We live in a world where the United States has elected a sexual assault perpetrator who is obviously crazy, and who, with the aid of an egocentric billionaire is dismantling the federal government and all of the protections it extends, protections that support the lives of hundreds of millions of people across that country.
We live in a world where the people of Gaza are under constant bombardment from a rogue nation, while our political class pretends it’s not happening.
And speaking of our political class, in a time of rising inequality—where the gap between the rich and the poor has never been more pronounced or more dangerous to social cohesion—their latest decisions are appalling. They’re punching down, hitting those who already have the least, by taking support away from them while those at the top are protected from any form of additional taxation.
We live in a world where Ukraine is hanging on by its fingernails, having been invaded by its closest neighbour and although they’ve had aid from all across the world, that aid now largely depends on the whim of the madman in the White House, who would prefer it if the Russians won. At the same time as he is backing away from supporting Ukraine, he’s making not-so-veiled threats about invading and taking Greenland.
In other corners of the world, we’re doing more harm than good, supplying weapons to dictators who are murdering their own people. Most of that never even makes the papers.
Here at home there are landlords who refuse to lift a finger to repair homes that are crumbling around their tenants’ ears, leaving hundreds of thousands of people in this country living in what can only be described as squalor. And because of rising rents and housing prices, they are unable to get themselves out of it.
I could go on, but you get the point. This is not a great time to be a human being who values concepts like justice. Justice in this world barely functions or even exists.
I said yesterday that this was going to be a long, tough week and that we were going to have to take our licks. I also knew that the media would pull some rabbit out of the hat in order to punt more copies, to strike whilst the going was good for them. Because the media thrives on scandal and chaos. It’s their bread and butter.
Naturally, today we have one of the unnamed 14 abuse survivors who’ve not yet agreed terms with the club saying that Celtic’s function in paying out in the class action case is to protect itself and deny justice.
This is obvious rubbish, of course. This is what the class action was set up to do. This is what these people said they wanted all along.
I know who the survivor is. We all know who the survivor is. He can’t keep his mouth shut online. Every single thing that’s in the papers today, he said on Twitter yesterday. He’s the one who’s allied himself with the worst elements of the supporters across the city. And for them, the word justice doesn’t apply here, because their version of it is to see Celtic Park closed, the ground ploughed under, and a shiny shopping centre in its place. That’s what they want. That’s the minimum they’ll settle for.
The whole point of raising the class action case—the whole point of raising the legal case at all—was that Celtic would settle. That’s what they all signed up for. That was, from the start, what their lawyers wanted to happen, and the lawyers would have made that very clear to them from the beginning.
If they thought there was going to be some big mea culpa, where people would take the stand and say they’re evil, say that Celtic is an evil institution, and all manner of other things, they were never living in the real world. That was never going to happen. Nor is the public inquiry they’re all screaming about.
A public inquiry can cost tens of millions of pounds. It takes years, and in the end, nobody is going to find out anything they don’t already know. A public inquiry is not legally binding. It cannot establish legal guilt or civil liability. It’s about learning lessons, and we already know what the lessons are. It’s why we have enhanced disclosure requirements for people working in certain professions.
Are there people walking about right now who’ve escaped some measure of justice? Yes, there are. But only in the narrowest sense. Because they are not liable under the law. If you ask me if we should change the law, then yes, we should and we should put those people in prison where they belong … but that will never happen, because once you open that Pandoras Box the shockwave doesn’t stop at the doors to Celtic Park.
Too many powerful people in too many much bigger institutions than Celtic would be under real pressure if such a law were ever passed, and that’s why it never will be. Nobody wants to open that can of worms. Because this is not a just world we live in, and if some people are late to realising that I don’t know what to tell them.
We all know who some of these people are. Perversely, those demanding that Celtic accept full responsibility for these matters don’t even understand, or pretend they don’t, is that one of the reasons we can’t, and won’t, is that our lawyers would never allow us to. Because that would be the Celtic board of right now going on the record accusing previous Celtic directors of cover-ups and all manner of other deeds … our board doesn’t have the right to do any such thing.
But there is not a room that those people can walk into, for the rest of their natural lives or indeed any room they could have entered for very many years prior to now, where everyone doesn’t know what they allowed on their watch.
That is not justice—not in the sense of slapping on the bracelets. But don’t kid yourself; that it isn’t justice of another sort.
