I'm at EMC World, this is theCUBE, our flagship program. We go out to the events, extract the signal from the noise. I'm John Furrier, the founder of SiliconANGLE, and we're here at EMC World in Las Vegas. Our fourth year, consecutive with theCUBE, theCUBE was born in 2010 here at EMC World. And one of the great things about theCUBE is we get to go to the events, extract the signal from the noise, and talk to the executives of the companies at the event here, it's EMC, so we talk to all the head haunches. But more importantly, we love to go out to the crowd and find out the emerging players, the ones that aren't the big whales, the ones that are gaining ground. And we've got a great guest here, the chairman and CEO of ServiceMesh, Eric Fleer. Thanks for coming on theCUBE. It's great to be here, thanks. So, ServiceMesh is in the hybrid cloud management for applications, which is the cutting edge area right now because cloud mobile and social has become the buzzword, the pillars that everyone's building and transforming their infrastructure to literally go to, as what I call, modern infrastructure. And it's a huge inflection point. I once called it the combination of client server computing and the PC revolution boiled together, and that's kind of the action we're seeing in terms of dynamics and impact. And it's happening very, very fast. So, I want to ask you, you guys have an uncontested lead in this area, but you're not a huge company. I mean, you've got all these big companies could be doing it. Why are you guys gaining so much traction? Yes, well, we're not a huge company compared to the ones that I'm sure you're thinking of. IBM's the MC's of the world, but we are growing. And I think we're growing primarily because that we've taken an approach that's very customer centric. So in other words, when this IT transformation, as you put it, started to become ubiquitous, the CIOs of the world started to look for a problem, to solve a problem that was really focused on applications, getting them to market faster, and having a lower cost base to run them. So there was a lot of pressure on them that really had a lot to do with business metrics. And yet the field that had really come up through virtualization and infrastructure automation had a natural affinity to approach the same set of problems from their place of knowledge, which is infrastructure, right? So you start with infrastructure optimization, and you start to move up the stack. The problem is that this is really not, ultimately, an infrastructure problem. It's an infrastructure in search of an application. In other words, what good is infrastructure if it's not helping applications? So we really approached it from the app down, and I think that's changed our model. Yeah, Sean Douglas, a recent hire of yours, actually from EMC, I've gotten to know Sean, he was at EMC Ventures. You guys really had a stellar hire with Sean. He's now CTO of your company, and you're co-founder of Frank is now in charge of strategy, kind of looking at the next mountain climb for service mesh, which the market's growing like crazy. I got to ask you, I mean, we saw DevOps really change the game around web scale, companies saying, hey, I want to be more hyper-scale. So DevOps became a very popular, kind of pre-cloud developer community. That has now blown up huge into cloud operations, right? So cloud operations is the public cloud. We know Amazon, OpenStack, we had you on OpenStack, but more importantly, the enterprises aren't necessarily that eager to go to the public cloud for a lot of variety of reasons, compliance, security, data, et cetera, et cetera. They're going there. It's a destination for them. So the hybrid cloud is a nice fit for you guys. So I got to ask you about the competitive landscape. What do you see out there for companies that are taking the best of DevOps, what was proven as, hey, I can develop on cloud resources, launch new apps, and actually make this stuff run fast and deliver business value. So that's a mainstream requirement right now. Hard to get to. It is. So what is the competitive landscape? Okay, well, I think you've hit it on the head in terms of what the requirement is. How do you actually create an automated DevOps tool chain? Which is, how do you get a concept to production faster? And how do you do that with some of the existing tool sets that you have, because in an enterprise they're not going to throw it out everything and just buy your new fangled toy, right? So what we see in the marketplace are people attacking this from different angles. You have the guys, as we discussed just earlier, that are looking at it from infrastructure optimization or automation. So they take these kind of old fashioned run book automation tools and they try to apply it up the stack. Then you've got guys who are really focused on DevOps who have an ability to do what they might call continuous delivery or some kind of automated way of bringing you along a release management chain, but they're not well connected to the infrastructure. And at the core of all this is really a policy problem, right? From an enterprise point of view, you want your constituents, your business units, to go fast, but they have to stay safe. If you turn over the reins for IT as a service to the business and you don't have an effective policy or governance model, then everything falls apart. So what we've done at Service Mesh is we've really started there. What if we could build an extensible, incredibly powerful policy core and apply that up to the DevOps tool chain and down into the infrastructure so that you can essentially provision real time applications or application platforms and then treat code as a first class citizen and move it along a software delivery lifecycle? So this entire landscape of problems that one has to solve, if you don't have a policy core that has some fidelity across these different problems, then essentially you end up with point solutions and they become more trouble than there were. Yeah, I mean, I love the infrastructure as code concept because that's about making things programmable. And the buzz here is software-defined storage. And obviously software-defined networking kicked off the software-defined everything or as we say software-led infrastructure. But let's take a step back. I want to ask you one question around the operating system of the data center and how the data center is changing from a more like API model, like a lot of Amazon. But how did you guys get started? Talk about Service Mesh because you guys aren't a big well-known company and the vertical people know you're doing extremely well. How did you guys get here? Tell us, how did you guys start the company? You have a co-founder, met Frank at OpusTrack.  Well, Service Mesh is a company that's a long time in coming. So it seems like maybe we've done about half a decade of work and done a lot in half a decade. Five years of hard work building an application that we think could be fundamentally important to this space. But the truth is we spent a lot of time prior to that, which is really the story of Service Mesh. So the folks that have built Service Mesh have decades of experience in the enterprise. So we didn't approach this from a consumer perspective or even an infrastructure perspective. We approached it from an application-centric mentality from other ventures that we had done in the enterprise. So for instance, a previous venture that Frank and I had worked on together was called SOA Software. We spent quite a bit of time really focused on what does it take to have- As in service-oriented architecture. Service-oriented architecture. What does it take to scale service-oriented architecture from a governance and policy point of view? Well, that's a stepping stone to the same type of problems that we needed to solve here. So the way that this came about is that we've built, I think, a certain amount of credibility and relationships in the enterprise space, and we were able to call from those relationships the set of requirements that were converging on a similarity. The bet was that by the time we were able to build something that was scalable and referenceable that the market would arrive. So rather than take a normal approach, which would be early VC money, a lot of PR, a lot of marketing, everyone knows about you, and then you do a lot of pilots, but the market's not there. We went the opposite approach. We went really deep with select, highly complex, regulated, multinational organizations to really prove out that we had something. And you self-funded. We self-funded. And when we got to the point where the market started to arrive and we had referenceability where companies could stand up and say, we've saved $150 million. We've fundamentally transformed our productivity metrics and we were able to point to those companies and they would stand up proudly and speak to the same. Then we felt we were ready to scale. And so that brought us maybe to about 18 months ago where we took on our first capital from Ignition, which had been fantastic for us. Frank Artali. Frank Artali and John Connors and the rest. Cube alumni. Yeah, amazing. Praise the Cube alumni. Is that right? Yeah, he's been on multiple times. We love Frank. He's a friend of ours. He's great. And so we couldn't be happier with our partnership there and they've really supported this company, backed it, and made it what it is today in the sense that we took that backing and then built out the structures for scale and that's where we are now. So basically, and if I can summarize, you made a big bet. You made a big bet that web services and services in the arts, aka now APIs would be big. Yes. Now, if you look back a decade ago and even more than a decade ago, that was web services and that's now hitting. Yes. I mean, so that kind of went through this like, well, yeah, it wasn't really ready for prime time. The web services, but it's changed too with cloud. So you're in a good spot. So you essentially skated to where the puck, you went where the puck was coming. You were already there waiting for it. Oh, that's right, yeah. Okay, so take us now today. So you made a good bet. Both of the chops to do that. You got the multi now clients, now you're growing, you got the funding. How does this world that you're living now change? Because we had the CIO of EMC on earlier as consistent with other thought leaders, validated again that the operating system model of the data center really is what people should be thinking about. But the data center is now an operating system and operating systems have subsystems, layers of software.  