Stuart Barrie
14.9K posts

Stuart Barrie
@mestuartbarrie
Music obsessive, Livingston FC supporting, optimist Dad of 3 daughters. Believe we can and must do better for our children and communities.





🗣️ “Far too many signings arrived, far too many signings underperformed” Kris Boyd on Livingston’s recruitment during a "difficult season" as they remain 12 points adrift at the bottom of the Premiership ⤵️

JUST IN: You do not fire your Army Chief of Staff in the middle of a war for no reason. You fire him because of what comes next. Pete Hegseth called General Randy George on April 2 and told him to retire immediately. The Pentagon confirmed it within hours. No reason was given. Not publicly. Not privately. A senior Army official told Fox News that Hegseth offered George nothing: no misconduct, no operational failure, no policy disagreement on the record. Just a phone call and a career ending in the middle of the most significant American combat operation in two decades. George is the 24th general or admiral Hegseth has removed. But he is not the 24th. He is the one that matters. The Army Chief of Staff. The man whose signature sits between a president’s intent and the order that sends soldiers across a beach or into a tunnel complex. The 82nd Airborne is deploying right now. Marines from the 31st MEU are staged on the USS Tripoli. JSOC operators are at forward bases in Israel, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE. Kharg Island, 90 percent of Iranian oil exports, sits 16 kilometres off a coast that someone will have to decide whether to approach. And the four-star general whose job it was to advise whether that approach should happen was removed 48 hours after Trump told the nation the war would continue for two to three more weeks. The replacement is Vice Chief General Christopher LaNeve. He was Hegseth’s senior military aide before this appointment. The man who carried the Secretary’s briefcase now commands the Army the Secretary is reshaping. The chain of command did not break. It shortened. The distance between a television studio and a combat order just collapsed to zero intermediaries who were not personally selected by the man giving the order. No reason was given. That is the tell. When someone is removed without explanation during a crisis, the explanation is the crisis itself. George either objected to something or was about to. The ground option. The power plant strikes. The Kharg raid. The escalation that turned a highway bridge in Karaj into rubble on the same day he was told to leave. Something in the next two weeks requires a chief who will not push back, and the Pentagon solved that problem by installing one trained as Hegseth’s aide. A former Fox News weekend host just fired a four-star general with combat tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, replaced him with his own former assistant, and did it during a live war in which the next decision could put American soldiers on Iranian soil for the first time in history. No hearing was held. No misconduct cited. The Army woke up on April 3 with a new chief it did not choose, in a war it did not start, preparing for a phase the previous chief apparently could not be trusted to execute. The question is not why George was fired. Every general in the building knows why. The question is what order is coming in the next fourteen days that required removing the one man in the chain of command who might have said no. The war has no perimeter. The chain of command has no objectors. And the next phase has no one left to stop it. open.substack.com/pub/shanakaans…

At an estimated price of £2 for 7 Panini stickers for the 2026 FIFA World Cup it works out at approximately £2,030 to fill the 980 sticker album unless you swap with other collectors. If the price is £1.70 it would be £1,777. If you do swap then the price range is ‘just’ £238-280 (plus the price of the album). #GotGotNeed

Good, Great or Masterpiece? | Listen to the album + explore our tribute here: album.ink/RStattoo

Touting continues for the FIFA World Cup with some scalpers trying to charge over $50,000 for tickets for the final…and that’s before fees charged by the touting sites


One of the best Traditions in Tennis is the Barcelona Champion jumping in the pool with the ball kids…🌊😅

Premier League fans deliver damning verdict on VAR. 75% of 7,946 fans polled by the Football Supporters’ Association “didn’t support the use of VAR”. Too long, too forensic, too much of a joy killer, fans say. Findings shared with Premier League and PGMO. 92% of fans surveyed “agreed” that “VAR has removed the spontaneous joy of goal celebrations” (82% of them “strongly agreed”). 85% of match-going fans “strongly disagreed” with the notion that “VAR makes watching football more enjoyable”. And 83% of those watching on TV. 85% of match-going fans “strongly disagreed” that “VAR decisions are generally resolved in a reasonable amount of time”. Echoed by 83% of those watching on TV. Only 18% agreed that “VAR has improved the overall accuracy of refereeing decisions”. 72% are “concerned about the expansion of VAR beyond its current remit”. 79% “strongly disagreed” with the suggestion “that the match-going experience is better with VAR”. 67% “strongly agreed” that they preferred “watching games that are played without VAR to games with VAR”. 84% “strongly support” goal-line technology. 34% “strongly opposed” to the idea of a challenge system (two per game per team). “These findings back up the FSA's previous survey in 2021, where fans expressed misgivings about the introduction of VAR,” says Thomas Concannon, @WeAreTheFSAPremier League network manager. “The vast majority are reporting the same concerns five years on - the loss of spontaneity when celebrating goals, and an overall worsening of the match-going experience. We have shared the survey results with the Premier League and PGMO, and look forward to discussing its findings with them.” Fans surveyed of all PL clubs and all ages (Under-18 to 65+).








