NATO summit and Wimbledon success

How does a banana trigger a CIA backed coup Do AirPods herald the arrival of a new global order What do LED lights say about the future of humanity I'mt Conway, and in each episode of my new podcast, Stuff Matters, I take an object, crack it open, and reveal the world shaping forces hidden inside. This is economics told through the things we think we understand. Search Stuff Matters on your podcast app to listen and follow Sky News, The full story first Nijl Farage is under increasing pressure after more financial benefits he received came to life USA have been knocked out of the World Cup. All three hosts are now out, but could FIFA's role in allowing their striker to play have knock on effects for the tournament. He you're listening to Cheat Sheheet, a ten minute podcast on theoday's News on Tuesday, the seventh of July. I'm Soph Rich. And I'm Wilf Frooss Also today British success at Wimbledon as Arthur Ferry ranked outside the top one hundred. makes it into the quarter finals So it's another day of pressure for the reform UK leader Nigel Farage over his financial affairs. So this time it's a focus on benefits he received from a man called George Cottrell C convicted criminal crypto gambler. He was convicted of wire fraud in twenty seventeen for his role in a dark web money laundering plot in the US. He's currently looking for a presidential pardon. So what we're specifically talking about here according to reporting by the Sunday Times and the Times is that Cottrall funded a pretty big part of Nandre Frager's operation before he became an MP in twenty twenty four, which he didn't declare. So this is things Three staff members who did his social media access to a property in Westminster, that kind of thing. Obviously the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards is already Loo into the other very high profile question mark, I think, it's fair to say Ofarraage, which is this five million pound personal gift he received from Christopher Harborne, the Thai based billionaire. Whether this is now added to what the parliamentary commommissioner looks into or not remains to be seen and oddly compomared to you know, weeks, months ago where the bad news was that the Parliamentary Commission was looking into it. He's having such terrible News fllow at the moment. one wonders whether the Parliamentary commommissioner could give him some level of small reprieve depending on the result of the investigation for him to try and draw a line under this coverage. But in the meantime, it's clearly really getting to him. Yeah, so this is what he had to say when he was asked by Gy News if he should have reported the benefits. You tell your bosses, you harass my family anymore, and I'll take you be serious consequences. That's what your organisation has done this morning We should say and make it very clear, Sky News has not contacted Nigel Farge's family. Look, there's two ways of looking at this. Nigel Farge has always come out in a combative way when faced by what he would describe as the MSM, right, the mainstream media for people like Sky News. It's part of his appeal to many people, right he comes out, he's like, no no, this is not story or boring or whatever it is It feels to me and you know listeners may disagree or not, that this feels a bit different that actually this kind of relentless scrutiny that he's had over these last few weeks. I really strongly would say that this is the kind of scrutiny that people get all the time if it's a chance of them becoming Prime Minister Look at Kirstar or over the gifts he received. It's getting him. Almost more importantly, it's getting to the electorate. you know, I think again, I go back to the original one. a five million pound personal gift just cuts through like You know, like nothing else. We wait to see if there's formal actions, but it look you just have to look at the polls. Look, you could say it's because it's now Burnham in place, you could say it's because Kemy's had a bounce, whatever, but reform have slipped a few percentage points in the last month or so. The USA are out of the World Cup. They lost for one Last night to Belgium in Seattle, obviously already, fellow World Cup hosts, Canada and Mexico Already out I don't know if you noticed Mexico crashed up yesterday Played well, but just thereed us up against an unplayable team. J just didn't quite make it. Sorry about that. The game though has unquestionably been overshadowed by the fact to return to the stories we did yesterday, that before the game President Trump spoke to FIFA and FIFA then decided to overturn a red card or delay the punishment for a red card for Floren Balligan, their star striker who obviously did then play but didn't score and they lost anyway And look, I really do wonder We both condemned it loud and clear fresh off it in the morning yesterday, but I think this is a genuine turning point for FIFA because It was just so absurd. I'm still completely shocked by. You know how bad it is when set Batter The former disgraced FIFA president criticized the decision. I mean, you literally can't even make it up. Exactly. You don't want to be worse than saidbl ear. That's not, you know what anyone wants to be going by. By the way, he has a lot of followers on X. I didn't know still floating around. The other thing I wouldd say as well is that on paper right If you're someone who doesn't know much about football or soccer or whatever, you might think it's a good idea to be like, Hey, this is our star guy. We need to get the red carvernded. But sport doesn't always work like that. And I think that actually when it came down to it in the game itself The USA team are not