So you agree with that? Absolutely. Okay, so that's cool. So we don't need to spend that. So with that, what is the mandate? I'm a CIO. Yeah. Okay, I say, okay, the future is obvious now. The fog has lifted. I got to get to a cloud like environment, have utilities and APIs, but still keep my on premise. What is the mandate for the CIO to move there? And what do they do? And how do you guys help them? It's a very good question because that actually is the question that we most often have to ask ourselves. Because ultimately you want CIO buy in. This is a really a moment in time that is, I don't think that we've seen since the late 90s. It's truly IT transformation. Nobody's business as usual. So the CIO has a set of common concerns right now of an enterprise. One is that the CFO has come to them and said you have to cut out anywhere from 150 million to a billion dollars of your annual spend. So you have to cut the run rate down to the extent that you can't just shave around the edges. There's an operating model ship that's necessary. The other thing is that the business now needs to compete with a different set of constituents. The business is no longer satisfied with the monopoly internally to supply them with what's necessary in order to do their job. So what happens is when the business gets a mandate from the CEO and the chief marketing officer, et cetera, to get into new markets, new emerging markets with new products faster, to compete with upstarts who don't have the same difficult quagmire of regulatory issues, et cetera, then what happens is if the IT organization can't respond fast enough and can't be a better partner, they go around them. And this phenomenon is known as shadow IT. Because the business units say, okay, in the past we would just be sluggish along with you. But now they're saying, we'll go to Amazon. We'll go to Salesforce. We'll go to Rackspace. We'll go around you and put in our credit card and we'll start doing our work because we have to get something done. But they're cobbling together, right? So what happens is that goes outside the operating system model. They're going, the shadow IT is, as we said, it's innovation opportunity. Yes. I mean, so yeah, it's rogue, but rogue sometimes is R&D and innovation. You justify it because it's more convenient and you have to get your job done. However, that brings us to where we are today. What the CIO wants is not that. CIO doesn't encourage shadow ITs. It's a regulated environment. Don't ask, don't tell policy. No, it has to be managed. It's governed. You have auditors, right? So what the CIO wants is to be able to offer the same level of convenience and agility that they can get externally, internally. Essentially, it's this. The CIO wants to transform the IT organization to become a cloud broker that can deliver IT as a service directly to the business. That's what every CIO is looking to do. And the way that you do that. And you've got to cut the middleman out. Well, you become the middleman, right? And as the middleman, you now have an ecosystem of service providers. And this is very interesting because now you say, okay, well, what does the CIO think about? Always thinks about pleasing the CEO and the COO and the CFO. Do they care about software-defined networking, software-defined storage? Only in so far as it supports applications, right? Because applications are where you make your money and it's where you spend your money. So what we like to show at ServiceMesh is that we can be that connective tissue, that glue. We are behind that software-defined data center vision and the practical application of that to what the enterprise actually needs to fulfill their IT transformation goals. So let's talk about the large companies out there because you mentioned them earlier that people might build a point solution and then it kind of breaks. And you also mentioned a comment that early on that you saved the company $150 million. Give an example of a use case. You don't have to name names, but where you've walked in and literally saved a company over $100 million. Okay, so I'll give two if I might. Is that accurate? You've done that? Yes, not me personally, but our team. Yeah, ServiceMesh. Yeah, you was the name. I wish I could do half of the things that our company heroes. Yeah, they don't let me touch anything these days. But what we've done at ServiceMesh is actually just that. We've been able to come into organizations that are looking to affect that model, to become an IT broker and give them the tools where they can do that, but still have the same manageability and auditability and security that they have now. So they can feel that comfort to shift to this model. So what we've done at one particular bank is we put in that model and we did a few things. The first was to look at existing applications and understand how you can migrate them onto more standardized platforms, right? Because a lot of the cost structures in the enterprise today come from all these insane Rube Goldberg machines that these applications live on top of. As you shift to a cloud model, you're also shifting to a model of more standardization, less variability. So you can have less people to run them, right? So that's where a lot of the cost comes is you can lower your FTE count around that particular function. So that's one thing. The next thing is how do you actually create those standardized platforms so that they can be automated from beginning to end? And what we mean by beginning to end is really no human intervention. The only place you want human intervention is where you want to go back later and maybe insert some for some reason that you say, okay, we want Joe to approve this or Sally to approve that. You don't want to be forced to any human intervention which means you have to replace every sticky point where there's a human today with a policy. So the central policy engine from service mesh allows you to, in essence, create those policies but manage them centrally, change them centrally, version them centrally, in essence scale. So you end up with this capability of having an end-to-end provisioning, okay? Once you do that, you now can provision complex topologies which are known as application platforms and put them in an app store. And that's an example of something that we've brought forward, that by reducing the manual steps and the number of people necessary and increasing the standardization, we've been able to save company significant capital in the range of what you've described. And economics is a great proof point too in terms of valuations. Especially if they're willing to stand up and verify those economics. Not a lot of people can say, have people stand up and saying, we've saved over a hundred million dollars. Well, let me ask you about speaking of large complex deployments. I mean, let's talk about VCE. We're going to have them on the cube here. So VCE is a flagship offering for around EMC, of EMWare, everyone knows this was involved. Big problem, a lot of reference ability, same kind of challenges. How do you guys play with VCE? And how do you compliment, say, VC? Because that's an environment that is not easy to turn key. So, or is it? We think it is easy to turn key. If just because it hasn't necessarily been a turn key to the extent that it will soon, it doesn't mean that it's not getting there. In fact, work with VCE at all? Yes, and we think it's a fantastic product. The VBlock is, it's on fire. I mean, it's a staple of the enterprise, or it's becoming that way, right? So we actually believe very strongly in that vision of converged infrastructure and the units of provision being a unit that you don't have to assemble various pieces and parts, right? So from the end user experience, what you really want is the ability to put a cloud in the box in the data center and instantly begin getting business value. And what you're describing is that there's still some friction between that arrival of a VBlock on site to when somebody can get business value. We think that we can add a lot of value to that. The automation side, management in general? Two things, one is obviously on the automation side, which is core to what we do, but even more importantly, to bridge that gap from a policy and governance directly into the software delivery lifecycle. Because why does someone want a VBlock? One is complexity reduction, right? You could assemble it yourself otherwise. And the other is business value. So the complexity reduction piece, we can add because you can install service mesh in a matter of hours as opposed to weeks that a lot of competing capabilities cause. The next thing is, well, now that you've got it in an hour, is what are you going to do with it? The idea is that you want to deliver IT as a service, which is the ability to spin up application platforms, not VMs, but true platforms that you can start writing code on and deliver that directly to the end user. Now you can't do that without the right policies. You can't do that without a notion of application lifecycle, because what are they doing? They're building applications in a lifecycle. We've spent five years doing that, and I think that's our value that we can bring to VCE. We're getting the hook here, so I'll give you the final word, talk to the camera and tell them what's next with service mesh, what's your year looked like, what's your goals? So our goal now is, it's a very exciting year for us. So our goal really is scale. We put the structures in for scale, we're beefing up on the support side. Our channel partnerships are becoming increasingly important. I think what you'll hear from us is a number of SIs and service providers, MSPs, and even ISVs that will be OAMing and reselling our product. So we're excited, we think this is the year where we'll become better known. Service mesh, up and coming, hot startup, scaling, and not startup anymore, they're growing like crazy, self-funded, great entrepreneurial story, congratulations Eric for the year. Chairman and co-founder and CEO of Service Mesh, company to watch here at EMC World. We'll be right back with our next guest after this short break.


