Monthly Archives: January 2022

THE economic prosperity of the island of Ireland shows the benefits of membership of the European single market, according to the SNP.

The Northern Ireland economy was outperforming the rest of the UK, according to figures published by the Office of National Statistics (ONS) in November.

Economic output in Northern Ireland in the third quarter of last year was only 0.3% below that of the final quarter of 2019, before the pandemic, performing better than any other in the UK.

It was ahead of the UKs overall economic recovery, which fell 2.1% over the same period.

The SNP said this pointed to it prospering under the Northern Ireland protocol which keeps it within the European single market, while the Scottish economy suffered a 6% hit over the same time.

READ MORE:'No plans' to stop Holyrood staff saying 'Brexit' after UK rule change

The party also highlighted statistics which show how the Republic of Ireland has become economically stronger after it joined the European Community in 1973.

Export figures from the Irish Central Statistics Office show in that year, Ireland exported nearly 55% of its goods to the UK. Now 90% of the countrys exports are to non-UK destinations.

Data from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) shows that Irelands GDP per person has gone from being 66% of the UKs in 1973 to over 200% in 2020.

Meanwhile, the country was ranked second in the world for quality of life in 2020, according to the United Nations Human Development Index.

Ireland moved up one place from the 2019 Index, overtaking Switzerland and second only to Norway.

SNP Northern Ireland spokesperson Richard Thomson MP said:These figures illustrate the benefits of being in the largest single market in the world a market around seven times bigger than the UK alone.

They also expose how the arguments of Westminster Unionists that Scotland should only rely on trade with one single state are not borne out by the reality of Irelands experience North and South.

They also show how member states of the EU are supported by the EU whilst Westminster ignores constituent countries. Ireland batted for Remain-voting Northern Ireland and the economic benefits can be seen.

Westminster ignored the people of Scotland and the economic damage they have caused can also be seen.

Scotland is paying an outrageouspriceforbeingignoredbyWestminsterfor aBrexitinflicted on us against our will. These figures mean crippling lost revenue for businesses across the Scottish economy and, in turn, that means lost jobs, lost income and hardship for families up and down the country.

READ MORE:Lord Frost sees massive backlash after congratulating Brexit team for honours

Meanwhile Northern Ireland has been insulated against the worst effects ofBrexitbecause they remain in the EUs single market.

These figures illustrate thatbeingcontrolled andignoredbyWestminsteris anything other than a disaster forScotland. How on earth can Scotland prosper and progress when it is cut off from the worlds largest single market in a UK that has the lowest GDP per head, worst economic productivity, highest poverty rates, and greatest inequality amongst its neighbours?

Only with the full powers of independence and as an equal partner to our neighbours can Scotland break this downward spiral and develop into a progressive, forward-thinking and prosperous nation.

The rest is here:

Success on island of Ireland in the EU shows what Scotland is missing - The National

It's not often that browsing the genteel aisles of Waterstones reminds you of madmen storming the Capitol in buffalo-horn helmets, but that's the buzz I got as I briskly scanned the History shelves. I happened on a slender volume called How To Stop Brexit,written by Nick Clegg. Id never heard of the book (a realisation that probably attaches to quite a lot of books by Lib Dem leaders) so I pulled it out, with curiosity. The text, I thought, must be a new thing, written since we finally Brexited and Clegg joined Facebook. But no: it was published in 2017. It seemsI was holding a kind of revolutionary pamphlet, advising Remainers how they might ignore Britains largest ever democratic vote, and get it reversed, thus evading the will of the people.

Ignoring and reversing a democratic vote is particularly piquant right now as the world remembers, much more vividly, what happened in Washington DC a year ago: when angry Trumpites marched through the American capital, intent on annulling the US presidential election, and reinstalling The Donald.

The philosophical similarities between the two enterprises, thwarting a referendum and thwarting a US election, are obvious. In October 2019, Remainers even did their own enormous march on the UK parliament, demanding a 'second vote' (ludicrously re-named a 'peoples vote', as if 33 million people didnt vote in the first one). And yet, for some reason, we happily forgive and forget this anti-democratic scheming, even as we revile and remember the MAGA hat wearers. Why? Is there some fundamental difference, beyond the absence of nooses and QAnon conspiracies on this side of the pond?

