"Do people judge hurricane risks in the context of gender-based expectations? We use more than six decades of death rates from US hurricanes to show that feminine-named hurricanes cause significantly more deaths than do masculine-named hurricanes. Laboratory experiments indicate that this is because hurricane names lead to gender-based expectations about severity and this, in turn, guides respondents’ preparedness to take protective action."
Let's hope we don't have a trans hurricane then. The confusion would be immense, as people tried to decide whether there was a safe space.
Wasn't it a hurricane that identified as a light storm that got Michael Fish into trouble?
No. It was the duty forecaster at the Met Office.
Incidentally, the Met Office supercomputer in 1987 had less processing power than today's mobile phones.
The most remarkable factoid about the current storm is that its severity was predicted, by the climatic models, before it had even formed as an entity on the weather map. Such are the advances that have been made in long range weather forecasting over the past decade.
That was true of Hurricane Sandy in 2012. Forecast spot-on with a ten-day lead time.
I wouldn't say that North Atlantic windstorms are a great poster child for advances in weather modelling - it's true that we've got pretty good at predicting storm intensity from quite a long way out, but the projections of track are still generally pretty rubbish. Sandy was more of an exception than the rule - for an example in the opposite direction, have a look at Henri in 2021 - originally projected to miss the US mainland by at least a thousand miles, it drifted all over the place: first South, then West, then North, and eventually made landfall in Rhode Island.
It's going to be tough for Harry to win the next monarch election.
Andrew and Harry were both posed the same life question- what's the point of the Spare Heir once the line of succession decisively moves away from you.
Harry's answer looks a lot saner and healthier than Andrew's.
Harry seems happier with his family now which is good for him, but he still seems a bit lost as to what to do with himself. Not sure what he would do if he, WIll and Charles patched things up, seems like he kind of needs that conflict as it provides attention for other things he wants to do.
As concerns grew in Europe over an imminent Russian invasion of Ukraine, Germany’s foreign minister suggested for the first time on Friday that military action by Moscow could mean the end of Nord Stream 2, a natural-gas pipeline running from Russia to Germany.
NY Times live blog
It's a finely balanced judgment. The Americans fear Nordstream 2 because they believe it would give the Russians the whip hand over Europe whereas Europeans are in favour because they calculate that Russian dependency on eurocash would make them more malleable. The clever thing about it is that the rate of flow can be carefully adjusted at each end, leading to more or less pressure as the situation demands. But obviously it has to be finished, first.
The real problem with NordStream2 that Russia can then cut off countries in the "Near Abroad" without interfering with supplies to Germany etc.
So they can divide an conquer - threaten countries near them and even cut them off, separately to German gas supplies.
Couldn't the Germans then supply those countries with gas from NordStream2, i.e. pipe gas in the opposite direction?
As concerns grew in Europe over an imminent Russian invasion of Ukraine, Germany’s foreign minister suggested for the first time on Friday that military action by Moscow could mean the end of Nord Stream 2, a natural-gas pipeline running from Russia to Germany.
NY Times live blog
It's a finely balanced judgment. The Americans fear Nordstream 2 because they believe it would give the Russians the whip hand over Europe whereas Europeans are in favour because they calculate that Russian dependency on eurocash would make them more malleable. The clever thing about it is that the rate of flow can be carefully adjusted at each end, leading to more or less pressure as the situation demands. But obviously it has to be finished, first.
The real problem with NordStream2 that Russia can then cut off countries in the "Near Abroad" without interfering with supplies to Germany etc.
So they can divide an conquer - threaten countries near them and even cut them off, separately to German gas supplies.
Couldn't the Germans then supply those countries with gas from NordStream2, i.e. pipe gas in the opposite direction?
Nope - there is no pipeline from Germany to those countries.
The whole design was to separate deliveries to Western Europe from those to East Europe.
"Do people judge hurricane risks in the context of gender-based expectations? We use more than six decades of death rates from US hurricanes to show that feminine-named hurricanes cause significantly more deaths than do masculine-named hurricanes. Laboratory experiments indicate that this is because hurricane names lead to gender-based expectations about severity and this, in turn, guides respondents’ preparedness to take protective action."
Let's hope we don't have a trans hurricane then. The confusion would be immense, as people tried to decide whether there was a safe space.
Wasn't it a hurricane that identified as a light storm that got Michael Fish into trouble?
No. It was the duty forecaster at the Met Office.
Incidentally, the Met Office supercomputer in 1987 had less processing power than today's mobile phones.
The most remarkable factoid about the current storm is that its severity was predicted, by the climatic models, before it had even formed as an entity on the weather map. Such are the advances that have been made in long range weather forecasting over the past decade.
The oddest thing about the 1987 storm was that a random civilian took the trouble to call the Met Office and predict a hurricane and instead of just saying 'thanks, we'll let you know' Michael Fish took the trouble of quoting her on the evening forecast simply in order to dismiss it. It does make you wonder if there was more to it than met the eye.
That is a complete misrepresentation of what happened. A lady had heard about a hurricaine in the west indies and rang about that asking if it was coming to the UK. She wasn't predicting anything. He also said that while no hurricane was coming (true) it would be a bit breezy (understatement). What happened was similar to todays storm, with the track not going as expected and also a bit more intense, with the as yet unknown 'sting jet' phenonomen, which caused the real damage in the SE. Its also important to recall that we have had 34 years of improvments in computer modelling of weather and were able to predict Eunice days ago, before it had even started forming. Even with that there was disagreement across the models as recently as two days ago. The MET instituted an internal review after the 1987 storm. Now we have excellent weather warning systems and so far in the UK, no lives have been lost.
There's a photo somewhere of Thatcher being given a tour of the Met Office in front of a conference poster on the 1987 storm. Can't find it right now.
To the credit of all involved the Met Office made a good case for increased investment to produce better weather forecasts and Thatcher's government agreed. It was [the response to] the storm that made the Met Office the world-leading national weather service it is today.
Rather bizarrely, Scottish Green MSP Ross Greer has decided to double-down on the already bizarre decision of the SNP to sow confusion about Scots pensions.
Apparently, the fact that, after the American Civil War, the victorious Union Govt went on to pay the pensions of the losing Confederates is a useful debating point when considering what might happen after Indy...
It's interesting to look at the broader trends since the last election. Zemmour has taken votes from Le Pen and the Republicans, but overall it shows a shift to the right, with probably some direct crossover from Melenchon, meanwhile Macron has squeezed the Socialist Party vote even more in order to stay still.
It's going to be tough for Harry to win the next monarch election.
Andrew and Harry were both posed the same life question- what's the point of the Spare Heir once the line of succession decisively moves away from you.
Harry's answer looks a lot saner and healthier than Andrew's.
Harry seems happier with his family now which is good for him, but he still seems a bit lost as to what to do with himself.
Or a bit lost as to how to pay for what he wants to do with himself.
It's going to be tough for Harry to win the next monarch election.
Andrew and Harry were both posed the same life question- what's the point of the Spare Heir once the line of succession decisively moves away from you.
Harry's answer looks a lot saner and healthier than Andrew's.
The basis of Harry's celebrity seems, to a certain degree, to be conflict with the Royal family. Whatever the rights and wrongs of his situation, this is really sad and unlikely to go well in the long term.
It's going to be tough for Harry to win the next monarch election.
Andrew and Harry were both posed the same life question- what's the point of the Spare Heir once the line of succession decisively moves away from you.
Harry's answer looks a lot saner and healthier than Andrew's.
Harry seems happier with his family now which is good for him, but he still seems a bit lost as to what to do with himself.
Or a bit lost as to how to pay for what he wants to do with himself.
Or indeed a sense of what it means to be a private citizen
As concerns grew in Europe over an imminent Russian invasion of Ukraine, Germany’s foreign minister suggested for the first time on Friday that military action by Moscow could mean the end of Nord Stream 2, a natural-gas pipeline running from Russia to Germany.
NY Times live blog
It's a finely balanced judgment. The Americans fear Nordstream 2 because they believe it would give the Russians the whip hand over Europe whereas Europeans are in favour because they calculate that Russian dependency on eurocash would make them more malleable. The clever thing about it is that the rate of flow can be carefully adjusted at each end, leading to more or less pressure as the situation demands. But obviously it has to be finished, first.
The real problem with NordStream2 that Russia can then cut off countries in the "Near Abroad" without interfering with supplies to Germany etc.
So they can divide an conquer - threaten countries near them and even cut them off, separately to German gas supplies.
The main reason for the project in the first place, was to cut off Ukraine. Gas pipelines are one of their largest sources of hard currency.
UK, EU and friendly countries need to start buying Ukranian goods, mostly foodstuffs. Let them see that trade with the West is always the better option for them.
"Do people judge hurricane risks in the context of gender-based expectations? We use more than six decades of death rates from US hurricanes to show that feminine-named hurricanes cause significantly more deaths than do masculine-named hurricanes. Laboratory experiments indicate that this is because hurricane names lead to gender-based expectations about severity and this, in turn, guides respondents’ preparedness to take protective action."
Let's hope we don't have a trans hurricane then. The confusion would be immense, as people tried to decide whether there was a safe space.
Wasn't it a hurricane that identified as a light storm that got Michael Fish into trouble?
No. It was the duty forecaster at the Met Office.
Incidentally, the Met Office supercomputer in 1987 had less processing power than today's mobile phones.
The most remarkable factoid about the current storm is that its severity was predicted, by the climatic models, before it had even formed as an entity on the weather map. Such are the advances that have been made in long range weather forecasting over the past decade.
That was true of Hurricane Sandy in 2012. Forecast spot-on with a ten-day lead time.
I wouldn't say that North Atlantic windstorms are a great poster child for advances in weather modelling - it's true that we've got pretty good at predicting storm intensity from quite a long way out, but the projections of track are still generally pretty rubbish. Sandy was more of an exception than the rule - for an example in the opposite direction, have a look at Henri in 2021 - originally projected to miss the US mainland by at least a thousand miles, it drifted all over the place: first South, then West, then North, and eventually made landfall in Rhode Island.
There are still some forecast busts, but the advances have been amazing.
Let's remember that they had the confidence to name Eunice even before Dudley arrived. That's a massive advance on what used to be the case.
It's going to be tough for Harry to win the next monarch election.
Andrew and Harry were both posed the same life question- what's the point of the Spare Heir once the line of succession decisively moves away from you.
Harry's answer looks a lot saner and healthier than Andrew's.
The basis of Harry's celebrity seems, to a certain degree, to be conflict with the Royal family. Whatever the rights and wrongs of his situation, this is really sad and unlikely to go well in the long term.
"Do people judge hurricane risks in the context of gender-based expectations? We use more than six decades of death rates from US hurricanes to show that feminine-named hurricanes cause significantly more deaths than do masculine-named hurricanes. Laboratory experiments indicate that this is because hurricane names lead to gender-based expectations about severity and this, in turn, guides respondents’ preparedness to take protective action."
Let's hope we don't have a trans hurricane then. The confusion would be immense, as people tried to decide whether there was a safe space.
Wasn't it a hurricane that identified as a light storm that got Michael Fish into trouble?
No. It was the duty forecaster at the Met Office.
Incidentally, the Met Office supercomputer in 1987 had less processing power than today's mobile phones.
The most remarkable factoid about the current storm is that its severity was predicted, by the climatic models, before it had even formed as an entity on the weather map. Such are the advances that have been made in long range weather forecasting over the past decade.
That was true of Hurricane Sandy in 2012. Forecast spot-on with a ten-day lead time.