We've had some good news on the vaccine and medical science looks like it could ultimately save us from this pandemic That's a good thing because our political class certainly can't from late lockdowns to fudge testing stats Our government's response to COVID has been an outright failure But for some it's work worked out just fine But who you ask of course their friends their friends have done pretty good Out of the last six catastrophic months when it comes to government policy So there was a great investigation in the Sunday times this weekend which found the government had awarded 1.5 billion pounds of taxpayer money to companies linked to the conservative party during the coronavirus pandemic Of these firms none were prominent government suppliers before this year So 1.5 billion pounds to their mates and their mates who worked in industries Which aren't really related to what they were being contracted to do looks quite suspicious to begin with and when we go Into the details it remains very suspicious only more suspicious So I'm not expecting procurement processes between government and private firms to be you know something that you have that much familiarity with to be honest before this pandemic Never did I but a couple of Fundamentals which are important to remember as we go through this story Which is that when a contract is given to a private provider There are sort of two fundamental conditions that are normally met and from the government So one is they must be advertised and so you know The the process by which that contract is going to be given out has to be transparent And you have to have an opportunity to apply for it if you don't happen to be friends with someone in the government And there is also a legal requirement of the government to publish details of awarded contracts within 30 days Now during the pandemic neither of these things has happened. This is all background We're going to tell you the specifics in a moment Ministers have used emergency procedures to award work directly And again many of these went to their mates So the Sunday Times and which is the article we're using for much of this section worth reading And they try to be sympathetic to the government on breaking the rules I've just explained to you so they write this is a world in which ministers have turned to friends with links to the Conservatives because of a mixture of trust convenience and a panicked need to deliver rather than a desire to benefit themselves financially the end result However is arguably similar friends of the Conservatives have played a central role in responding to the pandemic securing high profile positions and Contracts along the way this pattern of conduct became visible in May We've written in lockdown when Boris Johnson and the health secretary Matt Hancock turned to trusted contacts to run parts of the pandemic response This was all done in a panic It was done in a difficult situation You can see why you wouldn't go through the proper normal channels when you've got doctors and nurses You know saying look we can't do our jobs because we don't have proper PPE You can imagine you don't say oh what you've got for 30 days to apply to become a provider of PPE You can see why they just say you know we need to sign this contract with you this evening so that we can get it as soon as possible That will make sense The problem is when you go into the details of what's Happening it has very little to do it seems with people just you know working through a difficult situation in the best possible way Often you know people are just behaving in a fairly appalling fashion and we're going to introduce you to some of the worst cases now So I'm hoping we can get up George Pascoe Watson So he's one of the big characters in all of this and so he is chairman of Portland communications Which is a lobbying firm that represents pharmaceutical companies such as Pfizer and weapons manufacturers and banks such as Barclays and HSBC And it also has a number of Tory advisors on its board He was also the former political editor of the Sun News, but you can get an impression of the politics of this guy Now during the pandemic Pascoe Watson was appointed by the Department of Health and Social Care as an advisor though This wasn't announced now You say there's no excuse for that not to be announced being in a rush or being in a high stress situation doesn't mean you shouldn't tell You know Tell public authorities who you've employed anyway Let's go to what's written up about this guy's role Pascoe Watson participated in daily strategic discussions chaired by Lord Bethel a hereditary peer and former Lobbyist who serves as test and trace minister for six months Bethel 53 was a surprise appointment in March having chaired Matt Hancock's leadership campaign in 2019 and giving a £5,000 donation Hancock the health secretary and Baroness Harding the head of test and trace are Understood to have joined calls including Pascoe Watson and senior officials about how to communicate announcements and policy So you've got this guy who is a former political editor at the Sun and works at a PR Agency where lots of Tory sit on the board and now with no announcement There's no public Admission of this he's sitting in on on phone calls with some of the most important people In the the government response to this pandemic Lord Bethel who serves as the test and trace minister and then Dido Harding and Matt Hancock who I'm sure you you know about It gets worse because not only is this person In government meetings and it's a secret kind of suspicious but this guy who is A boss basically at Portland communications was releasing Private information he was getting in these meetings to people to clients of Portland communications So he works for a communications company where you're a you're a corporate client You go to him to sort out your communications He's emailing you inside information About government policy when it comes to coronavirus before the public or media know about it now some examples You like me probably only found out about the current lockdown late on the night of the 30th of October when it leaked to the press Or in Johnson's press conference on the 31st of October. Remember it was Halloween and that was when we found out We couldn't leave the house for a month But if you were a client of Portland communications, you would have found out two days earlier So this is incredibly important public information, which is going to people who pay An advertising agency essentially a communications agency to get that information It's going out to them before it goes out to the public before it goes out to people in the NHS They also got some information. We still haven't been told So there is an email which was about tier two restrictions in London This was on the 15th of October and the official position is that it would be reviewed Fought nightly so when Matt Hancock announced this restriction system He said we'll be reviewing every two weeks whether or not London in this case should stay in tier two This guy Pasco Watson emails his clients and says the decision makers have told me personally that spring is likely to be the first opportunity to lift the restrictions So we've got here someone who is accessing those meetings. It's not publicly advertised that they're accessing those meetings They are someone who sort of moves in Tory circles And now they're using the information from those meetings to tell their private clients stuff that we don't know as members of the public Stuff that you know leaders in the NHS don't know But you can find out if you are a client of one of you know, someone who moves in Tory circles all It's nasty We're gonna go through some more figures in the democracy and I'm gonna go to you Ashford for your comments on all of this But these are some of the big names. So we're gonna go to Dido Harding She is a former telecoms boss and wife of a conservative MP She was appointed to run test and trace and which was announced in a tweet by health secretary Matt Hancock She was also given a peerage by Cameron She also goes horse-riding with Matt Hancock. So married to an MP friends of Matt Hancock She's not really from a public health background and she gets appointed without any sort of advertising process to lead test and trace Around the same time that she's appointed Kate Bingham is appointed to another leading job She's appointed to run the vaccine task force incredibly important job. Just like I'm leading NHS test and trace now Just like Dido Harding. She's also married to a Tory MP Not only that she is a family friend of Boris Johnson and Boris Johnson when he decided She should have the job. He gave her a personal call asking her to come on board So again, this wasn't advertised. He was just like, I'll get my I'll get my friend Kate Bingham to do it He calls her ask her to do it. Her response is funny So this is from the Sunday Times according to a speech that Bingham 55 gave to a group of US venture capitalists another theme there She responded to Johnson's