egg

Ability

Yep, and the conveniently timed bets on the war starting, and ending. The Aussie take on it, with as clear an explanation as you'll see: 'You want to know why they started a war? Follow the money. Always follow the money. Monday morning. 6:50am New York time. Markets are dead quiet. Pre-market trading. Thin liquidity. The kind of hour where normal people are arguing with their alarm clock or trying to remember if they fed the dog. But somebody's awake. Somebody's VERY awake. Because at 6:50am, someone drops $1.5 BILLION into S&P 500 futures. Simultaneously shorts $192 million in oil. Orders 4 to 6 times larger than anything else trading at that hour. In a market so quiet you could hear a Bloomberg terminal fart. Fifteen minutes later, Trump posts on Truth Social that the US and Iran are having "productive conversations" and he's pausing strikes on Iranian energy infrastructure. S&P rockets up 2.5%. Oil crashes 11%. Whoever made those trades just printed themselves a fortune in the time it takes to microwave a Hot Pocket. But I'm sure it's fine. I'm sure some guy in Connecticut just had a really, really good feeling about geopolitics at 6:50 in the morning. Woke up, did some yoga, had a green smoothie, thought "you know what, I reckon there's going to be a surprise peace announcement in 15 minutes in a war that's been escalating for 4 weeks" and casually threw one and a half billion dollars at it. Happens all the time. Totally normal. Nothing to see here. Now here's where it gets so corrupt it's almost beautiful. Over on Polymarket, 10 brand new accounts, all created at the same time, no trading history, dropped $160,000 betting on an Iran ceasefire by end of March. They stand to collect over a million dollars. And two of those wallets? They'd already successfully bet on the war STARTING. Read that again. Someone allegedly knew the war was coming. Bet on it. Won. Then knew the "peace talks" were coming. Bet on that too. Won again. Using fresh wallets with zero history. Created simultaneously. Like a litter of puppies, except instead of being cute they're committing federal crimes. But sure. Maybe it's the same guy from Connecticut. Maybe he's just really good at this. Maybe his horoscope said "Sagittarius, big week for geopolitical prediction markets, wear something blue." Now here's the part that turns this from corruption into actual comedy. Iran says none of it's real. Their Foreign Ministry says there are no negotiations. Their parliamentary speaker went on X and said, and I'm paraphrasing, "This is fake news designed to manipulate financial and oil markets." Even Iranian academics are laughing about it. One said Trump makes these announcements every week when markets open to drive oil prices down and his 5 day deadline conveniently expires on a Friday when markets close. So. The President of the United States allegedly MADE UP a diplomatic breakthrough. In the middle of a war he started. A war that's killed over 3,200 people. A war that's shut the Strait of Hormuz and sent fuel prices into orbit from Houston to Hobart. He fabricated peace talks so someone could make millions on futures contracts before breakfast. That's not corruption. That's a Netflix series. That's Ozark with nuclear weapons and a worse spray tan. And the beautiful thing? This isn't even the first time. This isn't even the first time THIS YEAR. April 2025. The tariffs. Trump tweets "THIS IS A GREAT TIME TO BUY!!!" on Truth Social at 9:37am. Four hours later he announces a 90 day tariff pause. Markets go vertical. S&P jumps 9.5%. His own media company stock rockets 22%. Senate Democrats demanded an SEC investigation. Warren called it corruption in plain sight. Schiff called for an urgent inquiry. You know what happened? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. Because the SEC chair is Trump's handpicked guy, Paul Atkins, confirmed by the Senate he controls, running an agency he's been systematically gutting since day one. The watchdog didn't just go to sleep. They took it out back, Old Yeller style. So here we are. March 2026. And the playbook hasn't changed. It's just graduated from tariffs to actual warfare. Let me walk you through how this works, because it's genuinely elegant in a "stealing candy from 330 million people" kind of way. Step 1. Start a war on a Friday night after markets close. Can't have people panic selling in real time, that would be inconvenient. Step 2. Let oil prices explode. Strait of Hormuz closes. Crude goes through the roof. Petrol stations start looking like crime scenes. Normal people suffer. Step 3. Monday morning, just before markets open, announce a dramatic peace breakthrough. Make sure your mates are positioned first. Step 4. Watch the S&P scream higher and oil crater. Collect profits. Step 5. Have Iran deny everything 27 minutes later. Markets give back half the gains. Reposition. Step 6. Repeat on Friday with a new threat. Repeat Monday with new hope. Rinse and repeat until everyone's retirement account has been shaken upside down like a tourist in a back alley. Step 7. When asked about it, have the SEC "decline to comment." Every major announcement timed to market hours. Every escalation on a Friday close. Every de-escalation on a Monday open. CNN called it a pattern. I'd call it a subscription service. For fifty bucks a month you too can find out what the President's going to post on Truth Social before he posts it. Allegedly. And who's going to stop them? The SEC they castrated? The Congress they own? The Justice Department that's been turned into a personal legal team? The media that gets a new five alarm fire every 6 hours and can't focus on one scandal long enough to finish a headline? 3,200 people are dead. The Strait of Hormuz is closed. Fuel prices are wrecking families on every continent. Australia's sitting on less than 3 weeks of fuel reserves. Gold's crashed 20% in a month. People's retirement savings are being treated like a poker chip at a table where the dealer is also the house, the pit boss, and the guy who owns the casino. And somewhere, right now, someone is sitting in front of 6 monitors watching their brokerage account tick higher every time a 79 year old man in a bathrobe hits send on a social media post from his golf resort in Florida. This isn't an administration. It's a hedge fund with a flag. The grift isn't a side effect of the chaos. The chaos IS the grift. And they're not even being subtle about it anymore. Why would they be? Who's going to do anything? The referee works for them. The rule book's been shredded. And half the crowd is still cheering because their team is winning, even as their pockets are being picked in real time. But hey. I'm sure it's all a coincidence. Ten times in a row. Exposed by a whale tracking account on Twitter and a bunch of crypto nerds on Polymarket. Thank God we've got a free press and an independent judiciary to sort this out. Oh wait'.

