The world cup has kicked off, or at least the ball has been kicked, the cup itself remains safely in the cabinet, much like David Davis in spite of his threats to the contrary. The football tournament though, that's being held in Russia over the next couple of weeks. If you're an England fan it's not long to wait until that moment when they fail to win and Gareth Southgate is forced to inevitably resign over his sole responsibility for England failing to be the best team in the entire world, no doubt accompanies by tabloid headlines about the team being Putin their place. Mind you, I keep saying world but the USA aren't in the tournament, nor are the Italians, the Dutch or Chile, China, India. Scotland haven't even qualified for the tournament since France 98, although I guess that at least shows a strong level of consistency, something that many teams, notably England, lack.

Anyway, if football's your thing then all your top footballing stars are there on the telly for you to gaze at. But back to the world of politics, it's not just Luis Suarez who's biting off more than he can chew. Today saw the news that the US is going ahead and imposing tariffs of 25% on Chinese exports accusing Beijing of intellectual copyright theft. In retaliation the Chinese said they'd do likewise with anti-US rate increases of 25%.

For something going down in price though, compare and contrast to the Labour Party's Jezfest music+politics festival this weekend where ticket prices have been slashed by around 70% after people discovered you could apply for free ones if you asked nicely. For once I actually agree with some of the socialists on this one: they're complaining and saying that it's not right for some people to just get given things for free when others have had to work to pay for them.

Anyway, for now I've got some money down on Germany to win the world cup and no money down for the north London socialism festival if either of those things are of interest then enjoy the weekend.