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Latest Playbook now done. This one is for those who commission or design leadership or coach development programmes in elite sport
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Alistair Smith
22.3K posts
Alistair Smith
@alsmithlearning
Learning in sport and education. Author of 8 books, speaker, cheer leader. Learning Consultant to the Football Association for 20 yrs and for UEFA, FIFA
London Sumali Ocak 2009
2.1K Sinusundan7K Mga Tagasunod
Alistair Smith nag-retweet
Was it for this that the US spent 80 years building power and alliances? Not to be a force for good. But instead to impoverish neighbours, threaten those it protected, rob minerals from war-torn countries, and break its promises to 100s of millions of the poorest in the world? 🧵
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Alistair Smith nag-retweet
As a former Wing Commander, I can tell you, our brave RAF pilots are not just “hanging around” when they put their lives at risk to save others.
The words you’re looking for @KemiBadenoch are ‘Thank you’
Serious times require serious politicians and you’ve just failed the test.
The Labour Party@UKLabour
Our Armed Forces keep us safe at home and abroad. Yet Kemi Badenoch says our brave RAF pilots are just "hanging around". She must apologise.
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Alistair Smith nag-retweet
@allenanalysis Completely untrue - listen again to exactly what he said
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🚨 UK Prime Minister Starmer just confirmed Britain is now entering the war.
His justification: Iran started attacking countries in the region.
But here’s what he left out:
The US launched an illegal war with no congressional authorization, no imminent threat, and no plan. Iran responded. And now Britain is using Iran’s response as the justification to join the war that provoked it.
This is how wars of aggression launder themselves into wars of defense.
Start it. Get hit back. Call the retaliation the real provocation.
The entire Western alliance is now being pulled into a war five Americans have already died in — built on a lie the White House still can’t explain
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Alistair Smith nag-retweet
Alistair Smith nag-retweet
Peston’s analysis follows a now familiar pattern when it comes to Keir Starmer. The framing is rarely neutral. It begins not with the principle at stake, but with an implied weakness. The reader is invited to see the Prime Minister as either naïve, overly legalistic, or politically cornered. That lens then shapes the rest of the commentary.
The central issue was whether the United Kingdom should permit the United States to use British bases, including Diego Garcia, at a moment when America was arguably the initiating force in a conflict with Iran. The reported advice of the Attorney General was that doing so before any Iranian retaliation would place Britain on questionable legal ground. That is not a minor technicality. It is the difference between participating in an unlawful act and acting in collective self defence.
To portray adherence to that advice as political timidity or diplomatic miscalculation is to invert the argument. If Britain claims to uphold international law, then it cannot suspend that commitment whenever a powerful ally demands expediency. Law is not an accessory to be worn in peacetime and discarded in crisis.
It is also misleading to suggest that this was some uniquely British hesitation. Germany and France adopted similarly cautious positions. Neither signalled blanket support for immediate participation in a conflict whose legal basis was contested. That places Britain within a broader European posture rooted in prudence and legality. This was not isolation. It was alignment with major allies who took the view that international law must frame action from the outset.
The suggestion that Starmer “alienated” Donald Trump also deserves scrutiny. Alliances between states are not personal friendships. They are institutional, strategic and enduring. A refusal to act outside legal parameters is not hostility. It is sovereignty. If the American administration were to respond by withdrawing tariff arrangements secured through negotiation, that would reflect a transactional approach in Washington rather than a failure of statecraft in London.
As for the apparent shift from refusal to later cooperation, the distinction is neither cosmetic nor contradictory. Once Iran retaliated against regional allies, the legal character of the conflict changed. Collective self defence carries a different basis in international law than participation in a first strike. Recognising that distinction is not inconsistency. It is constitutional discipline.
There is also a broader point that is underplayed. Public opinion in Britain remains cautious about further military entanglement in the Middle East. A Prime Minister who insists on lawful justification before committing national assets is not necessarily weak. He may simply be reflecting both the law and the electorate.
The easy narrative is that in moments of crisis leaders must privilege realpolitik over principle. The harder truth is that once principle is abandoned in favour of expediency, it becomes far more difficult to invoke it later. If international law is dismissed as inconvenient when allies breach it, then it loses moral force when adversaries do the same.
One may disagree with Starmer’s judgment. But to suggest that fidelity to legal advice is folly misunderstands the very order Britain claims to defend.
