Latest news with #HibernianFC
Edinburgh Reporter
18 hours ago
- Sport
- Edinburgh Reporter
Hibernian Community Foundation launches involvement in the 2025 Edinburgh Kiltwalk
The Hibernian Community Foundation has launched its involvement in the 2025 Edinburgh Kiltwalk. Taking place on Sunday, September 14, this will be the 6th time HCF have been involved, with numbers steadily increasing year on year. HCF will cover the cost of your entry using the code HIBS2025 when you sign up to walk and are challenging and encouraging all walkers to raise £150 or more to celebrate Hibernian FC's 150th anniversary. Sign up here and nominate 'Hibernian Community Foundation' as your charity, otherwise the discount code will not activate. The Edinburgh Kiltwalk began in 2016 as a way of bringing charities across Scotland together to raise funds for their chosen cause. Walkers began to nominate HCF in 2020 during virtual COVID Kiltwalks, before HCF officially entered in 2023 with 300 Community Academy players raising over £18,000 fora range of community football initiatives. In 2024, HCF once again participated as an official charity, encouraging Community Academy players, fans, staff and members of the Hibernian community to walk and raise funds. Walkers were joined by several men's team players including captain and HCF board member Joe Newell, Nicky and Chris Cadden, Rudi Molotnikov and Josh Campbell, as well as David Gray, Sporting Director Malkay Mackay and Chairman Ian Gordon. Walkers' efforts in harsh conditions were rewarded with over £16,000 raised, marking another impressive entry for HCF. '2023 and 2024 were both such great successes for us, and we are eager to be bigger and better in 2025,' said Chair of the HCF Board, Steve Smith. 'The money raised each year has been pivotal in our delivery of football and community activities, providing equipment and support for people who don't regularly receive it.' This year, HCF is challenging every walker to raise £150, honouring the 150th anniversary of Hibernian FC and the charitable, community-focused roots of the club. 'We know the target of £150 per walker is ambitious, but we also know the community surrounding Hibs rallies behind their friends, and hopefully every walker can hit that target.' As in previous years, the HCF will be organising to leave as a group in the 10.30am Wee Wander slot, so participants should indicate that in their registration. Anyone aiming to participate in either the Big Stroll or Mighty Stride, the discount code will still apply. Whichever length you choose, please be sure to link your Just Giving fundraising page to HCF's: 2025 Kiltwalk with HCF. This year, walkers will have the opportunity to walk alongside their heroes. Please note that appearances from players and the coaching staff are dependent on availability amid changes in fixtures. Like this: Like Related
BBC News
3 days ago
- Sport
- BBC News
Livi host Hibs in all top-flight League Cup match
Livingston will host Hibernian in the second round of the League secured their spot as one of the best runners-up with a 6-0 thrashing of Kelty Hearts on are due to be played on the weekend of 16th/17th August.
Yahoo
6 days ago
- Sport
- Yahoo
Sporting JAX move up ticket sale date, announce home game themes
Sporting Club Jacksonville announced it sold over 6,000 season tickets as the team is set to make its inaugural season is set to kick off next month. Sporting JAX says, because of this demand, the club will move its public on-sale date for single-match tickets from August 1 to July 24. The club also announced that each home game at UNF's Hodges Stadium will feature a theme night. 'We've been floored by the incredible response from the First Coast community since launching our season ticket sales in April,' says Sporting JAX President and CEO Steve Livingstone. 'With rising demand and only 9,400 seats at Hodges Stadium, we want everyone to have a chance to be part of this historic first season. But our club has always stood for something bigger than soccer, and our themed match nights reflect the spirit of the First Coast to ensure every fan feels seen, inspired, and connected.' ▶ Listen to Jacksonville's Morning News Interviews Sporting JAX announced the following theme nights for the club's preseason and regular season matches: Preseason Matches: International Women's Soccer Series, presented by Visit Jacksonville Saturday, Aug. 2: vs. Hibernian FC (Scotland) Inaugural Match: Sporting JAX takes the field for the very first time to face off against Scottish Women's Premier League champions Hibernian Women FC. Sunday, Aug. 10: vs. Wrexham AFC (Wales) Superhero Night/Back to School: Celebrating educators and students with a night of fun, giveaways, and a cameo by Deadpool! 2025/2026 Inaugural Season Home Match Schedule Saturday, Aug. 23: vs. DC Power FC (Home Opener) First official Gainbridge Super League match: Presented by Ascension St. Vincent's, experience the excitement of the league's first match with pre-game festivities, Fan Zone debut, and a spectacular post-match fireworks show. Saturday, Sep. 6: vs. Dallas Trinity FC Healthcare & Hispanic Heritage Night: Honoring healthcare heroes and celebrating Hispanic heritage across our region. Saturday, Sept. 13: vs. Carolina Ascent FC International Night: A global celebration through food, music, and community. Saturday, Oct. 18: vs. Tampa Bay Sun FC Soccer For All/Disability Awareness Night: A night for fans and athletes of all abilities, along with the club's Florida Cup rivalry series kickoff. Saturday, Nov. 22: vs. Fort Lauderdale United FC Military Appreciation Night: Saluting active-duty