With a hundred other things on my mind, including cutting my toenails, eating an old yogurt that was left in the fridge, washing my hair and playing Warhammer Total War, I haven’t had much time to turn my attention to the amusing subject of our friend the State Aid Nutjob and the complete and utter humiliation which was his this week.
But I’m on my Kit-Kat and coffee break now, so here goes.
The Evening Times published a piece out of Glasgow City Council which cleared up, once and for all, the craziest conspiracy theory in Glasgow history; that of the “cheap land deal” which our club secured for itself via a spiders web network of corrupt characters in a number of public and private bodies who were willing to risk their careers, reputations and even possibly their freedom to do a sweetheart deal with us All For The Love of Celtic.
I know how much we all love our club, but who amongst us would risk all that for their benefit? Does Celtic put food on your table, or mine? Do they pay the bills? Would you put your job and the wellbeing of your family on the line for it?
That’s the whole basis of his case, by the way. When you consider that in contrast Rangers fans couldn’t even summon the will to save theirs from destruction … well, it contains a sort of backhanded compliment in a way, doesn’t it? He’s saying, in effect, that we have longer reach than them, more influence than them and love our club more than they love theirs.
All of that, of course, is undoubtedly true … but that’s not the point.
The conspiracy theory has not simply been dealt a blow this week as much as it’s been utterly destroyed. Sevconia has, it seems to me, spent four years solid looking for the “smoking gun” that will prove somehow that our club has done things every bit as dodgy as the crimes of the Dodgy Dave’s and to no avail. They’ve presented their case to the Charities Regulator, the European Commission and anyone else who would look at it.
And that’s the key here, as anyone with half a brain knows. That they got public bodies to conduct frivolous investigations into this stuff was presented as a victory in itself, as some kind of proof that they weren’t just pissing in the wind, but as I’m certain State Aid Nutjob was well aware these organisations are public service agencies and as such were legally obligated to do that when presented with evidence, no matter how farfetched.
There are guys online – such as BarcaBhoy – who had destroyed these flimsy arguments and pointed out the holes in them from the beginning, and I admit to having had a lot of fun covering the expanding nature of the conspiracy these people envisaged, as well as writing about every single time one of those agencies reported back their findings.
But this week the knockout blow was struck.
Glasgow City Council, probably tired of the constant string of emails demanding “answers” and offering “proof” released a press statement clearing the matter up once and for all, and this guy and his adherents couldn’t have been more spectacularly wrong if they’d founded the Glasgow branch of the Flat Earth Society For People Who Believe Everything They Read In A Dan Brown Novel.
For not only did Celtic not underpay for the land, we overpaid for it.
By a little?
Not quite, no. By a lot. Not value plus half either.
But value times three.
Yes, we paid three times what the land was worth. The taxpayer didn’t just not get ripped off. They didn’t even get a conventionally good deal; for the citizens of this fair city this was The Sale of the Century. We met our commitments and then some.
State Aid?
This was aiding the state.
In contrast to our remarkable generosity, it was the State Aid Nutjob and his ilk who actually cost this city money; nearly £300,000 of it, squandered in the last couple of years, investigating this nonsense.
I trust that these same people, having been presented with the evidence, are now going to accept that they were wrong, and thank Celtic for an extraordinary act of public service. Because otherwise they don’t seem like concerned citizens as much as narrow minded bigots with a very unhealthy obsession with Scotland’s most successful (surviving) football club.
And they wouldn’t want that, would they?
Yes, I realise there’s an error in the title … and you know what? That I’ve written this amendment rather than correct it should be a demonstration of the utter contempt I have for the cretins who are its subject. State Aid Nutjob is an afterthought; a legend only in his own mind. His assorted goons are even less worthy of time or attention or editing.