offer by saying I'm not a vaccine expert. Why should I be the right person? She obviously got the job. I say it's relevant that she was speaking to US venture capitalists there because just like Pasco Watson She has also been pretty goddamn irresponsible with the position of authority. She has found herself in so she has also been given out Sensitive information to people who have paid for the privilege So in her case, she shared information to investors about the vaccines the government were interested in incredibly important Information if you're an investor which companies are the government interested in investing in she gave out all of this Information to people who'd paid 200 pound ahead or 200 dollars ahead and to take part in a particular conference so you've got more people profiting from You know public information from the public vaccine response. We've got two more to go through Lord Feldman So he is a former chairman of the Conservative Party He runs a lobbying firm used to play tennis With David Cameron and he was quietly appointed as an unpaid advisor again lots of people that are unpaid advisor Which I think is part of the morrow. I think they think well, I'm not paid for it I might as well make a profit from it on the side He was appointed as an unpaid advisor to Lord Beffle and that was never formally announced and now we need to introduce you to Lord Beffle who's Lord Beffle and so he is a hereditary peer and nightclub Baron turned health minister I'm as we've already mentioned he gave money and chaired the health secretary Matt Hancock's 2019 Tory leadership campaign So it was a prize when he got appointed by Matt Hancock because he didn't have much Experience to take on the role of minister for test and trace But the connection he did have to Matt Hancock is that he'd given five grand to his leadership campaign I find it astonishing how cheap it is to buy influence with these people Not that I've got a spare five grand, but you know what I mean to be at the top of government. It seems surprising That's all it takes Lord Felman is an ex Tory chair He was appointed to assist this guy a Tory peer and donor to Matt Hancock to work with industry during the pandemic And we got one more because Feldman sat in on a phone conversation between Beffle and Tory donor David Mellor And this is the real icing on the cake. So you've got a Meeting between Feldman Beffle and David Mellor You've got Tory ex Tory chairman Tory donor and now this guy who's again a Tory donor and his firm Mellor design A design firm has been awarded 163 million pounds of PPE contracts And the connection here is that most of those donations from Mellor came when Feldman was party chair Party chair is responsible for fundraising. So you've got this this connection of people who are all very You know intertwined with the history of the Conservative Party Lots of them donors to the Conservative Party and suddenly you've got all of them in these zoom calls responsible for spending Millions and billions of pounds Giving out sort of privileged sensitive information left right and centre to their clients and the whole thing just just stinks the thing worth Focusing on is the fact that 1.5 billion pounds has been spent by by the government to people They have personal connections with who don't have any experience providing the things they've been paid to provide In any other country you'd call this corruption And I think that's just the first thing we need to say any other country you would call this corruption And yet the media in this country is so It's like a beaten dog, which is internalised the violent logic of its owner It's so scared of losing access that they're refusing to call things for what they are So you get these stories which end up being nowhere near as big as they ought to be This is the kind of thing which should you know lead to resignations sacking an inquiry and you know the Hounding as some of these key figures out of public life But the media consistently You know pulls its punches with regards to these kinds of stories There's a sense of well, there must have just been kind of mistake I don't think she could have meant to pay herself these outrageous sums of money Or I don't think he could have meant to have you know given a contract worth millions to his old, you know drinking buddy Um, and I think that that's a problem I think that that's one of the reasons why these stories don't have the kind of cut through That they ought to and you know the story of corruption and sleaze. It's an old one. Um, but I think that we've got A media climate which is least equipped to handle it the other thing To note is that Relatively early on in the pandemic, you know, I'm talking about late april and may stories were emerging Of billions of pounds worth of state contracts being given out without a proper tender process And so what that means is that normally when you have a state contract being put out There's got to be some element of competition So companies put in different kinds Uh of bids saying how much they'll do for how much money in the state supposedly is able to get the best deal through that coronavirus became A pretext and an opportunity to just let the piggies directly At the trough, right? So you've got this huge transfer of wealth from public to private hands Which has also resulted in the parcelization of our healthcare infrastructure most notably with test and trace You've got incredible sums of money being Handed out to companies which have absolutely no expertise or Background in providing healthcare support and manufacturing PPE or whatever it is. Do you remember how much we all laughed with? When chris grayling handed out A contract to a company which didn't actually have any fairies 14 million pound contract. Do you remember how ridiculous that sounded? Now it's billions of pounds everywhere for people who have nothing to do with the thing they've been paid to produce And I think that the problem is is that unless there's a real reckoning and I've got an idea of how that reckoning should go Um or lay it out. Is that your free point plan? How does the reckoning go? Basically, I think that this should be a moment like phone hacking Right in a way that it led to leveson phone hacking was that this kind of you know In some way it was what paul mason always dreamed of was a sort of strategic alliance between the left and the center And it did have some consequences If not all the kinds of consequences that we wanted and I think that anti-corruption It could actually be a really strong place For the left and for liberals to find some shared terrain shared campaigning objectives The reason why I don't hold my breath that that's going to happen is that right now the center is still too convinced with You know sealing Corbinism in a tomb and then burying that tomb at the bottom of the deepest trench of the atlantic ocean And I think with that set of priorities You're not going to necessarily see the kind of work being done Around these issues that that you need because the media is not going to do it They're not going to do it And so I think that means that you are going to have to have some kind of grassroots campaigning effort Um towards making it a big story and I just don't think Uh, I don't think anyone's in the place to make that happen. Unfortunately I mean, we should say I mean, I totally agree that I mean if you look at the broadcast media commentary on this I don't think Matt Hancock got asked any questions about this at the daily briefing Um, but I mean, obviously we're taking this story Or we're we're getting a lot of the detail from this story from the sunday times who I mean politically aren't aligned with us But one thing they do have is quite well funded journalists, which means they can put some time into investigations Especially the sunday times. I think that the normal times doesn't bother quite so much Which leads me to saying That if you want us to do the same kind of investigations that these big multi billion companies can do And that's precisely why we really want you to go to support dot of our media dot com donate the equivalent of one hour's wage a month So we can start doing these investigations as well


