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Name: {Anonymous}
aka: Rangers Tax-Case, RTC
Started: 2011
Ended: […]
Tagline: “Bringing you the story that Scottish journalists seem unable to do.”
Blog Link: http://rangerstaxcase.wordpress.com/
Twitter: @rangerstaxcase
Biog
‘Rangers Tax-Case’ (RTC) is an anonymous hero of not just Celtic but for Scottish football, all football and the tax authorities. Even Rangers fans out there with any sense will in time also have to grudgingly acknowledge his part on what he accomplished.
In truth, on a personal level we know little of him! All we know is that he is a self confessed Celtic fan. Beyond that with the benefit of anonymity on the web, he has used his blog to analyse and rationally explain the self-imposed financial Armageddon that Rangers had got themselves into in the 2000’s. Simple as that. He laid out the facts and figures plainly for all to see. Hun sycophants had never seen control slip from their grasp as effortlessly as this had. Rangers’ chairmen had always been able to believe that the media would always acquiesce to their financial might, but this time they were overturned (and there was nothing they could do).
It’s hard to know where to say it all began. RTC may not have been the original supergrass or agent to expose the EBT scandal (against the handful trying to fight each other for this honour) but he gave the whole case credibility. Before the RTC blog, the whole issue was based on posts on the Celtic forums and articles, and unqualified journalists simply dismissed it all. With his financial background, RTC wrote qualified and convincing exposes on the tax issue that left the mainstream press scurrying around. RTC was simply bringing to the public the story that the mainstream journalists were unwilling to analyse and probe.
Unlike the others, RTC could therefore simply not be ignored or dismissed as others had been (they became labelled ‘Internet Bampots’). The main press started to acknowledge RTC openly for leading on this story, only for the Daily Record to very late on try to claim they were the ones to reveal the story by basically stealing much of his work (and laughably won local media awards for it).
RTC had broken not only Rangers by revealing the truth, but brought forward a national scandal. He had shown the great mature face of the online Celtic community, and the bitter retorts by certain media men was an open acknowledgement that they had now lost their monopoly on the media control.
RTC is thus a pivotal figure for the online Celtic community. The work by people like him has democratised freedom of information. His award of the respected Orwell Prize in 2012 for his blog on the expose was highly deserved.
Anyone who criticises his anonymity must open their eyes. He is obviously a whistle-blower and so it is vital to stay low, especially in light of the incidents where incendiary devices were sent to, amongst others, Celtic manager Neill Lennon. For his family’s own security it was best to not reveal his real name. He’d already received many serious threats against him online from Hun supporters, and that is a back handed compliment on the one hand but on the other is quite a genuine concern.
He broke the backs of the corrupt Huns and for that we will be forever grateful.
Links
Rangers Tax-Case on writing politics
Link: http://theorwellprize.co.uk/news/rangers-tax-case-on-writing-politics/
August 3, 2012
This is a guestpost from Rangers Tax-Case, winner of the Orwell Prize for Blogs 2012
Much has been written recently about the crisis facing political writing. Most of the discussion has centred on the always seemingly imminent death of the newspaper and the rapid rise of the blogosphere. It is a debate that pitches old-media versus new-media and it has largely missed the point. The technology used to deliver the message is not really relevant, and bloggers are as susceptible to the real issue as any old fashioned Lunchtime O’Booze: too much writing is designed to appeal to a specific constituency and too few writers have the courage to challenge the cherished beliefs of their readers.
Now more than ever people are choosing to receive a pre-filtered version of the news that merely confirms their own prejudices. There is a flaw in human reasoning that makes most of us form opinions first and then seek data that confirms these views. Exploiting the prejudices of readers is nothing new, and print-media barons from Randolph Hearst to Rupert Murdoch, have made vast fortunes this way. The problem is that technology makes it easy to filter out all sources with which we disagree. Allowing writers to target very narrow subject areas, the new media may even exacerbate the issue.
