bmck

i honestly think the press are just a bit smarter than ally, its all part of his apprenticeship. i let the mrs read tannochside_bears account earlier tonight (i should never have got the intenet in the house, i will never finish this essay) and she said "if they are going to start spraying stuff at people its them who have to live with the consequences - people who get sprayed with tear gas for no good reason retaliate". few people are going to sit and take that, regardless of the consequences, even if they are far from hard. but i think the main point of the piece that calling for allys resignation is just silly is right. if he had said "if i were in the crowd i would have done something similar" he would have pleased the support for two seconds and dragged this chirade of a witch hunt out even longer. uefa will do what they do, and we will do what we do, and on it goes. this has never happened at ibrox where we evil hordes congregate in the biggest numbers - whats the difference? the polis here arent stupid enough to use pre-civilisation crowd control methods. nonetheless, the tearing up of seats and that cant go unpunished, regardless of the rights or wrongs or justifications because thats how life is. the moral posturings of the morally bankrupt media aside - its like at school, you punch someone in the face, you will get into trouble regardless of the provocation because the rules are the rules, but you dont feel bad about it or lose any sleep. ally, because of his job, is one the teachers side now, and sometimes it involves stuff like this. he should have said no comment probably, but thats it.

i dont think its that ambiguous. while clearly there is no law that says you have got to get worse before you get better, if the way forward involves less money for players and wages in the short term, its hard to imagine how it will get better in small increments. i think that is the biggest hurdle proponents of pure fan ownership have to face. on the other side of things, its hard to know what is better is four or five steps after the fact. pure fan ownership may still, if it werent for the debt, allow us to invest more in the team than the rest of the spl, and encourage us to adopt a rangers way of producing and playing players. in a real sense what is happening to us now me be a prototype of what will ultimately happen across the board, and what seems like a step back may be a step forward. i dunno. all speculation at this stage. you are right though - not every situation demands getting worse before getting better, but i cant see how fan ownership will be able to cough up the money to clear the debt as well as finance improvement on the park. hell, im not sure if big money guys can do that. one thing is clear - you only get this chance for innovation once every few generations and its fallen to ours. lets hope we dont make an arses of it.

I think the crux is that the only to keep improving is to have millionaire input, which ultimately precludes fan ownership. Fan ownership would mean lack of money for wages/players which would make us regress until the finances were sorted.

^ agree 100%

Not being one to wince at a wee riot, I say give them out at reduced price to those proven drunk too soon?

It's essentially how the parliamentary system works. We all have one vote, but there are benefits in pursuing your interests via a 'party' or block.

Not that it's making your blood running cold isn't proof enough, but why exactly? I dunno if it's a good idea or not - seemed to me like a good idea, but I've not thought it through. What makes it bad?

Just to throw an idea out that seems to run contrary to the current OMOV thinking. I think there perhaps should be a one-fixed-sum-one-vote system. This directly corrolates investment to responsibility. This needn't be thought of, however, as a shortcut for high net worth individuals to positions of prominence if you have an important caveat. Namely, that groups can block vote, and elect a representative who represents their concerns and intuitions. For example, you only need to look at the difference between maineflyer's and, say, calscot's perspectives. These tensions are always going to exist within the support. With the block voting system high net worth supporters aren't put off from investing the substantial capital we need by an attendent lack of return; similarly, small net worth voters wont feel impotent provided they find themselves having concerns which align themselves with sufficient numbers of other people. In this sort of system high net worth investors' motivations to maintain their own power will naturally align themselves with the majority opinions so as to stay the possibility of large block voting against them. High net worth investors will have the carrot of large support and the stick of severe undermining to always act in the club and majority's best interest. There are loads of flaws with this idea, but provided a decent constitution is drawn, with proper checks and balances and weighing of votes it could work. You could essentially model it on Classical period Athens; with board positions have fixed one year terms.

thought you would be way more raging dude. tis an excellent result nonetheless.

cheers for that johnny. im for fan ownership, i think - roughly speaking. but i dont trust the rst to lead it.

this is the crux of it for me. either our sensibilities are too fragile for offensive singing or they aren't. no middle ground, or some strands of offense being worse than others.

im not sure where this stuff about british nationalism comes from. its certainly not in scotland, despite the hordes of evil rangers nazis that abound in the mind of journos, that we have elected bnp members as meps. most rangers fans i know are centre left, when you get down to it - or, like most britons, uninterested at all in politics.

i agree with craig. i'm not sure anyone's even saying we've got a 17 year old midfielder who can replace him. football isn't analogous to other jobs. if you play crap, you get stuck on the bench till you get your chance again and prove yourself.

isn't davis still only like 23 or something though? he might get more consistent as he gets a bit older.

someone should probably also tell her that trailing and dragging arent the same thing. just to keep her from looking stupid.

how long to go?

everything she writes is undermined because you know when she saw the trouble her little heart swelled at the thought of getting to put on her denouncing-evil hat. she works for the mirror; if she wants to fight the great evil of the age....

it worked then

not only an excellent and measured account, but a pretty evocative read! thanks.

me too! :spl:

heh. i think gersnet should take over RFC media interaction for a fraction of the price (say, 9/10ths ).

even looking at newsnow as a sample set. first we can divide them into those affected by bain's statement and those unaffected, going only by the headline - not even the content of the thing. Fans blame police for Rangers crowd trouble - unaffected Fans criticised after unrest at Gers clash - unaffected Rangers shamed by small group of louts: The David McCarthy verdict - unaffected Rangers chief demands UEFA probe as fans involved in half-time riot with Romanian stewards - affected Rangers look into fan reports - affected Rangers fans sprayed with CS gas - affected Gers complaint over crowd trouble BBC Sport - affected Rangers to complain over crowd trouble - affected Rangers boss: police response to crowd trouble "totally unacceptable" - affected Rangers to complain to UEFA after crowd trouble - affected Soccer-Rangers to complain to UEFA after crowd trouble - affected Unruly fans add to Rangers’ woes in Europe - unaffected Gers chief exec condemns "unacceptable" violence - affected 'gers Chief Condemns Fan Trouble Sporting Life - affected the majority are affected. of those a significant portion focus on the complaint rather than the violence, which is a win. i imagine of those affected which still place the trouble in the most prominent position in the title, offer some balance within the article itself because of the rest of bain's statement. no matter how you look at it, the statement has tempered the harshness of the news, and so it's worked out well in relative terms.

this shouldn't be applauded because it's atypically ballsy. it should be applauded because it's clever. getting to the effectual truth of things, as machiavelli would say, you can control the news story to some extent by taking the lead. journalists don't care about truth, as we all know, but about stories. when you don't give them a story, they fill in the blanks with whatever nonsense comes into their head. but once you give them an angle, once the dust inevitably settles on their "thugs in europe" caper they'll look to rangers for a statement. then they'll see bain's statement about the complaint and turnstyles and tear gas and they'll be a brand new story. some journalists will say it's deflection but they don't have the freedom to ignore it, which gives the impetus back to us. they'll have something else to fill their papers with. the news about rangers can be managed so much better if it's approached in a more clever manner. this is a good first step. we get some photo of an elderly person in the crowd looking oppressed and/or vulnerable and the negative aspect of the story is functionally dead.

naw, we will win tonight!

at least if i stick on a few grand i will be getting the blame as part of the new consortium!