Peter Leonard

Northerner.

[Peter Leonard @PeterMLeonard]

The party of ‘economic competence’. 😂

[Times Radio @TimesRadio]

Deputy Conservative leader Alex Burghart can’t tell Kate McCann the cost of his own party’s policy to cut employer’s national insurance for 21-24-year-olds.

“I’m sorry Kate, I’ve forgotten the cost.”

@KateEMcCann

[Eddie Gibbs @eddiegibbs]

🇵🇹 Ronaldo Has Become a Parody of Himself

📖 Narcissism: an excessive preoccupation with oneself, accompanied by a craving for admiration and an inflated sense of one's own importance.

I’m not diagnosing Cristiano Ronaldo. I’m describing behaviour.

And his extraordinary 1,740 word tantrum provides quite the case study.

This entire saga began because a 41 year old footballer was told he might play 30 minutes for Portugal and then didn't. Jorge Jesus changed his mind during a match. Ronaldo considered this betrayal worthy of a manifesto.

Then comes the truly extraordinary part.

Ronaldo reveals that a document was prepared detailing what Jesus should say publicly. Among the proposed lines was an apology for warming up someone of the "stature of Pele or Diego Maradona" without bringing him on.

Imagine the staggering vanity required to approve those words about yourself and then publish them believing they strengthen your case.

Portugal created this monster.

For years they indulged Ronaldo, massaged the ego and hoped Father Time might eventually introduce the realism nobody around him possessed the courage to provide.

They waited too long.

Last week I asked whether anybody in Portuguese football had the balls to tell Ronaldo his time was up.

Jorge Jesus finally did.

Ronaldo responded like a pampered child being told no. He left the camp, blamed others and has now produced nearly 2,000 words explaining why Cristiano Ronaldo remains the victim in the continuing tragedy of Cristiano Ronaldo.

He even wants "one or more farewell matches". Naturally. Apparently even his goodbye requires a tour.

An extraordinary footballer has become a deeply embarrassing spectacle.

Father Time won.

Ronaldo simply cannot accept the result.

✍️ P.S. Last time I dared question Ronaldo, the cult descended. So, for clarity, as a footballer and athlete he was extraordinary, one of the greatest we've ever seen. I don’t need his goal statistics from the Saudi league waved at me as proof that he somehow remains an elite footballer. My eyes have told me for years that he’s washed at the highest level. His devoted following can continue to delude themselves if they wish. His reputation cannot outrun reality forever.

[Nick Harris @sportingintel]

Blimey. You think you’ve seen it all and then someone equates Man City in the Mansour era with Nelson Mandela. 😂

[Lfc Kev @Kev1Lfc]

One solution is to move Man City out to the UAE Pro league.

[Labour Right Watch @LabourRightWtch]

@BethRigby Sticking to Reeves' unhelpful fiscal rules and refusing to recover wealth from the richest means Burnham is doing these ridiculous contortions.
The Greens have the balls to tax wealth and take other measures to deliver what's needed and long overdue.

[Beth Rigby @BethRigby]

Andy Burnham has suggested he could delay his free national care service well into the 2030s to avoid having to raise taxes to fund it.

Speaking on Wednesday, the prime minister acknowledged that savings from the scrapping of the current pensions triple lock would not fund his social care reform plans until later in the next decade.

Costings published by the government on Wednesday estimate the pensions policy will save £15bn a year in cash terms by 2039-40, rising to £50bn by 2049-50, equivalent to £11bn and £30bn in current prices.

Burnham said that “savings on that scale would be enough to pay for social care, but obviously they’re not released immediately”.

Asked by Sky News if tax rises would be required, he said: “No, because there’s a different way of doing it. If you delay the date of introduction and you introduce a national care service progressively.”
https://t.co/cQqDlYiziK

[Peter Leonard @PeterMLeonard]

Larry Elliott on self-serving neoliberal nonsense & a prime minister who risks becoming ‘the nearly man of British politics’: https://t.co/bAAdf8zHtE

[Football Tweet ⚽ @Footballtweet]

🔵⚪ Fabian Hürzeler’s Brighton & Hove Albion are playing some of the best football in Europe right now.

▪️ Scored 4 vs. Aston Villa ⚽⚽⚽⚽
▪️ Scored 4 vs. Tromsø ⚽⚽⚽⚽
▪️ Scored 3 vs. Chelsea ⚽⚽⚽
▪️ Scored 5 vs. Coventry ⚽⚽⚽⚽⚽
▪️ Scored 3 vs. Man Utd ⚽⚽⚽
▪️ Scored 3 vs. Arsenal ⚽⚽⚽

[Peter Leonard @PeterMLeonard]

Brighton 3-0 Arsenal.

