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Tuesday 5 January 2016

A BOX OF ACTION MAN'S HEIDS

I remember when I was wee, in the early 70s, we used to get excited when we heard about a jumble sale. Despite numerous disappointments, we always felt that this one was going to be different; there would be all manner of things we would be able to buy with our pocket money. Sometimes you'd be lucky and there would be a pile of old, American comics, selling for 1 or 2p each but, for the most part, the greedy bastards running the thing wanted a fortune for their junk. I think they all got carried away watching 'Going For A Song' on TV and thought they were selling antiques!

Sometimes, your parents would promise you extra money for the thing and you'd be looking forward to all the toys and games you were going to buy. Then, when the day came, you'd be handed 50p and then find out that the jumble-sale folk wanted 20p each for a pile of old Casper comics. You'd end up rummaging in a 10p box, in which, among stringless yo-yos and other, useless bits and pieces, resided a bundle of Action Man's heids. How these Action Men ended up decapitated was a mystery; they must have been part of a Saudi Arabian edition. To my mind now, after all these years, no jumble sale is complete without a box of Action Man's heids.

If there's one person that knows how I felt at those jumble sales, it's Mark Warburton, 'Warbs'. Remember all this stuff from Honest Dave in June of last year?

"But if you want to look at the funding plan, it is to spend whatever it takes to win the Championship next year and have at least the nucleus of a squad to move up to the Premiership the year after. The mandate to the manager is going to be to get players that could compete in the Premiership.
We’re going to increase running costs at the club. The idea is to have it sustainable by the end of the three-year period – not during it. I think it is very important that we win the league this season, so it’s probably the right thing to overinvest this season and make sure we do comfortably come out of the league we’re in and also have a strong squad going into next season."

That was like our parents, back in the 70s, promising us money for the jumble sale. And, just like me, 'Warbs' has ended up rummaging in the box of Action Man's heids of football. Maciej Gostomski, for example, seems to have the lucky number 3, having been third-choice goalkeeper at Legia Warsaw and then spending ages in the third tier before working his way up to the second. His hobbies, according to Wikipedia, include working as a fisherman and smoking. Along with Harry Forrester, another 'journeyman', he has signed up for the customary six-month contract.

It's quite hilarious to read what these players say about these essentially last-chance-saloon contracts. Gostomski says, "They (Sevco) are a huge club with a great history and I am delighted to be here." Forrester, meanwhile, claims that he has signed for "one of the biggest teams in Europe". I wonder how The Peeppul, and our media, would react if they told the truth and said, "Thank Christ there's somebody out there willing to sign us!"

And now 'Warbs' is reduced to grubbing about in the depths of England's fourth tier, trying to steal players from Accrington Stanley. That's like nicking an Action Man's heid out of the box! Interestingly enough, if Wikipedia is to be believed, Accrington Stanley appears to have a lot more integrity and honesty about it than Sevco. It says that the club, founded in 1968, is not to be confused with Accrington Stanley 1891, which was liquidated in 1966. Although it bills itself as 'The Club that Wouldn't Die,' the new club seems to have no pretensions of still being the old club, unlike another new club I could mention.

The sad, obsessed fool that is PZJ has recently been poring over the Celtic accounts. If nothing else, you've got to admire his tenacity, his indefatigability etc. etc.; anybody else that had been proven wrong so many times would give up, but not this hardy bigot. According to him...well...I don't really know, to be honest. I can't be the only one whose attention wanders when faced with all his facts and figures that, inevitably, lead nowhere. There's a famous, logical, mathematical proof that 1+1=1. I think PZJ works along those kind of lines. One statement did, however, leap out at me: "Celtic have a corporate structure that is very complicated to the natural eye." That'll be in stark contrast to Rangers, which was incorporated in 1899 and liquidated in 2012!

Anyway, I was more interested in his other posts, where he gives us a potted history of the Fenian Brotherhood. All very interesting but it hardly proves his point that the word 'Fenian', as used by The Peeppul, is not sectarian. Utter nonsense. I could just as easily give you a brief biography of Atilla and his rampaging hordes, but it doesn't change the fact that when we use the word 'Hun' we mean a Rangers/Sevco supporter. Whatever the meaning is or isn't in Northern Ireland is neither here nor there; this is Scotland, not Northern Ireland. Equally, we all know what those Huns mean when they spout stuff about 'Fenians'; they mean Catholics, Irish or otherwise. Danny McGrain, as he recounted in his autobiography, was called a 'Durty, big, Fenian bastard!' while spectating at a Rangers match. He heard the character shouting being told that McGrain was not a Catholic, whereupon the cry was changed to 'Ya durty, big, diabetic bastard!' Surely, if 'Fenian' was not sectarian, then the insult should have still stood! Equally, I've heard folk coming out of Mass called 'Fenian bastards' and even a lad of Indian extraction at my primary school! As usual, PZJ is full of shite.

