Gloucester Saint

Reform aren’t racist, homophobic bigots and nothing remotely like the old National Front and BNP. Honest. And if you believe that after watching this appalling clip, you’ll believe anything https://www.channel4.com/news/exclusive-undercover-inside-reforms-campaign-evidence-of-homophobia-and-canvassers-racism

Good summary on last night’s poor head to head - another 0-0 and when the incumbent shouts and interrupts every 30 seconds, that’s all it can ever be https://inews.co.uk/opinion/bbc-tv-debate-sunak-last-shot-fluffed-election-3134101 This article sums up why the Tories are where they are, it’s the equivalent over-60s Saints fans sitting at SMS and critiquing whatever Russell Martin and the last few managers have done because it’s not what Lawrie would have done. Lawrie was successful in his context 1970s and 1980s, Thatcher was successful in her 1980s context. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/jun/27/rishi-sunak-tories-election-conservatives-david-cameron But contexts and the needs of different eras change and evolve, in the same way that Keynes wasn’t a permanent solution by the 1970s, so the free market and Monetarism isn't either. Reform UK is akin to creating another SFC in political terms to recreate that era, including a lot of the myths as well as the genuine history. Until the party settles the battles from the late 1980s, especially Europe, because Brexit clearly isn’t sufficient to do that, and finds the exit door for all the B String Australian and US Republican strategists killing their finances for ineffective ‘culture war wedge’ issues, then it has no chance of competing for power again with a fresh vision any time for the foreseeable. Which is not a good thing for democracy.

It still will be even if the Spurs-Saints game is moved, Millwall v the Skates has a long history of trouble eg Waterloo station when it kicked off between their fans late 90s/early 00s. IIRC the skates were in a pub next to the station called the Windmill. Just like the Thomas Crown Affair theme tune, the Millwall had the Windmill in their minds and getting at the skates in it. Quite a battle by all accounts and the pub was totalled - was Dec 2001 http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/static/in_depth/programmes/2002/hooligans/diary/portsmouth.stm Edit - the poor old Windmill, more trouble 10 or so years on https://www.standard.co.uk/hp/front/pub-wrecked-as-football-fans-clash-6335058.html No wonder that fixture has been played behind closed doors at times!

The FA need to take action here. Instruct Southgate to take the handbrake off tactically or depart his post. Contract nearly up so less costly to pay off. Newspapers need to really back up the TV pundits. Palmer and Mainoo must start next game even if it’s done over the manager’s head which I’d fully support. Watkins for Kane as well. Pace. Pace. Pace. Southgate you boring prick. Don’t agree with booing the players this time, needs to be a full scale ‘Southgate out’ from the fans. Lucky to win the group, very lucky.

Palmer immediately takes people on and two Slovenian defenders are drawn out to create space for Rice’s shot. This isn’t difficult to work out. The players are going to have hold a meeting if they want to play more progressive stuff, be a bit more direct, and challenge the manager a bit tactically, especially if the bigger names break out. Shows you how bang average the English and Scotland players really are without the overseas players to prop them up.

Excellent article here from the FT summarising the journey from 2019 to now, and why London and the SE is deserting them. Essentially two reasons, firstly the anti-business, anti-universities and anti-London/SE rhetoric and policies and secondly Brexit and the continuing pursuit of retaining the Red Wall gains which flies in the face of the more educated, internationalist, London, South and SE. The 2019 coalition of voters was always a tough gig to keep intact as they want opposites in social, cultural and economic ideologies. Not an accident that the Lib Dem’s are also causing the Tories a lot of problems in these areas and in the SW where the Tories left the fishing industry high and dry, and didn’t follow through on replacements for Interreg in Cornwall. And Reform are eating significantly in the much older, less formally educated groups they’ve been targeting with culture war crap they learned parrot fashion from Trump and Bannon. Trouble is, Farage communicates that stuff far more effectively than Bad Enough, Braverman and Donelan, even if Reform makes Truss and Kwarteng look economically sound by comparison: https://www.ft.com/content/4c7594b9-22f3-4a31-8168-4b2622e2d685

It’s Dune in June

At £10-15m there would no point selling given the quality of player you lose but at £20-25m it starts creating FFP headroom to buy. I believe KWP’s buyback clause is £30m which Spurs were reluctant to pay last summer but somewhere between £20-25m is more doable and Ange likes him. The FFP workaround might be for Spurs to chip a little bit off Rodon’s fee, as we are clearly keen on him, and that overall envelope would probably cover the RWB from AZ. I agree though that FFP and especially PSR is idiotic and needs to go.

