iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

marklaffan.bsky.social @marklaffan.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

The bigger question for English rugby is why the shift in their league isn’t translating into Europe or internationally. That does tend to point to a weaker competition rather than a strengthening one.

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marklaffan.bsky.social @marklaffan.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

Amazed to see the “UK re-entry” chat gathering steam. Do people imagine that the EU has nothing better to do than indulge the UK in another drawn out hokey cokey? There isn’t a single major EU administration with political capital to waste on this nonsense.

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marklaffan.bsky.social @marklaffan.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

It’s not just the direct impact. The US has been able to leverage access to its air technology for foreign policy. The UAE and F35’s, Turkey voting Sweden into NATO for F-16’s, right back to Egypt getting F-4’s as part of the Camp David deal. Drone tech is edging that bargaining chip off the table.

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marklaffan.bsky.social @marklaffan.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

Finding it increasingly surprising that Russian nationals are still wondering around European cities on vacation.

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marklaffan.bsky.social @marklaffan.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

And it’s fundamentally not taxed twice. The deliberate conflation of two parties is part of the sleight of hand. People who die don’t get taxed, and the beneficiaries of their estate haven’t paid tax on that income previously.

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marklaffan.bsky.social @marklaffan.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

Have they switched or…without being too brutal…just died? The Tories were always heading to a bit of a demographic cliff.

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marklaffan.bsky.social @marklaffan.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Players in Tier 1 nations who don’t make an academy intake in their teens have a hard enough time getting spotted. Antoine Frisch’s CV is testament to that.

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marklaffan.bsky.social @marklaffan.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Taxing wealth. Taxing corporations. Post WW2 levels of public house building. A radical shift in earning distribution. There’s no plausible future in which a model of taxing work to support the elderly is rendered feasible by importing working age people.

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marklaffan.bsky.social @marklaffan.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

I’m not anti immigration, but I think this argument is very flawed. There’s no future model in which we maintain a system of benefits funded by taxes on the working population given the aging population, ongoing extension of life expectancy and imminent mass automation. Much bigger thinking needed.

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marklaffan.bsky.social @marklaffan.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

It’s immense. Actually underrated I think. I’ve seen it more times than any other film I suspect.

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marklaffan.bsky.social @marklaffan.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

My cynical commercial gut tells me that these scares are engineered to allow them to slow development without damaging their valuations. They can’t deliver the corporate ROI they’ve promised.

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marklaffan.bsky.social @marklaffan.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

I’d agree. Ultimately I’d want to ask world rugby whether there’s any successful precedent for trying to build interest in this way. Seems to me the countries that have progressed in the last decade or two - Spain, Japan, Fiji, Chile, Portugal - have done the boring, year on year grass roots work.

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marklaffan.bsky.social @marklaffan.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

Italy vs Ireland in NY would have legs, I’d imagine? But they’d need domestic fans to travel to the US as happened in the World Cup for it to really make a bang. It’s never going to be easy to sell Americans a sport that they’re just a bit shit at.

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marklaffan.bsky.social @marklaffan.bsky.social · 06/09/2026

I have a suspicion that there’s a split now in the right between those who are actually racist and those who have come to associate a tolerance of immigration with the broad liberal consensus that they see as having abandoned them. I think what they hate most is middle class white men in suits.

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marklaffan.bsky.social @marklaffan.bsky.social · 20/08/2026

It’s a difficult thing to say in the context of guys picking up life changing injuries, but pro rugby players are paid too much. Loss making pro outfits spending the lions share of their revenue on player wages. Guys wanting 300k a year to play to five men and a dog.

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marklaffan.bsky.social @marklaffan.bsky.social · 06/08/2026

If there’s 3 of you at the bar, at least one is prevented from leaning. Pythagoras was clear on this.

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marklaffan.bsky.social @marklaffan.bsky.social · 06/08/2026

I’d agree, and I think in their heads they conflated it with the free speech battles of the 50’s-80’s. There’s a whole generation of Cold War raised comedians convinced they’re refighting the battles they had with censors in their obsession with “woke”.