I wouldn't say that North Atlantic windstorms are a great poster child for advances in weather modelling - it's true that we've got pretty good at predicting storm intensity from quite a long way out, but the projections of track are still generally pretty rubbish. Sandy was more of an exception than the rule - for an example in the opposite direction, have a look at Henri in 2021 - originally projected to miss the US mainland by at least a thousand miles, it drifted all over the place: first South, then West, then North, and eventually made landfall in Rhode Island.
There are still some forecast busts, but the advances have been amazing.
Let's remember that they had the confidence to name Eunice even before Dudley arrived. That's a massive advance on what used to be the case.
Its certainly advanced a lot from the days when you'd get just as good forecasts by simply parroting whatever today's weather is.
Rather bizarrely, Scottish Green MSP Ross Greer has decided to double-down on the already bizarre decision of the SNP to sow confusion about Scots pensions.
Apparently, the fact that, after the American Civil War, the victorious Union Govt went on to pay the pensions of the losing Confederates is a useful debating point when considering what might happen after Indy...
To be fair, it was news to me that the the last widowers' pension for a Confederate service personnel was paid out in 2012.
Genuine helpful advise to SNP, from 3,000 miles away. Stop talking about pensions, there’s precicsely nothing that will help your cause by keeping the subject alive.
And confirming WaPo: The US has obtained intelligence suggesting that Russia’s claim of pulling back forces earlier this week was deliberate disinformation designed to make the West think they were de escalating while moving more forces toward the border: cnn.com/2022/02/18/pol…
I was in New York during the Falklands War and the news they were getting over there bore no relation whatsoever to that put out by news stations in the UK. Since then I've struggled to believe a word from any side who have a direct interest in the result.
"Do people judge hurricane risks in the context of gender-based expectations? We use more than six decades of death rates from US hurricanes to show that feminine-named hurricanes cause significantly more deaths than do masculine-named hurricanes. Laboratory experiments indicate that this is because hurricane names lead to gender-based expectations about severity and this, in turn, guides respondents’ preparedness to take protective action."
Let's hope we don't have a trans hurricane then. The confusion would be immense, as people tried to decide whether there was a safe space.
Wasn't it a hurricane that identified as a light storm that got Michael Fish into trouble?
No. It was the duty forecaster at the Met Office.
Incidentally, the Met Office supercomputer in 1987 had less processing power than today's mobile phones.
The most remarkable factoid about the current storm is that its severity was predicted, by the climatic models, before it had even formed as an entity on the weather map. Such are the advances that have been made in long range weather forecasting over the past decade.
That was true of Hurricane Sandy in 2012. Forecast spot-on with a ten-day lead time.
I wouldn't say that North Atlantic windstorms are a great poster child for advances in weather modelling - it's true that we've got pretty good at predicting storm intensity from quite a long way out, but the projections of track are still generally pretty rubbish. Sandy was more of an exception than the rule - for an example in the opposite direction, have a look at Henri in 2021 - originally projected to miss the US mainland by at least a thousand miles, it drifted all over the place: first South, then West, then North, and eventually made landfall in Rhode Island.
There are still some forecast busts, but the advances have been amazing.
Let's remember that they had the confidence to name Eunice even before Dudley arrived. That's a massive advance on what used to be the case.
Its certainly advanced a lot from the days when you'd get just as good forecasts by simply parroting whatever today's weather is.
Broadly speaking persistence produces a pretty good weather forecast, but the problem is that it's the changes in weather which are most important. And you can never improve a forecast based on persistence.
It's really hard to produce a better forecast than persistence. It took a long time.
"Do people judge hurricane risks in the context of gender-based expectations? We use more than six decades of death rates from US hurricanes to show that feminine-named hurricanes cause significantly more deaths than do masculine-named hurricanes. Laboratory experiments indicate that this is because hurricane names lead to gender-based expectations about severity and this, in turn, guides respondents’ preparedness to take protective action."
Let's hope we don't have a trans hurricane then. The confusion would be immense, as people tried to decide whether there was a safe space.
Wasn't it a hurricane that identified as a light storm that got Michael Fish into trouble?
No. It was the duty forecaster at the Met Office.
Incidentally, the Met Office supercomputer in 1987 had less processing power than today's mobile phones.
The most remarkable factoid about the current storm is that its severity was predicted, by the climatic models, before it had even formed as an entity on the weather map. Such are the advances that have been made in long range weather forecasting over the past decade.
That was true of Hurricane Sandy in 2012. Forecast spot-on with a ten-day lead time.
I wouldn't say that North Atlantic windstorms are a great poster child for advances in weather modelling - it's true that we've got pretty good at predicting storm intensity from quite a long way out, but the projections of track are still generally pretty rubbish. Sandy was more of an exception than the rule - for an example in the opposite direction, have a look at Henri in 2021 - originally projected to miss the US mainland by at least a thousand miles, it drifted all over the place: first South, then West, then North, and eventually made landfall in Rhode Island.
There are still some forecast busts, but the advances have been amazing.
Let's remember that they had the confidence to name Eunice even before Dudley arrived. That's a massive advance on what used to be the case.
Not sure what you mean by that, since the names are taken from a pre-generated alphabetical list. If you just mean they forecast another storm coming in a few days afterwards, all that tells us is they spotted something building off the Gulf stream that was likely to exceed the threshold for naming - which isn't all that impressive.
"Do people judge hurricane risks in the context of gender-based expectations? We use more than six decades of death rates from US hurricanes to show that feminine-named hurricanes cause significantly more deaths than do masculine-named hurricanes. Laboratory experiments indicate that this is because hurricane names lead to gender-based expectations about severity and this, in turn, guides respondents’ preparedness to take protective action."
Let's hope we don't have a trans hurricane then. The confusion would be immense, as people tried to decide whether there was a safe space.
Wasn't it a hurricane that identified as a light storm that got Michael Fish into trouble?
No. It was the duty forecaster at the Met Office.
Incidentally, the Met Office supercomputer in 1987 had less processing power than today's mobile phones.
The most remarkable factoid about the current storm is that its severity was predicted, by the climatic models, before it had even formed as an entity on the weather map. Such are the advances that have been made in long range weather forecasting over the past decade.
The oddest thing about the 1987 storm was that a random civilian took the trouble to call the Met Office and predict a hurricane and instead of just saying 'thanks, we'll let you know' Michael Fish took the trouble of quoting her on the evening forecast simply in order to dismiss it. It does make you wonder if there was more to it than met the eye.
That is a complete misrepresentation of what happened. A lady had heard about a hurricaine in the west indies and rang about that asking if it was coming to the UK. She wasn't predicting anything. He also said that while no hurricane was coming (true) it would be a bit breezy (understatement). What happened was similar to todays storm, with the track not going as expected and also a bit more intense, with the as yet unknown 'sting jet' phenonomen, which caused the real damage in the SE. Its also important to recall that we have had 34 years of improvments in computer modelling of weather and were able to predict Eunice days ago, before it had even started forming. Even with that there was disagreement across the models as recently as two days ago. The MET instituted an internal review after the 1987 storm. Now we have excellent weather warning systems and so far in the UK, no lives have been lost.
"Earlier on today, apparently, a woman rang the BBC and said she'd heard there was a hurricane on the way..."
I'd say she was predicting, and there was no mention of the West Indies.
I agree about 34 years of improved forecasting. We shouldn't forget that poor Robert Fitzroy was driven to suicide because of the Met Office's uneven record.
Just back from the beach, enjoying some afternoon sun with the dog. Apart from the surfer-quality waves still coming in from the Channel, you'd never know that this morning had happened.
Until I got back and saw the sorry state of my roof, obvs. Still, a small price to pay for the island chalking up another spot in the book of English weather records...
"Do people judge hurricane risks in the context of gender-based expectations? We use more than six decades of death rates from US hurricanes to show that feminine-named hurricanes cause significantly more deaths than do masculine-named hurricanes. Laboratory experiments indicate that this is because hurricane names lead to gender-based expectations about severity and this, in turn, guides respondents’ preparedness to take protective action."
Let's hope we don't have a trans hurricane then. The confusion would be immense, as people tried to decide whether there was a safe space.
Wasn't it a hurricane that identified as a light storm that got Michael Fish into trouble?
No. It was the duty forecaster at the Met Office.
Incidentally, the Met Office supercomputer in 1987 had less processing power than today's mobile phones.
The most remarkable factoid about the current storm is that its severity was predicted, by the climatic models, before it had even formed as an entity on the weather map. Such are the advances that have been made in long range weather forecasting over the past decade.
The oddest thing about the 1987 storm was that a random civilian took the trouble to call the Met Office and predict a hurricane and instead of just saying 'thanks, we'll let you know' Michael Fish took the trouble of quoting her on the evening forecast simply in order to dismiss it. It does make you wonder if there was more to it than met the eye.
That is a complete misrepresentation of what happened. A lady had heard about a hurricaine in the west indies and rang about that asking if it was coming to the UK. She wasn't predicting anything. He also said that while no hurricane was coming (true) it would be a bit breezy (understatement). What happened was similar to todays storm, with the track not going as expected and also a bit more intense, with the as yet unknown 'sting jet' phenonomen, which caused the real damage in the SE. Its also important to recall that we have had 34 years of improvments in computer modelling of weather and were able to predict Eunice days ago, before it had even started forming. Even with that there was disagreement across the models as recently as two days ago. The MET instituted an internal review after the 1987 storm. Now we have excellent weather warning systems and so far in the UK, no lives have been lost.
There's a photo somewhere of Thatcher being given a tour of the Met Office in front of a conference poster on the 1987 storm. Can't find it right now.
To the credit of all involved the Met Office made a good case for increased investment to produce better weather forecasts and Thatcher's government agreed. It was [the response to] the storm that made the Met Office the world-leading national weather service it is today.
By about 1993, when I had a tour there, they had “The Cray Twins”, two massive state-of-the-art supercomputers, doing the forecasting.
"Do people judge hurricane risks in the context of gender-based expectations? We use more than six decades of death rates from US hurricanes to show that feminine-named hurricanes cause significantly more deaths than do masculine-named hurricanes. Laboratory experiments indicate that this is because hurricane names lead to gender-based expectations about severity and this, in turn, guides respondents’ preparedness to take protective action."
Let's hope we don't have a trans hurricane then. The confusion would be immense, as people tried to decide whether there was a safe space.
Wasn't it a hurricane that identified as a light storm that got Michael Fish into trouble?
No. It was the duty forecaster at the Met Office.
Incidentally, the Met Office supercomputer in 1987 had less processing power than today's mobile phones.
The most remarkable factoid about the current storm is that its severity was predicted, by the climatic models, before it had even formed as an entity on the weather map. Such are the advances that have been made in long range weather forecasting over the past decade.
The oddest thing about the 1987 storm was that a random civilian took the trouble to call the Met Office and predict a hurricane and instead of just saying 'thanks, we'll let you know' Michael Fish took the trouble of quoting her on the evening forecast simply in order to dismiss it. It does make you wonder if there was more to it than met the eye.
That is a complete misrepresentation of what happened. A lady had heard about a hurricaine in the west indies and rang about that asking if it was coming to the UK. She wasn't predicting anything. He also said that while no hurricane was coming (true) it would be a bit breezy (understatement). What happened was similar to todays storm, with the track not going as expected and also a bit more intense, with the as yet unknown 'sting jet' phenonomen, which caused the real damage in the SE. Its also important to recall that we have had 34 years of improvments in computer modelling of weather and were able to predict Eunice days ago, before it had even started forming. Even with that there was disagreement across the models as recently as two days ago. The MET instituted an internal review after the 1987 storm. Now we have excellent weather warning systems and so far in the UK, no lives have been lost.
