J-Mac ❄️

@MiguelDelaney The silence of national football associations on ticket pricing and fan allocations has been deafening. Presumably too scared to speak up in case they lose their chance to climb up the greasy FIFA pole.

Special report: the great World Cup rip-off - Fifa's central role beyond tickets - Fifa REJECTED similar plans in 1994 - all decisions from president's office - Fifa, the "safeguards", usher in a model club owners crave - Fifa going against own statutes independent.co.uk/sport/football…

@PaulJohnDykes @ACSOMPOD An institutionalised player trading pipeline? Was that the thing that identified Balikwisha? If so, the pipeline must start at Shieldhall.

A Board Bot has malfunctioned. Check out the AI responses this one is generating… 😩

Americans: "Iranians are religious radicals." Also the White House faith advisor leading a mass exorcism:

@PaulJohnDykes @ACSOMPOD Meanwhile our title rival, operating with a fifth of our budget, has their next signing target at the game on Monday. I’m already prepared for the usual half arsed attempt at European qualifying in early July.

One way traffic from the club, which has become the norm under this regime. Fans have been asked to stump up for season ticket renewals and a new kit in the last week. How did they prepare us for these launches? By staging an interview with the interim Chairman that was full of the usual waffle that insults the intelligence of the entire fanbase. We don’t know who the new management team will consist of, or who the Chairman & Head of Football Operations will be. We don’t know what the club is doing to improve our recruitment strategy or whether the CEO who has overseen the most dysfunctional season in recent memory will still be at the club. They are relying on our love for Celtic outweighing our disdain for the Board. Something’s got to give.

@SirTomHunter What’s the maths behind that level of increase? Or are they just pulling numbers from a hat? The quality of services provided by the council certainly haven’t improved six-fold.

A 481% increase in business rates, from £111,000 to £645,000 a year. Hearing this from Kevin Martin, Managing Director of MML Leisure, shows the reality facing hospitality. These are the kinds of costs that make it harder for businesses to keep going.

@sharko67 Anything that shines a light on the atrocious executive management of the club is a positive for me. Bloom hasn’t done anything especially clever, nor has he spent fortunes - they had their next signing in the stand tonight FFS. Forward planning? That’ll never catch on.

Do I want Celtic to win the league? 100% After this season of shit, would I be bothered if the diets did? After 41 years of 3 Glasgow clubs winning the league, naw, no really. Would rather it was the Arabs, Hibees or the Sheep, right enough.

@bhoysviews Take the win, but that was absolutely dismal. Back to the eye bleeding abomination that is the horse shoe of doom - special word for the two starting wingers who, once again, added nothing. Behind on GD and we’re pissing around v 10 men with “left, right, back to keeper.”

@ThePundit_ It’s beyond belief that Tounekti was watched in the first place given his stats and an absolute nonsense he was signed - unless they were really keen on a winger who was gash at scoring and assisting.

That said, we are far too slow in possession as always. We are against 10 men, we should be racking up goals. Instead, slack defending sees us go in at the break level. Tounekti is a man down.

@joe_yer99 If we’re so costly to “own”, and have nothing of substance beyond a fantasy monster and a sugary drink, why would you want to hold on to such a shitty place?

@lao1969 @EntertainedAre It’s a film called In Bruges - and if you haven’t seen it, you’re in for a treat.

@EntertainedAre How have I not seen this before - for those of us who like some spicy dialogue can you direct us to the movie/show please.

🤣🤣🤣🤣

@iAmJoshHunt And I’m prepared to bet that a version of PFI will be magicked up to solve the “housing emergency.” Because these one trick ponies really don’t know any better.