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marklaffan.bsky.social @marklaffan.bsky.social · 06/08/2026

I think it’s more accurate to say that the council has claimed without any evidence that the Guardian is misrepresenting the story. Plenty of space in that press release to clarify the actual policy. I think I know which of the parties involved is spinning.

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marklaffan.bsky.social @marklaffan.bsky.social · 06/08/2026

Old men’s pubs have always had people standing at the bar.

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marklaffan.bsky.social @marklaffan.bsky.social · 04/08/2026

What’s Saints’ average home gate? 14,000? I know there’s international and European and TV money, but at some point the penny has to drop that rugby players are simply overpaid for the audience their product generates.

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marklaffan.bsky.social @marklaffan.bsky.social · 31/07/2026

At the point that you’ve turned Sepp Blatter into Greta Thunberg, it’s generally time to reverse course.

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marklaffan.bsky.social @marklaffan.bsky.social · 26/07/2026

I know it’s valid for you to feel it could be better, but don’t lose sight of the fact that you’ve done something there that’s really, really remarkable.

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marklaffan.bsky.social @marklaffan.bsky.social · 26/07/2026

Does he realise in any way that in a world where political violence is the norm he has a life expectancy of 35 minutes?

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marklaffan.bsky.social @marklaffan.bsky.social · 26/07/2026

One by one. In fairness, they’ve been waiting 75 years. But “speeches that thank the nutritionist” is now a category.

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marklaffan.bsky.social @marklaffan.bsky.social · 21/07/2026

This is the time of year set aside by nature for wild transfer speculation.

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marklaffan.bsky.social @marklaffan.bsky.social · 19/07/2026

They were Hymns. I’d recommend the Rest is History recent series on them. Strongly tied to the emergence of nation state identity in the 18th and 19th century.

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marklaffan.bsky.social @marklaffan.bsky.social · 19/07/2026

It gave me a tremendous surge of nostalgia. Seeing Dr Contempomi get rattled and completely lose the run of himself used to be the highlight of every Munster fan’s season. I wonder if one of the reporters was wearing Alan Quinlan’s scrum cap for an extra edge?

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marklaffan.bsky.social @marklaffan.bsky.social · 16/07/2026

You’d have to assume they’ve been given some update to that effect too, and are just chancing their arm?

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marklaffan.bsky.social @marklaffan.bsky.social · 16/07/2026

I think if I was PM, I’d quite like to have a chancellor that knows he can’t be PM, and who knows I know he can’t be PM. Would make for quite a healthy dynamic.

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marklaffan.bsky.social @marklaffan.bsky.social · 01/07/2026

Bad business. I’d have been rude about him for half of that and saved them a small fortune.

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marklaffan.bsky.social @marklaffan.bsky.social · 25/06/2026

It’s pretty horrendous that we’re at a point where most of the Irish people I know in the UK now assume that they will have to make plans around family location. The implications are horrendous - reciprocal action would mean that some families literally have no way of staying together.

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marklaffan.bsky.social @marklaffan.bsky.social · 19/06/2026

I can see the moral panic critique, but surely there’s a sound essential argument that allowing Silicon Valley Fascists to monetize the cerebral cortex of a generation of young people has not been a successful experiment?

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marklaffan.bsky.social @marklaffan.bsky.social · 19/06/2026

I think historians will write chapters on how the Brexit inspired purge of the more moderate faction of Tory MPs left them stranded. Drop a Heseltine or Clarke of a younger vintage in and you’d have a different party. But their membership is far to the right of the country.

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marklaffan.bsky.social @marklaffan.bsky.social · 19/06/2026

I’d agree - the Tories tried to tack and have sunk. I dont see who a Shire Tory is supposed to vote for now. Bizarrely, they have the biggest political open goal in front of them. There’s still a solid 30% support for a small govt, economically liberal, socially Conservative Party in England.