Yep, that's all it is. It took a whole 45 mins for Iran to say it's bollox and that there's been no direct or indirect communication with Trump.

Bidding

Yep, that was my take on it. It was a nothing storyline, and they could have done so much more with it - Flynn coming back and having another crack at Duke, or whatever. Duke himself was a poor character, and badly cast.

Wave

It's you that went off on a Wood and Romeu tangent. It was a strange point which completely overlooked that Baz has been crap throughout most of his time here. I commented on what you said, so I'm not sure why you're banging on to me about crisp packet wrists etc. The 2 years ago Vs Kelvin in 2012 comparison is desperate. He's shit. I don't understand the unwillingness to just accept that and move on, but each to their own.

Yep. What makes it even better is Charles waiting for the bobble to go out of the pass. He'd have hit it earlier if not. Phenomenal goal.

So Baz would have been brilliant if Wood and Romeu weren't in the team? Right you are. I know football fans will never agree on everything, but it should be universally acknowledged that Baz was a disaster and has finally been upgraded.

I love these Aussie takes. Always bang on: 'Thank You For Your Attention to This Matter: A Senile Man Declares Economic War on Planet Earth Let me get this straight because I'm about to book a trip to a different gene pool. The Strait of Hormuz is closed. Oil is $108 a barrel. Gas in the US has jumped 93 cents a gallon in 3 weeks. The global economy is bleeding from every artery. And this senile fucking game show host just posted on Truth Social, at 7:44pm on a Saturday night from his golf resort, that he's going to blow up Iran's power plants. All of them. Starting with the biggest one first. "Thank you for your attention to this matter." Like it's a fucking strata notice about bins. Let's talk about what this drooling strategist apparently doesn't understand. Iran has roughly 400 power plants. You know what runs on power? Refineries. Pumping stations. Pipeline infrastructure. The entire oil and gas production chain that produces around 3 million barrels a day for the global market. You want the Strait open so oil flows again? Fantastic. So your plan is to destroy the infrastructure that PRODUCES the oil that flows through the Strait? That's like burning down the brewery because the pub's closed. Even if Iran surrenders tomorrow. Even if they open Hormuz by Monday morning and wave through every tanker with a little flag and a complimentary baklava. You've just told the world you're going to flatten the energy grid of OPEC's third largest producer. Rebuilding a power plant takes 3 to 5 years minimum. Refineries without power don't refine. Wells without power don't pump. You're not just talking about a temporary disruption. You're talking about removing millions of barrels of production capacity from the global market for the better part of a decade. Oil won't go back to $70. It won't go back to $90. You've just baked in $100+ oil for years. Maybe permanently. And that's before we talk about the retaliation Iran just promised. They've already said if their energy infrastructure gets hit, every US-linked energy asset, desalination plant and IT system in the Gulf gets targeted. Saudi Aramco. Qatari LNG terminals. UAE refineries. The entire energy architecture of the Middle East, up in smoke. This isn't a military strategy. This is a 79 year old man with a phone and a Diet Coke threatening to set the global economy on fire because nobody will do what he says. Winston Churchill studied maps. He agonised over Gallipoli for the rest of his life because he understood what it meant to get it wrong. Truman dropped the bomb and then couldn't sleep. MacArthur, for all his ego, understood supply lines, logistics, the difference between destroying an enemy and destroying yourself in the process. This bloke can't find Iran on a map. He thinks "strategic" is a brand of vodka. Friday he said the war was winding down. Friday night. "Getting very close to meeting our objectives." Twenty four hours later he's threatening to plunge 90 million civilians into darkness and crash the global energy market for a generation. And the sign off. The fucking sign off. "Thank you for your attention to this matter. President DONALD J. TRUMP." Mate. You're threatening to commit what most of the planet would consider a war crime against civilian infrastructure, and you've formatted it like a letter from your accountant. The man who said "we don't even use the Strait" is now threatening to blow up the entire energy grid of a sovereign nation because the Strait isn't open. The man who promised cheap gas is presiding over the fastest fuel price spike in American history. The man who said the war was won is now issuing 48 hour ultimatums from a beach club in Palm Beach. This isn't 4D chess. This isn't even checkers. This is a toddler flipping the board because he's losing and screaming that he won. Meanwhile, back in the real world, Australia has about 50 seconds of fuel reserves left. We refine almost nothing domestically. Our entire economy runs on imported diesel. And the bloke with his finger on the button just threatened to make the global oil crisis permanent. But sure. Thank you for your attention to this matter. We're all paying fucking attention now.'

I don't think it'll be that close, but the Charlton and West Brom draws will make a difference one way or another.

And Morgan and Meghoma in the under 20's.

It's not happening. The FA cup run, as great as it is, means we'll be playing catch up with game on top of game. I'd have laughed if someone told me 6th was a possibility when Tonda came in, and I'd be delighted with that.

We watched it this evening. Really underwhelmed - too many characters missing, and Duke wasn't strong enough for me. Decent soundtrack though.

Stand