"Earlier on today, apparently, a woman rang the BBC and said she'd heard there was a hurricane on the way..."
I'd say she was predicting, and there was no mention of the West Indies.
I agree about 34 years of improved forecasting. We shouldn't forget that poor Robert Fitzroy was driven to suicide because of the Met Office's uneven record.
There was no woman ringing in - he made it up, based on a colleagues mother who was off the the Caribbean. Seriously - no-one predicted 1987 and was ignored.
Rather bizarrely, Scottish Green MSP Ross Greer has decided to double-down on the already bizarre decision of the SNP to sow confusion about Scots pensions.
Apparently, the fact that, after the American Civil War, the victorious Union Govt went on to pay the pensions of the losing Confederates is a useful debating point when considering what might happen after Indy...
To be fair, it was news to me that the the last widowers' pension for a Confederate service personnel was paid out in 2012.
Genuine helpful advise to SNP, from 3,000 miles away. Stop talking about pensions, there’s precicsely nothing that will help your cause by keeping the subject alive.
If only the SNP would listen to some bloke on the internet. Tbf there are tens & tens of thousands of them blokes so it's hard to separate the wheat from the chaff.
"Do people judge hurricane risks in the context of gender-based expectations? We use more than six decades of death rates from US hurricanes to show that feminine-named hurricanes cause significantly more deaths than do masculine-named hurricanes. Laboratory experiments indicate that this is because hurricane names lead to gender-based expectations about severity and this, in turn, guides respondents’ preparedness to take protective action."
Let's hope we don't have a trans hurricane then. The confusion would be immense, as people tried to decide whether there was a safe space.
Wasn't it a hurricane that identified as a light storm that got Michael Fish into trouble?
No. It was the duty forecaster at the Met Office.
Incidentally, the Met Office supercomputer in 1987 had less processing power than today's mobile phones.
The most remarkable factoid about the current storm is that its severity was predicted, by the climatic models, before it had even formed as an entity on the weather map. Such are the advances that have been made in long range weather forecasting over the past decade.
That was true of Hurricane Sandy in 2012. Forecast spot-on with a ten-day lead time.
I wouldn't say that North Atlantic windstorms are a great poster child for advances in weather modelling - it's true that we've got pretty good at predicting storm intensity from quite a long way out, but the projections of track are still generally pretty rubbish. Sandy was more of an exception than the rule - for an example in the opposite direction, have a look at Henri in 2021 - originally projected to miss the US mainland by at least a thousand miles, it drifted all over the place: first South, then West, then North, and eventually made landfall in Rhode Island.
There are still some forecast busts, but the advances have been amazing.
Let's remember that they had the confidence to name Eunice even before Dudley arrived. That's a massive advance on what used to be the case.
Not sure what you mean by that, since the names are taken from a pre-generated alphabetical list. If you just mean they forecast another storm coming in a few days afterwards, all that tells us is they spotted something building off the Gulf stream that was likely to exceed the threshold for naming - which isn't all that impressive.
Let's recap what's changed.
In 1987, less than 12 hours before the storm struck, we had no idea what was going to happen.
In 2022, four days in advance it was known that a storm would arrive that was sufficiently dangerous to warrant being named.
Rather bizarrely, Scottish Green MSP Ross Greer has decided to double-down on the already bizarre decision of the SNP to sow confusion about Scots pensions.
Apparently, the fact that, after the American Civil War, the victorious Union Govt went on to pay the pensions of the losing Confederates is a useful debating point when considering what might happen after Indy...
To be fair, it was news to me that the the last widowers' pension for a Confederate service personnel was paid out in 2012.
Genuine helpful advise to SNP, from 3,000 miles away. Stop talking about pensions, there’s precicsely nothing that will help your cause by keeping the subject alive.
If only the SNP would listen to some bloke on the internet. Tbf there are tens & tens of thousands of them blokes so it's hard to separate the wheat from the chaff.
Oh well, keep talking about pensions then. Doesn’t bother me!
And confirming WaPo: The US has obtained intelligence suggesting that Russia’s claim of pulling back forces earlier this week was deliberate disinformation designed to make the West think they were de escalating while moving more forces toward the border: cnn.com/2022/02/18/pol…
I was in New York during the Falklands War and the news they were getting over there bore no relation whatsoever to that put out by news stations in the UK. Since then I've struggled to believe a word from any side who have a direct interest in the result.
If you'd bothered to read the histories, it turns out the BBC (and the information they were given) was close to 100% correct nearly all of the time. In fact too accurate in a few places....
The Argentine media was full of garbage and made up conspiracy theories. They are still claiming, IIRC to have sunk an aircraft carrier that was secretly replaced....
In my view Starmer is making the correct judgement here, in committing not to re-open the Brexit debate.
One reason I think Labour did rather well in 2017, was that it was able to appeal to both Brexit and Remain voters. They commited to enact the referendum result, but were themselves not the authors of Brexit. But in committing to another referendum in 2019, they picked a side (as every party was forced to at that point).
Now, passionate Rejoin voters are unlikely to vote Tory anyway, particularly if Johnson, Sunak or Truss is Tory leader. By suggesting that the Brexit war is over, Starmer signals to Labour Brexit voters that it is safe to vote Labour without reopening the Brexit debate. For someone like me, who might want the freedom to vote Lib Dem without voting for the whole 'Bollocks to Brexit' business, this is also now, potentially, a safe option, as we need no longer fear constant referendums or constitutional reversals under a non-Tory government.
At least, that's probably the Starmer plan, anyway... Let's see if it works.
And confirming WaPo: The US has obtained intelligence suggesting that Russia’s claim of pulling back forces earlier this week was deliberate disinformation designed to make the West think they were de escalating while moving more forces toward the border: cnn.com/2022/02/18/pol…
I was in New York during the Falklands War and the news they were getting over there bore no relation whatsoever to that put out by news stations in the UK. Since then I've struggled to believe a word from any side who have a direct interest in the result.
I was in Moscow at the start of the war - before Reagan had put Kirkpatrick back in her box and decided to back the Brits (the American public, on the other hand had no trouble in spotting the fascist aggressor) - so the Soviet’s were in a bind. The Brits can’t be the good guys, but then again neither can the Argies - and until the US took sides they didn’t know which script to run.
Rather bizarrely, Scottish Green MSP Ross Greer has decided to double-down on the already bizarre decision of the SNP to sow confusion about Scots pensions.
Apparently, the fact that, after the American Civil War, the victorious Union Govt went on to pay the pensions of the losing Confederates is a useful debating point when considering what might happen after Indy...
To be fair, it was news to me that the the last widowers' pension for a Confederate service personnel was paid out in 2012.
His logic seems to be: unintuitive things sometimes happen with pensions, therefore unicorns exist.
I found the American attitude generous, and healing, but isn't there a misprint WidowERS pension. Were there female soldiers in the Confederate Army? Even if it was a widows pension that suggests the lady lived to a VERY considerable age.
"Do people judge hurricane risks in the context of gender-based expectations? We use more than six decades of death rates from US hurricanes to show that feminine-named hurricanes cause significantly more deaths than do masculine-named hurricanes. Laboratory experiments indicate that this is because hurricane names lead to gender-based expectations about severity and this, in turn, guides respondents’ preparedness to take protective action."
Let's hope we don't have a trans hurricane then. The confusion would be immense, as people tried to decide whether there was a safe space.
Wasn't it a hurricane that identified as a light storm that got Michael Fish into trouble?
No. It was the duty forecaster at the Met Office.
Incidentally, the Met Office supercomputer in 1987 had less processing power than today's mobile phones.
The most remarkable factoid about the current storm is that its severity was predicted, by the climatic models, before it had even formed as an entity on the weather map. Such are the advances that have been made in long range weather forecasting over the past decade.
The oddest thing about the 1987 storm was that a random civilian took the trouble to call the Met Office and predict a hurricane and instead of just saying 'thanks, we'll let you know' Michael Fish took the trouble of quoting her on the evening forecast simply in order to dismiss it. It does make you wonder if there was more to it than met the eye.
That is a complete misrepresentation of what happened. A lady had heard about a hurricaine in the west indies and rang about that asking if it was coming to the UK. She wasn't predicting anything. He also said that while no hurricane was coming (true) it would be a bit breezy (understatement). What happened was similar to todays storm, with the track not going as expected and also a bit more intense, with the as yet unknown 'sting jet' phenonomen, which caused the real damage in the SE. Its also important to recall that we have had 34 years of improvments in computer modelling of weather and were able to predict Eunice days ago, before it had even started forming. Even with that there was disagreement across the models as recently as two days ago. The MET instituted an internal review after the 1987 storm. Now we have excellent weather warning systems and so far in the UK, no lives have been lost.
"Earlier on today, apparently, a woman rang the BBC and said she'd heard there was a hurricane on the way..."
I'd say she was predicting, and there was no mention of the West Indies.
I agree about 34 years of improved forecasting. We shouldn't forget that poor Robert Fitzroy was driven to suicide because of the Met Office's uneven record.
There was no woman ringing in - he made it up, based on a colleagues mother who was off the the Caribbean. Seriously - no-one predicted 1987 and was ignored.
In that case how about "The oddest thing about the 1987 storm was that Michael Fish introduced a weather forecast with a fabricated story solely in order to dismiss it."
Khan-Brook. Nothing much to say we know what the dynamics are. Khan is fast and tricky to hit and if he doesn't let himself get pulled into a toe-to-toe has a live chance of tagging Brook and putting him down. Brook however has the timing and needs to stay around until Khan slows down and then time his attack and ka-pow. They are not as fast or good at timing respectively as they were. So really a close one.
I think Brook wants it more. He has wanted it as we know for years and years and there is an evident frustration not to say demons that he wants to exorcise.
I want to say a Khan win in six but I just think Brook might out aggress him. Yes hedging my bets because it is a genuinely intriguing fight.
bf odds are nothing to get excited about either way.
Rather bizarrely, Scottish Green MSP Ross Greer has decided to double-down on the already bizarre decision of the SNP to sow confusion about Scots pensions.
Apparently, the fact that, after the American Civil War, the victorious Union Govt went on to pay the pensions of the losing Confederates is a useful debating point when considering what might happen after Indy...
To be fair, it was news to me that the the last widowers' pension for a Confederate service personnel was paid out in 2012.
Genuine helpful advise to SNP, from 3,000 miles away. Stop talking about pensions, there’s precicsely nothing that will help your cause by keeping the subject alive.
If only the SNP would listen to some bloke on the internet. Tbf there are tens & tens of thousands of them blokes so it's hard to separate the wheat from the chaff.
Oh well, keep talking about pensions then. Doesn’t bother me!
Sorry, your Scotch credentials as someone who thought betting against the SNP as the largest party at the last Holyrood election was a good punt should certainly be given more respect. That puts you in the special SE Pantheon with Leon.
You'd end up going from an intact eyesore to a dilapidated eyesore, hardly an improvement.
Demolish it and build something useful on the site.
It's a pretty impressive concert venue. Guessing you don't like it just because it was New Labour? I mean it was vacuous Blair vanity at the time but certainly isn't now.
I think it would be a shame to dismantle everything about Cool Britannia. It was the last occasion when Britain had anything Great about it. All downhill since.
PMSL.
So that joke of a site is more "Great" than the 2012 Olympics to name a more recent example?
You're a joke.
Come on Philip. Is that kind of aggression really necessary? The 02 is an amazing concert venue. I doubt from your post that you've ever been.
