The success currently being enjoyed by Joel Glazer is in no way down to him
By Jim White. 27 January 14:12
For fans of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, things are looking up. After near two decades of muddling mediocrity, their team has reached the Superbowl for the first time since 2002. Not only that, they will be playing against the Kansas City Chiefs next month in their own home, albeit that the pandemic has restricted the crowd in the Raymond James Stadium to 22,000.
What’s more they have within their ranks the greatest Superbowl winner in history, the recently signed 43 year old quarterback Tom Brady, who will be throwing for his seventh Superbowl winner's ring. In Florida, the stars seem to be aligning.
No wonder Joel Glazer, scion of the family that owns the franchise, was cooing with delight when interviewed after his team’s play-off victory last weekend.
“We’re so happy,” he said. “Tampa we’re coming home.”
At the same time, across the Atlantic, the Glazers’ other sporting entity also appears to be awakening after a lengthy slumber. Manchester United are back in a title race, the place that their fans believe is the minimal requirement for an operation of their prestige.
This joint upward trajectory has made some observers wonder whether we have got the Glazers wrong. Far from the leeches of wider conception, are the family in fact model owners, careful stewards determined to bring playing success to their clubs? Maybe we should give them some credit.
To which the only answer is: yeah, right, just like Newcastle fans should all bow down in gratitude to Mike Ashley.
Malcolm Glazer bought the Buccs in 1996. No expert in sports management, and not even that much of a gridiron fan, he largely left the day-to-day running of the business alone, his main concern drawing down the dividends. In 2002 the family hired John Gruden as coach and he won the Superbowl in his first year in charge. It was a high point that could not be maintained.
The Glazers had no clever system, no revolutionary management technique, no moneyball equivalent to keep the franchise potent. Their one piece of methodology was to change coaches as often as Chelsea. 12 they have hired in the 25 years they have owned the Buccs, none coming close to matching Gruden until Bruce Arians arrived in 2019 and brought Brady in last year. It is that pair who have revived the sleepiest of institutions. Much to the astonishment of many.
It is a pattern which looks rather familiar to Manchester United fans. When the Glazer family bought the club in 2005, this time generously parking a £600million reverse takeover debt on the books, a bill that has barely been pared down in 16 years since, they were blessed that Sir Alex Ferguson was running the place. But they did nothing to learn from how he worked.
All that interested them was monetising the club’s history, bleeding the asset. The Glazers added no expertise, no enlightenment, no philosophy. Unlike the owners of Liverpool and Manchester City they offered up no discernible plan or procedure. They certainly didn’t do anything as vulgar as investing any of their own money. All they have done in a quarter century of sporting ownership on both sides of the Atlantic is trouser the profits.
Naturally, there is a point where the financial self-interest of the owners and the ambition of the fans intersects: both benefit if the club does well. But, as was evident after they lost the services of Ferguson, the Glazers’ understanding of how to keep a club successful were limited to changing the coach regularly until they happened upon one who knows what they are doing. It is an ownership model apparently born in the casino. Though the truth is, every so often even the most hapless of punters gets lucky.
For the Glazers luck has struck simultaneously: for Arians and Brady read Ole Gunnar Solskjaer and Bruno Fernandes. At neither the Buccs nor at United have the family contributed anything to the current happy circumstances beyond firing the previous coach. And if that counts as the model owner’s route map to success then Roman Abramovich should be lifting the Champions League trophy every season.