Alright, Cyber Traders, welcome on back here this Wednesday, May 18th, not March 18th, but May 18th. Great to see Norman Grant, Bill, Michael, and all of us live inside Cyber Group. And for all of us joining us once again on social media, Facebook Live, or YouTube, welcome on back as well. My oh my folks, what happened? What had happened today? Geez, spy is down over 3% and counting. Obviously, still at the lows, albeit it looks like maybe a little short beginning to come in. But geez, all the movement up that we had heading into the close yesterday, that obviously went all the way today and much, much more. We ended up hearing from Janet Yellen early in the morning. I think that really ended up shocking the market a bit. I think just overall week retail earnings just from this week yesterday and today. There's some COVID news that came out or some headlines that came out on top. It's like everything that could happen is happening here folks and we're seeing a big drop off as a consequence as a result. So for right now, I mean, at least for what's on the screen, Target, TGT, albeit expensive, this was a really good short from today. I mean, it took a little while for it to continue to pull back down. For as much as it dropped off, you would expect a potential dead cap bounce at first, perhaps after the market opens up. But from there, it didn't even bounce up too much. It was just like a long consolidation period. No, it just ended up failing to break higher, failing to break higher, and then ended up snapping down. And that's what led to a good short trade again with this stock. So for right now, TGT it seemingly is on the way towards like, I'll say 150. I mean, I was going to say like 155 when it was at 160. So here we are now and why not? I think that it can go another five points lower here. So TGT, Target, I'll just put on the watch list to begin. I would assume we're going to find a lot more on the loser side today, folks. But I got to do my due diligence and just go right from the top of the gainer's list first. The DPSI stock, what the hell happened here? I mean, for as much as the market dropped off, not everything goes with it. We know that. That's been the theme over the last real week or so with us here. But DPSI, this thing was so flat and ugly in pre-market. I was really reluctant to put this on the pre-market watch list just to begin. And with that, it wasn't really doing anything for us going into the open. So with that, it ended up popping up pretty quickly. It got halted up. It got halted down. And normally when a stock gets halted down, that's normally game over. That's a wrap. So listen, we ended up missing the vast majority of this move, if anything. I didn't touch this thing. Ended up bottoming out around 680-ish, 675, perhaps that even is. And then ended up slingshotting back over 7. It made a really nice push, really nice squeeze. But we know this will come right back down. It ended up popping and dropping back in the beginning of May. So right now, it's still pretty much up on the date, but the order book is so thin right now. I'm not really too impressed with it here for the afternoon. If it ends up making another big spike during this meeting, then maybe I'll slip it on the list here at the end. But still, I'm not as likely to touch this thing just given how thin the book is, how big the spread is, and how much you can fluctuate at that. All right. So let's see what else we got here. We got a cheapy AFI.  Obviously, contrary to DPSI, this thing really liquid. So I like that. I'm not as particular to the stocks below a dollar though, right? We ended up doing really well earlier on one of them. I think it was the genius trade going into the market open. You know, I'll come back to this if I need to. You know, the AFI trade, just put it on the side list. Looks like a new IPO here, BGXX, similar order book to the DPSI and a lot more expensive. So PIK, a little push from earlier this morning, but fell flat. So we skip over that here. UVIX, I believe, is an ETF similar to UVXY. So mark it down as much as it is. Obviously, UVXY, SQQQQ, all of the VIX or inverse or bearish ETFs are on the gainer side here, SOXS here, LabD, all of those. So I'll just basically tag UVXY on the list here itself. I know students like Mark and Johannes. I don't want to leave anyone out there, but I know those two in particular were killing it on UVXY earlier today. Maybe John was perhaps, if I'm not mistaken, maybe Robert. You know, just I know a few of us ended up jumping in and out on this trade for UVXY. And with that, it's at the high. So, you know, the market's at the lows. This should be at the highs. We'll put more of a focus at least on this one. All right, let's see what else we got. SOXS and SQQQ, all the inverse ETFs like I had referenced, here's Genius GNUS from earlier pre-market ended up popping up pretty nicely. It was a great pre-market trade, but then ended up, you know, hey, diving off after the open, expectedly so. We were hopeful to see support around 83 cents, you know, maybe 85 cents there. And it held for a bit, but it didn't give us the push that we wanted, right? So, you know, if it's not going to make that big move up, guess what? It's going to make a big move. I guarantee it. Just the complete other way. So, with that, we ended up seeing it just continue to dump off and, you know, fill the gap down on the daily chart there. All right, let's see what else we got. Like I had said before, folks, markets are tanking, not expecting to find much of anything on the gainer side, but, you know, I got to do my due diligence, got to cross my T's, dot my I's. The OST one, I remember this was down like 90% one day, like new IPO or so, but yeah, not really doing a whole lot now. And then lastly, BBIG, right? BBIG was a really good runner for us early this morning, went against the grain at first, running up from nearly, you know, 295-3 level, and then, you know, pushed up towards 340.  All right, so good sideless stock. Keep this in mind for, you know, tomorrow and for Friday, at least end of the week, definitely, you know, a very tradable liquid stock, but I just don't expect this to break higher by the close. And hey, if it keeps pushing by the end of this meeting, then I'll flip my script, then we'll, you know, look to follow it a lot further if it could prove itself a little bit more from this point. But let's see what we have on the loser's side first. So, target number three on the loser's side. That's shortable. Endos number two. Wow. Endo Pharmaceuticals, a 61-cent stock now. It was a 36-cent stock earlier today. Oh my goodness.  I mean, really almost as long as I've been employed with Fausto. I mean, probably since like 2017 time, when it started to fall, you know, around 10 bucks, six bucks or so.   Jeez. All right. Well, we're not going to short it. We're not going to dead cap balance it, but just wanted to take a quick look at TGT. And then, of course, for anyone with Traders Dyslexia, we'll suffer. We got TGI right below it. And this thing actually looks decent as far as a chart. So, you know, chart looks pretty good. Nice trend down, breaking support from around 17. You know, probably doesn't have the most liquid of books and probably didn't, I should say, from earlier. It doesn't right now.   I was at 218. So, pretty much right here, around 1630-ish, 1632-ish. Someone smashed up to try and cover short, it seems. Then from there, ended up continuing to pull back. So, you know, for right now, obviously, I'd look to follow the trend and respect the trends here on this TGI. I wish it was a little bit more filled in here on the book, but you know what? I don't mind putting this on our list. I'll separate it from TGT, the TGT, TGI. All right. So, there's definitely a lot on this loser's side here, folks. You've got BJs down over 17%. I'd be remiss to not at least click on that for perhaps Fausto, who may or may not be tuning in right now, right? And this thing is dropping off pretty nicely. This is actually one that I know. Like, this is one of his favorite stocks. Like, as far as a swing, he's done really well on the sum of swing sides. That's right, jokingly say that, of course. But either way, definitely looks great as a day trade, a little bit more expensive, but nonetheless, for a $52 stock, I'd say this is relatively liquid. Compare this to TGI. I mean, it's pretty similar. So, for $52, that's pretty good. All right. What else we got here? We got Woof. That's Pekko? Really? I didn't realize Pekko is Woof. That's interesting. All right. Well, Pekko Health and Wellness Center, obviously, taking a hit here today could be often for earnings. That would be my guess, but this one looking like the best one in terms of the liquidity on the order book. It's just at the lows. It's already trading a lot of volume per minute right now. So, you know what? Woof, we got it. We'll put this on the top of our list here for right now. Definitely the best looking short here so far. Dick's Sporting Goods. Dick's is like $77. He has a lot more than that, but this one dropping off too. So, obviously, like we said before, retail taking a huge hit. Department stores taking a huge hit. Let's see. Anything else to round up the loser's side here? I'm sure there's got to be plenty more. I mean, number 48 is down over 13.5%. So, I'm going to need a little help, folks. Let's work together here as a team. If there's anything else up down or anything down, certainly more than 10% at least, type it in the chat board. Let me know if the GLPE trade. I'll just keep it on the side list. I reckon it's been a nice trade from the last couple of days, a gap down, then squeezed all the way back up, and then dropped back down today. It is shortable. John out on the UVXY trade is $1680. Nice catch from him. Steve asking about Rivian. Let's take a look. It's not really going anywhere right now, Steve. You