topcat(The most tip top)

Some Key Facts and Figures about Sky TV Total customers: 10,471,000 TV customers: 10,253,000 Sky + HD customers: 4,063,000 Multiroom customers: 2,350,000 Sky Broadband customers: 3,651,000 Sky Talk customers: 3,407,000 Adjusted revenue: £6,597,000,000 Investment in programming: £2,188,000,000 Adjusted operating profit 1 : £1,073,000,000 http://corporate.sky.com/about_sky/key_facts_and_figures To put that into perspective the whole SPL TV deal costs 0.24% of Sky's total revenue. Their subscriber base is bigger than Scotland and Northern Ireland put together. That's how important SPL led subscriptions are to sky's business. Rangers fans are basically chucking pebbles at a Rhinocerous. If they do it very, very well then their target might actually notice that somebody is trying to piss them off but that's about it.

Victoria Wine along with Haddows, Wine Rack, Peter Dominic etc were owned by "The Threshers Group" which went into administrations in 2009

He actually said precisely that in the post match interview on Saturday Which I thought was a bit strange as they don't know what they're going to get yet.

Do you think he meant "complicit" as opposed to "compliant"

My Uncle hasn't been to Easter Road since the 1970s and prefers Rugby Could you sort him out with a ticket?

You don't understand how the parties can be fighting and yet courting at the same time You sir are clearly lucky enough to have never sat through a screwball Romantic Comedy.

After reporting in the previous accounts that there was an ongoing HMRC investigation. Hearts got hit with a £1m bill last year, It triggered a few late salary runs, You may have read about them. It appears that Hearts may have been briefly paddling in the same pool that Rangers were swimming in for a decade.

According to Transfer Markt the Contract Expiry dates are as follows Contracts which Expire 2012 Scott Gallacher, Goalkeeper(TW), 22 Years Kyle Bartley, Defence(IV), 20 Years Sasa Papac, Defence(LV), 32 Years Gordon Dick, Midfield(ZM), 19 Years Andrew Mitchell, Midfield(ZM), 19 Years Sone Aluko, Midfield(RM), 23 Years Salim Kerkar, Midfield(LM), 24 Years David Healy, Striker(MS), 32 Years Andy Little, Striker(MS), 22 Years Contracts which Expire 2013 Neil Alexander, Goalkeeper(TW), 33 Years Kirk Broadfoot, Defence(RV), 27 Years Lee McCulloch, Midfield(DM), 33 Years Maurice Edu, Midfield(ZM), 25 Years Kyle Lafferty, Striker(LA), 24 Years Kane Hemmings, Striker(MS), 20 Years Contracts which Expire 2014 Dorin Goian, Defence(IV), 31 Years Carlos Bocanegra, Defence(IV), 32 Years Matt McKay, Midfield(ZM), 29 Years Alejandro Bedoya, Midfield(OM), 24 Years Contracts which Expire 2015 Ross Perry, Defence(IV), 22 Years Jamie Ness, Midfield(ZM), 21 Years Steven Naismith, Striker(RA), 25 Years Contracts which Expire 2016 Lee Wallace, Defence(LV), 24 Years Steven Whittaker, Defence(RV), 27 Years Steven Davis, Midfield(ZM) , 27 Years Contract that Expire 2017 Allan McGregor, Goalkeeper(TW), 30 Years If people can repost this crossing off the players as they leave then that would probable help us all keep track

Depends whether they've got any ambition left to make an impact in Europe. Their rhetoric has been full of hyperbole along the lines of "More than a club" & Global Support". If they really want hooped shirts on racks next to Chelsea and Real Madrid ones in downtown Saigon or Dallas then they're going to have to keep spending the big money required to make them competitive against big European clubs Otherwise They currently outgun the oppositions Wage bills by about 5 to 1. If they' put their global ambitions aside the celtic board can easily afford to give a lot more of supporters money to shareholders and less to players and their agents with only a small increase risk of not winning the league. It may be more effective to field a young, relatively cheap team playing in front of a busy Parkhead than a highly paid team in front of a packed Parkhead.

I'd say that it's not a question of deferring responsibility to McCoist. McCoist is the person to whom the responsibility falls to make the detailed choice of which players to lose and which to retain. McCoist may wish to trim the attacking players more deeply than the Defensive Players or vice versa. He may have sufficient faith in whoever their reserve goalie is to put McGregor near the top of the list of luxuries to be foregone. Overall he'll probably have a choice between a significantly weakened first Eleven with no cover or a massively weakened first eleven with some cover. All these choices are football choices and they should really fall to McCoist. The Administrators should just decide how much to cut, McCoist should decide how to do it. As A hearts supporter I'm more familiar than most with footballing decisions being trumped by business considerations and it' a bit annoying but if McCoist doesn't act soon then the administrators will have to step in and impose the decision on him by counting down the payroll in salary order until they've sacked £1m worth regardless of what kind of tactical mess that puts him in

There's a big difference between the cases. Celtic Football Club, for all it's flaws hasn't been lecturing people on sexual morality for a 958 years. If there's one good thing that's come out of the systematic child rape carried out within the Catholic Church it's the fact that less and less people take seriously it's public pronouncements on what consenting adults should be allowed to do with each other. The supposed moral authority of men like Keith O'Brien is now in the gutter when he makes pronouncements like this weekend's one. To revel in that loss of authourity would be wrong given how it came about but none the less that loss is surely something to be welcomed (except by bigots).

