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andy steel

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  1. andy steel
    Offline for 24 hrs as tribute to the late, great Lou Reed. Heartbroken.
  2. andy steel
    Christ, the unseen paradise is even more hidden than I thought! It really is in England! The idea that nationally the Beeb is left wing is as stupid as it is boring. Given that every one of its senior reporters, editors and most producers are public school educated, perhaps Grant Shapps would be better off investigating why Oxbridge is continuing to churn out so many Trots. If left wing bias is a prerequisite for govt. intervention these places ought to have been shut down the minute the Cambridge spy rings were revealed. The BBC, lefty...rarely a week goes by that I don't sit and watch 'Socialist Pioneer's Den', in which Union officials present ingenuous plans to give workers' more rights, and in our house 'Wake Up to the End of Capitalism' is the radio show of choice first thing in the morning. But there's truth in the accusation that it's dumbing down, ironically enough due to market competition, capitalism at its sharpest. And petty pish like Spence and his inability to simply tell a story without throwing in wee digs a 10 year would have grown out of are helping it get ever dumber. BBC Nationally is an institution, with faults, but certainly something I can say makes Britain better. Even BBC Scotland does well, outside of its appalling sports & news depts. But if they carry on letting inaccuracy and personal feeling get before actual reporting of fact, they leave the door wide open for those who hate it, like Tory chairman Grant Shapps. Watching (this is true) the sheepdog trials on Countryfile tonight (Ireland won, we came last - I didn't see our shepherd but presumably his dug must have shat on Julia Bradbury's wellies, or something), I was struck when weatherman Darren Betts happened across my screen, resplendent in his Sunday evening casual attire of jeans and a cotton shirt, to issue a dire warning of some wind & rain in the south. On the day some transient Tory mouthpiece yet again brings up the threat to do away with the BBC lest it become even more of a beacon for disaffected communists, I entertained my dear wife to a long diatribe about how the only way the BBC can remain special, and retain its special means of funding, is by both being and appearing to be special. That means presenters speaking to a certain standard, not necessarily of accent but at least of comprehension. It means people wearing a shirt and tie when doing the weather, even on a Sunday night. It means sticking quite rigidly to accuracy in a way most outlets wouldn't because only by doing so do the magic initials 'BBC' open doors across the world and make its unique funding worthwhile. I suppose the distortions and outright bollocks dished up by Pacific Quay (Mark Daly, anyone?) stands as a microcosm for the Corporation. They've no shortage of haters, but they're making it hard even for those who adore it to be overly confident. As long as Miss Victoria still does Only Connect in a series of tight fitting frocks I shall carry on watching, mind you. As they used to say in Russia, Вся власть BBC!
  3. andy steel
    Not good enough! Even if there is an element of truth to your second point, by sticking to this mantra and refusing to amend behaviour we harm not celtc, but Rangers. You know I'm not making this up. It's what happens, and will happen, whether its fair or not. We need our fans to step up and be 'Simply the Best'.
  4. andy steel
    Believe it or not, it's worse than you think. It's Neil Doncaster who has been appointed. Stand by for the imminent collapse of the Champions League.
  5. andy steel
    I don't see that we have a choice. If Blin et al are in place to ensure probity, and others do the day to day running, fair enough.
  6. andy steel
    Hopefully we can sneak past this under the radar. 5Live mentioned that the name on the flag in the photo was the name of an RSC somewhere down south, they did also qualify the Nazi stuff with the Red Hand explanation. Even so, if you absolutely must go around giving Red Hand salutes, would it no be an idea to maybe put a red glove on? Someone's mum could knit a dozen pairs and send them round.