One way some Remainers tried to justify their anti-democratic actions, at the time, was via the claim that the Brexit vote was somehow 'advisory': little more than an opinion poll, which would then somehow 'inform' our political approach to the EU, or not. This is specious drivel, and we know this because the prime minister told us so. Here is David Cameron, speaking at Chatham House, in 2015. It is worth quoting him at length, because he is so perfectly explicit:

'Ultimately it will be the judgment of the British people in the referendum... You will have to judge what is best for you and your family, for your children and grandchildren, for our country, for our future. It will be your decision whether to remain in the EU on the basis of the reforms we secure, or whether we leave. Your decision. Nobody elses. Not politicians. Not Parliaments. Not lobby groups. Not mine. Just you. You, the British people, will decide. At that moment, you will hold this countrys destiny in your hands. This is a huge decision for our country, perhaps the biggest we will make in our lifetimes. And it will be the final decision.'

Piquantly in the light of what unfurled after June 2016 Cameron goes on to say this:

'So to those who suggest that a decision in the referendum to leave would merely produce another stronger renegotiation, and then a second referendum in which Britain would stay, I say: think again. The renegotiation is happening right now. And the referendum that follows will be a once in a generation choice. An in or out referendum. When the British people speak, their voice will be respected not ignored. If we vote to leave, then we will leave. There will not be another renegotiation and another referendum.'

Apart from saying, 'Nick Clegg, dont write that stupid book' or 'Keir Starmer, dont repeatedly ask for a second vote' (which Starmer did, when he was shadow Brexit secretary), then it is difficult to see how Cameron could have been clearer. The Brexit vote is final; the Brexit vote, whichever way it goes, will be respected. Yet it was not.

Does any of this matter? Well yes, it really does. And to get a sense why, heres a thought experiment. Imagine if the Scots had voted Yes to independencein 2014. Imagine if, after that, a group of Scots had decided to ignore this vote and force another to overturn it; imagine if some had gone even further and suggested Scotland simply revoke the Yes vote (the official Lib Dem policy on Brexit in the 2019 General Election). The result would, firstly, have been a total collapse in democracy in Scotland, as people realised it was not worth participating in elections; it could also have resulted in civil disorder, as Scottish Nationalists realised they had no democratic route to independence, and any Yes vote could simply be upended. Some would surely have turned to violence.

Is the wider UK somehow different to Scotland? Of course not. Which means the Remain campaign from 2016-2019 was, indeed, a polite, elongated British version of what unfolded in Washington DC a year ago. It was a stupid and dangerous assault on democracy. We just skipped the buffalo-horn helmets.

Here is the original post:

What the Capitol riots and the plot to stop Brexit have in common - Spectator.co.uk

YOURcorrespondence interlocutions about Brexit (The Cumberland News, December 31) brings us full-circle to the man who sparked it with his education x3 universities-for-all policy: step forward the newly (and controversially) knighted Sir Tony Blair.

Like it or not, he has had more influence on modern Britain than other post-war prime ministers, along with Clement Attlee, Harold Wilson and Margaret Thatcher and did win three successive elections with overall majorities, which proves that you CAN fool most of the people all of the time.

Before Blair became PM net migration to Britain had never exceeded the tens of thousands: its peak had been 77,000 in 1994.

But one year into Blairs term it leapt to 140,000, and when Labour left office in 2010 it was a quarter of a million a year, which the Con-Lib coalition was unable to reduce and which, does anyone doubt, was the prime motivation of Brexit?

Contrary to the alarmist Remainerpredictions there were no long lorry tailbacks at ports, empty supermarket shelves or financial markets panic, just a (worldwide) staff shortage, exacerbated here by a surfeit of uni undergrads.

It is true worldwide trade benefits have yet to appear, but that can partly be explained by historicalaversions, for instance the Irish-descended American president (remember his last-but-one predecessor threatening us that we would be last in the queue if we votedLeave and the former French ambassador to the UKs only half-joking recent observation that Anglo-French relations were the worst since Waterloo?).

Nevertheless, at least one excellent thing has emerged from Brexit: yesterday (Thursday January 6) the Environment Secretary was to announce to the Oxford Farming Conference Local Nature Recovery and Landscape Recovery schemes to rewild Britain, with farmers paid tohalt the decline in biodiversity in place of EU subsidies.

The popularity of countryside excursions during the lockdowns indicates that this means more to most people than unsustainably cheap food.

