Time for spine and conscience to collapse King's house of cards

I am not going to start by sympathising with outgoing Scottish Football Association director, Gary Hughes, even though I don't believe that he did anything wrong by calling Rangers fans "the great unwashed" in 2006 - long before he was employed by the SFA.

What he said in that interview, so conveniently uncovered by The Rangers, (the original Rangers having been put into liquidation six years after the quote), was a silly joke. It was no more or less offensive than being called a "soap-dodging Weegie" by a fan one of the Edinburgh clubs but that's beside the point.

Hughes has gone, even though there was nothing illegal or motivated by religious bigotry or any other kind of hate speech.

But I won't weep for him.

Nor do I feel the need to rally to the side of Murdoch McLennan after the most contrived and absurd attacks on him having connections to companies involving Dermot Desmond and Denis O'Brien.

Both men will survive this and are presumably comfortably off. They have also been part of an institution noted for its incompetence on its better days and corruption on its worst.

You might argue that men of their business pedigree are needed to reform the SFA but I disagree. It is beyond redemption and only disbandment and a new organisation would have any hope of seeing the Scottish game being properly governed.

But what we should all be concerned about is the increasingly malign influence over the Scottish game of the convicted criminal, Dave King.

King has a grasp on truth, integrity and basic morality befitting a bona fide psychopath.

It is now so well known that a South African judge described him in court as a "glib and shameless liar" as to seem a tired cliché when repeated.

It is old news that he was a director of Rangers as the club ran a scheme of industrial-scale cheating and tax evasion, despite which he was considered a "fit and proper person" to be a director of a new club for which the SFA broke its own rules as well as the fundamental principles of good governance by allowing it to take a place in the Scottish Football League, for which it did not meet the basic criteria.

He sabotaged his own new club in order to pressure Mike Ashley into dumping it in the ditch, despite Ashley (no angel, by any means) being far better qualified to create a south Glasgow powerhouse.

He spun another intricate web of lies in order to take control of The Rangers acting in concert with two other parties to try to duck below company law.

And, of course, the takeover panel laughed him out of court when he claimed that nobody would sell their shares to him at the price dictated but, nevertheless, he would not make any offer as he lacked the funds to do so but, if so ordered, would buy the shares with the money that he claimed not to have.

As someone reluctant to make light of mental health issues, I would normally hesitate to make crude remarks about the psychological state of someone based purely on evidence prevented in the media but King's behaviour appears to be consistent with a serious personality disorder (which is not typically considered to be a mental health issue in the same way as the afflictions that many people suffer from through no fault of their own).

He self-evidently feels no embarrassment about telling the most absurd lies, which, at times it is difficult to believe that anyone - even the most rabid of the great unwashed - could possibly believe.

And he is not simply self-interested but more than willing to destroy anything that gets in his way, including the club that he is using for his own gain, or the game that sustains it.

Increasingly, he comes across as a man who would dynamite his own house rather than have the bank repossess it, regardless of the risks to the neighbours and any random passersby.

And yet he gets support in the media of the kind that goes beyond footballing bias or cultural affinity.

Over the last week, we have seen this from both ends of the Scottish journalistic spectrum.

At the bottom-feeder level is that international class buffoon, Keith Jackson.

Like King, Jackson apparently experiences neither embarrassment nor shame when shown to be glaringly wrong and, like King, he regularly trades in obvious falsehoods without discomfort.

In his latest piece on the supposed conflict of interest over McLennan, Jackson declares himself a dab hand at writing about company law.

This is from a man who once, despite having the benefit of the Internet, failed to correctly spell the word, "chateaubriand", on three consecutive occasions, as he attempted to boast to Twitter about how he was living the high life.

Graham Spiers is notionally a superior type of writer to Jackson, though he has rarely broken a story.

Spiers is of above average intelligence for a Scottish football writer, which is a compliment of a similar level to saying that Kris Boyd is of above average fitness for a man in his mid-thirties.

But Spiers is not as clever as he would like to think and he shares the same failing as Jackson in that he clearly believes that the public are too stupid to know when he is spinning them a line, even when he knows it very well, himself.

Spiers decided to tire us all by giving credence to King's most risible assertions that there is an appearance of something untoward in the McLennan situation, swatting aside every question about people who were clearly conflicted in their work with the SFA.