I think the Olympics was amazing. Not a venue as such but amazing. That was also a Cool Britannia outcome and owed a huge amount to Tessa Jowell amongst others (whatever Boris tried to claim).
Leave off the personal abuse okay?
I've been a couple of times, I wasn't that impressed with it. I wouldn't say it was an "amazing" concert venue.
However my wife loved the fact that they had a Spur restaurant there last time we went, so I'll give them credit for that. No idea if its still there or not.
I've seen four events at the O2 - The Who, Jerry Seinfeld, Paul Simon/Sting, and The Avengers Live.
If I were to give a single piece of advice, one to live by, it would be never watch "The Avengers Live". It was perhaps the worst two hours of my life.
Seeing the crime-fighting antics of Emma Peel and John Steed live sounds brilliant to me.
Just tried to drive over to a friend for tea. Found a fallen tree blocking the driveway so no-one could get in our out. There are 12 properties in our development including 2 doctors. Luckily we have a tame tree surgeon who handles our woodland and we are awaiting him and his chain saw.
Goodness, those poor ethnic Russians being attacked by bad bad Ukraine. I sure hope someone can step in and bring peace and stability to the region. If only someone happened to have 200,000 troops lingering near the Ukraine border.
And some foreign agents with bomb making skills pretending to be Ukrainian.
Macron funnels €2.1bn into EDF to stop it going bankrupt. People like to talk about nationalising industry, yet these are also the kinds of decisions that would rankle the British public in a way it probably doesn't in France.
Worse still for Macron is that a big chunk of that €2bn is going towards Hinkley Point C and keeping that project on track as there's loads of penalties building up for EDF for late delivery at the moment.
You'd end up going from an intact eyesore to a dilapidated eyesore, hardly an improvement.
Demolish it and build something useful on the site.
It's a pretty impressive concert venue. Guessing you don't like it just because it was New Labour? I mean it was vacuous Blair vanity at the time but certainly isn't now.
I think it would be a shame to dismantle everything about Cool Britannia. It was the last occasion when Britain had anything Great about it. All downhill since.
PMSL.
So that joke of a site is more "Great" than the 2012 Olympics to name a more recent example?
You're a joke.
Come on Philip. Is that kind of aggression really necessary? The 02 is an amazing concert venue. I doubt from your post that you've ever been.
I think the Olympics was amazing. Not a venue as such but amazing. That was also a Cool Britannia outcome and owed a huge amount to Tessa Jowell amongst others (whatever Boris tried to claim).
Leave off the personal abuse okay?
I've been a couple of times, I wasn't that impressed with it. I wouldn't say it was an "amazing" concert venue.
However my wife loved the fact that they had a Spur restaurant there last time we went, so I'll give them credit for that. No idea if its still there or not.
I've seen four events at the O2 - The Who, Jerry Seinfeld, Paul Simon/Sting, and The Avengers Live.
If I were to give a single piece of advice, one to live by, it would be never watch "The Avengers Live". It was perhaps the worst two hours of my life.
Seeing the crime-fighting antics of Emma Peel and John Steed live sounds brilliant to me.
Depends.
Whilst the Ralph Fiennes / Uma Thurman movie had its... compensations... it was almost as terrible as everyone said it was.
"Do people judge hurricane risks in the context of gender-based expectations? We use more than six decades of death rates from US hurricanes to show that feminine-named hurricanes cause significantly more deaths than do masculine-named hurricanes. Laboratory experiments indicate that this is because hurricane names lead to gender-based expectations about severity and this, in turn, guides respondents’ preparedness to take protective action."
Let's hope we don't have a trans hurricane then. The confusion would be immense, as people tried to decide whether there was a safe space.
Wasn't it a hurricane that identified as a light storm that got Michael Fish into trouble?
No. It was the duty forecaster at the Met Office.
Incidentally, the Met Office supercomputer in 1987 had less processing power than today's mobile phones.
The most remarkable factoid about the current storm is that its severity was predicted, by the climatic models, before it had even formed as an entity on the weather map. Such are the advances that have been made in long range weather forecasting over the past decade.
The oddest thing about the 1987 storm was that a random civilian took the trouble to call the Met Office and predict a hurricane and instead of just saying 'thanks, we'll let you know' Michael Fish took the trouble of quoting her on the evening forecast simply in order to dismiss it. It does make you wonder if there was more to it than met the eye.
That is a complete misrepresentation of what happened. A lady had heard about a hurricaine in the west indies and rang about that asking if it was coming to the UK. She wasn't predicting anything. He also said that while no hurricane was coming (true) it would be a bit breezy (understatement). What happened was similar to todays storm, with the track not going as expected and also a bit more intense, with the as yet unknown 'sting jet' phenonomen, which caused the real damage in the SE. Its also important to recall that we have had 34 years of improvments in computer modelling of weather and were able to predict Eunice days ago, before it had even started forming. Even with that there was disagreement across the models as recently as two days ago. The MET instituted an internal review after the 1987 storm. Now we have excellent weather warning systems and so far in the UK, no lives have been lost.
There's a photo somewhere of Thatcher being given a tour of the Met Office in front of a conference poster on the 1987 storm. Can't find it right now.
To the credit of all involved the Met Office made a good case for increased investment to produce better weather forecasts and Thatcher's government agreed. It was [the response to] the storm that made the Met Office the world-leading national weather service it is today.
By about 1993, when I had a tour there, they had “The Cray Twins”, two massive state-of-the-art supercomputers, doing the forecasting.
I don't think you can have seen the Cray Twins in 1993. They still had them in 2003 when they moved them down the motorway to Exeter, and I doubt they went a decade between supercomputer upgrades. I saw them in 2002.
Rather bizarrely, Scottish Green MSP Ross Greer has decided to double-down on the already bizarre decision of the SNP to sow confusion about Scots pensions.
Apparently, the fact that, after the American Civil War, the victorious Union Govt went on to pay the pensions of the losing Confederates is a useful debating point when considering what might happen after Indy...
To be fair, it was news to me that the the last widowers' pension for a Confederate service personnel was paid out in 2012.
His logic seems to be: unintuitive things sometimes happen with pensions, therefore unicorns exist.
I found the American attitude generous, and healing, but isn't there a misprint WidowERS pension. Were there female soldiers in the Confederate Army? Even if it was a widows pension that suggests the lady lived to a VERY considerable age.
IIRC she married a confederate veteran when she was very young and he was very old and then did indeed live to very old age herself.
You'd end up going from an intact eyesore to a dilapidated eyesore, hardly an improvement.
Demolish it and build something useful on the site.
It's a pretty impressive concert venue. Guessing you don't like it just because it was New Labour? I mean it was vacuous Blair vanity at the time but certainly isn't now.
I think it would be a shame to dismantle everything about Cool Britannia. It was the last occasion when Britain had anything Great about it. All downhill since.
PMSL.
So that joke of a site is more "Great" than the 2012 Olympics to name a more recent example?
You're a joke.
Come on Philip. Is that kind of aggression really necessary? The 02 is an amazing concert venue. I doubt from your post that you've ever been.
I think the Olympics was amazing. Not a venue as such but amazing. That was also a Cool Britannia outcome and owed a huge amount to Tessa Jowell amongst others (whatever Boris tried to claim).
Leave off the personal abuse okay?
I've been a couple of times, I wasn't that impressed with it. I wouldn't say it was an "amazing" concert venue.
However my wife loved the fact that they had a Spur restaurant there last time we went, so I'll give them credit for that. No idea if its still there or not.
I've seen four events at the O2 - The Who, Jerry Seinfeld, Paul Simon/Sting, and The Avengers Live.
If I were to give a single piece of advice, one to live by, it would be never watch "The Avengers Live". It was perhaps the worst two hours of my life.
Seeing the crime-fighting antics of Emma Peel and John Steed live sounds brilliant to me.
Depends.
Whilst the Ralph Fiennes / Uma Thurman movie had its... compensations... it was almost as terrible as everyone said it was.
Yeh, I'd want Patrick Macnee and Diana Rigg to be on loan from God for the event, as well as Brian Clemens for the script.
Head of the "People's Militia" Major General Denis Sinenkov claims his car was targeted and he is uninjured. So they're claiming that this was a targeted assassination attempt. Absolutely not suspicious in the slightest.
In my view Starmer is making the correct judgement here, in committing not to re-open the Brexit debate.
One reason I think Labour did rather well in 2017, was that it was able to appeal to both Brexit and Remain voters. They commited to enact the referendum result, but were themselves not the authors of Brexit. But in committing to another referendum in 2019, they picked a side (as every party was forced to at that point).
Now, passionate Rejoin voters are unlikely to vote Tory anyway, particularly if Johnson, Sunak or Truss is Tory leader. By suggesting that the Brexit war is over, Starmer signals to Labour Brexit voters that it is safe to vote Labour without reopening the Brexit debate. For someone like me, who might want the freedom to vote Lib Dem without voting for the whole 'Bollocks to Brexit' business, this is also now, potentially, a safe option, as we need no longer fear constant referendums or constitutional reversals under a non-Tory government.
At least, that's probably the Starmer plan, anyway... Let's see if it works.
But there are two questions: How does SKS win an election. And, two, what does he actually do about post Brexit policy once he has won?
"Do people judge hurricane risks in the context of gender-based expectations? We use more than six decades of death rates from US hurricanes to show that feminine-named hurricanes cause significantly more deaths than do masculine-named hurricanes. Laboratory experiments indicate that this is because hurricane names lead to gender-based expectations about severity and this, in turn, guides respondents’ preparedness to take protective action."
Let's hope we don't have a trans hurricane then. The confusion would be immense, as people tried to decide whether there was a safe space.
Wasn't it a hurricane that identified as a light storm that got Michael Fish into trouble?
No. It was the duty forecaster at the Met Office.
Incidentally, the Met Office supercomputer in 1987 had less processing power than today's mobile phones.
The most remarkable factoid about the current storm is that its severity was predicted, by the climatic models, before it had even formed as an entity on the weather map. Such are the advances that have been made in long range weather forecasting over the past decade.
That was true of Hurricane Sandy in 2012. Forecast spot-on with a ten-day lead time.
I wouldn't say that North Atlantic windstorms are a great poster child for advances in weather modelling - it's true that we've got pretty good at predicting storm intensity from quite a long way out, but the projections of track are still generally pretty rubbish. Sandy was more of an exception than the rule - for an example in the opposite direction, have a look at Henri in 2021 - originally projected to miss the US mainland by at least a thousand miles, it drifted all over the place: first South, then West, then North, and eventually made landfall in Rhode Island.
There are still some forecast busts, but the advances have been amazing.
Let's remember that they had the confidence to name Eunice even before Dudley arrived. That's a massive advance on what used to be the case.
Not sure what you mean by that, since the names are taken from a pre-generated alphabetical list. If you just mean they forecast another storm coming in a few days afterwards, all that tells us is they spotted something building off the Gulf stream that was likely to exceed the threshold for naming - which isn't all that impressive.
Let's recap what's changed.
In 1987, less than 12 hours before the storm struck, we had no idea what was going to happen.
In 2022, four days in advance it was known that a storm would arrive that was sufficiently dangerous to warrant being named.
Head of the "People's Militia" Major General Denis Sinenkov claims his car was targeted and he is uninjured. So they're claiming that this was a targeted assassination attempt. Absolutely not suspicious in the slightest.
Rather bizarrely, Scottish Green MSP Ross Greer has decided to double-down on the already bizarre decision of the SNP to sow confusion about Scots pensions.