My blog, Rangers Tax-Case, gave me a platform to reveal the facts about a decade-long financial doping scandal at Rangers FC – and the Scottish media’s complicity in keeping the story quiet. It provides a good example of the challenge facing those whose writing covers contentious subjects. The blog maintained a tight focus on just three issues: how Rangers’ assorted tax schemes operated, the corruption of the mainstream Scottish media (with only a couple of notable exceptions), and latterly, campaigning for a fair sporting outcome that amends the history books for the years of rule breaking. Within the confines of these topics, and being armed with information not available to the public elsewhere, there should not have been much scope for disagreement with my core readership. Yet, when I occasionally expressed an opinion that was considered unconventional, the reaction from a small minority of readers could be ferocious. Invariably, such disputes led to accusations that the blog had succumbed to a nefarious hacking attack from The Forces of Darkness. A vociferous section of readers really just wanted a deepening of existing views rather than anything that might provide food for thought. On a specialist not-for-profit blog that did not take advertising this was relatively easy to manage. However, it would have been much more complicated issue had this been a money-making venture.
I agonised over whether to accept advertising for a long time. In the end, I felt that it would present too much of a temptation to run with rumour and sensationalism over factual analysis. My email inbox filled daily with tips from well-meaning readers alerting me to a host of potential leads. Few were ever verifiable and therefore were not fit for publication (in fact, virtually all of these leads would be proven incorrect in the fullness of time). Yet, every day that I was not consumed with a real revelation, the temptation to run with a plausible sounding rumour was almost over-powering. If I had a financial incentive to keep up readership statistics, I doubt that the resolve to separate fact from speculation would have held. There were also a few salacious aspects to this case that were not relevant to the story. Would I have published these if there was a monetary reward? I would hate to think so, but I have experienced enough through operating this blog to know that the new media faces all of the same pitfalls and temptations as mainstream outlets. My amateur adventures in journalism were simply not representative of the real world where writers need to get paid.
The central problem of thoughtful writing is the same now as it has been for decades: to challenge the long-held convictions of readers or to pursue easy popularity (or profit) by telling them what they want to hear. George Orwell had the courage of his intellect to challenge his own beliefs and to upset the cultural orthodoxy of his day. As I pull down the curtain on my own involvement in the Rangers tax case, my proudest achievement was to obtain national recognition for this project by winning a writing award named in his honour.
An Appreciation of the Rangers Tax Case Blog
Link: http://scotslawthoughts.wordpress.com/2012/07/31/an-appreciation-of-the-rangers-tax-case-blog/
July 2012
On 27th March 2011, events of major importance happened all around the world.
The Syrian government deployed the army to the country’s main port to help bring the national unrest to an end – that hasn’t worked.
The Libyan government under Colonel Gaddafi was claiming that it was in charge of the country despite the efforts of the Libyan rebels to capture Sirte – that definitely didn’t work.
Scotland lost 2-0 to Brazil – ah well.
The UK census took place – you could have counted on that.
David Cameron was complaining about demonstrations in London the previous day – plus ca change.
Rangers FC was on the way to winning another SPL title – plus ca change parte deux.
David Murray was negotiating to sell his team to the Motherwell born billionaire, Craig Whyte – we all know how that turned out, thanks to the next entry.
And a new blog appeared on the internet…
Yes, it was then that the Rangers Tax Case Blog first saw the light of day.
—————————————————————–
The anonymous author described the blog as “born out of the wilful ignorance of the Scottish media on this story.”
He referred to the media “reprinting unbelievable PR fiction related to Rangers as news” and of ignoring the tax story.
RTC said that he would be:
Explaining what Rangers have been accused of doing
Exploding many of the myths and falsehoods printed in the Scottish media
Revealing why HMRC feel so confident about this case
Discussing the implications of HMRC winning the case on Rangers FC
He made it clear that he was a Celtic fan, but would endeavour to be dispassionate and factual.