  7. andy steel
    An interesting point. I admit I hadn't given it much thought until TRS appeared, seeking to understand quite why we were so detested and why so many - well, all - the other clubs and fans kicked us so hard when we were down. Seemed as clear as day to me, jealousy of our success and dislike of the religious/political baggage. You can't blame it on people who oppose such views at Parkhead, it was everybody. Clear enough that most simply couldn't stick going to the football and getting regaled with the repertoire. No reason to stop it, in itself - bollocks to the lot of them, in my opinion. You certainly won't find me crawling to other teams' fans asking them to explain what's wrong with Rangers. But when you see the impact this hostility has on the club - catastrophic, coming on top of Whyte's misrule - you are negligent if you don't sit and think about it. Some will conclude this: which, while true, does nothing to address the damage that is done to the club by indulging in Forbidden Activities. Pretending something will go away because you don't like it didn't work when we were kids faced with a trip to the dentists. Others may feel the whole thing is a To which I would say, since sponsorship came about in the mid-80's why have we been sponsored by such localised companies? Look at the audience reach both us and them have; look at the TV & media coverage; we should have Jeep or Toyota or Pepsi or someone of that stature pushing their brand on our omnipresent shirts. We don't. We have Scottish lagers, subsidiaries of same, fly by night cable TV companies and bloody double glazing. I can't give you a list of theirs but I don't ever recall feeling aggrieved that they had a Blue Chip sponsor so I imagine they're the same. That alone tells you a hell of a lot, and not that our commercial department are asleep on the job.
  8. andy steel
    Young lad at right back as well, saw him yesterday but forget the name. Also Wilshere, Ramsay.
  9. andy steel
    I doubt if any of us find it offensive, you're missing the point. Some suggest complaining as a quid pro quo for Timothy's constant whining about us; some say use the issue to flush out the inconsistencies in groups like FARE or the media; and a lot, like you, don't care either way. What such stuff does do, though, is make it far harder for Timothy's commercial department to strike deals with pan-European or multi-national companies, to bring in real money, since they don't wish to be associated with such stuff. This applies to us as well, of course. 'Being offended' is shorthand for being a pussy nowadays when in fact, it's just being aware that we are shooting ourselves in the foot over and over again. The dismay I felt at being woken at 6-45 on a Sunday morning by my clock radio to hear the words 'Glasgow Rangers supporters club', 'Nazi salute' & 'shameful' on Radio 5Live can be imagined.
  10. andy steel
    What an image. Love it! Sadly accurate, too. This is how I feel a lot as well but I suppose we need to fight that feeling as hard as possible. Short of the Steel masterplan happening - buy some land immediately over the border, build a 75,000 seater stadium & ancillary village, then work up from the Cumbria & District Sheep Worriers' League Division 2 - we're stuck here! Is that good or bad?
  11. andy steel
    For your Sunday morning consideration. Just like the best newspaper keech, brought to you the night before! Unseeing seems to be the order of the day, alright. From the lights going out at Ross County, to the media blackout of celtc's 'Oranje Bastard' ditty, to media and SFA Prophets of a New Dawn, proclaiming Great Days Ahead. Those of you who played the music above will no doubt be reflecting on the stirring, rousing tune which inspired so much hope, fear and ultimately despair, as the Soviet Union sank from revolution to eventual collapse in 1991. I imagine those with no time for the doctrine of Marx and Engels can concede that, coming from Tsarist Russia, it was a noble attempt, even if it failed in gallons of the blood of its own people. What does this have to do with Rangers, I hear you ask? Hunners. Images of the old Soviet Union rushed back into my mind last week when the Pacific Quay CSC, in a move of unparalleled daftness even for them, decided to ask Jim Spence to cover the latest Rangers story; and then Josef Vissaronovitch Rhegan himself emerged on the back on some decent results for the national team to laud his latest useless initiatives. Perhaps Spence was being tested to see if the he could actually manage to report on Rangers without being inaccurate; perhaps it was to punish the listeners by making them listen to his awful ,stuttery, regional accent more than usual; perhaps it was an 'up you' to the Rangers fans who apparently lined themselves up with those other emblems of totalitarianism, the Nazis and the Stasi, by invoking the