Mark Irvine - Blogger, Campaigner, Organiser

The latest edition of Private Eye forecast correctly that HM Customs and Revenue would appeal the long-running tax case involving Rangers Football Club. What I don't understand is how a loan can be a loan - if the loan amount is never recovered by the lender? Never mind 'fantasy football' - that sounds to me like a fantasy tax return! "PLANET FOOTBALL" Rangers "Many tax experts were surprised by the majority 2-1 decision in favour of the Glasgow club and its owners at the rcent tax tribunal, and they expect that the taxman will appeal the tribunal ruling that the £47 million pumped into offshore trusts for 81 players plus club officials represented genuine loans, rather than income, and so were not taxable. The fact that the dcision was by a majority would normally encourage an automatic appeal - plus there is up to £70 million in tax, interest and penalties at stake. The tax claim effectively forced rangers into administration and now liquidatio...

News reports during the week suggested that the boss of Britain's third largest union - Paul Kenny of the GMB - is preparing to stand down early from his post. Has this anything to do with the likely merger between GMB and Unison? I don't know, I have to admit. But if and when a new union comes about - GUMBO or whatever it's called will have around 1.9 million members - even more than the current pack leader, Unite, with 1.5 million members. I would say it's time that people stopped and ask themselves whether this trend towards supersized unions is in the interests of ordinary union members. Because in any other walk of life it wouldn't be allowed - without putting a series of checks and balances into the system. Supersize Me (21 January 2012) Britain's union bosses (the Bubs) are always banging on about the need for healthy competition on the high street - and the benefits of cutting the big banks down to s...

Jose Manuel Borroso - the President of the EU Commission - has been in the news recently for poking his nose into the various 'ifs, buts and maybes' about Scotland's planned referendum on independence in 2014. But there is another side to this gentleman which is laid bare by the latest edition of Private Eye - in its regular column about the worst excesses of the European Union. BRUSSELS SPROUTS While member states row over cuts to the EU's 89 billion Euro budget, the battle between them and the European Commission over the bloated salaries of the EU's civil servants looks set to rumble on. Despite continually refusing pay cuts and legal challenges in the European Court of Justice (ECJ), chairman of the Federation of European Civil Servants Pierre-Philippe Bacri has now threatened strikes to block future summits if their pay demands are not met. Since the EU's 55,000 or so civil servants enjoy an average salary of 18,000-30,000 Euros a month...

The debate about gun control in America is likely to get bogged down in a partisan debate - with the two main parties attacking each other's positions.  I heard some chap on the TV the other day say that the way to make schools safer was to allow teachers to carry firearms - because at the moment the 'bad guys' are not at all anxious about going into school premises because they are for the most part gun-free zones. Now I suspect that the reason schools are gun-free zones is that if a teacher were to be allowed to carry a gun - then why not a student or, indeed, another visitor? The same argument taken in isolation must surely  apply about people having the right to defend themselves - whether that person is a student, school teacher or someone else - what essential difference is there under the law? But it doesn't take a genius to work out that more guns there are in circulation - the more incidents there ar...

I think Sir Alex Ferguson must have too much time on his hands at the moment - because he's switched his attention away from winning the Premier League in England - to deliver one of his 'hairdryer' rants on the subject of Scotland's independence referendum.  Playing the man rather than the ball, in my view, Sir Alex has accused the First Minister - Alex Salmond - of trying to 'silence' Scots who live in the rest of the UK - by calling for the cash they can donate to the referendum campaign to be capped at £500. In response, Sir Alex decided to donate £501 to the Better Together, pro-Union camp - with the extra £1 being a symbol of his defiance presumably - and released a statement which said: "Eight-hundred-thousand Scots, like me, live and work in other parts of the United Kingdom. We don’t live in a foreign country; we are just in another part of the family of the UK. Scots living outside Scotland but inside the UK might not get a...

