Picture for a moment a fantasy
world which was, a long time ago, promised to the Scottish press as a
complete reality. Outside Ibrox Park stands a gleaming skyscraper with moon
beams shining high into the Govan sky. The individual letters on a neon sign
flash C-A-S-I-N-O on repeat. Inside the
ornate halls lie a series of crap tables and there the looming figure of Craig
Whyte slipping his hand into his suit jacket bears into view.
He puts down onto the table a
pound note. A crisp, Scottish pound note. The pressmen from the Daily Record and the Herald stop dead in
their tracks as their heads are turned. Chick Young grunts a noise of disbelief
as he drops his fifteenth dachary of the afternoon. “This guy’s a serious player”,
he thinks to himself. The croupier, Jim White, can hardly believe his luck. “Come
to Daddy,” he drools into his bow tie. Behind the security cameras, high up on
the sixty sixth floor the congregated Orangemen and Scottish Freemasons who run
the club turn to each other and the penny drops: “We’ve got our man,
gentleman.”
Nobody needs to be reminded of the
complete rush to the head today has brought to us in the ongoing saga that dogs
Rangers Football Club. Around the television studios the Rangers apologists are
stalking the sets to vent their disbelief of what a large number of supporters
– non-deluded supporters – were seeing as a truth a long while ago. Craig Whyte
managed to buy “a big, world football club” for £1.
The Ticketus deal is the smoking
gun in what has been a long stand-off recently. Even on the Rangers FC forums –
home to what can politely be called a set of intransigents – they’re accepting
the fate of things to come.
But what is to come? We know now,
following on from Whyte’s statement today, there will be no chairman after the
Administrators have done their adjudication. And this is not to mention of
course the whopping tax bill that will surely – given the absolute facts
associated with the club presently – pot their blackball. David Murray –
himself to blame for a fair proportion of the club’s worries – sold this team
knowingly to a man not worth any business credentials.
What is for certain is a
suspicion that with the politicians sniffing around a club in the latter stages
of rigor mortis, there could be an intervention from the state. This of course
would mean that an institution that has got away with £75 million in tax
avoidance will now ask you – yes YOU – to foot the bill. It was blatantly clear
where the feather in Alex Salmond’s cap blew last week. It was pretty hefty and
expensive rhetoric, a similar rhetoric that was seen at Ibrox where, according
to the media, the world and its dog turned out to buoy up their team last
Saturday. The team lost to Kilmarnock. So much for the brave leading the brave.
After tonight the men with the
power we don’t see will be working in overdrive to save Rangers. If the club is
bailed out by the public purse – let’s face it, what businessman would want to
be lumbered with such a travesty of an enterprise – then there’d be uproar in
Scotland. Today libraries are facing their death because of petty public cuts.
If they can shut libraries and save a football team which promotes bigotry
almost publicly then is there not a better time to announce a breaking point in
society?
Perhaps a cocaine addiction on
masse every Saturday would be a more sensible option. For Rangers supporters
and for us.
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