Apparently, the fact that, after the American Civil War, the victorious Union Govt went on to pay the pensions of the losing Confederates is a useful debating point when considering what might happen after Indy...
To be fair, it was news to me that the the last widowers' pension for a Confederate service personnel was paid out in 2012.
His logic seems to be: unintuitive things sometimes happen with pensions, therefore unicorns exist.
I found the American attitude generous, and healing, but isn't there a misprint WidowERS pension. Were there female soldiers in the Confederate Army? Even if it was a widows pension that suggests the lady lived to a VERY considerable age.
IIRC she married a confederate veteran when she was very young and he was very old and then did indeed live to very old age herself.
It was a common thing apparently - marriage to pass on such pensions.
As concerns grew in Europe over an imminent Russian invasion of Ukraine, Germany’s foreign minister suggested for the first time on Friday that military action by Moscow could mean the end of Nord Stream 2, a natural-gas pipeline running from Russia to Germany.
NY Times live blog
It's a finely balanced judgment. The Americans fear Nordstream 2 because they believe it would give the Russians the whip hand over Europe whereas Europeans are in favour because they calculate that Russian dependency on eurocash would make them more malleable. The clever thing about it is that the rate of flow can be carefully adjusted at each end, leading to more or less pressure as the situation demands. But obviously it has to be finished, first.
The real problem with NordStream2 that Russia can then cut off countries in the "Near Abroad" without interfering with supplies to Germany etc.
So they can divide an conquer - threaten countries near them and even cut them off, separately to German gas supplies.
The main reason for the project in the first place, was to cut off Ukraine. Gas pipelines are one of their largest sources of hard currency.
UK, EU and friendly countries need to start buying Ukranian goods, mostly foodstuffs. Let them see that trade with the West is always the better option for them.
That of course is why Maggie and then Major were so supportive of the satellite countries joining the EU and NATO. The expansion of the EU to the East is the best thing to happen to these countries to secure their future peace and prosperity. Britain's role in the EU was as liberator, and well worth the short term cost.
Brexit was playing into Putins hands by weakening it. If we had remained we could be pushing for Ukranian entry.
As concerns grew in Europe over an imminent Russian invasion of Ukraine, Germany’s foreign minister suggested for the first time on Friday that military action by Moscow could mean the end of Nord Stream 2, a natural-gas pipeline running from Russia to Germany.
NY Times live blog
It's a finely balanced judgment. The Americans fear Nordstream 2 because they believe it would give the Russians the whip hand over Europe whereas Europeans are in favour because they calculate that Russian dependency on eurocash would make them more malleable. The clever thing about it is that the rate of flow can be carefully adjusted at each end, leading to more or less pressure as the situation demands. But obviously it has to be finished, first.
The real problem with NordStream2 that Russia can then cut off countries in the "Near Abroad" without interfering with supplies to Germany etc.
So they can divide an conquer - threaten countries near them and even cut them off, separately to German gas supplies.
Couldn't the Germans then supply those countries with gas from NordStream2, i.e. pipe gas in the opposite direction?
Nope - there is no pipeline from Germany to those countries.
The whole design was to separate deliveries to Western Europe from those to East Europe.
But there must be a pipeline from those countries to Germany, otherwise it wouldn't have been possible for Russia to supply Germany via those countries. Is there any reason why you couldn't reverse the flow of gas through that pipeline? That is, Germany could accept gas from Russia via the NordStream pipelines and pipe it back through the old pipes to Ukraine, the Baltics, etc.
As concerns grew in Europe over an imminent Russian invasion of Ukraine, Germany’s foreign minister suggested for the first time on Friday that military action by Moscow could mean the end of Nord Stream 2, a natural-gas pipeline running from Russia to Germany.
NY Times live blog
It's a finely balanced judgment. The Americans fear Nordstream 2 because they believe it would give the Russians the whip hand over Europe whereas Europeans are in favour because they calculate that Russian dependency on eurocash would make them more malleable. The clever thing about it is that the rate of flow can be carefully adjusted at each end, leading to more or less pressure as the situation demands. But obviously it has to be finished, first.
The real problem with NordStream2 that Russia can then cut off countries in the "Near Abroad" without interfering with supplies to Germany etc.
So they can divide an conquer - threaten countries near them and even cut them off, separately to German gas supplies.
The main reason for the project in the first place, was to cut off Ukraine. Gas pipelines are one of their largest sources of hard currency.
UK, EU and friendly countries need to start buying Ukranian goods, mostly foodstuffs. Let them see that trade with the West is always the better option for them.
That of corse is why Maggie and then Major were so supportive of the satellite countries joining the EU and NATO. The expansion of the EU to the East is the best thing to happen to these countries to secure their future peace and prosperity. Britain's role in the EU was as liberator, and well worth the short term cost.
Brexit was playing into Putins hands by weakening it. If we had remained we could be pushing for Ukranian entry.
The EU knew our price to stay in, they refused to pay it so we left. There's not a lot more to it than that. If our membership was as valuable as you say then more fool them for not doing whatever it took to keep us in the tent.
Even as Ukrainians sensibly show restraint, there's no defense against manufactured crisis. By accusing Kyiv of imminent assault and calling for evacuation of civilians to Russia, Kremlin-backed separatists lay groundwork for images of refugees, "genocide" and calls to action.
I'm on the Moldovan and Belarus mailing lists for the FCDO. I have just received an email advising against all travel to Transdnistria, also against all but essential travel to Belarus and also against all travel to a number of places near the Ukranian border, including Brest which is also on the Polish border.
I don't think you can have seen the Cray Twins in 1993. They still had them in 2003 when they moved them down the motorway to Exeter, and I doubt they went a decade between supercomputer upgrades. I saw them in 2002.
T3E installed in 1996 apparently, but replaced earlier generation Cray hardware
As concerns grew in Europe over an imminent Russian invasion of Ukraine, Germany’s foreign minister suggested for the first time on Friday that military action by Moscow could mean the end of Nord Stream 2, a natural-gas pipeline running from Russia to Germany.
NY Times live blog
It's a finely balanced judgment. The Americans fear Nordstream 2 because they believe it would give the Russians the whip hand over Europe whereas Europeans are in favour because they calculate that Russian dependency on eurocash would make them more malleable. The clever thing about it is that the rate of flow can be carefully adjusted at each end, leading to more or less pressure as the situation demands. But obviously it has to be finished, first.
The real problem with NordStream2 that Russia can then cut off countries in the "Near Abroad" without interfering with supplies to Germany etc.
So they can divide an conquer - threaten countries near them and even cut them off, separately to German gas supplies.
The main reason for the project in the first place, was to cut off Ukraine. Gas pipelines are one of their largest sources of hard currency.
UK, EU and friendly countries need to start buying Ukranian goods, mostly foodstuffs. Let them see that trade with the West is always the better option for them.
That of course is why Maggie and then Major were so supportive of the satellite countries joining the EU and NATO. The expansion of the EU to the East is the best thing to happen to these countries to secure their future peace and prosperity. Britain's role in the EU was as liberator, and well worth the short term cost.
Brexit was playing into Putins hands by weakening it. If we had remained we could be pushing for Ukranian entry.
If France and Germany didn't want Ukraine in the EU, our presence would have made zero difference.
And they didn't because then their lights risked going out.
Head of the "People's Militia" Major General Denis Sinenkov claims his car was targeted and he is uninjured. So they're claiming that this was a targeted assassination attempt. Absolutely not suspicious in the slightest.
1. Would any of this be happening were it not for Brexit? 2. What implications does the survival of Major General Sinenkov have for the Scottish independence movement?
As concerns grew in Europe over an imminent Russian invasion of Ukraine, Germany’s foreign minister suggested for the first time on Friday that military action by Moscow could mean the end of Nord Stream 2, a natural-gas pipeline running from Russia to Germany.
NY Times live blog
It's a finely balanced judgment. The Americans fear Nordstream 2 because they believe it would give the Russians the whip hand over Europe whereas Europeans are in favour because they calculate that Russian dependency on eurocash would make them more malleable. The clever thing about it is that the rate of flow can be carefully adjusted at each end, leading to more or less pressure as the situation demands. But obviously it has to be finished, first.
The real problem with NordStream2 that Russia can then cut off countries in the "Near Abroad" without interfering with supplies to Germany etc.
So they can divide an conquer - threaten countries near them and even cut them off, separately to German gas supplies.
The main reason for the project in the first place, was to cut off Ukraine. Gas pipelines are one of their largest sources of hard currency.
UK, EU and friendly countries need to start buying Ukranian goods, mostly foodstuffs. Let them see that trade with the West is always the better option for them.
That of corse is why Maggie and then Major were so supportive of the satellite countries joining the EU and NATO. The expansion of the EU to the East is the best thing to happen to these countries to secure their future peace and prosperity. Britain's role in the EU was as liberator, and well worth the short term cost.
Brexit was playing into Putins hands by weakening it. If we had remained we could be pushing for Ukranian entry.
The EU knew our price to stay in, they refused to pay it so we left. There's not a lot more to it than that. If our membership was as valuable as you say then more fool them for not doing whatever it took to keep us in the tent.
Yep and weakened both ourselves and the EU. Putin must have pissed himself laughing, then Trump too...
As concerns grew in Europe over an imminent Russian invasion of Ukraine, Germany’s foreign minister suggested for the first time on Friday that military action by Moscow could mean the end of Nord Stream 2, a natural-gas pipeline running from Russia to Germany.
NY Times live blog
It's a finely balanced judgment. The Americans fear Nordstream 2 because they believe it would give the Russians the whip hand over Europe whereas Europeans are in favour because they calculate that Russian dependency on eurocash would make them more malleable. The clever thing about it is that the rate of flow can be carefully adjusted at each end, leading to more or less pressure as the situation demands. But obviously it has to be finished, first.
The real problem with NordStream2 that Russia can then cut off countries in the "Near Abroad" without interfering with supplies to Germany etc.
So they can divide an conquer - threaten countries near them and even cut them off, separately to German gas supplies.
The main reason for the project in the first place, was to cut off Ukraine. Gas pipelines are one of their largest sources of hard currency.
UK, EU and friendly countries need to start buying Ukranian goods, mostly foodstuffs. Let them see that trade with the West is always the better option for them.
That of corse is why Maggie and then Major were so supportive of the satellite countries joining the EU and NATO. The expansion of the EU to the East is the best thing to happen to these countries to secure their future peace and prosperity. Britain's role in the EU was as liberator, and well worth the short term cost.
Brexit was playing into Putins hands by weakening it. If we had remained we could be pushing for Ukranian entry.
The EU knew our price to stay in, they refused to pay it so we left. There's not a lot more to it than that. If our membership was as valuable as you say then more fool them for not doing whatever it took to keep us in the tent.
Yep and weakened both ourselves and the EU. Putin must have pissed himself laughing, then Trump too...
Are you implying that the likes of Tusk and Merkel were Putin's useful idiots when they refused to countenance reforming the way free movement works?
As concerns grew in Europe over an imminent Russian invasion of Ukraine, Germany’s foreign minister suggested for the first time on Friday that military action by Moscow could mean the end of Nord Stream 2, a natural-gas pipeline running from Russia to Germany.
NY Times live blog
It's a finely balanced judgment. The Americans fear Nordstream 2 because they believe it would give the Russians the whip hand over Europe whereas Europeans are in favour because they calculate that Russian dependency on eurocash would make them more malleable. The clever thing about it is that the rate of flow can be carefully adjusted at each end, leading to more or less pressure as the situation demands. But obviously it has to be finished, first.
The real problem with NordStream2 that Russia can then cut off countries in the "Near Abroad" without interfering with supplies to Germany etc.