In doing so, these two have created a false sense in the media that legitimate questions are being asked, which has given some semblance of media credence to King's latest attempt to slip the noose of the Notice of Complaint raised in relation to Rangers securing a licence to play in European competitions through submitting false information.

The Hughes case is just one that points to ample evidence that the current modus operandi of The Rangers is to set the dogs on anyone with the slightest potential influence over events pertaining to that aberration of a club.

This follows on from a tradition once boasted of by their former PR grime-lord, Jack Irvine, whose emails - exposed by Charlotte Fakes (almost certainly Dave King) boasted of being able to coerce journalists because he knew "all their dirty little secrets".

I would not expect Spiers to have the kind of dark secrets that many Scottish football writers accrue on every second trip abroad, though an uncharacteristic moment of weakness is always possible.

In the case of Jackson, I would expect that his bar is set so low as to be difficult to embarrass by any heterosexual indiscretion.

King may well have dug some dirt on these two as he has clearly had people rooting into the backgrounds of others or he may be offering them different ways to get back into the fold (though despite his Ibrox bans, it's not clear that Jackson was ever really out of it).

But, whether through carrot or stick, King is clearly able to persuade high-profile members of the Scottish football media to write whatever he wants.

In doing so, he is further undermining the already crumbling foundations of a game that is thoroughly rotten.

Far from humouring his destructive bent, the media should be honouring their pledge to report the truth without fear or favour, and exposing King for the cynical charlatan that he is.

We await some decent members of the Scottish media developing both the spine and conscience to do what they surely know they should and bring down the  King house of cards.

Celtic: On spin, hostile PR, press bans and media freedom

A free, fearless and impartial media is one of the pillars on which any society

Due diligence: Two Scottish sports
hacks discuss standards and ethics

claiming the accolade of “democracy” rests.

In various corners of the world, journalists have been pressurised, intimidated, sacked, arrested, imprisoned, tortured and even killed for their determination to get to and report the truth.

It is through journalism that presidents have been held to account, crimes revealed, spying exposed and more. And so we should be careful to do nothing to support the suppression of truth or the journalistic freedoms on which a just and transparent society depends.

And yet, that sacred implied contract of society defending a free press is based on a number of clauses. The journalism cannot always be fearless, it is rarely free in the truest sense but it must always strive towards such impartiality as is possible, allowing for – but guarding against – unconscious biases.

It must never, ever stray from seeking to uphold those ideals and when it does so – stray from the seeking, rather than attaining these ideals – it loses its claim on our protection. It becomes something weak, spreading error, misinformation and even disinformation. It becomes something anathema to all journalists everywhere; a thin cloak of journalistic privilege over a body of PR or even propaganda.

When that happens, the rules change fundamentally. The so-called journalists and the publications they represent distort their core mission for reasons that are not always clear – fear, self-interest, blackmail, bribery, intimidation – and they become something not only unworthy of privilege, but demanding to be challenged.

And this is pertinent now, perhaps more than ever. It is indicative of the absurdity surrounding one part of Scottish society that such issues are being bandied about over the subject of football.

Once, Scotland might have been said to have excelled at the journalistic game, far more so than the one of beauty in which we invest so much of our time, money and emotional energy.

In recent decades, however, Scottish sports journalism has rarely sought to set the bar as high as a Fosberry Flop. We can be in danger of presuming that we have too much and too perfect knowledge of motivations – that is largely irrelevant.

What matters is the evidence of the output and, while it is problematic to talk of “empirical evidence” in something that doesn’t lend itself to statistically-rigorous analysis, we can take another approach.

If we were to evaluate the output of the Scottish media in terms of positive or negative media coverage, what conclusions would we draw?

We needn’t and shouldn’t seek PR spin from the media. That invariably obscures truth, which followers of a once-famous club know can, in the most extreme circumstances, prove fatal.

Is the coverage negative? Overwhelmingly, yes, which is remarkable, given that this seems to be the case in promising, as well as challenging, times. This raises issues, to which we will return.

However, there is a third question: in a scenario in which a competitor saw itself as being in a polarised market, despite there being other legitimate (and longer-established) players, would that competitor be likely to think that their PR budget had been well-spent, both in promoting their brand and denigrating the brand of their rivals?

The answer to that would also seem to be an unequivocal yes.

