"It's been happening for 50 years. The big decisions have always gone against my club and in favour of Rangers. Nothing has changed." - Billy McNeill, Ex-Celtic manager.

"Everyone wants people to get ordered off, everybody wants penalties against us, everybody wants everything against us. I don’t know what road we are going down in that respect. We seem to be reaching a ridiculous stage where refereeing decisions actually become far more important than the game itself." - Walter Smith, manager of Glasgow Rangers.

"Mumble, mumble..take it on the chin" - Tony Mowbray, manager of Celtic (ok this one is made up.. possibly).

Every now and again in Scottish football the question of match official bias towards Rangers explodes onto the back pages, flares for a brief moment then gradually sinks down to dampened embers largely due to a concentrated effort on behalf of the Scottish football establishment to apply a large measure of cold water. On every occasion when the controversy has reared its head, invariably after a sustained period of highly dubious decisions aiding the Forces of Darkness, a counter attack is led by the nation's press aided, of course, by a vanguard of retired players in the pay of the same media and retired referees, some of whom were involved in equally controversial pro-Rangers decisions during their careers. The sports hacks from the Fourth Estate (as it fondly likes to call itself) are certainly not all rabid cheerleaders for the Dark Side, although some certainly are, however to make it in the mainstream media a certain amount of personal compromise must be adopted to enable career progression.

The situation is best summed up by the media watch project, Medialens. Referring to the ability of journalists to present officially promoted fiction as fact, the website FAQ states: "we believe that the all-too-human tendency to self-deception accounts for their conviction that they are honest purveyors of uncompromised truth. We all have a tendency to believe what best suits our purpose; highly paid, highly privileged editors and journalists are no exception. In any case, professionals whose attitudes and opinions most closely serve the needs of corporate power, whether in media institutions or elsewhere, are more likely to be filtered through to positions of authority within such institutions." In other words those who toe the line are far more likely to climb up the greasy pole of career progression. During controversies mainstream media journalists invariably adopt a neutrality facade in order to present the corporate line as their own objective opinion. Medialens rightly regards such 'neutrality' as a sham: "we believe that media 'neutrality' is a deception that often serves to hide systematic pro-corporate bias. 'Neutrality' most often involves 'impartially' reporting dominant establishment views, while ignoring or marginalising non-establishment views."