In another post he tries to excuse the 'Billy Boys' song altogether, telling us all about Billy Fullerton. He hasn't got that much to tell, since he claims that Google doesn't throw up much information. Again, he's lying; there's plenty of stuff out there about Fullerton and his ilk. Obviously he doesn't like what he found and decided to ignore it. What he can tell us is that a Catholic once hit Fullerton with a hammer. PZJ is at pains to point out that this doesn't excuse Fullerton's hatred and violence but, if that's the case, then why mention it? The same thing comes up again and again in his narrative, which obviously shows that he thinks Fullerton was justified. Strangely, though, when violence is used against a whole people PZJ thinks it's wrong when they respond with violence. But, then, double standards has always been a strong trait among The Peeppul.

It's something I've always been proud about, coming from Glasgow, that gangsters are not venerated and seen with misty-eyed romanticism the way they are in London. The Krays, for example, always 'luvved their muvva' and 'looked afftah their aaown'. Yes, you'll still get the odd clown boasting of his family connections to Arthur Thompson or the like, as if you're going to jump up and shout, 'Shake my hand! Is that the very hand that shook his?'. In the main, though, ordinary folk have a healthy disdain and distaste towards our gangster fraternities. Except, of course, when it comes to The Peeppul and Fullerton.

In the 1920s and 1930s the gangs were a big problem in Glasgow. It's been proven time and again that religion only played a small part in these gangs' activities, and even then it was just an excuse for violence. The gang fights were territorial and the Norman Conks were just as likely to do battle with the Shamrock as they were with the Billy Boys. The gangs were also involved in criminal activities like extortion, protection rackets and burglary and hired themselves out as rent-a-thugs to any political party or organisation that stumped up the price of a good bevvy. When WWII arrived, many of them, including Fullerton, were press-ganged into the merchant navy, where they apparently ran a smuggling operation and got involved with organised crime on the East Coast of Canada and America. Of course, the end of the war brought these lucrative operations to a halt and most of the gangsters, coming home to a changed world, ended their days in penury. They were not the types to have put a bit by for the future when times were good.

It says a lot for the zeitgeist in Scotland back in the day when the man credited with diminishing the effects of the gangs in Glasgow, Chief Constable Sir Percy Joseph Sillitoe, went on record as thinking of Billy Fullerton as a family man, even though he had been imprisoned for beating up his wife. It is also notable that police operations were concentrated in the Gorbals and the city's East End, when there were just as many gang problems on the other side of the river and in Govan. It also says a lot about our media when they can still glibly state that Fullerton 'signed up' to the merchant navy and 'served with distinction' when research has shown that this was far from the truth. It says even more about The Peeppul that they have chosen to put on a pedestal a benighted thug and career criminal, just because he was in an Orange band! Oh, but did I mention that a Catholic hit him with a hammer?

The Daily Record, meanwhile, has decided to point the finger at the Scottish Government for the failure of its Offensive Behaviour at Football Act, rather than at the bigots themselves. Yes, the Act is flawed but it certainly doesn't help that the police hardly enforce it with impartiality. Celtic supporters are kettled on Gallowgate and are videoed throughout matches, meanwhile tens of thousands can parade their sectarian and racist bigotry with the police not even raising a mobile phone to take a picture, unless it's of their mates to put on Facebook. You can hardly blame a Government Act for the failure of our boys in blue to implement it!

Today, we had the charges read out to the Sevco Six and James Doleman was there to tweet the proceedings, while our media give us a quick summary of what The Peeppul want to hear. It's worth having a look at the comments on the DR for the laughter value. There are Sevconians on there that honestly believe that the whole purpose of these trials is to determine how bad everybody was to 'Raynjurz'. If the Crown wins its case and the appeal against HMRC is upheld they're demanding that compensation be paid to 'Raynjurz', who were the victims of conmen, a belligerent HMRC and collusion between Celtic and everybody else in Scottish football. They're talking about money for league wins, European appearances etc. They really haven't thought this one through, have they? Never mind Whyte, Green etc.; if everything, as seems likely, ends up in HMRC's favour, is compensation going to be paid to all the other clubs by stripping the tainted titles of the Cheating Years?

Finally, I see Chris 'Ze List' Graham is picking up even more work now that word has got round about him being one of the biggest knobs in Scotland. Read about his latest job here.



 

 
Warbs 'swoops' for his latest signing.

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