On the subject of Celtic receiving negative coverage in times of success, we could conclude that the club’s public relations strategy or implementation is flawed – it certainly has been in the past.

On the other hand, we might equally ask if what masquerades as objective media coverage in this country is, in effect, PR for our would-be rivals. And, if we conclude that the answer to that is “yes”, that doesn’t simply validate action consistent with challenging a hostile PR machine – it positively demands it.

Imagine a scenario far removed from football. Coca-Cola and Pepsi see their competition as a zero-sum game – what’s good for Coke is bad for Pepsi and vice-versa. There are other brands out there but the media focuses on the big two, no matter what. (As if you didn’t know, the world’s third-best-selling brand is RC Cola – in red & blue packaging but unlikely to be sold at at least one Scottish football ground).

Let’s say Pepsi have gone through really bad times (they haven’t – it’s just pretend) and the company is really worried about where it goes from here. Their results are bad, their innovations are damp squibs, Pepsi drinkers constantly disgrace themselves in public.

On the other hand, Coke is flying high: buoyant on the market, great new products and a feelgood factor surrounding it because people just like it.

If the trade press constantly banged the drum for Pepsi, against all evidence, and ran bad news stories against Coke every time things got really serious, would you expect the Coca-Cola Company to just shrug awkwardly and say: “There’s nothing we can do”?

To continue the analogy, it’s like Coke going strong where a company that thinks it’s Pepsi – but is in fact, not RC Cola, not even Strike Cola, but Solripe, whose branding has been bought by The Sticky Sugar King NewCola Company – is getting all the good press, while chunks are being taken out of Coke, to the detriment of the brand.

Without trying to speak for Coke, Pepsi or Celtic, the point is that, regardless of what Celtic do on or off the park, the media coverage seems to diminish the good, exaggerate the bad and run smears on the club when our over-inflated “rivals” are in the darkest of places.

And at that point, it is more than legitimate to question the press privileges given to certain publications and simply say: “The ba’s on the slates!”

Many Celtic fans baulk at the idea of “media bans”, with a quite admirable appreciation of the principles espoused at the beginning of this article. We should laud and respect them.

However, while the principles of media freedom are eternal, the prevailing conditions and practicalities of the modern age are radically changed.

Firstly, let’s not forget that this is football – the entertainment business as surely as the popular music industry. (Look, straighten that face – you get awful live concerts, too!)

We are not talking about central government, institutions substantially funded by the public purse or matters of pressing social concern.

We’re talking about football. It means a lot to us, is important in its own way, but is not intrinsically relevant to democracy or larger quality-of-life issues.

If that seems to be trivialising the issue, it is the same logic used by sports desks and sports hacks, allowing them to concoct and print unadulterated garbage, with the defence of: “Lighten up, it’s only a game!”

But, by the same token, those who absolve themselves of professional standards also lose the right to claim the status of loosely-defined “colleagues” who actually do journalistic work. To fail to recognise that is to stand behind the scribes who reported the World War II bomber found on the moon or exposed Freddie Starr’s taste for hamsters.

Secondly, what is offered by football clubs – much like the music industry – is privileged access, based on the “legitimacy” of the media outlet.

When people in important positions at Celtic agree to the odd interview with the independent websites, most of us appreciate it. When the club offers regular exceptional privileges to fan sites, it often provokes suspicion.

Why? Because privileged access is not a right – the clue is in the name. It is a recognition of a certain journalistic standing as well as standards, also known as “legitimacy”. And, while it is not something to be traded as currency, neither should it be given out unthinkingly, because – you know – “people might talk”.

And this leads us to a third point – the protocols surrounding a “free press” – originally meaning printed media – were established when there were few means through which the general public could glean information as to the events and decisions which intimately affected their lives.

They were never designed to defend the right of idiots to represent the interests of their favourite football clubs, to the detriment of competitors.

There should be no suggestion of Celtic trying to pressurise journalists into writing whatsoever they choose, as long as it remains within the realms of truth, legality and basic journalistic standards.

And decades of experience have told us that they will write anything about Celtic without fear, which may not be the case when reporting on others who demand favour.

But the club does not have to extend media privileges to those who eschew the principles of journalism, any more than it has to give every blogger a press pass to eat sandwiches and free tickets to the game.

