The next episode is now online ✍️ I spoke to screenwriter Claire Bennett about how the UK television industry has changed, whether it is still London-centric and whether fresh stories need to be told on television. Click below to watch ⬇️

Hello @FeargusYoung. Thank you for the follow. Can you please subscribe to @the286project by clicking on the link below ⬇️ youtube.com/@the286project

PLEASE RETWEET @PhilR2025 @WJourneyBook @footyheritage @FootballRemind @BelgianPodcast @SoccerBooksLtd @FBeyondBorders @fussballgeekz @AChapterOfMyLi1 @robertmdaws @MotherSoccerNL @Mexico86HQ @martindacruz_ @sliding_tackles @BRTD1989 @MarkGordonMedia @mrwriterman79 #worldcup

The next interview is now online ⚽️ I spoke to @sliding_tackles about Ireland's qualifying campaign for the 1982 World Cup in Spain. WATCH BELOW, LIKE AND SUBSCRIBE ⬇️

I’m actually a child online safety expert and was one of the pioneers in this space with Club Penguin and so I feel uniquely positioned to critique this. The groomer problem is real but it’s also vastly overstated. The far larger issue we saw at Penguin was suicidality or reports of sexual abuse in the home. There is no solution for lazy/bad parenting. You can implement all the ID laws you want but if parents are going to just hand kids their phones unlocked, those kids will have access to all the same things the parents have unfettered. What I found is that these draconian safety laws actually make it harder to be an honest operator of kids apps because on one hand it’s so much legal risk and so much user friction that it simply becomes uninvestible as a business. Parents will just lie to let their kids use the unfettered internet. For example, I have a friend who works in mobile gaming who has two kids, one above and one below the age limit but separated by just 2 yrs, and the two wanted to play and chat together on Roblox - which is reasonable. To do this, he just verified that his younger kid is old enough for the chat feature when he’s not. This happens all the time and will happen with these laws to. How far do we want to go with this? Scan the face of the user in real-time to make sure it’s not a kid using the device? We could do that but it feels like a massive unwanted intrusion of privacy. That’s how you know this law isn’t about kids. COPPA and GDPR-K and so forth already make it illegal to allow chat and other grooming vectors to kids. What’s really being done here is trying to eliminate online anonymity. And this is a far bigger issue that goes to core speech rights because if you cannot criticize the govt anonymously and if wrong speech is a crime then it becomes easy to identify all the detractors of the govt in power, and ban, fine or jail them for speech crimes. Starmer has already been doing this and he wants to do it at a much bigger scale. Starmer won’t even acknowledge the problem of actual grooming gangs in Britain’s neighborhoods but he’s worried about online grooming? No he’s not, and this hypocrisy gives away the game. What he wants is to kill online anonymity so he can enforce censorship of his unpopular policies. No politician should have this power.

Banning smoking in pubs & restaurants was hysterical, unnecessary, illiberal, myth-based, costly, and damaging (as the malaise of the pub trade shows). It was supported by a bunch of curtain-twitching busybodies more concerned with imposing their personal taste on places they didn't frequent in the first place - middle class women in particular - and it legitimised moral panic as a basis for making public policy. So yes, I'd say this comparison is apt. The law should not be a gesture. We should not make law on the basis that, though the problem is lacking evidence and the solution is proven not to work, it will nonetheless "change the culture". You try to change the culture by making arguments, not by sucking up to politicians and having them dictate terms to your fellow citizens. You live the culture you want by using the tools you already have at your disposal (such as banning smartphones, monitoring your child's internet usage, etc). You provide the evidence that your views produce better results. You do not force every adult in the country to hand over their data, their ID, their right to privacy, on the basis of mere vibes. You may not like the choices other people make, but you do not have the right to impose your whims on them. This is foundational liberalism, and it is pathetic that it must be restated in this way.

A must read.

Killer McCoy (1947) is definitely a #boxing film, despite the poster trying to pretend it's not. Directed by Roy Rowland, and starring Mickey Rooney, Brian Donlevy, Ann Blyth, James Dunn, Tom Tully, and Sam Levene.