Hello again, and good morning!
This listing is for items that did not sell during the January 17 Auction, so you can buy anything you want right here and right now - no buyer's premiums, no additional fees.
*FREE shipping for any order over $100.
*All items priced at $1 are now .75 each
Each lot was individually imaged (front and back) for the auction - so the easiest way for you to see exactly what you're buying is to visit the auction link (the auction is over, so I'm not advertising anything different or advertising an upcoming auction) - so here that is:
https://www.invaluable.com/catalog/2qx7j50tq0?size=50&page=1&categories=&sort=
Here is the required "prove you still have the stuff" photo with the username card and today's date:
PHOTO
Payment: PayPal only. I do not have Venmo/Zello/Bitcoin or any other form of digital payment at this time. No notes if using PPFF, please. (Thank you.) If you choose to use PPFF, please make sure to send me your shipping address here as it won't automatically load with your payment.
Shipping: I will charge you what it costs me for the USPS label rounded up to the nearest dollar. For First Class that is usually $4, for USPS Priority Mail Flat Rate Small Box it will be $9. I will get you a tracking number right after payment is received and will get your package scanned into the USPS system within 24 hours of receipt of payment. I will offer "Risky Shipping" (via stamped greeting card) at my discretion for $1 - for single, small coins ONLY. NOTE: These prices are for Continental US shipping only - if you live outside the continental US, shipping will be more expensive. I am still happy to do it under the same rules as above, but just keep in mind it's going to cost more.
What do YOU need to do to buy coins from this group: send me a list of which lots you want (for example, I want to buy lots # 51, 52, 53, 54, 55) and I will send you a total. There are too many coins here (plus there are duplicates) so I cannot look up the coins you want by description - just give me lot numbers and it will be much simpler.
I'd like to make a simple and polite request - if I have sent you my PayPal information (meaning we've agreed to a deal) please finish it up as soon as you can so I can check you off the list and move on to the next person. This helps make sure you get all the coins we discussed and no one else is in limbo.
I will do my absolute best to update the ad as soon as lots sell.
LEFTOVERS:
52 China (Republic) 10 Cash $5.00
57 China (Hu-Peh Province) 10 Cash $1.00
59 Hong Kong - 1866 1 Cent NICE $8.00
61 China (Republic) 10 Cash $3.00
62 China (Kiang-Nan Province) 10 Cash NICE $20.00
63 China (Republic) 20 Cash $5.00
64 1977 D Eisenhower Dollar UNC MINT CELLO $4.00
67 British West Africa - 1940 1/10 Penny NICE $5.00
70 France (Perpignan) 1917 A 10 Centimes $5.00
71 1976 Shelbyville Dam (Illinois) Elongated/Smashed Nickel Souvenir $3.00
76 France (Orleans/Lyon/Toulouse) 10 Centimes Transportation Token (good to 31 Dec 1918) $3.00
77 Papua New Guinea - 2008 2 Kina UNC $2.00
78 Missouri Insurance Company (St. Louis) Good Luck Token $3.00
79 1900 India (Rama-Laksmana) Type C #1 (Brotman) Temple Token NICE $40.00
80 1956 Roosevelt Dime UNC TONED $6.00
83 1955 General Motors "Motorama" Medal BU $15.00
86 Central States 70th Anniversary Convention Token Jerry Lebo Advertising $6.00
87 Consolidated Numismatic Advertising Token Good For $1 Edmundston, Canada $2.00
88 France (Perpignan) 1917 A 5 Centimes $5.00
91 France (Perpignan) 1921 A 25 Centimes Scalloped Edge $8.00
93 Ukraine - 2003 100 Hryvnia UNC $2.00
94 German East Africa (Tanzania) - 1916 T 20 Heller $10.00
95 Illinois Governer Otto Kerner Inauguration Medal $2.00
96 5 Cent Trade Token NICE $3.00
98 Germany (Schleswig-Holstein) - 1923 10 Mark Notgeld UNC $10.00
99 A. Phillips Co Cambridge, Maryland 20 Cent Trade Token NICE $8.00
100 EZ Park Courtesy Token $1.00
159 Great Britain - 1949 Penny NICE $2.00
163 1959 Type B Reverse Washington Quarter UNC TONED $12.00
165 Great Britain - 1932 1 Penny NICE $3.00
166 1960 Type B Reverse Washington Quarter UNC $10.00
167 1960 Type B Reverse Washington Quarter UNC $10.00
169 Portugal - 1921 10 Centavos NICE $10.00
170 Germany (Prussia) 1700's-1800's Jeton (Token) Wilhelm 3 "Neue Ehre Neues Gluck" $3.00
172 1963 Type B Reverse Washington Quarter UNC TONED $12.00
175 1964 D Washington Quarter UNC TONED $8.00
176 Canada - 1921 1 Cent NICE $4.00
179 Stag Beer Wooden Nickel "Fair on the Square" $1.00
180 The TV Shop Slidell, LA One Wooden Buck $1.00
181 Canada - 1929 1 Cent NICE $3.00
185 1962 Type B Reverse Washington Silver Quarter NICE $8.00
186 Canada - 1920 1 Cent NICE $4.00
188 1957 Type B Reverse Washington Quarter NICE $6.00
192 Canada - 1945 5 Cents NICE $2.00
193 State of Missouri Sesquicentennial Medal $2.00
194 State of Missouri Sesquicentennial Medal $2.00
195 Canada - 1945 5 Cents NICER $4.00
196 France - 1916 2 Centimes LOW MINTAGE $2.00
197 Germany (Empire) 1914 J 2 Pfennig NICE $8.00
198 Mexico - 1946 1 Centavo NICE $1.00
200 Mexico - 1924 2 Centavos BETTER DATE $6.00
259 1954 S Washington Quarter UNC $10.00
260 1957 Washington Quarter UNC TONED $10.00
261 1963 Type B Reverse Washington Quarter UNC TONED $20.00
262 1999 D Kennedy Half Dollar UNC from Mint Set GEM BU PROOFLIKE $3.00
263 1941 S "Large S" Lincoln Wheat Cent $1.00
264 1941 S "Large S" Lincoln Wheat Cent $1.00
266 1941 S "Large S" Lincoln Wheat Cent $1.00
267 1941 S "Large S" Lincoln Wheat Cent $1.00
269 Maybrook NY Golden Jubilee Good For 10 Cent Wooden Nickel $1.00
270 Maybrook NY 1975 Golden Jubilee 25 Cent Wooden Nickel $1.00
274 2009 P Lincoln Cent "Formative Years" Doubled Die Reverse 013 UNC $2.00
275 World Silver - Barbados 1973 Proof 5 Dollars LOW MINTAGE $20.00
276 2009 P Lincoln Cent "Formative Years" Doubled Die Reverse 013 UNC $2.00
277 2009 P Lincoln Cent "Formative Years" Doubled Die Reverse 013 UNC $2.00
279 2009 P Lincoln Cent "Formative Years" Doubled Die Reverse 012 UNC $2.00
280 2009 P Lincoln Cent "Formative Years" Doubled Die Reverse 012 UNC $2.00
281 2009 P Lincoln Cent "Formative Years" Doubled Die Reverse 012 UNC $2.00
282 2009 P Lincoln Cent "Formative Years" Doubled Die Reverse Book Low UNC $2.00
286 2009 P Lincoln Cent "Formative Years" Doubled Die Reverse 002 UNC $2.00
287 1983 Lincoln Cent DDO FS-101 $25.00
288 2009 P Lincoln Cent "Formative Years" Doubled Die Reverse 012 UNC $2.00
289 2009 P Lincoln Cent "Formative Years" Doubled Die Reverse 012 UNC $2.00
291 1964 D Washington Silver Quarter UNC TONED $8.00
293 1960's Terre Haute, IN Sesquicentennial Wooden Nickel $2.00
295 2009 P Lincoln Cent "Formative Years" Doubled Die Reverse 002 UNC $2.00
296 2009 P Lincoln Cent "Formative Years" Doubled Die Reverse 002 UNC $2.00
298 1982 Buffalo NY Sesquicentennial Wooden Nickel $1.00
352 Denmark - 1950 5 Ore KEY DATE $10.00
354 2009 P Lincoln Cent "Formative Years" Doubled Die Reverse 013 UNC $2.00
355 2009 P Lincoln Cent "Formative Years" Doubled Die Reverse 013 UNC $2.00
356 2009 P Lincoln Cent "Formative Years" Doubled Die Reverse 013 UNC $2.00
357 1990 Rappahannock Area Coin Club Wooden Nickel $1.00
359 Germany (Empire) - 1874 C 1 Pfennig $2.00
360 Old Time Wooden Nickel Co Support Our Troops Wooden Nickel $1.00
361 1941 S "Large S" Lincoln Wheat Cent $1.00
362 1941 S "Large S" Lincoln Wheat Cent $1.00
364 1980 D Jefferson Nickel Mint Error - Minor Curved Clip (@3:30) $3.00
365 1979 S "Type 2 - Clear S" Proof Jefferson Nickel $2.00
367 Germany (Empire) - 1895 F 1 Pfennig $3.00
368 Germany (Empire) - 1874 A 1 Pfennig $2.00
369 Germany (Empire) - 1900 F 1 Pfennig $2.00
370 Germany (Empire) - 1874 B 1 Pfennig $2.00
371 Australia - 1951 3 Pence $2.00
372 Great Britain - 1861 3 Pence $3.00
373 Germany (Empire) - 1875 J 5 Pfennig $2.00
375 50 Cents in Trade Token $1.00
376 Germany (Empire) - 1874 E 2 Pfennig $2.00
377 Clear Lake, IA Perkins Wooden Nickel $1.00
378 50 Cents in Trade Token $1.00
379 Medallic Art Co Grand Canyon National Park 50th Anniversary Medal Bronze $3.00
380 Great Britain - 1981 25 New Pence UNC $3.00
382 Pomona National Bridge / Jackson County 200 Year Anniversary Medal $3.00
383 Guyana - 1970 1 Dollar UNC $2.00
384 Germany (Empire) - 1875 J 2 Pfennig $4.00
385 Illawarrra Numismatic Association Membership Discount Wooden Nickel Token $1.00
386 San Juan Quality Royale Casino Token $1 Face Value $1.00
387 Canada - 1963 Prooflike 1 Cent Emerald Rainbow Toning $3.00
388 Artisan Silverworks Temecula, CA Wooden Nickel $1.00
389 Canada - 1966 1 Cent Emerald Toning $2.00
390 Germany (Empire) - 1875 E 2 Pfennig $2.00
391 Germany (Empire) - 1874 H 2 Pfennig $4.00
392 5 Cent Token $1.00
394 Germany (Empire) - 1894 F 1 Pfennig $3.00
395 Denmark - 1904/804 1 Ore NICE $8.00
396 Netherlands Antilles - 1965 2.5 Cents UNC TONED $6.00
397 Germany (Empire) - 1874 G 1 Pfennig $10.00
398 Netherlands - 1921 1/2 Cent BETTER DATE $2.00
399 Netherlands - 1922 1/2 Cent BETTER DATE $4.00
400 Germany (Empire) - 1874 D 10 Pfennig $3.00
451 Sweden - 1901 1 Ore $1.00
452 Norway - 1948 50 Ore Overdate 4/4 $5.00
453 Netherlands Antilles - 1959 1 Cent UNC $2.00
454 Germany (Empire) - 1899 A 1 Pfennig $1.00
455 Germany (Empire) - 1899 A 1 Pfennig $1.00
456 Germany (Empire) - 1898 A 5 Pfennig $1.00
457 Germany (Empire) - 1875 F 5 Pfennig $1.00
458 Canada - 1948 5 Cents $1.00
460 Denmark - 1951 10 Ore NICE $5.00
461 Barbados - 1973 Proof 5 Cents in OGP $1.00
462 Germany (Empire) - 1875 A 5 Pfennig $1.00
463 Barbados - 1973 Proof 25 Cents in OGP $1.00
464 Germany (Empire) - 1876 D 5 Pfennig $1.00
465 Hungary - 1965 2 Filler Key Date $5.00
466 Germany (Empire) - 1889 A 5 Pfennig $1.00
467 Germany (Empire) - 1889 A 5 Pfennig $1.00
468 Switzerland - 1968 5 Rappen UNC TONED $1.00
469 Germany (Empire) - 1875 A 5 Pfennig $1.00
470 Germany (Empire) - 1875 C 5 Pfennig $1.00
471 Trinidad & Tobago - 1973 Proof 1 Cent in OGP $1.00
473 Germany (Empire) - 1892 D 5 Pfennig $1.00
474 Germany (Empire) - 1897 A 5 Pfennig $1.00
475 Germany (Empire) - 1890 E 5 Pfennig $1.00
477 Germany (Empire) - 1890 D 5 Pfennig $1.00
478 Germany (Empire) - 1894 D 5 Pfennig $1.00
480 Barbados - 1980 Proof 25 Cents in OGP cello $1.00
481 World Silver - Switzerland 1975 1 Franc $6.00
482 Germany (Empire) - 1897 D 5 Pfennig $1.00
484 Canada (New Brunswick) - 1861 1 Cent $3.00
485 Canada (Nova Scotia) - 1861 1/2 Cent $2.00
486 Austria - 1893 10 Heller $1.00
488 Netherlands East Indies - 1921 1/2 Cent NICE KEY DATE $8.00
489 Austria - 1895 10 Heller $1.00
490 Austria - 1894 20 Heller $1.00
492 World Silver - Mexico - 1887 Do C 10 Centavos LOW MINTAGE $5.00
551 South Africa - 1965 Proof 1 Cent LOW MINTAGE 25,000 $2.00
553 Switzerland - 1902 2 Rappen KEY DATE FIRST YEAR $8.00
554 Panama - 1975 Proof 1 Centesimo in OGP $5.00
557 South Africa - 1965 Proof 5 Cents LOW MINTAGE 25,000 $2.00
560 South Africa - 1965 Proof 20 Cents LOW MINTAGE 25,000 $2.00
561 Panama - 1975 Proof 5 Centesimos in OGP $1.00
562 Panama - 1976 Proof 5 Centesimos in OGP $2.00
563 South Africa - 1965 Proof 50 Cents LOW MINTAGE 25,000 $5.00
564 South Africa - 1966 Proof 1 Cent LOW MINTAGE 25,000 $2.00
565 South Africa - 1966 Proof 2 Cents LOW MINTAGE 25,000 $2.00
566 South Africa - 1966 Proof 5 Cents LOW MINTAGE 25,000 $2.00
567 South Africa - 1966 Proof 10 Cents LOW MINTAGE 25,000 $2.00
568 Panama - 1974 Proof 5 Centesimos in OGP cello $1.00
569 South Africa - 1966 Proof 20 Cents LOW MINTAGE 25,000 $2.00
572 Panama - 1973 Proof 1/10 Balboa in OGP $1.00
573 South Africa - 1967 Proof 1 Cent LOW MINTAGE 25,000 $2.00
574 Barbados - 1973 Proof 1 Cent $1.00
575 Panama - 1973 Proof 1/4 Balboa in OGP $1.00
576 South Africa - 1967 Proof 2 Cents LOW MINTAGE 25,000 $2.00
577 South Africa - 1967 Proof 5 Cents LOW MINTAGE 25,000 $2.00
578 South Africa - 1967 Proof 10 Cents LOW MINTAGE 25,000 $2.00
579 South Africa - 1967 Proof 20 Cents LOW MINTAGE 25,000 $2.00
580 South Africa - 1967 Proof 50 Cents LOW MINTAGE 25,000 $4.00
584 Liberia - 1974 Proof 10 Cents in OGP $1.00
590 Mexico - 1923 1 Centavo NICE UNC TONED $8.00
593 Mexico - 1923 5 Centavos NICE $5.00
594 Bahamas - 1970 Proof 1 Cent in OGP $1.00
595 Mexico - 1935 20 Centavos NICE $30.00
596 Token "10" Unknown origin $1.00
652 Indiana Sesquicentennial Medal 1966 $3.00
654 Alleppey Dist Treasury 286 Token $3.00
655 Creotina Remedies Belleville, IL Token $3.00
657 Mexico - 2001 1 Peso UNC in original cello $1.00
658 Germany (Empire) - 1903 A 1 Pfennig $4.00
662 Germany (Weimar) - 1924 A 1 Pfennig NICE $6.00
664 Malaysia - 1977 50 Sen TONED UNC $3.00
665 Franklin D Roosevelt $2 Trade Token Union Maystern $3.00
666 Great Britain - 1953 5 Shillings UNC (Crown sized) $5.00
667 Russia - 1994 50 Roubles Blind Mole Rat LOW MINTAGE UNC $3.00
672 Mint of Romania Aluminum Token UNC $3.00
673 Bahamas - 1973 and 1974 Proof 1 Cents in OGP (two coins) $1.00
675 Canada - 1939 5 Cents UNC $20.00
676 Penny Press Mint 1 Dollar Token (Morgan Dollar Inspired Design) $2.00
677 Penny Press Mint 1 Dollar Token (Morgan Dollar Inspired Design) $2.00
678 France (Paris) Montmartre Auditing Firm "Good for one audition" Token $2.00
679 Thailand - Bangkok Institute of Accounting Token $1.00
680 Swedish Shooting Medal Double Pistols Design $3.00
681 1941 Mercury Dime Pin $4.00
682 Korea (Republic) - 1968 5 Won UNC $25.00
683 Korea (Republic) - 1973 50 Won NICE $5.00
684 Russia - 1994 50 Roubles Bison NICE LOW MINTAGE $2.00
685 Coca-Cola 1974 "It's the real thing" Silver Dollar City Token $5.00
686 State Mint of Romania Octagonal Token UNC $2.00
687 Canada - 1937 Dot 5 Cents UNC $10.00
688 France - 1977 10 Francs TONED $2.00
690 Saarland - 1954 10 Franken UNC $8.00
692 Mount Vernon, VA High School Token $1.00
693 Korea (Republic) - 1967 10 Won NICE $5.00
694 Korea (Republic) - 1967 10 Won UNC $40.00
695 Princes of Jerusalem - Cahokia Council A.A.S.RITE Valley of East St Louis Token $3.00
697 Magic Mountain Valencia California Souvenir Token $2.00
698 Pearl Harbor, Hawaii Driver's Association "good for one full fare" token $1.00
700 Downtown Granite City (Illinois) Shopping Center Token $3.00
751 Canada - 1957 House of Commons Medal $3.00
753 Mr. Pizza (World's Worst Pizza) Wooden Quarter Token $1.00
754 National Pony Express Centennial Medal So Called Dollar UNC TONED $5.00
755 Pulaski Bowling Center Free Game Wooden Nickel Token $1.00
756 Four Canada 1991 UNC Cents (4 coins) in OGP CELLO $1.00
757 Four Canada 1991 UNC 5 Cents (4 coins) in OGP CELLO $1.00
758 Pair of Two Thomas Jefferson 1 Cent Postal Stamps $1.00
761 Mexico - 2000 10 Pesos UNC in original cello $6.00
764 Ye Olde Curiosity Shop Seattle 25 Cent Wooden Nickel Token $1.00
765 Mexico - 2000 20 Pesos UNC in original cello $10.00
768 Morocco - AH1320 10 Mazunas $8.00
773 Diamond Dolls Pompano Beach, FL Free Hamburger Wooden Nickel Token $1.00
774 Nadine's Backwoods Bistro One Free Tap Beer Wooden Nickel Token $1.00
775 Ocean Springs Mini Golf One Free Game Wooden Nickel Token $1.00
777 Poland - 2014 2 Zlotych UNC $2.00
778 Lansing, Michigan University Quality Inn One Free Well Drink Wooden Nickel Token $1.00
780 San Jose, California Donut Delight One Small Drink 40 Cents Wooden Nickel Token $1.00
781 H.E.B. Hustle Chip Wooden Nickel Token $1.00
782 Two Mixed Tokens $1.00
784 South Gate, California Robby's Tepee 1 Glass Draft Beer Wooden Nickel Token $1.00
785 Macadoo's One Free Sara Lee Bagle (with butter!) Wooden Nickel Token $1.00
786 Canada - 1970 1 Cent TONED $1.00
788 State Penal Institution 5 Cent Good For Token $3.00
790 Fishing Equipment & Tackle 10% Discount Wooden Nickel Token $1.00
791 District Treasury Alleppey 1860 Token Government of Kerala $2.00
792 Russia (Empire) - 1881 1 Kopek $1.00
793 Black Duck Buck Good For One Premium Drink Wooden Nickel Token $1.00
794 Goodles, Michigan Cook's Cobblestone One Free Beer Wooden Nickel Token $1.00
796 San Diego, California My Yogurt Place One Free Frozen Yogurt Sundae Wooden Nickel Token $1.00
797 Canada - 1939 Coronation Medal $2.00
798 Ellsworth, Maine Bicentennial Headquarters Wooden Nickel Token $1.00
800 Suwanee River Attractions 25 Cent Admission Wooden Nickel Token $1.00
851 Sunnyvale, California Odyssey Room 1 Free Drink Wooden Nickel Token $1.00
852 Great Britain - Queen Victoria 60 Years of Rule Medal $3.00
854 Belgium - 1944 2 Franc NICE $1.00
855 Fredericksburg, Virginia Rappahannock Area Coin Club Wooden Nickel Token One free month $1.00
859 Monarch Automatic Co Northhampton Good For One Coupon in Trading Token $2.00
860 Netherlands - 1881 1 Cent $1.00
862 Mexico - 2000 20 Pesos UNC in original cello $10.00
863 Fredericksburg, Virginia Rappahannock Area Coin Club Wooden Nickel Token One free month $1.00
864 Tullahoma, Tennessee The Finish Line Free Drink Wooden Nickel Token $1.00
865 Here's Johnny's 25 Cents off Purchase Wooden Nickel Token $1.00
866 $1 Good For Token Large $3.00
867 Canada - 1939 Coronation Medal $3.00
868 Boise, Idaho Miller's Sewing Center 25 Cent Needle Package Wooden Nickel Token $1.00
869 San Antonio, Texas Dan's 10861 FM "Round TUIT" Wooden Token $1.00
870 Belgium - 1836 2 Centimes $1.00
871 Vandalia, Ohio Skipper's $3 off purchase Wooden Nickel Token $1.00
872 Roseville, California Onyx Club One Free Beer Wooden Nickel Token $1.00
873 Long Beach, California Fayette Cleaners Wooden Nickel Token $1.00
874 Beckett, Massachussetts 1965 Bicentennial Lee National Bank 5 Cent Wooden Nickel Token $1.00
875 Munhall, Pennsylvania 5 Cent Wooden Nickel Token $1.00
877 Washington, Indiana Sesquicentennial 1966 Wooden Nickel Token $1.00
878 1953 Queen Elizabeth Coronation Medal $3.00
881 Fredonia, New York Coyle's Pub One Free Drink Wooden Nickel Token $1.00
882 Monterey, California Wharfside Restaurant Complimentary Calimari Appetizer Wooden Nickel Token $1.00
883 Lyman, Wyoming Cecil Sanderson Military Token & Wooden Nickel Collector "Round TUIT" Token $1.00
884 Eastlake, Colorado Karl's Farm Dairy Inc 25 Cent Wooden Nickel Token $1.00
885 Elko, Nevada Ed's Coins & Currency "Cents of Humor" Wooden Nickel Token $1.00
887 Richmond Hot Stuff Deluxe Tattoo One Free Drink Wooden Nickel Token $1.00
888 Australia - 2014 1 Dollar 100 Years of ANZAC $1.00
889 Sacramento, California The Tides 1 Free Beer Wooden Nickel Token $1.00
890 Lancaster, Pennsylvania The Comic Store Free Comic Wooden Nickel Token RARE $1.00
891 Bennington, Vermont Bicentennial 1961 5 Cent Wooden Nickel Token $1.00
892 Torrance, California Old Towne Mall One Free Play Wooden Nickel Token $1.00
893 Duenweg, Missouri State Bank One Quart Token NICE $3.00
894 Rotary International Token $1.00
896 Canada - 1930 House of Commons Medal $3.00
897 Greenfield, Iowa Al's Shoe Service 5 Cents Wooden Nickel Token $1.00
900 France - 1944 C 2 Francs $1.00
951 France - 1944 C 2 Francs $1.00
952 Poland - 2006 2 Zlotych $3.00
953 Poland - 2003 2 Zlotych $3.00
954 Aurora, Illinois Dairy Queen Free Small Sundae Wooden Nickel Token $1.00
955 Mullan, Idaho Silver Dollar Bar 1 Free Drink Wooden Nickel Token $1.00
956 Poland - 2004 2 Zlotych $3.00
957 New Horizons Computer Learning Center Turkey Token 10 Auction Dollars Wooden $1.00
962 Lake of the Woods 40th Anniversary Token $2.00
963 The Travancore Bank Trivandrum #103 Token $1.00
964 Perryville, Wisconsin Good For 1 Glass Tap Beer Wooden (plastic) Nickel Token $1.00
966 1925 Larkin Dollar Medal BU $8.00
968 Palmolive Soap Chicago, Illinois Good For One Cake Token NICE $5.00
969 Duenweg State Bank Duenweg, Missouri Strawberry Token Good For 1 Crate $6.00
970 Dallas, Texas City Hall Token $1.00
971 California State Numismatic Association 1973 53rd Anniversary Token $2.00
972 Worldwide Bi-Metallic Collector's Club World Money Fair Encased Coin (Mexico 20 Centavos) $3.00
973 Worldwide Bi-Metallic Collector's Club World Money Fair Encased Coin (Mexico 20 Centavos) $3.00
977 Worldwide Bi-Metallic Collector's Club World Money Fair Encased Coin (New Zealand 5 Cents) $3.00
979 Worldwide Bi-Metallic Collector's Club World Money Fair Encased Coin (New Zealand 5 Cents) $3.00
981 Worldwide Bi-Metallic Collector's Club World Money Fair Encased Coin (New Zealand 5 Cents) $3.00
983 Worldwide Bi-Metallic Collector's Club World Money Fair Encased Coin (New Zealand 5 Cents) $3.00
984 Worldwide Bi-Metallic Collector's Club World Money Fair Encased Coin (New Zealand 5 Cents) $3.00
987 Harry S Truman US Mint Bronze Medal in OGP $3.00
988 John Wayne US Mint Bronze Medal in OGP $5.00
989 Vietnam Veterans National Bronze Medal in OGP $3.00
992 2010 Korea Money Fair Token with original Flip $3.00
993 Matchless Metal Polish Co Liverpool 1906 Token $5.00
995 Marissa, Illinois 1967 Centennial Wooden Nickel Token $1.00
996 Central States Numismatic Society 2005 Token Original AirTite $2.00
997 Central States Numismatic Society 2005 Token Original AirTite $2.00
998 Central States Numismatic Society 2005 Token Original AirTite $2.00
999 Rustler Silver Gas Token $1.00
1000 Worldwide Bi-Metallic Collector's Club World Money Fair Encased Coin (Euro 5 Cent) $3.00

