Olivia
Online
Kenny
@joebones40
Skiing, bowling, working, sleeping. Don’t mind the odd bet either..........
Dumbarton, Scotland
Joined September 2011
1.2K Following
174 Followers
2.6K Posts
Pinned Tweet
That’ll be me….😛
'He's made it personal.'
CWS General Secretary Dave Ward says the CEO of Royal Mail 'lacks integrity' and has recently lied about not hearing from the union.
@TomSwarbrick1| @DaveWardGS
Bang on the money 👏👏
I’ve followed Scotland since I was 15 years old. I’ve travelled to all three games here in America and, like thousands of other members of the Tartan Army, I’ve lived every kick of the ball. The Tartan Army have put in the performances, brought the creativity and backed the team relentlessly. That’s why this isn’t about two defeats. It’s about recognising a pattern we’ve now seen for far too long.
The biggest question isn’t whether Scotland have reached the knockout stages. It’s whether we actually deserve to.
Against Haiti, yes, we won, but a deflected John McGinn goal was all we had to show for it. This was our chance to announce ourselves back on the World Cup stage. Instead, we laboured, created very little and never really put Haiti under sustained pressure. Winning matters, but performances matter too.
Against Morocco, we once again paid the price for poor defending. We gave ourselves a mountain to climb and although Morocco looked vulnerable in the second half, Scotland never adapted. We remained disjointed, failed to take advantage when the game was there to be rescued and ultimately paid the price.
Then came Brazil.
Nobody expected Scotland to dominate Brazil. But there is a difference between respecting the opposition and fearing them. Scotland looked like a team waiting for something to happen rather than trying to make something happen.
The biggest frustration for me was the lack of adventure. Why wasn’t Ben Gannon-Doak starting? Against the world’s best teams, pace and unpredictability are exactly what you need. Instead, we reverted to caution.
It also felt like our biggest players disappeared. Scott McTominay and John McGinn have carried Scotland for years, but they struggled to influence the biggest games when we needed them most.
And that’s what concerns me.
This feels remarkably similar to Euro 2024. Two years later we’re having exactly the same conversation. The same tactical approach. The same lack of creativity. The same inability to turn possession into genuine chances.
People will point to qualification and say, “We got here.”
They’re right.
But qualification papered over cracks that were already visible.
Even during qualifying there were warning signs. The performances weren’t consistently convincing. We relied on moments rather than sustained quality. Yes, there were outstanding performances, particularly against Denmark, but too often results masked deeper issues.
At major tournaments that simply isn’t enough.
There’s another uncomfortable conversation we have to have.
This is an ageing Scotland squad. We’ve remained heavily reliant on the same core of players for years. These players deserve enormous respect for ending Scotland’s long wait for tournaments, but international football moves quickly.
Every player has an expiry date at the highest level. Some of our core players now look a yard slower against elite opposition, and that matters.
Steve Clarke deserves huge credit for transforming Scotland’s fortunes and leading us back to major tournaments.
But with a new four-year contract comes a new challenge.
Can he evolve?
Can he trust younger players sooner?
Can he refresh a squad that now looks in need of fresh energy?
Because if we continue with the same personnel and the same tactical approach, we’ll be having this exact conversation again after the next tournament.
The Nations League in September gives Scotland an opportunity to reset.
To introduce younger players.
To challenge established names.
To build a team that isn’t simply grateful to be there, but genuinely believes it belongs there.
Scotland has made enormous progress.
But qualification cannot be the destination.
It has to be the starting point.
I’ve followed Scotland since I was 15 years old. I’ve travelled to all three games here in America and, like thousands of other members of the Tartan Army, I’ve lived every kick of the ball. The Tartan Army have put in the performances, brought the creativity and backed the team relentlessly. That’s why this isn’t about two defeats. It’s about recognising a pattern we’ve now seen for far too long.
The biggest question isn’t whether Scotland have reached the knockout stages. It’s whether we actually deserve to.
Against Haiti, yes, we won, but a deflected John McGinn goal was all we had to show for it. This was our chance to announce ourselves back on the World Cup stage. Instead, we laboured, created very little and never really put Haiti under sustained pressure. Winning matters, but performances matter too.
Against Morocco, we once again paid the price for poor defending. We gave ourselves a mountain to climb and although Morocco looked vulnerable in the second half, Scotland never adapted. We remained disjointed, failed to take advantage when the game was there to be rescued and ultimately paid the price.
Then came Brazil.
Nobody expected Scotland to dominate Brazil. But there is a difference between respecting the opposition and fearing them. Scotland looked like a team waiting for something to happen rather than trying to make something happen.
The biggest frustration for me was the lack of adventure. Why wasn’t Ben Gannon-Doak starting? Against the world’s best teams, pace and unpredictability are exactly what you need. Instead, we reverted to caution.