So they can divide an conquer - threaten countries near them and even cut them off, separately to German gas supplies.
The main reason for the project in the first place, was to cut off Ukraine. Gas pipelines are one of their largest sources of hard currency.
UK, EU and friendly countries need to start buying Ukranian goods, mostly foodstuffs. Let them see that trade with the West is always the better option for them.
That of course is why Maggie and then Major were so supportive of the satellite countries joining the EU and NATO. The expansion of the EU to the East is the best thing to happen to these countries to secure their future peace and prosperity. Britain's role in the EU was as liberator, and well worth the short term cost.
Brexit was playing into Putins hands by weakening it. If we had remained we could be pushing for Ukranian entry.
Certainly Ukraine needs to travel some distance before it meets the accession criteria, but it's a great ambition. It would be really good for Ukraine to have them firmly on that track.
There may be potential for a compromise if EU membership is tolerated by Russia but explicitly not (perhaps even based on an agreement not) as a stepping stone to join NATO. Then those countries could benefit from the EU's economical development assistance (such as it is), but wouldn't threaten Russia militarily.
As concerns grew in Europe over an imminent Russian invasion of Ukraine, Germany’s foreign minister suggested for the first time on Friday that military action by Moscow could mean the end of Nord Stream 2, a natural-gas pipeline running from Russia to Germany.
NY Times live blog
It's a finely balanced judgment. The Americans fear Nordstream 2 because they believe it would give the Russians the whip hand over Europe whereas Europeans are in favour because they calculate that Russian dependency on eurocash would make them more malleable. The clever thing about it is that the rate of flow can be carefully adjusted at each end, leading to more or less pressure as the situation demands. But obviously it has to be finished, first.
The real problem with NordStream2 that Russia can then cut off countries in the "Near Abroad" without interfering with supplies to Germany etc.
So they can divide an conquer - threaten countries near them and even cut them off, separately to German gas supplies.
The main reason for the project in the first place, was to cut off Ukraine. Gas pipelines are one of their largest sources of hard currency.
UK, EU and friendly countries need to start buying Ukranian goods, mostly foodstuffs. Let them see that trade with the West is always the better option for them.
That of corse is why Maggie and then Major were so supportive of the satellite countries joining the EU and NATO. The expansion of the EU to the East is the best thing to happen to these countries to secure their future peace and prosperity. Britain's role in the EU was as liberator, and well worth the short term cost.
Brexit was playing into Putins hands by weakening it. If we had remained we could be pushing for Ukranian entry.
The EU knew our price to stay in, they refused to pay it so we left. There's not a lot more to it than that. If our membership was as valuable as you say then more fool them for not doing whatever it took to keep us in the tent.
Our membership was valuable, but not not that valuable.
Rather bizarrely, Scottish Green MSP Ross Greer has decided to double-down on the already bizarre decision of the SNP to sow confusion about Scots pensions.
Apparently, the fact that, after the American Civil War, the victorious Union Govt went on to pay the pensions of the losing Confederates is a useful debating point when considering what might happen after Indy...
To be fair, it was news to me that the the last widowers' pension for a Confederate service personnel was paid out in 2012.
His logic seems to be: unintuitive things sometimes happen with pensions, therefore unicorns exist.
I found the American attitude generous, and healing, but isn't there a misprint WidowERS pension. Were there female soldiers in the Confederate Army? Even if it was a widows pension that suggests the lady lived to a VERY considerable age.
Even if it did most of the population have now been double vaccinated and had their boosters, so for most of them Covid will be no more than a cold or flu even if they do get it. We don't require isolation by law if you get flu
The Scottish Government has lost a court battle over legislation which expanded the legal definition of a woman....
The three judges who presided over the appeal said the government did not have the power to have "expanded the definition of women" to include trans women.
Their ruling said that by “incorporating those transsexuals living as women into the definition of woman, the 2018 Act conflates and confuses two separate and distinct protected characteristics”. They said the definition of woman adopted in the Act "impinges on the nature of protected characteristics which is a reserved matter."
As concerns grew in Europe over an imminent Russian invasion of Ukraine, Germany’s foreign minister suggested for the first time on Friday that military action by Moscow could mean the end of Nord Stream 2, a natural-gas pipeline running from Russia to Germany.
NY Times live blog
It's a finely balanced judgment. The Americans fear Nordstream 2 because they believe it would give the Russians the whip hand over Europe whereas Europeans are in favour because they calculate that Russian dependency on eurocash would make them more malleable. The clever thing about it is that the rate of flow can be carefully adjusted at each end, leading to more or less pressure as the situation demands. But obviously it has to be finished, first.
The real problem with NordStream2 that Russia can then cut off countries in the "Near Abroad" without interfering with supplies to Germany etc.
So they can divide an conquer - threaten countries near them and even cut them off, separately to German gas supplies.
The main reason for the project in the first place, was to cut off Ukraine. Gas pipelines are one of their largest sources of hard currency.
UK, EU and friendly countries need to start buying Ukranian goods, mostly foodstuffs. Let them see that trade with the West is always the better option for them.
That of corse is why Maggie and then Major were so supportive of the satellite countries joining the EU and NATO. The expansion of the EU to the East is the best thing to happen to these countries to secure their future peace and prosperity. Britain's role in the EU was as liberator, and well worth the short term cost.
Brexit was playing into Putins hands by weakening it. If we had remained we could be pushing for Ukranian entry.
The EU knew our price to stay in, they refused to pay it so we left. There's not a lot more to it than that. If our membership was as valuable as you say then more fool them for not doing whatever it took to keep us in the tent.
Yep and weakened both ourselves and the EU. Putin must have pissed himself laughing, then Trump too...
Are you implying that the likes of Tusk and Merkel were Putin's useful idiots when they refused to countenance reforming the way free movement works?
It's like the star player of your local team demanding millions to stay. It's a loss to lose him, but would be an even greater loss to pay up and bankrupt the club (and set a precedent). Either way, your rivals are laughing.
Goodness, those poor ethnic Russians being attacked by bad bad Ukraine. I sure hope someone can step in and bring peace and stability to the region. If only someone happened to have 200,000 troops lingering near the Ukraine border.
This is where I think the US/UK tactics have worked rather well. By putting their intelligence into the public domain they are undoubtedly making it harder for the Russians to get even the slightest plausibility about false flag operations etc. The intelligence flights referred to by @Yokes last night show that they are not letting up on this. Its putting Putin in a bit of a spot. Tomorrow is going to be tricky with missiles etc floating about in quite large numbers. If there is going to be an attack it might be the day.
Well, it says "could", which is in itself a reason to ignore...
I'm surprised these modellers have the brass-necked gall to come out with any other predictions!
Why don't they concentrate on making their models actually frigging work by incorporating economists ideas about modelling real human behaviour (as outlined at length by Lilico)?
As concerns grew in Europe over an imminent Russian invasion of Ukraine, Germany’s foreign minister suggested for the first time on Friday that military action by Moscow could mean the end of Nord Stream 2, a natural-gas pipeline running from Russia to Germany.
NY Times live blog
It's a finely balanced judgment. The Americans fear Nordstream 2 because they believe it would give the Russians the whip hand over Europe whereas Europeans are in favour because they calculate that Russian dependency on eurocash would make them more malleable. The clever thing about it is that the rate of flow can be carefully adjusted at each end, leading to more or less pressure as the situation demands. But obviously it has to be finished, first.
The real problem with NordStream2 that Russia can then cut off countries in the "Near Abroad" without interfering with supplies to Germany etc.
So they can divide an conquer - threaten countries near them and even cut them off, separately to German gas supplies.
The main reason for the project in the first place, was to cut off Ukraine. Gas pipelines are one of their largest sources of hard currency.
UK, EU and friendly countries need to start buying Ukranian goods, mostly foodstuffs. Let them see that trade with the West is always the better option for them.
That of corse is why Maggie and then Major were so supportive of the satellite countries joining the EU and NATO. The expansion of the EU to the East is the best thing to happen to these countries to secure their future peace and prosperity. Britain's role in the EU was as liberator, and well worth the short term cost.
Brexit was playing into Putins hands by weakening it. If we had remained we could be pushing for Ukranian entry.
The EU knew our price to stay in, they refused to pay it so we left. There's not a lot more to it than that. If our membership was as valuable as you say then more fool them for not doing whatever it took to keep us in the tent.
Yep and weakened both ourselves and the EU. Putin must have pissed himself laughing, then Trump too...
Are you implying that the likes of Tusk and Merkel were Putin's useful idiots when they refused to countenance reforming the way free movement works?
It's like the star player of your local team demanding millions to stay. It's a loss to lose him, but would be an even greater loss to pay up and bankrupt the club (and set a precedent). Either way, your rivals are laughing.
Yet it's entirely possible that the player will be better off in his next role, and that the club will get on better without the distraction of the constant disagreement.
"Do people judge hurricane risks in the context of gender-based expectations? We use more than six decades of death rates from US hurricanes to show that feminine-named hurricanes cause significantly more deaths than do masculine-named hurricanes. Laboratory experiments indicate that this is because hurricane names lead to gender-based expectations about severity and this, in turn, guides respondents’ preparedness to take protective action."
Let's hope we don't have a trans hurricane then. The confusion would be immense, as people tried to decide whether there was a safe space.
Wasn't it a hurricane that identified as a light storm that got Michael Fish into trouble?
No. It was the duty forecaster at the Met Office.
Incidentally, the Met Office supercomputer in 1987 had less processing power than today's mobile phones.
The most remarkable factoid about the current storm is that its severity was predicted, by the climatic models, before it had even formed as an entity on the weather map. Such are the advances that have been made in long range weather forecasting over the past decade.
The oddest thing about the 1987 storm was that a random civilian took the trouble to call the Met Office and predict a hurricane and instead of just saying 'thanks, we'll let you know' Michael Fish took the trouble of quoting her on the evening forecast simply in order to dismiss it. It does make you wonder if there was more to it than met the eye.
That is a complete misrepresentation of what happened. A lady had heard about a hurricaine in the west indies and rang about that asking if it was coming to the UK. She wasn't predicting anything. He also said that while no hurricane was coming (true) it would be a bit breezy (understatement). What happened was similar to todays storm, with the track not going as expected and also a bit more intense, with the as yet unknown 'sting jet' phenonomen, which caused the real damage in the SE. Its also important to recall that we have had 34 years of improvments in computer modelling of weather and were able to predict Eunice days ago, before it had even started forming. Even with that there was disagreement across the models as recently as two days ago. The MET instituted an internal review after the 1987 storm. Now we have excellent weather warning systems and so far in the UK, no lives have been lost.
There's a photo somewhere of Thatcher being given a tour of the Met Office in front of a conference poster on the 1987 storm. Can't find it right now.
To the credit of all involved the Met Office made a good case for increased investment to produce better weather forecasts and Thatcher's government agreed. It was [the response to] the storm that made the Met Office the world-leading national weather service it is today.
By about 1993, when I had a tour there, they had “The Cray Twins”, two massive state-of-the-art supercomputers, doing the forecasting.
I don't think you can have seen the Cray Twins in 1993. They still had them in 2003 when they moved them down the motorway to Exeter, and I doubt they went a decade between supercomputer upgrades. I saw them in 2002.
The Crays retired in 2004: https://www.theregister.com/2004/06/21/super_met_forecast/ It must have been 93 I saw them, certainly no later than 94.(I was 16 in ‘94, and living a dozen miles form Bracknell). Maybe they upgraded them during their lifetime?