As he said, “Hopefully, this blog can help shed some light on the most important issue facing Scottish football currently and can help be a clearing-house to dispel the many myths which will likely grow exponentially as the First Tier Tribunal resumes.”
It was not on the agenda that the blog would achieve millions of hits.
It was not planned that there would be literally thousands of comments on each post.
It was not thought possible that the blog would find itself quoted, sometime with attribution and sometimes not, in the very same mainstream media.
It was not anticipated that the Orwell Prize for Blogging would be awarded to RTC within a year.
My blog shows how Scotland’s media were complicit in Rangers’ fall
The Guardian
The author of the blog that has pulled down the facade at Rangers was motivated by the failings of the Scottish press
Rangerstaxcase.com
guardian.co.uk, Friday 17 February 2012 20.00 GMT
A fan outside Rangers
The story of Rangers’ insolvency is already becoming a fireside tale told mostly by those who were not there, says rangerstaxcase.com. Photograph: Andrew Milligan/PA
“It does not require a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless minority keen to set brush fires in people’s minds” – Samuel Adams, 1775
It is easy to feel powerless in this world. “Why bother? What can I do?” Even as a student, I did not join protest marches. While most of my generation screamed: “Can’t pay! won’t pay!” about the hated poll tax, I could and I did. Raging against the machine seemed like Sisyphean futility and talk of changing the world was for poets and artists. To me, practical people just got on with it and made the best of events. Cynicism was a uniform I wore with pride. Against such a background, I make an unlikely campaigner and the last person anyone would pick to give voice to a silenced and disenfranchised community.
Yet my blog, rangerstaxcase.com, seems to have done exactly that. What started as an impulse one Sunday evening in March of last year has grown into something of a Scottish cultural phenomenon. Love it or loathe it, few would dispute that this blog has played a significant role revealing the facts and shaping the debate on a subject that has taken on such importance that the UK prime minister and Scottish first minister have belatedly jumped on the bandwagon.
This monster has grown to the point where it is now fielding daily traffic of over 100,000 views, while new arguments and ideas are fuelled by reader comments that are now coming in at a rate of about 1,500 per day. These are odd statistics for discussions characterised by accounting conventions and insolvency law. It is as if all of the cool kids in the playground suddenly want to read the swots’ algebra homework.
In a world of free information, where most blogs die alone and ignored shortly after birth, the very popularity of rangerstaxcase.com carries a message about modern Scotland. It is a story of the unmet need for the straight story, uncorrupted by the sinister Triangle of Trade that renders most of what passes as news in Scotland’s media outlets as worthless. It is the tale of why things went so wrong at Rangers and why the club’s many fans seemed paralysed by disbelief until it was too late.
If you have not spent much time in Caledonia what follows will seem a little surreal. It seems that way because it is. Scotland is a land where nothing matters like football matters – in particular within the west-central region. For over 120 years, Glasgow’s two biggest football teams have engaged in one of the world’s most bitter sporting feuds. With mindless tribalism masquerading as a religious divide, stabbings, live bombs sent through the post, and even murders have been woven into the tapestry of the recent history of Scottish football. Yet I still get challenged over my penchant for anonymity? Football in Scotland is not like football elsewhere – at least not in Europe. (Latin Americans might recognise the poison brought to the surface by the poultice of football, but few other places would understand).
Yet for all of its ugliness, I love it. A large part of my “two score and change” years on this planet has been devoted to supporting my team, Celtic. Actually watching the team would be a very small part of the time expended. The obsession with your team colours many other aspects of life for those unfortunates who find themselves pulled into the vortex that goes along with supporting either of the Glasgow giants.
Football clubs from places like Manchester and Liverpool can lay claim to much more success on the field, but these cities do not get close to Glasgow in terms of intensity of interest. It is this passion that serves as the growth medium for the bacillus that infects the news business in Scotland, which in turn serves as the carrier of the disease that threatens to kill Rangers.