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marklaffan.bsky.social @marklaffan.bsky.social · 19/06/2026

100%. Circle can’t be squared. Brexit creates a temporary alliance of small c conservatives and the far right, but there’s no cogent platform for uniting those constituencies long term. Shire Tories don’t punch policemen.

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marklaffan.bsky.social @marklaffan.bsky.social · 19/06/2026

I think about 5% is the number, and has been for a long time. They lent their votes to Johnson on Brexit, have been Reform, BNP, UKIP. But they’ve always been there. They’ve hidden in the Brexit movement for a decade now but with that gone we’re back to straight anti-immigrant politics.

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marklaffan.bsky.social @marklaffan.bsky.social · 19/06/2026

That tendency always been there, and I would say historically at about the 5% level. It’s aligned with the BNP in the 90’s, UKIP, the Tories, Reform and now Restore. What we’re seeing in this cycle I think is that they’re voting again, and haven’t splintered back into their traditional factionalism.

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marklaffan.bsky.social @marklaffan.bsky.social · 12/06/2026

Important to remember that this isn’t new money. It’s being taken out of other avenues of investment and super-concentrated into a very limited number of organisations. The long term effects on US innovation capacity will be interesting to see.

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marklaffan.bsky.social @marklaffan.bsky.social · 12/06/2026

Aside from the whole “have you heard about Northern Ireland” bit, I think my favourite part is the “but what if racist violence started happening in America?” hypothesizing.

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marklaffan.bsky.social @marklaffan.bsky.social · 12/06/2026

De Chastelain setting up an Independent Commission for Recommissioning the Decommissioning as we speak.

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marklaffan.bsky.social @marklaffan.bsky.social · 12/06/2026

I’m anti gun, but by most estimates there are 400 million + firearms in the US. If you take out one a second every second of every day it’s going to take 12 years. You’d have to assume an industrial footprint equivalent to the US automotive industry. And that’s once you have all the guns in hand.

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marklaffan.bsky.social @marklaffan.bsky.social · 10/06/2026

Again, democratic accountability and transparency. The position of union delegates at conference in relation to Labour policy is a matter of public record and decided by their members. JCB don’t turn up at conferences and vote.

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marklaffan.bsky.social @marklaffan.bsky.social · 10/06/2026

Transparency and democratic accountability. The quid pro quo for Union participation is made clear at Conference. That’s fundamentally different to opaque deals with private donors, especially the criminal kind that Farage is engaged with.

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marklaffan.bsky.social @marklaffan.bsky.social · 10/06/2026

I think that’s a mischaracterisation. Unions are democratic entities and part of the Labour movement. Their role is separate to the current behaviours being demonstrated by the likes of Reform, and previously the Tories, who have pawned the nation to the highest bidder.

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marklaffan.bsky.social @marklaffan.bsky.social · 10/06/2026

Hard to avoid the conclusion that they weren’t wholly committed to keeping him. If they cut an offer that was already on the table then they pretty much told him directly to feck off.

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marklaffan.bsky.social @marklaffan.bsky.social · 10/06/2026

I think you would. Affiliated Unions are an integral and constitutional part of the Labour Party. Non affiliated would fall under whatever broader caps were put in place I would guess.

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marklaffan.bsky.social @marklaffan.bsky.social · 10/06/2026

Depending on drafting. Miliband’s similar plan in 2012 would have exempted affiliate funding.

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marklaffan.bsky.social @marklaffan.bsky.social · 10/06/2026

Absolutely. In a way the most worrying thing about it is the “he thought he had a deal” line - if they get a reputation for rug pulling stuff that is felt to be agreed then negotiations will get sticky. They’ve always been unnecessarily attritional - forcing players into kite flying to extract terms

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marklaffan.bsky.social @marklaffan.bsky.social · 10/06/2026

It’s shoddy, but sounds like a de facto decision not to renew. Did they really think he was signing that new offer?

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marklaffan.bsky.social @marklaffan.bsky.social · 10/06/2026

I think my point would still be that this is just the latest manifestation of a murderous hostility to difference. One that was evident long ago. The targets are new, but the organisations and many of the individuals the same.

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