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Alistair Smith nag-retweet
Probably the clearest and strongest way of expressing that you can be both
Against a hateful, destructive Iranian regime
And think that Trump’s actions are illegal, reckless, and destabilising for the global order - far beyond Iran
Clash Report@clashreport
Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez on Iran: Today more than ever, it is essential to remember that one can be against a hateful regime, as is the case with the Iranian regime, as is the whole of Spanish society, and at the same time be against an unjustified, dangerous military intervention outside of international law. That one must be against a war initiated without the authorization of the United States Congress or the United Nations Security Council and, as I have said before, one that violates international law. And that there is always room for a negotiated solution, instead of being dragged along by the devastation of arms as the only possible way out. Therefore, I would like once again, as we have done since the beginning, to appeal for immediate de-escalation, for full respect for international law in all the conflicts we are unfortunately suffering, and for the urgency of resuming dialogue as soon as possible. That is where Spain will be, and that is where I believe the whole of the European Union should be.
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Alistair Smith nag-retweet
This is What It Means to Have Balls
It’s a kind of psychopathy. That’s the only word for it. They are killing people wantonly. They are bombing schoolgirls — 150 of them. Not combatants. Children. And the machinery of Western power grinds on as if this is simply the cost of doing business.
Thirty years. Thirty years of this madness. And it has cost us trillions. Not billions — trillions. Trillions bled out of the American body while the roads crack and the bridges rust and the living standards of ordinary Americans stagnate or fall.
Netanyahu is a madman. That is not hyperbole — it is a clinical description of a man who operates outside every boundary of law, humanity, and restraint. And Israel, under his direction, has become what it has become: a rogue, murderous state that kills with impunity because it has calculated, correctly, that Washington will cover every crime, fund every atrocity, and veto every consequence.
Trump is an utter disgrace to this nation. Let that be stated plainly. Every word of America First was a lie. Every promise of restraint, of ending the forever wars, of putting the American people before foreign entanglements — inverted. Reversed. Betrayed. He did the exact opposite of what he told the American people he would do. The exact opposite.
Congress? Dead. It does not matter whether it is Johnson or Schumer. These people are useless. They are on the Zionist lobby’s payroll and they have been for decades. They have squandered our wealth. They have squandered our strength. They have mortgaged the future of this country to a foreign policy that serves no American interest whatsoever.
Ask yourself the simple question: why does China have 50,000 kilometers of high-speed rail — roughly 30,000 miles — and the United States has not one mile? Why is Chinese infrastructure advancing at a pace that would have seemed impossible a generation ago while American
infrastructure is literally falling apart? The answer is not complicated. China does not go to war. The United States is in nonstop, undeclared war. War that is never voted on, never debated, never honestly accounted for.
The cost is not just money. It is freedom. It is the steady transformation of this republic into a military state — one that funds foreign carnage while its own people live on crumbling foundations, both literal and figurative.
This is madness. It is shocking, disgraceful, and it is bankrupting the United States, morally and financially. And Trump lied. Every word of it. Every last word.
Ignorance, the root and stem of all evil@ivan_8848
🚨That's What it Means to Have Balls 👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏 🚨It's a kind of psychopathy because they're killing people wantonly. 🚨They're killing schoolgirls. 150 schoolgirls bombed by Israel. 🚨30-year project of madness that has cost us trillions and trillions of dollars. 🚨This is MADNESS! 🚨Netanyahu's a MADMAN! 🚨Trump, let me add, is an utter DISGRACE to our nation. 🚨ISRAEL is a absolutely rogue, MURDEROUS NATION. 🚨He and the madmen in charge in the United States have brought us into this. 🚨They are systematically destroying our country as they are destroying the Middle East. 🚨If you ask why do the roads not work and the bridges not work in the United States. 🚨Why is infrastructure falling to pieces? 🚨Why are living standards stagnant or declining? 🚨It's because we spend trillions of dollars in war. 🚨Why is China advancing so rapidly, so effectively? 🚨Why does the United States have not one mile of fast rail? 🚨China just completed its 50,000th kilometer, approximately 30,000 miles of fast rail. 🚨Because China doesn't go to war. 🚨The United States is in NONSTOP WAR. 🚨Undeclared wars, about the cost to our society, the loss of freedom of being ruled by a military state, which we are, of being in partnership with a absolutely rogue, murderous nation, which is Israel, which thinks a little bit beyond its means because it thinks it has the United States to do all of its work for it. 🚨Trump, let me add, is an utter disgrace to our nation. 🚨Utter disgrace. He lied to us every word about America first. His whole premise was we're not going to do this. And he did exactly the opposite of what he said. He did exactly the opposite of what the American people say. 🚨Of course, Congress is dead for all intents and purposes. 🚨It doesn't matter whether it's Johnson or Schumer. 🚨They're useless, these people. 🚨They're all in the Zionist lobby payroll. 🚨They have squandered our wealth. 🚨They have squandered our strength. 🚨It's absolutely shocking, disgraceful, dangerous, bankrupting our country. 🚨And Trump lied. 🚨Lied every word of what he was going to do. ***Jeffrey D. Sachs is a world-renowned economics professor, bestselling author, innovative educator, and global leader in sustainable development. 👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏
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Alistair Smith nag-retweet
Alistair Smith nag-retweet
What an utterly disgusting and dangerous front page from the Mail today. Surely by now everyone can see that Reform is a party that thrives on division, fuels anger, and uses the scapegoating of minorities and migrants to gain support. Everyone it seems except the Mail
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Alistair Smith nag-retweet
@BethRigby It proves nothing of the sort. It proves the Greens were considered the best bet in this constituency at this time. Too much interest in gossip in the news media.