It also felt like our biggest players disappeared. Scott McTominay and John McGinn have carried Scotland for years, but they struggled to influence the biggest games when we needed them most.
And that’s what concerns me.
This feels remarkably similar to Euro 2024. Two years later we’re having exactly the same conversation. The same tactical approach. The same lack of creativity. The same inability to turn possession into genuine chances.
People will point to qualification and say, “We got here.”
They’re right.
But qualification papered over cracks that were already visible.
Even during qualifying there were warning signs. The performances weren’t consistently convincing. We relied on moments rather than sustained quality. Yes, there were outstanding performances, particularly against Denmark, but too often results masked deeper issues.
At major tournaments that simply isn’t enough.
There’s another uncomfortable conversation we have to have.
This is an ageing Scotland squad. We’ve remained heavily reliant on the same core of players for years. These players deserve enormous respect for ending Scotland’s long wait for tournaments, but international football moves quickly.
Every player has an expiry date at the highest level. Some of our core players now look a yard slower against elite opposition, and that matters.
Steve Clarke deserves huge credit for transforming Scotland’s fortunes and leading us back to major tournaments.
But with a new four-year contract comes a new challenge.
Can he evolve?
Can he trust younger players sooner?
Can he refresh a squad that now looks in need of fresh energy?
Because if we continue with the same personnel and the same tactical approach, we’ll be having this exact conversation again after the next tournament.
The Nations League in September gives Scotland an opportunity to reset.
To introduce younger players.
To challenge established names.
To build a team that isn’t simply grateful to be there, but genuinely believes it belongs there.
Scotland has made enormous progress.
But qualification cannot be the destination.
It has to be the starting point.
@bet365 Scotland losing to Peru in ‘78
Ally Macleod with his head in his hands.
Also David Coleman calling Asa Hartford a “whole hearted player” and managing to get an apology in before the switchboard broke down completely.
All fair points 👍
Well, I spent the best part of £7000 to be here so I’ll have my say…
Great season, winning the league, so we can’t complain too much… here’s the *but*… (all things I’ve said many times over)…
- ‘Arsenal game-state 1-ahead’ continue to be one of the most frustratingly bad teams in football.
- The decision making from our players on the simplest of things leaves so much to be desired at times. Saka’s told he doesn’t have long by the ref and continues to waste a corner before HT - where there was no chance of a PSG counter. (He was also abysmal throughout - not the only one).
- The technique on the two missed penalties - doubtful change of body shape and addressing the ball all wrong - is just asking for trouble.
- The Champions League continues to be a blot on our history, I’m convinced we’ll win one of the next three (and remember, if it was invented in the 1920s we’d probably have many more, including the one Liverpool cost us, after GG got to grips with European football, in 1991).
- I don’t think the ref was great, but I think he got the big things spot on.
- Budapest a lovely city and the people are really nice.
#AFC
Dodgy decisions
Three pitch invasions
1.3m of damages to our stadium
It’s a toughy, no wonder SFA and SPFL can’t crack the code as to what the issue is.
@MarkOHaire That’s pretty sad. Enjoyed listening every week. Some great insights. 🥲
You obviously don’t watch much Scottish football mate. 🤣
This might be the worst VAR decision I’ve seen (and there’s a lot of competition). Extraordinary given the significance.
That abysmal interview of Davy Russell really was like something pulled out of The Thick of It 🤣🤣🤣
Believe me, the amount of cash 💰 they threw at keeping her seat will probably bankrupt the party.
So Jackie Baillie has held her seat. Are you nuts Dumbarton?
@paulhutcheon 58 a poor night 🤣🤣🤣
Desperate stuff.
This is crazy. Also might be the best post I’ve ever seen on here.
I have three monitors on my desk. The left one shows the order book. The middle one shows Truth Social. The right one shows the investigation queue.
On April 21st, the left screen moved first.
I am a Senior Surveillance Analyst at a commodities exchange. I have held this position for nineteen years. My job is to monitor trading activity for suspicious patterns and generate compliance reports. I am employee of the quarter. I have a mug.
At 19:54 GMT on April 21st, someone placed 4,260 sell orders on Brent crude futures. They did this during post-settlement. The window after the market closes when daily volume is typically in the dozens. Sometimes single digits. Sometimes I watch the screen and nothing happens for forty minutes and I think about whether my daughter is happy.
On April 21st, someone placed $430 million in directional bets in 120 seconds during that window. One hundred and twenty seconds. I timed it on my watch because the system clock rounds to the nearest minute and I have found, in nineteen years, that precision matters to no one but me.
At 20:10 GMT, the President posted on Truth Social that he was extending the Iran ceasefire.
Brent dropped from $100.91 to $96.83.
I flagged the trade. I flag a lot of trades. I want to tell you what happens to my flags.
