Latest news with #Scotland
Telegraph
an hour ago
- Business
- Telegraph
SNP's Swinney willing to debate Farage before crucial Holyrood contest
John Swinney accused Labour of having 'given up' on winning a crucial Holyrood by-election as he said he would be willing to hold a debate with Nigel Farage, Reform UK's leader, ahead of next week's vote. The Scottish First Minister was speaking as the campaign for the Hamilton, Larkhall and Stonehouse vote entered its final weekend. With the 'crucial' vote taking place on Thursday June 5, Mr Swinney said backing the SNP candidate means people in the area will 'elect an MSP who will deliver on their priorities'. He insisted the battle is a 'straight contest' between the SNP and 'the ugly, divisive politics of Nigel Farage' and said he is willing to debate the Reform leader following a similar challenge laid down by Anas Sarwar, Scottish Labour leader. Labour insisted the by-election – taking place after the death of Scottish government minister Christina McKelvie – is a 'chance to call time on SNP failure and choose a new direction'. Dame Jackie Baillie, the Scottish Labour deputy leader, insisted only her party can defeat the SNP as Anas Sarwar, the Scottish Labour leader, visited a factory in the constituency. She said Reform UK 'can't win' the seat, while adding that the SNP 'does not deserve' to do so. Dame Jackie said: 'We can see the consequences of SNP incompetence right across this community – people languishing on NHS waiting lists, high-street shops struggling to stay open, and kids not getting the education they deserve. 'It's clear the SNP does not deserve to win this by-election and only Scottish Labour can beat them.' She added that Reform UK, led by Mr Farage, 'can't win here', declaring: 'This is a direct fight between Scottish Labour and the SNP, no matter how much Reform and the SNP want to pretend otherwise. 'This weekend, Scottish Labour campaigners will be talking to voters the length and breadth of Hamilton, Larkhall and Stonehouse so we can deliver a new direction for this community and elect local champion Davy Russell.' Mr Swinney accepted 'things are really tough right now for many people, with the cost of living a real issue'. But the First Minister insisted that 'while others shout, the SNP is acting'. He pointed to action his party is taking at Holyrood to scrap peak-rate rail fares, to pay winter fuel payments to pensioners, and to end the two-child cap on some benefits – a move expected to come in next year. Mr Swinney added: 'Labour have let people across Scotland down, and they have quite clearly given up on this by-election. 'Thursday's vote is now a straight contest between the SNP and Nigel Farage, and I am urging people to reject the ugly, divisive politics of Nigel Farage and to unite behind the SNP.' He added: 'I would, of course, debate with Nigel Farage. 'But what's important is that we've got a contest on Thursday, which is an attempt by Farage to insert his politics of racism and poison into Scotland. 'I want to make sure the SNP wins the two-horse race in the Hamilton, Larkhall and Stonehouse by-election.' Mr Farage is expected to visit the constituency next week to support Reform's candidate, Ross Lambie. The 41-year-old architect said he believed people were fed up with years of broken promises from opposition parties, which he said were 'panicked' by indications of growing support for his party. 'There's a real sense of urgency among people that things need to change quickly. But what they hear from Labour is that they might turn things around and start cutting taxes in 10 years. 'The SNP released its 19th annual programme for government a few weeks ago and there was nothing exciting in that. So people are actually a bit panicky. 'They feel there's been a lost generation – if you're in your 30s in Scotland, your whole adult life has been in a country with limited economic growth and falling standards in health and education.' Katy Loudon, the SNP's candidate for the seat, declared if she is voted into Holyrood, she will 'get on with the job from day one'. She said: 'This by-election is an opportunity to put the priorities of people in Hamilton, Larkhall and Stonehouse first, and my promise to local people is this: I will always stand with you, fight for you and deliver for you.'
