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Alasdair McKillop in the Scottish Review


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Ally doing a splendid job as usual in making our detractors look daft.

 

http://www.scottishreview.net/TheCafe23a.html

 

In last week’s edition of the Scottish Review, Kenneth Roy and Gerry Hassan considered the recent controversial developments involving Rangers Football Club and the Herald. As far as can be gathered from reports on the matter, Rangers did little more than privately dispute a factual statement about one of its directors, with a spokesperson confirming no legal complaint or action had been raised at the time of the apology by the Herald.

 

We should be cautious about implying a pattern of behaviour or believing the grubby actions of the Church of Scotland in the 1920s will shine much light on the situation. I take heart from the impression Rangers remains a financial and cultural titan despite all the evidence of recent years but the specifics of the case might have been more comprehensively explored. According to Roy Greenslade, for example, the Graham Spiers column that sparked the controversy was not vetted by the paper’s lawyers prior to publication because of 'an editorial staff error’.

 

The NUJ criticised the Herald for 'pandering to the mob'. When exactly this was supposed to have happened in the timeline of events I can't be sure. Was it during the Herald’s private exchanges with Rangers? Or was it when its lawyers told the paper the claim by Spiers would not stand up in court? Was it when Spiers personally 'dynamited' his position at the paper by creating a website to challenge an apology issued by his employer? Angela Haggerty’s case might be worthy of more sympathy but equally there must have been other ways for her to express solidarity with Spiers. Did she have to take to social media to 'undermine’ an apology offered in lieu of possible legal action? Given her many previous comments about Rangers and Rangers fans, it seems unlikely Haggerty went to the barricades, as Kenneth had it, with a heavy heart. At the very least, she was partly undone by the impulsiveness encouraged by social media, about which the Sunday Herald engaged her to write in an expert capacity.

 

Gerry might have been right to argue that Scotland has a fondness for dominant narratives that stifle debate but it’s not at all clear how this observation bears any relationship to this specific case. He is entitled to assess 'the toxic legacy of Rangers’ as he see fit but others are entitled to question how he might be going about that business from such a starting point. The debate about sectarianism in Scotland is characterised by subjectivity, ill-feeling and folk mythology. This requires us to carefully handle the facts we do have at our disposal. Gerry carelessly stated Rangers did not sign Catholics until 1989 without giving any indication of when this practice came into being. The reader was thus invited to infer, intentionally or not, that it had been in place from the club’s inception when experts believe it originated in the febrile interwar period. In a debate as fast moving as that on sectarianism, we shouldn’t easily relinquish the factual footholds available to us.

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A fair majority of the usual suspects named in that article. What a surprise. Well done the author. It shows just how much planning is going on with these eejits. Gillivan had an article the other day where he referred to the hag and the nuj in relation to the same subject.

I hope no Rangers fan in the not too distant future when we're back at our rightful place ever forgets what those in the media said or indeed how the football authorities tried to murder us.

Edited by boabie
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It more often than not all about the two big "R"s. The media thinks it has a Right to inform the public about each and any- and everything. But it also has the Responsibility to do it impartially, truthfully and in full. If the latter R is being corrupted, the first one of these twins suffers accordingly.

Edited by der Berliner
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Yes, he did. We also had several more earlier in our history.

 

People like Muirhead, Haggerty and the tarred one have been told and know all about players like the Eire captain who played for us. Their agenda however doesn't allow them to pass such information on to their equally deluded friends. They'd rather just wrap themselves up in hatred for hatreds sake.

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So that's 31 years of signing Catholic after Catholic and we still get the shit.

 

Ironically, I think if you look at the last 30 years through the microscope of equality employment, I think we'd find that we'd under-represented non-Catholics compared to the population demographics.

 

I am also confident that Celtic would fail abysmally there and would be shown to be extrememely sectarian in their employment policiy this regard throughout their history.

 

The strange two strange myths they keep using to defend this, is that it's only sectarian when it's exclusive non-employment and the hidden implication that Catholics make up 50% of the population.

Edited by calscot
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