Famine Song Statement

[Frankie 8,552]

I still have that partcular letter and he did not confirm the ban mate.

 

He did say that I would recieve a copy of the written grounds if I contacted the club, so I duly did, in fact one of letters was sent to Carol Paton amongst others and I did not even recieve an ackowledgement from any of them, then of course we had all the rst stuff that basically said we were to drop it as it was gone.

 

I did upon being cautioned on the PRW have a full and frank discussion with the police in Helen St about the subject and recieved an apology, and yes it was about TBB, I could go into it more but suffice to say I have always been of the opinion that their is an agenda against the support and all fingers point in the one direction.

 

All rather puzzling but the fact remains the club were censured for discriminatory singing and a ban was put in place by UEFA IMO.

 

Your experience with the police shows up the inconsistency with how the subject generally is approached.

 

It is all a sham and the club should be saying so.

[Frankie 8,552]

I'll go further and say that certain elements of the RST were almost certainly and knowingly complicit in this "game". This was the single act of treachery that killed the RST stone dead, in which condition it remains today.

 

I disagree.

 

The RST membership numbers always steadily increased up until this year I believe. The unfortunate happenings of last Spring may have killed the organisation (IMO) but TBB incident certainly didn't - even if some may have disagreed with the Trust working with the club on enforcing TBB ban.

 

Sure, looking back, perhaps the organisation may have done a bit more to challenge the ruling but, as I've said earlier, the people who represented us at the meetings with the club are far from the type of people who'd be complicit with SDM for any reason.

Edited November 3, 2008 by Frankie

[JMS 0]

Two years ago the rst had their agm in the wrc before an aberdeen game TBB was brought up and does anyone remember what was the opinion given to the members,

cause I do.

[Frankie 8,552]

Two years ago the rst had their agm in the wrc before an aberdeen game TBB was brought up and does anyone remember what was the opinion given to the members,

cause I do.

 

The opinion was given by DE that we had to stop singing the song because of the UEFA sanction...

 

No-one contested this as far as I remember.

[maineflyer 0]

Now, I don't know for a fact if these words are UEFA's or Rangers' but I'm pretty sure they are from UEFA as I simply don't believe there would be any reason for the club to make such stuff up - given the censures mentioned on the UEFA websites.

 

Oh come on, the club has made up worse than that. With Murray's record, I wouldn't give a moonbeam for "pretty sure".

[Frankie 8,552]

Oh come on, the club has made up worse than that. With Murray's record, I wouldn't give a moonbeam for "pretty sure".

 

When one looks at the broader picture (ie the UEFA charge and initial/final decisions) then the wording seems reasonable enough to be part of any directive.

 

In the absence of any evidence whatsoever for the opposing viewpoint (namely that the club banned TBB and not UEFA) then there is no other conclusion I can take.

[maineflyer 0]

I disagree.

 

The RST membership numbers always steadily increased up until this year I believe. The unfortunate happenings of last Spring may have killed the organisation but TBB incident certainly didn't - even if some may have disagreed with the Trust working with the club on enforcing TBB ban.

 

Sure, looking back, perhaps the organisation may have done a bit more to challenge the ruling but, as I've said earlier, the people who represented us at the meetings with the club are far from the type of people who'd be complicit with SDM for any reason.

 

You may very well choose to disagree but I think you are being way too optimistic about the RST membership. There was no always and there was no steadily - or at least there wasn't when I asked for specific information about membership numbers and retention rates. The truth is the RST was in decline before the resignation debacle and to believe a significant part of the membership weren't disenfranchised by TBB affair only reveals the lack of perspective that infected the RST by that time. Perhaps if every dissenting voice hadn't been summarily banned from FF, you might have been more aware of the actual depth of feeling.

 

As for "the organisation may have done a bit more", I presume you mean a bit more than nothing at all?

[maineflyer 0]

The opinion was given by DE that we had to stop singing the song because of the UEFA sanction...

 

No-one contested this as far as I remember.

 

Opinion? You mean he didn't actually know?

[Frankie 8,552]

You may very well choose to disagree but I think you are being way too optimistic about the RST membership. There was no always and there was no steadily - or at least there wasn't when I asked for specific information about membership numbers and retention rates. The truth is the RST was in decline before the resignation debacle and to believe a significant part of the membership weren't disenfranchised by TBB affair only reveals the lack of perspective that infected the RST by that time. Perhaps if every dissenting voice hadn't been summarily banned from FF, you might have been more aware of the actual depth of feeling.

 

As for "the organisation may have done a bit more", I presume you mean a bit more than nothing at all?

 

Well I can only go on the information supplied to me over my 3 years... In each year I served, new memberships and the membership numbers generally were always increasing steadily enough. Not at a tremendous rate but that's why - about 6 months before I resigned - we embarked on trying to improve communication to avoid the valid problems you speak of and increase numbers more effectively.

 

I believe such improvements were promised after I resigned. Not sure if they have delivered as I am no longer a member.

 

I also don't remember many bans from FF at the time of TBB issue?

 

Regarding what we could have done at the time, I understand why you think we did nothing. That isn't true though as we did try our best to change the club's mind as well as point out the inconsistencies but the UEFA sanction was clear enough (to the people who seen it) so we could do little else but work with the club to ensure the sanction wasn't breached.

 

Does that mean we should have left the song consigned to the bin? No and I remember trying to persuade the board that we should have been pushing UEFA (and others) on the subject. To not enough agreement unfortunately.

 

Since then I've personally tried to highlight the sham of the whole industry including writing my own empirical thesis on it. Not much of a contribution but about as much as one person can do.

[JMS 0]

The opinion was given by DE that we had to stop singing the song because of the UEFA sanction...

 

No-one contested this as far as I remember.

 

Not the opinion I heard mate.