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Scotch drinkers
at 18:31 28 Mar 2024

Yeah, from the description on their website it'll taste as much like bourbon as you'll get from a Scottish distillery.
[Post edited 28 Mar 18:32]
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Rail strikes announced for day of the narwich game
at 11:40 28 Mar 2024

Presumably the rostered driver of the 11.06 is an ASLEF member and agreed to do that shift as overtime, but now won't be.

(or more likely, the impact of the overtime ban is that Greater Anglia doesn't have sufficient drivers available to fulfil its full schedule, so has chosen to run a reduced timetable with the drivers it does have available - ie. either non-union drivers or drivers scheduled to work that day not as overtime)
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Not a single river healthy
at 08:52 28 Mar 2024

I have an ice cream machine, so I'm entirely unbeholden to the Big Whippy Industrial Complex.
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Not a single river healthy
at 21:40 27 Mar 2024

The thing with public ownership is that although an industry might be run well or run badly, depending on who is in charge, at least I know its main purpose is ultimately the public good. If I don't like how it's being run, at least there's someone I can hold accountable.

If it's the private sector, its main purpose is to be profitable. Providing the public with a good service is more or less incidental to that purpose and the people running it are more or less beyond accountability.

That's usually fine when it's something unimportant or something where I can meaningfully choose between competitors. If I think Carte D'Or's product has deteriorated, I can go buy a different brand of ice cream. But I can't consumer choice my way into better water infrastructure.
[Post edited 27 Mar 21:46]
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Not a single river healthy
at 19:29 27 Mar 2024

What people forget about British Leyland was that it was failing private firm long before it was a failing nationalised industry.

When it was nationalised in 1975, it was because private sector managers had already made a pig's ear of it. It was also the most under-capitalised mass production car firm in the world (the likes of Ford, VW, Fiat, Renault were investing 5/10 times as much per worker). They gave it a whole 2 years of modest investment under the Ryder Plan, then abandoned that for hiring a hatchet man as chairman in 1977, so he could rationalise the workforce, close plants and generally fatten the company up for privatisation. Chuck in the Thatcher recession and it never stood a chance.

Yet it goes down in national mythology as having failed because Tony Benn personally designed the cars and Red Robbo lead a million strikes or other such fantasies.
[Post edited 27 Mar 19:36]
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Tories taking on the big issues again
at 19:15 27 Mar 2024

It's one of the things that made the whole "levelling up" thing so specious. It imagined great swathes of Northern England suffering from long-term economic decline and that a Tory government was going to swoop in and supercharge the local economy with lots of high quality new jobs.

But no one really knows how to do that kind of sub-regional development and a lot of the people voting for it weren't actually unemployed workers in need of good work, but home-owning retirees who just wanted the local shops to be a bit nicer.
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Tories taking on the big issues again
at 18:32 27 Mar 2024

It is a bit of an odd one, especially for a Conservative, who you would presume is a free marketeer by ideology. What's the government got to do with locating Fish and Chip Shops?

Does fit with a theory that I've had for a while now, that actually at least some of the "decline" that people discern in their local area is often just the changing economics/logistics of retail shopping.
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Southgate on borrowed time?
at 15:18 25 Mar 2024

Most national teams managed by people who'd are B-lister club coaches.

The last World Cup final was contested by teams managed by Lionel Scaloni and Didier Deschamps, neither of whom would be at the top of any elite team's management recruitment strategy. Deschamps was fired from all three of his club jobs, Scaloni got his gig after a stint as Argentina U20 coach.

I don't think you can make a straightforward case that another manager would have definitely negotiated those hurdles. Historically, England managers haven't been good enough to get to those sorts of situations. The charge against Southgate seems to be that out-performing every predecessor bar one doesn't count. Is the argument that this group of players is uniquely brilliant? Or that no competent England coach has been appointed in the last half century?
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Well done Paul Cook!
at 13:01 25 Mar 2024

Blackpool's promotion season too.
Lincoln City also managed the play-offs with huge player turnover one year we were in that league.
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Well done Paul Cook!
at 11:29 25 Mar 2024

Not sure I buy the idea that Woolfenden was super raw under Cook. He looked a million dollars under McKenna inside about 2 weeks.
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Sunak gone by the end of next week?
at 23:03 24 Mar 2024

I wonder if the Tories have considered at any point whether their inevitable 2024 electoral wipeout is a bandaid they'd be better off just pulling off now rather than meandering along with this Zombie government until the Autumn?
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Ten thousand for the women's team today
at 14:46 24 Mar 2024

I wonder if long term they might end up getting a mini-stadium at Playford Road? The pitches there have got to be better than the AGL.
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Southgate on borrowed time?
at 14:37 24 Mar 2024

Ok, but if the bar is best player in the World (or Europe) in their position, having 2 is pretty brilliant, isn't?

Even if we're discounting Rice and Stones (who are probably decent candidates for best player in Europe for their position), is there an international team with obvious claim to have 3 or more?

Think you're right that Saka's not up there with Mbappe, Vini Jr or Salah, although he's absolutely ahead of Kingsley Coman, who despite having 5 years and 23 more caps on Saka, trails him quite substantially on goals and assists already.
[Post edited 24 Mar 14:42]
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Southgate on borrowed time?
at 11:37 24 Mar 2024

Depends where you want to put the bar really. If John Stones, easily one of the best players in Man City's run to win the Champions League, isn't a truly elite centre back, who is?