South China Morning Post
an hour ago
- Business
- South China Morning Post
What is Harris tweed? How the classic Scottish fabric is seeing a resurgence
'When you see tweed on the runway, you don't expect it to come from here,' joked 38-year-old former banker Alexander MacLeod as he set up his loom in a converted barn on the shores of a Scottish loch. MacLeod became a weaver two years ago, joining residents on the islands of Lewis and Harris, off Scotland's northwest coast, in helping rejuvenate the tweed industry after a significant period of decline. 'It's a good thing to keep the tradition going,' he said. Tweed is a symbol of Scottish heritage and has 'always been part of the culture' on the country's Outer Hebrides island chain, added Macleod, who hails from the island of Scalpay, which is connected to Harris by a bridge. It is now 'an attractive sector to be in', he added. Harris tweed weaver Alexander MacLeod works at his weaving loom in his atelier at his home, on the Isle of Scalpay. Photo: AFP MacLeod works at his weaving loom at his home. Photo: AFP
Telegraph
an hour ago
- Business
- Telegraph
Revealed: the council that spends more on pensions than it collects in tax
Cash-strapped local authorities are spending more than half of their council tax revenue on staff pensions, a Telegraph investigation has found. The Shetland Islands council puts the equivalent of 111pc of its council tax haul into staff pensions, while councils in Hackney, South Oxfordshire, Newcastle-under-Lyme and the Orkney Islands all shell out more than half. Another 19 fork out the equivalent of at least a third of what they take in. Together, the 24 councils have stuffed almost £3bn into staff pensions over the past five years – but still hiked their tax rates by an average of over 7pc for 2025-26. As rates soar to record levels and second home owners are hit with double premiums, Telegraph Money can reveal: 12 Scottish, nine English and three Welsh local authorities now shell out more than a third of their council tax on staff pension contributions – with the total bill exceeding £730m a year. 60 councils spend at least 20pc of what they collect. The Local Government Pension Scheme already pays 2.3 million retirees and another five million current and former workers are building up generous, inflation-linked pensions. It comes after nine in 10 areas across England endured the maximum 4.99pc council tax rise last month, with parts of Scotland and Wales slapped with even higher increases. Local authority funding comes from multiple sources, including government grants, but tax receipts represented more than half of English councils' core spending power last year, according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies. The Local Government Pension Scheme for England and Wales is one of the world's largest funded schemes, with 6.7 million members and £390bn in assets. Scotland's scheme has another 639,000 and assets of £60bn. Together, they pay retirees £15bn a year in inflation-linked, guaranteed pensions for life. Employers pay an average contribution of 19.8pc of salaries for staff pension in England and Wales and 17.5pc in Scotland. Now, following a series of Freedom of Information requests, The Telegraph can reveal the true cost of the generous schemes – and how much of your council tax is used to fund them. Nigel Farage, Reform leader, said: 'For all the talk of debt, for all the talk of interest rates, for all the talk of local, county and national budgets, the real elephant in the room is public sector pensions. 'What is happening is a microcosm of an even bigger national problem. These will present big challenges for Reform in the councils we're in control of.' The Shetland Islands council reported the highest percentage of contributions paid compared to council tax collected with 111pc. Its pension costs of £74.9m over the past five years dwarfed the £67.7m it collected from ratepayers. In March, council officials said the council's major spending commitments and millions in borrowing repayments would lead to cuts to everyday services. Orkney Islands council was also near the top of the list after spending the equivalent of 58pc of council tax. The highest in England was Hackney council, which collected £415.2m in council tax between 2020 and 2024 and paid £243.3m, or 59pc, into staff pensions. It has yet to release its 2024-25 figures, but confirmed in November it would need to make savings of £67m by 2028. South Oxfordshire district council received £43.8m over the past five years, but spent £25.2m, or 58pc. Blaenau Gwent county borough council, at 39pc, was the highest in Wales after taking in £176.9m and spending £68.5m. A total of 60 local authorities have spent more than a fifth of the council tax they collected on pension contributions since 2020-21. Among the 24 that spent over a third, the average council tax increase for 2025-26 was 7.5pc. It ranged from 1.99pc in Newcastle-under-Lyme to 15pc on the Orkney Islands. Birmingham council, which effectively filed for bankruptcy and announced £300m in cuts over two years, spent more than £100m a year, equivalent to 29pc of its council tax. The figures come as homeowners and renters battle soaring council tax rates across the country. Almost half of properties in England now face bills of at least £2,000, while the number of households on the hook for a £5,000 bill has quadrupled. Six councils were also granted permission for exceptional increases by Angela Rayner, with Labour-run councils in Bradford and Newham hiking rates by 9.99pc and 8.99pc respectively. Increases in Scotland and Wales were even higher. Second home owners have also been hit after more than 200 local authorities brought in a 100pc council tax premium from April 1, enabled by rules introduced under the Conservatives. Telegraph analysis found that 2,000 second home owners in popular holiday hotspots could face bills of £10,000 or more across both their residences. The average second home owner will now see their tax bill rise 77pc to £3,672 in 2025-26. John O'Connell, of the TaxPayers' Alliance, said: 'Local taxpayers are fed up with seeing more and more of their cash being used to prop up gold-plated pensions that most could only dream of. 'Households across the country are still reeling from the latest round of council tax rises and authorities are cutting back key services. All the while, those working in local councils are sitting pretty on defined benefit nest eggs that are all but non-existent in the private sector.' Despite the amounts paid in by councils, the Local Government Pension Scheme remained almost £6bn in deficit at its last valuation. Of 87 individual schemes, 26 still didn't have enough money to pay their retirees. There were hopes that councils would be able to cut their contributions following the next round of valuations, due later this year. However, experts fear this is now less likely after Donald Trump's announcement of global tariffs hit investment markets. Andy King, of wealth manager Evelyn Partners, said the 'huge divide' between public and private sector pensions raised questions over affordability and fairness for taxpayers. He said: 'A lot of council tax payers will be surprised at just how much of their continually rising bills go towards funding pensions, rather than into local services. The scheme is hugely more generous than private sector pensions, and local government staff may not know how good it actually is.' A Local Government Association spokesman said: 'The Local Government Pension Scheme [LGPS] can help encourage people to develop a career in local government. With pay often lower in local government than comparable private sector roles, the LGPS can mitigate that while occupational pensions, like the LGPS, can help public sector workers avoid needing welfare benefits in retirement. 'The LGPS is the most robust public sector pension scheme. Compared with other major public sector pension schemes, the employer contribution rates in the LGPS are also generally much lower.' A Hackney council spokesman said: 'Council tax income is just one of many funding sources that form our £1.9bn budget this year and help us deliver over 800 services that our residents rely on.'
