Alistair Smith

Latest Playbook now done. This one is for those who commission or design leadership or coach development programmes in elite sport

Ten reasons why Heart of Midlothian have already changed Scottish football for the better, whatever happens at Celtic Park today... 1) Interest levels risen at home and abroad. 2) Better competition. 3) Possible improvement in co-efficients with a strong Hearts heading into Europe. 4) Reminder of what can be done with shrewd recruitment (£300k net spend in summer window taking into account Penrice sale). Blend of data from the gem-finding geniuses of Jamestown Analytics and a good judge of players and inspiring man-manager in Derek McInnes. 5) Reminder of what can be done by fans – Foundation of Hearts (“Be Part Of The Disruption”) have 8,000 members/owners and have raised £20m for the club. 6) Big-hearted benefactors like James Anderson and Ann Budge, caring for their community. 7) Big-hearted initiatives like Hearts fans buying additional season tickets and donating them to kids at Dalry Primary School, Edinburgh Children’s Hospital charity and elsewhere. 8) Reminder of what can be achieved through togetherness within a club, within a squad and within a fanbase. 9) Reminder to others that the great Old Firm duopoly can be challenged. Believe. 10) Finally, what a song and Colin Chisholm’s stirring pre-match rendition. The talk of the toon are the boys in maroon. #Hearts

Dominik Tarczyński, the far-right Polish nationalist who built his career on hating immigrants, now crying like a baby because Britain told him to fuck off. You and Tommy Robinson wanted to fly in and turn London into another far-right hate rally... Starmer did exactly what any sane leader should do: kept the provocateurs out. This isn’t ‘communism’, you delusional grifter. It’s basic border control. Go sue Starmer in your dreams.

Absolutely shameful coverage by @SkyNews in Golders Green today. A maniac with poor mental health stabs people, and it's all PM Starmer's fault according to Sky. You shame journalism, and have turned into GB News mark II. Shameful. #SkyBiasAgainstStarmer

Tice, Jenrick, Yusuf, Farage - all had huge accusations against them in last few days. Where's your in-depth 'Can Reform survive?' review on main bulletins? @ChrisMasonBBC @BBCPolitics @BBCNews #ReformUK

What in the world did we just see! The 2 hour marathon barrier has been broken. Three guys went under the old world record... Sabastian Sawe just ran 1:59:30 with crazy negative splits, closing the last half in 59:01....faster than the American Record in the half. One of the most mind blowing performances we've seen. How did we get here? Every breakthrough is a mixture of belief and progress. It takes folks daring to see what's possible, surrounding themselves with a quality team and doing the work to give themselves a shot. You've got to bet on yourself in a big way. When asked whether he believed he could run a sub-2-hour marathon before the race, Sawe answered with one word: "Yes." Let's get the obvious out of the way. Performance enhancing drugs are the legitimate question mark to every breakthrough. So Sawe did as much as he could about taking that off the table. He and his team asked to be tested all the time. His sponsor put up 50K to the Athlete Integrity Unit. The tests are run independently, no advance notice. Over a 2 month stretch, he went through 25 drug tests. There's always a doubt. There has to be given what we know. Hopefully there's transparency in the results. But hats off to Sawe for addressing it: "I want to prove that I am clean when I set foot at the start line." But how'd we actually get here where two guys went sub 2 in the same race? 1. Shoe tech We've had a revolution in shoe technology that boosts running economy. For years shoe companies said their shoe would make you faster and was mostly marketing. Until 2016, when it actually did. Initial research showed a 3-4% saving in economy, while subsequent work has shown it's highly variable. Now, it's a matching game. Find the perfect shoe for your form and you can get a big boost. Normally, it takes years of lots of miles and strength training to boost economy. But now we get that instant boost that not only helps boost performance but often leaves us feeling less beat up in the later stages of the marathon. So we get a little bit less hitting of the wall... 2. The fuel For a long time, fueling was limited by biology. You can only take in and process so much. Then in the 2000s, researchers found if we mixed sugars, we can boost intake because they're processed differently. Then recently, Maurten found if you use a hydrxogel, you boost utilization without GI distress anymore. We've gone from pushing 60g/hr to 120g/hr in a few decades. Again...less bonking. 3. Depth A few decades ago, you spent your career racing on the track and then once your speed started to fade a bit you went to the marathon. Now, many skip right to the marathon. That's where the money is. And with the economy boost from the shoes, you can make that jump quickly. More depth of talent means more competitors in their prime pushing barriers. 4. Belief Even with the shoes and tech, a few years ago sub 2 hours seemed a long way off, until Kipchoge pushed that barrier in a series of time trials. Yes, they weren't official races and had contrived pacing. But it absolutely shifted everyone's thinking on what is possible. A generation of runners saw Kipchoge go for it. Our prediction of what is possible changed. It's mind blowing how far we've come in such a short time. What once seemed decades away, just got smashed twice in the same race. Hats off to Sawe, especially for addressing the scourge of doping and showing folks what is possible with a lot of hard work, some crazy belief, and some fortuitous advances.

