👋 @britishacademy.bsky.social is launching a new international policy programme on ‘Humanity, Climate & Nature’. 🎬 We are starting with a call for discussion papers. Proposals are welcome from practitioners, policymakers and researchers from anywhere in the world at any stage of their career

It's time to stop thinking of FIFA as a conventional public global governance organisation, but rather a giant private money-making machine masquerading as one www.theguardian.com/football/202...

FA joins criticism of Fifa plan to sell off World Cup stakes to private investors

The Football Association has joined Uefa in condemning Fifa’s plan to sell off stakes in the World Cup to private investors

theguardian.com

I am not Jesus, though I have the same initials, I am the man who stays home and does the dishes

Secret Drug Addict@scrtdrugaddict.bsky.social · last mo.

Really sad news about Kevin Keegan. He died almost 31 years to the day since his Newcastle team played Rushden & Diamonds pre-season: I remember it being £3.50 to get in, David Ginola, Peter Beardsley, Les Ferdinand, Ruel Fox, Lee Clark all played. Incredible scenes. www.youtube.com/watch?v=HMy1...

Rushden & Diamonds 1995/96 | Newcastle United (H) Pre-Season Friendly

YouTube video by RD mVideos

youtube.com

This is so true: having lived overseas between the tail-end of New Labour and the immediate aftermath of the Brexit vote, the extent of homelesness was by far the most immediate thing that shocked me when I moved home

Luke Tryl@luketryl.bsky.social · last mo.

Seen a few people saying rough sleeping policy isn’t aimed at median public concern. Quite apart from any policy/moral imperative it really is - rough sleeping comes up time again in focus groups as one of the most visible signs of Broken Britain and community decline!

If it’s true that Italy are trying to hire Guardiola as manager, it would be utterly negligent for the FA not to try and nab him, as we will probably discover when they beat us at Wembley in the Euro 28 quarters

An under-acknowledged explanation for rapid Prime Ministerial turnover is the disturbing role of the media-industrial complex itself: never-ending soap opera reportage reaches its apex on days like this, before the clamour for a new series of Love Island in Suits starts all over again tomorrow

It’s still pretty amazing that neither of these two finalists could beat Cape Verde in 90 minutes 🇨🇻

This half time nonsense has to be the final straw — literally nobody outside the US thinks sport should be adulterated with anything that isn’t the sport itself

We need a public enquiry into the consequences of Brexit modelled on our vibrant never-ending inquest into England's repeated failures at the business end of international football tournaments

Three games in a row where an exhausted England midfield needed to keep the ball to release pressure, and the one player in the squad whose entire game is about retention in tight spaces and efficient recycling sees every defender in the squad play in midfield instead of him #freekobbie

This World Cup has been great, in spite of FIFA and the hosts doing everything they can to make the football incidental to the commercial grift. It’s high time fans and football associations stood up and said no to this nonsense though. www.bbc.co.uk/sport/footba...

World Cup 2026: Half-time for final to last up to 25 minutes

The half-time break in Sunday's World Cup final is expected to last between 20 and 25 minutes.

bbc.co.uk

Banter scenario: Count Binface narrowly wins in Clacton, Burnham enjoys a big poll bounce during August (especially if England do the unthinkable this week) and then calls a snap election in September while Farage is no longer an MP

Tom Roberts@tpgroberts.bsky.social · last mo.

Fundamentally, this is not a number that indicates Nigel Farage is likely to be Prime Minister.

The sheer quality of imported Chinese and Korean packet noodles you can get in Britain these days is astonishing: who doesn't want "volcano carbonara" flavour!

England will be sloppy when you insist on playing an exhausted central midfielder with a virus, a centre-half at right-back, an unfit right-back in midfield, a 10 on the left-wing while leaving your best ball-retaining midfielder on the bench for the whole tournament and your best right-back at home

The Guardian@theguardian.com · last mo.