The gambling on the GE date in advance scandal keeps growing. Clearly it’s not the Nick Mason who played the drums for Pink Floyd! The Tories since 2019 have had a monumental self-destruct button - even if Saints had been bought by Milan Mandaric not Dragan, Harry returning and Westwood as Director of Football (shudder - and super strength air freshener for the exec corridor) could they have fucked up an organisation by design that severely. They were a disaster from 2016 really but Corbyn masked it for them. https://news.sky.com/story/top-conservative-official-takes-leave-of-absence-amid-new-election-betting-allegations-13157405

If you type Jack Clarke and Southampton there’s pages of it, saying for £15m and Wolves also interested, but the player would apparently prefer Saints. Clearly there’s been interest there from the club for a while. May be that Callum O’Hare, another player strongly-linked, is key here as out of contract, but more clubs in the equation both domestically (Villa, Wolves, Leeds, Burnley) and overseas (La Liga and Bundesliga). Saints rumoured to be front of the queue there as well, but can’t see us signing both unless I’m wrong. I like Alcaraz but the £30m swap deal with Rodon sounds too good to be true and it’s from Nixon. If it was, then the CB area could be ticked off, although Jan only has 12 months on his contract so maybe not, but he seems a lot happier. Swap deals were more of a 1990s/early 2000s thing, the ones for Saints which stick out are Bridge/Le Saux (which would have been OK if Lowe had bought a younger LB in 2004) and Davies/Beattie (the club did extremely well out of that one). Maybe with the FFP biting they are coming back but with the huge wage and complex packages these days they still seem unlikely. Ghoddos and the guy at Fulham seem sensible if they come off. KWP contract is vital - probably a low release (£20-25m) if he did sign another but a bit of protection if we went straight down. Edit - Gustavo Hamer at Sheff Utd, 27 tomorrow though and the Blades have their parachute payments. Straight out of a decent PL campaign, apparently their POTS, but would potentially cost more than Clarke and doesn’t suit the SR sell on model. O’Hare 26 but no fee. Clarke is younger than both (25?).

Agent talk - on big wages and Roma trying to shift him and Kumbulla https://romapress.net/roma-struggling-to-find-suitors-for-rick-karsdorp-marash-kumbulla/ 29, 12 months left on his deal. I wouldn’t, unless it was a free transfer with Roma paying 50% of the first year’s wages. Mourinho had a public go at him which escalated nastily after a poor performance https://www.givemesport.com/what-happened-to-as-romas-rick-karsdorp-after-jose-mourinho-bust-up/ Risky one, if true, would need to look into his injury record. Better going forward than defensively, might work if Martin plays a back five most games to offer width assuming the club don’t want KWP to walk away in 2025 on a free, or as competition.

It’s what I’ve been saying all along - VAR is not the issue whatsoever when used by professional people, I would halt the promotion of all English referees for the moment into the PL and Champ until we can cut the PGMOL tarnish out of the sport. Replace with overseas referees for the next few years to replace until we can get a non-PGMOL domestic cohort in the pipeline and pay a bit over the top to do it. PGMOL is rotten, I think there’s a lot more to come out about them. I didn’t pay as much attention to the PL last season but some of the decisions did seem to be very questionable and worthy of further investigation by the authorities. Now PGMOL and one of their puppets has been exposed on the global stage. No hiding place any longer. Overseas players has revolutionised the PL and Champ, time to open competition globally for officials to raise standards.

There wasn’t anywhere near as much knowledge about what the PO had covered up - the Second Sight report came out July 2013 and was smothered until 2014/15 https://www.postofficescandal.uk/post/the-second-sight-interim-report/ Jo Swinson and Paul Scully on the other hand had full access to it and much more awareness. Not saying Davey couldn’t have probed further but a lot of the evidence wasn’t in plain sight in the same way.

Finally, Southgate takes off the poor man’s Yan Valery. Playing him in midfield was just fucking bizarre and the sort of shit Pellegrino did, and Burley on a bad day. Speaking of which, Saints under Pellegrino is exactly how England are playing. Saka will get a bollocking for running at opponents, and Foden fined for taking a good shot from range hitting the post. Get some more pace on - Eze and Cole Palmer - up with Kane. Go 433. Saka is the only one gambling. Or Watkins if he really wants 442. Gallagher booked. Shearer is right, Stones needs to break forward with the ball and push the midfield. So fucking deep. Edit: At last! Mix up the play a bit now to get Eze and Watkins in behind.

Going back to austerity, it was a political choice, although it backfired on Osborne, who had his political career terminated by May after it came back to clobber and terminate Cameron’s Premiership like a 🪃 through Brexit. If austerity hadn’t have disproportionately impacted the services used most of all by the bottom 20% of society and policies which hurt them e.g. bedroom tax, the referendum result, whilst not being a massive win for Remain, was likely to be different. So whilst austerity didn’t directly hurt this household, it did choke off growth but we had the economy to weather it in in the long-run. However, what it unleashed afterwards with the referendum and Brexit, a very hard one at that, has had a serious impact on our quality of life and polluted the country, in more ways than one. Losing 4-5% of our economy, and getting worse, HAS had a major and irreparable impact. Politically, it also ushered in a generation of morons such as Boris and Truss who really went to town on destroying the economy and country, the latter making 1975-9 look like a picnic by comparison. Sunak is miles out his depth but he’s not made the severance with that wing by expelling Truss et al and it’s made the damage terminal plus the campaign bloopers. BTW, we’ve got more of it come after July whoever wins, to go with the overall tax take still rising. Back to the election, liking this poll from a Lib Dem perspective. Duck will like it too with Reform predicted to take 5 seats including Richard Holden’s now in Essex. Given his behaviour in nabbing that candidacy, there’s a Reform victory I’ll certainly raise a glass to if it materialises in practice. Still hard to believe Sunak would be overturned in his own seat… https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/rishi-sunak-lose-tory-wipeout-poll-53-mps-b2565451.html

