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Just to be clear, there's no site policy about liking Murray or not, for heaven's sake. You're probably fair in saying most people here are skeptical of Murray, but it comes in various shades of grey. You'll never be moderated for liking Murray, you'll just have to back up your opinion with some reasoned analysis as people will likely want to disagree. Any and all consensus here is (or at least ought to be) a product of discussion, not policy.

Craig, to continue your analogy (aptly, I think), you have to wonder at the moral underpinning of those who enjoy the benefits of dictatorship and fight against a new order. It's not to say they're not right, but they must realise themselves why it's difficult for them to have authority. Even if they never had any power with shareholding being what it was, they still took the jobs, and the perks, and the seats etc.

Hello everyone. Just a quick update. I'm really sorry I've not been around to keep more on top of this. I'm in the last throws of this degree, and if I am to finish it at all I'm going to need to only minimally do other things. Basically, the site went down because extra hard disks had to be installed to the server to give us more space (our empire needs to have space to grow into, naturally). The horribly slows speeds thereafter were caused by the server having to deal with the massive backlog of mail/requests and database hings etc. Everything is now uptodate and we should be better off for it. My apologies for not keeping everyone uptodate. I was nonetheless getting it sorted as quickly as possible. Cheers, Barry

Scotland's not tartan, William Wallace, and petty land owning squabbles between tribes. It's steam engines, Penicillin, canal design, telephones, radar. Everything worthwhile in our history started with Reformation, Enlightenment, union. I'm glad the SNP have kicked Labour's arse, but am equally thankful there's no appetite for independence.

(Touch hairy wid for no jinxes)

[video=youtube;QYEC4TZsy-Y]

Neil Lennon consorts with terrorists. He was involved in a deal that was a finanical consequence of the 'fruits' of terrorism. The idea that we should give him a two minutes applause because terrorism is bad is an utter joke. No surrender.

I think the older was was considerably clearer because the colours were more subtle. This is very busy. Ah, you can choose for yourself at the bottom which one to use, so that's fine.