Jude Bellingham unimpressed after Tuchel criticises ‘lucky’ England’s performance

Farage looking pretty establishmenty vs the man of the people with a bin on his head

Farage could easily lose this byelection: voters don't like being taken for granted, particularly by politicians with questionable financials who are transparently doing it to distract attention

So the people of Clacton are now the arbiters of parliamentary standards in the UK: it's a novel constitutional approach at least

There's something really odd about politicians - especially Labour ones - whose own social mobility was drastically enhanced by a university education not wanting others to have the same experience (unless it's their own kids, of course)

Tom Roberts@tpgroberts.bsky.social · 2mo ago

The government has once more declared war on the labour market. The beatings will continue until morale improves. www.gov.uk/government/n...

“Small producers are just trapped on this island and we’re all fighting each other for the same market share" Brexit in a nutshell and why free-trade agreements with countries 7000 miles away cannot make up for being locked out of the huge market on the doorstep www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

‘A total, utter nightmare’: small businesses on Brexit, 10 years on

Cheesemakers, farmers, exporters and wine merchants say red tape, lack of vision and rising costs mean they have stopped trading, sold up or retired early

theguardian.com

Starting to think that maybe you do need to take your most creative players to a World Cup after all

"Ten years ago I decided to burn my house down because it needed the roof doing and despite living in the embers since I was absolutely right do it"

The Guardian@theguardian.com · 2mo ago

I stand by what I said 10 years ago. We were right to leave the European Union | Larry Elliott

The most striking thing about the extent to which British voters see Brexit as "a disaster" is that, for two decades now, they've been fed a relentless diet of anti-EU propaganda with few people or organisations with a serious platform making a pro-European case ecfr.eu/publication/...

Brexit isn’t working: British voters are ready for a European future – European Council on Foreign Relations

Ten years on from the referendum, the British electorate has moved on from its old divisions and—in a world of crisis—is embracing an ambitious move back toward

ecfr.eu

The notion that 20m+ Britons who either voted remain or didn't get to vote (plus the 14m who are still too young to vote) should be held hostage by a decision taken by a shrinking minority of 10m increasingly dead people will soon become untenable www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

Three in five gen Z Britons would like new vote to rejoin EU, poll finds

Exclusive: Data reveals 60% of 18 to 28-year-olds would vote to rejoin bloc if given the opportunity

theguardian.com

Why do journalists only talk about the "cost" of government doing things, rather than calculating and explaining the size of the corresponding benefit, the value of the asset/capital acquired on the national balance sheet, and the ongoing positive multipliers? www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

What would ‘change’ look like if Andy Burnham becomes prime minister?

From public ownership, to devolution and the cost of living, the policies of the potential Labour leadership challenger will face intense scrutiny

theguardian.com

A decade after the referendum and Britain is still litigating a basic fact of trade policy that experts warned about repeatedly in 2016: the benefits of European single market membership do not arise spontaneously and if you leave you will lose them and be poorer www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

Rejoining customs union would not fix damage caused by Brexit, research finds

Exclusive: Economists find Brexit caused 12% depression in UK exports, most of which is due to leaving single market

theguardian.com

Surely we’ve seen enough evidence now to know that a stuttered run up on a penalty should be consigned to oblivion?

This is precisely why we should enfranchise everyone from the moment they’re born so that young people are not held hostage by the prejudices of old people determining the shape of a country they don’t have as long left to live in

Sam Freedman@samfr.bsky.social · 3mo ago

Don't think people realise quite how deeply split by age current voting intention is. This is the latest YouGov for under-50s: Green: 26% Lab: 18% Reform: 14% Tories: 12% LD: 11% And over 50s: Reform: 36% Tory: 22% Lab: 16% LD: 12% Greens: 9%

The hand-wringing about the pensions triple lock ignores the fact that young people today stand to benefit most from the compounding effect of a growing state pension The paradox is that they'll still ultimately be denied this by a retirement age that keeps increasing until just before they die

Of all the slightly odd England tournament squads I've seen in my 40-odd years on planet earth, this is unquestionably the oddest