From the Celtic Network
A failed attempt to silence a journalist.
Sep 01, 2011
It’s been an interesting day.
I awoke to find out that my site was suspended by my web hosting company.
They had received after an email from a dignified chap claiming to be part of “a stakeholders group” that was, apparently, concerned about the Rangers FC related content of my site (www.philmacgiollabhain.com).
Their concern centred on the possibility that my journalism would scare away potential investors because I was giving the impression that all was not well, financially, at Rangers.
It is rather unfortunate timing, to say the least, that on the day that my site was accused of spreading malicious rumours about the health of Rangers as a business that the moderator of the Follow Follow website started a thread about HMRC freezing the club’s bank account.
I have had no formal communication from Rangers FC or from anyone representing that football club about the content of my site.
Needless to say I am sourcing another hosting company and I hope to be online again soon.
In the meantime I stand by everything that I have written about the state of Rangers’ finances and their unresolved issues with HMRC.
My journalism on these subjects has been well sourced, evidence based and non-actionable.
I have been heartened by the support shown to me today many in the Celtic Family and by my colleagues in the NUJ.
I will continue.
Oh, one other thing.
HMRC staff were at Ibrox today.
It wasn’t a social call.
Phil Mac Giolla Bhain
UPDATE on SCOTZINE
The American writer Marshall Lumsden said: ‘At no time is freedom of speech more precious than when a man hits his thumb with a hammer.’
Well today someone hit my thumb with a hammer when they persuaded my web hosting company to suspend my account and close down my site.
If I say the air turned blue you will fully understand my thinking when you discover the people demanding the site be closed were Rangers ‘stakeholders.’
According to the system administrator at the hosting company one Archie Ferguson MCMI, MIET, MBA who claimed to be the representative of a stakeholders group.
We can forgive the member of staff in the hosting company in Australia, perhaps, believed that he represented Rangers FC threatened legal action against me and the company.
According to Archie, I Phil Mac Giolla Bhain, had “harmed the commercial standing and good trading name of this company” namely Glasgow Rangers FC PLC.
Archie and ‘his legal team’ are considering legal action against the company.
According to Archie I had “has shed doubt on the company’s inability to run its financial affairs and implied that there was some impropriety on the part of the company with regard to its tax affairs.”
According to Archie I had written a “litany of…misguided suppositions.”
How did the meeting with the HMRC team at Ibrox go today? Final score Rangers 0 HMRC 1.
I have another question for Archie Ferguson MCMI, MIET, MBA.
Who was the source of the story about the nine million pound “mystery bid” for Nikica Jelavić?
Everyone in the Scottish press knows his identity, but will you read about it tomorrow?
Probably not so why wait? It was Gordon Smith.
You are stakeholder so you will be able to ask your club’s Director of Football.
Tonight on BBC Radio Scotland Chick Young was sombre and dignified about the perilous financial situation at Rangers. Your club is staring into the abyss.
Chin up now Archie.
Dunkirk spirit and all that…
Written by Phil Mac Giolla Bhain
A Freelance Journalist based in Donegal, Ireland, Phil has broken some of the most high-profile exclusive stories in recent times regarding Scottish Football. From the Hugh Dallas email scandal to the Rangers tax issue, the Neil Lennon letter bomb attacks not to mention tackling the racist Famine Song. Phil has written for the likes of Celtic View, Caledonian Mercury, Irish Independent, Guardian, Irish Post and The Irish Times.
"If the Party could thrust its hand into the past and say, this or that never happened, that, surely, was more terrifying than mere torture and death.
And if all others accepted the lie which the Party imposed if all records told the same tale then the lie passed into history and became truth.
’Who controls the past' ran the Party slogan, 'controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.'
Day by day and almost minute by minute the past was brought up to date. In this way every prediction made by the Party could be shown by documentary evidence to have been correct; nor was any item of news, or any expression of opinion, which conflicted with the needs of the moment, ever allowed to remain on record.
All history was a palimpsest, scraped clean and reinscribed exactly as often as was necessary."
George Orwell
2 comments:
Get yourself to 1and1.co.uk
£1.99 per year for a .co.uk site and £10 pa for .com
- a Dundee fan who enjoys your articles.
When the company is put up for sale buyers do due diligence to see what it is worth.
They would uncover the tax liabilty at some stage.
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