Selling news of any kind in Glasgow has long been a simple business: sales are driven by stories about Rangers and Celtic. If you need a circulation boost to improve advertising rates, you need more and better stories about these football teams. Good news moves newsprint. Bad news sells, too, as fans wallow in the misery of their hated enemy. However, Scotland is not evenly divided between these clubs. Celtic and Rangers may attract similar attendances to home games, but the demographic reality is that there are a great many more people in Scotland who would claim to be Rangers supporters than Celtic. Religious census figures provide a decent proxy for the numbers that sustain both clubs: in 2001, less than 18% of the population of Scotland identified as being Roman Catholic. Celtic’s support base is far from exclusively Catholic, but it would be a little daft to ignore the reality of family religious origin in determining which football team a young boy or girl is most likely to follow in Scotland. Rangers’ demographic surplus has determined the general editorial tone of the nation’s news business for decades.
During the early 1990s when Celtic had their own brush with financial mortality, newspapers sent journalists across the globe to chase down scandal related to Celtic’s imminent demise. Such was the open glee in print, it is a wonder that the English language had to import the word Schadenfreude from German. The lowland Scots dialect would surely have had several words of its own to offer, but I doubt that the acronym GIRUY would have translated as readily across the globe. Celtic’s travails were good for the media business. There was no shortage of Rangers supporters willing to smirk at their impoverished foes while dreaming of European Cup triumphs to come. The arrival of Celtic’s saviour from Canada, the unfashionable Fergus McCann, ended the era of amateurism in the boardroom and also planted the seeds for the great divergence in the fortunes of the clubs. Few could have imagined how much could change in just two decades.
The story of Rangers’ insolvency is already becoming a fireside tale told mostly by those who were not there. Trampled down in the rush of journalists claiming that “of course, I knew all along, but I just could not say anything” are all of the derisive newspaper articles and radio call-in panellists dismissing the risks Rangers were facing. I am in no doubt: Scotland’s media, sports and business desks alike, are complicit in the disaster than has befallen Rangers. They killed their golden goose.
The Triangle of Trade to which I have referred is essentially an arrangement where Rangers FC and their owner provide each journalist who is “inside the tent” with a sufficient supply of transfer “exclusives” and player trivia to ensure that the hack does not have to work hard. Any Scottish journalist wishing to have a long career learns quickly not to bite the hands that feed. The rule that “demographics dictate editorial” applied regardless of original footballing sympathies.
The last vertex of this triangle is the reader – the average football fan. Fed a diet rich in sycophantic rubbish, he lost the ability to review critically what he was reading. Super-casino developments worth £700m complete with hover-pitches were still being touted to Rangers fans even after the first news of the tax case broke. Along with “Ronaldo To Sign For Rangers” nonsense, it is little wonder that the majority of the club’s fans were in a state of stupefaction in recent years. They were misled by those who ran their club. They were deceived by a media pack that had to know that the stories it peddled were false.
In the end, Rangers fans sat back for years and barely raised a word of complaint as their club was abused and misused. Many of these same fans who sat on their hands have had plenty to say about the motivations of my blog. Egged on by spokesmen for those doing Rangers the most harm, it is widely believed that HMRC are feeding me information to do damage to their club. Firstly, anyone reading the blog again would see that my sources of information probably lie outside of the government. Secondly, the blog has been the only dependable source of information about the sorry state of affairs within Ibrox. By revealing what has been happening at Ibrox, I have provided Rangers fans with an opportunity to do something about it. If I was really intent on harming their club, I would have said nothing at all. That this opportunity has been squandered is something for Rangers fans to contemplate. It is in helping expose this Bermuda-triangle-for-truth that I take most pride.