New York Times
2 hours ago
- Business
- New York Times
Why have U.S. owners become so commonplace in Scottish football?
Viewers of TV drama Succession will be familiar with the lengths Logan Roy's children would go to in their attempts to win his affection. In season two, his youngest son, Roman, has a think and decides to buy the football club from the Scottish city of Edinburgh he believes his father supports — Hearts. Advertisement Naturally, it turns out his dad is actually a fan of their bitter city rivals, Hibernian, leading to Logan giving this response to the gift: 'You know, maybe you're right. How would I know what team I supported my whole f***ing life? I mean, maybe I support Kilmarnock. Or F***lechester Rangers? I mean, how can I possibly f***ing know?'. While a piece of the English football cake has become the ultimate soft-power toy for the world's billionaires over the past two decades, Scottish clubs are still being bought up in the real world — and by mere millionaires; ones who do a lot more research than Roman Roy did. This month, Livingston were purchased by Calvin Ford, the great-great-grandson of car-industry pioneer Henry Ford. They were promoted back to Scotland's top division on Monday, after a 5-3 comeback win in a play-off against Ross County. Now a U.S.-based group led by healthcare businessman Andrew Cavenagh and 49ers Enterprises — the investment arm of the NFL's San Francisco 49ers, which already owns Leeds United of the Premier League — is expected to complete a takeover of Rangers, one half of Glasgow's famed Old Firm rivalry, which would see Leeds' chairman Paraag Marathe also become vice-chair of the 55-time Scottish champions. It means that next season, seven of Scotland's clubs will be American-owned, including five of the 12-team Premiership. 'Passion, on steroids,' is the explanation offered by Mark Ogren, who acquired Dundee United in 2018 following their relegation to the second division. Suddenly, this son of Minnesota, previously in charge of his father's oil distribution empire, which had lasted half a century, was responsible for reviving that famous club from the east coast of Scotland. Ogren tells The Athletic: 'At a fan forum after we bought the club, we're sitting among all these fans and they're just asking me tons of questions. Finally, a guy stood up and said, 'I'm sorry, Mr Ogren, if it sounds like we're asking you a lot of personal questions, but you need to know this. This isn't our local petrol station that goes out of business. If that happens, we'll find another one. It's not our local grocery store. If they go out of business, we'll find another one. It's not even our local pub. If that goes out of business, we'll find another one. This is our football club, this is our life'.' Advertisement The first Scottish club to be bought by Americans were Dundee, back in 2013, when Texan duo Tim Keyes and John Nelms invested £650,000 to assume majority control. Dundee's city neighbours, United, whose Tannadice stadium is just 200 yards away from their Dens Park, were next. The following year, Hibernian were bought by Washington, D.C.-based Ron Gordon and his family. The past 12 months have seen a further flurry of investment from across the Pond. Why Scotland, then? The Athletic spoke to the owners of Dundee United, Hibernian, Dunfermline and St Johnstone to try to find out. Dundee United owner Ogren used to find football a little boring and coached his kids to play it without knowing all the rules but, as he took in more and more games from leagues in Europe, his love for the sport grew. In September 2018, he decided to sell the family business and invest in football. He did not have the financial muscle to buy in the top two divisions of the English game, so started looking for mid-tier leagues in Europe which had rich histories and favourable routes into the continental UEFA competitions; a search which led him to Scotland. 'Celtic and Rangers are in a different financial class than all of us, quite frankly, but there's still three European spots in most years that are available,' says Ogren. 'The ramifications of getting into Europe can be really big.' United have indeed qualified to play in Europe next season, clinching fourth place in the Premiership and its UEFA Conference League spot. This marks significant progress from when Ogren arrived almost seven years ago. United were in need of direction but there was some trepidation over this American stranger's intentions. That is no longer the case. Ogren says, 'When we bought the club, it was in a really tough financial position. And to this day, I consistently get thanked by our fans. It's been quite a roller-coaster ride.' Advertisement There was nearly a promotion in his first six months but United lost the play-off final in 2019, having finished as runners-up in the second tier. The pandemic then forced him to fund major losses as matches were behind closed doors due to government restrictions on crowds, designed to limit the spread of Covid-19. They did go up in 2020, as champions of that coronavirus-curtailed season, and in their second year back in the top division, finished fourth to qualify for Europe. They were then relegated again 12 months later. 'As we ended up in fourth place (in 2021-22) and got Europe, we said, 'Hey, let's spend some more money'. On paper, we had one of the best teams that we've ever had, but for whatever reason, it just didn't work out,' Ogren says. 