My flags go into a system called TRACE. Trade Review and Compliance Evaluation. I did not name it. The system generates a report. The report goes to a committee. The committee has a name I am not allowed to share but I can tell you it meets quarterly and the conference room has a credenza with bottled water that is sparkling because someone once put still water in the room and a managing director sent an email about it that was longer than most of my surveillance reports.
The committee reviews my flags. The committee has reviewed all of my flags. Here is the complete record of actions taken on my flags in 2026:
Reviewed.
That's it. "Reviewed" is a status. In compliance, a status is the absence of an action that has been given a name so it looks like one.
Let me show you my flags.
March 9th. Someone bet millions on oil falling at 18:29 GMT. Forty-seven minutes later, a CBS reporter posted that the President said the Iran war was "very complete, pretty much." Oil dropped 25%. Forty-seven minutes. I flagged it.
March 23rd. Someone sold 5,100 lots of Brent and WTI crude futures between 10:49 and 10:50 GMT. Fourteen minutes later, the President posted on Truth Social about a "COMPLETE AND TOTAL RESOLUTION" to hostilities. Oil dropped 11%. Over 13,000 contracts traded in sixty seconds after the post. Fourteen minutes. I flagged it.
April 7th. Someone established a $950 million short position in oil futures at 19:45 GMT. Three hours later, the President declared a two-week ceasefire. Nine hundred and fifty million dollars. I flagged it.
April 17th. Someone placed $760 million in bearish bets twenty minutes before Iran's foreign minister confirmed the Strait of Hormuz would reopen. Seven hundred and sixty million. I flagged it.
April 21st. The $430 million. Fifteen minutes. I flagged it.
That is $2.1 billion in directional oil bets in April alone. Every one of them landed on the correct side of a presidential announcement. Every one of them was placed in a window so narrow you could measure it in bathroom breaks. I flagged every single one.
The CFTC chair told a Congressional committee that his organization has "zero tolerance" for fraud and insider trading. I wrote that quote on a Post-it note and stuck it to my right monitor. The one that shows the investigation queue. The investigation queue has not moved since March.
Zero tolerance. Zero staff. Zero budget. Zero prosecutions under the STOCK Act since it was signed in 2012.
Fourteen years. The law has existed for fourteen years and has been enforced zero times. In compliance, we call that a compliance rate of one hundred percent. No cases filed means no cases lost. You cannot fail an audit you never conduct. We call that excellence.
Last month the White House sent an internal email to staff. I was not on the distribution list but I have read reporting on it and I need you to sit with what I am about to say. The email instructed White House staff not to use insider information to place bets on prediction markets.
The White House had to send a memo telling its own employees not to insider-trade.
I want you to read that sentence again. Not because the instruction was unclear. Because the instruction was necessary. Because someone in the building looked at the same pattern I have been flagging for months on my three monitors and decided the appropriate response was an email.
The President's son sits on the advisory board of Kalshi. He is an investor in Polymarket. Both are prediction markets. Both saw accounts created days before U.S. military action.
One account. I cannot stop thinking about this account. It was called "Burdensome-Mix." It was created in December. On January 2nd, it placed $32,500 on Venezuela's president being removed from power. On January 3rd, Maduro was seized by U.S. special forces. Burdensome-Mix collected $436,000. Then it changed its username. Then it disappeared.
One account is a coincidence. But there were six.
Six accounts were created on Polymarket in February. All bet on U.S. strikes on Iran by the 28th. When the President confirmed the strikes, the six accounts collected $1.2 million between them. Five of the six never placed another bet. The sixth went on to correctly predict the ceasefire date and made another $163,000.
My surveillance system logged all of this. My system logs everything. My system does not have opinions and neither do I. I generate reports. The reports go to committees. The committees meet quarterly. Between meetings, the windows get shorter and the bets get larger.
March 9th: 47 minutes. March 23rd: 14 minutes. April 17th: 20 minutes. April 21st: 15 minutes.
The window is compressing. In March, you had time to make coffee between the trade and the announcement. By April, you had time to send a text. By summer, at this rate, the trade and the announcement will be the same event.
The spokesman said any implication that administration officials are engaged in insider trading is "baseless and irresponsible reporting."
Then the White House sent the email again.
I have been in compliance for nineteen years. I have seen insider trading run out of strip mall offices by men who could not spell "derivative." I have seen pump-and-dump schemes coordinated over WhatsApp by people who used their real names. I have seen a man try to manipulate soybean futures from a Panera Bread.
I have never seen $2.1 billion in perfectly timed trades across five presidential announcements in a single month go uninvestigated.
But I have also never seen a compliance system work this beautifully. Every trade flagged. Every report filed. Every committee briefed. Every quarterly meeting attended. Bottled water: sparkling. Minutes: distributed.
Zero prosecutions.
As long as the flags go up and the cases don't, my performance review says I am meeting expectations.
