Today Celtic held their AGM and it wasn’t very amicable as the clubs board seemed to ignore valid pleas from the fans/shareholders.

I admire a passionate bunch of Celtic fans who’ll always make these meetings uneasy for the board as they demand that Celtic are run in a more socially ethical way.

For years, supporters have demanded that the club become a living wage employer.

But yet again Celtic’s board decided to ignore the calls and keep with their minimum wage policy of £7.95 instead of introducing the living wage of £8.25.

It has been mentioned that if Celtic were to introduce the living wage then it could cost the club an extra £2k a week.

For a club the size of Celtic that isn’t a hard target to meet (if that £2k figure is true).

They could raise the price of season tickets by around £3 and that would cover the yearly cost of the rise.

But why should the fans pay the price? They already fork out enough in my opinion.

Last year Chief Executive Peter Lawwell received a £400k bonus on top of his £500k a year wage. That £400k bonus could cover the wage rise of the club’s poorest employees for at least three and a half years. Why he receives such a huge bonus when the club hasn’t moved on in the last few years is beyond me.

You could also find that extra £2k a week if you cut the player budget.

Celtic just signed up Carlton Cole. The former Premier League striker can’t play in Europe at the moment and it’s doubtful Celtic will still be in the Europa League beyond Christmas. They don’t really need Cole to win the Scottish Premiership, so maybe they could have been better served not signing him.

It increasingly looks like Scott Allan was only signed to get one over on Rangers. That seems particularly reckless considering the Blue half of Glasgow aren’t direct rivals at the moment and probably won’t be in the near future.

Then you look at a player like Derk Boerrigter. The pretty Dutchman is paid handsomely to sit on the treatment table and not play due to persistent injuries. I’d argue that those paid £7.95 an hour deserve their wage a lot more than Boerrigter and yet they seem unimportant to the head honchos that run the club.

You then get to the situation that Celtic have a Tory peer in Lord Livingston on their board. The same Lord Livingston voted for a cut in tax credits earlier this year.

In his defence of Livingston, Celtic chairman Ian Bankier stated:

“Our fans come from every quarter of society and share the common bond of supporting the team.”

While this is true and no one is suggesting that Lord Livingston stop supporting the club, his political stance flies in the face of the clubs ethos in which they were formed in 1888.

Celtic were an institution that was embracing of all of society and made serious efforts to help the poor and those that needed their help the most. The funds raised by the club and its founding father Brother Walfrid directly helped the poorest and those deprived in Glasgow’s east end.

Could you see Brother Walfrid sharing a room or a chat with Lord Livingston after that tax credit vote? I doubt it! (Obviously that’s just my opinion).

A special mention should be made regarding the Celtic Foundation as they do follow the values and foundations in which the club was built on.

Now when their is a huge vocal part of your fanbase calling for someones head, then it makes total business sense to rid yourself of the problem. They’d easily sack a manager if he came in for the same amount of criticism. Yet it looks like Lord Livingston will be voted to remain on the board.

That’s the problem here, Celtic’s board don’t really care about the supporters as long as they keep buying enough tickets and merchandise to help promote the bonuses in which the club’s highest earning personnel decide that they have ‘earned’!

Those two particular changes that a vast amount of fans have asked for wouldn’t cost Celtic a huge amount of money but it’s an old ‘Bhoys’ act that runs this club and they only seem to look after their own!

Posted on November 20th, 2015 by scott
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