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Especially if they expand the Euros to 32 teams which is likely from 2028… that’s 58% of all UEFA members! The Nations League could be a brilliant way to revitalise the international calendar. Were you at the England games for the goals out of curiosity? That makes a big difference for me...

Major tournament football is top tier for me. I’ve not celebrated many goals as I did for Watkins and Plamer’s goals last summer.

Too many meaningless, mismatched games like tonight. At its best, there isn’t anything better than competitive international football, these games are a chore.

I made that mistake, but will contact the bank if it doesn’t come through after the transaction is completed.

Which quite a lot considering their economy is bigger, is growing more and their tax burden is around 10-11% lower than ours.

I’ve not had the cashback yet, but my transaction for the Hull tickets were debited by ‘CCFC’ so should be within scope.

If you click expand the data markers (see attached), it gives you GDP expenditure, even the link you supplied had Japan on 41.66% rather than 57% as you posted - which I assumed was a typo because it was same as Germany’s.

How sustainable do you think the post-WW2 settlement is in the UK, Japan, Germany, France, Canada and Italy? All low growth economies with worsening public services. My answer is consistent across the board: no. All 6 of those countries have population time bombs and have identical issues with...

No, I said the civil service increased its headcount by 20% from 400-ish thousand to 550-ish and productivity hasn’t increased so clearly there is some wastage there. So the number I’m referencing is closer to 110-120k and nowhere near the 1.3m you reference. Hypothetically, if that many roles...

The drive in the evening is pleasant, lots of nice views if I recall correctly. Last season, it took over an hour to get out of the car park, I missed a junction that added 20-30m to my journey and had to stop off on the side of the road to have a sleep because of the tiredness. Horrible...

Agreed. I know a few lads who were well up for Hull away before it got moved to midweek. I won’t be driving for this one, it’s far too dangerous driving 3+ hours after a night game and had a v bad experience of it last season to be honest.

It probably needs to drop to around 35-39% which is closer to Japan and The USA than someone like Germany or France. What is the purpose of this question exactly? As a sovereign currency issuer, if your borrowing panics markets, our currency gets devalued by them. So we can’t get away with...

Is this more important to front line public services to you? You keep parroting that we’ve had austerity and ‘deep cuts’. The reality is that government spending steadily increased during this supposed era of austerity. The share of GDP that is government spending has gone up to 45% and this is...

Labour has identified 10k jobs at NHS England that can be scrapped. The civil service has increased by 21% and productivity has flatlined which probably means there’s either a lot of duplication of work or the roles just aren't productive. OFGEM, for example, has increased its headcount 163%...

Sometimes, you need the shock therapy. We’re arguably already in a death spiral of raising taxes continually to fund a public sector that is no longer delivering basic services to a good standard. The tax burden is being shifted onto the productive sectors of the economy (private sector & wealth...

Agreed to an extent. Yet, this seems like more of a moral panic over the ‘incels’, ‘the manosphere’ and ‘that Andrew Tate shite’ because it’s an easy target. What’s more uncomfortable for people to deal with, in the context of ‘online radicalisation’, is Islamist propaganda. Especially since...

Is this supposed to be an insult? If the state was the best vehicle to achieve ‘redistribution of wealth’ or prosperity, the Cold War would’ve been the Soviet Union. At what point is government spending too much? 45% of the economy? 50-60%?

That’s not the important issue. 45% of our economy is government spending and this isn’t a pathway to prosperity. The state is just too overstretched and needs to fundamentally be cut down to size. We just cannot afford to keep raising taxes to pay for a public sector that delivers less and less.

The civil service has a lot to answer for. Headcount has swelled by 21% since COVID, median salary has also increased by 27% in the same period (2019-2024) and to top it off, productivity is still below pre-pandemic levels. So why should taxpayers tolerate an expanding bureaucracy that delivers...

Well, when we played them after Robins got sacked it was a game we could’ve won so that perception still lingers. They’re over performing based on the ‘underlying data’ but they have that star quality to win games. Finally, their home form hasn’t been amazing in 2025 (currently 11th in home...