The rest of the country will be in Tier 1 or 2 lockdown but “The Liverpool City Region - home to 1.5 million - is expected to face the tightest restrictions with pubs and gyms closed, and further rules on households mixing indoors.” Also “all gyms and betting shops will be closed”
Now I’m no conspiracist but funny how the Tories put the harshest lockdowns on the Murdoch hating, Tory hating, Labour supporting city of Liverpool
I genuinely feel for players like Jota and Thiago who have to acclimatise to a brand new City/Country with the harshest of lockdowns
Will this effect the football? How will it work with other clubs coming to play and staying at hotels etc?
https://twitter.com/PippaCrerastatus/1315664276280012800
https://mobile.twitter.com/JenWilliamsMEN/status/1315664785103618050
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-54499963
—————————
EDIT: CONFIRMED By Boris

Boris Johnson has announced that local authorities in the Liverpool city region will move into the Tier Three "very high" alert level from Wednesday.
As well as pubs and bars, gyms and leisure centres, betting shops and casinos will also close.

https://twitter.com/SkyNews/status/1315667211973988353
—————————
EDIT 2:

PM announces that much of Merseyside will go into top tier - and that gyms, casinos, betting shops will close in too

Shops, schools and universities to stay open throughout.
https://twitter.com/PippaCrerastatus/1315665673251680266
WTF IS THIS?! How does this make any sense?!
——————
EDIT 3: Liverpool Mayor confirms Armed Forces will be brought in to help with testing etc

My list (only based on cities I've actually been to!)
1) London
2) Liverpool
3) Sheffield
4) Nottingham
5) Birmingham or Milton Keynes
So every January and June - me and two mates go to a city in the UK that atleast two of us haven't been too before - however becuase we've been stuck inside for so long due to COVID we're gonna go out more next year.
We're quite young so we like the tall building, busy city London type of vibe - good food, open spaces, nightlife etc and was wondering your recommendations.
London - nothings going to beat it, feels like literally the whole world in one place - dwarfs everything else by comparison, after not going there for around 5 years or more I went back last year for winter wonderland and fell in love with the place again - haven't been clubbing there though, feels too crazy a place to do it.
Liverpool - Amazing city, was there for 2 days and it exceeded expectations - the accent isn't great but the place is quite gorgeous - part of me loved the centres open designs and part of me found it underwhelming - the shopping is meh but everything else is great, it feels massive and busy and the street food is exceptional - will definitely be returning if just for that - also the clubbings underrated, never hear Liverpool brought up but it was great - apart from when we had to walk all the way back to the apartment then to the club again becuase apparently the shoes I had on are worn by druggies in the area.
Sheffield - Sheffield surprised me alot - went to see a hockey game (or a footy game I can hardly remember) what I do remember is how surprisingly modern it feels - meadowhall is huge which is nice, the shoppings just ok though - could've put a Selfridges or something there - I much prefer bullring and MK's centre.
Nottingham - I moved from London to Nottingham around 2 years ago and I really like it, sitting in market Square and just chatting with mates while the tram goes past is great, it has that city feel and is one of the more varied cities in terms of food, shops etc just a shame that the better shops aren't inside the shopping centre which severely lacks imo - it's an old place that feels young. Known for its clubbing it dosent disappoint - I don't think I've ever seen so much clubs in one place.
Birmingham - the first time I came to Birmingham was a college trip about 3 years ago and I was in awe of the place, I thought it was gorgeous and huge. My gf is in Birmingham so I've been there alot since and that effect has almost completely worn off.
Bullring/grand Central is still great - shops are great, layouts great - no issues there, plenty of big shiny buildings and the food is exquisite - the restaurants, the fast food, shisha lounges - all of that is great and there's some really nice areas..but man, is the city dirty and kind of ugly sometimes to - jewellery quatre is a nice area but that's the only one I can think of, not to mention the amount of rats there is staggering. Really 60/40 with Brum - the nightlife was good though, really fun vibe.
Milton Keynes - never been clubbing here or really seen the living areas but the shopping centre is still my favourite, it feels modern, Xscape used to be more fun when I was a kid before the bowling alley and arcade became a casino but there's still the snowdome and other things - I'm a bit bias becuase I used to come here with my mum alot as a kid and the place was always just magical to me whereas London was too big for me to understand what was going on - we never turn down a chance to go.
Possible visits :
I've heard Manchester's the second best to London - heard nothing but good things all of a sudden by people so thats next on the list for sure.
Heard Leeds is great - really fun atmosphere and great food.
Newcastles always referred to as the undisputed king of UK nightlife - I'm not really into drinking anymore but I love the electric you dunno what's gonna happen feel in the air on a night out so that's on the plans to.
Edinburgh - at some point next year we're planning a road trip to either Edinburgh or either lake or peak district - lake District has the best pub food btw, went when I was like 12 and never forgot the place.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/189498870@N03/albums/72157715276319253
Unfortunately I have to sell my game collection due to some urgent issues. Hard for me to say goodbye, but I have to. I'll leave a Flickr album here with pictures of all the games.
I'm asking for 5150€ for the entire collection, no game will be sold separately.
This is a honest collection from a game enthusiast. Shipping cost can be discussed.
PS1

• Xenogears
• Vandal Hearts
• Breath of Fire III
• Final Fantasy Anthology
• Vagrant Story
• Guilty Gear
• Critical Depth
• Point Blank 3
• T'ai Fu: Wrath of the Tiger
• Resident Evil
• Iron Soldier 3
• Point Blank 2
• Point Blank
• 2 Games: Medal of Honor + Medal of Honor: Underground
• Destruction Derby 2
• Destruction Derby 2
• Thrasher: Skate and Destroy
• Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2
• Destruction Derby
• Medal of Honor
• Tony Hawk's Pro Skater
• Alien Trilogy
• Circuit Breakers
• Destruction Derby Raw
• Grand Theft Auto
• Re-Volt
• Gran Turismo 2
• Rage Racer
• Alone in the Dark: The New Nightmare
• Deathtrap Dungeon
• Die Hard Trilogy
• Porsche Challenge
• Time Crisis: Project Titan
• Wild 9
• Resident Evil 2
• Time Crisis
• Worms Armageddon
• 007 Racing
• 007: The World Is Not Enough
• Driver 2
• Mat Hoffman's Pro BMX
• Micro Machines V3
• Ridge Racer Revolution
• Shadow Master
• Tomb Raider II
• Tomb Raider: The Last Revelation
• 007: Tomorrow Never Dies
• Big Air
• Bust-A-Move 4
• Driver
• Gran Turismo
• The Italian Job
• Shadow Master
• Thunderhawk 2: Firestorm
• WWF Smackdown!
• CyberTiger
• Formula One 99
• Monopoly
• The Dukes of Hazzard: Racing for Home
• FIFA 2001 Major League Soccer
• FIFA 99
• Formula One 2000
• Mission: Impossible
• Colin McRae Rally
• Cool Boarders
• Cool Boarders 2
• No Fear Downhill Mountain Bike Racing
• V-Rally
• V-Rally 2
• Dancing Stage: Party Edition
• Formula 1 '97
• Formula 1 '98

