To avoid going over too much old ground and simply repeating myself, I've shortened this response and left out quite a lot.
The original came from Anders when he was looking at the figures...
This is from Anders' own website:-
"Or perhaps we should turn it around the other way and look at it from the fans’ point of view because this outflow is no less than 70% of all United’s matchday revenues. 70 pence from every pound spent by supporters on match tickets, food and drink, programmes, even car parking, and 70 pence from every pound spent on corporate boxes and executive facilities will go straight out of the door in dividends, fees and interest."
(Notice the "perhaps we should turn it around the other way" bit - why turn it around the other way? Because it looks worse that way and it is bound to infuriate the matchgoers when you make it appeal to their sense of injustice like that).
I'm afraid that this is where you trip yourself up time and again with a lack of diligence and meticulosity. Your original complaint was about this:
"70p out of every pound spent by matchgoers goes directly to paying the debts"
In that form, and if MUST has said it exactly like that (it wasn't sourced), it's wrong and misleading.
However, you have then tried to pin that to Andersred, and that's where you have made your mistake. Have you even read the post where the quote that you presented came from? If you have, then you can't have understood it. If you haven't, then that's just sloppy.
That post, entitled,
"Half a billion £s....." is an analysis of the
"the detailed covenants contained in the Red Football bond prospectus which was published on 11th January 2010". The main thrust of the analysis is an attempt to discover
"how the family [a]re going to deal with the rest of the PIKs". Simply reading it should discourage anyone who isn't dogmatic about it being simple
"bullshit propaganda", particularly as most people couldn't hope to offer something as careful and of such depth (hardly the hallmark of propaganda), but it should also become clear quite quickly exactly what it intends to show, and even more crucially, what it doesn't.
Andersred reveals various
"'covenants' Red Football Ltd has to adhere to” in the small print of the bond prospectus that also allows certain dividends to be taken which could be used to reduce the size of the PIK's, because, as most people agree, £70m isn't enough in either the long or short term. At some point, they have to be managed in one way or another, and it looks increasingly unlikely that the Glazers will use their own money. So far so good, I hope.
So, what about that quote? Well, as is fairly clear simply by reading the analysis, Andersred shows that
"the Glazers could have paid themselves 50% of Consolidated Net Income (about £22.6m) in dividends" and then uses the example of
"Net Income for the year to September 2009" to give an idea of what that would mean. He then concludes, having sourced every figure that he uses, that
"[a]dding management fees, expenses and the interest on the bonds, every year 79% of the operating profits of the club will be taken out."
At best, you could argue that he should have used
"could" instead of
"will" — which, by the way, he does a little earlier — but as is clear for anyone who reads the analysis, it isn't a psychic evaluation of what the Glazers absolutely will do, it's an analysis of what they can and possibly will on the basis that they need to reduce the size of the PIK's. Again, context matters, because it's trivially easy to cherry pick something from an entire post and to make it look like someone is saying the opposite of what they actually are.
After that part comes the quote that you have given. As should now be obvious, and in the context of the entire analysis, that quote is simply one way of showing how much money can be taken from the club for non-football debt related reasons. That you take issue with
"turn[ing] [something] around the other way", as an attempt to highlight what it would mean is another example of you looking for things that aren't there. I use analogies and "in other words" type devices all of the time. If you see that as a nefarious plot, that's your own problem. But for most people, it's simply a way of helping others to understand the magnitude of what they are saying and of clarifying difficult issues.
For most football fans, much of that analysis will be difficult to comprehend, whereas they can understand things in terms of the money that fans pay for tickets, or total match-day revenues, etc. It's really no different than suggesting that Berbatov (or any other player) cost x percentage of our total match-day revenue for one particular year.
No you won't. You proved that when you refused to accept my evidence of a lie because it took 24 hours (according to you) for me to find it.
This is incorrect. At no point did I "refuse to accept [your] evidence of a lie because it took 24 hours...for [you] to find it." That I didn't agree that it was a lie only suggests that I don't accept your own version of reality, and it is perhaps suggestive that I try to use language more carefully. I certainly don't apologize for that.
I did, however, agree that it was misleading and inaccurate, which it was. That you believe differently isn't necessarily evidence that I won't accept my own mistakes.
You'll need to support that claim...
Sure. You originally said that the
"anti-Glazer propaganda didn't work" and that the
"general Manchester United support rejected MUST and the RKs". I counted that you can't know that and also said that MUST and the RK's have never asked for a boycott. I've placed this all in one quote so that it is easier to follow.
Then, you said this:
The problem is, no one actually knows who the Red Knights are so when someone like Keith Harris tells people to boycott, we get people saying "He's not a Red Knight and doesn't speak for them" despite the fact that he certainly does appear to speak for them.
[...]
MUST have never explicitly used the word boycott (they've skirted around the periphery though) - they have at least had enough sense to realise that that would be a very extreme stance to take...
But, why not just explicitly admit that neither has asked for a boycott and leave it at that?
The reason that I know that you already know this, unless you have selective amnesia, is because in reply to Ralphie telling you that neither MUST or the RK's have asked for a boycott on the 7th August, which is just 13 days ago (
here), you said:
What was the intention then? Just to highlight the problems? OK. Point made. We know about all that stuff now.
Now what?
So, you know it, but in exactly the same post, you tried to do exactly the same as you did to me:
The point was to put pressure on the Glazers' business model so that the RKs could come in and buy the club. The only way to put pressure on the business model was to withhold funds from the club i.e. to boycott the club (not just STs but other merchandise) whether the word was used or not, the inference was always there when after months of anti-Glazer propaganda, fans were basically encouraged to "do what they felt best".
There was no other way of achieving a takeover unless you think waving green & gold scarves would have scared them away or something.
So, despite being corrected, you keep pushing the line that,
"well, alright, they haven't actually asked for a boycott, but, you know, wink, wink, nudge, nudge, that's what they really meant."
You also said this on 6th August:
None of this changes the fact that the 100,000 members were required to give them some clout when they call for a boycott.
fredthered replied that:
MUST have not called for a boycott, and neither have the RKs. They have said its purely up to each individual to make their own choice. Keith Harris has mentioned a boycott, but he's not one of the RKs.
You didn't reply specifically to this, but you did post very soon after, even referencing fredthered, so it is inconceivable that you hadn't seen his post.
You also said this to peterstorey just yesterday:
The idea behind this propaganda is to make people feel less inclined to spend their hard-earned money on United merchandise and tickets.
The idea is to get people to boycott.
So, given all of this, you have clearly known for some considerable time that neither MUST or the Red Knights have called for a boycott, but for some reason you can't seem to separate the perfectly reasonable question of what would or might have happened if the Red Knights had been in a position to make a bid, from accusations and insinuations that what they really wanted was a boycott.
This is not intellectually honest. In any conversation, it's important to be absolutely clear about the point that you are making and to be honest about what you can and cannot support with evidence.
The reason that I often focus on what probably appears to be irrelevant minutiae is because I've found that, otherwise, many people will say exactly the same things that you have corrected them on just days earlier, only they won't be quite so explicit and will instead turn it in to a
"connect the dots, wink, wink, nudge, nudge" type scenario, in order to avoid the obvious conclusion that they can't and won't accept that they're wrong.
