"To be a Ranger is to sense the sacred trust of upholding all that such a name means in this shrine of football. They must be true in their conception of what the Ibrox tradition seeks from them. No true Ranger has ever failed in the tradition set him." - William Struth  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

The Toxic Triumvirate

Written by: General Schomberg
Friday, 18th of July 2014

To the average Guardian reader, Roy Greenslade's tear-jerking tale of poor little Angela Haggerty being hounded by Rangers fans on a football forum following her appearance on BBC Scotland could on the face of it have been written with a degree of justification.

However as is often the case with the polemic Mr. Greenslade, he is economical with the facts and deliberately paints a one-sided picture.

Ms. Haggerty is Rangers-obsessed, or to put it more accurately, obsessed with hating Rangers. She forms part of a toxic triumvirate headed and guided by the blogger Phil Mac Giolla Bhain. The third spoke in the buckled wheel is Greenslade himself, who is always available at short notice to be Mac Giolla Bhain's useful idiot, the so-called respectable face of anti-Rangers spite.

We need not go over Mac Giolla Bhain's sordid history in great detail. Really, enough has been written about it already. A tunnel-visioned, one-eyed, unemployed, unemployable fantasist, bigot. As The Sun Editorial described him when dropping the serialisation of his totally discredited book "tarred with a sickening sectarian brush". My favourite description though comes from a former Irish Republican with whom he ran the Tiofacdh Ar La fanzine;

"I discussed his political activities with a republican activist that I hold in high esteem and his conclusion was that Phil was more a 'fantasist' than a provocateur, but that the outcome in either case was often the same. His conclusion was that we should cut him adrift. If anything, this Doctor Who style regeneration of himself in each decade of the last three, is further evidence of his mental instability. There are a number of articles by him that refer to the Rangers support which in my honest opinion verge on the religiously sectarian and bigoted."

So by definition, Ms. Haggerty, at a mere 25 years of age and a committed Celtic supporter, was the editor/proof-reader of a now totally discredited book about Rangers written by a mentally ill (by his own admission) sectarian bigot. Quite how that qualifies her to be summoned by BBC Scotland to comment on the tax and legal affairs of Rangers Football Club is beyond any reasonable analysis.

Ms. Haggerty has no expertise, formal training or qualifications in anything resembling accountancy, finance, tax or corporate law. She has an HNC in journalism from Cardonald College in Glasgow. Furthermore, she is agenda-driven, hate-filled and shockingly inept. Her constant online referencing of Rangers fans using bilious terminology like "zombies" and "The Klan" betray a mind-set carefully cultivated by Mac Giolla Bhain. The question that must be answered is why was she invited onto this show and more importantly who at BBC Scotland suggested she appear and/or made the decision to invite her?

Ms. Haggerty has expressed her support for Irish Republicanism and that of course will have struck a chord with Greenslade, himself a well-known Sinn Fein activist and former An Phoblacht writer under the nom de plume "George King". He counts among his friends one Pat Docherty, one-time vice-president of Sinn Fein and former member of the IRA's Army Council. Strange company for a man born and bred in England to keep.

Resident in Donegal alongside Glaswegians Docherty and Mac Giolla Bhain (not his real name), Greenslade comes across as a troubled creature with an identity crisis. Much like Docherty and Mac Giolla Bhain really.

Doesn't it seem strange that he is happy to count those who directed child-murder and covered up rape and paedophilia as friends and colleagues, but gets himself in a mock-tizzy when a silly wee lassie gets called a few nasty names on an internet football forum?

On the plus side, it seems that a normally compliant media have themselves tired of the poisonous ramblings of the noxious ménage-a-trois. Well said Ronnie Mackay of The Sun and Chris Jack of the Evening Times, who described The Three Pus-kateers as being "clearly in cahoots….a wretched triumvirate of bigotry and propaganda…… unbalanced, hysterical nonsense".

I couldn't have put it better myself.

 

by Nineteen Seventy-Two
 
by John McCrae & Chubbybrown
 
   

 

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