Rangerstaxcase.com has become a platform for some of the sharpest minds and most accomplished professionals to share information, debate, and form opinions based upon a rational interpretation of the facts rather than PR-firm fabrications. In all of the years when the mainstream media had a monopoly on opinion forming and agenda setting, the more sentient football fan had no outlet for his or her opinions. Blogs and other modern media, like Twitter, have democratised information distribution. Rangerstaxcase.com has gone far beyond its half-baked “I know a secret” origins to become a forum for citizen journalism. The power of the crowd?sourced investigation initiated by anyone who is able to ignite the interest of others is a force that has the potential to move mountains in our society. All that is required is an issue about which others are passionate and feel unheard.
“Why bother? What can I do?” If it is something you care about, you can do anything you want.
Rangers Tax Case
Link: http://celticunderground.net/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=948:rangers-tax-case&catid=49:season-2012-2013&Itemid=85
Written by Michael Dolan
Tuesday, 31 July 2012 12:00
“What is Rangers’ tax case all about?” The opening title of perhaps the most talked about football blog site ever was crystal clear in posing a question which was going to be answered in the most detailed way for nearly 18 months.
That opening line in March 2011 set the scene for a forensic examination of the biggest scandal ever to hit Scottish football. However, the Rangers Tax Case blog became much more than just a hub for reading and discussing a toxic Employee Benefit Trust scheme implemented by David Murray at Rangers. It became a vehicle by which the mainstream media were left behind through willful ignorance and, in some cases, a high level of deceit to their readership and listeners.
Time after time, armed with information supplied by the Rangers Tax Case blog, callers to phone ins were systematically ridiculed or cut off for having the temerity to talk about the implications of the tax case. The laughable Hugh Keevins dismissed the idea of the a tax case as being the figments of the “internet bampots” imagination. “We cannot talk about that matter because it is an ongoing case.” wailed the uninformed Keevins on Superscoreboard. Of course he was seriously misleading callers as the tax case remains in exactly the same state as it did months ago when he was cutting callers off and ridiculing their claims. He wasn’t the only journalist guilty of this and at one level the gulf between what we could read online via Rangers Tax Case and the mainstream media was widening on a daily basis.
As the RTC site grew in stature it became clear that a core of contributors were going to the very heart of the corruption endemic at Rangers and across the Scottish football authorities. The BBC documentaries by Mark Daly only served to confirm the information provided online by Rangers Tax Case. At this point the penny finally began to drop with the likes of the pompous Jim Traynor that Ibrox was awash from a huge tsunami of financial fall out.
It is perhaps a testimony to Rangers Tax Case that when Duff & Phelps sat down to their first Administrators pres conference that their opening statement referenced both ‘the small tax case’ and ‘the big tax case’. What Craig Whyte had claimed was “99% crap” had just become the defining parlance of the the men put in charge of Rangers in Administration.
For those of us who have written for years about Scottish football finance and more specifically focused on the reckless financial wrecking antics of David Murray it was heartening to see the Rangers Tax Case retain a clear focus on the key topic and to pursue those who attempted to undermine his work.
What the Rangers Tax Case blog has done is show the arrogant sections of the Scottish football media that there are individuals and groups of football supporters who are highly articulate and highly informed about the game and all its various nuances. The new media allows them to put these views out their with credibility. The reality is that even the group of broadsheet journalists who are reasonable in plying their trade simply cannot tell me virtually anything about football finances which I wasn’t aware of already. So it was downright foolish for sections of the press to take a stance of dismissing the Rangers Tax Case blog as being an agenda driven bampot.
So now the Rangers Tax Case blog has announced it is going to be wrapped up. Keeping anonymity was essential to the whole thing being a success, protecting sources of information and those wishing to assist in uncovering such an epic scandal.
We still await the outcome of the tax tribunal’s deliberations on the case but it is a fitting tribute to the Rangers Tax Case blog that any number of supporters across Scottish football will keep the pressure on the authorities to act with integrity and make the correct decisions.