PS2

• Gregory Horror Show: Soul Collector
• Metal Slug Anthology
• Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 4
• Resident Evil Survivor 2 - CODE: Veronica
• Disgaea 2: Cursed Memories
• Drakengard 2
• Okami
• Xenosaga Episode II: Jenseits von Gut und Bose
• Capcom vs. SNK 2: Mark of the Millennium 2001
• Dark Chronicle
• Shin Megami Tensei: Lucifer's Call
• Disgaea: Hour of Darkness
• King of Fighters Neowave
• Manhunt 2
• SNK Arcade Classics Vol. 1
• Star Ocean: Till the End of Time
• Suikoden IV
• Wild Arms 3
• Atelier Iris 3: Grand Phantasm
• Dragon Ball Z: Budokai Tenkaichi 3
• Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy
• Resident Evil: Dead Aim
• Xenosaga Episode I: Der Wille zur Macht
• Legacy of Kain: Defiance
• Mega Man X8
• Resident Evil Outbreak File #2
• SNK vs. Capcom: SVC Chaos
• Zone of the Enders: The 2nd Runner
• Atelier Iris 2: The Azoth Of Destiny
• Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance II
• Drakengard
• Yakuza
• Hyper Street Fighter II: The Anniversary Edition
• Metal Slug 4
• Shadow of Memories
• Street Fighter EX3
• Arc the Lad: Twilight of the Spirits
• Batman Begins
• Dragon Quest VIII: Journey of the Cursed King
• Dynasty Warriors 3
• Grandia II
• Grandia II
• Guilty Gear Isuka
• Jade Cocoon 2
• Legion: The Legend of Excalibur
• Ninja Assault
• Rayman 10th Anniversary
• Resident Evil 4
• Resident Evil 4
• Resident Evil Outbreak
• Second Sight
• TimeSplitters: Future Perfect
• Atelier Iris: Eternal Mana
• Bujingai: The Forsaken City
• Buzz! Junior: Robo Jam
• Chaos Legion
• Crash Nitro Kart
• Dancing Stage Max
• Destroy All Humans!
• Devil May Cry 2
• Grand Theft Auto: Vice City
• Guitar Hero II
• Kingdom Hearts II
• Maximo vs. Army of Zin
• Metal Slug 5
• Onimusha 3: Demon Siege
• SEGA Genesis Collection
• Tenchu: Wrath of Heaven
• The Incredible Hulk: Ultimate Destruction
• The Suffering
• The Warriors
• Zombie Zone
• Thunderstrike 3: Operation Phoenix
• Auto Modellista
• Beyond Good & Evil
• Blood Omen 2: Legacy of Kain
• Capcom Fighting Evolution / Capcom Fighting Jam
• Crash Bandicoot: The Wrath of Cortex
• Crash Twinsanity
• Dynasty Warriors 5: Empires
• Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas
• Kingdom Hearts
• Mafia
• Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2
• Maximo: Ghosts to Glory
• Metal Slug 3
• Red Dead Revolver
• Resident Evil: CODE: Veronica X
• SingStar: Boybands vs Girlbands
• Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3
• Urban Chaos: Riot Response
• Worms 3D
• Yu-Gi-Oh! The Duelists of the Roses
• Ace Combat 4: Shattered Skies
• BloodRayne
• Bully
• Cold Winter
• Crash of the Titans
• Def Jam: Vendetta
• Destroy All Humans! 2
• Dora the Explorer: Dora Saves the Snow Princess
• Dragon Ball Z: Budokai 3
• Dragon Ball Z: Budokai Tenkaichi 2
• Escape From Monkey Island
• Extermination
• God of War II
• Jet Li: Rise to Honor
• Knight Rider 2
• Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver 2
• LEGO Indiana Jones: The Original Adventures
• LEGO Star Wars II: The Original Trilogy
• LEGO Star Wars: The Video Game
• Lemmings
• Midway Arcade Treasures
• Midway Arcade Treasures 2
• R-Type Final
• Rayman Arena
• Sega Superstars
• Star Wars: Battlefront
• Star Wars: Bounty Hunter
• Tank Elite
• The Thing
• Time Crisis 3
• Twisted Metal: Black
• Ty the Tasmanian Tiger 2: Bush Rescue
• Valkyrie Profile 2: Silmeria
• Warhammer 40,000: Fire Warrior
• Age of Empires II: The Age of Kings
• Area 51
• BLACK
• Buzz! The Big Quiz
• Deus Ex: The Conspiracy
• Dragon Ball Z Budokai
• Freedom Fighters
• Global Defence Force Tactics
• Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories
• Guncom 2
• Legend of Spyro: The Eternal Night
• Looney Tunes: Acme Arsenal
• Mercenaries : Playground of Destruction
• Midnight Club 3: DUB Edition
• Mortal Kombat Armageddon
• Mortal Kombat: Shaolin Monks
• NBA Jam
• Need for Speed Underground 2
• Pinball Fun
• Pirates: The Legend of Black Kat
• Rally Championship
• Rocky
• Samurai Warriors
• Scooby-Doo! Mystery Mayhem
• Serious Sam: Next Encounter
• SingStar '90s
• SingStar Popworld
• Sonic Mega Collection Plus
• Star Wars: Battlefront II
• Starsky & Hutch
• Summoner
• Super Bust-A-Move
• Tekken Tag Tournament
• The Simpsons Road Rage
• Time Crisis II
• TimeSplitters 2
• Virtua Fighter 4
• XGIII: Extreme G Racing
• XIII
• Yu-Gi-Oh! Capsule Monster Coliseum
• Avatar The Last Airbender
• Bomberman Hardball
• Bratz Rock Angelz
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Chaos Bleeds
• Call of Duty 3
• Call of Duty: World at War: Final Fronts
• Colin McRae Rally 2005
• Crazy Taxi
• Disney Golf
• Dragon Ball Z Budokai Tenkaichi
• Dynasty Warriors 5
• FlatOut
• Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories
• Half-Life
• Harry Potter: Quidditch World Cup
• International Cue Club 2
• Jaws Unleashed
• Kengo: Master of Bushido
• Kessen II
• Legend of Spyro: A New Beginning
• Legends of Wrestling II
• Manhunt
• Marc Ecko's Getting Up: Contents Under Pressure
• Mat Hoffman's Pro BMX 2
• Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty
• Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater
• Micro Machines V4
• Monster House
• Mortal Kombat: Deception
• Pitfall: The Lost Expedition
• Pride Fighting Championships
• RC Revenge Pro
• Reign of Fire
• Ridge Racer V
• Secret Weapons Over Normandy
• SingStar '80s
• SingStar Rock Ballads
• SOCOM: U.S. Navy SEALs Combined Assault
• SoulCalibur II
• Spartan: Total Warrior
• Spider-Man: Friend or Foe
• Tekken 4
• Test Drive Unlimited
• The Bard's Tale
• The Bouncer
• The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring
• The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King
• The Mummy Returns
• The Simpsons Game
• TimeSplitters
• TOCA Race Driver 2
• Tokyo Xtreme Racer Zero
• Tomb Raider: Underworld
• Tony Hawk's Proving Ground
• Total Overdose: A Gunslinger's Tale in Mexico
• Ultimate Spider-Man
• Vampire Night
• Worms 4: Mayhem
• WWE SmackDown! Here Comes the Pain
• X-Men: Next Dimension
• Alone in the Dark: The New Nightmare
• Batman Vengeance
• Blade II
• Brave: The Search for Spirit Dancer
• Cel Damage Overdrive
• Devil May Cry 3: Dante's Awakening
• Dragon Ball Z Budokai 2
• Driver: Parallel Lines
• Final Fantasy X-2
• Gauntlet: Dark Legacy
• Grand Theft Auto III
• Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
• Harvest Fishing
• Inspector Gadget: & the Gadgetinis
• Kao the Kangaroo Round 2
• Leisure Suit Larry: Magna Cum Laude
• Mad Maestro
• Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne
• Medal of Honor: Vanguard
• Micro Machines
• Midnight Club 3: DUB Edition Remix
• Naruto: Ultimate Ninja
• Need for Speed: Underground
• Power Rangers: Super Legends
• Primal
• Pro Rally 2002
• R: Racing
• Ratchet & Clank 3: Up Your Arsenal
• Rocky Legends
• Scaler
• Secret Service
• Shadow the Hedgehog
• SingStar Legends
• SingStar Party
• SingStar R&B
• Sonic Heroes
• SSX Tricky
• Super Monkey Ball Adventure
• The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron, Boy Genius: Jet Fusion
• The Getaway: Black Monday
• The Simpsons Skateboarding
• Theme Park World
• Tomb Raider: Anniversary
• Tony Hawk's Underground
• Tony Hawk's Underground 2
• They Came From The Skies
• Time Crisis: Crisis Zone
• 1945 I / II The Arcade Games
• Aggressive Inline
• AirBlade
• Alpine Racer 3
• Burnout
• Buzz! The Hollywood Quiz
• Buzz! The Sports Quiz
• Call of Duty 2: Big Red One
• Call of Duty: Finest Hour
• Cars
• Commandos 2: Men of Courage
• Constantine
• Crash Tag Team Racing
• Dave Mirra Freestyle BMX 2
• Devil May Cry
• Die Hard: Vendetta
• Dynasty Warriors 2
• Dynasty Warriors 3: Xtreme Legends
• Dynasty Warriors 4
• FIFA 11
• Final Fantasy X
• Final Fantasy XII
• Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock
• Gun
• Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
• Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
• Headhunter
• Headhunter: Redemption
• Herdy Gerdy
• Hitman: Contracts
• IndyCar Series
• Intellivision Lives!
• Jeremy McGrath Supercross World
• Kessen
• Kuri Kuri Mix
• Max Payne
• Need for Speed Most Wanted
• Off Road
• Onimusha: Warlords
• Project: Snowblind
• Psi-Ops: The Mindgate Conspiracy
• Rayman 3: Hoodlum Havoc
• Red Faction
• SingStar Anthems
• Soldier of Fortune: Gold Edition
• Sonic Gems Collection
• Sonic Unleashed
• Space Invaders Anniversary
• Space Invaders: Invasion Day
• Tom and Jerry in War of the Whiskers
• Tony Hawk's Downhill Jam
• Ultimate Ninja 4: Naruto Shippuden
• Virtua Cop: Elite Edition
• Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit
• Worms Blast
• WRC FIA World Rally Championship 04
• WWE SmackDown! Shut Your Mouth
• X-Men 2: Wolverine's Revenge
• X-Men Legends II: Rise of Apocalypse
• The Italian Job
• WWII: Tank Battles
• Air Raid 3
• Bad Boys 2
• BCV: Battle Construction Vehicles
• Burnout 2: Point of Impact
• Burnout 3: Takedown
• Bust-A-Bloc
• City Crisis
• Colin McRae Rally 04
• Crazy Frog: Arcade Racer
• Dead or Alive 2
• Disney Move
• Dog's Life
• Dora the Explorer: Journey to the Purple Planet
• DRIV3R
• Energy Airforce
• Everybody's Tennis
• Ford Street Racing
• Forgotten Realms: Demon Stone
• From Russia With Love
• Ghost Master: The Gravenville Chronicles
• Gran Turismo 4
• Guitar Hero: World Tour
• Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
• Heracles: Battle With The Gods
• Hitman 2: Silent Assassin
• Inspector Gadget: Mad Robot Invasion
• Jak 3
• Juiced
• Madagascar
• Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa
• Marvel Ultimate Alliance
• Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones
• Pro Race Driver
• Quake III: Revolution
• Rayman 2: Revolution
• Reservoir Dogs
• Rune: Viking Warlord
• SingStar
• Sonic Riders
• Spider-Man 2
• SpongeBob SquarePants: Revenge of the Flying Dutchman
• Summer Heat Beach Volleyball
• Surf's Up
• Tak and the Power of Juju
• The Ant Bully
• The Haunted Mansion
• The Incredibles: Rise of the Underminer
• The Lord of the Rings: The Third Age
• The Shadow of Zorro
• Tokyo Road Race
• Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon: Jungle Storm
• Tomb Raider: Legend
• Tony Hawk's American Wasteland
• Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 4
• Turok: Evolution
• Ty the Tasmanian Tiger
• UEFA Champions League 2004 - 2005
• WWE SmackDown! vs. RAW 2009
• X-Men Origins: Wolverine
• X-Men: The Official Game
• 18-Wheeler: American Pro Trucker
• 50 Cent: Bulletproof
• Aeon Flux
• ATV Offroad Fury 3
• Ben 10: Protector of Earth
• BMX XXX
• Broken Sword: The Sleeping Dragon
• Colin McRae Rally 3
• Commandos Strike Force
• Dancing Stage Fusion
• Driving Emotion Type-S
• Dynasty Warriors 4: Empires
• Fairly OddParents: Shadow Showdown
• Fighting Fury
• Freak Out
• Full Spectrum Warrior
• G-Force
• Haven: Call of the King
• Hulk
• Iron Aces 2 Birds of Prey
• Jak II
• James Bond 007: Everything or Nothing
• James Bond 007: NightFire
• James Bond: Quantum of Solace
• Made Man
• Medal of Honor: European Assault
• Medal of Honor: Rising Sun
• Metal Arms: Glitch in the System
• Midnight Club II
• MX vs ATV Untamed
• NBA Live 07
• NBA Street
• Need for Speed: Carbon
• Need for Speed: Undercover
• Penny Racers
• Pirates of the Caribbean: The Legend of Jack Sparrow
• Portal Runner
• Prince of Persia: Warrior Within
• Project Eden
• Ratchet: Gladiator
• Rayman: Raving Rabbids
• Red Faction II
• Rogue Ops
• Rugby
• Shamu's Deep Sea Adventures
• Shrek 2
• Shrek Smash 'n Crash
• SingStar Morangos com Açúcar
• SingStar Rocks!
• Sled Storm
• Smash Cars
• SpyHunter
• Star Wars Starfighter
• State of Emergency
• Suzuki TT Superbikes
• Syphon Filter: The Omega Strain
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
• Terminator: Dawn of Fate
• The Incredibles
• The Sims 2: Castaway
• The Sum of All Fears
• TOCA Race Driver 3
• Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell Pandora Tomorrow
• Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Double Agent
• Top Angler: Real Bass Fishing
• Top Gun: Combat Zones
• Transformers: The Game
• True Crime: New York City
• Twisted Metal: Black Online
• U Move Supersport
• Unreal Tournament
• V-Rally 3
• WRC Rally Evolved
• WWE SmackDown vs. RAW 2008: Featuring ECW
• WWI: Aces of the Sky
• Underworld
• WinBack: Covert Operations
• 187 Ride or Die
• ATV Offroad Fury 2
• Brothers in Arms: Earned in Blood
• Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
• Clever Kids: Dino Land
• Conflict: Desert Storm
• Conflict: Vietnam
• Defender
• Detonator
• Doomsday Racers
• Dr. Seuss' The Cat in the Hat
• Dragon Rage
• Endgame
• Enter the Matrix
• Euro Rally Champion
• EyeToy: AntiGrav
• FIFA Street
• FIFA Street 2
• FightBox
• Ford Racing 2
• Formula One 2001
• Full Spectrum Warrior: Ten Hammers
• Fur Fighters: Viggo's Revenge
• Go Diego Go!: Safari Rescue
• GoDai: Elemental Force
• GoldenEye: Rogue Agent
• Gran Turismo 3: A-spec
• Gran Turismo Concept: 2002 Tokyo-Geneva
• GTC Africa
• Heatseeker
• Heroes of Might and Magic: Quest for the DragonBone Staff
• Hot Wheels World Race
• Ice Age 2: The Meltdown
• James Bond 007 in... Agent Under Fire
• James Cameron's Dark Angel
• Juiced 2: Hot Import Nights
• Jumanji
• Killzone
• Largo Winch: Empire Under Threat
• LMA Manager 2005
• Lotus Challenge
• Madden NFL 2003
• Mercury Meltdown Remix
• Monopoly Party
• MotoGP 2
• MotoGP 3
• MotoGP 4
• NBA Live 06
• Need for Speed: ProStreet
• Open Season
• Operation Air Assault
• Over The Hedge
• Piglet's BIG Game
• Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time
• Pro Evolution Soccer 2
• Pro Evolution Soccer Management
• Project Minerva Professional
• Ready 2 Rumble Boxing: Round 2
• RISK: Global Domination
• Road Rage 3
• Road Trip Adventure
• Robot Warlords
• Robot Wars: Arenas of Destruction
• Scooby-Doo! Night of 100 Frights
• Sega Sports Tennis
• Sensible Soccer
• Shark Tale
• Silent Scope
• Smuggler's Run 2: Hostile Territory
• Spider-Man
• Spider-Man 3
• SSX
• SSX 3
• Star Trek Voyager: Elite Force
• Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith
• Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines
• The Da Vinci Code
• The Great Escape
• The Hobbit
• The Polar Express
• The Sims 2
• The Sniper 2
• The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie
• Thrillville: Off the Rails
• TNA iMPACT!
• Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter
• Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six 3
• Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell Chaos Theory
• Tony Hawk's Project 8
• True Crime: Streets of L.A.
• Twin Caliber
• UEFA Champions League 2006-2007
• UEFA Euro 2004: Portugal
• Victorious Boxers
• World Championship Poker
• World Rally Championship 3
• World Rally Championship II Extreme
• WRC: World Rally Championship
• X-treme Express: World Gran Prix
• Alpine Skiing 2005
• America'S 10 Most Wanted
• Army Men Major: Malfunction
• Athens 2004
• Bakugan: Battle Brawlers
• Battlefield 2: Modern Combat
• Bionicle Heroes
• Boxing Champions
• Bratz: The Movie
• Brothers in Arms: Road to Hill 30
• Burnout Revenge
• Burnout: Dominator
• Conflict: Desert Storm II: Back to Baghdad
• Conflict: Global Storm
• Crashed
• Dark Summit
• Donald Duck: Who is PK
• Dropship: United Peace Force
• EyeToy: Groove
• EyeToy: Play 2
• FIFA 08
• Fireblade
• Flipnic: Ultimate Pinball
• Formula One 2003
• Gottlieb Pinball Classics
• GT-R 400
• Happy Feet
• Heroes of the Pacific
• Jet ski Riders
• Just Cause
• Knockout Kings 2002
• Lakemasters Ex
• Legends of Wrestling
• LMA Manager 2002
• Looney Tunes: Back in Action
• Madden NFL 06
• MaXXed Out Racing
• Medal of Honor: Frontline
• Men In Black II: Alien Escape
• Miami Vice
• Mojo!
• Moto GP 4
• Motor Mayhem
• Motorsiege: Warriors of Primetime
• MX Superfly
• Mx World Tour
• Myth Makers Super Karts GP
• NBA Ballers
• NBA Live 08
• Peter Jackson's King Kong
• Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End
• Play It Pinball
• Police Chase Down
• Prisoner of War
• Pro Evolution Soccer
• Pro Evolution Soccer 2009
• Raceway: Drag and Stock Car Racing
• Rollercoaster World
• Rugby 2005
• SingStar Abba
• Sitting Ducks
• Smuggler's Run
• Snowboard Racer 2
• SOCOM: U.S. Navy Seals II
• Splashdown
• Stock Car Speedway
• Stuntman: Ignition
• The Sims
• Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon
• Tomb Raider: The Angel of Darkness
• Torino 2006
• Tourist Trophy: The Real Riding Simulator
• Truck Racing 2
• Twenty 2 Party
• Wild Wild Racing
• WWE SmackDown! vs. RAW
• X-Squad
• Zathura: A Space Adventure
• The Operative: No One Lives Forever
• HSX: Hypersonic.Xtreme / G-Surfers
• Nicktoons Unite!
• 24: The Game
• Backyard Wrestling 2: There Goes the Neighborhood
• Big Mutha Truckers
• Casino Challenge
• Centre Court: HardHitter
• Crescent Suzuki Racing: Superbikes and Super Sidecars
• Disney Think Fast: Le Maxi Quiz
• Disney's Chicken Little
• DTM Race Driver 2
• Energy Airforce: Aim Strike
• EyeToy: Kinetic Combat
• EyeToy: Play 3
• Fame Academy
• Fantastic 4
• Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer
• FIFA 06
• FIFA 09
• FIFA 2002
• Fight Night 2004
• Fight Night: Round 3
• Flushed Away
• Formula One 05
• GT Racers
• Hello Kitty Roller Rescue
• International Cue Club
• International League Soccer
• International Pool Champions
• Junior Board Games
• Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events
• LMA Manager 2003
• LMA Manager 2006
• Meet the Robinsons
• Mission: Impossible Operation Surma
• MTV Music Generator 2
• Muppets Party Cruise
• Perfect Ace: Pro Tournament Tennis
• Pimp My Ride
• Pool Paradise
• Pro Evolution Soccer 6
• Robots
• Rock Band
• Rugby 06
• Runabout 3: Neo Age
• SBK-07: Superbike World Championship
• SBK-08: Superbike World Championship
• Skateboard Madness "Xtreme Edition"
• Smarties Meltdown
• Smash Court Tennis Pro Tournament
• SOCOM: U.S. Navy Seals
• Sprint Car Challenge
• Street Hoops
• Stuntman
• Surfing H3O
• The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe
• The Getaway
• The Golden Compass
• The Great British Football Quiz
• The Sims Bustin' Out
• The Ultimate World Cup Quiz
• The Urbz: Sims in the City
• Tiger Woods PGA Tour 07
• Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2003
• Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2004
• Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell
• Ultimate Pro Pinball
• Walt Disney's The Jungle Book Rhythm N' Groove
• Warriors of Might and Magic
• World Super Police
• WWE SmackDown vs. RAW 2006
• WWE SmackDown! vs. RAW 2007
• Xtreme Quads
• Brian Lara International Cricket 2007
• Cricket 07
• Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
• Dance Fest
• Dance UK
• England International Football
• ESPN NFL Football 2K4
• ESPN NHL 2K4
• FIFA 07
• FIFA 2003
• FIFA 2005
• Football Generation
• Hawk Kawasaki Racing
• Karaoke Stage
• Kiddies Party Pack
• Little Britain: The Video Game
• London Racer 2
• NHL 2003
• Pacific Warriors II: Dogfight
• Pro Evolution Soccer 2008
• Shrek the Third
• Swing Away Golf
• The X-Factor: Sing
• Ultimate Mind Games
• Virtua Pro Football
• Wallace & Gromit in Project Zoo
• World Championship Snooker 2005
• XS Jr. League Soccer
• Top Trumps: Doctor Who
• Aqua Teen Hunger Force Zombie Ninja Pro-Am
• Band Hero
• Brian Lara International Cricket
• Championship Manager 5
• EyeToy: Kinetic
• FIFA 2004
• Formula One 2002
• Go Go Golf
• Pilot Down: Behind Enemy Lines
• Poker Masters
• Pro Evolution Soccer 5
• ProStroke Golf: World Tour 2007
• The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers
• Tiger Woods PGA Tour 08
• Boogie
• Cricket 2002
• Cricket 2004
• EyeToy: Play
• Formula Challenge
• High School Musical 3: Dance
• High School Musical: Sing It!
• International Golf Pro
• PDC World Championship Darts
• Pro Evolution Soccer 3
• Pro Evolution Soccer 4
• Rugby 2004
• This is Football 2003
• Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2005
• Top Trumps: Horror and Predators
• WWII: Battle Over The Pacific
• American Idol
• Baila Dancing Stage Megamix
• Buzz! Junior: Dino Den
• Buzz! Junior: Monster Rumble
• Chess Challenger
• Cue Academy
• Disney's Donald Duck: Goin' Quackers
• ESPN International Superstar Soccer
• F1 Championship Season 2000
• Finding Nemo
• Home Alone
• Le Mans 24 Hours
• Liverpool FC Club Football 2005
• Monster Trux Extreme
• Monsters, Inc.
• Next Generation Tennis
• RS3: Racing Simulation Three
• Rugby League
• Rugrats Royal Ransom
• Scrabble
• Sven-Goran Eriksson's World Manager
• Tarzan Untamed
• The Godfather
• The Ultimate Music Quiz
• The Ultimate Trivia Quiz

