izzymuzzet

Our temperate climate could make Northern Europe a very attractive proposition - for capital, labour and finance - over the next 50 years. That will create political challenges as well as opportunities of course.

Haha, thanks. My first degree was history but I spent three years mostly inebriated, so trying to make up for lost time by reading all the books I should have back then.

If you take a longer view of history we might one day look back on the Cold War era as an anomaly in relations between the US and Europe. From the mid 1800s until WW1 the American story was one of territorial expansion and, eventually economic domination. The US expanded southwards, westwards and into the Pacific. At the same time they expressed opposition to European colonialism in the Western hemisphere, which prompted the European powers to embark on imperialist expansion into Africa and Asia. They were dragged into WW1 late and during the 1920s US politics was torn between increased isolationism and propping up ailing European economies. The Wall Street Crash essentially made their choice for them and they withdrew until Pearl Harbour. 1945-1991 Europe was considered a key battleground in the Cold War against the Soviets, with a huge amount of economic and military resources poured into the region. Over the last 30 years or so we've seen the gradual decline in US interest in Europe and over the last decade an economic bifurcation as the US economy steams ahead while Europe (including the UK) stutters. Put in this context Trump appears not as an aberration but as a continuation of an earlier US approach to international relations, combining elements of early 20th century isolationism with the territorial ambitions (e.g. Greenland) of the 19th century.

Vanguard LifeStrategy funds are easy to use and reasonably priced. You choose a fund that suits the level of risk you want to take. The higher the level of risk you're willing to take on, the higher the percentage of stocks vs bonds. So the LifeStrategy 100% equity is generally considered the highest level of risk as it's 100% stocks, while the LifeStrategy 20% equity fund is the lowest risk as its' 80% bonds. Vanguard have increased their platform fee recently so it's worth checking if other platforms offer LifeStrategy funds. I know Hargreaves Lansdown do as the LifeStrategy 100% equity fund makes up a good chunk of my portfolio. Another option would be the roboinvestors like MoneyBox, Wealthify etc. However I've not used any of them for investing so unsure what the service is like.

I enjoyed Ian from the Fosse Way's exasperated rant on the latest WYS. Nice to hear a bit of emotion on what can often be a very dry podcast. Very little point in having Stowell on if he's just going to be a company man.

Good point. In fairness to Ruud with the injury situation his options have been limited.

All reminds me of the period before Pearson came back for his second spell. Players with big reputations on big contracts not performing. Cliques in the dressing room. Increasingly frustrated supporters. Question is whether Ruud can be the man to do a proper reset like Nige did in 2012-13, and whether Top/Rudkin/Whelan will allow him to.

Dawid Malan was quite a useful player to hold together a T20 innings. Not the quickest starter but he could steady the ship when a couple of wickets fell. Brook could be that player but he still lacks a bit of experience to know when to slow things down and when to ramp back up again. The rest of the top order all seem to want to hit a six every ball.

Looks like a recruitment consultant.

Matt Heath is the best of the Piper stand-ins. Knowledgeable and reasonably articulate. Stowell is bland, won't say anything critical about the club. Fryatt is abysmal. How can someone use so many words while saying so little.

Listened to this for the first time in years recently. It's aged really well. I think Weak Become Heroes is one of the best ever songs about going out and being young, it gets me every time.

The UK has been a net importer of raw food goods (i.e. animals and stuff grown in the ground) since the mid 1800s. Even during WW2 we imported more food than we made in the UK. You could build on half the farms in the UK and we'd be able to feed the population just fine (obviously there are other reasons why you might want to preserve domestic agricultural production).

Martin Jol was very good at Spurs for a couple of seasons before it went pear shaped. He then went to Fulham and did a decent job.

Jakub Faes Vesty Okoli Woyo Skipp Winks Kristiansen Bilal Facundo Daka Horrible, but at least it's horrible in a different way.

Yeah, I get those concerns. Critics of index funds have been saying similar things for 20-30 years though, during which a boring world tracker has returned average 10% a year. Some of the American tech stocks in particular look overpriced so can see a short term dip. But long term I'm not too worried.

Passive is king. I like to let time and compounding do the work.

With the exception of the FT, most reporting on this has been pathetic. Nick Robinson on Today was describing it as a “market meltdown” earlier this week.

UK 10 year gilt yields pretty much back to where they were at the start of the year. What a fun bit of pointless, panicked discourse that was.

One of the major problems with our transfer business over the last 5 years or so has been not shifting out of favour players for decent money. Cannon clearly has some qualities but has hardly pulled up trees here or on loan. £13m seems like a good bit of business. Need to do the same with the likes of Hamza, Faes, Thomas, Daka etc now and in the summer. A few million profit on each all helps with PSR (or whatever it's being replaced with).

We're far too open and concede too many chances. Soumare and Winks don't offer enough protection. Skipp is a very limited player but maybe you just ask him to sit in front of the defence and run around to at least put some pressure on their attackers in that area. Defensively there are limited options to change things - I'd bring Okoli back in but he wasn't even on the bench on Wednesday so that seems unlikely. I'd give Daka a go for this and ask him to bust a gut pressing for 60 minutes before getting Vardy on. Acknowledging that we're going to sacrifice a bit of creativity, but hoping we can be a bit more solid, I'd go with: Jakub Justin Vesty Faes Kristiansen Soumare Skipps Winks Buonanotte Daka Bilal

Not having this. We spent £80m in the summer. £45m of that was on Skipp, Ayew and Okoli. The issue is not that we haven't spent any money in recent years, it's that we've spent quite a lot of money incredibly poorly with no coherant recruitment strategy.

I've not mentioned Trump at all, not sure why you are. I'm suggesting people shouldn't overreact. Obviously it's not ideal that rates on the 10 year bond have risen, because that increases the cost of government borrowing. But the more important measure in terms of stability is how far they are above the base rate. After the Truss mini budget the yield was 2.25% above the base rate. Markets are moving but they're not melting like they were in September 2022.

Dollar is also at a two year high against the Euro. Any dollar movement is more likely to be about FX traders pricing in higher projected US interest rates than anything the UK government has done. Think everyone needs to calm down a little bit and stop overeacting to gilt markets doing gilt market things.

The Tories were still blaming Labour for the Global Financial Crisis well over a decade after it happened, with some success. Labour will continue to blame Liz Truss for higher inflation and interest rates as long as they can, and everytime she pops up to argue about it the electorate is reminded how much they dislike her. Then they remember how much they dislike the Conservative Party. It might not be entirely fair, but that's politics.

For most young, wealthy, non-British men, living in or around London is much more appealing than living in e.g. Lancashire or the North East. So Fulham, Brentford, Palace etc have a significant advantage over Burnley, Middlesbrough, Sunderland etc.