Talk about a roller coaster of a week for Scottish sports fans. This time last week they were basking in the glory of drawing with England at Twickenham. Okay, to be fair, coming back from 31-0 down was pretty impressive. But today they are seriously pondering what their chances are of qualifying for the Euro 2020 football championships, a tournament that is going to be hosted by twelve different countries, including Scotland! It’s fair to say their prospects were not helped by their humiliating 3-0 defeat to the footballing giant that is Kazakhstan on Thursday afternoon. Kazakhstan are currently ranked 117th in the world, some 67 places lower than ‘Big Eck’s’ team, and have only won three of their previous forty competitive matches (against the mighty Andorra, Latvia and the Faroe Islands). The good news for the Tartan Army is that they have the chance to put things right this afternoon against another of Europe’s footballing super-powers, San Marino. Well, that’s not quite strictly true. San Marino are the lowest ranked footballing nation in the whole of world football. They have never won a European or World Cup qualifying match. In fact, they have only ever won one game, that being against Lichtenstein in 2004. If Scotland lose this afternoon it’s fair to assume that their manager will soon be seeking alternative employment and a certain desk at The Weekly’s headquarters might be unoccupied for a day or so until the indignity and embarrassment subsides!
It’s hard to believe really, but we are already almost through the first quarter of the year. Whilst Spring sprung on Wednesday, data released this week by Property Archive indicates that the UK property investment market is still yet to spring into life. Commercial property investment in February was soft, at just £1.5bn, following a revised total of £3bn in January. Taking the first two months of the year together, the total value of investment transactions is less than half of the same period last year. Further evidence of a 'wait and see approach' comes in the form of a lack of large one-off deals, with the largest deal reported in February being the sale of the Zinc Hotels portfolio for £246m. This made February the fifth consecutive month when the value of the top five deals has been below the last six-year average. With uncertainty about the outcome of Brexit looking most likely to continue well past the end of next week, the investment market could remain rather muted for some time yet.
Entering the murky world of Brexit is not something The Weekly does lightly, but a potential shortage of loo paper being just one possible consequence was certainly something that grabbed our attention as we read the newspaper sat on the...train. According to a former Labour MP and Minister for Europe, each Brit consumes 110 toilet rolls every year, two and a half times the European average. Whilst the boss of one of the UK’s biggest toilet paper producers advised on Friday that a no deal Brexit would not ‘wipe out’ supplies (despite having an extra 600 tons of loo roll stored in warehouses in Bolton and Bridgend 'to safeguard supplies'), the rumours circulating didn’t stop a German company (Hakle) sending ninety x sixteen-roll packs to Buckingham Palace in a bid to ensure that the Queen was not ‘caught short’. Sadly for Hakle, the delivery was turned away due to safety and security fears, and not because Her Majesty was ‘too posh to wipe’ as suggested on Twitter. The 1,440 rolls eventually ended up at Woodgate High School in Coulsdon. We have no idea why! Of all the things that The Weekly never considered about Brexit, a shortage of toilet paper is right up there. But since there may apparently be food shortages too, the potential loo roll shortage will kind of...well, resolve itself.