Like most people I'll be taking some time off over Christmas and the New Year - quite when and for how long remains to be seen as far as the blog site is concerned. But the Action 4 Equality Scotland office in Edinburgh will be closing down over the festive period - from 5pm on Friday 21st December and will re-open again at 9am on Thursday 3rd January 2013? Season's Greetings and Happy Holidays! 

Channel 4 News and Michael Crick have shown the country what good investigative journalism is all about - and it now seems as if the Government Chief Whip - Andrew Mitchell may have been the victim of a considerable injustice.  I couldn't help feeling that the chap from the Police Federation got a taste of his own medicine - as he sought to explain himself, very badly in my view, under only the mildest of questioning from the polite Mr Crick.  I wonder where this story will lead next?  

You see some strange wildlife sights living in a city centre these days - for example urban foxes are frequent visitors, deftly dodging cars and people, as they head out foraging as soon as the evening sun comes down. But here's a sight you don't see every day - a big yellow 'rubber ducky' swimming up the River Thames in London - and all just for fun as well. 'Tis the season to be jolly - after all.

News reports today confirm that a police officer has been arrested on suspicion of misconduct in a public office - following an investigation by the Met Police into how national newspapers came to publish police records into an incident at Downing Street. The so-called 'Plebgate Row' led to the resignation of the government's chief whip - Andrew Mitchell - and the Police Federation had plenty to say about events at the time - demanding that someone's head should roll so long as it was not the head of a serving police officer, of course. Apparently a police officer from the Diplomatic Corps was arrested on Saturday and bailed on Sunday to return in January 2013 - having been suspended from his normal duties. Presumably this means the officer being suspended on full pay while the case trundles through the court system - but you have to ask why the matter is not also being dealt with through his employer's disciplinary procedure...

So the men of violence have returned to the streets of Belfast - only this time the flash point is the flying of the Union Jack over Belfast City Hall for 365 days a year - and the defence of their cultural heritage, we are asked to believe. Now judging by the number of young teenagers who have been arrested on the streets - I doubt this is true - because I have some experience of young teenagers and I have yet to meet one who is genuinely interested in their cultural heritage - at the tender age of 13 or 14. More likely they are simply mimicking the behaviour of their adult role models - by hurling rocks, petrol bombs and fireworks at the police. While elsewhere parts of the mob threaten and intimidate elected Belfast councillors from the Alliance Party - who voted to break with some of the flag flying traditions from the past. Now of course no one is stopping anyone from flying the Union Jack - and if you go into some areas of Belfast, flying the...

I'm all in favour of tougher regulation for the press - who isn't these days? My mind was made up about twenty years ago when I complained to the Press Complaints Commission (PCC) about a sucrrilous article in the (Glasgow) Evening Times, if I remember correctly - which completely rubbished a dispute I was fighting at the time - on behalf of low paid NUPE members. My complaint was rejected in a peremptory fashion - the PCC being stuffed full of  arrogant newspaper editors - so the outcome was hardly a surprise.  Ever since I've regarded the PCC as a completely worthless organisation - with the same kind of credibiliity you would achieve - by putting Count Dracula in charge of the blood transfusion service. So while I think the Leveson Inquiry was something a three-ring circus - a celebrity-driven feeding frenzy - nonetheless the noble lord has hit the nail on the head by saying that the gam...

The Daily Record reports that the RMT member at the centre of the planned strike at ScotRail was dismissed by his employer several months ago - back in March 2012. Now I can't be the only person to find it rather strange that the dispute is still dragging on all this time later - and that dates for strike action called by the RMT just happen to coincide with one of the busiest periods of the year - the run up to Christmas. Nor has the RMT said whether the union is actively pursuing a claim for unfair dismissal to the Employment Tribunals - which is the obvious thing to do in the circumstances. Since a tribunal hearing would involve an independent examination of all the facts and issue an impartial decision as to whether or not the dismissal was unfair - without the need for a strike and all the inconvenience to the travelling public. The more I read about the RMT - the more I think the union leadership is completely out of ...

