Start both halves well (serious)

You’d much rather come back here next season than go to Scunthorpe, right? (Whimsical)

Yeah can’t afford a repeat of the first four months of this season. Ended up costing loads in the January to fix the mistake.

Gone from beating the likes of Sheff Weds, Oxford, Wycombe and Lincoln to potentially playing Warrington Rylands. Football is cruel (though Morecambe more than rode their own luck)

Big game at Cheltenham with a good away support hopefully, and a Chelt team who should be on the beach

Until last weekend I’d been to as many away wins as home this season (2). So honestly… Notts next. And I’ll expect us to have a better chance there than against Harrogate (h) the week after.

“Hottest country in the world”… well in fairness he’s doing a good job of attempting it.

Would agree with that. In particular, Barrow, Harrogate (and to an extent Tranmere) all have pretty gruesome fixtures ahead.

We’re safe as long as we a) meet expectations in our home games and b) those sides don’t pull out a supernatural performance against sides who are broadly in the top 8.

0-0 would be a brilliant result

As much as I loved the og intro music, I love run lads shoot lads even more.

Pretty despondent.

Trying to find positives. We lost only narrowly vs MK and Swindon. Many clubs above us have praised our performances eg Bromley, Swindon, MK.

We’re still theoretically in the race but we aren’t any nearer to grinding out results. Our lack of shots suggests we aren’t even close.

Shrewsbury away was also a complete failure to gain any traction against a bad team

Bet Huw thought we’d be in the playoffs and he’d take on investment at a profit…

Imo they just don’t like investors terms. Huw valued us at £1m iirc?

Pratt / Huh are surely demanding less (£300-500k?) and who wouldn’t

Trust should have sought to cancel the 80s shares months ago but still should. Will take months

The Trust also doesn’t have the money for a new investment round

His maths adds up, and we are doing better than Bristol squandering £m’s more.

Didn’t take enough blame for squad, but those saying there are easy signings out there are foolish

Got to get investment in. I fear the Trust are fussing over dilution of 80s shares - may be better just accepting it.

Few owners will stand up and face the music for almost three hours. He’s a flawed man but he’s not a bad person. I worry abt Huw saying he’d sell up to break even.

Wish he’d said ‘I’m in it because I want to be here’. We need him to want to be here because there is no other show in town right now

Fascinating graph from a Swedish study that says a lot about the current approach to special needs children

www.ft.com/content/8252...

True. Mathematically, sadly, we can’t survive if we lose every game 1-0 and Bristol Rovers keep losing 3 or 4-0…

but I suppose all I’m saying is there is a foundation that Fuchs can build on, given the right help. which might be better than our rivals have

Trying to not be too apocalyptic. Our 5 minute, two goal collapse aside, we have had three L2 games playing okay, & better than the teams around us

But we’re in an unshakeable rut of dropping points. IMO we need experienced (25-30yo) competition at CM & RW - a few players ‘phoning it in’ as you say

The recommendations

Feels like there are genuine wins available to the Cardiff Bay gov’t if it focussed on asking Westminster for the most impactful reforms. I worry the next government will not have had the past experience to appreciate the impact of small and incremental reforms like this though.

Lots of positive recommendations in this. Power to smooth budget settlements between years, opportunities in tax devolution, the favourable funding treatment of devolved policy areas, low exposure to PFI leading to better prospects for capital borrowing rates. www.cardiff.ac.uk/__data/asset...

Government to rethink rejection of Waspi compensation Pensions Secretary Pat McFadden says that the rethink does not mean that payouts will necessarily follow.

Amid the already dire proposals trailed in the media by the government for the Autumn budget… we’re talking about compensation for Waspi women??

There’s a lot wrong with the handling of it… but £10.5 bn spent on this and not on dozens of more important issues is mad www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Kudos to @welshpolitics.bsky.social for probably the most insightful podcast into the workings of devolved governments, perhaps ever

This stuff ought to shape a huge part of the upcoming Senedd elections but politicians inevitably will shy away from these issues

Pretty worrying re: inter gov’t relations & devolution

e.g. Labour runs edu in E&W. Yet the 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿 edu dep’t are given no info abt the 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 edu dep’t re-designing technical qualifications

*should* be a big national story - it’s ignored because it doesn’t matter to 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿

podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/t...

Great episode. Love to hear the suggestions from Blakey in the midst of all the doom and gloom from County fans right now

Came across GB News ‘reporting’ on Charlie Kirk.

The host immediately turns it into left versus right, ‘woke’ gets the blame, complaining "the left are perpetrating violent crime”

Channels like theirs are fuelling the same toxic political atmosphere that is causing this violence in the US. Madness

Does Maga like the UK after all? First Trump, now Vance, are daring to visit Britain

Not really the key point of this article but allegedly Ellen DeGeneres is selling her £22.5m home after only living there for 9 months. That’s £2.6m in stamp duty, nearly £300k a month 🤔 on.ft.com/3UtdeqV

Local govt ends up being an area that comes out better than some during the SR:

Average annual increase in spending power of 2.6% per year in real terms between 25/25 and 28/29

Will leave spending power 2.7% lower in real terms than in 2010/11 and 15.9% lower when accounting for population growth

Well bravo regardless. I have been to three and the planning was insane, especially when a rail replacement gets thrown in…

I appreciated the Tranmere recommendation, I’ve been looking for somewhere to tick off next season so that might well be it!

Great pod as always, @1912exiles.com! Ollie, do you reckon you are going to all 51 next season?