That was not an appeal to justice that the Record ran this morning; that was an interview with someone consumed by anger and hatred of our club, published by a newspaper staffed by a lot of people who are consumed by anger and hatred of our club. You may believe that he is right to feel that way, but the point is that this is someone driven by emotion and not reason.
Everything he says should be seen in that light.
I know I’ve come across as very intolerant of his suffering in this piece, but I feel sorry for this guy. Of course, I do. It must be exhausting to live like that. On top of the mental turmoil the guy would be in even without it, carrying all that anger must be debilitating in itself. It must be very hard to get up every morning and ponder your life and to blame an entire institution for ruining it, especially when that institution looms so large in the public consciousness and seems to be in good health.
But it’s not the fault of an entire institution.
It’s the fault of a handful of people. And so being angry at the entire institution is ultimately futile and self-defeating because the institution of Celtic isn’t going anywhere and those in charge of modern Celtic should not have to crawl through broken glass in penance for what other people did before them.
My beef, as ever, is with the newspaper. As far as I’m concerned, running an article like that from someone who is emotionally traumatised is nothing short of exploitative. This is the Daily Record trading on a man’s grief and personal demons to attack Celtic. That’s all that it is. Everything about it—the tone, the headline—it’s all designed with that singular purpose in mind.
In his anger, this guy has allowed himself to be used by various factions, all united by a single common purpose: they hate our club. If he thinks the media in this country gives a damn about justice, he needs to look at how it’s handled itself in cases where it has been caught engaging in all manner of shady tactics and behaviour.
Justice is often the furthest thing from their minds.
The whole point of entering a class action was to get Celtic to settle. Celtic has now made a settlement offer. It may not be enough in cash terms, but no one can say that the club is only interested in protecting itself when it’s paying up.
The demand for an apology is preposterous, considering that Celtic has apologised and expressed its sympathy and support for the victims again and again throughout this time. We’ve worn the hair shirt. The suggestion that we should keep on doing it is stupid. The suggestion that we’ve not yet done it, when the evidence is there to show that we have, is offensive. The idea that Celtic should take full responsibility for these actions is so dumb that it barely deserves the recognition of a discussion.
As I said, our legal advisers will never allow us to do that and I’m not sure we should. A handful of individuals enabled this, but not even they are fully responsible. The people who are fully responsible are those who did the deeds.
Many of them have gone to jail. Some of them wouldn’t have without Celtic’s co-operation with the cases.
The truth—and we know this is the truth—is that for some people, no measure of justice will ever be enough. Short of the complete destruction of Celtic, there are people who will never be happy.
They will never get that.
There will never be the reckoning they want and so they will have to live with the existence of Celtic for as long as they are alive. It would be better for them if they reconciled themselves to that fact.
We live in a world filled with injustice. This is not a fair world. This is not a righteous world. Even in cases where justice is said to be done, you cannot change the past. You cannot bring back what has been lost. But people have a choice about moving on and moving forward. In making a settlement offer, Celtic has given these people that opportunity, and many of them have taken it.
Others can’t because it’s Celtic itself that they are at war with.
And in their misguided fog of grievance, they are easy prey for unscrupulous people who simply want to paint our club in the worst possible light. That’s all this was today. Almost everything these people wanted, our club has done. Almost every concession they demanded has been granted. The only thing that hasn’t—and won’t be—is Celtic accepting full responsibility for acts it is not fully responsible for or our modern leadership apologising for things in which they played no part.
The haters can continue to hate. It’s all they are good for. Celtic now wants to bring closure to this, and whatever small measure of justice to the victims that it can. It’s not enough, we all know that, the club knows that and those who run it, for all my arguments with them on policy, are good and decent men and women who are trying to find the best outcome here that they can and they always have been.
To paint them as inhuman monsters as The Daily Record tried to do today is disgusting. To exploit a man’s grief and suffering is disgusting. But we expect no less from that rag and those who are salivating over this.