Richard Lennox,Henry Street,Langholm

View post:

'Newly-knighted Blair was the one who really sparked Brexit' - News & Star

Britains departure from the European Union has caused a number of changes to be implemented. Among these, Britons may need to use separate lanes from EU, EEA and Swiss citizens when queueing at border control.

Sam Gad Jones, Financial Times journalist in Switzerland and Austria tweeted a picture of his experience at an airport recently, which showed a considerable queue for non-EU arrivals.

The queue appeared to be for passport control, and many of those in the line sported facemasks in addition to carrying large bags.

The journalist described the delays experienced as a manifestly cretinous event.

Accompanying the image, he wrote: I know were all supposed to be accepting about Brexit now, but for those of us who regularly travel and have lives beyond the narrow confines of decaying Britain, it is still a manifestly cretinous event.

In a tweet to his 118.7k followers, Brexiteer Richard Tice issued a retaliation to Sam Gad Joness comments.

He claimed that Britains departure from the trade bloc was a very fine thing.

The leader of the Reform party added that Brexit had helped millions due to an increase in wages.

He said: For millions of lower paid Brits living in Britain, receiving good pay rises thanks to Brexit stopping unlimited low skilled immigration, it's a very fine thing.

READ MORE:Spanish rage at EU membership over Gibraltar: 'We have no weight!'

And S Coast Steve added: I have travelled numerous times since Brexit and, apart from Covid checking in some European countries, have not noticed any significant change.

I did enjoy flying into Berlin and finding no one in the Non-EU passport queue while 100s were waiting at the EU gate.

Following Brexit, tourists do not need a visa for short trips to EU countries, Switzerland, Norway, Iceland or Liechtenstein.

Tourists are permitted to stay for up to 90 days in any 180-day period.

There are also different rules for Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus and Romania whom each have their own separate 90-day limits.

In addition, new travel rules mean there are restrictions on taking meat and dairy products into the EU.

There are some exceptions, for example, certain amounts of powdered infant milk and infant food are allowed.

Tourists could also face data roaming charges as the guarantee of free mobile phone roaming throughout the EU, Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway has ended.

Read more here:

Tice brutally shuts down Remainer claims over Brexit: 'A very fine thing for millions' - Daily Express

Researchers at the University of Bristol have created high-performance sodium and potassium ion batteries using sustainably sourced cellulose. Scientists at the Bristol Composites Institute use what they call a novel controllable unidirectional ice-templating strategy capable of tailoring the electrochemical performances of next-generation post-lithium-ion batteries.

The results open up the market for low-cost, sustainable and vastly available alternatives that could one day be used to power electric vehicles.

The teams groundbreaking achievements, developed in collaboration with Imperial College, are set out in the scientific journal Advanced Functional Materials.The performance of the new ion batteries has been proven to outperform many other comparable systems and makes use of cellulose, which is a sustainably sourced material.

Corresponding author, Steve Eichhorn, Professor of Materials Science and Engineering at the University of Bristol, said: We were astounded with the performance of these new batteries.

There is great potential to develop these further and to produce larger-scaled devices with the technology.

He added: In light of these findings, we now hope to collaborate with industries to develop this strategy on an industrial scale and to explore whether this unique technology can be easily extended to a variety of other energy storage systems such as zinc, calcium, aluminium and magnesium-ion batteries, thus demonstrating its universal potential in next-generation energy storage systems.

The study has been published at a time when the world is witnessing a rapidly increasing demand for sustainable, ethical and low-cost energy storage.

JUST IN:Brexit LIVE - Truss holds talks with Coveney TODAY

"The main route is through electrolysis of sodium chloride solution (salt solution or seawater).

There are various ways to extract potassium too, some recent ones are 'green' processes from feldspar a common mineral.

Prof Eichhorn added: Its true that the UK has lithium, but its mining is not without environmental cost wherever the extraction takes place.

Batteries have two electrodes and a separator, plus an electrolyte between them that carries the charge.

Use of lithium results in a number of problems, including the build-up of the metal inside the devices, which can lead to short circuits and overheating.

Alternatives to lithium, such as sodium and potassium batteries have not historically performed as well in terms of their rate performance and the ability to use them lots of times.

The inferior performance is due to the larger sizes of sodium and potassium ions, and their ability to move through the porous carbon electrodes in the batteries.

However, Jing Wang, lead author and a PhD student in the Bristol Composites Institute, believes she and his colleagues may have hit upon a solution.

