PO Box 306, Glasgow, G21 2AE, Scotland
Dear NTV,
The following is a letter I have sent for publication in the Celtic View. I would be grateful if you too would consider publishing it in your next issue.
CELTIC FC & NIKE
As the 2004/05 Scottish Premier League season draws to a close so too does Celtic Football Club's long association with kit suppliers Umbro in favour of a lucrative new five year deal with Nike worth a minimum of £25m to the Celtic PLC.
With the first designs of the new strips about to be made public it seems pertinent to ask if Celtic supporters are entirely comfortable with this relationship?? The reason I ask is that for many years now the Nike Corporation has stood accused of exploiting workers in the poorest parts of Asia in an effort to maximise profits.
Of course many of you will say that Umbro were no less unscrupulous and whilst this may be true it is Nike who are consistently shown to be the main transgressors in this abhorrent practise. These allegations include the use of child labour, excessive shift lengths, the denial of the right to join a free & independent Trade Union, physical abuse & serial breaches of Health and Safety procedures where such procedures exist to name but a few. Of course if workers attempted to protest or organise themselves Nike simply up sticks and relocate to 'greener pastures'.
It is also widely accepted that in Nike plants in Indonesia, China and Vietnam workers were paid less than $2 a day, not even sufficient to provide their dependants with an adequate meal.
Given the origins of our club, which are very much in our minds at the moment with the recent publication of the Brother Walfrid commemorative brochure, I would suggest that this deal between Celtic PLC and Nike is in direct conflict with the history and traditions of the club.
In order to address the issue I call on the board, through the pages of its official weekly magazine the Celtic View, to make a full public statement which is both honest and can be corroborated, to assure supporters that there were no abuses of employees' rights, that all garments were produced ethically and that throughout the manufacturing process of Celtic/Nike products there was full compliance by the Nike Corporation with all Fair Trade agreements. Only when this statement is forthcoming will concerned Celtic Supporters be able to purchase Celtic/Nike merchandise with a clear conscience.
It would be an act of gross betrayal to the memory of Brother Walfrid if one hundred and seventeen years after the club was founded to provide funds for the poor children's dinner table in the East End of Glasgow that Celtic Football Club, through its association with Nike were to profit from the poor peoples dinner tables of the Far East at our expense.
Let us, the wider Celtic family, ensure that doesn't happen.
Yours in Celtic,
Packie
Baker.
(Season Book holder)
divine inspiration
Dear NTV,
With regard to our new manager I'd just like to point out that apart from being busy trying to buy some new players, it appears he has been putting pen to paper an adding some weighty tomes to the world of books as well.
If you're trying to build a squad then I suppose there's no better example than the man who gelled together the original First Eleven (plus a sub).
'The injury news on Thomas is that he is very doubtful.'
Yours etc.
REV. D.
WAYNE
Alabama
red issue
Dear NTV,
I'm an Aberdeen fan and have been following the Dons for over 20 years, ever since I was earning enough to be able to go and watch them. Whenever I go to away games I buy a fanzine, mainly to read their thoughts on football, and the Dons in particular. When I was at Celtic Park for the game last May I bought issue 133 of your magazine and was interested to read your report on the game at Parkhead on 16th April.
It stated that the Dons hadn't beaten Rangers since 1998 - which is true - but was wrong in saying that we haven't taken a point off them since the year 2000. Aberdeen drew 0:0 with them at the start of season 2004-05 and also got a 1:1 draw with them the season before when they equalised with 3 minutes to go. There was also a 2:2 draw in November 2002.
After Aberdeen beat Celtic 3:2 in October your correspondent said that we went to Ibrox four days later and 'leaked five goals without so much as an attack on the Rangers net.' What really happened was that Aberdeen went 2:0 down early in the second half, threw caution to the wind, went to a 2-4-4 formation and were picked off by the Hun forwards. And no, it wasn't because Jimmy Calderwood is the Aberdeen manager, despite what the conspiracy theorists say.
As for the 'Aberdeen only try against Rangers' shit, it was Richard Guff who came out with that one at the end of a game one afternoon. The Huns jumped on the bandwagon and used it as an excuse whenever Aberdeen didn't lose against them. All the while we were losing 5, 6 and 7:0 against Celtic. I know... I sat through them all.
Let me assure you - and any Rangers fans who may be reading this - that when we play Rangers they're up for games against Aberdeen, and so are their supporters. Ask any Rangers fan and they'll tell you that after Celtic the game they want to win is against the Dons, and our results against them since 1998 bear this out. They try their damndest to beat Aberdeen, yet Dundee United have knocked them out of the Scottish Cup and won at Ibrox at least twice in the last couple of seasons. I don't hear them moaning about that.
Reading between the lines, I get the impression that there's a feeling that Aberdeen only now try against Celtic because we've won twice at Parkhead in the last year. Try to bear in mind that when we won 2:1 in April 2004 it was our first win in Glasgow for 11 years!
By the way, when we did beat Rangers in 1998 it effectively stopped them from making it 10 in a row - so we'll take the credit for that, thank you, not you!!
DEREK THE
RED
Cardenden
no one likes them
Dear NTV,
I spotted this edition of the cartoon strip The Premiershits in Private Eye.
Maybe one of your readers could suggest where they got the idea for calling the Ku Klux Klan team the 'Mississippi Rangers'?
KEVIN BURNS
Edinburgh