Paul Billingham

100% - Manchester City in 2025-26 are the first team in history to win every single match across both the FA Cup (6/6) and League Cup (6/6) in a single season. Domesticated.

When you forget your PE kit on cross country day and Mr Williams makes you do it in whatever is in the lost and found box.

@slbsn What I don’t get is why he’s allowed to keep the Mayor position until he knows if he’s won the seat or not. It’s a bit like telling your employer that you are applying for another job but can you keep your current one open until you know if you’ve got it or not

I don’t think Burnham will win Makerfield. Labour’s vote is going to be split in multiple directions. Really doubt Burnham is so popular as to offset that

@lewi1s @City_Xtra @PFA @OliverKay I was referring to the people saying he should have voted for Haaland

@Billers26 @City_Xtra @PFA @OliverKay CLUB teammate. Are they club teammates?

Bernardo Silva on his vote for @PFA Player of the Year: “My friend Bruno [Fernandes]. He’s had an incredible season…” [via @OliverKay]

@spbajko So the City celebrations for “only the FA Youth Cup” were excessive but the constant whining about the venue were not

DAY 857 of FA Youth Cup Final knicker-twisting as United coach kicks off about City celebrations 🤪

Not that probably anyone is bothered BUT…. I was a Government Advisor Dept Health for 5yrs and I had a private 1/1 2hr meeting with Andy Burnham at Portcullis House. It was a big thing to get a 2hr meeting with a then Shadow Secretary of State. I prepared for 2weeks, burned candle at both ends. Presented evidence and looked the man in the eyes. He BROKE every promise he made me, never bothered to acknowledge our meeting and I never saw or heard from him again. It was lip service. Think on before you vote him in 😏

Thoughts from a Labour MP: “We have to face up to the fact every single one of them is fucking useless. Andy’s strategy has been a disaster. Angela bottled it. Ed clearly a hiding to nothing. Wes AWOL. God knows what Catherine West is doing. Not quite sure how we ended up here.”

@Wireless_Goat @Guymowbray It’s very clear in my previous Tweet. I’m frustrated we haven’t had the right decision for the last 8 months for similar incidents. As is most of X this evening by the looks of it, and also explained very eloquently by Jared Bowen on Sky after the game.

@Billers26 @Guymowbray Why are you frustrated by a correct decision?

That is a foul. Arm across alone is debatable - but he’s got hold of Raya’s left arm too

@Wireless_Goat @Guymowbray No, it was a foul, but Arsenal have been doing the same thing all season and not got punished, that’s the frustration The good news is that we should finally see an end to the multiple daily Tweets saying PGMOL are being bribed by City

@Billers26 @Guymowbray Are you suggesting it *wasn't* a foul?

I guess PGMOL no longer paid by City. Or something like that.

Why is Trossard not looking at the ball and holding a player, or Rice pulling a player down, not also worthy of review in slow motion?

The UK 10-year gilt yield closed at 5.10% on Tuesday. The last time it was that high was July 2008, the month of the Lehman collapse. We have not paid this much to borrow money for almost 18 years. There's no shortage of visible proximate triggers. You've got Brent crude touching $114 a barrel. The Prime Minister is being told by his own backbenches to expect a leadership challenge in days. The Telegraph's weekend splash put the welfare bill at £155 billion, with 16,000 households drawing more than £60,000 a year in benefits. The deeper trigger is the underlying maths. Britain has run a cumulative deficit every year since 2001. The national debt is approximately £2.7 trillion. Annual interest payments on that debt currently run above £100 billion, more than the entire defence budget. Each percentage point that gilt yields rise adds, over a couple of years as the debt rolls, tens of billions to that figure. We're looking at a £1 billion spent on debt interest every three or four days. What sits behind the yield, in plain accounting terms, is 15 years of derelict money management. The two-child cap, the welfare expansion, the energy bill, the bank bailout, the Truss minibudget, the Reeves budget, the Iran exposure, the Streeting-Starmer civil war, the underlying productivity collapse: it sums to price in the gilts. It stems from a fundamental misunderstanding of key laws of monetary physics. Most of the people at working-a-lever level in central government come from an intellectual tradition that believes, in an unexamined and in-earnest fashion, that money and wealth are naturally aborning quantities. Stuff that wells out of the ground, and that the only thing of interest about it is who captures it (the state, which is good; or individuals, who then become billionaires, which is bad). Taking this as axiomatic, it's very easy to understand why the governing class has spent a decade and a half assuming the cost of borrowing was a constant of nature. That every fresh promise could be funded by issuing slightly more debt at slightly higher coupons that someone, somewhere, would always be in a position to buy. Eventually, that assumption will be tested. Every promise made to the British public over the next decade will be conditioned by the rate at which the British state can borrow. A 5% yield is not the end of the world. A 5% yield maintained for five years, on a £2.7 trillion debt, is approximately £270 billion in additional interest costs, which is roughly the entire annual cost of the NHS (or, for a different analogy, the GDP of Nigeria). Those numbers compound until somebody, somewhere, decides they will not. We need a government that will run the place on the basis that the bills are real. Who understand that wealth cannot be taken-for-granted, and must created, and who will rebuild a productive economy that can pay the bills. That can deliver the cheap energy that lowers those bills, and stop the slow programme of welfare expansion that has now produced a transfer system larger than the defence budget and growing faster than the rest of the economy. The bond markets will repay such seriousness of intent and action with cheaper money. They have done so for every country that has ever turned itself around. Britain is not exempt from how this works.

@slbsn Instead of a sponsor?

Desperate

@Londonblue_2 I’m sure Arsenal fans will take it well

That was a brave call. Could have gone either way but again it did look like Eze was trying to buy the penalty. Not enough in it for genuine foul play imo.

@HannahMargBrown @heraldscotland There already is a yacht tax, it’s called VAT. Anything above that is bad news for yacht manufacturers and people that work for yacht manufacturers

Exc: Scottish Greens co-leader Ross Greer tells @heraldscotland yacht tax ' definitely not off table' after Malcolm Offord revealed he owns six boats at STV's Leaders' Debate last night. heraldscotland.com/news/26063774.…

@MerrynSW @_JamieMcIntyre You’ve completely missed her point: nothing wrong with serving others but that doesn’t get funded without the taxes from wealth creators and Scotland (and the UK) should want more of them in order to keep funding public servants. Where do you think the money comes from?

@_JamieMcIntyre There are many ways to judge success and happiness. But the welfare state depends on the taxes paid by wealth creators and the otherwise well off. Choices.

A stream of tweets from Merryn this morning suggesting that 'success' & 'achievement' are about making a lot of money for oneself rather than serving others in society, for lower financial reward (or even none). What a sad & narrow perspective on the world.

@paulhutcheon There would be something very wrong if a public servant whose entire career has been funded by the tax payer and never had to take a risk in his life had more than 1 house and 1 car

NEW: John Swinney in Edinburgh says he has one house, one car and no boats. Comes after immodest millionaire Malcolm Offord boasted about his wealth.

@faisalislam Any thoughts on the current bond yields Faisal?

NEW 10y bond yields across Europe tumbling on opening after two week ceasefire announced… UK down 20 basis points ie 0.2% to 4.63% FR down 24 bps 3.54% Ge down 17bps Important for fixed mortgages: UK 5y gilt down 23bps 4.25% 2y down 27bps 4.15% This was after avg mortgage rates had risen to 5.9% (2y) and 5.78% (5y) acc to Moneyfacts, having been below 5% on both counts pre war… if today is sustained these should come back down again.