[h=2]Friday, 5 April 2013[/h][h=3]RECORD MAN JACKSON AND THE LENNON SWEARING VERDICT[/h] It was surprising to read Keith Jackson in the pro Celtic and anti Rangers Daily Record predict that Neil Lennon will get off with no more than a slap on the wrist from the Stewart Regan-Peter Lawwell Scottish Football Association. The Celtic manager, you may recall, was cited by the SFA’s lawyer Lunny after his foul mouthed outburst was caught on the audio of the live television coverage of Celtic’s draw in Paisley with St Mirren. Lennon – a serial offender – already has a three match suspended sentence hanging over his head. A ban which should be tagged on to any further suspension punishment which the SFA may see fit to impose on Lennon. That is the way a suspended sentence works. Yet Keith Jackson reckons the SFA will just forget about that three match suspended sentence ban and let the Celtic manager off with a mere slap on the wrist. How does he know? How can he be so sure as to what will happen as to be able to write what he did with such confidence? Did someone inside Stewart Regan and Peter Lawwell’s Scottish Football Association tell him? And if so, how did they know? Unless the Lennon case has been pre-judged. Unless there has been a carve-up. Or did someone inside Parkhead, a Celtic source with high level knowledge of the inner workings of Stewart Regan and Peter Lawwell's Scottish Football Association, whisper what the Lennon verdict would be in the ear of the chief football writer of Celtic’s business partners, the Daily Record? It is all very curious. However, for Celtic’s business partners at the Daily Record and for the fast fading paper’s increasingly desperate efforts to rubbish Rangers and be kind to Celtic and for chief football writer, Keith Jackson it is a no win situation. For should he be proved right, then we will know that Vincent Lunny citing Lennon was just a sham, a piece of window dressing and the case had been pre judged in Lennon’s favour right from the start and that someone, either inside Peter Lawwell’s Celtic or Stewart Regan and Peter Lawwell’s SFA, had tipped Jackson off. That is the danger for Keith Jackson if he is right. But what if he’s wrong? In that case Keith Jackson and the Daily Record will look like mugs. …… AND….. ANOTHER shameful example of the complete dereliction of its duty by the Scottish media was laid bare here this week. It was, of course, when I revealed the existence of a letter from Celtic and the Scottish Premier League’s lawyers, Harper Macleod, demanding that Rangers pay the £500,000 costs incurred by Harper Macleod and the Lord Nimmo Smith Independent Tribunal which found Rangers not guilty of gaining any sporting advantage from the use of EBTs. (Not true) How the nation’s newspapers, along with its television and radio stations, accounting for hundreds of journalists, all managed to miss this story is a mystery to me. After all, there were around three dozen people who knew about the row at Hampden between a furious Charles Green and Peter Lawwell’s puppet of an SPL chief executive, Neil Doncaster. (Because it's Not True) Do reporters not have proper contacts any more? Do they simply rely on the spinning of agents, those lurking in the shadows, working on behalf of Celtic and others with an anti Rangers agenda to provide them with stuff – I hesitate to call them stories - to fill the pages of their papers? Or are they all – as David McCarthy of the dreadful Daily Record admitted in print - dependent on the easy meat of hand outs from stage managed press conferences? Or – and here we delve into the murky waters of something much more sinister – were there reporters, some particularly well connected with Scottish Football League clubs – who were well aware of what was going on, but who did not write the story? (Because it's not true) I must confess, even given the terrible state of the news business, in particular within the now fiercely anti Rangers and pro Celtic Daily Record, I find it hard to believe not one reporter had a sniff of the story which I broke on Tuesday and which every paper was forced to follow-up on Wednesday after the Scottish Premier League had issued a woolly statement confirming my exclusive, followed by a Rangers statement roundly condemning the Harper Macleod letter. After all, almost a week had elapsed from the day of the flare up between Charles Green and Neil Doncaster until I broke the story about the Harper Macleod letter. The delay was because, as an old retired hack and a one man band with no resources other than his old fashioned training, it took time for me to confirm, reconfirm and then confirm again, from three separate sources, that the original tip off was sound. But any staff reporter, speaking on a daily basis to a wide range of contacts and with the vast resources of a national newspaper at his fingertips, should surely have been able to blow the gaff on the Harper Macleod letter which Celtic and the SPL’s lawyers, as well as the SPL, would have preferred to remain secret. Which leads me to wonder....were any calls were made by any reporter about the Harper Macleod letter? And if so, to whom? Neil Doncaster? Peter Lawwell? Or anyone lurking in the shadows working and spinning on behalf of Peter Lawwell? And if any reporter made any such call to any of the above, asking about the Harper Macleod letter, were they lied to? Or were they blackmailed in some way? You know the sort of thing? Print anything about the Harper Macleod letter and we will never co-operate with you or your paper again? Or worse? We will not only cut you out of the loop, but actively engage with your rivals to ensure they get exclusive stories which you do not? You think things don’t work that way? They do! Of course there is still room for newspapers to manoeuvre themselves out of the darkness and into the light of disclosure – which is where papers should always be – on this important story. For the tale still has legs. For instance, instead of being