[͏͏͏𝐉𝐚𝐲 ⌖ @cagiago_]

Manchester United fans watch and learn, we will teach you how to beat Brighton with ease

[Peter Leonard @PeterMLeonard]

Brighton have just beaten Arsenal three-nil. But, yeah, Man Utd should definitely sack Michael Carrick. #MUFC

[Liz Webster @LizWebsterSBF]

🚨 Ratcliffe’s constant running down of Britain is actually a promotion of a political project.

A class of mobile billionaires wants to transform Britain into a vast offshore platform: low taxes on wealth, weakened regulation, diminished public services, cheapened labour and national assets permanently open to global capital.

They want a strong state to protect private property, enforce contracts and subsidise business, but a weak one when citizens need healthcare, housing, benefits or security.

In effect, they want Britain run as a tax haven.

The billionaires can move their money, factories and tax residence across borders. Everyone who cannot move is left financing the country they hollowed out.

They get the tax haven and we get serfdom.

[Liz Webster @LizWebsterSBF]

‼️ Jim Ratcliffe:

🔹 Backed Brexit
🔹 Moved his tax residence to Monaco
🔹 Abandoned plans to build the British 🇬🇧 Grenadier in Wales and moved production to France
🔹 Now lectures Britain from Denmark about why the country is on the slide

And who does he blame? Immigrants and people on benefits.

The billionaires who helped hollow Britain out always point down, never at Brexit, tax flight, chronic underinvestment or their own decisions.

*Toughness* seems to mean somebody poorer paying the price.

[Isabella M Weber @IsabellaMWeber]

America first until human extinction.

[Peter Leonard @PeterMLeonard]

Sweet dreams, everyone!

[Edward Luce @EdwardGLuce]

Refreshed free link

https://t.co/ga3lhurm3C

[Peter Leonard @PeterMLeonard]

Cloughie did, of course, go on to win the European Cup (twice, in consecutive seasons!) with Nottingham Forest, and joined the pantheon of British managerial greats. And the holier-than-thou Don Revie eventually scuttled off to the UAE, with his reputation in tatters.

[Prof. Frank McDonough @FXMC1957]

12 September 1974. Brian Clough was sacked as Leeds United manager after a turbulent 44 days in charge. The same evening he appeared on the local current affairs programme Calendar, only to be surprisingly confronted by the man he had replaced: Don Revie.

[Piers Morgan @piersmorgan]

This thread is extremely concerning…. especially given that when I interviewed Professor Stephen Hawking shortly before he died, he said the biggest threat to mankind was if AI ever learned to self-design.

[Isabella M Weber @IsabellaMWeber]

Neoliberals portray social security spending as spoiling the people. In fact, it’s democracy’s self-defense. Your dignity should not depend on how much money you make. That’s why we need a mind shift in economics.

Social security is the #1 concern for voters in Saxony-Anhalt.

[Liz Webster @LizWebsterSBF]

🚨 The Sunday Times business pages explain what its political pages chose to conceal: the bond sell-off is global.

It was driven by war, oil prices, inflation fears, interest-rate expectations and enormous borrowing by AI corporations, not Britain’s welfare bill.

Using a global shock to demand cuts to pensions and benefits is not market analysis. It is austerity advocacy dressed up as market instruction.

Yet when gilt yields rise, we are told the “markets” demand that British pensioners, disabled people and public services must pay.

Britain’s debt and refinancing costs are serious. But debt at roughly 94% of GDP does not automatically mean “IMF territory”. Britain issues sterling and most of its government debt is denominated in sterling. We have not suddenly run out of pounds.

Indiscriminate austerity would make matters worse. Cutting investment, suppressing growth and weakening tax receipts makes the debt-to-GDP ratio harder 👉not easier, to manage.

“We must impoverish the country because the country is becoming poorer” is not an economic strategy.

Borrowing to conceal failure is dangerous. Borrowing to strengthen energy security, food production, water, transport, housing and industry creates assets, expands productive capacity and reduces our exposure to future shocks.

And Britain cannot achieve credible growth while maintaining trade barriers with its nearest and largest market.

Rejoining the Single Market would support exports, investment and productivity. That is how we strengthen our capacity to manage debt, not by administering more gruel to an already weakened country.

[Resolution Foundation @resfoundation]

Is welfare spending ''out of control''?

It's estimated to be 11.1 per cent of GDP this financial year.

That's just 1.1 per cent of GDP higher than in 2007-08, and total welfare spending has actually fallen by 0.9 per cent of GDP since 2012-13 ⤵️

[Liz Webster @LizWebsterSBF]

🚨 WTF editorial from The Times.

Labour “must not shift left” 👉even if voters do.

Public ownership, wealth taxes and investment are dismissed as a “world of illusion”, while cutting welfare to satisfy bond markets is presented as “getting real”.

Yet subsidies for Rolls-Royce, mining corporations and private energy projects are sober “industrial strategy”.

Public money for capital is realism. Public money for citizens is fantasy.

This is how democratic possibility is enclosed: you may vote, but never for an economic settlement that threatens those who already hold the wealth and power.