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Alistair Smith nag-retweet
As someone who has run Polling Stations as a Presiding Officer for every election and referendum, national and local, for well over 40 years, I am baffled by the ‘family voting’ furore. A core duty of the PO is to maintain secrecy and only a PO may assist a voter in casting their vote - except for blind voters being assisted by a companion. In both circumstances, a meticulous record must be maintained. If this practice occurred, then there are only three possibilities: (a) the PO was not doing their job, (b), the PO and the POs staff were complicit, or, (c) that they were intimidated to comply. If it happened in the presence of authorised observers (when staff would be at their sharpest as regards to procedures) then it is even more extraordinary. Something about this story seems very odd indeed. I am not saying it didn’t happen, but the question is: how did it happen if it did happen? 🤷♂️
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Alistair Smith nag-retweet
How far gone is the UK media? Will the @dailytelegraph
disavow this clearly racist statement by its star columnist?
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Alistair Smith nag-retweet
@BBCNews Let's get it right, BBC. Those Councils will all disappear in a year's time or less, due to reorganisation. The votes are a waste of time & money, which councils can't afford after 14yrs of Tory funding cuts. The councils *asked for* a delay. All Govt did was agree to allow it.
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Alistair Smith nag-retweet
Manchester United belongs to all of its supporters. No fan should feel excluded from following or supporting the club because of their race, religion, nationality or background. Comments from the club’s senior leadership should make inclusion easier, not harder.
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Alistair Smith nag-retweet
Sadio Mané: "When it was my turn to audition there was an older man who looked at me as if I was in the wrong place. He asked me: "are you here for the audition?" and I said yes.
"With those shoes? Look at them, how can you think of playing with them?", he told me. In fact they were really shabby, old and broken.
Then he added, "And those shorts? Don't you have any soccer shorts?"
I told him that I was there with the best equipment I had and that I just wanted to play and demonstrate my qualities.
And when I went onto the field you should have seen the surprise in his face. He came to me and said: "I'll sign you right away, you'll play on my team."
I went hungry, survived hard times, played barefoot and didn't go to school.
I don't know what fun is, I've never gone to a party because I know that if I don't give everything, I'll never perform well on the pitch and I'll never achieve my goals.
Today, with what I earn, I can help others.
I built schools, a stadium, we gave clothes, shoes and food to people in extreme poverty. And then I donate 70 euros a month to all the inhabitants of a very poor area of Senegal, to contribute to the family economy.
Why would I want ten Ferraris, twenty diamond watches and two airplanes? What good are these things for the good of the world?
I can't even stand the PlayStation, my classmates' main hobby. I've never used it, I think it's just a way to waste time and I don't want to waste mine unnecessarily."
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Alistair Smith nag-retweet
Alistair Smith nag-retweet
Andrew Tate explaining why he doesn't read books is the funniest video I've watched all week 🤣
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Alistair Smith nag-retweet
#IStandWithStarmer
I want to follow anyone who stands with Starmer. Whether you vote labour or not, this is a fight for British democracy against the oligarchs and Tech Bros and right wing fringe!
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Alistair Smith nag-retweet
@bbclaurak @DPJHodges That’s simply not true. He has 404 MPs and only a tiny handful have said anything unsupportive. They are the usual suspects who’ve criticised him from day one but are happy to benefit personally from the Labour whip.
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