TBH, I don’t know why Celtic paid out anything. The Celtic Boys Club was not part of Celtic. It was a separate entity. We live in a blame culture where it’s always someone else’s fault. “The teachers should have saw it… medical staff should have picked that up….the police should have done more, the social workers missed it”. We’re never happy with punishing the primary source. We live in such a nanny state, that we always look to shift the blame elsewhere. And that’s exactly what makes those parasitic ambulance chasing second rate law firms millions of pounds each year. They thrive off it. “If you fell on an uneven pavement and skint your knee because you were p@shed last night, call Bigby Drowne”. I wonder what percentage of their claimants are even truly genuine. Re the Celtic Boys Club victims, they were groomed and manipulated by vile perverts who used CFC as the leverage to gain access and to control their victims. CFC is a victim of those despicable perverts also. The club did not facilitate or provide a platform for the abusers. The abusers used their affiliation with Celtic as part of their modus operandi. Although the victims have my deepest sympathy, I do not consider CFC to be in any way responsible. So my admiration goes to the Club for acknowledging any degree of accountability, albeit merely because of association. As you said yesterday James, it would have been highly doubtful that a single action would have proved vicarious liability. How could it – the Boys club was a separate entity. But a class action was the best angle for an ambulance chasing firm to pursue…just keep throwing mud, mirky the waters, continually tarnish the name and reputation of CFC, and eventually get an out of court settlement as the Club would want it to “go away”. A winning strategy and a hand well played. 1-0 to the Parasites. They got money for your clients, their 20% + cut and now looking for another ambulance to chase. They were never seeking justice for their clients. They just recognised a soft target from which they could get an easy pay day. CFC are not in anyway culpable for what happened to the victims. And it’s testament to how decent a club they are that they have provided financial reparation. What a fantastic football club…COYBIG
They paid out because it was up to the insurers, as it had been from the start. Celtic’s involvement was pretty minimal. The insurers will have calculated the risk of losing a case, and associated costs, versus the cost of a quick settlement. They will then have decided to go with the certainty of a settlement as a strategic decision.
The crimes committed and the suffering of the victims will not have figured in this at all for them. They’re a soulless insurance company making dispassionate decisions based on a bottom line.
That, unfortunately, is the reality of class action lawsuits. The victims rarely feature and justice is rarely done. But a lawyer/ law firm gets a payday and a feather in their cap, and an insurance company makes a deal.
Money will never recompense these victims for what they’ve went through, so if money was going to be the outcome, this was probably the best process for achieving that and we as a society have to accept the inhuman way these cases are ultimately dealt with.
SM
Legally you are right .
CFC and their insurers could have gone all the way to the Court of Session and assuming they didn’t run into uncontrollable factors ( eg seriously high masonry) could well have concluded this tragic affair with little if any financial liability .
BUT! They have done the right thing and have and will provide compensation as best they can in the circumstances and rightly so for the victims whom every one of us has shame and sympathy towards .The club and the board has thus done what every single fan woupld have wanted them to do .
I haven’t read the DR in decades but I know enough to understand it is simply the media equivalent of the Lambeg drum ….There are tens of thousands of TRFC fans ( and CFC fans ) who have no clue that exactly the same abuse ,and on a similar if not on a worse scale , was perpetrated across the city and that their club has behaved much much worse that CFC
I look forward to the DR selecting some Murray park survivors of abuse who ,as things stand given the Dave King directing of the class action to the liquidators, will get NOTHING and get their views of when they expect compensation from the club that they all claim still exists with all their titles etc
I am sure Keevins Jackson and all the other DR acolytes and the TRFC board and the bold Barry and their Anyone Everyone mantra will agree that the first Investment for the new season isn’t £5.7m on Cerny but that kind of sum is paid to McNeely’s abuse victims
James is right ! No one and particularly the TRFC supporting media is interested in taking a proper balanced view of events on this subject and ,as they should , demand all the other clubs follow Celtic’s moral lead
Instead they all thought they could kill CFC with this and the clowns didn’t realise that would never happen and so blinded themselves to their own favourite clubs abhorrent behaviour
Very well written article. These hypocrites want one thing and that is to see our club blackened and in their own shameless way, put their own club up there as some sort of example of righteousness, regardless of what it takes. And now of course, because the compensation didn’t have the effect that they have been for months, eagerly anticipating. As if the extent of these horrible acts weren’t enough already, as bad as things are, it’s now a campaign by the predictable suspects, through twisted lies, exaggerations and just plain poison, tae make it look a lot worse.This is the ugly, toxic, bigoted mindset we’re dealing with. A twisted, obsessive, shameless hate that doesn’t have any boundaries.
just as i posted yesterday they will dredge up some story and sure as night follows day it took them less than 24 hours. a despicable gutter rag.
