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The outcast in Anchorage: A senate storm brews in Alaska – politicalbetting.com

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  • MoonRabbitMoonRabbit Posts: 13,400
    Leon said:

    kinabalu said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Farooq said:

    Leon said:

    Fck me, I immediately thought this was a piece from years ago, but last week. The Spikedtator..




    It’s a perfectly legitimate view. One held by Emmanuel Macron, I believe

    The Putin of 10 years ago was a very different beast. Lucid, clever, sane. A ruthless patriot, a brutal soldier, but amenable to logic. Perhaps we could have handled him better; certainly our rapid expansion of NATO right up to his borders, immediately after the humiliating collapse of the USSR now appears questionable

    Does any of this excuse Putin’s satanic and pointless assault on Ukraine? Of course not. It’s pure evil. It’s also pointless even for mad dog Putin, it might well backfire quickly and even if he “wins” in the short term he loses in the end. What’s the endgame for him? I can’t see a good one
    Your analysis doesn't account for the long gap -- some 6-8 years -- between the Baltic states' accession to NATO and Putin going "bad".

    It's easy to compress timelines when looking at the past, but Putin was acting fairly sensibly long after 2004. All the attempts to explain this in terms of NATO membership or the Iraq war fall down on the same point, and until someone even tries to account for that huge time lag, I do not take such a view seriously.
    You might be right. I’d have to go back and look
    at the timelines. But we agree there was a time when Putin was “sensible” - and that seems to be Liddle’s point (tho I haven’t read the article, just the headline, and Liddle does say some foolish things to provoke)

    Either way Andrew Neil is quite right. One big reason we hate the new mad Putin is that he wants to crush free speech and dissent. Free speech means seeing printed opinions you might fiercely dislike
    Free speech also means being allowed to whine about Woke and being cancelled when someone highlights all-to-predictable contrarianism, or in this case just reproduces an image of the headline of an article. Then everyone can point & laugh at those whiners and their endless attempts to pretend being challenged is some kind of censorship.

    It’s great.
    In my experience, criticism of the Spectator nearly always comes from a peculiar subset of people who genuinely dislike its viewpoint yet secretly would love to be published inside it, as it is so prestigious. A curious phenomenon
    It's interesting. A decade or so ago I was a regular reader of the Speccy and found it a pleasant zippy-in-places recreational read. I now see it as bow-tie reactionary faux man-of-the-world drivel you'd have to pay me serious money to allow through the letterbox. So, has it changed or have I changed? Bit of both, I guess, but I think it's mainly me. The last 10 or 12 years, coinciding with not having to earn a living, I've made a concerted effort to really *think* about things rather than forever chasing around in a daze, swilling coffee, running for trains and planes, and it's made a big difference. It's been the decade of my enlightenment - with my Spectator habit one of its minor casualties.
    lol. It seems to be coping without your subscription
    Maybe They must be paying for cheaper, step down in quality, hacks.
  • JosiasJessopJosiasJessop Posts: 42,371
    MattW said:

    Chameleon said:

    https://twitter.com/JimmySecUK/status/1497500029099118594

    Another Russian supply convoy wiped out.

    The baffling failure of Russian air power and ability to defend it's own supply lines make no sense. Mavbe he really did expect Ukraine to just roll over?

    I'm inclined to think that "somebody* on the Russian side is a little complacent, or over-confident.

    It must require a large number of assumptions about risk to line up 90 helicopters parked nose to tail on a road 20-25 miles inside Belarus.



    https://www.militarytimes.com/news/your-military/2022/02/25/new-images-show-about-150-helicopters-large-ground-force-100-miles-from-kyiv/
    RAF Basingbourn (still an MOD site) is just down the road from me. It was home to B17 aircraft of the USAAF.

    Nearby there is a stately home, Wimpole Hall, which coincidentally had a wide two-mile long avenue stretching between it and the base. So the air force used it as distributed parking for their aircraft - and there are photos of these massive bombers arrayed along it.

    Whenever I walk the avenue, I think of what it must have been like with all those bombers there.

    https://www.wimpolepast.org/323rd_memorial.asp
  • Leon said:

    I have tall, floor-to-ceiling sash windows in my London flat. Facing directly south

    Every year, in late winter/early spring, there is a day when the sun shines so bright it warms my entire flat - like the heating is on, yet it isn't - and I actually have to open the windows to cool things off.