This one will require a stiff drink. In the early 1990s, the government came up with a clever idea. Instead of borrowing money cheaply to build hospitals, schools, and roads, it would get the private sector to build them and then pay the private sector back over 25 to 30 years. The Private Finance Initiative. PFI. The attraction was obvious. You got a shiny new hospital today. The bill didn't show up on the government's books. The cost was deferred into the future. Politicians got ribbon-cutting ceremonies without the awkward conversation about borrowing. It was, in effect, the nation's credit card. Buy now, pay later. Except the interest rate was extraordinary. The total capital value of everything built under PFI was around £50 billion. As of March 2024, there were 665 PFI contracts still running across the UK, with roughly £136 billion in remaining payments stretching out to the early 2050s. These are payments public bodies are contractually locked into. Hospitals, schools, councils, government departments. Paying for buildings that in many cases were constructed twenty or thirty years ago. And the terms are extraordinary. PFI contracts were structured so the private sector would not just build the facility but manage its services. Cleaning. Maintenance. Catering. Portering. These services are bundled into long-term contracts with built-in inflation increases that the public sector cannot renegotiate, cannot exit without paying massive penalties, and often cannot even fully scrutinise because of commercial confidentiality clauses. In one case raised in Parliament, a hospital was charged £333 to change a lightbulb. That isn't an urban myth. It was cited in Hansard. The NHS has been hit hardest. According to parliamentary analysis, the capital cost of NHS PFI projects was around £13 billion. The total repayments are estimated at around £80 billion. And the peak of NHS PFI annual repayments isn't even here yet. It arrives in 2029. The bills are still going up. In 2020-21, NHS trusts paid £457 million purely in interest charges on PFI contracts. Not services. Not maintenance. Interest. In the last five years, NHS trusts have handed over more than £1.8 billion in PFI interest alone. We Own It calculates that money would have covered the starting salaries of over 50,000 new doctors. One NHS trust, Essex Partnership, has reportedly paid back 27 times what was originally borrowed. Some hospitals are spending more on PFI repayments than on medicines for patients. And remember, these repayments come out of the same NHS budget that's supposed to fund patient care, staff, and equipment. Scotland got it just as badly. Audit Scotland reported that Scottish taxpayers will pay a cumulative £40 billion for PFI assets worth just £9 billion. North Ayrshire Council will have paid £440 million by 2038 for four schools that cost £83 million to build. Now here's what makes this worse. Many of these contracts are starting to expire. The buildings are being handed back to the public sector. And the NAO has warned of significant risks around the handback process, including cases where public bodies were dissatisfied with the condition of assets being returned to them. Decades of payments. And some of these buildings may come back needing significant further investment. So what actually happened? The government could have borrowed money at significantly lower rates to build these hospitals and schools itself. Sovereign borrowing has always been cheaper than private finance. Instead, it paid the private sector to borrow at a premium and passed the inflated cost on to the taxpayer. The private sector took the profit. The taxpayer took the risk. The buildings are now ageing. The debts are still being paid. And the services that were supposed to benefit are being squeezed partly because so much of their budget is locked into contractual obligations they cannot escape. PFI wasn't investment. It was an accounting trick. A way for governments to build things without the borrowing showing up in the national debt figures. It made politicians look fiscally responsible while loading future generations with obligations they had no say in and no ability to renegotiate. Both parties did this. The Conservatives created PFI in 1992. Labour massively expanded it after 1997. More than 700 projects were signed. The coalition eventually wound it down. The current government scrapped the latest version. But the contracts remain. The payments continue. And the damage is already done. This is what it looks like when a country chooses to buy its infrastructure on hire purchase instead of investing properly. You lock in above-market rates for decades. You lose control of the assets. You tie the hands of future governments. And when the bill keeps coming due, you're told there's no money for doctors, teachers, or social care. There was always money. It just went somewhere else.

@Mike_Blackley Jack Perry was so opposed to “the economics of the madhouse” that he drew an inflated public sector salary for five years at Scottish Enterprise. Glad he’s seen the light.

SNP ministers have the financial prudence of “a bunch of drunken sailors on shore leave” and have pedalled the “economics of the madhouse”, says former Scottish Enterprise boss.

@Slimshady1961 I admire the guy for sticking around and, at times doing a job, but he’s sadly become a prime example of how our squad building is so flawed. He’s just never kicked on as a player, despite loan spells and game time and should have been moved on several years ago.

Ralston's 1st instinct when he gets the ball is to turn back - I think back to McGrain - every time he got the ball he had only one thing on his mind, attack no matter if he was inside the opposition half or inside his own penalty area

@cammay37 @The_Young_Team The Scottish academy system in all its glory. Stay and get to 22 with a couple of first team starts, get discarded and move to a lower league. Whilst your club is bringing in on loan young players from other clubs.

@The_Young_Team A perfect example of the Club/Academy system gone wrong. Everyone (no exceptions) at Celtic rated him as exceptional, but Brendan thought otherwise. A multi year process and investment allowed to walk out the door.

Scottish left back stars in promotion winning season in Europe 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 🇧🇪 Matthew Anderson (8 Scotland u21 caps, formerly Celtic, Admira Wacker) a key part of KV Kortrijk’s journey back to Belgian top flight. Technically secure, hard working two way fullback with great crossing. 👏

@joe_yer99 There’s a premium you might accept, but they’ve zoomed past that, nodded towards extortion and arrived at outright robbery. And they’re all at it. Trains, buses, hotels, restaurants the lot. Even if I could afford it, I wouldn’t pay.

@johnjmac63 Corrupt to fuck and they mugs still keep paying

Zero sympathy for the mugs who splurge on tickets for the world cup.

@Barcabhoy1 If Nygren is to play, he needs to be in behind a lone striker. As a conventional midfielder, he’s a man down. Makes zero effort to defend - our midfield has been a mess all season.

@_sneakernyame 🧐

Moroccans are accusing Senegal of age cheating after Senegal knocked them out of the CAF U15 African Schools Championship🤣🤣🤣. They’ve a point tho, look at the Senegal team🤣

@paullewismoney Amy Rees has zero experience of housebuilding. Is it unreasonable of me to think, in that sort of role, a little background in the sector might be helpful.

£16bn state housing bank. What could possibly go wrong? And how will it protect builders from war driven rising prices? Also a reminder that ‘affordable’ does NOT mean affordable except in the trivial sense that if a house is sold someone has afforded it.

@EdsLFC Clubs are being rinsed by players and agents - and no one seems to see the danger in unsustainable losses being laughably described as “investment.” Been going on since the 1990’s when ridiculous player’s wages blew up Italian football. And they just move on to the next mug.

This, albeit Liverpool specific, pretty much sums it all up. Feels like we’re waiting for the final nail in the coffin to seal the disconnect from the people who made footy to the people who profit from it. Game’s gone.