service members and veterans with powerful tributes and in-game recognition. Saturday, Dec. 13: vs. Fort Lauderdale United FC Youth Sports Night presented by adidas: Highlighting future stars of the game with special appearances and programming for local youth teams and clubs. Saturday, Dec. 20: vs. Tampa Bay Sun FC Holiday Celebration: Festive fun for the whole family with seasonal entertainment, holiday giveaways, and joyful surprises. Saturday, Jan. 31: vs. Carolina Ascent FC Heroes Night presented by Ascension St. Vincent's: Honoring first responders, healthcare workers and everyday heroes who make a difference in our community. Saturday, Feb. 7: vs. DC Power FC Lift Every Voice Celebration: A tribute to Black heritage, leadership, and legacy across Jacksonville and beyond. Wednesday, Feb. 11: vs. Spokane Zephyr FC Student Night presented by UNF: A high-energy night dedicated to students with discounts and giveaways. Saturday, Mar. 28: vs. Spokane Zephyr FC Women in Jax: Recognizing women who lead, inspire, and shape the future in sports, business, and beyond. Saturday, April 4: vs. Brooklyn FC High School Soccer Night presented by Episcopal School of Jacksonville: Showcasing the talent and passion of high school soccer programs throughout the First Coast. Saturday, April 25 vs. Lexington SC Faith & Family Night: A night of fellowship, shared values, and uplifting community moments. Sunday, May 3 vs. Brooklyn FC Fan Appreciation Night: A heartfelt thank you to the best fans in the league, featuring surprise giveaways and celebration-worthy moments. [This post is based largely on a press release from Sporting JAX]
New Statesman
23-07-2025
- Business
- New Statesman
GMB chief Gary Smith: 'Oil and gas is not the enemy'
Illustration by Ellie Foreman Peck Gary Smith is not a man who disguises his passions. The wall of his office features framed pictures of pioneering Scottish trade unionists, the Durham Miners' Gala, steam ferries on the Mersey, the jazz poet Gil Scott-Heron, and Hibernian FC. As the general secretary of the GMB – the country's third-largest trade union, with around 630,000 members – the blunt, puckish Scotsman leads an organisation that is more central to national life today than it has been for decades. Its parliamentary group alone comprises more than 250 Labour MPs (making it, as Smith likes to quip, over twice the size of the Conservative Party), including Keir Starmer, Rachel Reeves and Angela Rayner. GMB's presence in sectors such as defence, energy and manufacturing means that cabinet ministers heed its voice. 'It's a huge improvement on what went before, impossible to compare it,' said Smith, 57, with a thatch of boyish blond hair. We met in Euston, central London, at the GMB's national office, Mary Turner House (named after the indomitable Irishwoman who served as the union's president for 20 years). Smith praised the government's rescue of British Steel, its defence industrial strategy, the commitment to build the Sizewell C nuclear plant and the 'transformative' Employment Rights Bill. 'Has the government made mistakes?' Smith asked. 'Yeah, absolutely, and we have been outspoken in our criticism about winter fuel payments. Nobody said there shouldn't have been reform of payments; it was just badly handled. Likewise, on disability benefits, we were very worried about the poorest and most vulnerable – many of our people who are in work get Pip payments.' Smith, who was elected general secretary four years ago, has often been an ally to Starmer when it's mattered most. At the 2021 Labour Party Conference it was post-midnight conversations with Smith in Brighton hotel suites that convinced Starmer and his chief aide, Morgan McSweeney, that they had the votes required to rewrite the party rule book and marginalise the Corbynite left. But Smith is unsparing in his criticism of Labour's first year in office. 'The big thing that is missing is a clear vision about the future. What we need is a sense of national mission and I don't think that's there. I don't think we've got that emotionally compelling story about the future of the country. 'We are emerging into a new world order as well. That's very difficult for any government to navigate. This is a new epoch that's opened up in front of us: the end of globalisation, the end of neoliberalism. Any government's got to wrestle with what Britain's place in the world is going to be.' He added: 'It frustrates me that the right-wing press accuse[s] Labour of talking down Britain. I think in many ways people are underestimating the state the country's in. Our finances are precarious, we've seen that in the past few weeks. We are beholden to the bond markets; this could unravel very quickly. The country's in a really difficult situation and so I don't envy what they've had to inherit.' (The Office for Budget Responsibility's recent report warned that the UK had the sixth-highest debt, fifth-highest deficit and third-highest borrowing costs of the 38 OECD countries.) This year Donald Trump has become the unlikely hero of some US unions, with the United Auto Workers praising his tariffs as necessary to 'end the free-trade disaster'. Smith invoked the US New Right – and its embrace of protectionism over Reaganism – several times during our conversation. 'The New Right saw an opportunity with working-class communities hollowed out by globalisation. We can talk about average GDP, we can talk about how many people in the globe got wealthy. There were a whole number of our communities that were absolutely abandoned. 