She explained: We proposed a novel controllable ice-templating strategy to fabricate low-cost cellulose nanocrystals/polyethylene oxide-derived carbon aerogels with hierarchically tailored and vertically-aligned channels as electrode materials, which can be utilised to well-tuning the rate capability and cycling stability of sodium- and potassium-ion batteries.

Benefiting from the renewability of the precursor and scalability at relatively low cost in the environmentally benign synthesis process, this work could offer an appealing route to promote large-scale applications of sustainable electric vehicles and large-scale energy storage grids in the near future.

Originally posted here:

Brexit Britain win: Experts 'astounded' by discovery of cheap lithium battery alternatives - Daily Express

Jenny chose a classic Parisian look for a recent Christmas concert in Torrox Costa. / SUR

in the frame

Many people will already be familiar with the name Jenny Mandera: either through her career as a professional singer and dancer on the Costa del Sol; or because they follow her social media pages on fashion, body positivity and mental health.

Jenny has been in Spain since 2003, when she saw an advertisement for a job as a dancer, having decided "spontaneously" to leave London, where she had been living for three years.

The job wasn't quite what she expected: "It turned out to be for something like Go-Go dancers on the beach in Marbella," she recalls.

"That really wasn't what I was after. I was a bit shocked to be honest," she laughs.

However, she decided to stay and did find work as a singer and dancer; she has also worked in the world of language education, while keeping her interest in fashion alive, largely through social media, and collaborations with photographers, make-up artists and other fashionistas.

Jenny, 44, is originally from Helsingborg in Sweden. Her maternal grandparents were Polish, but moved to the Nordic country after the Second World War and before Jenny's mother was born.

"My grandparents adapted completely to Swedish life. My Grandmother had been in Auschwitz and my grandfather had fought in Austria, Italy and eventually ended up in a camp in Finland," Jenny explains.

"I come from a family of strong women," she adds, reflecting on the hardships endured by her grandparents' generation. "We have a strong European sense in the family and my grandparents spoke a lot of European languages," she adds.

She puts her own keenness to travel and live in other countries down to her family's background and in 2000, after finishing her studies at a performing arts school in Sweden, Jenny moved to London, where she really felt she "belonged". "Brexit has ruined my life and I'm not even British," she laments.

After leaving London in 2003 to come to Spain, Jenny always thought that at some point she would always be able to return to the UK capital to pursue a career in the performing arts and combine it with her other love: fashion.

However, with Brexit making it very difficult for Europeans to move there and get work permits, Jenny recognises that, as a freelancer, it would be difficult to go back.

"I love England, but I can't just go there, make contacts and build up work. I would probably have to do a job that I didn't like just to earn enough money to get a visa and the pandemic has taught me that I want to live my dream."

Jenny's dream has always been to pursue a career in the performing arts and fashion. At the age of 14 she and some friends started copying looks from fashion magazines.

"I went ballistic with fashion when I was 14. I wanted to wear things that nobody else was wearing and I've never stopped."

Jenny started a fashion blog in 2014, but it was during the lockdown in 2020 when she really started to "treat it like a job".

As well as writing about fashion, she also wrote about body image and her own struggles with OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder).

Like many, Jenny also uses Instagram. "I'm not the typical skinny 20-year old influencer, but I love fashion and I want to show women my age that they can break the rules and wear what they want," she explains, adding, "But in the end, people have to feel comfortable in what they wear.

"I break the rules all the time and tell women in their forties for example that it's OK to wear a miniskirt. I follow some amazing fashion bloggers in their 60s who always look great."

Another of Jenny's concerns is the waste involved in the fashion industry with so much 'fast fashion' ending up in landfill.

"I wear a lot of vintage. I love mixing old and new but I think fewer items of each style should be sold. I can't say that I don't go to Zara. Of course I do, but I don't buy as much as I used to. In the past I would go to the sales and go ballistic. Now I use apps like Vinted and shop in vintage stores."

Jenny sees Malaga as an exciting place to be at the moment in terms of fashion. She's also hoping to start singing again after a seven-year break and says, "Someone told me recently that Malaga is 'so on the map'. There's a lot of opportunity for some exciting collaborations."

Read this article:

'Brexit has ruined my life and I'm not even British' - Surinenglish.com

Rangers received a club-record fee from Everton for 20-year-old full-back Nathan Patterson

Nobody in Scotland needs a statistic to back up the gobsmacking difference in the spending power of the Premier League in England and the top flight in this country, but here's another one in any case.