EDIT: Games are mostly PAL, some are NTFS
EDIT 2: added list of games!

I thought I’d bring to your attention the current plight of Wigan Athletic, an English football (soccer) team who play in the Championship (1 league below the Premier League). A brief history below but please bear with me until we get to the recent news featuring the actual conspiracy to defraud by Dr. Choi Chiu Fai (Stanley).
Wigan Athletic were elected to the football league in 1978 and after many years gained promotion to the Premier League in 2005 until they were relegated in 2013.Along the way Wigan got to the League Cup Final in 2005 losing to Manchester United and won the FA Cup (the holy grail of English football) by beating Manchester City in 2013.
The success of Wigan Athletic is mainly down to a local businessman, Dave Whelan. Whelan took control of the club in 1995. It was Whelan’s passion, financial input and backing of various managers that saw Wigan elevated from a lower division club to a club who competed from 2005–2013 in the Premier alongside the likes of Arsenal, Chelsea, Liverpool Manchester United, Manchester City etc... Wigan also qualified for the Europa Cup (old UEFA cup) for 2014-2014.
Whelan sold the club to the Dr. Choi Chiu Fai owned International Entertainment Corporation (IEC ) in 2018 and it was announced that Former Everton boss Joe Royle and his son Darren will now join the board. Darren was to replace David Sharpe (Whelan’s Grandson) as chairman, while Joe was to become a director. https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/41636508
IEC are a Hong Kong-based, Cayman Islands-registered company which owns a hotel and casino in the Philippines.
It is believed that Darren Royle introduced the Whelan family to IEC and has connections to KB88 a betting company based in the Philippines who are Wigan's shirt sponsors, the relevance of this will become apparent later.
When Whelan sold the club to IEC, the club was in a very good position financially and at the point of sale was debt free.
The conspiracy:
As with all UK football the impact of the Covid outbreak saw Wigan and all other top-tier teams without revenue from gates and matchday purchases, however the league was resumed on the 20th June without fans and Wigan just above the relegation zone. Despite their lowly league position Wigan restarted their season with a 2-0 win over Huddersfield. They then went on to beat Blackburn 2-0 (27th June) and Stoke City 3-0 (30th June). These results gave Wigan Athletic a boost up the table and left them eight points clear of the relegation zone with six matches left to play.
In the month of June, Wigan Athletic were sold again to Next Leader Fund LP. Their major shareholder is Dr. Choi Chiu Fai the same man who is the majority shareholder and chairman of IEC who sold the club to NLF. Initially NLF was majority owned by the same majority owner of IEC, Dr Choi Chiu Fai, with Au Yeung as a minority shareholder until Au Yeung was announced as the owner of more than 75%. In doing so NFL agreed a loan from IEC for the amount of 24.36 million pound sterling. The loan attracted an interest rate of 8% rising to 20% if the loan wasn’t repaid within a year or if the club defaulted on payments. The English Football League applies a deduction of 12 points for any club going in to administration (this is important). This will be applied at the end of the current season if Wigan Athletic finish above the relegation zone or in the next season if Wigan Athletic get relegated. Currently a 12 points deduction puts Wigan Athletic firmly at the bottom of the league and makes them favourites to be relegated
After the takeover had been agreed and ratified by the English Football League (EFL) the club was put in to administration, this was 7 days after the deal was done. The reasons for the club being put in to administration was stated as Covid, Brexit and loss-making finances of the Championship.
Wigan Athletic fans rallied around to investigate Choi and Yeung to see what they could dig up and one Wigan fan confronted EFL chairman Rick Parry and secretly filmed him saying that administration was linked with a bet in Philippines on Wigan being relegated. A single bet may be stretching it a bit but playing the exchanges knowing that at least one club is guaranteed to go down is not. As unbelievable as it sounds it does look like the plan was to cash in on Wigan Athletic being relegated but after we restarted the season with 3 straight wins lifting Wigan right out of the relegation zone the only option open to them was to put the club in to administration guaranteeing that Wigan would have 12 points (equal to 4 wins) deducted.
We know that Dr. Choi Chiu Fai (Stanley) is a high stakes poker play and a major gambler and that he has been involved in quite a few ‘dodgy dealings’ in the past. He also appears in the Panama Papers ( https://offshoreleaks.icij.org/nodes/12163042 ) but so far our efforts to track down Au Yeung haven’t been that successful. It should also be noted that for someone to own a football club in England they need to pass a ‘fit and proper' test administered by the EFL. I cannot see a reason that even a cursory glance at the takeover would not have raised multiple red flags.
We now have the support from our local MP and the leader of the opposition but I cannot express in words how much this club means to the community, a true family club left devastated by Dr Choi Chiu Fai and Au Yeung. I reach out to the autists, fellow conspiracy people and justice seekers to help us fight this and dig up all you can find.
We are all working hard to raise funds to try and get the club through to the end of the season but all I'm asking for is any information you may have on the main protagonists or associates (unless of course you want to donate). We hope that we can survive as a club and plan to use all the relevant evidence we can gather to help us to to appeal the 12 points deduction.
I realise that there is a large contingent from across the pond and we play football with different shaped balls but any help at all will be really appreciated. I'd also appreciate any suggestions on how we could get the information of our current plight to more people.
Links:
Rick Parry video : https://twitter.com/i/status/1278729830645850113
Request for investigation : https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/53309675
Fan lettesummary : https://twitter.com/JayWhittle6/status/1278616643724328960/photo/1
Crowdfunder : https://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/official-wigan-athletic-football-club-fundraiser
TLDR: Help wanted in investigating a dodgy loan\betting scam relating to an English football club involving Hong Kong businessmen(?) and a very suspect review of the owner by the English Football League.
PN: I had to create a new account as I can't login with my old one (not that I ever had anything worth posting).

I was thinking about saving up major $$ to get a signed Firmino match worn jersey from the game we attended in January, but it's sold out. Any ideas in what the best Liverpool related present I can get him? I've gotten him numerous jerseys in the past.

Since I’m moving to Sydney soon, I was wondering how well received football and the English Premier League is down under. Also, which are the clubs that are most followed?