know, it's a good side list stock. It's been really nice to us over the last few days on the way down, on the way up, both directions. But for right now, we'll pass on this. You could probably say the same on a lot of different trades, and that's okay. It's worth at least checking out. Right now, Lulu Lemon from John also, a little bit more expensive for our liking, but dropping off really nicely as well. If I'm going to put one expensive stock on our watch list here for the close, I think it'll be Target, but for right now, TGT. I mean, how could you not respect the trend down here? If you're going to buy puts on it, that's one thing, but otherwise, I'm not as interested in trading the equity as much. Neo here, I'm probably going to need to clear my chart, so just bear with me for a quick second there. That's from yesterday's trading, actually, not from today. That's not really relevant. Trace levels. But Neo, a lot of chop going on there. Not really too much happening on the Neo trade right now, so we'll pass on that. You could say the same on AMC. American Airlines was dropping off all throughout the afternoon. It slowed down a little bit here. I could put this on our list. It's down over 5% in one of the airlines. John saying, beyond meat, down from $150. Yeah, right. She's down from $150 down to $25. Actually, I appreciate the shout on beyond meat. I'm not going to put this on the watch list here for the afternoon, but I didn't realize beyond meat is like $25 now. Damn. All right, so this is definitely going to be on my personal side list going forward. Let me write this down. It's going to be a nice prep. I don't know if I'll trade this tomorrow, but I didn't write this down today. I could have. There we go. Nice to have. Nice to have in the back pocket. You never know. Never know when, John. I appreciate that. Let's take a look. What else do we have here, folks? You got maybe a gaming stock, casino stock, like MGM, down over 8% right now. That was dropping off really nicely across the late morning, early afternoon. Seems still very tradable. Penn, Penn National Gaming, similar move down, maybe not as steady. Maybe hasn't dropped off as much percentage-wise. MGM definitely took a bit of a hit. Win down over 5.5% right now, a little more expensive, but just wanted to check out another casino stock. RJF checking out the Veru trade for us. Yeah, Veru Veru. Nice speech impediment. Ended up making such a big move for us yesterday. Ended up dropping right back down. At that, it ended up holding resistance or past resistance at $14.50 as support, but ended up breaking down from that point. It's getting a small push right now out of all the sideless stocks that we've talked about so far. I'd be most interested in the MGM and the Veru trade right here. I don't mind at least adding Veru to our list. We're at least really familiar with it. It's not making an impressive move. That's definitely not the case. I'm not expecting this to run back up to $16 or $15.50. God bless if it does that, but if we're right now at least, should the markets make some sort of squeeze back up, maybe this can make the push, but that's the only reason why I would put this on our watch list here. Jim's calling out OPEN. It's down near 10% at the lowest of the day today. In terms of a nice level one, maybe level two short in terms of volatility, this would be a great stock to watch. Let's see what else we got. OPEN, I definitely could put on our list. Mike calling out the CCL trade near the low of the day that down over 7%. I'll tell you what, we're going to do a little bit of everything here. We're going to do CCL. We're going to do MGM, that VIRU trade I already put on the list, and OPEN. That's a good deal right there. In total, we got 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 different stocks and then obviously UVXY for all of us that are following UVXY heading into the close, or maybe like an SQQQ. I'll kind of feature UVXY for you folks there. All right, for all of us on Facebook Live and YouTube, once more, I appreciate you folks joining me each and every day, each and every afternoon. I always like to post my email here at the end of these streams. In case if you have any other questions or traits that you'd like to go over with me here, send it on over to Josh at ctutrading.com. If you wanted to join us live inside our trading room, feel more than free to do so. You can go right down to the link on the yellow banner below right there on the stream to get yourself started. But for Michael, for Jim, for John, for Norman, for Steve, who I'll keep talking to in just a little bit actually, I look forward to talking to most of us otherwise coming up at 3.30 here to wrap things up for the market close. Talk to you all then.


If that thing would have had Cash Money on it, boy, hey, that would have been a whole another level.  And they did a lot of stuff for Atlanta Audis, but man, come on, man, like Cash Money. We on Boss Talk 101, here we go on Talk. So I had to ask you, because recently, BT Awards came up. And we were watching it, and I remember his reaction when he was watching it. He was wanting more. He was wanting more Southern representation, till when he saw Master P come on. But I see BT, I got excited. No, I promise you, he got so excited. And then when Master P came back on and made his speech and he mentioned Cash Money, I was like, you were like, you know, but why do you think Cash Money wasn't there alongside them there at the show? I talked to Baby all the time. Matter of fact, I talked to him four times yesterday. I think it's because I don't know what happened with Cash Money and BT. I don't know if something happened or Baby, they just probably was busy. They probably, I don't know, I really can't see that part, because I don't know. So you don't know if they reached out? Did you really reach out? Yeah, I don't know if they really reached out to him, because I didn't ask Baby that or whatever and stuff. I heard a Turk see on the show that he didn't reach out to them before in the past, but I don't know if they reached out to Baby and talked to him. I didn't ask him about that. Especially with Tyler Perry Bean from New Orleans, you would think that he would abroad more. And I'm going to give him a pass. You gotta give him a pass. I'm going to give him a pass. I'm the reason why I'm giving Tyler Perry a pass. Because he just got it. But they said some people told me he didn't really close the deal. He really got it. That's what I heard. Now I could be wrong. Somebody was saying they don't know if the deal already closed. But I know Booster did sit on the red carpet. Man, I'm in here. Tyler Perry, I'm in. You here, so you got those three tickets? I got them tickets. You got now. Tyler Perry on BT now. So you got those tickets? I'm in the bid. How the fuck's going on? But I'm going to say this. If that thing would have had cash money on it, boy, hey, that would have been a whole another level.  And they did a lot of stuff for Atlanta artists, but man, come on, man, like cash money. The most influential record label of all time in hip hop. Like all them errors. Drake, Wayne, Nicky, the high boys, baby is a personality. Manifest the beats. Drake and them Wayne. I think it's coming. I said to say that I gave Tyler Perry a pass because for the main fact, he just now got it. All of this stuff. You got to think about companies, period. He's planned this stuff months in advance, maybe even a year in advance, and he's gotten this mid month, mid a year. You know what I mean? So I doubt he had that much influence. He had probably some pull, but not a lot. I look forward to seeing next year and see what he does with it. I definitely know, like I said, cash money, you know, people definitely was like wondering like how they not on it because like I said, that label has such a long run and did so much for the culture. So like I said, I was glad to see Peter and I was glad to see that piece of show love to baby and give me flowers and stuff. But I got to say, man, you know, it didn't surprise me because I know I've been there really, really, you know how I feel about them. You know, I really didn't like the way he was doing things. And I kind of turned my back on him. He did. Years ago. And but, you know, the Tyler Perry thing, it kind of made me look back at it. But I really I wasn't surprised. Right. That Beyonce didn't show up. That that, my boy, you know, that that man, though. Yeah, yeah, but they should have gave. I'm going to be honest with you. You you cannot. You can't nitpick the south when they come down to the south. When you look at not only you got you got outcast, right? UGK, good and mob, you know, all the different. Come on, man, six, three, six. You got you got eight ball. MJG, you got three, six mafia. There was a litany of people that wasn't there. Right. The cash money by far, you know, reinvented themselves over and over again. But each era, they had something that they fulfilled a need for our people. Definitely. So in the south, ain't nothing else.