    This is that day, in 2022. It is normally a wonderful day. The departure of winter. Like seeing the first daffodils in a meadow

    *sigh*

    Friend, the daffodils are Ukraine yellow, the sky Ukraine blue. Take it as a sign that the natural order is with them - and rejoice.
    It's where O'Brien (as in 1984, not LBC) was wrong. The boot never gets to stamp on the human face forever. Winter may go on too long, it may return, not everyone will survive it, and all that is horrible to contemplate.

    But spring always comes.
  • kinabalu said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Farooq said:

    Leon said:

    Fck me, I immediately thought this was a piece from years ago, but last week. The Spikedtator..




    It’s a perfectly legitimate view. One held by Emmanuel Macron, I believe

    The Putin of 10 years ago was a very different beast. Lucid, clever, sane. A ruthless patriot, a brutal soldier, but amenable to logic. Perhaps we could have handled him better; certainly our rapid expansion of NATO right up to his borders, immediately after the humiliating collapse of the USSR now appears questionable

    Does any of this excuse Putin’s satanic and pointless assault on Ukraine? Of course not. It’s pure evil. It’s also pointless even for mad dog Putin, it might well backfire quickly and even if he “wins” in the short term he loses in the end. What’s the endgame for him? I can’t see a good one
    Your analysis doesn't account for the long gap -- some 6-8 years -- between the Baltic states' accession to NATO and Putin going "bad".

    It's easy to compress timelines when looking at the past, but Putin was acting fairly sensibly long after 2004. All the attempts to explain this in terms of NATO membership or the Iraq war fall down on the same point, and until someone even tries to account for that huge time lag, I do not take such a view seriously.
    You might be right. I’d have to go back and look
    at the timelines. But we agree there was a time when Putin was “sensible” - and that seems to be Liddle’s point (tho I haven’t read the article, just the headline, and Liddle does say some foolish things to provoke)

    Either way Andrew Neil is quite right. One big reason we hate the new mad Putin is that he wants to crush free speech and dissent. Free speech means seeing printed opinions you might fiercely dislike
    Free speech also means being allowed to whine about Woke and being cancelled when someone highlights all-to-predictable contrarianism, or in this case just reproduces an image of the headline of an article. Then everyone can point & laugh at those whiners and their endless attempts to pretend being challenged is some kind of censorship.

    It’s great.
    In my experience, criticism of the Spectator nearly always comes from a peculiar subset of people who genuinely dislike its viewpoint yet secretly would love to be published inside it, as it is so prestigious. A curious phenomenon
    It's interesting. A decade or so ago I was a regular reader of the Speccy and found it a pleasant zippy-in-places recreational read. I now see it as bow-tie reactionary faux man-of-the-world drivel you'd have to pay me serious money to allow through the letterbox. So, has it changed or have I changed? Bit of both, I guess, but I think it's mainly me. The last 10 or 12 years, coinciding with not having to earn a living, I've made a concerted effort to really *think* about things rather than forever chasing around in a daze, swilling coffee, running for trains and planes, and it's made a big difference. It's been the decade of my enlightenment - with my Spectator habit one of its minor casualties.
    I think you missed out a third and most important possibility. It is not that you or the Speccy have changed so much as that the world has changed. It has become exponentially more polarized and treading a line through the middle of that as a commentator or reacting to commentary without slipping off the knife edge in the middle onto one slippery slope or another has become hugely more difficult.
  • LeonLeon Posts: 54,905
    This is a fascinating subplot to the war. Eastern Europe turning on Germany. It's not just Ukraine


    “It’s in Poland’s interest that Ukraine wins this war, but it’s not in Germany’s interest,” says one of Poland’s main geopolitical experts @BartosiakJacek

    🇵🇱🇺🇦🇩🇪

    https://twitter.com/visegrad24/status/1497198633246154756?s=20&t=G_q2S_ZCwuxeyVs1BfFChw
  • Dura_AceDura_Ace Posts: 13,677
    Jonathan said:

    Lots of wishful thinking here I fear. Alas.

    Isn't there just. It's like me watching Leeds.
  • Big_G_NorthWalesBig_G_NorthWales Posts: 62,873
    edited February 2022
    Scott_xP said:

    Exclusive:

    Labour calls on Boris Johnson to expel the Russian ambassador to the UK

    "The Russian ambassador is parroting the lies of Putin’s rogue regime, which is waging an illegal war against Ukraine," David Lammy says

    https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/russia-boris-johnson-ukraine-invasion-ambassador-b2023891.html

    I do not understand why Labour think this will help in the longer run other than it being a knee jerk reaction

    Only if the US and EU were to eject their Russian ambassadors would it make sense for us to do the same

    Rather immature from Lammy

  • LeonLeon Posts: 54,905
    Dura_Ace said:

    Jonathan said:

    Lots of wishful thinking here I fear. Alas.

