Democratic Process - Hanging by a thread or a rope ?

[Hildy 0]

So what do you do to all those individuals & institutions who put in the £22m last year ? Without it we wouldn't be here today.

What you're suggesting sounds like something Stalin would have done in communist Russia.

Whether you you like it or not Rangers football club is owned by a plc owned by shareholders. Those shareholders decide who they want to run the plc which owns the club.Welcome to democratic capitalism my friend. Many clubs throughout the world exist this way.

 

I'm perfectly relaxed about the capitalist system. It might be the best way to run a society, but it is no way to organise a football club.

 

The leading German clubs and Barcelona and Real Madrid are fan-owned. We should be examining their structures and learning them from them instead of tugging our forelocks to faceless people in the big house.

 

Rangers will not survive with a procession of random owners taking charge. We've already endured one catastrophe when the club fell into the wrong hands, and it could happen again.

 

You are gambling with the ownership of Rangers. I want it properly secured, and that means fan ownership.

 

You want random dictators.

 

I want a democracy.

 

 

 

 

 

As for your Stalin comment

[Hildy 0]

Utopia, dream on bud.

 

Keep living the nightmare then.

 

There is a better way, and it needn't be a dream.

[simplythebest 0]

I'm perfectly relaxed about the capitalist system. It might be the best way to run a society, but it is no way to organise a football club.

 

The leading German clubs and Barcelona and Real Madrid are fan-owned. We should be examining their structures and learning them from them instead of tugging our forelocks to faceless people in the big house.

 

Rangers will not survive with a procession of random owners taking charge. We've already endured one catastrophe when the club fell into the wrong hands, and it could happen again.

 

You are gambling with the ownership of Rangers. I want it properly secured, and that means fan ownership.

 

You want random dictators.

 

I want a democracy.

 

 

 

 

 

As for your Stalin comment

 

Our directors getting voted off would hardly have greatly changed that structure or moved towards fan ownership even if the reqs are 'Rangers men'.

[RANGERRAB 3,259]

I'm perfectly relaxed about the capitalist system. It might be the best way to run a society, but it is no way to organise a football club.

 

The leading German clubs and Barcelona and Real Madrid are fan-owned. We should be examining their structures and learning them from them instead of tugging our forelocks to faceless people in the big house.

 

Rangers will not survive with a procession of random owners taking charge. We've already endured one catastrophe when the club fell into the wrong hands, and it could happen again.

 

You are gambling with the ownership of Rangers. I want it properly secured, and that means fan ownership.

 

You want random dictators.

 

I want a democracy.

 

 

 

 

 

As for your Stalin comment

 

If we were fan-owned how much money would that raise annually do you think ? Do you think someone like Graham Wallace would want to be CEO ?

[BrahimHemdani 1]

I think there is some confusion here between "democracy" as in the workings of a plc and "democracy" as in fan ownership.

 

Rangers International Football Club is a plc which is indeed run on democratic lines. In order to participate in this democracy you have to be part of it. Being part of it means you have to buy shares in it. You don't get to take part in this democracy by buying a season ticket or club merchandise. If you own shares in it you get to take part in the democracy by electing your representatives at the AGM or EGM specially called for that purpose. Whether you like the result or not (and this is not a comment one way or the other) we have just seen that democracy in action. This democracy is tightly controlled by company law. Any breach of that law is a criminal offence. It is, of course, true that not everyone pays the same price for their share of this democracy but that is how a stock market works and that is where this particular game is played.

 

RST to their credit (and no doubt some will find it surprising that I give RST credit for anything, but I did say elsewhere that I had long ago given up any bitterness towards them per se) raised £250,000 to buy new shares on behalf of their members and at the same time increased their own membership. However, if my maths is correct, then that £250,000 only purchased less than 0.5% of the issued shares of the plc. It is said that fans purchased new shares to the total of £5m which would be around 10% of the club and a figure of 12-13% has been widely mentioned as being in fan ownership.

 

It is worth noting therefore that individual fans own 25x the number of shares owned through RST. Again if my understanding is correct, RST is still a "one member one vote" democratic body and its share block will be voted in accordance with that one member one vote philosophy. Again, I would commend RST for polling their fans about the AGM resolutions. However what this does mean is that Kris Boyd, who apparently purchased shares to the value of £5,000 through the scheme, gets the same one vote on how these shares are voted, as Joe Bloggs who bought one share for 70p (or whatever the minimum purchase was). I will leave others to debate whether or not that is democratic; but I would suggest that it was one reason why the RST scheme was not more successful. Many people might think that if you buy 10,000 shares and the next person buys 100 shares, you should have 100 times the say as him?

 

Indeed that was one of the biggest stumbling blocks we faced with the 2010 scheme because it was said that there were many wealthy fans who had the ability to put up say £50,000 plus (and indeed we were in communication with one such who said he had several hundred thousand to invest but had all sorts of conditions attached thereto) and why we considered a two-tier scheme.