17. Cheyenne, Wyoming December 12. The last evening came. I did not wish to realize it, as I looked at the snowy peaks glistening in the moonlight. No woman will be seen in the park till next May. Young Lyman talked in a highfalutin style, but with some truth in it, of the influence of a woman's presence, how low, mean, vulgar talk had died out on my return, how they had all pulled themselves up, and how Mr. Cavern and Mr. Buchan had said they would like always to be as quiet and gentlemanly, as when a lady was with them. By May, he said, we shall be little better than brutes in our manners, at least. I have seen a great deal of the roughest class of men, both on sea and land, during the last two years, and the more important, I think, the mission of every quiet, refined, self-respecting woman, the more mistaken I think those who would forfeit it, by noisy self-assertion, masculinity, or fastness. In all this wild west the influence of woman is second only in its benefits to the influence of religion, and where the last unhappily does not exist, the first continually exerts its restraining power. The last morning came, I cleaned up my room, and sat at the window watching the red and gold of one of the most glorious of winter sunrises, and the slow lighting up of one peak after another. I have written that this scenery is not lovable, but I love it. I left on birdie at eleven o'clock, Evans writing with me as far as Mr. Nugent's. He was telling me so many things, that at the top of the hill I forgot to turn round and take a last look at my colossal, resplendent, lonely, sunlit den. But it was needless, for I carry it away with me. I should not have been able to leave if Mr. Nugent had not offered his services. His chivalry to women is so well known, that Evans said I could be safer and better cared for with no one. He added, his heart is good and kind, as kind of heart is ever beat. He's a great enemy of his own, but he's been living pretty quietly for the last four years. At the door of his den I took leave of birdie, who had been my faithful companion for more than seven hundred miles of travelling, and of Evans, who had been uniformly kind to me and just in all his dealings, even to paying to me at that moment the very last dollar he owed me. May God bless him and his. He was obliged to return before I could get off, and as he commended me to Mr. Nugent's care, the two men shook hands kindly. Some months later Mountain Jim fell by Evans's hand, shot from Evans's doorstep, while riding past his cabin. The story of the previous weeks is dark, sad and evil. Of the five differing versions which have been written to me, of the act itself and its immediate causes, it is best to give none. The tragedy is too painful to dwell upon. Jim lived long enough to give his own statement, and to appeal to the judgment of God, but died in low delirium before the case reached a human tribunal. End of footnote. Rich spoils of beaver skins were lying on the cabin floor, and the trapper took the finest, a mouse-coloured kitten beaver skin, and presented it to me. I hired his beautiful Arab mare, whose springy step and long easy stride was a relief after Bertie's short sturdy gate. We had a very pleasant ride, and I seldom had to walk. We took neither of the trails, but cut right through the forest to a place where, through an opening in the foothills, the plains stretched to the horizon covered with snow, the surface of which, having melted and frozen, reflected as water would the pure blue of the sky, presenting a complete optical illusion. It required my knowledge of fact to assure me that I was not looking at the ocean. Jim shortened the way by repeating a great deal of poetry, and by earnest, reasonable conversation, so that I was quite surprised when it grew dark. He told me that he never lay down to sleep without prayer, prayer chiefly, that God would give him a happy death. He had previously promised that he would not hurry or scold, but fiking had not been included in the arrangement, and when in the early darkness we reached the steep hill, at whose foot the rapid, deep, St. Frayne flows he fiked unreasonably about me, the mare and the crossing generally, and seemed to think I could not get through, for the ice had been cut with an axe, and we could not see whether the blaze had formed since or not. I was to have slept at the house of a woman farther down the canyon, who never ceases talking. But Miller, the young man whose attractive house and admirable habits I have mentioned before, came out and said his house was now fixed for ladies. So we stayed there, and I was made as comfortable as could be. His house is a model.  It was amusing to hear the two men talk like two women about various ways of making bread and biscuits, one even writing out a recipe for the other. It was almost grievous that a solitary man should have the power of making a house so comfortable. They heated a stone for my feet, warmed a blanket for me to sleep in, and put logs enough on the fire to burn all night, for the mercury was eleven below zero. The stars were intensely bright, and a well-defined or rural arch, throwing off fantastic coruscations, lighted the whole northern sky. Yet I was only in the foothills, and Long's glorious peak was not to be seen. Miller had all his things washed up and his pots and pans cleaned in ten minutes after supper, and then had the whole evening in which to smoke and enjoy himself. A poor woman would probably have been fussing around till ten o'clock about the same work. Besides Ring, there was another gigantic dog craving for notice, and two large cats, which the whole evening were on their master's knee. Cold as the night was, the house was chinked, and the rooms felt quite warm. I even missed the free currents of air which I had been used to. This was my last evening in what may be called a mountainous region. The next morning, as soon as the sun was well risen, we left for our journey of thirty miles, which had to be done nearly at a foot's pace, owing to one horse being encumbered with my luggage. I did not wish to realize that it was my last ride, and my last association with any of the men of the land whom I had learned to trust, and in some respects to admire. No more hunter's tales told, while the pine-knots crack and blaze. No more thrilling narratives of adventures with Indians and bears. And never again shall I hear that strange talk of nature and her doings, which is the speech of those who live with her and her alone. Already the dismaleness of a level land comes over me. The canyon of the St. Frayne was in all its glory of color, but we had a remarkably ugly crossing of that brilliant river, which was frozen all over, except an unpleasant gap of about two feet in the middle. Mr. Nugent had to drive the frightened horses through, while I, having crossed on some logs lower down, had to catch them on the other side as they plunged to shore trembling with fear. Then we emerged on the vast expanse of the glittering plains, and a sudden sweep of wind made the cold so intolerable that I had to go into a house to get warm. This was the last house we saw, till we reached our destination that night. I never saw the mountain range look so beautiful, uplifted in every shade of transparent blue, till the sublimity of Longs Peak and the lofty crest of Storms Peak bore only unsullied snow against the sky. Peaks gleamed in living light, canyons lay in depths of purple shade. One hundred miles away, Pike's Peak grows a lump of blue, and overall, through that glorious afternoon, a veil of blue spiritualized without dimming the outlines of that most glorious range, making it look like the dream-dove mountains of the land which is very far off. Till that sunset it stood out sharp in glories of violet and opal, and the whole horizon up to a great height was suffused with the deep rose and pure orange of the afterglow. It seemed all dream-like as we passed through the sunlit solitude. On the right the prairie waves lessening towards the far horizon. While on the left they broke in great snowy surges against the rocky mountains. All that day we neither saw man, beast, nor bird. Jim was silent mostly. Like all true children of the mountains he pined even when temporarily absent from them. At sunset we reached a cluster of houses called Namakwa, where to my dismay I heard that there was to be a dance at the one little end to which we were going, at St. Louis. I pictured to myself no privacy, no peace, no sleep, drinking, low sounds, and worse than all, Jim getting into a quarrel and using his pistols. He was uncomfortable about it for another reason. He said he had dreamt the night before that there was to be a dance and that he had to shoot a man for making an unpleasant remark. For the last three miles which we accomplished after sunset the cold was most severe, but nothing could exceed the beauty of the afterglow and the strange look of the rolling plains of snow beneath it. When we got to the queer little place where they keep strangers at St. Louis they were very civil and said that after supper we could have the kitchen to ourselves. I found a large prononce, competent, bustling widow, hugely stout, able to manage all men and everything else, and a very floored sister like herself, top heavy with hair. There were besides two naughty children in the kitchen who cried incessantly and kept opening and shutting the door. There was no place to sit down but a wooden chair by the side of the kitchen stove at which supper was being cooked for ten men. The bustle and clatter were indescribable and the landlady asked innumerable questions and seemed to fill the whole room. The only expedient for me for the night was to sleep on a shakedown in a very small room occupied by the two women and the children, and even this was not available till midnight when the dance terminated, and there was no place in which to wash except a bowl in the kitchen. I sat by the stove till supper, wearying of the noise and bustle, after the quiet of Estes Park. The landlady asked, with great eagerness, who the gentleman was who was with me, and said that the men outside were saying that they were sure that it was Rocky Mountain Jim, but she was sure it was not. When I told her that the men were right, she exclaimed, Do tell! I want to know that quiet kind gentleman. And she said she used to frighten her children when they were naughty by telling them that he would get them, for he came down from the mountains every week and took back a child with him to eat.  