In the 24-7, multimedia, social-media age, no one can stop people reporting on the matches, if they buy a ticket or watch it on TV (which some hacks do) or reporting the outcome of press conferences, which are often streamed, anyway.

You’ll find a dozen Celtic fan sites doing the same.

They, too, are informing the public, equally deserving or undeserving of privilege.

So there is no need to talk of “bans” or attacking press freedoms, if privileges are withdrawn from those who do not feel bound by professional standards and values, instead leveraging those principles in order to damage our club.

Celtic must protect Celtic, with or without those “legitimate” journalists who seem hell-bent on damaging us. Cut them off, without fear or favour.

If they’re hacked off, sobeit. What’s the worst they can do – relentlessly and unfairly criticise us?

That would be awful.

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Time for Celtic to abandon Scotland?

No, it's not that old “let's go to the Premiership” line that we know is not going to happen in the foreseeable future. It's an even older line – but one that seems to have reached its peak at the most improbable time – the relationship between Celtic as a club and body of fans with the Scottish national football team and association.

This angst goes back at least as far as Jimmy McGrory, the highest goalscorer in the history of British football who was awarded just seven international caps – scoring seven goals.

Many will hark back to the era of Jimmy Johnstone and deciding to turn their back on the national team after hearing Scotland fans boo a man who was acknowledged as one of the finest players in the world. Others will point to the absurd – the surprise omission of Kenny Dalglish from the Scotland squad coincidentally preserving the consecutive caps record of former Rangers player George Young.

Sit in any company of Celtic fans and each will have his favourite story of a Celtic player overlooked for selection (Harry Hood being a decent example) or abused by the Tartan Army at Hampden (too many to name – let's plump for Brian McClair).

Yet somehow, today's Scottish football hierarchy has contrived to scale new heights in alienating the Celtic support, discarding all honour in their efforts to assuage the ire of Rangers fans – within and without the Scottish media.

In the interests of accuracy, it should be noted that honour – or even basic fairness – have never been attributes highly valued by the SFA. In the 1990s – when Rangers were riding high and Scotland still occasionally qualified for tournaments, the period was remarkable for the national team's ability to reach the latter stages despite sudden call-offs from certain Rangers personnel who were almost invariably fit for their club's domestic and European encounters.

Far from being criticised for their repeated acts of disloyalty, the practice was almost invariably either dismissed as bad luck or seen as some sort of virtue: to lead the charge for Rangers but let the country fend for itself. There were no worse offenders than the future Scotland and Rangers assistant manager, Ally McCoist and the terrorist-supporting criminal associate Andy Goram, who were nevertheless reinstated without question when the glamour matches came around.

However, even in those days – when Celtic fans had more pressing worries – there was rarely the level of unqualified anger that has surrounded the relationship between the Scottish football establishment bodies and their favourite team.

Ever since the media clamour to sack the incumbent Berti Vogts and replace him with Walter Smith (with then media pundit Gordon Duffield Smith the vanguard Bear), the SFA has flitted between accommodation and capitulation to the interests of Rangers FC, regardless of the conduct of their officials or rabble element amongst their players.

Walter Smith, who had been out of work as a manager since his sacking by Everton 18-months previously, had clearly briefed pundits such as Duffield who were able to say that they “knew” he was willing to take the job.

For this salvation from football's scrapheap, he rewarded his employers by abandoning the country without notice at a vital moment in a Euro 2008 qualifying campaign. David Taylor claimed to have been very unhappy about the whole show yet compensation was never pursued, Smith was praised in the sections of the media that would like to claim to be impartial and the interests of Rangers were seen to be still paramount in 21st-century Scotland.

Back at Rangers, and far from having any sympathy with George Burley, (who had replaced another former Rangers manager at the national team), Smith's players continued the policy of his previous period of tenure – some selective withdrawals added to loutishness and malice to the point of sabotage. Some, like Kenny Miller and David Weir, continued to support their nation's cause on the football field.

But the scurrilous behaviour of Kris Boyd, Lee McCulloch, Barry Ferguson and Allan McGregor would have appalled any Scottish fan who cared about his country. It appeared neither to worry Walter & Ally nor Gordon & George (Peat), who made occasional rumblings about behaviour being unacceptable before making Burley the scapegoat for all the episodes. Is it a coincidence that all the issues of conflict or ill-discipline in Burley's Scotland came from players of the club whose players withdrew from squads most regularly?