'People were told that they're competing in this global labour market and the jobs went abroad and that left people embittered, angry and absolutely disoriented. And the New Right in America got this – they certainly got it better than the liberal left did.' To some this will sound reminiscent of Blue Labour, the party's economically interventionist and socially conservative faction. (Its founder, Maurice Glasman, was the sole Labour parliamentarian invited to Trump's inauguration.) But Smith bridled at the comparison. 'I'm not being critical of anybody but we're not Blue Labour. Why do we have to stick badges on things all the time? We're a working-class organisation; we spend a lot of time listening to our members. So I'm not interested in fashionable factions in the Labour Party, I'm just interested in listening to working-class people, and our members have been telling us this for a long time. They are tired of low-paid, insecure employment. That was a Tory economic model. 'You know, we got to a point in Barrow where we couldn't build nuclear submarines. The only growth industry was heroin, and that happened under Cameron and Osborne. So what shapes our world-view is not some factional philosophy in Labour – it's just listening to working-class people and our membership.' Unite, the UK's second-largest union, this month vowed to 're-examine' its affiliation to Labour and excoriated the party's record in office, with union representatives since surveyed on the matter. 'It's up to Unite what they do. We're not interested in what other unions do,' Smith replied diplomatically when I raised the subject. 'For us, a relationship with government should be contentious, there should be disagreement and debate. But I'd much rather have a Labour government in power than the alternative. And let's be clear about the Tories – they're done – the alternative is going to be Reform.' What does Smith believe is fuelling Farage's ascendancy? 'This is a fuck-you vote, people are just angry: they're pissed off and they're looking for somebody to kick. A lot of this ultimately is about declining living standards. We're a country where in our towns and communities people just look beat. You live in a city like London and even if you're on a good wage you're struggling to keep your head above water… Farage is feeding off that anger and frustration and decline.' In recent months, Farage has reframed Reform as 'the party of working people', speaking of his desire for a 'sensible relationship' with the trade unions and vowing to reopen the Port Talbot steelworks. But Smith – precisely the kind of earthy general secretary whose endorsement Farage would relish – is unimpressed. 'I think he's a chancer. He is no friend of trade unions or working-class people. Peel back the rhetoric: where was he on the Employment Rights Bill? He's voted against working people at Amazon having the right to organise and collectively bargain over their pay. He's voted against people having stronger collective rights at work, which will allow us to better redistribute wealth in this country.' Smith ridiculed Farage's claim that he was appalled by Michael Heseltine's closure of coal mines as Conservative trade and industry secretary in the 1990s. 'Do you think he went on picket lines and supported the miners? Do you think he argued for the steel workers? No, he was a metal trader in the City of London, lifting another glass of Champagne as all this devastation of UK industry and communities went on.' Gary Smith was born in Edinburgh in 1967; his father was an electrician and his mother a bookmaker's clerk. He became a Scottish Gas apprentice at the age of 16 (the GMB later paid for him to study at Ruskin College, and he gained a Master's degree in industrial relations from Warwick University). His political consciousness was shaped by the fraught social conflicts of the early Thatcher era. 'I saw working-class people and communities getting treated very badly,' he said. 'I get so angry when I listen to people talk fondly about the Thatcher era because a lot of kids didn't get off the housing estates. It was mass unemployment, cheap heroin, and HIV/Aids. There's a whole generation of young men who died and never made it through that period.' Four decades on, Smith is once more haunted by the spectre of deindustrialisation. He spoke of a recent encounter with an oil and gas worker moved to tears in Middlesbrough ('big guy, really impressive guy') who declared at a town hall meeting: 'They're doing to us what they did to Middlesbrough in the 1980s.' For this, Smith attributes much blame to the UK's net zero policy of which he is the fiercest Labour critic. 'For too long, we were exporting jobs and importing virtue, so we closed down British industry. That was great for emissions, not great for communities. Our notional emissions have fallen but all we've done is export jobs and industry to China, where they burn coal to produce the goods we then import on diesel-burning barges and ships – and that includes the vast bulk of all renewables industry.' Though he emphasises that he is not a climate change denier – 'We're not in the same place as the US New Right' – he believes that current energy policy is a gift to Farage. 'We have been decarbonising through deindustrialisation and it's counterproductive because the communities that have seen their industries closed down, they've been abandoned and will end up voting for the right, and exactly the way that they have in America.' Smith fears that the political ramifications of net zero could be greatest of all in his native Scotland – he lives in Paisley – where Labour aims to prevent the SNP winning a fifth term next May. 