    Isn't there just. It's like me watching Leeds.
    You told us the sheer cultural power of the cheese souffle would persuade Putin to back down
  • MarqueeMarkMarqueeMark Posts: 52,454
    biggles said:

    Sean_F said:

    Dura_Ace said:

    Blimey...

    David Clark 🇺🇦

    @David_K_Clark·3h

    The Russians are struggling and taking heavy casualties. They are beatable. Our best chance to defeat Putin’s threat to Europe is now. We should be giving Ukraine everything it wants. Despite the risks, that should include a no-fly zone. Putin’s victory would be the greater risk.

    https://twitter.com/David_K_Clark/status/1497490959235440641


    David Clark 🇺🇦
    @David_K_Clark·3h

    He will not nuke us because we’ve shot down some of his planes.

    Fucking ludicrous. To do a No Fly Zone you've got to be prepared to a) shoot down Russian aircraft and b) do SEAD/DEAD on the Russian side of the border.

    NFZ is basically speedrunning the process of going to war with Russia.
    So far, the Russian military is resembling a paper tiger.
    I must admit, I did enjoy reading in the Telegraph this morning how British anti-tank weapons are taking out Russian armour near Kharkiv.

    Ukrainian soldiers were shouting 'God Save The Queen', after successful strikes.
    Just saw that and made me smile. We have sent them 2000 of 20k apparently. Send the rest!
    Bloody hell, that's a lot carnage. If the Stingers are in the hundreds too, that is a very significant contribution to how this war is going to unfold.
  • AslanAslan Posts: 1,673
    Ukrainian soldier saying goodbye to his kids and dog:

    https://www.reddit.com/r/ukraine/comments/t1pfa0/ukrainian_soldier_saying_goodbye_to_daughter_and/

    And Europeans still vacillitating to block the Russians from SWIFT.
  • kle4kle4 Posts: 95,979
    Scott_xP said:

    makes it far more likely that Ukraine will eventually end up inside NATO and, if they want, the EU.

    It's a bold move by VZ to push on EU candidate membership. One of the main cases against Ukraine joining over time has been reluctance to provoke Russia. That has somewhat fallen by default now (the clause on "good neighbourly relations" ditto). https://twitter.com/ZelenskyyUa/status/1497502946480869378
    Cant see the EU letting them join, even now (pending meeting other criteria of course). Various nations would still call it an escalation.
  • kle4kle4 Posts: 95,979
    biggles said:

    Sean_F said:

    Dura_Ace said:

    Blimey...

    David Clark 🇺🇦

    @David_K_Clark·3h

    The Russians are struggling and taking heavy casualties. They are beatable. Our best chance to defeat Putin’s threat to Europe is now. We should be giving Ukraine everything it wants. Despite the risks, that should include a no-fly zone. Putin’s victory would be the greater risk.

    https://twitter.com/David_K_Clark/status/1497490959235440641


    David Clark 🇺🇦
    @David_K_Clark·3h

    He will not nuke us because we’ve shot down some of his planes.

    Fucking ludicrous. To do a No Fly Zone you've got to be prepared to a) shoot down Russian aircraft and b) do SEAD/DEAD on the Russian side of the border.

    NFZ is basically speedrunning the process of going to war with Russia.
    So far, the Russian military is resembling a paper tiger.
    I must admit, I did enjoy reading in the Telegraph this morning how British anti-tank weapons are taking out Russian armour near Kharkiv.

    Ukrainian soldiers were shouting 'God Save The Queen', after successful strikes.
    Just saw that and made me smile. We have sent them 2000 of 20k apparently. Send the rest!
    Apparently they have an expiry date, so might as well
  • BigRichBigRich Posts: 3,492
    Dura_Ace said:

    Text from my oldest Russian friend (the one I went to fucking Vladivostok with to buy a JDM Pajero). He has lived and worked in Kyeeff for years.

    COMRADE IS RUNNING. XAXAXA.

    (XAXA = Russian LOL)

    There's your real time reportage from the front line.

    I know the Russian sense of hummer is different form ours and sometimes dark, but can somebody explain this?

    by 'COMRADE IS RUNNING' is he joking that the Russian army is running away? or the Ukrainians are?
  • pingping Posts: 3,805
    edited February 2022
    I wonder if, what ultimately will do it for Putin, is the last few years of budget cuts etc, that have enabled him to balance his budget and build up his war chest.