'It was a very difficult time and it forced us to hit reset because the revenue dropped off significantly, but we're one of the bigger clubs in Scotland. We didn't want to cut everything to the bone. When we got relegated, there was some anger, but I'd rather have that, because that's telling me that there's the passion is still there.' United duly came straight back up last season, and Ogren's decision to stick with manager Jim Goodwin has paid off as he has taken them to fourth again this time, while the club boast record season-ticket sales of 7,000 and average crowds of 11,000 at home matches. 'Our fans couldn't celebrate the first promotion, due to Covid,' Ogren says. 'And so when it happened again, although nobody wanted to have to go through that again, our fans were able to experience that. ' Ogren has put in over £13million ($17.5m), having recorded a loss of £2.4m in the club's most recent accounts. He did not expect to reach such a number, but says he has no regrets. Now a relatively experienced owner in Scottish football, he believes the country can capitalise on American investment and improve the profile and revenues of its league. He says, 'I'm hoping the 49ers being involved is going to increase the exposure, but there is definitely scope to increase the revenue. The TV deal is a big thing, but also the culture. The alcohol situation continues to bother me.' Advertisement There is a ban on any alcoholic drinks being served inside Scotland's football stadiums, a government policy that has been in place since rioting at an Old Firm game in the national stadium, Glasgow's Hampden Park, in 1980. Clubs in England can serve alcohol on their stadiums' concourses. 'It's absurd,' says Ogren. 'It's a touchy subject, but it is part of the entertainment value for people who come to matches, and they should be able to buy a beer.' 'It was always the plan for my dad and me to do this together,' says Ian Gordon. The Hibernian executive director is talking about his father, Ron, who bought the Edinburgh club in July 2019 then died from cancer in February 2023, aged 68. 'Towards the end, me and my brother watched the games on the bed with my dad,' Gordon tells The Athletic. 'We kind of knew that was it, that he only had a couple of days left. But he loved that day, sitting there talking about Hibs and everything. 'I wake up every morning with even more pride and fire to drive forward now and make sure we get it to the place that we talked about.' Ron had been born in the South American nation of Peru, where he learned the game, had a period living in Australia and then settled in Washington D.C. From there, he treated his two sons to a childhood filled with football-watching trips across the globe. He also built a communications business, which he sold to NBC Universal for around $200million in 2018. The goal after that was to buy a football club — and one place on the map kept calling. 'We did a very special family trip to Scotland to learn about our ancestry, go up to the Highlands, play a little golf, and have a little whisky,' says Gordon. Hibs have a 20,000-seater stadium and a modern training ground in Scotland's capital city, making them an attractive proposition. Their lack of silverware, relative to their size, excited their American buyers, too. 'We love this club. It's really taken over what our lives are. This is home for our family now,' Gordon says. Advertisement This season, the Hibernian men's team finished third in the Premiership to earn a place in the Europa League's qualifying rounds, the women's side won the Premier League title to secure Champions League football and the under-18 boys also topped their league and will play in the UEFA Youth League (the age-group version of the Champions League) next season. It has made all the trials and tribulations of the past six years worthwhile, but there were plenty of mistakes and lessons along the way. After his father's takeover, Ian was made head of recruitment, despite having limited experience in the sport. It was widely seen as nepotism. 'I wasn't picking the players, it was from a structure standpoint,' he says now. 'The club needed revamping in terms of how it operated. Looking back, we needed more experience, and we needed to bring a certain level of knowledge in.' The Gordons took bold action, ditching manager Paul Heckingbottom within four months. Then, in December 2021, came a controversial move. Despite Heckingbottom's replacement, Jack Ross, taking Hibs to their first third-place finish in 16 years and making it to at least the semi-final stage of four consecutive domestic cup competitions, they sacked him too, a week before the team faced Celtic in the League Cup final. Gordon says, 'We felt we needed to make a change, but I don't think we had the long-term or what's next figured out yet. Looking back, I don't think we would have made that change now. Everything's been a learning lesson.' His father took the public blame for the decision, but the churn continued across three more managers. Gordon never contemplated a sale, even after his dad passed away. In February last year, a potential game-changer occurred when billionaire Bill Foley, a fellow American, bought 25 per cent of the club for £6million. Advertisement Foley's Black Knight Football Club empire already contained Bournemouth, Lorient in France and New Zealand's Auckland FC, with the former having become the poster boys for forward-thinking Premier League clubs. Hibs are now part of the multi-club stable and employ similar coaching, playing styles and profile of players to other teams in the group, which they hope will be their competitive advantage. Foley, who also owns top-flight ice hockey's Vegas Golden Knights back in the States, and Ohio-born Tim Bezbatchenko, who is now the general manager across the four clubs, both have seats on the Hibs board. The new partnership did not result in an overnight transformation. Having filled in as caretaker manager after the previous three sackings, former club captain David Gray, who scored the late winner as Hibs beat Rangers in the 2016 Scottish Cup final, was given the job permanently when Nick Montgomery got fired last May. A dreadful start to this season brought just one win in the first 14 league games, and Foley laid bare the tensions behind the scenes. 