feared, Gestapo like tactic of emailing the BBC complaints department. Many of the survivors of world war two have, now you think about it, mentioned in their memoir the resemblance between the BBC and the authoritarian regimes they had help destroy, so this should come as little surprise. Who can forget Airey Neave's classic 'Colditz? A Holiday Camp Compared to the Beeb', or Douglas Bader's 'No Legs is Nothing Compared to No Freedom at the BBC'. Anyhow, those images of communist days. As a young leftie, I often watched with open jaw as representatives of the USSR came on the screen to tell us how everything there was wonderful and the western media were lying. That this was so obviously untrue left one wondering what it was they were trying to do; and the obvious answer was, of course, that they were trying to cover up the truth. Those old enough to recall the Chernobyl disaster will perhaps also remember the special, English language edition of Pravda which was on sale in Britain, and which sought to limit the consequences of this aged nuclear reactor blowing up to roughly akin to those of Kirk Broadfoot microwaving his breakfast. No-one was fooled. All the more nostalgic then, that Soviet Jim Spence should wind up his piece last week with a heartfelt op ed about how wonderful things were in the Scottish footballing garden, and that only Rangers were kept inside, locked in a permanent argument with its mum and not being allowed out to join in. Pravda got nothing on you, boy. No doubt the fans of Dunfermline & Hearts, going through their own miseries, felt a trifle piqued at being lumped in with the everybody happy! gang. It's unlikely many premiership treasurers are licking their lips at the thought of Hamilton winning the championship and bringing the bonanza that is the Accies travelling support (last home games, attendances 1,113 against Raith and 1,059 against LIvingstone) to the behemoth that is the SPFLP. Big Money!!! Kilmarnock fans, fighting their board to see who can hurt their club the most, might take issue with his comments; it goes on and on. Aberdeen close stands; the game is vibrant, apparently. celtc hide empty swathes of seats with banners; never been better! If only Pravda still existed, a job would be made for Spence instantly. The lights going out at Ross County during their game against ICT the other week says it all - if you don't want to see it, you don't need to see it. You can't help but think of Zaphod Beeblebrox's 'danger glasses' in The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy, which black out whenever danger threatens. Cool facewear, and great writing, but no basis to plan the future of the game. And what about us? A tartan version of Trotsky, exiled to the Mexico that is the fourth division, one can sense the ice-picks being readied lest we attempt to get back to what it known, apparently without irony, as the top of Scottish football. This expression seems to me to be akin to trying to find the top of your arsehole, but let that pass. The terror among some media commentators lest someone with money to invest get inside the doors of Ibrox is palpable; Rangers, the betamax to the SPFL's VHS, the Oracle to it's Teletext, the Scott Brown, if you will, to their Mezsut Ozil, are going to face some serious barricades which are being hastily erected to hold us back. Red Rhegan has broken his recent and extremely welcome media silence to re-assure the fans of other clubs that should Dave King try to get a job at Rangers, well, blimey, he will certainly have a good look at it and by gum, there will be no hiding places! Only the best of people for us! No doubt we'll all sleep better tonight knowing Stewart is looking out for us. Only a churl would recall his total lack of action when not one but two shysters bought our club, and conclude that he's more afraid of Rangers getting themselves organised than he is of any more damage to the club. We certainly have our problems and some our fans are probably as blinkered as Spence on some issues. But at least we don't pull the commissar's cap down over our eyes and insist that paradise is just around the corner. The bad news for Rhegan and his media mouthpieces is that our eyes are well and truly open now...we see you, and we know what we're looking at.
  12. andy steel
    Impossible to say without knowing more about the context of both the meeting and that ^ tweet. We're in a unique position when it comes to fan ownership of being both too big & not big enough at the same time. We have such a big fan base that fan ownership would result (imo only, of course) in constant fighting between factions; we're not quite so big that a fan owned club could also attract the kind of external funding a la Barca or Madrid that would allow us to compete at any sort of decent level. So in the end, a representative with no real power is probably about the most fans can hope for.
