Steve

@ukgolfguy Great thread 👏👌 (followed)

WHAT NEXT? International visitors bring a vital income to clubs. They spend in pro shops, stay in local hotels and support the wider economy. Jobs are created and communities thrive. But we should have more balance. We can’t allow our top clubs to become the preserve of American visitors. These are courses we should be able to experience, not just watch on TV. If you are a member at one of these clubs, why not suggest doing something a little different? Introduce a twilight rate for locals through the summer. Add an extra week at the start of the season with reduced pricing for domestic players. Or reopen in the winter for a morning each week with a sub £100 green fee and a bacon roll. Don’t forget, you benefit from this too. It opens the door to playing other courses that may currently feel out of reach. I genuinely believe change is possible. Imagine if every club focussed on just a couple of ways to bring the game back within reach of the average golfer. Our great golf course heritage is too important to be left entirely to market forces. 🧵12/12

Here’s my annual look at UK summer green fee increases - Average top 100 green fees are ⬆️11.4% - over 3X the rate of inflation - The average top 25 course is now £407 (up 15% on 2025) Here's a thread with some thoughts. You can read it all on my blog too. 🧵1/12

@fatiguedguy @Top100Rick You can do it cheaper, but roughly….. $1000 for the flight, $1000-1500 for hotel for the week. 5 rounds, 1 budget, 3 middle of the road (Nairn Dunbar, Royal Aberdeen etc) and two top names (Turnberry/Troon etc ) - $1500. Plus food, beer tokens and car hire…..$1500 ~$5000 🤷🏻‍♂️

@Top100Rick How much would a basic trip be? Seems too pricey for me 😭

A good friend of mine is playing golf in Scotland for the first time. He just sent me this text. 😍 He’s a great player, member of a great club, played tons of USA T100’s. And yet after just 2 days he has seen the light. He gets it. He now sees what golf can be. If you haven’t been, book that trip to Scotland!

@CubsfanOU812 @Top100Rick £50 per month for a SportAberdeen membership. Gives access to 9 gyms, 5 pools, tennis, Padel, dry ski slope and 5 municipal golf courses. The photo is of Banagask, one of the courses. Some courses are expensive now (like rates at the big names, but you get gems way under $100

@Top100Rick As a regular guy, I'll probably never visit Scotland and that's fine. I like playing the game on courses that I can easily afford every week. It's a great game no matter where you play it

Renewable electricity does not produce: petrol, diesel, bunker fuel, or jet fuel; it does not produce the feed stock for ammonia used to make fertilisers, or feedstocks for chemicals, pharmaceuticals or plastics; it does not produce bitumen, carbon fibres, armaments or ammunition; it does not produce the industrial heat needed to make cement, glass, aluminium, ceramics or steel. Claiming we shouldn't mine oil and gas in the UK because we won't be self sufficient is like suggesting we shouldn't produce any food because we won't be able to grow enough and would still need to import some. Caroline Lucas is NOT right.

This account does proper work and more people should read it. Greens and Green-curious, this one's for you. Not a gotcha, not a conversion pitch. Just the maths your own side has to answer to before any of the rest of it matters. £4.8 trillion. £78k a head. That's the starting position of every policy conversation in this country, whether anyone on the platform admits it or not. You can tax, you can borrow, you can print. Tax has a ceiling the Laffer curve already found. Borrowing runs into a gilt market that's been telling us for two years it's done subsidising us. Printing debases the currency your wages and your rent are denominated in, which hits the people you claim to care about first and hardest. None of that is right-wing. It's just immutable arithmetic. MMT describes the plumbing fine, it just doesn't repeal the consequences and its suggestions to print more money only exacerbates the existing inequality - that you rightly call out as a problem. It is a problem. We agree. I'm not asking you to forgive the Tories. I'm not asking you to love Labour. I'm asking whether the people asking for your vote now have actually sat down with the gilt curve and worked out how their programme survives contact with it. If the answer is just vibes, then you're a protest vote, and a protest vote in this fiscal environment is a luxury the country can't afford. Thirty years of being let down. You're right to be angry. So are we. That's the bridge. Perhaps we can still walk across it.

@BartGonnissen Love both of these threads, great info.

1/x I've explained what a P&I Club is in shipping, but who or what is Lloyd's of London, and how are they related to these P&I Clubs? Here’s another small 🧵

@johnkonrad This is hyperbole. Who’d insure cargo/vessel in Strait of Hormuz now? No need to be MI6/CIA/Mossad to see attack risk is at record high. Insuring here would be insane. Marine insurance market volatile last few yrs. Risk now higher than any recent period.