The obvious thing to do is to for the SPL to charge Rangers newco an entry feee to get back in. I'd suggest £5.5m/year over the next 8 years which distributed equall would give each team an extra half million pound of income.

Or suggests that your grandfather's numeracy was sufficiently limited to prevent him from being able to count that high.

Highbury was listed and they worked round that. The real reason they can't really sell the stadium to build houses is because it's in Govan

It's the Ride of the Valkyries. The shield maiden in question were astride winged steeds. Also the Wagner wrote it in 9/8 time so even on foot it would be more of a Waltz

Noun: tarrier (plural tarriers) A layabout or loiterer; Someone who tarries. (slang, derogatory, UK, ethnic slur) A Roman Catholic of Northern Ireland or Scotland http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/tarrier Personally I'd always thought it was a synonym for "tink". I've learnt something today

Our 1992 semi final defeat was frustrating at the time I now realise it cost us a historic double

It's like being a "celebrity" or being posh If you have to tell others that you're "the people" then you're clearly just "some people"

Nimmo-Smith is an old etonian so might be too posh for rugby

Likewise I wasn't saying it was implausible that they had taken some extra security just that it's plausible that they didn't. This whole story is full of smoke and mirrors and anybody who tells you that they know for sure precisely what's going on is probably best ignored. One of the unknowns is that we don't know how much of a discout ticketus were recieving on these tickets and so we don't know what the odds were for this punt.

That's the kind of detail that has stopped me from living in Monte Carlo

It seems plausible to me. They're financed by venture capitalists gambling with other peoples money looking for big gains. Recent experience tells us that even people in traditional banking will make overly risky bets under those circumstances. The real security they have is that if they've done this kind of deal with several clubs then they should still see most of their money back if one of the deals goes bad. They haven't bet the whole farm on Rangers.

A little bit of research on Ticketus They are primarilly backed by Octopus Investments an investment group with about £2bn of funds under management about £230 through Venture Capital Trusts. I found the following summary of their operation as one of the types of low risk operation that an Octopus Secure VCT would invest your money into EXAMPLE COMPANY – TICKETUS THE BUSINESS The Ticketus business model is based on purchasing an allocation of tickets for an event, up to two years in advance. (An example of this will be season tickets for English Premiership Football Clubs.) Event organisers receive a discounted price versus face value for their tickets in return for an immediate level of ticket sales. Ticketus is then able to sell the tickets on to the general public at face value, to mitigate the potential distribution risk. The event organisers will distribute this portion of tickets first through their normal distribution channels, which allows Ticketus to recover its original investment, plus a margin. Get investment advice now or call us on 0800 678 5929 PROTECTION Ticketus only buys tickets for well established, long running events that regularly sell out. It only buys a portion of the tickets available, and ensures its tickets are sold ahead of other stocks available. By buying in bulk and in advance, Ticketus is able to purchase at a discount to the price at which it intends to sell the tickets. LIQUIDITY In order to provide investors with a clear exit route, the Octopus VCT Directors intend to seek shareholder approval to wind up the Octopus VCT and return capital to shareholders after the end of the five year holding period. Octopus expects that this approval will take place at the AGM scheduled to be held in August 2015. This will allow investors to release capital, or perhaps re-invest into a new VCT and receive another tranche of 30% income tax relief (assuming that the appropriate VCT legislation is still in force in 2015). TARGETED MINIMUM RETURN Over the life of the investment, this product is designed to deliver a minimum effective tax free return of 50%, after all fees and charges. This is calculated as 100p invested less the 30p income tax relief (which provides an effective net investment cost of 70p) with a targeted minimum return to investors of 105p. This equates to an annualised tax free return of 7.85% (equivalent to a return of 13.08% per annum for a 40% taxpayer). Octopus will not receive their AMC until this has been achieved. OCTOPUS INVESTMENT TEAM With a total of 120 staff including a team of over 30 investment professionals, Octopus has over £230 million invested in 17 VCTs under Octopus management. The text seems originates from the brochure they released in late 2009, They've doubled in size since then http://www.cfgwealthmanagement.co.uk/files/pdf_09/Octopus%20Secure%20VCT%20Brochure.pdf You've probably already seen the statement they released last week http://www.octopusinvestments.com/press/news.html?newsId=363 It looks like they're saying that Rangers don't owe them money so they're not fighting for a place in the queue with all the other creditors. What they do own however is the first x thousand season tickets sold this summer, next summer and maybe a few subsequent summers This would make their investment safe as long as Rangers season ticket sales next season don't drop below the number that Ticketus bought. The obvious question is whether the "Rangers FC" season tickets that Ticketus own would be valid for "Glasgow Rangers FC" next season. It appears that if all the rangers season ticket holders didn't renew and instead switched to Pay as you go then they could effectively help the club bump Ticketus for several million pound. Were I in charge at Ibrox I'd offer a "club membership" deal where you sign up to be direct debited on a game by game basis and that activates your membership card for that game.

If I were a construction magnate I'd build Hearts a new Stadium If I were an Aberdeen supporting Michelin starred restauranteur I'd make sure the pies at Pittodrie were the best in the world If I were a Motherwell supporting professor of genetics I'd try and engineer a grass that would last the Fir Park winter If I were a Ranger supporting career criminal I'd do what Craig Whyte is doing now

Is that the stories concerning hamsters, duct tape, Filipino hotel cleaners and an awful lot of blancmange?