When Nathan Patterson signed for Everton the other day, the fee of 10m-plus was the most money the Ibrox club had ever received for a player in its history. For Everton, it wasn't even the most money they'd spent on a player this week.

In bringing the young Scotland international to Goodison Park, Patterson became Everton's 20th most expensive signing - in the past five years. Add it all up and it comes to half a billion, give or take the price of a Jean-Phillipe Gbamin or a Cenk Tosun or a Moise Keane.

This one looks like a good deal for Everton given, for them, the money involved is chicken feed. It's less than half a Ben Godfrey and a third of an Alex Iwobi.

But in a world where freakonomics doesn't exist - Scotland - that kind of cash for a 20-year-old with bags of potential but only limited exposure to first-team football, a multi-million pound fee with extras possibly to follow, is good business for Rangers. They're naturally sorry to see him go, but they've done well out of him.

There's a reason for that - and it doesn't begin and end with Patterson's age and promise. Since Brexit, the English clubs who have been previously minded to hoover up the best young talent from around Europe and the rest of the world are a touch stymied in that pursuit. It's much harder to get playing permits for these English clubs to get young foreigners now, unless they're teenage sensations with first-team experience and possibly international caps to boot. Those players come at a premium, of course.

It's why clubs in England - the Premier League and the more monied ones in the Championship - may be paying more attention to the clubs north of the border nowadays. If getting tyros from overseas is now a bureaucratic nightmare for them it stands to reason they'll look closer to home for prospects, as Everton did with Patterson, as other clubs are said to be doing with Aberdeen's Calvin Ramsay and Dundee United's Kerr Smith.

Aberdeen have not put a price on Ramsay's head, as has been stated. It would be daft to do so. Why set a ceiling when they don't know what a wealthy club is prepared to pay. Brexit has changed the picture. If English clubs want Ramsay or Smith or Josh Doig or any other talented young player in the Scottish leagues then the selling club is holding a few more aces now.

Aberdeen, who don't need to sell, are entitled to tell all-comers that the price is not 4m as has been reported and is more in the Patterson ballpark. They should feel emboldened by the alterations in the political landscape. Every Scottish club should be thinking about how effective their academy is, now more than ever. Dundee United are well-placed on that front.

There is talk at a number of Scottish clubs about the ramifications of Brexit. If an English club wants to bring in a player - a youngster or an unheralded older player with promise - who doesn't have the required number of points to gain a playing visa, then what do they do?

Could they sign the player and place him with a Scottish club as a form of clearing house, a device used to circumvent employment law? The Scottish club gets a talented player until he has earned his visa and moves south to the club that bought him.

FIFA has strict rules on what they call bridging transfers, and government wouldn't be slow in clamping down either, but these conversations are being had at certain Scottish clubs where the restrictions don't exist to anything like the same extent as they do down south. These Scottish clubs are looking into how Brexit can work for them.

Of course, there's a far easier way of doing all of this. If you're Celtic you just sign three fascinating players from Japan in quick order. No messing about. January is normally a time for endless faffing and bad decision-making at Celtic. It was in the previous five January windows they signed - on loan or permanently - Patryk Klimala and Jonjoe Kenny, Vakoun Bayo and Marian Shved, Oli Burke and Timothy Weah, Andrew Gutman and Manny Perez, Jeremy Toljan and Charly Musonda, Marvin Compper and Eboue Kouassi.

Now they've got Daizen Maeda, the joint leading scorer in the J-League last season with Yokohama Marinos, and Reo Hatate, a player so versatile that he started his campaign at the champions Kawasaki Frontale as a left-back, then moved up to left wing-back before being named in the team of the season as a forward.

They also signed Yosuke Ideguchi, a Japan international midfielder with a pedigree. All of them are at an excellent age and all have been recruited for small money.

"Frontale and Marinos fans, in particular, would be justified in feeling as though their clubs have been robbed in broad daylight," wrote Dan Orlowitz in the Japan Times on Tuesday.

It's still incredible that given the sophistication of scouting networks in Europe no club in a more glamorous league saw what Ange Postecoglou could see in Kyogo Furuhashi, a revelation since his move to Celtic in the summer. The way he settled in so quickly and reached icon status so rapidly was astonishing.