Given that Duffield and Peat admitted to meeting with Rangers officials to change the date of the Scottish Cup final to give Rangers an advantage in their SPL campaign and announced this to the Daily Record without consulting their members or the other finalists, it might have been thought that the Ibrox hierarchy would feel a personal debt if not one of national allegiance.

But the story of Scottish football remains that the Rangers manager is untouchable – by the authorities or the reporters like Darryl Broadfoot, well-known Murray and Rangers lapdog, who finds himself appointed as a media professional by the SFA.

Duffield and Smith are adopting old-time policies in a new media age, which makes their reinstatement of the Ibrox four all the more apparently an act in the interests of Rangers over Scotland. Their control over the referees seems only to extend to supporting decisions that have clearly disadvantaged Celtic and in the process silently abandoning the much-vaunted anti-diving campaign that, if implemented, would have robbed Rangers of the services of Kyle Lafferty and Nacho Novo along with Miller and Boyd.

In the face of media complaints – from hacks close to the Rangers manager – Celtic players are disciplined retrospectively with the SFA refusing to define the rules of procedure when Celtic wish to appeal. When Lafferty carries out one of the worst fouls seen in Scotland in recent times on Andreas Hinkel, there is silence. When Boyd elbows a player, the definition of offence is altered by the referee to obstruction, allowing him to avoid suspension, though a direct free-kick was awarded.

McGregor is involved in an “incident”, which he declines to report until it has been reported in the media, and Fraser Wishart – another former Rangers player involved in “fixture-gate” – decries an “assault” on a footballer “just for the jersey he wears”. He should be called as a witness as McGregor allegedly told police he did not know what happened or even where, frustrating their efforts to examine CCTV footage.

When the naked bias only involves tabloid headlines, we can choose to ignore it. But the insidious relationships at the heart of Scottish football are now blatantly undermining fair competition. For too long Celtic players have carried the immigrant's burden – having to try harder to show loyalty in order to earn an acceptance that is often grudged and rarely translated into “equality of esteem” as our ASBO neighbours might call it.

Amongst Celtic fans, it is always a contentious issue with many thousands born in Scotland every bit as passionate about their country as fans of any other club. However, the SFA-RFC-SPFA axis (with dishonourable mention to the SPL, led by another former Rangers player) has shown itself to disdain all normal rules of fair competition. The only pressure Celtic can exert is by boycotting the games – at least as fans. In the meantime, some of those hard-nosed executives and directors at Celtic should make their own voices heard in the corridors of power.

The inescapable conclusion seems to be that you can now support Celtic or Scotland – not both.
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Shh! Hear the irony?

I have long argued on this blog and elsewhere that Celtic fans must make the mainstream media irrelevant by ignoring it.

For too many years, unscrupulous scoffing hacks made their own kind of sport taunting and goading Celtic fans, denigrating the club and its representatives and often succeeding in sparking unrest.

That should come as no surprise – the Scottish media has long been an old-boys network where the lack of a common tie was replaced by questions on the name of prospective employees' schools. That may be changing but extreme nepotism has dictated that white male protestant journalism in Scotland will take many more years to absorb enlightenment.

The breaking of male hegemony has yet to be fully realised while the Catholics, Jews and Muslims stand further back in the queue (the atheists are notionally disbarred due to their inability to become Freemasons). You can expect to see the demise of news titles before any find themselves with a Black or Asian editor.

And, believe it or not, this is relevant today as the White underclass described by Graham Spiers has provided blood stock for the Scottish media for years. There is an old joke that you know you are a redneck if you have more than one brother called Darryl, which is quite apposite when you think of it.

And so, to the point. Before a minute's silence is besmirched, today has already been chronicled as a day in which Celtic fans defiled the honoured dead. Before we even have a chance to paraphrase John Robertson and declare our wars fought on the football field, Celtic supporters are being lined up for their routine haranguing, something which is always pursued with even greater enthusiasm when fans of the R-word disgrace themselves.

Not merely anticipated, the reaction has already begun with attempts to equate this longed-for behaviour with Rangers rioting in Europe's unsuspecting cities.