@TheNewsAgents Like listening to pub bores, always light on facts and long on opinions, endlessly pursuing irrelevance

"It is almost impossible not to contrast the gravity with which Olly Robbins speaks with the slightly childish, faux outrage we saw from Keir Starmer." Has one sacked civil servant exposed every flaw in the PM's version of events over Peter Mandelson? thenewsagents.co.uk/article/how-on…

@politixintheuk Lewis Goodall is the pub bore - short on facts, long on opinion boorishly talking over anyone with a considered view

“What’s the basis?" Darren Jones calls Goodall's bluff.

🔥Combat correspondent and former Green Beret Michael Yon on WH correspondents' dinner shooting: "[This is] another fake shooting event with Trump." "It's obviously fake." "Trump is just part of the actual information operation." "Karoline Leavitt, by the way, shortly before the fake shooting, was saying there would be shots fired at this press event." "[This] is a waste of time. We're in a huge war. [Trump's] an information operation." This clip of Yon (@Michael_Yon), who is a photographer and author as well as a combat correspondent, is taken from a video posted to his Substack page on April 25, 2026.

@mr_mayank Both ears are intact

Understand the chronology — > Donald Trump was facing the worst ratings of his lifetime > Iran war backfired, gas prices surged, higher cost of living, nothing going right for Trump > Suddenly Trump decided to go to White House Correspondents’ Dinner > A shooter came out of nowhere in the world’s most secure zone and fired shots RANDOMLY (Confirmed by eye witnesses) 😄 > The shooter is shot dead, no trace left whatsoever Suddenly Trump is due to get sympathy, he will be treated like a warrior fighting against satan... Why have we all heard this script somewhere before? 😂

If you look at the past 20 odd articles Chris Mason has written they are all negative about Labour. Absolutely nothing negative about any other party. I'm sorry but he's biased. He does not represent impartiality.

The Prime Minister handled this whole sorry debacle today, with good grace, patience, professionalism & dignity. His confident style of leadership is such a refreshing change from the amateurs of the last 14 years - the underhand, clueless idiot Johnson, in particular.

Olly Robbins is making it abundantly clear, the passing and denying clearance as claimed by the press simply doesn’t exist. The press, in particular @PippaCrerar and @guardian need to hang their heads in shame in not getting this fundamental fact right before breaking their news.

Girls football festival in Bandung with 400 very good excited girls being coached - thanks FFF and PSSI

Quite frankly, Pippa Crerar, this report does you no credit at all. You may regard it as something of a scoop, but many within Labour’s support will see it rather differently, as a poorly timed intervention that risks being interpreted as an attempt to destabilise the Prime Minister, Sir Keir Starmer. At a moment when the facts themselves point to a failure of process rather than ministerial wrongdoing, the decision to publish in this manner invites questions about judgement as much as journalism. It is not unreasonable for readers to ask whether proper balance and context have been maintained, particularly when the consequence is to amplify a narrative that does not yet rest on fully established ground. For many, this does little to strengthen confidence in The Guardian as a reliable and measured source. On the contrary, it risks reinforcing the view that sections of the media are too ready to blur the line between reporting and shaping political outcomes. I, for one, will think very carefully before turning to it again.

Former Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene openly accuses Donald Trump of orchestrating a massive government coverup. She reveals Trump forced Speaker Mike Johnson to block the Epstein files and even triggered a government shutdown to protect elite abusers. Pure corruption.

I think most people are now tired of the witch-hunt of our PM over the Mandleson affair which by comparison with other current world events is of no great consequence. They want him out because of his ongoing success in turning the country around after years of Tory corruption.

So far this week there has been extreme outrage because Kier Starmer, the UK Prime Minister: 1) Went on a 3 day minibreak to Spain and stayed in a £200 a night 4 star hotel 2) Spent £1500 on a sofa, and £1400 on a bed at his Downing Street residence (all Prime Ministers have, and have always used, a £30,000 annual allowance for this same residence). Does anyone else see how pathetic and desperate this all is? In a world where so many world leaders are openly corrupt to the tune of multi-billion dollars, that these people are digging so hard and so deep to fabricate a scandal where none exists? Outrage bait BS, and we all know it.

Trump insults Italy and Italian PM: Opposition parties rally to her support. Trump insults UK and British PM: Reform and Farage bend their knee and thank Trump. Tells you all you need to know about where their loyalties truly lie.

This article is utter tosh, whatever one's position on Trump, Pope Leo XIV, or the morality of the Iran war. Essentially every paragraph is nonsense. It reads like borderline satire at times. One example of the idiocy of the piece among others, I quote "... 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘗𝘰𝘱𝘦 𝘩𝘢𝘴 𝘢𝘭𝘴𝘰 𝘪𝘨𝘯𝘰𝘳𝘦𝘥 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘢𝘴𝘵𝘰𝘯𝘪𝘴𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘨𝘭𝘺 𝘱𝘳𝘦𝘤𝘪𝘴𝘦 𝘣𝘰𝘮𝘣𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘰𝘧 𝘮𝘪𝘭𝘪𝘵𝘢𝘳𝘺 𝘵𝘢𝘳𝘨𝘦𝘵𝘴", which is a truly insane thing to write, given that the first salvo of the war was literally a double-tap on a school that killed ~150 schoolgirls. It's puzzling this embarrassing piece passed an editor at the Times. thetimes.com/comment/column…