Lichfield Dean

My stocks and shares ISA and my SiPP pension have both suddenly jumped in value after months, even years of wobbling around zero growth. Is this a blip or the start of a longer term financial recovery?

Well, we left Shell today for Octopus. Should have done it earlier but... I suspect that Octopus are being bombarded with requests at the moment for being at least superficially a company with morals.

Ah, of course. Still think they were wrong though.

Also, Betty > Wilma

Always amazes me how Wall (Letocetum) seems to be such a significant intersection.

Well, I was on the fence with the first two episodes. I thought it was good, not great, but worth persevering with (unlike the walking dead which I thought was awful). I've never played the game, and I thought the opening episode especially was a bit weirdly paced and clearly very computer-gamery. But episode 3... wow that was a brilliant episode. Really great. Reminded me a bit of The Body, one of the very best Buffy episodes. You had one token "baddie" for a brief moment because that's what the show is ultimately about, but then the rest of the episode was just an emotional punch in the gut. Offerman was incredible. Not that he ever isn't of course. I hope the series has more innovative episodes that step to the side of the main story arc like that. I have high expectations now.

Huh? They totally replaced the sound system (at least in the Doug Ellis) with an amazing system, the kind of thing you get at rock concerts. That did mean that the volume went up by about 1000% so I get the point about volume, but quality wise it's night and day compared to a few years ago.

I remember walking around the town centre whilst killing some time after returning from a cruise. I was astonished at how little was going on. It just seemed totally lifeless. Really weird.

Oh, I hope so. I know they are intending to pedestrianise some of the surrounding roads, which will be amazing, but right now the whole town centre is just a total mess. Literally everywhere. It's there any info anywhere about what is happening at Victoria Square? I haven't found anything and there is no clue on site about what is going on. It is annoying and confusing people that are walking around that area - some messaging or info would be useful.

Agreed, but the Home Of Metal guys and various others have been putting on occasional events at Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, there is a lot of talk about turning The Crown into some kind of tourist spot and then there's this: So there is a lot of interest in this sort of thing, and endless attempts to get something done, but for whatever reason it never quite seems to happen.

The building works are even worse now - Victoria Square has been totally dug up for some reason and it's making walking through town a nightmare. Yes, at some unidentified point in the future the town might be better as a result but at the moment it's awful and quite frankly it's doing my head in.

Miroslav Close?

To prison?

My four year old daughter has repeatedly been watching him in his most famous role as Vigo the Carpathian in Ghostbusters 2. She loves that film.

Surely if this is true it has to be the end of Sunak? This is not something you can just brush off.

That is literally pointless. The maximum you are allowed is five years unless you're allowed to have more than five years?

Goal!!! Ollie!

Sadly there's nobody on the bench we could bring on to help....

To me, it looked like he was trying to roll the defender to the left, after which he would have been free to get the ball. But the defender took his legs out.

Don't think there's anything in the rules about that? If you're fouled you're fouled, and the ball was nowhere near going out or anything (not that I believe that matters). And he literally had his feet kicked out from under him.

Anybody got any clue why this isn't a penalty?

76% possession? Crikey.

Maybe it was that, I can't clearly remember now, but I thought when I saw it that it was official.

I absolutely swear I saw a tweet from the club saying he'd gone to West Ham for £15million but now I can't find it. Deleted? Or in my imagination?