'If the other ownership group at Hibernian listens to us, they will do better,' he said. 'There was a disagreement about the coach, but since then, Tim has come in and he's now hired multiple people under him,' says Gordon. 'Black Knight is now really starting to put their network together, and since then the collaboration is daily. The biggest benefit we see now is the exchange of best-practice behind the scenes. We're doing so many things in the background to get the structure that we now have in place, so we can just be a well-oiled machine. 'Ultimately, I decided that Dave was the right guy, and luckily that paid off quite well this season.' Hibs lost just three of their remaining 24 league games after that dismal beginning, picking up 49 points — four more than Rangers over that period and only three fewer than eventual champions Celtic. The appointments of Gray and sporting director Malky Mackay marked a reset in strategy, investing in Scottish experience to provide context to data. Advertisement 'I think Scottish football is unique. It's not like any other league in the world,' says Gordon. In February, Gordon vowed that his family would absorb the accounts' £7.2million worth of losses for the 2023-24 season. With the club expected to lose money again in next year's books, it surely isn't sustainable? 'We know we can't be writing off £7.2million every year,' he says. 'Moving forward, it should be a much better position, but if you want to be ambitious and drive for European football, you know you have to push the budget. With Black Knight, this is our clear plan.' In February, club anthem Sunshine On Leith went viral on social media after the Hibs fans serenaded their team following a derby win over rivals Hearts. They had a pub lock-in to celebrate, too. Gordon also highlights a trip to face Swiss side Luzern in the Conference League's qualifying rounds two years ago, which saw the staff mingle with 3,000 travelling supporters in a local bar from 10am. 'Just being in that and around that and feeling what the European trips do to the fans, what they did to me, it was such a great experience,' he says. Could Hibs, four-time champions of Scotland but not since 1952, one day challenge Celtic and Rangers for the title? 'Step one needs to be consistent years where we're qualifying for Europe, and then you're able to build from there,' Gordon says. 'Then (the goal is) to see this club competing year in, year out in Europe and winning multiple cups — not just one, multiple cups. This club has won just one Scottish Cup in almost 130 years. It deserves more.' When attempting to bring modern methods to football and upend its established order, who better to count among your former bosses than Brighton & Hove Albion's owner Tony Bloom and his Brentford counterpart Matthew Benham? James Bord is a former poker player who built a career in AI and data analytics. Born near London but now dividing his time between the UK and the States, he is leveraging that expertise, alongside his American business partner Evan Sofer, with Dunfermline Athletic in Scotland's second-tier Championship. Bord worked with Bloom — who is trying to buy a stake in Hearts — at data analytics company Starlizard after completing a degree in banking and international finance. He then spent a couple of years under Benham at sports betting firm Smartodds. 'They're both very inspirational guys in their own way, but I was too young and stupid to learn much from them at the time,' Bord says with a wry smile. 'I'd love my Dunfermline to play against Tony's Hearts one day.' Bord discovered he was a talented poker player at a local club. He went broke on his first trip to Las Vegas in 2002 but returned six years later. 'I walked into the biggest game in Vegas and just got really lucky,' he says. 'I had $2,000 when I got off the plane, and at the end of the month, I had $750,000. I bought a house and told my boss I was quitting.' Advertisement Poker is not his career, though. He joined a machine-learning company in the very early days of that technology before setting up his own firm, Short Circuit Science, in 2016. It now employs around 350 people, with around 75 per cent of its business being in sports analytics. The experience of working with elite football clubs exposed Bord to inefficiencies, and the absence of sophisticated algorithms that his company designs. Through an existing relationship with investment fund Infinity Capital, he was able to buy a 37 per cent stake in Spanish second-division club Cordoba last year. Soon after, he added 25 per cent of Bulgarian top-flight side Septemvri Sofia. Both deals are structured for him to assume majority control over the coming years, but Dunfermline already represent that following January's takeover. Bord says of the club based just across the famous Forth Bridge from Edinburgh: 'I bought Dunfermline because I love the underdog. The ambition is to bring back some of their history, but also to change the atmosphere at the club. Optimism. They are a very passionate fanbase that has suffered enough pain, and we'd like to bring them some joy.' He and Sofer had considered clubs in Croatia and Belgium, leagues with a strong track record in youth development, before buying Dunfermline. 