It was endlessly explained to these people that relentlessly cutting the deficit could lead to higher debt because it damaged growth, this is either incredibly disingenuous or ignorant

Tuchel should bring on 6 defenders, just for a bit

Can't understate how important this would be The decision to cut international aid did not improve our safety, but it has cost thousands of lives and threatened the health and wellbeing of many more

I imagine the pro-manufacturing arguments still revolve around Kaldors laws (economies of scale, generating demand for other manufactured goods, absorbing resources from less productive sectors) but there are probably a lot of questions over how this applies to modern UK manufacturing

Wonder what post-globalisation is going to mean for the multi-national firms that play a pretty major role in the UK economy

You have to assume Burnham doesn't quite fully appreciate 1) the spending cuts already baked in for the next few years and 2) the negative impact this approach at the Treasury would have on the fiscal rules to the point it would mean even more severe cuts

I mean it's possible that future historians will consider leaving a country slightly poorer and more divided a good thing

Some politicians are responsible for falling living standards though...

16 year old me trying to explain why the guy who just won the head boy election is actually obnoxious

I do think a lot of out problems can be traced back to a weird shared belief in political circles that the hallmark of a good politician is whether they're able to do just push ahead with doing bad things

We need a follow up on how England was undone by just sitting at the back, and you know who else sits? Lanyard wearing office workers

Another legacy of this government, obsessing so much over creating a bureaucratic nightmare for migrants, it was willing to leave British children stranded abroad...

Sort of jealous of England fans getting to complain about parking the bus after scoring a goal, rather than the Steve Clarke special of parking the bus after conceding one

Poor predictable England, always parking the bus after going ahead...

I will never understand why solid England squads always sit back after going ahead

Certain businesses and trade unions are going to find out they have been worrying about the wrong net-zero very quickly

Feel like politicians need to be given training to navigate football rivalry issues, it should be much easier to have a bit of fun with what is ultimately a bit of banter between historically rival teams

Wanted to make a joke about this, but then I thought about the damage done over the past 2 years, the rise of open hostilities against minorities, the rise in unemployment and continued decline of living standards, and the oncoming spending cuts and tax rises and just sighed instead

My ideal Chancellor would of course be 3 precogs who dwell in a hidden chamber beneath the Treasury

The headline distorts the message here a little, but I do think the starting point for a welfare system that supports people in employment involves making it more generous to better stimulate demand, and easing work conditionality so people can find jobs/training that is suited to them

The little exasperated shrug from Digne before Porro scores, as if it wasn't his job to track him...

Not sure this is the most helpful framing Sounds like there were serious issues with the procurement system, and lack of preparation, which raises questions over the consequences of driving our public services to be as "efficient" as possible www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026...

I do get politicians in charge have to be more upbeat about things but it's so jarring to act as if everything is going swimmingly when unemployment is up, living standards are falling and growth is underperforming the austerity years, and the global economy is in an even more precarious position

This is an awful shift in the rhetoric surrounding immigration, but I also think it's very revealing of how little Badenoch and her Party really understands how an economy works when they dismiss those on low wages or even out of work as not making a "significant contribution"

Got to hand it to him, he has managed to make full use of the office to get some cracking football experiences

Tories on 8% can't be right. Has anyone told the people of Manchester they're not doing net-zero nonsense anymore?

If I were an England supporting sports journalist, I would simply not needlessly stir things up between England's manager and England's star player

Fair play to the right, they never miss a chance to call for public sector cuts Market meltdown caused by the de-regulated financial sector, live within your means Liz Truss mini budget catastrophe, live within your means Guy with a bin on his head runs as novelty candidate...you guessed it

What a novel way to ensure the demand for articles condemning excessive welfare spending in the UK never dries up

Starmer after reading the Burnham letter promising to engage with MPs and select committees

Deeply warped to believe you are putting British citizens first by tearing apart their families

Good comedy has to be cutting edge, challenge boundaries, expose the farcical in the mundane, you know things like jokes about auto-correct saying "duck" or going "did you just assume its gender" to someone who used a pronoun or something

This is a bit like the J Jonah Jameson podcast rants in the spiderman game

Starting a bit funny, then getting quite tedious, and possibly ending very funny means we can finally deduce that Count Binface is in fact Stewart Lee

Setting a standard fee for university courses and then cutting support to the courses with relatively low marginal costs feels like a very poor way to help STEM subjects

VAR should check every goal in case someone was lightly nudged 42 minutes ago and they can rule it out

Need more of the great business minds in government

Wonder how long before we get a Washington based, pro-free market think tank arguing that FIFA should implement a modern indulgence system, allowing teams to pay their way out of in-game sanctions at a price agreed upon by their opponents, thus allowing market forces to help resolve any disputes

The man has never found a fence that he was not willing to sit on

Mexico trying the same thing 14,328 times in the space of 24 minutes despite it not even getting close is such a strange strategy to me

Scotland really missed a trick not drafting in a certain famous American eligible to play via his Scottish mother...

If Fifa are going to start bending the rules, they should just go for it and see what they can get away with, like give the US coach one of those little electric cars that carry the ball and let him just run over De Bruynes feet all game

This is actually so that Mexican themed chicken sandwiches can be diverted to branches in the other Home Nations where there is a surge in demand, when the market works it works

Willing to bet the Sunday pub leagues in Paraguay are intense

It's one thing to make Labour electable again, but to also make them unelectable again in just 2 years is an impressive achievement which the MSM just glosses over

At present living standards are expected to be worse at the end of this Parliament than the start, there are 100,000 additional people who are unemployed, and we are about to enter a period of spending cuts across most departments, it's astonishing he doesn't grasp the electoral consequences of this

The England game will play as originally scheduled...

Talk about being thrown a bone...

I know I'm a broken record on this, but consistently referring to it as the "welfare bill" demonstrates such a poor understanding of how important social security is as a fiscal tool to protect basic living standards and stimulate demand in the face of persistent economic shocks

At least if he ever gets asked "would you rather convince everyone you were grossly negligent and comically incompetent or concede your strategy may have had a few flaws" he will be able to give a pretty straightforward answer