The Premier League is pumping 350 million pounds into its Elite Player Performance Plan (EPPP) – a new blueprint for the academy system that has been around since 1998. The mission statement is to create “more and better home-grown players” using a network of 120 leading coaches working with 4,500 more at 96 professional clubs. Today’s graphic breaks down soccer’s home grown talent in the world’s five most popular leagues.

Marcus Agius, chairman of Barclays, resigned today as the bank attempts to deal with its involvement in an interest rate fixing scandal. See which investors will be most affected.

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…The bare rolling stretch of country from the North Tyne and Cheviots to the Scottish southern uplands was for a long time the territory of men who spoke English but had the outlook of Afghan tribesmen; they prized a poem almost as much as plunder, and produced such an impressive assembly of local narrative songs that some people used to label all our greater folk poems as ‘Border Ballads’ …

Folk Song in England: A L Lloyd (2008)

It was high summer in the year 1773. At the door of one of the cottages in the tiny Scottish border hamlet of Nether Knock in Eskdale, a 24 year-old country carpenter bade a final farewell to his parents, his brothers and his only sister. Lifting his bundle onto his shoulder, he followed the rough road beside the river out of the valley. On reaching the small town of Langholm, he turned westward and continued on foot for a further 25 miles to Dumfries. There, waiting at the quayside, was a ship bound for Canada. Until that moment, he had never seen the sea.

The name of the young carpenter was Archie Thomson –  great-great-great-great grandfather of David Thomson, Chairman of Thomson Reuters.

I think that we will not follow his ship, unfurling its sails as it moves out into the River Nith towards the Solway Firth and on to the New World. Instead, let us return to the old world of Eskdale. For it is there that  we may discover more about the Thomson family and the life which Archie had chosen to leave behind.

There had been Thomsons in Eskdale as long as anyone could remember. For centuries they had been associated most particularly with the hamlets of Nether Knock and Mid Knock. (more…)