I've only ever had one replica shirt with a player name on it, and it is Robertson 26

The streak is broken 😔

Some overdue good news for beleaguered Liverpool fans: I can't watch the game today

Really enjoying this. Both speakers are extremely good. I had no idea about the Labour Party history of Mosley

I'm pretty sympathetic to this argument, and have even made it before. Hannah Spencer's claim though is that "they don’t properly know what it’s like; how it feels in your bones". I'm sceptical it's necessary to have direct experience of hardship to sympathise and respond, but even so...

"politicians are quite inaccurate estimators of people’s preferences. They make large errors and even regularly misperceive what a majority of the voters wants. Politicians are hardly better at estimating public preferences than ordinary citizens". www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10....

Narrative violation: xGOT of the penalty was 0.76. In other words, the placement was not much better or worse than the average penalty. Certainly a good save.

Worst thing is that the Liverpool players looked like football was fun rather than a slog for half an hour, and it was so refreshing and I don't know when it will happen again.

Maybe I've been reading too much about myopic retrospection lately, but talking myself into the view that the smart tactical move is to let prices rise now, keep your fiscal powder dry, and save any cut for the lead up to the election. We're too far away from the election just now.

Some numbers I continue to be proud of: - Our global health grants have saved over 100k lives - Our farm animal welfare work has improved conditions for 3B+ animals - We supported late-stage trials for the R21 malaria vaccine, now being rolled out to millions of kids globally

Coefficient Giving recently passed $5 billion in total grants directed since we started in 2014. A few things about what that number actually represents 🧵

Yeah, very strong "sorry I got caught" energy. And it's not just Greenwood. That Marseille team also fielded Elye Wahi.

David squared fast becoming essential listening. Particularly loved @dmk1793.bsky.social's line on the Revolutionary Communist Party/Spiked crowd: "It's not just that they don't care about a good outcome, they want to get there by a bad process" (i.e. having a bunch of ill tempered arguments)

terrific read

Really good this on the way Salah is fascinating from an identity perspective. He contains multitudes. But then we all do.

An Evertonian appreciation of the migrant patriotism of Klopp and Salah capx.co/what-klopp-a...

Winning games is overrated. Ask Portugal 2016

I'll do another one about how I feel as an Aberdonian when Calvin Ramsay leaves, but something tells me you won't be so interested in that one...

As @aveek18.bsky.social is too modest to plug this, I’m doing it for him. This is excellent. 🙏 open.substack.com/pub/aveekbha...

Seems right "The socialism I believe in is everyone working for each other"

What I’m trying to say here is that Mohamed Salah is the greatest footballer ‘like me’. …representation is inherently subjective, and a brown guy with a beard will do for me. (totally get the reference to Mishra on the Russo-Japanese war — also thinking of Kip in The English Patient novel too)

This felt a little awkward to write, but I started writing about Mohamed Salah and I wondered whether anyone has noticed he might be the greatest *brown* footballer of all time. And how I don't know if that's the right category, but it's strangely meaningful to me...

the table usually lies

Next up: interwar converts to and from Communism

I really enjoyed returning to Past Present Future to talk about "political conversions" - starting with my favourite topic: interwar socialists who eventually embraced fascism

It's still common for people to assume that more activities needing a "human touch" - care, "hand holding" - is not vulnerable to AI. So teachers, doctors, care workers have some moat. It's plausible, but certainly not guaranteed.

I don't have a strong view on additional North Sea licences, but as a person from Aberdeen, I feel a bit sickened by the political pandering offering false hope to the region's economy. I worry that when politicians say they'll get drilling again, people hear we're going back to the good days.

Don't want to be too harsh about any MP defending aid, but this seems like a classic case of substituting polling for a substantive argument. Why would the general public have any sense of the value for money of different aid interventions?! www.politicshome.com/opinion/arti...

+1

So great that @dmk1793.bsky.social is on his way to being a PPF regular, always learn a lot from these.

Yes I think! Maybe self-serving as an example think tanker, but Westminster think tanks are much smaller and lower capacity than I expect many people imagine. And the Greens especially poorly served relative to their potential influence.

After Mo Salah joined Liverpool, anti Muslim prejudice declined in the area www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

Messing about with the AI, making a little personality quiz about which football team I should support. I ask what it says about me that it says I have "Arsenal energy", but I actually support Liverpool.

Me on Salah. www.theanfieldwrap.com/2026/03/youl...

This is my favourite, I think

Half of German voters in a survey were apparently unable to place Die Linke on a left-right spectrum.

What lessons should government learn from the cost-of-living shock that followed the Russian invasion of Ukraine for how to support households in the face of the current energy price spike? open.substack.com/pub/rodhick/...

Apparently this was Keir Starmer's prioritisation of his goals in government (top priority at the top). From @peterhyman.bsky.social's account of their early strategy meetings.

The UK's politics around meat sometimes gets silly, but so much more mature than the US (see also: Ben Carson hiding his vegetarianism). I mean, we have a pescatarian PM right now, and I don't think anybody's made an issue of it. Nor did it really seem to be a big issue with Corbyn.

I'm enough of a hypocritical football fan that I will be happy if this happens to benefit my team, but 6th place shouldn't get you CL, come on what a stupid system.

Not meaning to dunk on Arun here, but I do feel like something has gone wrong if you're a Liverpool fan - ever, but especially in 2026 - and jaded. The whole point of us is that we're meant to be delusionally optimistic! In part, because something miraculous happens every other year!

Liverpool are odds on to make top five.

Not sure why people are so surprised at a team that put in a huge physical effort two and a half days ago and then lost their two attacking focal points looking leggy and disjointed

Seems unduly uncharitable. Even if I don't agree with the government's broader approach on immigration, it's not good for student migration and asylum to get mixed up. Around 1 in 8 asylum claims are from people who entered on student visas (in part because of the lack of alternative routes).

It's a good tweet, simple but profound.

Brownburgh is fun to say in a Scottish accent

I think one of the most important questions on the future of AI is how far people accept it or even prefer it for emotional labour. Quite plausible LLMs are too obsequious to be therapeutic, but also plausible people choose them anyway because they are validating

Tonight at Queen Mary! We'll be launching the brilliant @morganj0nes.bsky.social's new book on the campaign for a second referendum after 2016, with a great line-up of speakers. There are still a few tickets available, so do join us at 18:30! www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/no-second-...

Don't know if this is one of those things everyone already knew, but it surprised me: the strongest case for the jury trial seems to be as a sort of civic education for jurors

I feel like @aveek18.bsky.social has written this just for my benefit to help prepare me for jury service aveekbhattacharya.substack.com/p/jury-trial...