'On the current policies, I don't believe that Labour can win in Scotland,' he warned of the government's decision to ban new North Sea oil and gas licences. 'People don't get that energy is an emotional issue in Scotland. We went hundreds of miles out in this inhospitable sea and built this incredible, groundbreaking energy infrastructure. 'If you're on the west coast of Scotland, most people of a certain age have a drop of oil from Sullom Voe because there are so many families who were involved in building that project when they landed the oil in Shetland. This was an emotional story about Scotland. It's important to its sense of self and the economy, and I don't think people have really got that.' While Starmer is expected to grant permission to the Rosebank and Jackdaw oil and gas fields in the North Sea – which are exempt as existing licences – he has consistently reaffirmed the ban on new ones. 'That is absolutely our position,' he recently declared (a stance that Trump publicly derided ahead of his planned meeting with Starmer in Aberdeen). Does Smith believe that Labour will ultimately be forced to rethink its policy? 'They will have to rethink it because the consequences in terms of energy prices, in terms of national security, in terms of the economy and jobs, are so profound. What we should be doing is taking a public stake in what is left of the oil and gas sector and using the profits for that sector, or part of them, to invest in a new green future. We should be talking about North Sea Two, how we're going to collaborate with Norway – not just decarbonising the North Sea, but what comes next. Oil and gas is not the enemy: it's actually the gateway to whatever comes next, and we've got to stop seeing it as a threat.' The GMB's stances have often put it at odds with the Energy Secretary, Ed Miliband – who has championed net zero as the 'economic opportunity of the 21st century' – but Smith hints at something of a rapprochement: 'I hope and think that Ed realises that in haemorrhaging jobs through this charge to net zero, the political consequences could be very, very profound for Labour. I get a sense that he's starting to listen and I think he also knows that a lot of these new, fashionable green companies are vehemently anti-union. 'And that's a huge problem because it's completely at odds with the government's agenda. Sea Wall in the North East – we're fighting for recognition there and have a strike ballot – they've had access to tens of millions of pounds of government funding and they're anti-union. Octopus Energy? Anti-union.' We return to Labour's future. Even those who sympathise with Starmer often say they do not know what he stands for ('There is no project,' one loyalist MP recently told me). 'If I'm honest with you, I don't think we've clearly defined what Starmerism is,' Smith said. 'There's huge opportunities post-globalisation and post-neoliberalism. How do we grasp those? 'Keir has done some really good stuff on the international stage. But we need to have a national mission and people need to believe again that there is a brighter tomorrow. Labour does need to be that light on the hill.' Just a year into government, cabinet ministers already speculate about whether Starmer will fight the next election. Does that surprise Smith? 'I always said that people underestimated him – let's see. He's got a huge and really tough job but people have underestimated him before. I never thought I'd see a Labour government again in my working life; Keir was part of the team that delivered that extraordinary election result last year and I think he deserves a bit of credit and a bit of time. If they end up all just turning on each other, stabbing each other in the back, it'll just be electoral disaster for them.' [See more: Can Nigel Farage have it both ways?] Subscribe to The New Statesman today from only £8.99 per month Subscribe Related
Edinburgh Reporter
17-07-2025
- Business
- Edinburgh Reporter
Hibs announce new partnership with cybersecurity company NordVPN
Hibs have announced a new partnership with leading online privacy and cybersecurity company, NordVPN, who become the official VPN partner of the Club. NordVPN have recently launched their Threat Protection Pro software, an antivirus tool which protects users from phishing and various cyber threats. As part of this new collaboration, NordVPN are offering all Hibernian FC supporters one etra month of their services free of charge. Hibernian FC's Head of Partnerships, Sam O'Donnell, stated: 'We are delighted to be working with the team at NordVPN for the duration of the 2025/26 campaign. 'With the Club's overseas supporter base continuing to expand, partnering with NordVPN will allow fans worldwide to access one of the world's fastest and most secure VPNs. 'This collaboration enhances our digital reach and ensures our fans stay connected and protected wherever they follow Hibernian FC.' Bob Brinklow, Country Manager for the UK at NordVPN, added: 'NordVPN is delighted to partner with Hibernian Football Club to help educate supporters on the importance of staying safe online. 'While cybersecurity and privacy tools help to protect internet users from a technical perspective, human error remains an essential factor in cybersecurity, and no one is fully protected from online scams. 'Tactics used by cybercriminals are becoming more sophisticated, and even cyber-savvy users are often exposed. 'NordVPN now offers cyber insurance benefits with its Ultimate plan, so users can secure their internet connection and enjoy the additional protection against online shopping fraud and online scams.' Like this: Like Related