I am meeting expectations. The system is meeting expectations. The $2.1 billion is meeting expectations. The fourteen-year-old law with zero prosecutions is meeting expectations.
The left screen moves. The middle screen moves. The right screen stays perfectly, immaculately still.
In my field, we call this price discovery.
So Trump, who in January claimed to be coming to rescue the Iranian people, says he is okay now with US forces killing them all.
He is bragging about war crimes and mass murder, with little or no limits.
How is the world okay with this? How is the American people?
😳
⏰ Coming up: Scottish Football VAR Review!
Hear the VAR audio and watch the discussion on plenty of incidents, including if Celtic's Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain should have been sent off for this tackle against Motherwell. Watch the show from 6pm on @SkyFootball 📺
Everyone is covering the Hormuz crisis as a list of problems. Energy. Fertiliser. Shipping. Insurance. Each gets its own headline. Each gets its own analyst. Each gets modelled independently.
That is exactly why every model is wrong.
The crisis is not a list. It is a loop. And the loop is feeding on itself in ways that no linear framework can capture. Follow the chain.
Gulf sulfur supply is cut. Nearly half of global seaborne sulfur trade is Gulf-dependent. Without sulfur there is no sulfuric acid. Without sulfuric acid there is no phosphate processing. China sees its own phosphate production threatened and bans exports through August. Global phosphate tightens. Blended fertiliser costs spike. Corn economics collapse relative to soybeans. American farmers shift 1 to 2 million acres away from corn. Corn supply tightens. But the ethanol mandate does not care. The Renewable Fuel Standard requires 15 billion gallons of corn ethanol annually, consuming roughly 43 percent of the US corn crop regardless of price. Ethanol demand is inelastic. Corn gets squeezed from both the supply side and the demand side simultaneously. Corn prices rise. Feed costs rise. The protein cascade flips. US cattle herd sits at 86.2 million head, a 75-year low. Poultry and pork were benefiting from cheap feed. That reverses when corn crosses $5 per bushel. The entire animal protein complex margin-compresses. Meat prices rise. Food import bills for developing nations swell. Egypt, already facing $29 billion in external debt repayments, cannot absorb it. Pakistan, where debt service consumes a devastating share of tax revenue, cannot absorb it. Sub-Saharan Africa’s $90 billion 2026 debt wall leaves zero fiscal space. Sovereign stress worsens. The fiscal capacity for fertiliser subsidies erodes. Application rates fall further. Yields drop further. Grain markets tighten further. Import bills rise further.
The loop closes. And starts again. Tighter each cycle.
Now layer the channels nobody is modelling.
Iran struck a desalination plant in Bahrain on March 8. Kuwait depends on desalination for 90 percent of its drinking water. The Gulf holds 42 percent of global desalination capacity, co-generated with power infrastructure under active bombardment.
Australia imports virtually all its urea, two-thirds from the Gulf. Its entire heavy freight network runs on AdBlue, which is 32.5 percent high-purity urea. No urea, no AdBlue, no freight movement, no groceries delivered. A Gulf drone dictates whether Sydney supermarkets stock shelves.
Southeast Asian aquaculture, 68 percent of the world’s farmed fish, depends on soybean meal for the majority of feed costs. Soy is repricing as corn-to-soy acreage shifts alter the entire oilseed complex.
US cotton acres declining 3.2 percent to 9.0 million. Bangladesh imports over 95 percent of raw cotton and faces simultaneous synthetic disruption from the same petrochemical shutdown. The garment sector generating 85 percent of export earnings is being hit from three directions.
And underneath all of it: PE, PP, PET, aluminium, tinplate, glass. All rising simultaneously. Adding several percentage points to retail food prices through a channel no farm futures contract tracks.
The Fed meets tomorrow with core PCE at 3.0 to 3.1 percent and GDP growth deteriorating. Markets price at most one rate cut in December. The central bank that is supposed to stabilise prices is watching fourteen transmission channels reprice simultaneously through a single chokepoint it has no tool to reopen.
This is not fourteen separate crises. It is one system consuming itself.
Full analysis: https://t.co/iFmUcarGdV
I’ve read it. It’s a classic.
Any of you guys ever read this. I’ve read over 100 books on football and this is absolutely my favourite
The White House one hour ago: It's a meme video of the Lion King, stop with the fake outrage
The White House ten mins ago: It was erroneously posted by some staffer*
* a staffer apparently is allowed to post videos directly to Trump's account at all hours through the night? maybe look into that system,
RETWEET if you stand with Kaitlan Collins against Donald Trump!
Right up there with the worst things he’s ever said. Disgusting.
Trump on NATO: "I've always said, will they be there if we ever needed them? That's really the ultimate test. I'm not sure of that. We've never needed them. They'll say they sent some troops to Afghanistan and this or that. And they did. They stayed a little back, off the front lines."
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