There are people, stupid people, who say I’m “obsessed” with Sevco.
Actually, I just like laughing at them, at all their wee lunacies, their mistakes, their delusions and their propensity for heaping enormous embarrassment on themselves and each other. I write mainly about Celtic, but our club can be boring at times.
The reason my Celtic blogs aren’t acknowledged more is that a lot of our fans simply don’t like reading about their club when criticism is being offered. As criticism goes with the territory, I have to do offer it, but I don’t like doing it and because of that I like to lighten the mood sometimes in these blogs.
Sevco always lightens the mood.
I write an average of 6000 words every day, about 100 different subjects, including music, politics, movies and even football teams outside Scotland. I also write fiction. Writing about Sevco, even on the days I do it, takes up less than a tenth of my working time and a mere fraction of my overall attention span.
Anyone who wants to use the word “obsessed” is free to do it. I think it’s a pitiful comeback, even by the gormless standards of the “whatabouttery” brigade.
Anyone who uses it – especially Celtic fans, by the way – is a clown.
It’s a bit like being slapped by a child.
Yet there are people out there who do have obsessions.
This article is about one of them, someone who actually is obsessed.
His peculiar obsession used to amuse me. Now it’s wearying.
We Celtic bloggers know him as “State Aid Guy”.
I’m not going to use his actual name; he’s had his 15 minutes of fame and it’s more than he deserves.
Some people get their 15 minutes and then shuffle back to their normal lives and their normal routines. Some get their 15 minutes of fame and find they can’t do that, that the limelight is so good, that fame, even amongst a small group, is preferable to a life of anonymity.
Going back to normality, to friends and family, becomes impossible.
And then there are some who have no life.
They are those who have no friends and whose family prefers to shun them. Those people crave attention and when they get it you simply can’t keep them from chasing more. They chase it and chase it until their whole life becomes about that.
State Aid Guy is like that.
His obsession is with Celtic, and a conspiracy he believes he’s uncovered.
The people involved in it cross the political and social spectrum; I’ve often thought that if State Aid Guy was right there was little point to the Bilderberg meetings as Celtic had proven to be a unifying factor in bringing people together in a way politics never had. I also thought that if State Aid Guy was on to something that Celtic must be so powerful that any such action was simply a waste of his time; after all, if our reach stretched to running the European Parliament and the British government then surely we would be able to cover out tracks.
A European Union investigation has found no case to answer. Internal inquiries at Glasgow City Council and the Greater Glasgow Health Board found there is no case to answer. An Audit Scotland investigation, whose conclusions were published in November last year, found no case to answer.
The cost to the taxpayer of all this has to be substantial.
It is this report, which is into his and other’s allegations of wrongdoing, even criminal action, in regards to the Lennoxtown deal, that he’s hawking around various parties this week. It is worth noting that it fully exonerates the club, although it suggests there should have been greater oversight on the parts of several other agencies. It found not one piece of evidence to support the wild assertions, allegations and innuendos which led to it.
No-one wants to touch this guy or his crazy campaign. Even a notorious North of Ireland bigot, whose writings and campaigns have sparked many a good belly laugh, won’t touch it with a 20 foot pole. Many on his own side think he’s gone from being a guy who had legitimate questions to ask to being a deranged fool who can’t take no for an answer.
No credible body believes there is a case here.
No news outlet – not even in Scotland, a country whose media routinely runs its stories through an anti-Celtic PR firm – wants anything to do with it.
There is nothing here. He’s misjudged “evidence”, misinterpreted facts, been revealed as a sloppy and selective researcher, someone who’s over-estimated his ability to comprehend complex documents and details, which has resulted in hilarious mistakes in his work, and every single organisation to which he has submitted his “research” has said to him, in the nicest way possible, that he is absolutely barking mad.
This is a person who needs to chuck it. Who needs to give up looking for things that aren’t there. Who needs to take a breather and get himself a life. His 15 minutes of fame has turned into 150 hours of shame. He increasingly looks like a fool.
But if he can’t stop himself, if he feels the need to keep digging, he might want to consider that this campaign has run its course and turn his attentions elsewhere. I can help him out with that; his own club is being pulled in two because of the warring factions amongst its support. Some of them are backed by the board, which has its hand in their pockets and the pockets of the other fans. Last night, a military charity got dragged into their money grubbing. That’s surely an issue worth looking into.
His club’s own chairman is a convicted tax crook who may have committed further offences that involve Sevco.
Surely that is worth his time.
Celtic did nothing wrong.
Its directors behaved with probity and transparency all the way down the line.
Not every club, not every board, can say the same.