Online gambling operator 1xBet has shuttered its UK-facing site after a Sunday Times investigation sparked a local regulatory probe.
On Sunday, the Timesreported that the UK Gambling Commission (UKGC) had launched a probe into the activities of 1xBet, which until this weekend had operated in the UK under a white-label deal with platform provider FSB Tech. Since Friday, the UK-1xbet.com website features only a splash screen stating ‘this site is not currently available.’
FSB says 1xBet’s UK customers needn’t fear for the safety of their account balances, but FSB did say it was reviewing its relationship with 1xBet. FSB added that it had always complied with its own UK regulatory obligations.
The Times probe claimed that some of 1xBet’s operations in other jurisdictions offered betting markets on cockfights and under-19 athletic competitions. 1xBet was also slammed for advertising on video file-sharing sites, which UKGC licensees have been prohibited from doing since 2016.
However, 1xBet’s biggest no-no may have been operating what the Times called a ‘pornhub casino,’ which apparently involves topless croupiers. The site also reportedly employed advertising featuring female cartoon nudity that linked back to the UK site, so while this cartoon crumpet was removing her knickers, the knickers of the UK’s anti-gambling moralists are now well and truly in a bunch.
A 1xBet spokesperson told the Times that its alleged faults were likely the result of “third-party networks or partners.” 1xBet pledged to “immediately” investigate how their ads appeared on “prohibited sites or sites which break the law,” apparently having missed all the recent news reports on the 1xBet logo’s ubiquity on pirate video sites.
1xBet began life as a Russian betting operator but has since launched overseas operations based in Cyprus and licensed in Curacao. These operations recently earned a spot on Russia’s online gambling payment processing blacklist.
1xBet’s UK public profile got a significant boost in recent weeks thanks to signing betting partnerships with three prominent football clubs: Barcelona, Liverpool and Chelsea, adding to the company’s existing deal with Tottenham. The future of these UK deals would now seem to be in serious jeopardy.
UK BOOKIE COMPLAINTS SOAR The Times’ piece on 1xBet came just days before the BBC’s Panorama program scheduled an episode detailing a surge in customer complaints against gambling operators. Using UKGC data, the program said there were 8,266 complaints filed in 2018 versus just 169 in 2013.
UKGC CEO Neil McArthur told the broadcaster that the surge wasn’t necessarily a wholly bad scenario, because it suggested that “consumers are demanding more of the gambling operators. And I would encourage them to continue to do that.”
The program focused on the experiences of a few individual gamblers, including ‘Amanda,’ who claimed to have lost £633k betting with online operator Jackpotjoy. She also claimed that Jackpotjoy offered her incentives to continue gambling after episodes in which she lost significant sums on the site.
Amanda said Jackpotjoy reps would contact her by phone or email if she’d neglected to gamble for even a single day. She said the company “never questioned whether I could actually afford to spend £50k a night.”
Jackpotjoy told the broadcaster that it was “deeply sympathetic” regarding Amanda’s “unfortunate personal circumstances” but said that it had followed its regulatory requirements regarding social responsibilities, including “the use of deposit limits, cooling-off periods and alternative withdrawal methods; tools which Amanda was aware of and used during the time she played with us.”

Source: Calvinayre.com

https://preview.redd.it/s1ru4gmtnlg31.png?width=1045&format=png&auto=webp&s=9bcd599a143c21671463cd0706fd7c8835974a33

Every weekday evening at around 9pm, in the Daily Mail’s headquarters in Kensington, west London, the slightly stooping, six-foot three-inch figure of Paul Dacre emerges into the main open-plan office where editors, sub-editors and designers are in the final stages of preparing pages for the next day’s paper. The atmosphere changes instantly; everyone becomes tense, as though waiting for a thunderstorm. Dacre begins with a low growl, like an angry tiger. His voice rises as several pages are denounced, along with those responsible. Imprecations reverberate across the office, sometimes punctuated by the strangely anomalous command to a senior colleague, “Don’t resist me, darling.” Pages must be replaced or redesigned, their order changed, headlines altered. New pictures are required with new captions. Dacre waves his long arms, hammers the air with his hands, shouts even louder and, if particularly agita­ted, scratches himself.
Nobody tries to argue. For all the fear and exasperation – “He never thinks of logistics and he has no idea of what’s an unreasonable request,” says one former sub-editor – there is also admiration. Dacre, Fleet Street’s best-paid editor, who earned almost £1.8m in 2012, has been in charge of the Mail since 1992 and, by general consent, is the most successful editor of his generation. The paper sells an average of 1.5 million copies on weekdays, 2.4 million on Saturdays. Only the Sun sells more but, on Saturdays, the Mail has just moved ahead. Its 4.3 million daily readers include more from the top three social classes (A, B and C1) than the Times, Guardian, Independent and Financial Times combined. Its long-standing middle-market rival, the Daily Express, slightly ahead when Dacre took over, now sells less than a third as many copies.
Under Dacre, the Mail has won Newspaper of the Year six times in the annual British Press Awards – twice as many prizes as any other paper. If anything, its authority and clout have grown in the past two years as Rupert Murdoch’s Sun has struggled with the fallout from the hacking scandal. Politicians no longer fear Murdoch as they once did. They still fear Dacre. The opposition from Murdoch’s papers to the government’s proposals that a royal charter should regulate the press is muted. Dacre’s Mail is loud and clear about the threat to “our free press”. Summoned twice before the Leveson inquiry – the second time because he had accused the actor Hugh Grant of lying in his evidence – he didn’t give an inch.
Everyone who has ever worked for Dacre, who has just passed his 65th birthday, praises his almost uncanny instinct for the issues and stories that will hold the attention of “Middle England”. No other editor so deftly balances the mix of subjects and moods that holds readers’ attention: serious and frivolous, celebrities and ordinary people, urban, suburban and rural, some stories provoking anger, others tears. No other editor chooses, with such unerring and lethal precision, the issues, often half forgotten, that will create panic and fear among politicians. “He’s the most consummate newspaperman I’ve ever met,” says Charles Burgess, a former features editor who also occupied high-level roles at the Guardian and Independent. “He balances the flow of each day’s paper in his head.”
“He articulates the dreams, fears and hopes of socially insecure members of the suburban middle class,” says Peter Oborne, the Mail’s former political columnist now at the Daily Telegraph. “It’s a daily performance of genius.”
But Murdoch’s decline leaves the Mail under more scrutiny than ever. Is Dacre at last running out of road? Rumours circulate in the national newspaper industry that members of the Rothermere family, owners of the Daily Mail, are increasingly nervous of the controversy that Dacre stirs up, notably this year with its attack on Ralph Miliband, father of the Labour leader, as “the man who hated Britain”. More than any other editor since Kelvin MacKenzie ruled at the Sun – and, among other outrages, alleged that drunkenness among Liverpool football fans led to the Hillsborough disaster of 1989 – Dacre attracts visceral loathing. His enemies see the Mail, to quote the Huffington Post writer and NS columnist Mehdi Hasan (who was duly monstered in the Mail’s pages), as “immigrant-bashing, woman-hating, Muslim-smearing, NHS-undermining, gay-baiting”.
The loathing is returned, with interest. In Dacre’s mind, the country is run, in effect, by affluent metropolitan liberals who dominate Whitehall, the leadership of the main political parties, the universities, the BBC and most public-sector professions. As he once said, “. . . no day is too busy or too short not to find time to tweak the noses of the liberal­ocracy”. The Mail, in his view, speaks for ordinary people, working hard and struggling with their bills, conventional in their views, ambitious for their children, loyal to their country, proud of owning their home, determined to stand on their own feet. These people, Dacre believes, are not given a fair hearing in the national media and the Mail alone fights for them. It is incomprehensible to him – a gross category error – that critics should be obsessed by the Mail’s power and influence when the BBC, funded by a compulsory poll tax, dominates the news market. It uses this position, he argues, to push a dogmatically liberal agenda, hidden behind supposed neutrality. Scarcely an issue of the Mail passes without a snipe and sometimes a full barrage in the news pages, leaders or signed opinion columns at BBC “bias”.
To its critics, however, the Mail is as biased as it’s possible to be, and none too fussy about the facts. In the files of the Press Complaints Commission, you will find records of 687 complaints against the Mail which led either to a PCC adjudication or to a resolution negotiated, at least partially, after the PCC’s intervention. The number far exceeds that for any other British newspaper: the files show 394 complaints against the Sun, 221 against the Daily Telegraph, 115 against the Guardian. The complaints will serve as a charge sheet against the Mail and its editor.
This year, the Mail reported that disabled people are exempt from the bedroom tax; that asylum-seekers had “targeted” Scotland; that disabled babies were being euthanised under the Liverpool Care Pathway; that a Kenyan asylum-seeker had committed murders in his home country; that 878,000 recipients of Employment Support Allowance had stopped claiming “rather than face a fresh medical”; that a Portsmouth primary school had denied pupils water on the hottest day of the year because it was Ramadan; that wolves would soon return to Britain; that nearly half the electricity produced by windfarms was discarded. All these reports were false.
Mail executives argue that it gets more complaints than its rivals because it reaches more readers (particularly online, where the paper’s stories are repeated and others originate), prints more pages and tackles more serious and politically challenging issues. They point out that only six complaints were upheld after going through all the PCC’s stages and that the Sun and Telegraph, despite fewer complaints, had more upheld. But the PCC list, though it contains some of the Mail’s favourite targets such as asylum-seekers and “scroungers”, merely scratches the surface. Other complainants turned to the law. In the past ten years, the Mail has reported that the dean of RAF College Cranwell showed undue favouritism to Muslim students (false); the film producer Steve Bing hired a private investigator to destroy the reputation of his former lover Liz Hurley (false); the actress Sharon Stone left her four-year-old child alone in a car while she dined at a restaurant (false); the actor Rowan Atkinson needed five weeks’ treatment at a clinic for depression (false); a Tamil refugee, on hunger strike in Parliament Square, was secretly eating McDonald’s burgers (false); the actor Kate Winslet lied over her exercise regime (false); the singer Elton John ordered guests at his Aids charity ball to speak to him only if spoken to (false); Amama Mbabazi, the prime minister of Uganda, benefited personally from the theft of £10m in foreign aid (false). In all these cases, the Mail paid damages.
Then there are the subjects that the Mail and other right-wing papers will never drop. One is the EU, which, the Mail reported last year, proposed to ban books such as Enid Blyton’s Famous Five series that portray “traditional” families. Another is local authorities, forever plotting to expel Christmas from public life and replace it with the secular festival of Winterval. It does not matter how often these reports are denied and their flimsy provenance exposed; the Mail keeps on running them and its columnists cite them as though they were accepted wisdom.
The paper gets away with publishing libels and falsehoods and with invasions of privacy because the penalties are insignificant. Often the victims can’t afford to sue and, if they can, the Mail group, with £282m annual profits even in these straitened times, can live with the costs. The PCC, even when its rules allow it to admit a complaint, has no powers to impose fines or to stipulate the prominence of corrections.
Besides, many victims don’t pursue complaints because they fear the stress of going to war with a powerful newspaper. They included the late writer Siân Busby who, the paper wrote in 2008, had received “the all-clear from lung cancer” after “a gruelling year”. In fact, the diagnosis had come less than six months earlier and she hadn’t received the “all-clear”. More important, as her husband, the BBC journalist Robert Peston, explained in the James Cameron Memorial Lecture in November this year, she wanted to keep the news out of the public domain to protect her children.
“The Mail got away with it,” Peston said. “As it often does.” (The Mail, in a statement after the lecture, said the information had been obtained from Busby herself and that the reporter had identified himself as a Mail writer.) In his 2008 book Flat Earth News, the Guardian journalist Nick Davies compared the paper to a footballer who, to protect his goal, will deliberately bring down an opponent. “Brilliant and corrupt,” Davies wrote, “the Daily Mail is the professional foul of contemporary Fleet Street.”
Even a list of official complaints and court cases doesn’t quite capture why the Mail attracts such fear and loathing. It has a unique capacity for targeting individuals and twisting the knife day after day, without necessarily lapsing into inaccuracies that could lead either to libel writs or censure by the PCC. For instance, as publication of the Leveson report on press regulation approached, the Mail devoted 12 pages of one issue – and several more pages of subsequent issues – to an “exposure” of Sir David Bell, a name then almost entirely unknown even to well-informed members of the public. A Leveson assessor and former Financial Times chairman, Bell was allegedly at the centre of a “quasi-masonic” network of “elitist liberals”, bent on gagging the press and preventing freedom of expression. This network, based on the “leadership” training organisation Common Purpose, had spawned the Media Standards Trust, of which Bell was a co-founder, which in turn had spawned the lobby group Hacked Off, an important influence on Leveson. To the Mail, this was a perfect illustration of how well-connected liberals, through networks of apparently innocuous organisations, conspire to undermine national traditions and values.
The paper also targets groups, often the weak and vulnerable. The Federation of Poles in Great Britain complained to the PCC that the Mail ran 80 headlines between 2006 and 2008 linking Poles to problems in the NHS and schools, unemployment among Britons, drug smuggling, rape and so on. Most of the stories, as the federation acknowledged, were newsworthy and largely accurate. The objection was to the way they were presented and to the drip, drip effect of continually highlighting the Polish connection so that, as the federation’s spokesman put it, the average reader’s heart “skips a beat . . . with either indignation or alarm”. The PCC eventually brokered a settlement that led to publication of a letter from the federation.