The mainstream media have taken a battering and perhaps as their readers and listeners dwindle they may have the humility and the small amount of common sense left in them to properly report as journalists in the future when issues like the Rangers Tax Case come along.
At Celtic Underground many of us have covered the corruption of Rangers and the now discredited charlatan David Murray over a number of years. So we pas on our sincere thanks and good wishes to Rangers Tax Case. The blog that changed the world of Scottish football. Forever.
hector-the-reaper”What is Rangers’ tax case all about?” The opening title of perhaps the most talked about football blog site ever was crystal clear in posing a question which was going to be answered in the most detailed way for nearly 18 months.
That opening line in March 2011 set the scene for a forensic examination of the biggest scandal ever to hit Scottish football. However, the Rangers Tax Case blog became much more than just a hub for reading and discussing a toxic Employee Benefit Trust scheme implemented by David Murray at Rangers. It became a vehicle by which the mainstream media were left behind through willful ignorance and, in some cases, a high level of deceit to their readership and listeners.
Time after time, armed with information supplied by the Rangers Tax Case blog, callers to phone ins were systematically ridiculed or cut off for having the temerity to talk about the implications of the tax case. The laughable Hugh Keevins dismissed the idea of the a tax case as being the figments of the “internet bampots” imagination. “We cannot talk about that matter because it is an ongoing case.” wailed the uninformed Keevins on Superscoreboard. Of course he was seriously misleading callers as the tax case remains in exactly the same state as it did months ago when he was cutting callers off and ridiculing their claims. He wasn’t the only journalist guilty of this and at one level the gulf between what we could read online via Rangers Tax Case and the mainstream media was widening on a daily basis.
As the RTC site grew in stature it became clear that a core of contributors were going to the very heart of the corruption endemic at Rangers and across the Scottish football authorities. The BBC documentaries by Mark Daly only served to confirm the information provided online by Rangers Tax Case. At this point the penny finally began to drop with the likes of the pompous Jim Traynor that Ibrox was awash from a huge tsunami of financial fall out.
It is perhaps a testimony to Rangers Tax Case that when Duff & Phelps sat down to their first Administrators pres conference that their opening statement referenced both ‘the small tax case’ and ‘the big tax case’. What Craig Whyte had claimed was “99% crap” had just become the defining parlance of the the men put in charge of Rangers in Administration.
For those of us who have written for years about Scottish football finance and more specifically focused on the reckless financial wrecking antics of David Murray it was heartening to see the Rangers Tax Case retain a clear focus on the key topic and to pursue those who attempted to undermine his work.
What the Rangers Tax Case blog has done is show the arrogant sections of the Scottish football media that there are individuals and groups of football supporters who are highly articulate and highly informed about the game and all its various nuances. The new media allows them to put these views out their with credibility. The reality is that even the group of broadsheet journalists who are reasonable in plying their trade simply cannot tell me virtually anything about football finances which I wasn’t aware of already. So it was downright foolish for sections of the press to take a stance of dismissing the Rangers Tax Case blog as being an agenda driven bampot.
So now the Rangers Tax Case blog has announced it is going to be wrapped up. Keeping anonymity was essential to the whole thing being a success, protecting sources of information and those wishing to assist in uncovering such an epic scandal.
We still await the outcome of the tax tribunal’s deliberations on the case but it is a fitting tribute to the Rangers Tax Case blog that any number of supporters across Scottish football will keep the pressure on the authorities to act with integrity and make the correct decisions.
The mainstream media have taken a battering and perhaps as their readers and listeners dwindle they may have the humility and the small amount of common sense left in them to properly report as journalists in the future when issues like the Rangers Tax Case come along.
At Celtic Underground many of us have covered the corruption of Rangers and the now discredited charlatan David Murray over a number of years. So we pass on our sincere thanks and good wishes to Rangers Tax Case. The blog that changed the world of Scottish football. Forever.
Last Updated on Tuesday, 31 July 2012 12:23