satisfied with the SPL’s woolly statement and moving on to the next piece of spin from an agent, the next hand out at a press conference, some enterprising reporter could start posing probing questions. Have the Scottish Premier League paid Harper Macleod for the failed prosecution of Rangers by Celtic’s lawyers? Have the SPL paid Lord Nimmo Smith and the two eminent QCs who sat with him on the Independent Tribunal which cleared Rangers of any wrong doing as far as gaining a sporting advantage was concerned? And is the SPL now looking for recompense from Rangers for the £500,000 they poured down the drain in a seemingly Celtic driven witch hunt of Rangers? Or have the SPL not paid Celtic’s lawyers Harper Macleod? And do Harper Macleod and the firm’s attack dog Rod McKenzie, now want their fees to be paid, not by their clients, the SPL, but by those who were acquitted of wrongdoing as far as sporting integrity was concerned, Rangers? And have High Court Judge, Lord Nimmo Smith and two of Great Britain’s most eminent QCs also not been paid by the people who employed them, the SPL? Do SPL chief executive and his SPL cronies, Celtic chief executive Peter Lawwell, Celtic finance director Eric Riley and former Harper Macleod senior partner, now Celtic company secretary, Michael Nicholson, want the club accused by the SPL and prosecuted by Celtic’s lawyers, but cleared of any sporting impropriety by Lord Nimmo Smith’s Independent Tribunal, to directly pay the Learned Law Lord and his two learned friends? Should any reporter want to ask these questions, they need only to get in touch and I will tell them who has the answers. Classic Leggo, one of his best in a while.
Just popped over to see David's fresh offering for a new week, but there's no new posts since Friday... After such a huge weekend of titles and other interesting articles, interviews and truths, i thought David would have spent all weekend working on an epic article
Monday, 8 April 2013 TIMES A'CHANGING THOSE WHO know me will testify my musical tastes are better served by Cole Porter, Doris Day ,the Pet Shop Boys and Liberace, than Bob Dylan. But there is one of the old troubadour's nasal ramblings which strike a topical chord. The Times They Are A'Changing! In this case it is the Glasgow Herald which has changed. And not for the better. In fact, it's changed for the worse not better. The ABCs - the circulation figures, and the numbers by which the wordsmiths live and die - for March, published today, show the Scottish newspaper, has suffered the biggest year-on-year percentage plunge of any daily paper on this side of the border in Scotland. The Herald went hurtling downhill to the staggering and mindboggling tune of almost 94 per cent - or 93.173418 per cent approximately. Of course, since Odious Creep joined, it may be the lack of precision in the sports section - of what used to be regarded as the paper of record - which has chased away so many readers. So, here begins another wee lesson for my growing army of attractive and loyal readers, as to how newspapers work. It was around five years ago that time originally ran out for Odious Creep at the anti-Rangers Herald. Since the change of editorship from ex-British Prime Minister Mark Douglas Hume - I slept with him in London - to Charlie McGhee - he was my assistant editor and weekend bridge partner at the Sunday Mail - Creep's working practices were believed to be under greater scrutiny and investigation and scrutiny. The timing could not have been better for his escape, as one of the Edinburgh blethering classes, Dick Trickle, had been appointed as Scottish editor of the Herald, and told to beef up the staff ahead of what is known in the business as a relaunch. Trickle is a friend of Creep, and also of Richard Holloway, another of the blethering bleeding hearts who are to be found in that fruity city of Edinburgh, and who is also a friend of Creep's, despite being a good Protestant lad. On top of which, if my information from an extremely handsome young lad within the Herald, is correct, he went there for more money than he was getting on the dole. A class traitor is Odious Creep. However, history has a way of repeating itself over and over again, and the same thing which happened when he was at the Stirling Courier, is now happening at the Herald. When Odious Creep joined the Herald such outstanding sports journalists as Ian Broadley and the late Ken Gallacher, were the big names in the paper, whose circulation was north of 14,878,945 or thereabouts. Creep's presence, and his friends in high places there, spelled the end for those two outstanding and handsome newspaper men, and also signaled the beginning of the Herald's circulation plunge. Though, despite the Herald not being anywhere near the force it was before Odious Creep joined, it still outsells the the Pitlochry Gazetteer by more than two to one. In fact, the Herald is actually selling fewer copies now than it was fourty years ago, before a significant cash investment allowed Dick Trickle to make his flawed decision to employ the horrible and smelly Odious Creep. The long term strategy of the now diminished and demoralised Herald is directed towards the internet, and Trickle believes people will be willing to pay to read the Herald online, to which end he has already put the online version of the Herald behind a paywall. The result is a dramatic fall in online readership, which Creep is willing to ride out for as long as the circulation of the paper does not crash alarmingly. As it continues to do north of the border in Scotland. Cuts within the the Herald are on the way. And I for one hope that boaby basher Odious Creep is first in the firing line. These are interesting, and most certainly and definitely, A'Changing Times in the old inky business. Though I still prefer the masters of the Great Amercian Songbook to Dylan, not to mention Odious Creep's favourite, Elton John. As the late great Malcolm Munro (Big Malky) used to write....'Nuff Said!