Yet there is something magnificent about the Mail’s confidence and single-mindedness. Other papers, trimming to focus groups, muffle their message, but the Mail projects its world-view relentlessly, with supreme technical skill, from almost every page. It is a paper led by its opinions, not by news. It is not noted for big exclusives, nor even for rapid reaction. “We were often known as the day-late paper,” a former reporter recalls. “Dacre wouldn’t really be interested in a story until he’d seen it somewhere else. We would sometimes give our exclusives to other journalists. Dacre surveys all the other papers, selects the right lines for the next day and follows them.”
Although Dacre has little enthusiasm for new technology – he still doesn’t have a computer on his desk – his paper is perfectly primed for the age of instant 24-hour news, when the challenge is not so much to find and report news as to select, interpret and elaborate on it. Long before other papers recognised the merits of a features-led or views-led approach, the Mail under Dacre was doing it.
The Mail gives its readers a sense of belonging in an increasingly complex and unsettling world. Part of the trick is to make the world seem more threatening than it is: crime is rising, migrants flooding the country, benefit scroungers swindling the taxpayer, standards of education falling, wind turbines taking over the countryside. Almost anything you eat or drink could give you cancer. Above all, the family – “the greatest institution on God’s green earth”, Dacre told a writer for the New Yorker last year – is under continuous assault. The Mail assures readers they are not alone in their anxieties about this changing world. It is a paper to be read, not on trains or buses or in offices, but in the peace and quiet of your home, preferably with an old-fashioned coal fire blazing in the hearth.
“Readers like certainty,” says a former Mail reporter. “Newspapers that have a wavering grip on their ideology are the ones that struggle. The Mail is like Coke. It’s consistent, reliable. Dacre is one of the best brand managers in the business. He lives the brand.”
Dacre lives mostly in the shadows. His two appearances before the Leveson inquiry gave the wider public a rare glimpse; apart from Desert Island Discs in 2004, he never appears on television or speaks on radio. If the Mail needs to defend itself (and it deigns to do so only in the most desperate circumstances), the job is assigned to an underling. Requests for on-the-record interviews are invariably refused, as they were for this article. A rare exception was made for the British Journalism Review, whose then editor, Bill Hagerty (a former editor of the People), in­terviewed Dacre in the tenth year of his editorship. There was also that audience with the New Yorker last year. Public lectures are equally unusual for him, though he gave the Cudlipp Lecture (in memory of Hugh Cudlipp, a Daily Mirror editor who was an early hero of his) in 2007, and addressed the Society of Editors in 2008.
Even former staff members mostly prefer not to be quoted when talking about Dacre. If they agree to be quoted, they wish the quotations to be checked with them before publication. BBC Radio 4 used actors for several contributions to a recent profile. The journalists’ fear is not only that they may be cut off from future employment or freelance work – “The Mail pays far better than anybody else and you don’t want to jeopardise the £2,000 cheque that might drop through the letter box,” said one writer – but also that the Mail may hit back. These concerns are shared by many politicians, who are equally reluctant to be quoted.
Dacre has few social graces and even less small talk. His body language is awkward, his manner prickly. He seldom smiles and, according to one ex-columnist, “He doesn’t laugh, he just says, ‘That’s a funny remark.’” He treats women with old-fashioned courtliness, opening doors and helping them with coats, but is otherwise uncomfortable with them, perhaps because he was one of five brothers, went to an all-male school and has no daughters. He speaks gruffly, with a slight north London accent and an even fainter trace of his father’s native Yorkshire. He sometimes buries his rather florid face deep in his hands, as though exasperated with the world’s inability to share his simple, common-sense values. He became notorious for the ripeness of his language – so frequent was his use of the C-word, almost entirely directed at men, that his staff referred to “the vagina monologues” – but when Charles Burgess told him women didn’t like hearing it he was profusely apologetic. On Desert Island Discs, he confessed to shouting at staff. “Shouting creates energy,” he said. “Energy creates great headlines.”
He still shouts, but in recent years, as an insider reported, “He’s no longer the expletive volcano he once was; his barbs these days tend to concern the brainpower of his target and their supposed laziness.”
He owns three properties: a home with a mile-long drive in West Sussex (known to Mail staff as Dacre Towers), a more modest weekday residence in the central London district of Belgravia and a seven-bedroom house in Scotland with a 17,000-acre shooting estate. He is a member of the Garrick Club, and sometimes takes columnists to lunch at Mark’s Club in Mayfair, which one recipient of his hospitality described as “very decorous, the sort of place you could have gone to in the 19th century”. He sent both of his sons to Eton.
There are no stories of past or present indiscretions involving women, alcohol or drugs. Jon Holmes, a contemporary at Leeds University who is now a sports agent, recalls him as “a very cold fish; he never, ever, seemed to go out in a group for a drink or a meal or anything”. A former Mail reporter says: “We’d all be in the Harrow [a Fleet Street pub, heavily frequented by Mail journalists], and he would come in, buy a half-pint, take it to the opposite end of the bar, drink alone, and leave without speaking.”
He has an apparently stable and successful marriage to a woman he met at university, which has lasted 37 years. He frequently attends Church of England services, but is not a believer. He likes and sometimes goes out to rugby union matches, the opera and theatre – the last partly because his wife, Kathleen Dacre, is a professor of theatre studies and partly because he has a son who is a successful director and producer with surprisingly avant-garde leanings. Asked what television he watched, he once mentioned Midsomer Murders and nothing else.
He mostly eschews the trappings and opportunities of wealth and power. It is impossible to imagine him as a member of the Chipping Norton set or anything like it. He rarely dines or lunches with the powerful or fashionable, nor does he attend glitzy parties and social events. Frequently, he lunches in his office on meat and two veg. Sometimes he will lunch with politicians, but he has little respect or liking for them as a class and thinks it wise to keep his distance; Oborne recalls how, one evening, he ignored at least five increasingly urgent requests to take a call from a senior Tory minister. He declines nearly all invitations to sit on committees; his chairmanship of an official inquiry into the “30-year rule” (under which Whitehall records were kept secret for three decades) was unusual. “Editorship is not for him a route to something else,” says a former employee.

Dacre was born and spent much of his childhood in Enfield, an unremarkable middle-class suburb of north London whose inhabitants, he told the New Yorker, “were frugal, reticent, utterly self-reliant and immensely aspirational . . . suspicious of progressive values, vulgarity of any kind, self-indulgence, pretentiousness and people who know best”. Though his parents divorced late in life, his family was then (at least in his eyes) stable, happy and secure.
But the more important clue to him and his relationship with the Mail’s Middle England readership is the Sunday Express of the 1950s and 1960s under the editorship of John Gordon and then John Junor. “That paper,” Dacre told the Society of Editors, “was my journalistic primer . . . [It] was warm, aspirational, unashamedly traditional, dedicated to decency, middlebrow, beautifully written and subbed, accessible, and, above all, utterly relevant to the lives of its readers.” Talking to Hagerty, he described Junor’s Sunday Express as “one of the great papers of all time”.
After leaving school in Yorkshire at 16, his father, Peter Dacre, joined the Sunday Express at 21 and stayed there for the rest of his working life – mainly as a show-business writer but also, for short periods, as New York correspondent and foreign editor. Each Sunday that week’s paper was discussed and analysed over the Dacre family dinner table.
It was then in its heyday, selling five million copies a week, and it didn’t go into severe decline (it now sells under 440,000) until the 1980s. It was a formulaic paper, which placed the same types of stories and features in exactly the same spots week after week. As Roy Greenslade observes in Press Gang, his post-1944 history of national newspapers, it was “virtually devoid of genuine news”; what it presented as news stories were really quirky mini-features, starting, as Greenslade put it, “with lengthy scene-setting descriptions or homilies”. Its staple subjects were animals, motor cars and wartime heroes. Its biggest target was “filth”, in the theatre, the cinema, books, magazines and TV programmes.
It particularly deplored any assault on the delicate sensibilities of children. Dacre’s father criticised the BBC in 1965 for the unsuitable content of its Sunday teatime serials. Lorna Doone, he wrote, ended “gruesomely”, with a man drowning in a bog, and in the first episode of a spy serial the actors used such expressions as “damn”, “hell” and “silly bitch” at a time supposedly reserved for “family viewing”. “Have the men responsible for these programmes,” asked the elder Dacre, “forgotten that there can be no family without children? What kind of men are they? Do they have families of their own?” Another piece denounced the BBC’s Sunday evening play for “an overdose of twisted social conscience”.
The young Dacre was hooked by newspapers. He only ever wanted to be a journalist and he always had his eyes on editing: “I’m a good writer, but not a great writer,” he told Hagerty. As a child in New York, during his father’s posting there, he would wake to the clattering of the ticker-tape telex machine outside his bedroom. In school holidays, he worked as a messenger for Junor’s Sunday Express and then spent a gap year before university as a trainee on the Daily Express. At the fee-charging University College School in Hampstead, north London, he edited the school magazine, and once ran, he told the Society of Editors, “a ponderous, prolix and achingly dull” special issue about the evangelist Billy Graham. It “went down like a sodden hot cross bus”, teaching him the essential lesson, which the Mail remembers every day on every page, that the worst sin in journalism is to be boring.
To his disappointment, his application to Oxford University failed. He went instead to Leeds, where he read English and edited Union News, taking it sharply downmarket from, in his own description, “a product that looked like the then Times on Prozac” to one that ran “Leeds Lovelies” on page three. It won an award for student newspaper of the year. The paper supported a sit-in (led by the union president, Jack Straw, later a Labour cabinet minister), interviewed a student about “the delights of getting stoned”, wrote sympathetically about gay people, immigrants and homeless families, and called on students to help in “breaking down the barriers between the coloured and white communities of this town”. At the time, he subsequently claimed, he was left-wing, though Jon Holmes, who worked on Dacre’s Union News, says: “I never heard him express a political view except in favour of planned economies for third-world, though not first-world, countries.”
His left-wing period, as he calls it, continued until the Daily Express, which he joined as soon as he left Leeds, sent him to America in 1976. He stayed there for six years, latterly working for the Mail. “America,” Dacre told Hagerty, “taught me the power of the free market . . . to improve the lives of the vast majority of ordinary people.”
The Mail brought him back to London in the early 1980s and made him news editor. According to various accounts, he would “rampage through the newsroom with arms flailing like a windmill”, shouting “Go, paras, go” as he despatched reporters on stories. He climbed the hierarchy until in 1991 he became the editor of the London Evening Standard, then owned, like the Mail, by the Rothermeres’ Associated Newspapers. Circulation rose by 25 per cent in 16 months and Rupert Murdoch sounded him out about the Times editorship. To stop him leaving, the Mail editor David English resigned his chair, recommended that Dacre should replace him, and moved “upstairs” as editor-in-chief, another title that Dacre eventually inherited after English died in 1998.
Dacre’s editorship has been more successful than his mentor’s but most staff do not love him as they did English. English, though capable of great coldness to those who fell into disfavour and no less likely to fly off the handle, had charm and charisma. “He would be delighted when you rang,” a former foreign correspondent says, “and he’d want to gossip and know about everything that was going on. Sometimes we’d talk for an hour. But Paul doesn’t give good phone.”
He will invite writers into his office, push a glass of champagne into their hands and start saying their latest story is rubbish even as he does so. “And you hardly got time to finish the bloody drink,” a former reporter complains. A former executive says: “His track record for creating columnists is nil. He buys them up from elsewhere. He doesn’t home-grow talent because he doesn’t nurture and praise it. That’s where he’s unlike English.”
Dacre is a passionate and emotional man. Though the story that he sometimes sheds tears as he dictates leaders is probably apocryphal, nobody who has worked with him doubts that he is sincere in the views he and the Mail express. “He’s not an editor who wakes up in the morning and wonders what he should be thinking today,” says Simon Heffer, a Mail columnist. Another columnist, Amanda Platell, a former editor of the Sunday Mirror and press secretary to William Hague during his leadership of the Conservative Party, says: “When I was an editor, I had to second-guess my readership because they weren’t my natural constituency. Paul never has to do that.”
But while his views are mostly right-wing, he is not a reliable ally for the Conservative Party, or for anyone else. This aspect of his way of working is little understood. More than most editors, it can be said of him that he is in nobody’s pocket, not even his proprietor’s. He inherited from English a paper that was slavishly pro-Tory (“David was always in and out of No 10,” said a long-serving Mail editor), firmly pro-Europe and read mainly by people in London and the south-east. Dacre changed the politics of the paper and the demographics of its audience. Today, it is resolutely – some would say hysterically – Euro­sceptic and a far higher proportion of its readership is from Scotland and the English north and midlands. The Mail has ceased to take its line from Tory headquarters or to act as a mouthpiece for Conservative leaders. Indeed, every Tory leader since Margaret That­cher has fallen short of Dacre’s exacting standards. That applies particularly to John Major and David Cameron. According to a former columnist, Dacre regards the latter as “brash, shallow, unthinking and self-advancing” and he takes an equally jaundiced view of Boris Johnson. Twice he backed Kenneth Clarke for the party leadership, despite Clarke’s enthusiasm for the EU.
Clarke is a model for the politicians Dacre generally favours even if he disagrees with most of what they say: earthy, authentic, unpretentious, consistent in their values. Jack Straw and David Blunkett – both, like Clarke, from humble backgrounds – are other examples. For a time, Dacre took a relatively kindly view of Tony Blair, having been impressed by the future prime minister’s “tough on crime” approach as shadow home secretary. But he was always suspicious of Blair’s socially liberal views on marriage, gays and drugs and he told Hagerty that once Labour attained power, he saw the new government as “manipulative, dictatorial and slightly corrupt”. He wished, he added, that Blair had “done as much for the family as he’s done for gay rights”.
Gordon Brown, however, was smiled upon as no other politician had ever been. The two men developed a strange friendship, involving meals together and walks in the park, which one Mail columnist described to me as “the attraction of the two weirdest boys in the playground”. Brown, Dacre told Hagerty, was “touched by the mantle of greatness . . . he is a genuinely good man . . . a compassionate man . . . an original thinker . . . of enormous willpower and courage”. At a Savoy Hotel event to celebrate Dacre’s first ten years as editor, Brown was almost equally effusive, describing the Mail editor as showing “great personal warmth and kindness . . . as well as great journalistic skill”. “We tried to tell Dacre,” says a former Mail political reporter, “that Brown was not a very good chancellor and the economy would implode eventually. But frankly, Dacre has poor political judgement. They were united by a mutual hatred of Blair. Both are social conservatives; they’re both suspicious of foreigners; they both have a kind of Presbyterian morality. Dacre would say that Brown believes in work. It’s typical of him that he seizes on a single word as the key to his understanding of someone else.”
It is inconceivable that the Mail would ever back a party other than the Conservatives in a general election, but Dacre’s support can be cool, as it was in 1997 and 2010. Although he described himself to Hagerty as “a Thatcher­ite politically” and though self-made entrepreneurs are among the few people who can expect favourable coverage in the Mail, Dacre is, to most neoliberals, a tepid and inconsistent supporter of free enterprise. Nor is he a neocon. The Mail opposed overseas military interventions in Iraq, Libya and Syria. It has denounced Guantanamo Bay, extraordinary rendition and torture. It may be hard on immigrants and benefit scroungers, but it is often equally hard on the rich and famous, pursuing overpaid bosses of public-service utilities to their luxurious homes, exposing “depravity” among the well-heeled and high-born, and rarely treating TV and film celebrities with the deference that is the staple fare of other tabloids.
Many Mail campaigns have centred on liberal or environmental causes: lead in petrol, plastic bags, secret justice, the extradition to the United States of the hacker Gary McKinnon, and so on. For a time, the Mail furiously campaigned to stop Labour deporting failed (black) asylum-seekers to Zimbabwe, even though, almost simultaneously, it was berating ministers for allowing too many illegal immigrants to stay. Other campaigns, such as those against internet porn and super-casinos (both of which influenced government action), though reflecting the Mail’s conservative social agenda, highlighted issues that concern many on the left.
Dacre’s most celebrated campaign, which even some of his enemies regard as his finest hour, was to bring the killers of Stephen Lawrence to justice. In 1997, over the five photographs of those he believed were responsible, he ran the headline “MURDERERS” and, beneath it, asserted: “The Mail accuses these men of killing. If we are wrong, let them sue us”.
It was hugely courageous, but did it exonerate the Mail from accusations of racism? Critics point out that the paper rarely features black people except as criminals, though this is not exceptional for the nationals. The “soft” features on women, fashion, style and health are illustrated almost entirely by white faces and bodies.