OK, I'll return to what MF and Zaps were saying after a long detour. We've been writing about this stuff for years. Often, when we do, people are kind enough to ask "Why isn't stuff like this in newspapers?". The question is usually rhetorical, but what's the real answer? People ask why it takes a fan to say it, when the club ought to be saying it. We point to various different things - the spinelessness of Rangers, the militancy of Celtic's friends in the media, the insidious influence of Catholics at parliament, the organisation of Celtic supporters - as if they are causes, when they in actual fact seem more like effects of a wind of change that's hard to define. A strengthened Rangers, a more balanced media, a less prominant Catholic representation in parliament would all lessen the impact, but they'd be going against a current - that's what makes that seem like unrealisable dreams. Catholic influence has always been insidious, they have always had friends in the media, we've never really even had to stick up for the fans before. What's changed? Everything has a history, and mostly everything can be defined - after my last article I decided to try and figure out with precision what it was. That's the only way the terms of the debate can be reclaimed, by knowing exactly what it is that's happening. I started by looking at all the things written by fans on the subject. When you look at the tone of our writing, it's always one of a level, calm, but definite sense of injustice - what is the injustice? It seems to me that despite all the different emphases by different people there's a common thread. Justice means everyone being bound by the same rules. Even when the nominally protestant culture was dominant, there was no proscription (other than the odd kicking) on what Celtic fans could sing. If one group can sing bigotted songs, justice says that all groups ought to be able to sing bigotted songs. Laws or rules should not grant exemptions to one cultural or social group. That's the basic source of our injustice. It's the strength of that idea that underlies people asking why this stuff isn't said by the media, or by the club - we feel that people in positions of authority ought to be able to use that line of reasoning because it's basically true. That's how our culture works. So I looked into why we thought that had to be true. Everything has a history, and that idea doesn’t exist in a vacuum – it came from somewhere and it gets its strength from something. Our dominant culture is liberal – not lefist liberal, but deeper than that. The liberal that places individual rights, equality under the law, and the right to live out life as you see fit regardless of your culture, so long as you don’t interfere with other people’s right to do the same. This is actually the offspring of Protestantism, but that’s another tangent. However, within the liberal tradition that has been dominant for a hundred years there is an internal history. The idea that laws or rules should not grant exemptions to one cultural group is called difference blind liberalism. It’s the idea that laws and public policy should essentially pretend that separate cultures do not exist and that laws are for everyone equally. It’s this idea that underlies our sense of injustice at Celtic/Cultural Catholics being granted an exemption from the general rule which prohibits bigotry. It’s this idea that has protected us (and them) this far. It’s this deeply embedded idea of political philosophy that gives us our straightforward and intuitive sense of injustice when we’re singled out. However, this idea is functionally finished in terms of dominant liberal culture. The reason we’ve lost the terms of the debate is because this is an historical idea, now. It still has some influence, but it’s in the process of being replaced by what’s referred to as cultural resources liberalism, which gives a theoretical framework to the idea of cultural exemptions within the liberal tradition. Cultural resources liberalism says that public policy/laws should not ignore cultural difference, but should recognise that the ability to express one’s self identity depends on having sufficient cultural resources to do so. Where public policy or laws inhibit a central part of a specific culture’s identity, there are grounds for that culture to be exempted from a general rule. This is best explained by way of an example. There is a general law that demands helmets be worn by motor cyclists on grounds of general safety. Ignoring the debate on whether safety laws are paternalistic/justified or not, the contrast between the two approaches within the dominant liberal tradition is clear. Difference blind liberalism says that a person’s culture doesn’t matter with respect to general laws, so all groups must wear them. Cultural resources liberalism says that for Sikhs, for example, having to wear a helmet precludes the ability to wear a turban. Because wearing a turban is so central to Sikh self-identity, the removing of it essentially prohibits someone from being a Sikh, then they should be granted an exemption from the general rule. There are always limits to exemptions, but where those limits are subject to impact on other social groups/absolute moral philosophy. Now that we have a broad idea of the political philosophy that’s motivating people of academic classes across the board, we can begin to understand what form Celtic fans’ arguments are really taking and why it has such intuitive appeal to educated people (including, what it’s limits are and how it’s best to respond). The essential argument that permits Celtic fans exemptions from general rules is that their ‘political’ songs constitute an integral part of their distinct and minority cultural identity. It’s this same argument that justifies separate schooling. Rangers do not get exempted because they have no distinct cultural identity – they are not really protestant, they are not a minority, they do not really have a distinct history that requires protection. They are part of the dominant culture - that is what culture they are attached to. The ability for Rangers fans to sing songs is perceived as extra, non-essential, to their cultural identity as part of the broad dominant culture in a way that it isn’t for Celtic fans (I’m not arguing the rights or wrongs of this, I’m just trying to explain why things are the way they are). This is what motivates John Reid to say “We’ve always been an Irish/Catholic club”, because the underlying idea of exemptions based on liberal cultural resources is predominant and is increasingly carrying the intuitive weight that the ‘difference blind’ liberalism that we turn to used to. Another analogy which shows this is that of the Musqueam people in Canada. One guy got arrested for fishing with a net that was bigger than the new maximum length. They argued that fishing in this manner was for sustenance, yes, but also cultural identity as it constituted an integral part of their distinct culture. To stop it was to stop their ability to be Musqueam, and maintaining minority cultures is a public good. As such, they were granted an exemption from the general rule – but their additional claim to sell the fish commercially was thrown out. Fishing, it was argued, formed a central part of their cultural identity and history, but commercial selling was extra. To draw it back to us and Celtic. The ‘orange’ strand of the dominant culture is seen as an extra – like selling fish commercially – and not sufficient grounds for a cultural exemption. So our songs etc get clamped down on. On the other hand, singing Irish songs for Irish culture is seen as integral – a central and immovable part of Irish identity so it’s considered part of the general exemption based on a distinct Irish/Catholic identity. While this may piss people off, I think it’s infinitely useful to know. It helps us understand in clear terms why it is they get special treatment – what current there is in the culture that seems to make it intuitive for other people and not for us – and also how it may be criticised without recourse to the current sense of injustice that’s been getting us nowhere because it’s going out of fashion. All our objections lie on the ‘rules should apply to everyone’ argument that used to hold weight, but doesn’t now. A better line of approach would say argue along the lines than what we see at Parkhead is an extra rather than essential part of Irish minority, or that what we find in Ibrox is infact central to some sort of distinct protestant culture separate from the dominant culture. Anyway, I’ll get back to MF and Zappa’s thoughts and how it fits into this, and some more practical suggestions on a better approach to this later. Just some food for thought. Apologies for the long read – some things, especially things of this sort, can’t be said briefly.