The Daily Record should be banned from Celtic Park, They have crossed a line by calling out the present day custodians of Celtic FC. The guilty men who inveigled there way into World of Celtic FC through the Celtic Boys Club have been punished and jailed. My knowledge of the Legal World is practically nil but I would say that legally the connection between the Boys Club and the company who owned Celtic was tenuous legally. In the 1970’s and 80’s lots of clubs throughout Britain had tenuous links with boys clubs bearing their names. Managers and players would turn up at prize giving and present trophies but official links weren’t clear. Were the Guilty men officially employed by Celtic FC? that is the question.
Celtic FC have now done the decent thing, rather than take the whole thing through the courts but these people in the media want one last kick at the club they hate.Any Celtic supporter buying these rags want to take a good look at themselves
One more thing I would mention. The Celtic hatin fuckin clown jackson, at his hypocritical best. Right there, in his article. That’s how this sleekit bastard works. Tryin tae go under an impression of an ‘impartial’ opinion. Comin out and tellin OUR club how they should have acted. And all the while, not one single reference, regardin what also went on at his beloved squeeky clean ibrox. Not even a hint. Or about any other Scottish club for that matter. Deliberately portraying this as a Celtic problem alone and trying to put a black mark on our Jersey. Ye’ll notice, he states we ‘done the right thing’ although conveniently makes no comment of how i.e. his ibrox club should do the same. The club who were ‘supposed’ to have informed the police, about one of their own monsters prowling ibrox. Let’s investigate that claim for the truth. Let’s see the sly bastard putting as much scrutiny into what went on at ibrox as he has ours. Let’s see it.! The fuckin prick and his like, have’nt even scratched the surface about ibrox’s problem with similar despicable individuals and they don’t intend to. A deliberate combined effort, to ignore and smokescreen what happened at their club. This is not and never has been a ‘Celtic only’ problem and tae weaponize it the way it has been and still will be, is a sorry reflection of the society we live in.
Any fuckin Celtic supporter who went ambulance chasing The Scummy Daily Record regarding that story by purchasing it is just as bad as the perpetrators of the story itself…
Two fuckers on ma street for starters and more than a few posters on CQN no doubt !
@ cath. Just tae clarify. Ah dont buy that bogroll. Haven’t either for about 20 years.
Ah definitely wasn’t referring to your good self Kevcelt59, it just happened to be the comment above when I posted…
Aye I’m like yourself as in not having read it for years save from what James rightly highlights about The Scummy’s on here…
Did use ma wee granny’s one thirty years ago to read on a boring night shift and they were really hammering Celtic then as well but rightly so the way Kelly, Whyte And co were running the club while they’re tongues were so far up Murray’s arse it could almost be viewed as an act of depravity…
I’m just surprised that they slagged these said custodians for running Celtic into the ground as today they would probably truly love them if that situation were still the case !
@ cath. It’s an anti-Celtic bogroll. Full of old and young ibrox disciples and fan boys, masqueradin as journalists.
The Scottish press actions today are those of sick hypocrites. If they promote and believe in the lies of the continuation and survival lie then they should be acting with journalistic integrity and holding the new club responsible for the same allegations of their own employees
Great article James, and equally, some fantastic comments.
If you are an honest, courteous, respectful and caring individual, then this modern world will certainly concern you.
I am always hugely positive, but it is impossible to ignore the downward spiral that we witness everyday in society, and certainly post Covid/lockdown. One can only hope, and pray, for an upturn in everything.
As Celtic fans, we have always been aware of the smsm negativity towards our club, and the twisted way they tend to report about us.
We have every sympathy with the abuse victims from the Celtic Boys Club era and it is to Celtic’s credit, regardless of the reporting, that they have settled this group action.
Although a certain club’s fans across the city have continually and appallingly sang about this, from their bile and hate filled songbook, the sheer hypocrisy of their own club, escapes them, either intentionally, or through their continued gross stupidity!!!
That many Scottish clubs ( including the first version of the club that emanated from Govan,) were identified as having individuals involved, that carried out abuse in the 1970s, 80s & 90s is both shameful and very sad.
It can only hoped that those victims receive the requisite acknowledgement and possible compensation.
I have no idea if Sevco will be attempting to settle any group actions coming their way…
but if they are still maintaining that their victims consult with the liquidators of the previous incumbents of Ibrokes, then maybe our “honest, impartial” smsm, will report appropriately, and finally smash the survival lie, and all of its associated nonsense!
You and I know that will never happen !!!
Yes, hypocrisy is alive and well in Ibrokes and from those that report on everything associated with them !!!
HH