Dacre’s somewhat belated support for the Lawrence campaign was prompted by a personal connection: Neville Lawrence, Stephen’s father, had worked as a decorator on Dacre’s London house of the time, in Islington. The Mail’s campaign, critics argue, was based on substituting one frame of prejudice for another. Young Stephen eschewed gangs and drugs, did his homework and wanted to go to university. His parents were married, aspirational and home-owning. In everything except skin colour, the Law­rence family represented Middle England, while his white alleged killers were low-class yobs who threatened the safety of all res­pectable folk.
In that, as in much else, Dacre’s Mail recalls 1950s Britain, which rather patronisingly welcomed migrants from Asia and the Caribbean as long as they behaved as though they and their ancestors were English. “If you’re in twinset and pearls, your colour is irrelevant,” says a former Mail journalist. “And Dacre’s attitude to gays changed when he realised it’s possible to be an extremely boring gay person.”
The Mail’s attitudes to drugs are also redolent of the 1950s. Writing about the disgraced Co-operative Bank chairman Paul Flowers, Stephen Glover – the Mail columnist whose views, according to insiders, track Dacre’s most closely – criticised commentators who “concentrated on his financial unsuitability”, placing “relatively little emphasis” on his “moral turpitude”.
Most of all, the Mail seems determined to uphold the 1950s ideal of womanhood: the stay-at-home mother who dedicates herself to homemaking and prepares a cooked dinner for her husband on his return home every night. That, the paper’s defenders say, is something of a caricature of the Mail’s position. It objects not so much to working mothers as to middle-class feminists who insist that women can “have it all”. English aimed at turning the Mail into “the women’s paper”, and succeeded: it became the only national newspaper where women accounted for more than half the readership. That remains true, and yet Dacre sometimes seems determined to drive them away. The paper subjects women’s bodies, clothes and deportment to relentless and detailed scrutiny, and often finds them wanting, particularly in the thigh and bottom department. It gives prominent coverage to research that warns of the negative effects of working mothers on children’s lives.
The Mail’s poster girl is Liz Jones, the columnist and fashion editor celebrated for her self-hatred and misery. “She has so much,” says another Mail journalist, “lots of money, expensive houses, the newest clothes. But she’s never had a child, she hasn’t kept hold of a man, and she’s unhappy. The message is: it’s what happens to you, girls, if you pursue worldly success. You can succeed but, oh boy, you will suffer for it.”
The Mail’s punishing hours, requiring news and features executives to stay at the office until late into the evening (not uncommon in national newspapers), and its largely unsympathetic attitude to part-time employment make it an unfriendly environment for working mothers. When Dacre took over at the Mail, he immediately appointed a female deputy, which, said another woman who then had a senior role in the group, “was quite a statement”. But the paper now has few women in its most senior positions, other than the editor of Femail (though sometimes even that post is occupied by a man), and few staff have young children.
Yet in some respects, the Mail, even though it does not recognise the National Union of Journalists, is a good employer. Unlike the Mirror, it is not under a company ruled by accountants who single-mindedly seek “efficiencies”. Unlike the Times and the Sun, it does not have a proprietor who touts his papers’ support to the highest bidder. Unlike the Guardian and Independent, it is not beset by financial problems. The pro­prietor, Viscount (Jonathan) Rothermere, whose great-grandfather Harold Harms­worth founded the paper with his brother Alfred in 1896, allows his editors wide freedom, as did his father, Vere Rothermere, who appointed Dacre. The Mail, alone among national newspapers, has had no significant rounds of editorial redundancies in recent years and its staffing levels (it employs about 400 journalists) are comparable to what they were a decade ago.
Dacre’s paper is his sole domain; MailOnline is run separately (though Dacre, as editor-in-chief, has oversight) and although the website carries all daily and Sunday paper stories, much of its content is self-generated and the editorial flavour is distinct. Dacre demands, and mostly gets, a generous budget, paying high salaries for established editorial staff and columnists and high fees for freelance contributors. Journalists are driven hard but, at senior levels in particular, they rarely leave, not least because Dacre is as loyal to them as they mostly are to him. Outright sackings are rare and nearly always accompanied by large payoffs.
Those who do leave often reach the top elsewhere. The current editors of both Telegraph papers – Tony Gallagher at the daily and Ian MacGregor at the Sunday – are former Mail executives.
Despite more than two decades at the helm, Dacre shows few signs of slowing down. After heart trouble some years ago – which caused an absence of several months from the office – his holidays, which he usually takes in the British Virgin Islands, have become slightly longer and more frequent. But he still routinely puts in 14-hour days.
Nevertheless, speculation about his future has grown among journalists on the Mail and other papers. At the end of November, Dacre sold his last remaining shares in the Daily Mail and General Trust, the Mail’s parent company, for £347,564; he disposed of the majority in 2012. His latest contract, signed on his 65th birthday, is for one year only. Geordie Greig, the 53-year-old editor of the Mail on Sunday, is widely regarded as the most likely successor, though Martin Clarke, the abrasive publisher of the phenomenally successful MailOnline, now the most visited newspaper website in the world, is also tipped and Jon Steafel, Dacre’s deputy, is favoured by most staff. The surprising announcement in November that Richard Kay, the paper’s diarist and a long-standing friend of Dacre’s, is to leave his position looks like another straw in the wind, particularly given that his almost certain replacement is Sebastian Shakespeare, previously the diary editor at the London Evening Standard, where Greig was editor before he moved to the Mail on Sunday.
Fleet Street rumour has it that Kay is being moved because he upset friends of Lady Rothermere, the proprietor’s wife, and that she is also behind the abrupt departure of the columnist Melanie Phillips, apparently on the grounds that her style – particularly during a June appearance on BBC1’s Question Time – is too shrill. Lady Rothermere, it is said, is desperately keen to oust Dacre in favour of Greig. Senior Mail sources pooh-pooh such tales, but they stop short of outright denials that Dacre is nearing the end of his days on the paper.

What a traumatic, useless, tragic, unfortunate and frustrating 2 weeks.
Before I get to the betting part, a short summary of the recent happenings is what caused me to crash into the iceberg. And don't worry, it's not another sob-story or something. Just a list of facts.
It started with me losing my job because my physical handicap proved to be too much hindrance for me doing a nice enough job. Then the recent weather shit crapped out my house with flood and destroyed parets. That was quickly followed up by destroyed pipes, leaking roof and broken sewer system. What made it even worse was that I made a mistake and didn't have a full insurance coverage for some random reason. I also went through the ice when I was crossing the river. There was plenty of ice on the river, but where I walked, it was no ice hidden underneath the snow, so I managed to cling onto the surface before the current took me away. Was frostyman when I got back home, though. Then my 2 remaining relatives died in car accident and from illness. Few weeks ago, I found out that my family dog for 20 years was dug up from the grave by some mammal, so I had to collect bones and fur to re-bury her. And to skip all other useless annoying happenings, I got the news y'day that I am turning blind. Literally.
Aloha, fellow bettors. Instead of me using the money to something relevant and useful, I thought I'd give it a go on some betting. I've been casually betting for about 20 years. And believe it or not, but I've actually ended up being on the plus side. Until recently. What happened? Well, I became an addict and then I "snapped". Just like that, I was swallowed by the hunger for gambling and wasted pretty much all the money I had left. Not that it was much to spend to begin with. But yeah, I cashed in on a winning betslip last weekend, but wasted it within 2 days on random stupid football bets and casino, of course. And you know what's the worst part about the entire thing? I couldn't control myself. I wasn't even drunk nor tipsy. I haven't touched alcohol since february last year or something like that, and I take no meds nor drugs either. I just didn't care. I felt so cold and "blank" as I saw the money vanish. Throughout the 20 years of casual betting, I have always managed to control myself with ease. But the recent happenings just overdid things for me and I lost the plot completely. When all was gone, I just felt icy. Cold. Shivers flowing through my body. I didn't know what to think, how to focus and what to do. I just sat there for a good hour before I took a longer walk. During this walk, I realized that I've lost all the money I had left, and that I ruined myself with that stupidity act of mine. I couldn't either stand there to blame myself. I knew I did something utterly braindead and stupid. I realized that I cannot fix it in any way. The only thing I can do, is to somewhat give it a go to look ahead of me, if possible. So now, I am sitting here with completely calm hands, but this fierce and immense coldness flowing up and down my body. It's so quiet here. And to imagine that only few months ago, the entire house was packed not so quiet, to put it that way. I realize that I am an addict now, but I can safely say I wasn't an addict before. So, I decided to logon to reddit, share my story and experiences with you lot, hoping that no one else walks into the "invisible" trap where you mess up your everyday life with some braindead actions and addictions. Think ahead. Look ahead. Think before you take an action. At least give it an honest try.
As for betting... Either you do it casually or full-on seriously. Don't do it semi-seriously or "think" that you're doing it seriously, but in reality, you're not. But even if you do it seriously, you can still fail, of course. Because betting is just THAT brutal. It doesn't matter if you sit on the knowledge. You must also combine it with MONEY and also a portion luck. Let me show you 2 examples with 2 betslips I made this weekend and yesterday. The betslip from last weekend contained 4 matches: Norwich o2.5, C. Adams to score a goal, Slovan Bratislava to score in both halves and W. Rooney to score a goal. Here comes the first mistake of mine: I relied too much on DC United's home form that I didn't consider too much about the supreme LAFC and Vela. Instead, I bet on W. Rooney. Not only didn't DC United score a single goal, but Rooney managed to get himself a direct red card. Why I didn't go for the more obvious choice C. Vela instead, is beyond my understanding. Then the second betslip that I put yesterday: Skov Olsen to score, Hazard to score, Club Brugge home team o2.5 goals and Liverpool o2.5 goals. Guess which one fails? The one with the LOWEST odds; Liverpool o2.5 goals with 1.64. The other 3 went straight in. Liverpool had 2-0 in the bag into the 2nd half. They didn't need to risk anything while they were good at defending themselves. So a clear 2-0-win was really not a surprising result, but to be that magical 1 goal away from a win, is just harsh reality and brutality at its best, really. It simply is how things are going for me. Is it tough luck? Bad decisions? Just how it is? Well, a nice mixture of those 3 things, I'd say. And that's how it's been over and over again for the past months. Until the end was reached today.
I am almost 40 years old who've lost my child, gf and family and I sit here with no income, no money left and bankrupt. That while being swallowed by the gambling addiction. I realized it a tad bit too late to do anything about it. I have opened up my eyes, and although I am rather stuck here where I am now (gambling treatment here costs a fortune that I don't have, ironically, so I cannot get much help with that), I hope that my message and brutal honesty will reach out to those of you who seem to be suffering from the same. I sincerely hope that you are able to open up your eyes before it's too late for you as well. And I definitely hope you have people around you who you should embrace rather than closing out. I don't have anyone to reach out to since I live in the middle of nowhere, but I will probably find a solution in the future. Some day. Somehow. I could just give up, but I won't. I will struggle a lot in the future, but then again; I do not know how it is to have a life without struggles, so that's nothing new for me. I do know that I will have to make a solid effort to enjoy the remaining pleasant time I have left before blindness reaches me completely, so I will do what I can to make the best out of it.
With that, I really hope that you too make a wise decision and drop it before it reaches too far. It's not worth it to lose it all. Kudos to you if you are able to have a balanced life and relationship to gambling/betting. It's not THAT difficult to be like that, actually. The problem is that when you let other things in your life overtake your mind on top of gambling, is when shit becomes dangerous. So. Be aware. Please.
I am thinking that this message will be a nice way for me to leave the world of gambling once and for all, because I cannot continue like this any longer. This bad time will be stuck within me a good while, yes, but I'll overcome it, hopefully. However, do drop a comment if you're wondering on anything. Feel free to message me as well if you need to. I am actually a good listener and I will respond you. It's not my last post here on reddit, but as far as gambling goes, it's a complete bye from me.
Good luck and take care.