You'd end up going from an intact eyesore to a dilapidated eyesore, hardly an improvement.
Demolish it and build something useful on the site.
It's a pretty impressive concert venue. Guessing you don't like it just because it was New Labour? I mean it was vacuous Blair vanity at the time but certainly isn't now.
I think it would be a shame to dismantle everything about Cool Britannia. It was the last occasion when Britain had anything Great about it. All downhill since.
Wasn't the Dome a Major wheeze?
The Dome wasn't the issue imo, it was the contents. A better plan would have been to build the thing as an arena in the first place, and just put on 'the Millenium show' there. Which imo should have been just like the Royal Edinburgh Military Tattoo crossed with Andre Rieux crossed with the Disney Parade crossed with Last Night of the Proms.
In actual fact, you could have done what they did for the Queen's Golden Jubilee concerts, have two - have a rockier one for 'da kidz' and a more classical one for the crumblies.
Even if it had had to close early due to lack of interest, there would have been no issue, just put a different show on our sell the site early. Easy to say with hindsight.
The major problem with the exhibition in 2000 is that Mandelson et al couldn't decide whether it should be educational or entertaining. So it ended up being neither.
It *was* entertaining. They hired that mad french guy to run it. He popped up on TV all the time trying to ramp his tent of tat. "Just another crazy day at ze Dome" he said when the place got robbed by bulldozer...
Oh you meant the exhibits entertaining? Screw that, they wanted £20 to come in.
£20 to come in? SeanT would be able to say if that's value or not...
Whatever happened to SeanT?
Maybe we miss someone who could put together an interesting sentence, even if his day job was writing whole books of such stuff to people about to board long distance coach journeys from Victoria Coach Station?
All we’ve had since are pale imitations obsessed about UFOs and why he decided, on the day of the vote, to plump for Brexit nearly six years ago.
As concerns grew in Europe over an imminent Russian invasion of Ukraine, Germany’s foreign minister suggested for the first time on Friday that military action by Moscow could mean the end of Nord Stream 2, a natural-gas pipeline running from Russia to Germany.
NY Times live blog
It's a finely balanced judgment. The Americans fear Nordstream 2 because they believe it would give the Russians the whip hand over Europe whereas Europeans are in favour because they calculate that Russian dependency on eurocash would make them more malleable. The clever thing about it is that the rate of flow can be carefully adjusted at each end, leading to more or less pressure as the situation demands. But obviously it has to be finished, first.
The real problem with NordStream2 that Russia can then cut off countries in the "Near Abroad" without interfering with supplies to Germany etc.
So they can divide an conquer - threaten countries near them and even cut them off, separately to German gas supplies.
The main reason for the project in the first place, was to cut off Ukraine. Gas pipelines are one of their largest sources of hard currency.
UK, EU and friendly countries need to start buying Ukranian goods, mostly foodstuffs. Let them see that trade with the West is always the better option for them.
That of corse is why Maggie and then Major were so supportive of the satellite countries joining the EU and NATO. The expansion of the EU to the East is the best thing to happen to these countries to secure their future peace and prosperity. Britain's role in the EU was as liberator, and well worth the short term cost.
Brexit was playing into Putins hands by weakening it. If we had remained we could be pushing for Ukranian entry.
The EU knew our price to stay in, they refused to pay it so we left. There's not a lot more to it than that. If our membership was as valuable as you say then more fool them for not doing whatever it took to keep us in the tent.
Yep and weakened both ourselves and the EU. Putin must have pissed himself laughing, then Trump too...
Putin's next hope is that the useful idiots aka as SNP assist him in his next ambition: the breakup of the United Kingdom
Well, it says "could", which is in itself a reason to ignore...
I'm surprised these modellers have the brass-necked gall to come out with any other predictions!
Why don't they concentrate on making their models actually frigging work by incorporating economists ideas about modelling real human behaviour (as outlined at length by Lilico)?
Because doing it this way gets them headlines in the Guardian.
Goodness, those poor ethnic Russians being attacked by bad bad Ukraine. I sure hope someone can step in and bring peace and stability to the region. If only someone happened to have 200,000 troops lingering near the Ukraine border.
This is where I think the US/UK tactics have worked rather well. By putting their intelligence into the public domain they are undoubtedly making it harder for the Russians to get even the slightest plausibility about false flag operations etc. The intelligence flights referred to by @Yokes last night show that they are not letting up on this. Its putting Putin in a bit of a spot. Tomorrow is going to be tricky with missiles etc floating about in quite large numbers. If there is going to be an attack it might be the day.
I agree, but the Russians could counter-argue that the predictions of a false flag attack by the US and UK were done to give carte blanche for Ukranian actors supported by Western Intelligence to attack the separatists and blame Russia. It would have very little credibility in my opinion, especially as the target has survived, but it's a mirror argument.
As concerns grew in Europe over an imminent Russian invasion of Ukraine, Germany’s foreign minister suggested for the first time on Friday that military action by Moscow could mean the end of Nord Stream 2, a natural-gas pipeline running from Russia to Germany.
NY Times live blog
It's a finely balanced judgment. The Americans fear Nordstream 2 because they believe it would give the Russians the whip hand over Europe whereas Europeans are in favour because they calculate that Russian dependency on eurocash would make them more malleable. The clever thing about it is that the rate of flow can be carefully adjusted at each end, leading to more or less pressure as the situation demands. But obviously it has to be finished, first.
The real problem with NordStream2 that Russia can then cut off countries in the "Near Abroad" without interfering with supplies to Germany etc.
So they can divide an conquer - threaten countries near them and even cut them off, separately to German gas supplies.
The main reason for the project in the first place, was to cut off Ukraine. Gas pipelines are one of their largest sources of hard currency.
UK, EU and friendly countries need to start buying Ukranian goods, mostly foodstuffs. Let them see that trade with the West is always the better option for them.
That of corse is why Maggie and then Major were so supportive of the satellite countries joining the EU and NATO. The expansion of the EU to the East is the best thing to happen to these countries to secure their future peace and prosperity. Britain's role in the EU was as liberator, and well worth the short term cost.
Brexit was playing into Putins hands by weakening it. If we had remained we could be pushing for Ukranian entry.
The EU knew our price to stay in, they refused to pay it so we left. There's not a lot more to it than that. If our membership was as valuable as you say then more fool them for not doing whatever it took to keep us in the tent.
Yep and weakened both ourselves and the EU. Putin must have pissed himself laughing, then Trump too...
Merkel was always Putin's useful idiot when she refused to properly engage with the real issues Dave raised in the sham negotiation. The price wasn't even very high, it was an ideological refusal to admit that the EU could get anything wrong which drove them to refuse Dave's meagre requests and water down his "victories". Had she actually listened the UK wouldn't have left (because people like me could have been won over to vote remain) and the EU would have come out stronger on the other side with a democratic vote of confidence from one of its most sceptical members.
As concerns grew in Europe over an imminent Russian invasion of Ukraine, Germany’s foreign minister suggested for the first time on Friday that military action by Moscow could mean the end of Nord Stream 2, a natural-gas pipeline running from Russia to Germany.
NY Times live blog
It's a finely balanced judgment. The Americans fear Nordstream 2 because they believe it would give the Russians the whip hand over Europe whereas Europeans are in favour because they calculate that Russian dependency on eurocash would make them more malleable. The clever thing about it is that the rate of flow can be carefully adjusted at each end, leading to more or less pressure as the situation demands. But obviously it has to be finished, first.
The real problem with NordStream2 that Russia can then cut off countries in the "Near Abroad" without interfering with supplies to Germany etc.
So they can divide an conquer - threaten countries near them and even cut them off, separately to German gas supplies.
The main reason for the project in the first place, was to cut off Ukraine. Gas pipelines are one of their largest sources of hard currency.
UK, EU and friendly countries need to start buying Ukranian goods, mostly foodstuffs. Let them see that trade with the West is always the better option for them.
That of course is why Maggie and then Major were so supportive of the satellite countries joining the EU and NATO. The expansion of the EU to the East is the best thing to happen to these countries to secure their future peace and prosperity. Britain's role in the EU was as liberator, and well worth the short term cost.
Brexit was playing into Putins hands by weakening it. If we had remained we could be pushing for Ukranian entry.
Certainly Ukraine needs to travel some distance before it meets the accession criteria, but it's a great ambition. It would be really good for Ukraine to have them firmly on that track.
There may be potential for a compromise if EU membership is tolerated by Russia but explicitly not (perhaps even based on an agreement not) as a stepping stone to join NATO. Then those countries could benefit from the EU's economical development assistance (such as it is), but wouldn't threaten Russia militarily.
Given that it’s EU membership which bothers Putin most, that’s exceedingly unlikely. NATO membership isn’t a as much of threat to Putin’s Russia as the possibility of Ukraine becoming a prosperous democracy.
As concerns grew in Europe over an imminent Russian invasion of Ukraine, Germany’s foreign minister suggested for the first time on Friday that military action by Moscow could mean the end of Nord Stream 2, a natural-gas pipeline running from Russia to Germany.
NY Times live blog
It's a finely balanced judgment. The Americans fear Nordstream 2 because they believe it would give the Russians the whip hand over Europe whereas Europeans are in favour because they calculate that Russian dependency on eurocash would make them more malleable. The clever thing about it is that the rate of flow can be carefully adjusted at each end, leading to more or less pressure as the situation demands. But obviously it has to be finished, first.
The real problem with NordStream2 that Russia can then cut off countries in the "Near Abroad" without interfering with supplies to Germany etc.
So they can divide an conquer - threaten countries near them and even cut them off, separately to German gas supplies.
The main reason for the project in the first place, was to cut off Ukraine. Gas pipelines are one of their largest sources of hard currency.
UK, EU and friendly countries need to start buying Ukranian goods, mostly foodstuffs. Let them see that trade with the West is always the better option for them.
That of corse is why Maggie and then Major were so supportive of the satellite countries joining the EU and NATO. The expansion of the EU to the East is the best thing to happen to these countries to secure their future peace and prosperity. Britain's role in the EU was as liberator, and well worth the short term cost.
Brexit was playing into Putins hands by weakening it. If we had remained we could be pushing for Ukranian entry.
The EU knew our price to stay in, they refused to pay it so we left. There's not a lot more to it than that. If our membership was as valuable as you say then more fool them for not doing whatever it took to keep us in the tent.
Yep and weakened both ourselves and the EU. Putin must have pissed himself laughing, then Trump too...
Are you implying that the likes of Tusk and Merkel were Putin's useful idiots when they refused to countenance reforming the way free movement works?
Oh, Paul, that is an absurd post, even by your recent standards. They were not ever going to countenance reforming free movement. Free movement was a central tenet and was agreed by the UK and when the EU expanded East (largely driven by UK policy) we deliberately embraced it. The huge irony is that we will have lost the benefits of free movement but over time we will see no reduction in immigration. Another example of the pointlessness of Brexit.
Rather bizarrely, Scottish Green MSP Ross Greer has decided to double-down on the already bizarre decision of the SNP to sow confusion about Scots pensions.
Apparently, the fact that, after the American Civil War, the victorious Union Govt went on to pay the pensions of the losing Confederates is a useful debating point when considering what might happen after Indy...
To be fair, it was news to me that the the last widowers' pension for a Confederate service personnel was paid out in 2012.
Believe Scottish Green AND Spectator are in error re: Civil War pensions to Confederate veterans & their dependents. (Texas v White having zero to do with this issue, as any semi-learned lawyer could have told the latter.)