Here's an intelligent and thoughtful article by Lord (Paddy) Ashdown - former leader of the Liberal Democrats - which appeared in The Times newspaper the other day. Strange to stop and think that two branches of Islam can wage such war and cruelty on each other - sometimes with guns and rockets - at others by subjugating whichever group happens to have the whip hand - in any particular country at a specific point in time. Islam's inability to tolerate religious differences within its own ranks seems to be the crux of the problem - and Paddy Ashdown is right to point out that western countries are terribly short-sighted - if they think that supporting one side or the other will bring about a lasting peace. What's needed is a power sharing approach where the rights of the minorities are respected and protected - but that of course is anathema to a culture based on tribalism, feudalism and religious certainties,  ...

Unlikely as it seems Scotland's opposition parties - Labour, Tory and Lib Dems - appear to have fallen head over heels for a new political poster boy, the 11th President of the European Commission - Jose Manuel Barroso. JMB (for short) has offered his considered view that Scotland will be outside of the European Union and its treaties - if the country votes for independence in 2014. Which I think is bonkers - I have to say. And I speak as a someone who is sceptical about the need for independence - because as I have said many times before I think the best outcome is a stronger Scottish Parliament - one with the power to run Scotland's economy instead of having no option but to follow UK policies laid down by Westminster. To my mind the headlong rush of Scottish Labour, Tory and Lib Dems parties to embrace the twisted logic of JMB seems rather silly to me - because  what the EC President says ma...

There are obvious parallels between the Dunblane massacre in Scotland in 1996 - and the cold-blooded murder of innocent children in Connecticut yesterday. 16 years ago an inadequate man with a grudge and a gun walked into a local school in Dunblane - a nice, middle-class  part of Scotland - and deliberately killed 16 young children and the teacher - before the turning the gun on himself.  In the leafy suburbs of Connecticut yesterday - a young man, armed with a variety of weapons, killed his mother at home before making his way to the school where she had taught - Sandy Hook Elementary - and shot dead 27 people including 20 children aged between 5 and 10. The response in Scotland was swift and already tight gun controls were tightened even further - so that now you can't even buy an air gun (a BB gun in America) without a licence and a police check. Now this doesn't make Scotland a better place than America - but ...

The BBC reported the other day that an Egyptian blogger - Alber Saber - has been sentenced to three years in jail for blasphemy and contempt of religion. Apparently Alber Saber - an atheist and non-believer from a Coptic Christian background - was arrested in September  after neighbours accused him of posting links to a film mocking Islam - presumably the one that led to staged protests recently across the Muslim world. So having taken to the streets to free themselves of one dictator - Hosni Mubarak who ruled Egypt with a rod of iron for forty years - a new tryant seems in danger of springing up in the guise of Islamic religious orthodoxy. Many liberals, secularists and minority groups such as Coptic Christians are complaining that the new draft Egyptian constitution - fails to protect basic rights - and that the assembly which approved the draft document last month was dominated by Islamists. Now the M...

As regular readers know, South Lanarkshire is one of my least favourite councils - one of the worst offenders in Scotland over equal pay - in my humble opinion anyway.  So I am pleased to share the news that South Lanarkshire has just lost another big equal pay battle - in the Glasgow employment tribunal. Earlier this year the council's 'in-house' job evaluation scheme was heavily criticised by the employment tribunal - which decided unanimously that it was not 'fit to be relied upon' in terms of the Equal Pay Act. A shocker of a result it has to be said - for a council which had been developing this 'in-house' job evaluation scheme for years - in collaboration with the trade unions, so it claimed. Unhappy with this decision, South Lanarkshire asked for a review of certain aspects of the original decision - another time-wasting and delaying tactic, if you ask me - never mind another appalling waste of public money.  And what do you know? South L...