for, and so have a say in how the club is run. Thinking about the previous part of my reply, I don't think most fans see a viable alternative - they obviously get that if you gather 100k fans together to buy just £20 worth of shares per year each, over a period of time then we could easily own half of the club after say, fifteen years. What I don't think they get is the logistics of how that can be done in a straightforward and transparent way. Just who do you trust to hold the cash or wield the power? What I suspect a lot of fans would like is some "sugar daddy" that they feel is a fan of the club whom they can trust to come in and buy the club and then facilitate a way to then sell them on to the fans over a period of time - I think that's what Hearts have in place with Budge, and to some extent what McCann did at Celtic. They need a trusted custodian who can act as a central point for the distribution of shares by underwriting the acquisition and selling a tranche to the fans every year - perhaps for a small and reasonable profit compared to say, bank interest. But there are other issues in the democratisation, where you have the same problems with society - who do you proxy your shares or how do you vote with them? Who would vote for their choice in the general election if they didn't represent a party that you knew about and what their ideals and goals were? Seems to me that there needs to be a similar party system which could allow the warring factions of the support to pretty much live with each other in a constructive way, despite the differing values. RST and RF could be two of those but there could be others that you proxy your shares to each year, and change whenever you want. I think at the moment, none of that is in place, and so I imagine most fans just feel a bit detached from it all while they watch and feel powerless from the sidelines. I think the fans want to do something, but how do you do that when the fight is, to your average bloke, in the complex, inaccessible and ultimately mind numbingly dull arena of finance? They need a leader in that field they can believe in, who has the financial clout, nous and balls to take the interlopers on. I don't think we'd have defeated the attempted English invasion/annexing without the likes of Wallace and The Bruce, and we desperately need someone soon before we lose all heart and eventually surrender.
  15. calscot
    I keep getting impressions of films when it comes to our situation. With Ashley now, I see him as one of the eponymous creatures in Alien that attaches itself to the Kane's face, rendering him unconscious. When the crew try to remove the creature it uses it's tail (or whatever) to cut the oxygen from its prey and so shows it will kill their crew-mate if threatened itself. The scariest part is that the creature eventually leaves Kane and he seems fine and well for a while - until we shockingly find out what legacy it has left behind gestating in his body... Be afraid, be very afraid...
  16. calscot
    The fictional writer, Paul Sheldon, needed medical care, food and water - and Misery could provide it... Ashley feels like a similar scenario to me.
  17. calscot
    I see your point and it's a contentious subject, although for everyone to have freedom to an extent, you have to have some kind of boundaries to protect everyone. We have such rules on this forum so are our human rights impinged by be forced to abide by them? For me this comes under some kind of deliberate incitement. Punishing by law could help prevent punishing by mob rule. Maybe you're right, but it does feel like he's overstepped some mark that is abhorrent to a decent society which creates a need for at least some kind of shaming or admonishment.
  18. calscot
    Don't think the guy should be sacked for being a cretin in his own time but do think he should be punished by the legal system. It would be different if it was a work tweet. People need to realise that doing this on Twitter is not sharing a sick joke with your mates, you are publishing your offensive views or quips to the world. It's like broadcasting from the rooftops with a bull horn. I think people are generally a bit too free and easy with their social media and don't realise the extent of their audience.
  19. calscot
    So, is that another one of your mysterious and inscrutable predictions or are you just pouring scorn? I never could tell the difference...
  20. calscot
    A bit like Nostradamus?
  21. calscot
    http://www.rangers.co.uk/fans/fans-board/item/7713
  22. calscot
    I think what is being said is that in say 20 years time, many of the over 55's will likely have passed away if current life expectancy doesn't change much. In their place will be the 35 to 55's now. If they stick with the same votes - unless it is an age thing where you change your mind as you get older, then that demographic could change. That could make a big difference if everyone else keeps the same vote and the next generation of 15 to 35's vote in a similar way to those now. It seems pretty logical, if having a fair few assumptions.
  23. calscot
    Does this also apply to a Rangers win?
  24. calscot
    As has been shown, we could absolutely use sterling but perhaps not in a currency union. Although, that one could have been a bluff to bully the voters. You can't see the cards if you don't call. EU membership - no chance we would be rejected, the problem would be the conditions - like adoption of the Euro and Schengen. There was far more chance of not being in the EC in say 10 years time, by the no vote winning. Middle England are more and more adopting the opinion that the UK should leave. NATO would be a complete formality. That's just a red herring. This is where you're arguing against yourself. A lot of the no votes was because some of this *couldn't* be promised. There is nothing to renege on. The devolved powers *were* promised and the impression was given that this was possible and even guaranteed. One thing is for sure is that the new Scottish parliament would have tried it's hardest for those issues, can the same be said of Westminster?
  25. calscot

    Share movement

    calscot replied to rbr's topic in Rangers Chat

    I still think the biggest discouragement to these schemes is that fans are not actually buying shares but donating money to a fan group to buy shares for that group. As someone pointed out, many people leave fan groups, for whatever reasons but it doesn't seem like they can take their shares with them - especially if they start to disagree with the fan group which has historically happened. I think it would be more encouraging if fans put a money into a scheme whereby they are allocated the appropriate number of shares in a database and get a pro-rata vote when electing representatives and other polls. Then after a set period of time, if they wish to leave they just need to pay for the administrative fee for transferring the owneship of the appropriate number of shares that they have accumulated. Or they can sell the shares back to the group at the current price, which is then paid for by the monthly income. When the scheme has enough for a certain amount of shares and the price is stable or low, it buys them and allocates them to the subscribers pro-rata (obviously with each person having a "remainder" amount that is used next time). The point being that you pay for your shares and have control of them as well as being more of an investment where you can get some cash back if you are in financial difficulty. If the other schemes work that way then I've got it wrong - but it's not the way it all comes across. It all just seems like a charity payment that you never see again, and other people have control - which sounds a tiny bit like the Rangers board...
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