(And if the bar is higher than that, are there many international teams with more than 2 players above it?)
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And another thing....
at 11:22 24 Mar 2024

Isn't that the issue though? English football churns out dozens of good wide forwards and attacking midfielders - Bellingham, Saka, Foden, Grealish, Maddison would all be a good shout for a place in most international teams. Then you've got up and coming players like Palmer, Eze, Gordon of roughly the same profile, plus Rashford and Sterling as experienced international players in the same position with 37 international goals between the two of them. The U21s are full of this profile of player too (Elliott, McAtee, Madueke, Philogene, could add Hutchinson too).

Cupboard is pretty bare for deeper-lying midfielders. Ideally to compliment Rice you'd want an excellent defensive midfielder who also builds play from deep. That isn't any of the guys mentioned above.
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Southgate on borrowed time?
at 11:09 24 Mar 2024

Don't think there's much worth in worrying about poor performances in friendlies, especially when they're three quarters of the way through a long season that will end with a long international tournament. There's zero chance that Southgate's on borrowed time or significantly in danger of losing his job before the Euros.

Southgate's tournament record is very good. It's better than any predecessors other than Ramsey. Nature of international football is that it inevitably comes down to tight knockout games that can go either way, you're not going to hire a manager who magically makes that not the case.

International managers are almost always B-listers anyway (Roberto Martinez was a club manager of no significant repute, he's now had a go at not one, but two, top ten international teams). Would be surprised if sacking him resulted in a really transformative appointment, particularly when you're just embedding the new person in the same FA. The role of England manager is really to be a figurehead for a system these days.

Style of play's hardly electrifying but there's an argument that's just the nature of international teams and the kind of risk-averse football that tends to win you tournaments. Don't think the finalists in the last three tournaments England have contested have been especially expansive teams.

In terms of personnel selection. Think with international teams you often end up fussing about the supporting cast but whether England win Euro 2024 will mainly be about getting the best out of their truly elite players (Bellingham, Kane, Rice, Stones, Saka, maybe Foden), more than who fills the other slots. My main criticism of Southgate is that he's often not pro-active enough in finding solutions to actual problems (of which England really have three - LB, CB, CM). There's an opportunity cost for persisting with players whose club form and participation is inconsistent, it prevents you from seeking out new ways of organising things that might suit other players who could grow into their roles. But, honestly, I don't see that deciding 15 months ago that you move from Henderson/Phillips to Gallagher/Ward-Prowse is a decision that's fundamental to your chances.
[Post edited 24 Mar 11:23]
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In footballing terms £105m isn't huge.
at 11:18 23 Mar 2024

FFP in the Championship is related to revenue not cash reserves. If it weren't, there are some very rich people who own Championship football clubs would be spending massively heavier than they currently are (Stoke for one).

External investment is effectively capped at £13m per season (ie. That's the operating loss you are permitted, less is you're borrowing the money to cover it).
[Post edited 23 Mar 15:38]
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In footballing terms £105m isn't huge.
at 09:13 23 Mar 2024

It's more or less irrelevant to wages and fees, isn't it?

As I understand it the cap on investment on the playing side has always been the EFL's financial rules rather than available cash flow from the original investors. If we wanted to spend additional wages on that, we could only do it at a rate of £13m a year.

Seems to be that this additional capital is targeted at areas that are uncapped in the EFL rules (academy and infrastructure spending).
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Quote of the day to unpick
at 06:29 23 Mar 2024

If you want a book about national identity formation on this island, Linda Colley, Britons: Forging the Nation, 1707-1837 is a really good one. You might also like Hobsbawm and Ranger, The Invention of Tradition, which is all about how the Victorians went about constructing a lot of our eternal-seeming national traditions.
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England new kit has enraged Joey Barton and the gammons…
at 10:30 22 Mar 2024

IMO If we're talking national symbolism most of the change has gone the other way over the past 40-50 years ago, towards more hyper-sensitivity around people's sense of national pride, not less.

Take Remembrance Sunday, for instance. Go back to the 1990s and there's no "official remembrance fixture" for the football, no poppies sewn into shirts, no expectation that everyone wear a poppy on every live TV programme or every public event, no questions directed towards those not wearing them or wearing white ones. It was a question of people quietly remembering in the manner they deemed appropriate and a discrete event on the Sunday. That's all a post-2000 invention and the sensitivities around it have dialled up not down.

You could do similar for other bits of national symbolism (the England flag itself! Had next to zero presence at England games until Euro '96).

I see people display national flags in their gardens now, which for much of the 20th Century would have been considered a bit of a gauche Americanisation (whose benefit are you displaying it for? Everyone who sees it already knows they're in England and most of them are English).

That's before we get into people's willingness to take offence on behalf of the monarchy (who are more than capable of looking after themselves).

Personally, I think countries that are at ease with themselves shouldn't need to spend quite so much time fretting over whether anyone is disrespecting their national symbols or sense of national identity. It is a sign of strength, comfort and security to just shrug it off.
[Post edited 22 Mar 10:31]
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