Everybody in football is looking for gems and Postecoglou found one in Furuhashi. What are his chances of finding another three? Furuhashi's success - coupled with Postecoglou's triumphs in Japan - illustrate that the Celtic manager understands the psyche of these players. Their culture is entirely different, but Postecoglou gets it. The progress of his three new men from the east will be intriguing to observe.

For many reasons, the second half of the season promises to be absorbing. Rangers experienced turbulence - and an eruption from Connor Goldson - but Giovanni van Bronkhorst settled them down the minute he walked in the door as Steven Gerrard's replacement. Gerrard's exit might yet prove a blessing. Rangers look solid and focused again. They lead the league by six points.

Celtic's recruitment has been breakneck - and it's probably not done yet - while Rangers are still easing themselves into it. James Sands, the versatile American, completed a loan deal on Wednesday, and Andreas Skov Olsen, of Bologna and Denmark, appears to be near the top of their priority list too.

Skov Olsen is an attacking, right-sided midfielder with plenty of international experience even though he's only 22. He's classy and he won't be cheap, but what a prize they're playing for this season. Barring a major turnaround, the champions of Scotland will go straight into the Champions League group stage. This is a 30m title.

We're less than week into the window and all sorts of things are already happening. Shaun Maloney's first signing as Hibs manager is Elias Melkersen, a 19-year-old who scored prolifically in the second tier in Norway last season. They've also got the American wide midfielder, Chris Mueller, coming in. So far, Maloney's focus has been on strengthening an attack that looks good on paper but doesn't deliver nearly often enough in reality. Celtic's fine young winger, Ewan Henderson, is said to be another on Maloney's list.

Their city rivals have made one significant play in the signing of Australian right-back Nathaniel Atkinson, one of the stars of his country's victory over Argentina and their narrow loss to Spain in the Olympics last year. Atkinson is 22 and highly regarded.

All of those clubs are thinking of Europe. At the other end, the only thing on St Johnstone's mind is surviving. At the halfway point they're rock bottom. The Cinderella story has ended and it's a horror tale now. Their last transfer window was a catastrophe with the twin totems of the team, Jason Kerr and Ali McCann, leaving on deadline day.

The club did awfully in trying to replace them. They seemed to be gripped by indecision and panic and here they are. Their situation is serious but salvageable. Daniel Cleary looks a decent beginning to their rebuild, an honest centre-half from Dundalk in the League of Ireland. Saints have lost their last eight games. They need some steel in there.

Davidson has also brought in left-back Tony Gallacher - once of Falkirk, then of Liverpool and Toronto - in a bid to bolster an awful defence. On Wednesday, in an attempt to create an attack where only a barren wasteland exists right now, Davidson dug up Nadir Ciftci, the former Dundee United and Celtic player.

Quite what Ciftci has going for him these days is hard to know. In a fast-moving opening week of the transfer window, with Dundee United attempting to fast-track Tony Watt's capture from Motherwell, Ciftci's reappearance on the scene was the most bizarre story of all. There will be others, nothing surer.

See the original post:

Freakonomics, Brexit and the bizarre - why Scotland's January window could be so influential - BBC News

Sean Dyche really has worked wonders as manager of Burnley.

The 50-year-old took charge of the Clarets way back in 2012 and helped them achieve promotion to the Premier League in 2013/14.

Burnley only lasted one season in the top-flight, but Dyche was able to mastermind yet another successful Championship campaign after being relegated.

The Lancashire-based club returned to the Premier League at the first time of asking and managed to stay in the division after reaching the magical total of 40 points.

Ever since then, Burnley have been a permanent fixture in the English top-flight and they even secured a seventh-place finish and Europa League football in 2017/18.

Dyche has worked miracles at Turf Moor on a relatively low budget and there's a case to be made that he's one of the greatest Premier League managers of the 21st century.

VOTE NOW: The GMS December Fan Awards

The ginger-bearded icon was a pretty tidy footballer as well and as you probably guessed, he was a no-nonsense centre-back.

After progressing through Nottingham Forest's youth system, Dyche played for the likes of Watford, Millwall, Bristol City, Luton Town and Northampton Town.

Dyche also spent seven successful years at Chesterfield, where he captained the team and helped them reach an FA Cup semi-final in 1997.

And in that semi-final against Middlesbrough, the current Burnley boss scored what has been described as the 'most Brexit penalty ever' to put the then second-tier outfit 2-0 up on the day.

Dyche stepped up from 12 yards and absolutely smashed the ball down the middle, the Boro goalkeeper almost looking like he dived to get out of the way of the shot as it nearly burst the net.