'We were looking for an outlet to develop young players,' he says. 'We have three clubs and we don't want to bite off more than we can chew. A step-by-step approach is much healthier, as creating stress hurts performance. We are focusing on Dunfermline.' The golden era for Dunfermline came in the 1960s, when they won the Scottish Cup twice and got to the semi-finals of Europe's since-scrapped Cup Winners' Cup, losing 2-1 on aggregate to a Slovan Bratislava side who then beat Barcelona in the final. They experienced a resurgence in the 2000s, making three more domestic finals and returning to Europe, but ended up entering administration in 2013 before their supporters saved them. Bord vows that he will never take on a debt, but Dunfermline have already broken the mould for Scottish clubs outside the Premiership by paying transfer fees and signing players on multi-year contracts. He has installed three people to work behind the scenes, but the aim is for him and Sofer to leverage what they have built at their company to influence the club's football department, particularly in terms of recruitment. Advertisement 'I think the traditional sporting department, when we look back in 10 years' time, will seem pretty historic,' Bord says. 'You can fail, but myself and Evan feel that we can bring modern methods to the game, which aren't adapted everywhere, and participate in a community team.' Bord pulled off a coup in March by hiring five-time title-winning former Celtic and Hibs manager Neil Lennon, who was in turn able to lure ex-Celtic and Tottenham Hotspur midfielder Victor Wanyama back to Scotland to play for him again. 'I wouldn't say it was soulless, but it was lost as a club,' Bord says. 'A big personality can steer the ship back in the right direction. Neil's presence at the club makes everyone's day around the place. Neil's front-foot playing style suits my philosophy, and hopefully we have him now for another two years.' Lennon was able to get Dunfermline to a seventh-place finish in the 10-team division, avoiding relegation, but what are the ambitions for the new regime's first full season in charge? 'In terms of spending, there's a calculation: how long you stay in the Championship and what you lose in cash-burn, against promotion?' Bord says. 'We have concluded that we're happy to spend a little bit more money to give ourselves a better chance of going up as quickly as possible. 'We'd hope to be in the Premiership within two years, but as long as I can see development in the playing style and in the playing squad, I think that comes naturally. With a bit of luck, of course.' Qualifying for Europe every three to five years is the eventual goal, but for now Bord is just enjoying being able to watch his team compete. 'Sometimes, you have to kick yourself, as it is such a fun experience,' he says. 'I might watch 50 games on a Saturday, so I will be watching four games at the same time. But all I will really be watching is Dunfermline. 'I'm not going to be an absentee owner. But I also back my staff, as intervention in the wrong place is bad. You need to give them the confidence that you believe in them, and I believe in these guys.' 'If we get relegated, I view it as a reset,' said St Johnstone's owner Adam Webb, speaking when his Perthshire club were five points from safety with just six games of this season left to save their Premiership status. 'We have done everything we can do and gave our coach the resources in January to get the players he wanted. We improved and have been a top-six club in terms of form since January, but will it be enough?' Advertisement Alas for them, it was not. St Johnstone were relegated for the first time since 2002, just four years on from them winning a Scottish Cup/League Cup double in the greatest season of their 141-year history — indeed, perhaps the best pound-for-pound season football in Scotland has ever seen. Webb, who bought the club from local businessman Geoff Brown last summer after three tough seasons that saw them finish 11th, ninth and 10th in the 12-team Premiership, says he has no qualms about his commitment now they've finally succumbed to the drop. He tells The Athletic: 'It's not that we are going to lose interest, it is that (the fans) are going to be disappointed in us. Are people going to blame us that, in our first year, we got relegated? 'We are fighting our perception as unwise owners to come in and have this happen, but I think people who have been studying it can see that we have been giving the resources to the football people. We are in a pretty good place to succeed and get back up, to reinvigorate the club. 'It is not a positive, obviously, but it is a chance to take the steps that need to be taken to make the future bright. It is an inflexion point. We will be in a league (next season) where we will be expected to do well. Let's use it as a springboard.' Webb grew up in Columbus, Georgia, where he played football in high school before studying law at Harvard University. He then started his own firm in Atlanta. St Johnstone are not his first involvement in British football — he owns 10 per cent of Cambridge United, who have just been relegated to League Two, England's fourth tier. Webb bought the club based in Perth, a short drive west of Dundee, with a group of fellow investors in early July, but just two weeks later received the news he had cancer in his neck. Months of debilitating chemotherapy and radiation treatment, which he is still feeling the effects of, could have been taken as a sign to focus on his recovery and perhaps pass the club on to someone else. Advertisement 'After something like that, you feel high on life,' Webb argues. 