playing in a bubble. They will know the outrage, the controversy around the game. it will be more pressure on the guy himself, right? Florian Balligan. And Belgium will be out back to the wall. They've got another reason to be fighting. They've got something else. they've got you know a bit of a spring in the step because they're so angry, I guess and backs to the wall world is against you, they'll come up fighting. and these things could actually have the opposite effect you intend. Yeah, it's a really good point. And Belgium byough have been underwhelming so far. greatreat performance, they, you know, they go through to the next round in the quarters to face to face Spain. that the thing that is a shame is this USA team had really set the tournament alike. You know, their young team They played really well in a couple of the games And you didn't want this to, whether they go you know further or crash out at this stage, you didn't want this to be the closing story for you a country which is a massive sporting nation, but forever we're asking the question does soccer play catch up to their domestic sports and obviously hosting a World Cup was a big moment where that could happen. So it's a real shame. this is the closing story of their participation in this World Cup that they were hosting. And it opens, as you were saying yesterday, a bit of a can of worms, right? You know England are now considering appealing the red card that they got in their last match, Gerald Coner for his challenge against Mexico. set's precedent. Yeah, do you know what We were joking about willill Stahmer have the same influence I hope we don't Like, if independently FIFA feel like they have set this terrible precedent and do it, fine But we want to win Fair and Square. It was a red card. He got the sending off. Let's not You know, let's move on, by the way conveniently Reese James is fit as well. So other big World Cup story overnight Portugal knocked out Cristiano and now there this Portugal knocked out as Spain beat them one nil late goal, rather boring match, but as we said sets up Belgium versus Spain in that quarter final and It's sort of getting into the business end now, isn't it? So Kistama is arriving in Turkey today for a NATO summit. He's likely to face some criticism after Washington's ambassador to NATO called for Alliance members who are in his words, lagging behind on defence spending. st up Now we know of course that the Defence investment planlan, Kist Aama's Deence invvestment planl, produced an extra fifteen billion pounds for defence. That means that deffence spending will reach two point seven percent of GDP by twenty thirty and NATO of course promising that it's got to be three point five percent by twenty thirty five A lot Fnder Burnam. There's a lot of Fnder Burnam to make up the difference in just what? Starmer has pledged, you know, so that's a small headache or a significant headache. but small in the grand scheme of things to get to the right numbers. you can sort of see how this might play out over the next year, which is Burnham does get it up what StAarMmer's already announced and tries to frame it as I'm filling the gap that StAMmer unfairly left for me, even though NATO and defence experts and everybody else still thinks it's way too short. So it's a big, big issue. despite StAMmer going to NATO and it's all being framed as dun and dusted, it's a massively open issue still for anyone in the defence community Now, we've covered student loans a lot on this podcast on mornings and cross party Treasury Select Committee report has criticised Rachel Reef's decision in the budget to freeze the repayment threshold for people who are on what are called plan to student Lnans. So this meant that rather than increasing with inflation until twenty thirty the number which once you cross a certain level of earnings, you have to start repaying a student loan. She froze that so that people have to start essentially in real terms repaying it earlier. And they're saying that this is unfair, it breaks a promise that was made to them think most people's assessment of where we are, particularly with Plan two student loans is the entire thing is grossly unfair. and therefore this particular action to make it even worse by Rachel Reeves is getting criticism. It only raised her about eighty or ninety a million pounds a year, not very much and it punished students of all people. So understandably getting a lot of criticism from this you cross party committee report and we'll see if it does get reversed going forward. anotherother little hole for Andy Burnham to fill. We've been begging about football for ages But I do want to bang on about the tenedis for a minute because there was an amazing match yesterday at the Arthur Fairry Britz made the quarter finals after a great comeback victory. So we won the first set, lost the second two sets after that. So the second and third set. At that point I was like, right, you know, that's it now. you know Dimin Trov is too good for him. he's not going to comeback, but he just refused to give up. And this means he is the first wild card and the first player outside the top hundred since Nick Kirios in twenty fourteen to reach the last eight in the men's singles in Wimbledon since twenty fourteen. ammazing. Absolutely amazing. He plays the ninth seed in his next game who he did beat earlier this year in the Australian open, just by the way. But yeah, he's ranked outside the top hundred last year is ranked outside the top four hundred So really come from nowhere. The other thing to add is well, we were lamenting last week how I think by the Early stages, second or third round, he was the only Bit left and