Take a look at the magnificent spot kick here...

A penalty down the middle with a ridiculous amount of swerve? Pure genius from Dyche.

Boro came roaring back into the game after the spot kick, though, and the hugely entertaining match eventually ended in a 3-3 draw.

Chesterfield went on to lose the replay 3-0, but their historic run in England's most prestigious cup competition is one that won't be forgotten for many more years to come.

ENTER GIVEAWAY

Continue reading here:

Sean Dyche is responsible for the 'most Brexit penalty ever' and it's simply magnificent - MSN UK

With just four months to go until May's Assembly election, everyone is trying to work out what the DUP's next move will be.

It could be a captivating real-life chess game if it wasn't all so transparent.

For a year now since Brexit's Northern Ireland Protocol came into force, the DUP has been in a bind.

Dismal poll results helped prompt a messy leadership coup and a subsequent hardening of its anti-protocol rhetoric to try and reclaim support from unionist rivals.

Sir Jeffrey Donaldson has since September been threatening to collapse the Stormont Executive if his party's demands over the protocol are not met.

But the DUP leader has not acted on his warning, arguing that he was allowing space for talks between the UK and EU.

In reality the party desperately wants a deal that it can sell as having achieved its vague aim of removing the Irish Sea border.

It would then seek to claim the credit by arguing its threats brought about the concessions, hoping this would defuse the protocol debate before the election.

However, UK-EU negotiations have slipped into the new year with no end in sight.

That has left Sir Jeffrey with the only option of repeating his threats in an increasingly unconvincing manner.

He said last week there will be "major implications" at Stormont if the UK government does not swiftly set a "clear date" for ending talks with Brussels.

He has also been warning the British government not to press ahead with its pledge to introduce Irish language legislation unless it secures action on the protocol.

Without any semblance of a deal the DUP can sell, the party is pushing itself closer towards the brink.

But collapsing the Executive during the Covid-19 pandemic - when the Omicron variant is causing pressures on hospitals and schools - would be entirely unjustifiable for many voters.

Significant legislation on issues including organ donation and climate change, which MLAs have been scrambling to pass before the current mandate ends, would also fall if Stormont goes down early.

Want the biggest political stories sent straight to you?

Each week, our Political Reporter Brendan Hughes pulls together some of the biggest and most important matters from Belfast and Northern Ireland that we think youd be interested in reading.

From the Northern Ireland Protocol to other thorny issues inside Stormont and exclusive interviews - weve got you covered.

Simply sign up to our free newsletter here and we'll do the rest

Therefore the DUP has to come up with something else to save its blushes over so much bluffing.

This is where the latest intervention from loyalist Jamie Bryson comes into play.

He has threatened legal action, claiming that port checks required by the protocol are unlawful because they have not received Executive approval.

A pre-action letter on behalf of a group he represents was sent to Agriculture Minister Edwin Poots, whose department oversees protocol-related checks at the ports.

The DUP minister has since confirmed he intends bringing a paper to ministers before the end of January.

This paper will not reach the Executive table, as Sinn Fin has already said it will block it from appearing on the agenda.

If this happens, Mr Poots said it "won't stop me carrying out my responsibilities which would be to stop the checks".

It is unclear whether the minister will indeed be able to order a halt to port checks, potentially placing the administration at odds with the UK government's legal duty to implement them.

Another DUP tactic could be to reheat former leader Peter Robinson's in-out ministers protest from 2015 in response to claims of IRA involvement in a Belfast man's murder.

Something like this would keep Stormont functioning while seeking to give the impression to unionist voters of a more hard-line response to the protocol.

Mr Robinson has been back in the fold since Sir Jeffrey became leader, so many will speculate his hand in manoeuvres over the coming months.

Another theory is that the DUP could be seeking to use its protocol objections as reasoning for refusing to re-form a power-sharing Executive after the election.

With polling suggesting Sinn Fin could emerge as the largest party for the first time, unionism is tetchy about re-entering the Executive in second place.

The many moving parts make events hard to predict. It will be a challenge for parties to hone their strategies in the battle for votes.

But like any chess match, you can be sure the players in this game are always thinking several moves ahead.

To get the latest breaking news straight to your inbox, sign up to our free newsletter.

See original here:

Brendan Hughes: The DUP's election strategy over Brexit NI Protocol - Belfast Live