'And when you get to my age, mid-fifties, your kids are leaving the roost and you think, 'What are going to be some of my hobbies, goals, aspirations with this phase of my life?' For me, football and St Johnstone are it.' Webb says he's experienced 'universal embrace' and was part of the Scottish equivalent of a 'pep rally' at a local pub before the first game of the season. He now has a home beside the nearby River Tay and plans to spend the bulk of his summer there. 'I could have bought a beach house (instead) and had some very nice vacations,' Webb laughs. The full drama of St Johnstone's season has been filmed as part of a fly-on-the-wall documentary that hopes to project what makes Scottish football so intoxicating. 'It might not have the money, but it's still got the soul,' says Webb. 'We can certainly be the people's club, because we have a lot going for us. A beautiful community in the heart of Scotland, 140 years of tradition and a place that people could come to love and appreciate as they have Sunderland or Wrexham (after those clubs featured in recent documentary series over recent years). 'We don't have a Ryan Reynolds on board. If you know a Ryan Reynolds type — let me know.' The club are working with experts to improve the matchday experience for families to try to get attendances back up to what they used to be. Webb is also planning a club museum and shop in Perth's city centre, next to the building that houses the Stone of Destiny — a block of red sandstone used in the coronation of Scottish and British monarchs for centuries. He has partnered with a U.S. analytics company, is investing in the academy infrastructure and seeking to build St Johnstone's football budget every year, but says he will not be pumping in millions. 'We have to find an edge to compete, because we're a smaller club in a smaller city, and we're going to run a sustainable club,' he says. 'Owners always get tired after a few years of putting in money. I don't know if I would, but I think I would if I were five, 10 years into this and every year I'm putting in a million or more dollars. I might get sick of it. Advertisement 'By then, you've built up a residual cost, staff and systems that are going to sink the club. So it's just better, even if you want to put money in, to shoot to break even.' Webb will be planning St Johnstone's boomerang back into the top division during his stay in Perth this summer, and he may head home to the States with a few local phrases in his increasingly mixed vocabulary. 'The exoticness of a Scot still exists when you hear the accent,' he laughs. ''You cannae score if you dinnae shoot!' (You can't score if you don't shoot) is one I love. Just as well we have subtitles on the documentary!' (Top photos: Ogren, left, and Marathe: Getty Images)
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‘Dept. Q,' ‘Mountainhead,' Alfred Hitchcock on Netflix, and the best to stream this weekend
Welcome to , your VIP guide to the best of pop culture for the weekend ahead, curated by the Gold Derby team of experts. (May 30-June 1) From a genre perspective, Scott Frank's latest project for Netflix has little in common with his previous two shows for the streaming service, the Emmy-winning limited series The Queen's Gambit and Godless. But like them, Dept. Q is must-see TV. More from GoldDerby Patti Lupone goes scorched-earth, inside the troubled Michael Jackson biopic, and what to read this weekend: May 30, 2025 Loretta Swit holds this Emmy record that may never be broken Directors open up about identity, risk and emotional storytelling at Disney's FYC fest Adapted from the best-selling Department Q crime novels by Danish author Jussi Adler-Olsen, the nine-episode series (now streaming) stars Matthew Goode as DCI Carl Morck, an acerbic detective returning to work months after a routine welfare check leaves a young cop dead, his best friend and partner paralyzed from the waist down, and him with a bullet wound to the neck and mandated therapy. When his embattled Edinburgh police station needs a PR win, Morck is assigned to a newly created department of one, charged with investigating cold cases, starting with the four-year-old disappearance of a one-time prominent civil servant (Chloe Pirrie). What no one expects is that Morck, a lost cause with his own little band of rejects à la Slow Horses, might actually be successful in his endeavor. Dept. Q is the awards contender to watch this weekend. However, there is a lot going on this week as the TV season comes to a close ahead of the first phase of Emmy voting in June. Other contenders include: Hacks: Recently renewed for a fifth season, Max's Emmy-winning comedy closes out its excellent fourth season with a coda that finds Deborah (Jean Smart) and Ava (Hannah Einbinder) taking a trip to decompress after the life-changing events of the penultimate episode… and the news that Deborah can't perform stand-up for 18 months due to the contract she'd signed for Late Night. It's a fascinating, if somewhat unexpected end to a season about creating art and comedy with the confines of traditional media. The finale is now streaming on Max. Adults: It's a truth universally acknowledged that adults don't actually know what they're doing. FX's newest comedy puts Gen Z at the forefront of the latest version of this all too familiar story, as a group of five messy twentysomethings fumble their way through the early days of adulthood in New York City. Across eight episodes, the show tackles the fears and anxieties of being in charge of one's life and having no idea what to do about it. In an unconventional rollout, the series airs new episodes