  13. andy steel
    You'd need more faith in Ally's ability to construct a decent defence than I've got to think we'll romp D1. Win it aye, romp it, not so sure.
  14. andy steel
    For all you know he could have described celtc as the scum of the earth and the Record edited it out. Weird amount of anger toward a Rangers player of the past, did he give you abuse or something?
  15. andy steel
    Bit nothingy, on a first reading.
  16. andy steel
    Nothing new in this, Tony Blair swept to victory in 1997 despite offering nothing, mostly on the grounds that he wasn't John Major; David Cameron equally promised nothing other than not to be Gordon Brown. Not being the present lot is enough for me, to be honest, although the fact that I have heard of him and he's not another parachuted in 'who?' certainly helps as well. But he's not on any pedestal - just the better option.
  17. andy steel
    He does me. Exactly what we need, a boring suit who does things properly. I've head enough of walking mouths for the present.
  18. andy steel
    I'm surprised the Tims in the workforce didn't walk out at this affront to their workplace dignity. Do we have any idea when details will be available of what went down?
  19. andy steel
    Entirely your right to do so, I don't think it's good or bad, just a democratic right. What is not worth paying attention to is those who say 'You're a Rangers fan so you can't be a this or that' - that's just daft and gets ignored, by me, anyway.
  20. andy steel
    I fear you're right, but they'll never drag The Rangers down without a fight from me. I saw yesterday Toure, of Man City, being abused in Moscow & the suggestion has been made that his side should have walked off. My persistent nightmare is that the traditionalists persist with their repertoire right up and into our European return, upon which bodies like FARE organise a walk off during a game, and we are broadcast across the world as a bunch of fundamentalist loonballs. There will be no coming back from that...that's why it's so important to drive home the message again and again, not so much to the mentalists but to the alarmingly large body of apparently clever and normal fans who can't bring themselves to drop the shit of the 60's, 70's, 80's & 90's, that they have an absolute duty to the club we all love to realise that we do not exist in a social vacuum, and that behaving as if we do will only result in harm to The Rangers. Like you I'm bored stupid debating this stuff over and over again but if we don't, it will be Rangers that suffers.
  21. andy steel
    I remember reading the 'Playing for Rangers' annual for around 1980, and in it there was a story devoted to discussing the tactics of a game we played in the previous season, I think against Valencia (Kempes et al, should be able to date the annual from that). The writer said something like 'Believe it or not, continental teams play a second centre half in defence' - this in the 80's! We must have been seriously behind the times, not for the first or last time. That same annual had an interview with iirc Joao Havelange, predicting John MacDonald as the next big world star striker. Ah, well. How I remember my two favourite posters of my early teens, my Coop and MacDonald posters from the old Rangers shop down by the tube station, purchased during an honest afternoon's dogging school.
  22. andy steel
    Well, aye, but you're not really going to pay any attention to anyone who comes out with such stuff, are you? Yes its embarrassing when Rangers supporters represent the club in such a light, but if the likes of yourself wave goodbye to the football, it leaves the field open to the foil hat brigade to drag Rangers backwards.
  23. andy steel
    As long as, this time around, Paul Murray's group all actually know that they are in it.
  24. andy steel
    I must say, I do find the nail-dragging reluctance to actually hold an AGM most suspicious.
  25. andy steel
    Sanity there, BH, but then I have read of bears being arrested for potentially inciting public disorder when singing TBB in the Broomy, so they can use it if they want to! Also, I don't buy the difficulty involved in asserting that Timothy is certainly referring to Prods when he uses the word Orange; given the West of Scotland context, and given the precedent set in many cases where the 'F' word equates to Catholic, I think that wouldn't be as hard as you think. But people are talking about complaining to UEFA rather than the cops, I think.
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