It’ll rise for a hefty % of the population whoever gets in, that’s a fact, even if Sunak pulled off a miracle or Farage the impossible because of fiscal drag over the last few years pulling more people into higher bands especially. And no government with the dreadful state the economy and public finances can afford to raise thresholds for the next 3-4 years at very best. The IFS have been saying this for months.

Latest IPSOS-MRP poll showing similar to others, but Tories up over 100 seats to 117 on this one. Hoping for a bit more than 30-40 seats from a Lib Dem perspective but up from 8 currently would still be a very good outcome. Really need Labour voters to be tactically voting in areas where they can’t win and vice versa. https://www.theguardian.com/politics/article/2024/jun/18/labour-landslide-projected-tory-seats-conservatives-general-election Some interesting micro trends: - Corbyn not making any serious inroads vs Labour in Islington - Farage predicted at present to win Clacton, and Anderson holding Ashfield. Suggesting 3 seats for Reform, and in close contests with the Tories in a few more. Modelling tricky apparently where the Brexit party didn’t stand vs Boris. - Greens doing well in Bristol Central and N Herefordshire but could lose Brighton to Labour - Hunt hanging on as it stands, but Mordaunt, JRM, Keegan and Michael Green/Grant Shapps on their way if this trajectory played out. Sunak ok in his seat on a much reduced majority

Terrible news and thoughts very much with you and your family. Hopefully you made some memories to cherish at Wembley and throughout his life, 19, such a tender age.

As Whitey Grandad commented, who do they believe they are reclaiming the UK (well, England really) from? Clearly going by this, the black, brown, people with disabilities, women, and people with multi-long term conditions (95% of their over-65s base they are eroding from the Tories) covered by the 2010 Equality Act they want to abolish. The IFS estimated it as being erroneous by a margin of tens of billions https://ifs.org.uk/articles/reform-uk-manifesto-reaction Their summary is that there’s some clear sense of purpose but not a huge amount of it is affordable so hence many more savings would be needed and no prospect of the £17bn they want to raise for reducing NHS waiting lists (knowing that Farage wants to replace the NHS really). It concludes by saying there would be a huge cut in the size of the state, bearing in mind the dissatisfaction with austerity laid the ground for Brexit in a lot of areas. And these cuts would be far beyond what Cameron did. Not least given the scale of the tax giveaways which Reform say will cost £70bn but economists estimate at £93bn - bigger than Truss attempted and £23bn would be a huge unfunded gap. If the Tories had a brain, they’d latch onto this as Sunak also opposed Truss’s loony plans, but they are still fixated with Starmer.

The time is gone, the song is over, thought I’d something more to say - is probably what Southgate what will be thinking during the semi-finals. Which is still decent but with this squad of players you want to see them control games more.

Bellingham and Saka excellent, Rice hopefully should be helped by Gallagher being on, TAA awful. Foden hit and miss, Dusan booked for bringing him down. Guehi done well, Stones a bit ropey at times. Serbs have got to go for it now, Kane hits the bar, keeper saved that! What a save. Foden gives it away in a dangerous area yet again, get him subbed.

Mostly impressive from England, Trent a waste of a shirt though. Bellingham on a different planet. Nearly 2-0.

In the normal course if things, it probably would have been but a CBE/MBE/OBE would have left him level with Vennells in effect so a knighthood differentiates and recognises the struggles to fight chronic injustices over a long period whereas Vennells got her gong for doing her job (appallingly as it turned out).

Angus Gunn special - shot was well placed but a keeper at any EFL standard should be getting that around the post. Whoever is Saints keeping scout needs sacking given we’ve also signed Gavin ‘National League’ Bazanu. Good with his feet but can’t catch Covid. Combined £30m nearly just in fees pissed up the wall - Man City laughing.😆

Oh I agree, both on a personal level and also living in the SW (just about) in an area that was remain/leave marginal but where there’s a lot of cynicism about Brexit now. I think what she was trying to do is reassure the ‘Red Wall’ areas that they won’t attempt a Jo Swinney and subvert the referendum outcome, but they are going to find it hard to not make even further spending cuts on top of what is already likely, let alone net investment in public services, without some closer links to the EU to enable economic growth. After all, people tend to vote Labour to invest more in public services, not further cuts.