 

So that is company democracy but it is quite different from what I will term club democracy along the lines of FC Barcelona or the German or Argentinian Clubs. All German football clubs, except for some historic works teams that are allowed to maintain their company affiliation, such as Volkswagen's VfL Wolfsburg and Bayer's Bayer Leverkusen, are required to have at least 51% member ownership. All Argentinian football clubs are entirely fan owned. No other form of club ownership is allowed. We didn’t see any hoardings around Glasgow extolling the competing manifestos or visions of David Sommers and Malcolm Murray as potential Chairmen/ Presidents of the Club for one simple reason, those who might see such posters, for the most part, are not their constituency. Most people know that FCB is a member controlled club with upwards of 175,000 “socios” who have the right to be elected to and elect the Board of Directors, to elect the President and – ultimately – terminate the Board and the President’s tenure. The members also vote on how the income passed to the FC Barcelona Foundation is used. Members are expected to contribute to ensuring the Club’s financial position remains sustainable, which includes membership fees and season ticket costs and indeed the capital and assets are the property of the socios.

 

For more details and analysis please see http://www.uk.coop/sites/storage/public/downloads/insight3_bara_0.pdf written by Dave Boyle the former SD Chief Executive.

 

Unfortunately for Rangers fans today, those who were around in 1899 did not have similar foresight and chose a privately owned company as the Club’s structure (as did most if not all other such football clubs). Contrast with “cricket and rugby clubs, who chose co-operative forms of incorporation to ensure that the members – the supporters – retained control of the enterprise, and made the key decisions about the club’s strategy.” As is seen more than ever today, the objectives of shareholders do not necessarily reflect what fans might regard as the common good but rather the pursuit of business profit. Football is a business is a well worn phrase but true nonetheless. The challenge for Rangers fans who want a democratic club rather than a democratic company is to come up with a scheme which will raise enough money to buy the business and turn it into a members club.

 

That is a whole other ball game and I and others have written at length about such schemes. In the article that I co-authored with Arnold Black in August I suggested that “In order to get a scheme off to the best possible start we are of the opinion that all season ticket holders (next season) should be automatically enrolled as club members”. On a seasonal note, that might be akin to the turkeys voting for Christmas; but they (the turkeys) might consider it if it meant that they would get a good feed and get out of the spotlight in the barn after a few months.

 

Boyle mentions a figure of £600 per fan and that is indeed the starting point we had in 2010. Back then we thought that it might be possible to raise £1,500 over 5 years from 20,000 fans to cover the £30m (underwritten by McColl) thought to be needed to buy the club at that point in time. Of course back then there was a willing seller; but who is to say that there might not be willing sellers at some time in the next 5 years? What the price might be, would be anybody’s guess but obviously depends on what the sellers paid for their shares. My feeling is that it could be as little as £25m but as much as £75m or more depending on our fortunes in the intervening period. But if every season ticket holder was willing to pay £20/month for 5 years you would be half way there and we have several times that number of fans worldwide.

 

Some food for thought perhaps as we prepare to don our funny hats and tuck into our Christmas fare.

Edited December 21, 2013 by BrahimHemdani
Correction

[ranger_syntax 3,775]

Paul Murray and the nominees spoke of democracy, I think, to put a positive spin on the nominations and make the incumbents look like anti-democratic villains. After it was widely implied that the incumbent board would survive the term 'democracy' began to be used by those who favoured the incumbents. The clear purpose is to discourage dissent and further protests. The obvious problem is that the will of the majority can't persuade anybody of what the correct course of action is. It only gives the winner legitimacy.

 

Any action that supporters take to persuade the board that Stockbridge should be removed will not usurp shareholder democracy. Protests and the threat of boycott inform shareholder democracy.

 

Anybody who opposes the board's actions should criticise, protest or even boycott if they think it is appropriate.

 

Personally, I'll be renewing my season ticket while buying shares in Rangers and perhaps buying more shares in BuyRangers.

[the gunslinger 3,366]

Did green appoint Crichton, Somers and Wallace ? Think you're making things up now aren't you ?

 

yeah or his man easdale did. it's more that plue pitch appoints green and easdale and they appointed the rest but that 26% has appointed everyone. the one possible exception is chrighton and laxley.

[the gunslinger 3,366]

Craig Whyte made the odd appointment I approved of so i'm not really sure what that tells me. Every case is different, and Wallace seems to have been on the radar of all 'sides'.

 

green appointed walter and m murray. but the pilfering still happened.

[calscot 0]

Can't believe people are thinking capitalism is wonderful because it saved us when it was capitalism that almost killed us. I'm not totally anti-capitslism but it's silly to only see one side of the coin.

 

But I repeat, the whole thread is off on the wrong irrelevant tangent. Customers do not need to respect elections to the board especially when they don't like them. They are entitled to pick when and where they spend their money. Ironically the board do have to respect the customer or lose their jobs. The customer is king don't you know?

[the gunslinger 3,366]

Calscot is right we are not an electorate we are consumers.