Because IIRC the United States NEVER paid one cent in pensions based on service in CSA, which of course attempted to overthrow the US government in rather overt fashion (not even wrapping themselves in the Stars and Stripes like #45 & co-conspirators).
Instead, pensions to Confederate vets & dependents were paid out by STATE governments.
Not the first time that Brits are baffled by US federalism!
As concerns grew in Europe over an imminent Russian invasion of Ukraine, Germany’s foreign minister suggested for the first time on Friday that military action by Moscow could mean the end of Nord Stream 2, a natural-gas pipeline running from Russia to Germany.
NY Times live blog
It's a finely balanced judgment. The Americans fear Nordstream 2 because they believe it would give the Russians the whip hand over Europe whereas Europeans are in favour because they calculate that Russian dependency on eurocash would make them more malleable. The clever thing about it is that the rate of flow can be carefully adjusted at each end, leading to more or less pressure as the situation demands. But obviously it has to be finished, first.
The real problem with NordStream2 that Russia can then cut off countries in the "Near Abroad" without interfering with supplies to Germany etc.
So they can divide an conquer - threaten countries near them and even cut them off, separately to German gas supplies.
The main reason for the project in the first place, was to cut off Ukraine. Gas pipelines are one of their largest sources of hard currency.
UK, EU and friendly countries need to start buying Ukranian goods, mostly foodstuffs. Let them see that trade with the West is always the better option for them.
That of corse is why Maggie and then Major were so supportive of the satellite countries joining the EU and NATO. The expansion of the EU to the East is the best thing to happen to these countries to secure their future peace and prosperity. Britain's role in the EU was as liberator, and well worth the short term cost.
Brexit was playing into Putins hands by weakening it. If we had remained we could be pushing for Ukranian entry.
The EU knew our price to stay in, they refused to pay it so we left. There's not a lot more to it than that. If our membership was as valuable as you say then more fool them for not doing whatever it took to keep us in the tent.
Yep and weakened both ourselves and the EU. Putin must have pissed himself laughing, then Trump too...
Merkel was always Putin's useful idiot when she refused to properly engage with the real issues Dave raised in the sham negotiation. The price wasn't even very high, it was an ideological refusal to admit that the EU could get anything wrong which drove them to refuse Dave's meagre requests and water down his "victories". Had she actually listened the UK wouldn't have left (because people like me could have been won over to vote remain) and the EU would have come out stronger on the other side with a democratic vote of confidence from one of its most sceptical members.
C'est la vie.
Merkel is not to blame for the pathetic nature of Cameron's negotiation. His requests from the start were inadequate, driven by what I believe to be his desire to see the UK at the heart of the EU, with no exemptions, and his overconfidence that he could deliver this by browbeating the public. Therefore instead of opting the UK out of ever closer union, he made a silly demand that the whole EU needed to step away from ever closer union. A convincing semi-detachment of the UK from the EU could have been managed and could have been accepted by all but the most hardcore.
As concerns grew in Europe over an imminent Russian invasion of Ukraine, Germany’s foreign minister suggested for the first time on Friday that military action by Moscow could mean the end of Nord Stream 2, a natural-gas pipeline running from Russia to Germany.
NY Times live blog
It's a finely balanced judgment. The Americans fear Nordstream 2 because they believe it would give the Russians the whip hand over Europe whereas Europeans are in favour because they calculate that Russian dependency on eurocash would make them more malleable. The clever thing about it is that the rate of flow can be carefully adjusted at each end, leading to more or less pressure as the situation demands. But obviously it has to be finished, first.
The real problem with NordStream2 that Russia can then cut off countries in the "Near Abroad" without interfering with supplies to Germany etc.
So they can divide an conquer - threaten countries near them and even cut them off, separately to German gas supplies.
The main reason for the project in the first place, was to cut off Ukraine. Gas pipelines are one of their largest sources of hard currency.
UK, EU and friendly countries need to start buying Ukranian goods, mostly foodstuffs. Let them see that trade with the West is always the better option for them.
That of corse is why Maggie and then Major were so supportive of the satellite countries joining the EU and NATO. The expansion of the EU to the East is the best thing to happen to these countries to secure their future peace and prosperity. Britain's role in the EU was as liberator, and well worth the short term cost.
Brexit was playing into Putins hands by weakening it. If we had remained we could be pushing for Ukranian entry.
The EU knew our price to stay in, they refused to pay it so we left. There's not a lot more to it than that. If our membership was as valuable as you say then more fool them for not doing whatever it took to keep us in the tent.
Yep and weakened both ourselves and the EU. Putin must have pissed himself laughing, then Trump too...
Putin's next hope is that the useful idiots aka as SNP assist him in his next ambition: the breakup of the United Kingdom
If that happened and the SNP government of an independent Scotland then refused to join NATO that would be even better, it would offer him an open door
Comments
The whole design was to separate deliveries to Western Europe from those to East Europe.
To the credit of all involved the Met Office made a good case for increased investment to produce better weather forecasts and Thatcher's government agreed. It was [the response to] the storm that made the Met Office the world-leading national weather service it is today.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irene_Triplett
Given it's a (rough) coalition, I'm surprised Sturgeon hasn't put her foot down.
UK, EU and friendly countries need to start buying Ukranian goods, mostly foodstuffs. Let them see that trade with the West is always the better option for them.
Let's remember that they had the confidence to name Eunice even before Dudley arrived. That's a massive advance on what used to be the case.
https://today.yougov.com/topics/international/explore/public_figure/Prince_Harry
https://today.yougov.com/topics/international/explore/public_figure/Meghan_Duchess_of_Sussex
max seddon
@maxseddon
·
12m
Russian state media now claiming a "powerful explosion" happened in Donetsk near the separatist government HQ
https://twitter.com/maxseddon
It's really hard to produce a better forecast than persistence. It took a long time.
Sarah Rainsford
@sarahrainsford
Putin now says the Emergencies Ministry teams flying to Rostov to manage outflow of people from the Donbas
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NnxjZ-aFkjs
I'd say she was predicting, and there was no mention of the West Indies.
I agree about 34 years of improved forecasting. We shouldn't forget that poor Robert Fitzroy was driven to suicide because of the Met Office's uneven record.
Until I got back and saw the sorry state of my roof, obvs. Still, a small price to pay for the island chalking up another spot in the book of English weather records...
Tbf there are tens & tens of thousands of them blokes so it's hard to separate the wheat from the chaff.
In 1987, less than 12 hours before the storm struck, we had no idea what was going to happen.
In 2022, four days in advance it was known that a storm would arrive that was sufficiently dangerous to warrant being named.
How is that not an impressive advance?
Meanwhile the Portsmouth catamaran is on its way to the island, so you'll all be relieved to know that you are cut off no longer.
The Argentine media was full of garbage and made up conspiracy theories. They are still claiming, IIRC to have sunk an aircraft carrier that was secretly replaced....
One reason I think Labour did rather well in 2017, was that it was able to appeal to both Brexit and Remain voters. They commited to enact the referendum result, but were themselves not the authors of Brexit. But in committing to another referendum in 2019, they picked a side (as every party was forced to at that point).
Now, passionate Rejoin voters are unlikely to vote Tory anyway, particularly if Johnson, Sunak or Truss is Tory leader. By suggesting that the Brexit war is over, Starmer signals to Labour Brexit voters that it is safe to vote Labour without reopening the Brexit debate. For someone like me, who might want the freedom to vote Lib Dem without voting for the whole 'Bollocks to Brexit' business, this is also now, potentially, a safe option, as we need no longer fear constant referendums or constitutional reversals under a non-Tory government.
At least, that's probably the Starmer plan, anyway... Let's see if it works.
Even if it was a widows pension that suggests the lady lived to a VERY considerable age.
Pro DPR sources allege that a huge explosion took place near the government building of the DPR
https://twitter.com/NotWoofers/status/1494704957592854535
Khan-Brook. Nothing much to say we know what the dynamics are. Khan is fast and tricky to hit and if he doesn't let himself get pulled into a toe-to-toe has a live chance of tagging Brook and putting him down. Brook however has the timing and needs to stay around until Khan slows down and then time his attack and ka-pow. They are not as fast or good at timing respectively as they were. So really a close one.
I think Brook wants it more. He has wanted it as we know for years and years and there is an evident frustration not to say demons that he wants to exorcise.
I want to say a Khan win in six but I just think Brook might out aggress him. Yes hedging my bets because it is a genuinely intriguing fight.
bf odds are nothing to get excited about either way.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/18/opinion/space-china-billionaires.html
Worse still for Macron is that a big chunk of that €2bn is going towards Hinkley Point C and keeping that project on track as there's loads of penalties building up for EDF for late delivery at the moment.
Whilst the Ralph Fiennes / Uma Thurman movie had its... compensations... it was almost as terrible as everyone said it was.
https://twitter.com/ragipsoylu/status/1494713254257598466
https://twitter.com/NotWoofers/status/1494714549848752130
If they don't he will be re elected comfortably, if they do it could still be very close
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_storm_of_1987#Criticism_of_the_Met_Office
i obviously don't deny we've come a long way in 30 years, but our forecasting ability is nowhere near as good as is sometimes made out.
Mmm.
Brexit was playing into Putins hands by weakening it. If we had remained we could be pushing for Ukranian entry.
https://twitter.com/Lucian_Kim/status/1494713336637886471
And they didn't because then their lights risked going out.
1. Would any of this be happening were it not for Brexit?
2. What implications does the survival of Major General Sinenkov have for the Scottish independence movement?
https://nypost.com/2020/06/04/last-person-to-receive-pension-from-us-civil-war-dead-at-90/
https://twitter.com/MoniqueCamarra/status/1494698770365304837
Modelling group warns sudden change could lead to ‘rapid epidemic growth’ as PM expected to scrap rules in England
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/feb/18/ending-covid-tests-and-isolation-may-cause-rapid-rise-in-virus-say-experts
TL;DR - it's the Warwick modellers again. Ignore.
The three judges who presided over the appeal said the government did not have the power to have "expanded the definition of women" to include trans women.
Their ruling said that by “incorporating those transsexuals living as women into the definition of woman, the 2018 Act conflates and confuses two separate and distinct protected characteristics”. They said the definition of woman adopted in the Act "impinges on the nature of protected characteristics which is a reserved matter."
https://www.holyrood.com/news/view,scottish-government-lose-court-battle-over-redefinition-of-women
Tomorrow is going to be tricky with missiles etc floating about in quite large numbers. If there is going to be an attack it might be the day.
Why don't they concentrate on making their models actually frigging work by incorporating economists ideas about modelling real human behaviour (as outlined at length by Lilico)?
https://www.theregister.com/2004/06/21/super_met_forecast/
It must have been 93 I saw them, certainly no later than 94.(I was 16 in ‘94, and living a dozen miles form Bracknell). Maybe they upgraded them during their lifetime?
C'est la vie.
NATO membership isn’t a as much of threat to Putin’s Russia as the possibility of Ukraine becoming a prosperous democracy.
Because IIRC the United States NEVER paid one cent in pensions based on service in CSA, which of course attempted to overthrow the US government in rather overt fashion (not even wrapping themselves in the Stars and Stripes like #45 & co-conspirators).
Instead, pensions to Confederate vets & dependents were paid out by STATE governments.
Not the first time that Brits are baffled by US federalism!
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/02/defending-ukraine/622063/
They make a lot of outlandish claims about Ukrainian aggression regularly. First time I have seen them mention something like this though.
Will update when I hear more.
Their claims are usually focused making Ukraine look like the aggressor. I don't see how this report helps them in that aim.
https://twitter.com/OAlexanderDK/status/1494721666361999362