Hello @Highlystrung365. Thank you for the follow. Can you please subscribe to @the286project by clicking on the link below ⬇️ youtube.com/@the286project

Hello @bellapro12. Thank you for the follow. Can you please subscribe to @the286project by clicking on the link below ⬇️ youtube.com/@the286project

PLEASE RETWEET @PhilR2025 @WJourneyBook @footyheritage @FootballRemind @BelgianPodcast @SoccerBooksLtd @FBeyondBorders @fussballgeekz @AChapterOfMyLi1 @robertmdaws @MotherSoccerNL @Mexico86HQ @martindacruz_ @sliding_tackles @BRTD1989 @MarkGordonMedia @mrwriterman79

Writer and author @sliding_tackles discusses how national football manager Eoin Hand tried to bring professionalism to Ireland's pre-match preparation. Watch the full interview on Tuesday, 16th June at 7pm BST! #football #soccer #worldcup #ireland

Hello @TankTopFilms. Thank you for the follow. Can you please subscribe to @the286project by clicking on the link below ⬇️ youtube.com/@the286project

Ten reasons wealth taxes don’t work: 1.Europe already ran the experiment and quit. Twelve OECD countries had wealth taxes in 1990; only four do now. Those that still have wealth taxes don’t have CGT or IHT. 2.Norway proved how dangerous they are. A tiny rate hike was meant to raise ~$146m; instead $54bn of wealth fled and revenue fell by ~$448m net.  They hit the opposite of the target. 3.It will hit regular people. Governments typically bring in taxes on the “super rich”, then when it doesn’t work they lower the threshold. 4.Britain already wealth-taxes by stealth. Council tax, stamp duty, dividend tax, frozen thresholds, CGT, 40% IHT, luxury tax, private school tax - we have a diffuse wealth tax wearing a dozen costumes. 5.Wealth is a guess, not a fact. Income hit a bank account; wealth is an opinion about future value. You end up taxing and then litigating based on arguable estimates, every single year. 6.Most people can’t tell wealth from income. The politics sells because the public conflates “owns £10m of illiquid business” with “earns £10m” - they’re nothing alike. 7.It punishes illiquidity. Paper-rich, cash-poor founders must strip dividends from their own companies to pay - taxing ownership by gutting the thing that makes jobs. 8.The mobile escape; the rooted pay. Norway’s most-taxed man left for Switzerland in a weekend.  The regional business owner and the homeowner can’t so they get the bill. 9.It causes capital flight. More super-rich Norwegians left in 2022 than in the previous 13 years combined.  Capital is the most mobile thing there is. 10.It eats the seed corn. Wealth is just deferred investment the capital funding the next hire and the next business. It raises little, invites avoidance, and drains the capital base.  BONUS: 90% of what we call wealth now is intangible - intellectual property, data, algorithms, startup venture valuations, brand equity etc. The days of wealth being houses, factories and materials that can be seized are long gone. If you make your country anti-wealth you are basically making it anti-competitive in the modern economy.

Film director Alfred Hitchcock at the door of the Rovers Return Inn on the set of Coronation Street, Granada Studios, Manchester, 1964 (photo by Joe Derby, Daily Herald).

John McWhorter: American politicians who build their brand around black grievances are “becoming a relic of another time…. I almost feel sorry for them.” “We need more cosmopolitan, and frankly more honest, people as black leaders.”

Schedule for interviews in July: 6/16 at 7pm BST @sliding_tackles on Ireland's qualifying campaign for Spain '82. 6/21 at 6pm BST @BRTD1989 on the history of USSR football team. 6/30 at 7pm BST @everyscififilm on science fiction films. #football #worldcup #sciencefiction

Hello @Azimat66. Thank you for the follow. Can you please subscribe to @the286project by clicking on the link below ⬇️ youtube.com/@the286project

Hello @kexy_payn. Thank you for the follow. Can you please subscribe to @the286project by clicking on the link below ⬇️ youtube.com/@the286project