This year’s Orwell Prize for best blog has been awarded to Rangers Tax-Case, a blog aiming to ‘provide the details of what Rangers FC have done, why it was illegal, and what the implications are for one of the largest football clubs in Britain.’
The blog rose to prominence as the famous club became embroiled in financial scandal, all angles of which were investigated by the blog.
The judging panel said: “The 2012 Blog Prize showed that not only could blogs comment on current events, they could drive stories forward. Rangers Tax-Case takes what might be a dry topic – the tax affairs of a sports team – and shows how a striving for transitory success has severely distorted sporting, legal and ethical boundaries.
“Displaying focused contempt for those who evade difficult truths, and beating almost every Scottish football journalist to the real story – Rangers Tax-Case shows how expertise and incisive writing can expose the hypocrisies the powerful use to protect themselves from the consequences of their actions. It is a worthy winner which not only proves that independent blogging is as healthy as it ever was, but also offers a mirror in which our times are reflected.”
Comments
comments
"and beating almost every Scottish football journalist to the real story"
Don't think the "almost" was necessary. The other question to this is why this blog beat every Scottish football journalist to the story? As if we don't know.
comments
"At this moment the entire group of people broke into a deep, slow, rhythmic chant of 'R-T-C! .... R-T-C! .... R-T-C!' - over and over again, very slowly, with a long pause between the first 'R' and the 'T' then the 'C' - a heavy murmurous sound, somehow curiously savage, in the background of which one seemed to hear the stamps of naked feet and the throbbing of tom-toms. For perhaps as much as thirty seconds they kept it up. It was a refrain that was often heard in moments of overwhelming emotion. Partly it was a sort of hymn to the wisdom and majesty of RTC, but still more it was an act of self-hypnosis, a deliberate drowning of consciousness by means of rhythmic noise."
I know that Eric Blair will forgive me for replacing some letters in this extract from Big Brother because I do so to right a terrible wrong in the great man's name. This brave and brilliant writer must be spinning in his grave after Rangers Tax Case won the Orwell prize for blogging.
What were the judges thinking of? Their deliberation has made a mockery of everything he stood for. They really should be hanging their heads in shame.
Proclaiming itself to be exposing a craven media in Scotland, the blog is no more than a thinly-veiled haven for self-righteous football bigots.
It has an almost Stalinist refusal to allow anyone who fails to toe its all pervasive anti-Rangers sectarian party line being heard. Posts are swiftly removed which dare to challenge this bigoted orthodoxy. Not only that, posters are then banned and comments removed in a shameful rewriting of history. That's not free speech. That's sinister. That's Big Brother. And precisely what Mr Blair exposed so brilliantly in 1984, of course.
The failure to preserve free speech will be this blog's lasting legacy. Along with the cult of the personality that's been nurtured by RTC to sycophantic posters hanging on his every word. Far from democratising information distribution, it does the opposite.
The judges owe Mr Blair a massive apology.
comments
Unfortunately,Alexm`s post shows exactly why the RTC blog was both required and timely. The actuality is that RTC allows ,indeed encourages ,those who have an alternative view point to that of the originator. No sectarianism,no bigotry and a very successful overview of a story ignored,for the most part, by the MSM. Congratulations to the award panel and the recipient
Write Your Comment