This is potentially the biggest Iran story nobody is talking about: the global insurance market may be heading toward a systemic crisis. Here’s why… Most people don’t realize London isn’t just a financial center it’s THE center of global insurance. Lloyd’s underwrites ~40% of the world’s marine cargo. Ship sinks, port gets bombed, canal gets blocked the bill lands in London. This is why the UK punches above its weight. Not the Royal Navy. Not diplomacy. Insurance. Control insurance, control trade. And London doesn’t just control the 90% of global trade that moves by sea. Lloyd’s and the London market are major insurers of almost everything skyscrapers, factories, ports, satellites, entire supply chains. You can’t participate in public markets or raise large amounts of capital without insurance. Now, the normal playbook for war risk is repricing, not cancellation. Canceling coverage entirely is a massive escalation in underwriting posture. It signals something beyond risk, it signals uncertainty so deep the underwriter can’t even price it. The question everyone should be asking: why? Why not just jack up premiums and make a fortune off the crisis like they did in the Black Sea off Ukraine? To answer that, you have to understand WHY London has maintained a stranglehold on global insurance while losing nearly submarket related to ships. The answer: better intelligence. It is no coincidence that MI6 headquarters sits directly across the Thames from the @IMOHQ, the world’s maritime regulator & a short distance from Lloyd’s itself. I have no proof of a direct pipeline, but it has long been speculated in the industry that intelligence flows from MI6 to Lloyd’s. Having the best intel in the world would be the single greatest competitive advantage any insurer could possess: the ability to price risk that competitors can only guess at. Here’s the problem: the majority of MI6’s intel doesn’t come from its own agents. It comes from Five Eyes the alliance comprising the US, UK, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand. And within 5Eyes, the dominant partner is obvious. The CIA, NSA, NRO, etc generate the lion’s share of intel. So if Lloyd’s pricing advantage flows from MI6, and MI6’s best intelligence flows from the US… what happens when that data pipeline gets throttled? All indications are that @Keir_Starmer was blindsided by the size and scope of the US/Israel strikes on Iran this weekend. That alone tells you something about the current state of transatlantic intelligence sharing. And we know there has been serious anger in Washington over the UK’s decision to sell Diego Garcia, home to America’s most strategically important base in the Indian Ocean, to Mauritius. It is not a huge leap to conclude that the submarine cables linking Langley to London have gone dark, or at minimum have been significantly throttled. What this means for UK national security is a question for the Brits. But what it means for EVERY company globally that’s insured through the London market has massive implications for the entire financial system. Because most large insurers worldwide don’t do independent intelligence work. They index off Lloyd’s rates. If you’re insuring a skyscraper in Tokyo, a semiconductor fab in Taiwan, or a port in Argentina you get a Lloyd’s quote, then shop that price around. Other insurers see Lloyd’s number and assume the diligence was done. They price accordingly. This means if London is suddenly flying blind it’s not just Lloyd’s policyholders at risk. It’s the entire global reinsurance chain. The cancellation of war risk coverage on ships isn’t the crisis. It’s the canary. If this hypothesis is correct, we could be looking at a systemic repricing event across global insurance markets…. the kind of cascading uncertainty that defined 2008 and COVID. Watch Lloyd’s. Watch reinsurance spreads. What Five Eyes. That’s where this story, and possibly Wall Street, breaks. CC @BillAckman

#BRES Completion of the 87-hole Iyan programme is a major step forward. Consistent, near-surface #Graphite now defined across the deposit, with maiden Iyan JORC imminent and set to grow the Orom-Cross resource base. Beehive still to come adds further upside

#BRES Final Iyan assays confirm thick, near-surface #Graphite and complete the 87-hole programme. Maiden Iyan JORC now close - set to increase Orom-Cross’s total resource, with further upside still to come from Beehive. 📰Read more: blencoweresourcesplc.com/2026/02/23/iya…

#BRES achieves 99.99% #Graphite purity in EU-based testwork 🇪🇺 Independent European processing confirms ultra-high purity products, enhancing Orom-Cross’s strategic value for defence and energy markets and reinforcing Western supply-chain credentials. RNS: blencoweresourcesplc.com/2026/01/14/eur…

#BRES View from @VOXmarkets "A bullish assessment from Oak. Various funding options for development are under consideration, and argues that phase 1 will be developed via non-BRES equity structures." voxmarkets.com/articles/oak-s…

#BRES Oak Securities has published an initiation research note, reviewing the DFS, staged development strategy & expanding resource base at Orom-Cross 🔹Beehive & Iyan growth potential noted 🔹JORC update expected as drilling results are incorporated 📰blencoweresourcesplc.com/wp-content/upl…

#BRES Recent deep drilling at Beehive delivered 92.55m @ 6.83% TGC and confirmed a thick, continuous #Graphite system open at depth. 2 further deep holes expected shortly, plus 108 Beehive and 72 Iyan assays pending. Steady newsflow ahead as scale continues to build.

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Tin >$40k/t & #RMR now back drilling at Bisie North, just 8km from Alphamin’s Mpama mine. A large polymetallic system is already defined, but drilling has only scratched surface. Rigs turning again, & focus shifting deeper where tin grades are expected to strengthen.

Outstanding 92m @ 6.8%. Bigger picture matters even more. Growing confidence in scale & longevity attracts largest strategic players. ~180 drill results to come from Iyan & Beehive prospects. With results like this, multi-decade potential becomes clearer with every update

#BRES Major new #Graphite deposit confirmed at Iyan. Deep-hole drilling delivers continuous mineralisation to ~100m, all holes end in graphite 🔹High-grade intercepts up to 13.9% TGC. Supports early 2026 JORC upgrade 🔹 Beehive deep holes + more Iyan to come Read More Here: blencoweresourcesplc.com/2025/12/18/fur…

#BRES A fitting backdrop during a week focused on critical minerals, supply security and long-term strategy. Projects capable of delivering reliable, multi-decade graphite supply - such as Orom-Cross - are increasingly relevant to global supply chains

🎙️#BRES CEO Mike Ralston with @proactive_x 🔹US$1.087Bn NPV & 96% IRR 🔹More drill results, JORC expansion & off-take updates to follow 🔹Presenting the DFS at Resourcing Tomorrow show🇬🇧 Next stop: New York & Washington for #CriticalMinerals meetings 🇺🇸

Huge growth runway remains at #BRES: 🔹192 step-out holes still to be added 🔹New Iyan & Beehive deposits 🔹Deep drilling to ~100m - all mineralised 🔹Only ~2% of the licence drilled A second major JORC uplift expected post-DFS.