Bust and Bust

Up until now I've had a fair degree of sympathy with the plight of Rangers Football Club - despite the fact that I'm not a fan.

My logic is simple: 'How can it be good for Glasgow (or Scotland) to see Rangers FC in such dire straits?' 

But the news that an American tycoon - Bill Miller - has been named as the preferred bidder for the Glasgow club is raising great doubts in my mind.

Which have nothing to do with the fact that Bill Miller is an American - but everything to do with the fact that this is beginning to look like a good, old-fashioned, asset stripping exercise.

Because as far as I can see all that is going to happen is that the favoured few amongst the many Rangers creditors will be paid off - and the rest can go hang.

Including the UK taxpayers who are allegedly owed tens of millions of pounds - the latest figure being bandied about in the press was up to £134 million - and counting.

Now if this were the result of bad luck, of a business doing its best and failing, only to pick itself up and try again - then maybe I could see the point.

But it's not - the problem appears to be deliberate tax avoidance - on an industrial scale which has cheated the public purse out of many millions of pounds. 

So it's hard to see how Rangers can be allowed to just walk away - and leave everyone else holding the baby.

If the former chief of the Royal Bank of Scotland - Sir Fred Goodwin, as was - can be stripped of his knighthood, so that he is now just plain Fred then what should happen to the former Rangers owner, Sir David Murray?

Why should he be treated any differently? 

The whole saga is developing into a scandal that is much wider than just football - sadly.

The focus is now shifting to the use of what appear to be extremely unethical business practices and the lengths that some people and organisations will go to - to avoid paying their fair share of taxes.