Wednesdays on FX, but the entire first season is already streaming on Hulu. The Better Sister: Based on the 2019 book by Alafair Burke and directed by Craig Gillespie, Amazon's newest limited series follows Chloe (Jessica Biel) and Nicky (Elizabeth Banks), two estranged sisters who could not be more different. While Chloe lives an idyllic life with her husband and son, Nicky is a recovering addict who struggles to make ends meet. But when Chloe's husband is brutally murdered, the two siblings reunite, uncovering a complicated family history as they attempt to find out what happened. All eight episodes are now streaming on Prime Video. Streaming services emphasize the new over the classic, and Netflix does this most of all. It's estimated that only about 2 percent of Netflix's movie library consists of films made before 1980. This is very bad for cinema history, as viewers are not exposed to classic films on the dominant streaming platform. So it's important to watch classic movies when they pop up on Netflix. Which means our top movie pick this weekend isn't a new release, but a bunch of old ones from the Master of Suspense that are coming to Netflix for the first time. On June 1, Netflix is adding a collection of six Alfred Hitchcock films: Rear Window (1954), The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956), Vertigo (1958), The Birds (1963), and the final two of his career, Frenzy (1972) and Family Plot (1976). Also joining the collection are the 2012 biopic Hitchcock starring Anthony Hopkins and two horror films that bear a heavy Hitchcock influence, 2019's Us and 2022's Barbarian. The films' addition coincides with a six-week Hitchcock retrospective at Netflix's Paris Theater in New York. More Hitchcock films are expected to be added throughout the month. Psycho, Hitchcock's most famous film (though not his best; that's generally considered to be Vertigo, which topped the Sight & Sound poll in 2012), is already available on Netflix. It's a great opportunity to reconnect with the work of arguably the most influential filmmaker of all time. If you're looking for something new, here are some other recommendations: : For his first post-Succession project, creator Jesse Armstrong returns to HBO — and the world of billionaires — for the satire film Mountainhead. Steve Carell, Ramy Youssef, Jason Schwartzman, and Cory Michael Smith star as tech billionaires gathered for a ski trip at a mountain retreat when a financial meltdown occurs, and it's mostly their fault. The made-for-TV movie was shot in March, and made an astonishingly tight turnaround to premiere on May 31 at 8 p.m. on HBO and Max, just under the wire for Emmys eligibility. : This animated kids' comedy from DreamWorks is a spinoff of Captain Underpants that takes the form of a very silly story-within-a-story. It's about a police officer and his K-9 who get fused together to become Dog Man: half man, half dog, all cop. Dog Man goes up against Petey, 'the world's most evilest cat,' to save Ohkay City from the orange kitty's (voiced by Pete Davidson) reign of terror. It topped the box office for a few weeks earlier this year, with kids (and parents) enjoying its energetic humor. It's now streaming on Peacock. : U2 singer Bono gives an unusual take on the musician memoir in this filmed version of his stage show, which features the man born Paul Hewson telling stories from his life interspersed with new versions of some of his iconic songs, like 'Beautiful Day' and 'Where the Streets Have No Name.' It's an immersive show — literally so, if you have an Apple Vision Pro headset, which Stories of Surrender is the first film specifically made for — shot in striking black-and-white by Academy Award-winning Mank cinematographer Erik Messerschmidt and directed by Andrew Dominik (Blonde). If for some reason you don't have an Apple Vision Pro, don't worry; you can watch the film in 2D on Apple TV+. : This Christian cartoon is an interesting take on the Charles Dickens' children's story The Life of Our Lord, a version of the story of Jesus Christ that Dickens wrote for his own children. Kenneth Branagh voices Dickens, who narrates the frame story while his son Walter (Roman Griffin Davis) gets transported into it, and experiences the life of Jesus (Oscar Isaac) from a disciple's point of view. The film comes from leading faith-based studio Angel Studios, and features a star-studded voice cast that includes Uma Thurman, Mark Hamill, Pierce Brosnan, Forest Whitaker, and Ben Kingsley. It's now available on-demand on Apple TV and Fandango at Home. Speaking of Bono's Stories of Surrender, the U2 frontman released a three-song EP to accompany the streaming special featuring new live solo versions of the band's classics "Sunday Bloody Sunday" and "Desire," along with lesser-known track "The Showman." Give a listen below. Finally, with the sad news of the passing of composer Alf Clausen, whose Emmy-winning music helped define the best years of The Simpsons, we offer the playlist from Songs in the Key of Springfield. The compilation album, released in 1997, features such Clausen classics as "The Monorail Song," "Flaming Moe's," "Oh, Streetcar," and "We Do (The Stonecutters' Song)." After Clausen was unceremoniously fired in 2017, the show was never the same. Best of GoldDerby 'I cried a lot': Rob Delaney on the heart and humor in FX's 'Dying for Sex' — and Neighbor Guy's kick in the 'zone' TV directors roundtable: 'American Primeval,' 'The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power,' 'Paradise' 'Paradise' directors John Requa and Glenn Ficarra on the 'chaos' of crafting 'the world coming to an end' Click here to read the full article.