All the men in the settlement assembled in the front room, hoping he would go and smoke there. And when he remained in the kitchen, they came round the window and into the doorway to look at him. The children got on his knee, and to my great relief he kept them good and quiet, and let them play with his curls to the great delight of the two women who never took their eyes off him. At last the bad-smelling supper was served, and ten silent men came in and gobbled it up, staring steadily at Jim as they gobbled. Afterwards there seemed no hope of quiet, so we went to the post office, and while waiting for stamps were shown into the prettiest and most ladylike-looking room I have seen in the West, created by a pretty and refined-looking woman. She made an opportunity for asking me if it were true that the gentleman with me was Mountain Jim, and added that so very gentlemanly a person could be guilty of the misdeeds attributed to him. When we returned the kitchen was much quieter. It was cleared by eight as the landlady promised. We had it to ourselves till twelve, and could scarcely hear the music. It was a most respectable dance, a fortnightly gathering got up by the neighboring settlers, most of them young, married people, and there was no drinking at all. I wrote to you for some time, while Mr. Nugent copied for himself the poems in the glen and the latter half of The River Without a Bridge, which he recited with deep feeling. It was altogether very quiet and peaceful. He repeated to me several poems of great merit which he had composed, and told me much more about his life. I knew that no one else could, or would speak to him as I could, and for the time I urged upon him the necessity of a reformation in his life, beginning with the giving up of whiskey, going so far as to tell him that I despised a man of his intellect for being a slave to such a vice. Too late, too late, he always answered, for such a change. I too late. He shed tears quietly. It might have been once, he said. I might have been. He has excellent sense for every one but himself, and as I have seen him with a single exception, a gentleness, propriety, and considerateness of manner surprising in any man, but especially so in a man associating only with the rough men of the West. As I looked at him I felt a pity such as I never before felt for a human being. My thought at that moment was, well not our father in heaven, who spared not his own son, but delivered him up for us all, be far more pitiful. For the time a desire for self-respect, better aspirations, and even hope itself entered his dark life, and he said suddenly that he had made up his mind to give up whiskey and his reputation as a desperado. But it is too late. A little before twelve the dance was over, and I got to the crowded little bedroom, which only allowed of one person standing in it at a time, to sleep soundly and dream of ninety and nine just persons who need no repentance. The landlady was quite taken up with her distinguished guest. That kind, quiet gentleman, mountain gem, while I never, he must be a very good man. Yesterday morning the mercury was twenty degrees below zero. I think I never saw such a brilliant atmosphere. That curious phenomenon called frostfall was occurring, in which whatever moisture may exist in the air somehow aggregates into feathers and fern leaves, the loveliest of creations, only seen in rarefied air and intense cold. One breath and they vanish. The air was filled with diamond sparks quite intangible. They seemed just to glitter and no more. It was still and cloudless, and the shapes of violet mountains were softened by a veil of the tenderest blue. When the Greeley stage wagon came up, Mr. Fodder, whom I met at Lower Canyon, was on it. He had expressed a great wish to go to Estes Park and to hunt with mountain gem, if it would be safe to do the latter. He was now dressed in the extreme of English dandyism, and when I introduced them he put out a small hand cased in a perfectly fitting lemon-coloured kid-glove. Beginning of Footnote This was a truly unfortunate introduction. It was the first link in the chain of circumstances which brought about Mr. Nugent's untimely end, and it was at this person's instigation, when overcome by fear, that Evans fired that shot which proved fatal. End of Footnote As the trapper stood there in his grotesque rags and odds and ends of apparel, his gentleness of deportment brought into relief the innate vulgarity of a rich parvenu. Mr. Fodder rattled so amusingly as we drove away that I never realised that my rocky mountain life was at an end, not even when I saw a mountain gem with his golden hair yellow in the sunshine, slowly leading the beautiful mare over the snowy plains back to Estes Park, equipped with the saddle on which I had ridden eight hundred miles. A drive of several hours over the plains brought us to Greeley, and a few hours later, in the far blue distance, the rocky mountains, and all that they enclose, went down beyond the prairie sea. ILB End of Letter 17 End of A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains by Isabella L. Byrd


Welcome to Toffy TV, it is the Everton News Daily. Job and Pickford has been called up to the England squad for the Euro 2024 qualifiers against Malta and North Macedonia next month. England number one in there, Nick Pope isn't in there much to the annoyance of the Newcastle fans. There's a call-off for Sam Johnston, the Crystal Palace goalkeeper he is in the England squad, but like you say Job and Pickford is the number one. So he was going to be called up wasn't he? Jarrah Branthwaith and James Garner have been called up for a preparation camp ahead of the under 21s European finals. Branthwaith has been in excellent form for PSV this season, he's on a season-long loan from Everton. James Garner's got into the Everton side of late, he's had a couple of injuries this season, but he's on a good little run at the moment, playing quite well, so that's some reward for him. He was in the last squad as well of course and played a couple of games there, but he got to see the young lads getting called up as well. And just on the back of Jarrah Branthwaith, former Everton player Andy van der Maide said that Jarrah Branthwaith should return to England at the end of the season. He said his defensive qualities are linked better to England rather than Holland. He says he heads crosses away, doesn't come forward and stays on the half, defends on the half wane. This is in almost complete opposite to what Rhyw van Nistorwy has been saying about Jarrah Branthwaith and he wants PSV to keep him. They'd had a conversation with Everton about the possibility of making Branthwaith a payment and transfer, but Everton reluctant to sell the young defender. And he's one of a couple of transfers that van Nistorwy wanted to go through and PSV have apparently said they're unable to do those transfers, which has resulted in van Nistorwy resigning from his position today. Rhyw van Nistorwy's left PSV because they couldn't give many guarantees over transfers this summer rather with Branthwaith being one of them, so it's interesting to see what happens at PSV now that van Nistorwy has gone. There's been speculation today that 777 have pulled out of the race to invest in Everton. It's been reported yesterday, of course, so it's sorry on Monday that MSP have signed an exclusivity deal with Everton, they're coming into the football club. Dem and Farab Meshiri won't talk to anybody else during this period, they thought they'd be getting a couple of people on the board as well as they try to take Everton in a forward direction. 777 have been interested in a full takeover of Everton if you believe the report's coming out of America, but today some stories circulating there that they have now pulled out of that due to Everton's exclusivity deal with MSP. Finally, Tom Cannon has been linked with a return to Preston North End next season on loan. He's had a good second half of the season at Deepdale and finished the season strongly, Rhyon Low, the Preston manager very pleased with Cannon's contribution to the cause, but apparently today Swansea City have also registered their interest in taking Cannon on loan next season as well. This will be dependent on what happens on Sunday. If the waves come to the west and Everton were to be relegated, then Cannon may well be considered and should be considered to be part of Everton's squad next season, particularly given how well he's done in the second half of the season. He is an Everton player, he is a young striker and he has got championship experience now, so all of these loan talks will be dependent on what league Everton are in next season. Fingers crossed, it is the Premier League and Tom Cannon can then go and have another season. Maybe if Sean Dyche feels he isn't quite ready to help Everton in the Premier League. That is it for the news day. Give the video a thumbs up and subscribe to the channel if you haven't. Thanks for watching. See you later.