For my part, I would repudiate anyone who disrupts a memorial as stolidly as I would any authority that tried to dictate that there is only one view of war and prescribe precisely how it must be commemorated. The deeper issues are profound and subtle and therefore lost on the archetypal Scottish newspaper sports hick.

And yet, the one common courtesy observed in thousands of wars over millennia has been the right to reclaim, bury and remember the dead. In conflicts sparked by issues of survival, greed or sheer hatred, only the most savage have failed to observe the protocol of having enemies only amongst the living. (Viz: Michael Stone, Rangers fan helped by British security forces.)

But while the explosion of colour that has become the independent Celtic multimedia environment is bringing us ever closer to that day when the Scottish papers speak only to themselves, fans should remember that protests are better articulated through considered letters than oafish grunts.

But the great irony – one which is unlikely to be observed in the Scottish press – is that this week, it was Celtic who literally faced the Nazi Hun. In Germany, Celtic played a team with a strong German Neo-Nazi element, the SV Hamburger Hitler Fan Club.

Who swelled their ranks? The right-wing “loyalist” supporters of Rangers, who have branded themselves as the “quintessentially British club”, supporters of “our boys” in the armed forces, brandishing their Union Jacks and banners of “no surrender”. While they listen in hope for a single Celtic jeer, their friends will be lamenting the fall of the Third Reich.

Whose side are they on?





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The day the Celtic manager became media-proof

There were many observations – a lot of them ignorant – on Gordon Strachan’s walking out on the Celtic Park media conference on Friday. (Notably Saturday’s Football Focus misrepresented the issue before being corrected)

For those who don’t know by now, having agreed with the media that there would be no discussions on his future at Celtic for the Sunderland manager’s post, BBC Scotland’s Chris McLaughlin decided to ask: “Do you see your long-term future at Celtic?”

What was on McLaughlin’s mind, only he can answer. Was he having a brain-dead moment? Was he trying to be antagonistic? Broadcast or print journalists are rarely expected to respond to such speculation.

And, ironically, the question came after Gordon had insisted on maintaining a gentleman’s agreement, despite others having leaked information on a managers’ meeting to the press.

But Strachan’s upset was clear: “When I give you respect, I don’t get it back.”

He didn’t mention his counterpart at Ibrox (and probably wasn’t thinking about him). But it must irk the Celtic manager that a special level of disdain is reserved for the incumbent in that role in a Scottish media that fawns over anyone who happens to occupy the Ibrox hotseat.

It has always been this way in living memory and Celtic managers have responded in a variety of ways. Alex Ferguson remarked how Jock Stein gathered information on the hacks who followed Celtic around, often making reference to their secret vices just within their earshot.

Billy McNeill famously punched Gerry McNee, who had been so thin-skinned on hearing some implied criticism of his work that he foolishly suggest Billy discuss it with him outside.

Kenny Dalglish moved media conferences to the Celtic social club and had inveterate liar and embittered Celtic critic Hugh Keevins forcibly ejected.

But, when the press held power, many Celtic fans were sadly misled – goaded into abusing the key figures at Celtic by reporters and editors with an all-too-obvious agenda.

Josef Venglos was subjected to humiliating abuse, as was John Barnes, while a torrent of criticism was directed at McNeill, Dalglish, Jock Brown (yes, he was human too), Fergus McCann and latterly Strachan. Even Martin O’Neill was attacked for putting his arm round Neil Lennon in a show of support.

However, I sense that something has changed. With the advent of the internet bringing numerous Celtic sites and forums to fans’ computers, not to mention better-quality sports coverage from non-Scottish titles, supporters have choices. And increasingly, that choice is to make up our own minds, discarding the vacuous pronouncements of the fourth estate with the contempt they generally so fully merit.

Walter Smith or David Murray need not fear criticism from the press because unwritten codes prohibit such comment.

But with Strachan’s defiance, there was a sense of confidence. Perhaps there was a realisation that the Scottish media have damaged their credibility irreparably with Celtic fans to the extent that all their jibes, spin, and venom are utterly irrelevant.

Celtic fans will still criticise the club and certain people when they feel the need to. The debate between us will continue to be vociferous.

But as far as those reporters, writers, subs and editors who think of themselves as bona fide journalists are concerned, they might as well be talking to themselves.

Friday 5th December 2008 – the day the Celtic manager became media-proof.





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