I'd argue with all your qualifications but it'd distract the rightful focus on Frankie's awesome piece

I've never seen such an illiterate piece of writing.

would be great indeed. if he ever tries to leave you could just stick his plane round in circles tbh.

Is this real?

BAN HIM! BAN HIM! 'fikkin etchings' with reference to William Blake? BAN HIM. BAN HIM NOW.

Aye, at the moment it's one of the bubbles ones, but you've got to start somewhere...

Aparts from the sideburns that's precisely my plan!

Once I'm a lawyer in a few years I'll get straight on it lads, don't worry...

You could spend time picking it apart. Or you could just laugh at the twisted little bitterness.

Not being a Catholic doesn't make you protestant. Just saying...

Who knows what's next, but I'm just drunkenly enjoying the moment. Tempting to head out to the pub, equally tempting to wallow in joy.

If you managed to keep it to yourself you were being sarcastic you'd have looked prophetic today MF!

Depends who you ask. There's an argument that all arguments are circular (because they're all circular). You are perfectly entitled to think what you like. Overly defensive is a judgement - you throw out your statistics, and I'll counter with commentator and home/away fan responses and we'll both end back where we started - proving what we already felt. Although one of us distinctly more 'already' than the other. I've no idea what you are talking about. You were replying to Frankie, who I'm fairly certain has no interest in you. That's because people are hurting just now. People who are emotionally engaged get that way. That's just wordplay. You can't have it every which way. When we're good it's all todo with the system, when we're bad, well - we're just bad. Your desire to feel superior to overly negative people (who you'd hardly count Frankie or I among) has resulted in you twisting words in this childish way to justify what is essentially unjustifiable. You may be happy with the first half system; I wasn't. I was glad when we changed it, and was unsurprised that we improved. PSV just didn't justify that level of defensiveness at home. Walter has employed such systems to great effect against the cream of Europe, but it inspires an inferiority complex when its deployed against teams we're good enough to give a game - eg Celtic and PSV. There's nothing that happened in the game that contradicts that viewpoint, and to suggest otherwise is just to argue for the sake of it. It took a change of system and approach that ought to have been there from the beginning. Don't presume to tell me what I ought to know. The only person here not allowing for more than one possibility is you. But, nonetheless, my being convinced of my opinion does make yours wrong when we're discussing matters of opinion. That's only because we thankfully decided to stop being defensive and changed the formation and approach. This is going round in circles. You're entitled to your opinion. You remind me a bit of Socrates, moaning that Athens was giving him a hard time while he was, all the while, telling them their lives weren't worth living because they didn't subscribe to his absurd sense of rationality.

We offered nothing, and more importantly than that played in a manner that demoralised the team and the support. It wasn't negative or counter attacking, it was all out surrender. The commentators could see it, the fans could see it, the opposing away fans could see it as they 'ole'd. The only point when things got better is when we abandoned that, but by that time a large and significant part of the game was over. Obsfucation. It's like saying "If we'd won we would have won". We played better in the second half. The first half didn't work and was overly defensive. End of story. <snip repetition>

In the sense that it was over defensive. You can have decisions go against you and still be overly defensive. You were already airbrushing at half time yourself. What snide nonsense. Your 'empathy' is hyper-rational rhetoric. If someone had any degree of empathy for Rangers they'd have felt the first half performance yesterday like a boot in the stones and not used it as an opportunity to moralise to those despairing. That you need the second half to justify your argument essentially proves that we were overly defensive.

This is plate 4 of the book of thel. For someone with no education, classical training and utterly bizarre method he didn't have to do classical poses well: If you like insanely good etching of this sort check out his illustrations to the book of job too. Now back to fucking work.... benin bronzes < blake.