Cheats ought to never win but often they do...

Playlist
Cloudland Blue Quartet - Starlightnight

A fine morning...



...and a fine afternoon...



In the early evening, having listened back to yesterday's work today, I set about remixing the song "Vendome" for the umpteenth time...

This is definitely the final work, music-wise, on the LP - it is officially finished...

It was supposed to have been done by 30 November 2011...

The writing and recording has now spanned over 18 months - probably the worst 18 months I've experienced, truth be told...

But onwards and upwards...

I also amended the running order to move the opening soundscape to the middle of the album - it will now start with the rather upbeat (for me, anyway) "The Actor takes the Stage"...

Then, footie, with Spain playing in their usual frustrating fashion - like Germany last night, trying to walk the ball into the net - ironically, they almost literally succeeded in doing this with 3 minutes to go and sent Croatia home - Ireland, beaten 2-0 by Italy, also left the building with a disappointing, though expected, nil points...

So, if England make it through tomorrow by gaining at least a draw against one of the two worst ranked teams in the tournament (co-hosts Ukraine, the other was co-host Poland), they will face either Italy or Spain...

In other football news, the inevitable has been confirmed and there is indeed evidence that Glasgow Rangers cheated for over a decade by paying their players more than they declared to the Scottish Football Association...

They did this by using Employee Benefit Trusts (EBTSs) which allowed them to sign players whom, if the going rate of Income Tax and National Insurance had been paid, they would not have been able to afford...

At the time, there was nothing wrong with the use of EBTs - but Rangers' players and agents weren't satisfied with having an offshore tax free fund that they knew could be called upon in an ad hoc fashion - they needed it in writing and it is on this point that the EBTs failed (you can't have a contract in relation to them stipulating certain payments at certain times)...

So Rangers failed on two counts (1) their EBTs were not really EBTs because they had side contracts and so they owed the taxman millions in unpaid tax and NI and (2) they never told the SFA about those contracts, which meant they were paying their players more than they were declaring and so were cheating their competitors...

In other words, while EBTs were fine, their very nature made them hopeless for footballers - all earnings needed to be declared to the SFA - and to declare those EBT "earnings" in a contract (which the SFA would have required had they known about them) rendered them fully taxable...

In this way, Glasgow Rangers cheated every team they played against during that period - including Queen of the South in the 2008 Scottish Cup Final...

Some work on the cover for the new album, then to bed with the final version on the nut-phones...

Highlight of the day : Definitely finishing the album...