    He’ll have to rely on ever greater repression to stifle dissent. That strategy has its limits.

    If he gets bogged down in an expensive war, what does he do, then?

    Slashing budgets further - along with shaking down the oligarchs is pretty high risk, but that’s probably what he’ll have to do.

    Interesting times for Vlad.
  • MightyAlexMightyAlex Posts: 1,650
    Leon said:

    Germany, WTAF


    "Ukraine’s Ambassador to Germany, Andrij Melnyk, says he is baffled by the response he has received from German officials after asking for military aid.

    He says that ministers he has talked to say “you Ukrainians have only a few hours left. There is no point in helping you now”.
    Show this thread"



    https://twitter.com/visegrad24/status/1497528484868071424?s=20&t=Vx3tabRTJfv-XPumhPzI0g

    Ah the Yes Minister approach.
  • ChameleonChameleon Posts: 4,264
    The Ukrainian MoD is getting really quite graphic. They've just posted a video clearly showing 5+ Russians who have burnt to death trying to escape from their Rosgvardiya vehicle, then panning up to show many more Rosgvardiya vehicles reduced to husks. Just tragic.

    It's weird that we haven't seen evidence of the crashed IL-76s, especially given that the US have confirmed the downings. But there's plenty of evidence that Russians are taking massive casualties from some of their shody practices.
  • Another soldier:

    https://twitter.com/ArmedForcesUkr/status/1497547507697696770?

    - Mom, dad, I didn't want to go to Ukraine. They said that we were going to military training with 25th brigade and then at night of Feb 23rd they said that we are going to Ukraine to cross the border. I didn't want that.
    - (Operator) Where are you now?
    - Kharkiv
    ...

    https://twitter.com/TheLamb93505287/status/1497547455721885699?s=20&t=EUvY3kiYJCowv9OcZHzyhw
  • Dura_AceDura_Ace Posts: 13,677
    BigRich said:

    Dura_Ace said:

    Text from my oldest Russian friend (the one I went to fucking Vladivostok with to buy a JDM Pajero). He has lived and worked in Kyeeff for years.

    COMRADE IS RUNNING. XAXAXA.

    (XAXA = Russian LOL)

    There's your real time reportage from the front line.

    I know the Russian sense of hummer is different form ours and sometimes dark, but can somebody explain this?

    by 'COMRADE IS RUNNING' is he joking that the Russian army is running away? or the Ukrainians are?
    He is referring to himself. He is running west toward Poland. In a Hyundai Kona so he's probably dead now.
  • philiphphiliph Posts: 4,704

    MattW said:

    Chameleon said:

    https://twitter.com/JimmySecUK/status/1497500029099118594

    Another Russian supply convoy wiped out.

    The baffling failure of Russian air power and ability to defend it's own supply lines make no sense. Mavbe he really did expect Ukraine to just roll over?

    I'm inclined to think that "somebody* on the Russian side is a little complacent, or over-confident.

    It must require a large number of assumptions about risk to line up 90 helicopters parked nose to tail on a road 20-25 miles inside Belarus.



    https://www.militarytimes.com/news/your-military/2022/02/25/new-images-show-about-150-helicopters-large-ground-force-100-miles-from-kyiv/
    RAF Basingbourn (still an MOD site) is just down the road from me. It was home to B17 aircraft of the USAAF.

    Nearby there is a stately home, Wimpole Hall, which coincidentally had a wide two-mile long avenue stretching between it and the base. So the air force used it as distributed parking for their aircraft - and there are photos of these massive bombers arrayed along it.

    Whenever I walk the avenue, I think of what it must have been like with all those bombers there.

    https://www.wimpolepast.org/323rd_memorial.asp
    I've landed at Bassingbourne :)
  • Leon said:

    kinabalu said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Farooq said:

    Leon said:

    Fck me, I immediately thought this was a piece from years ago, but last week. The Spikedtator..




    It’s a perfectly legitimate view. One held by Emmanuel Macron, I believe

    The Putin of 10 years ago was a very different beast. Lucid, clever, sane. A ruthless patriot, a brutal soldier, but amenable to logic. Perhaps we could have handled him better; certainly our rapid expansion of NATO right up to his borders, immediately after the humiliating collapse of the USSR now appears questionable

    Does any of this excuse Putin’s satanic and pointless assault on Ukraine? Of course not. It’s pure evil. It’s also pointless even for mad dog Putin, it might well backfire quickly and even if he “wins” in the short term he loses in the end. What’s the endgame for him? I can’t see a good one
    Your analysis doesn't account for the long gap -- some 6-8 years -- between the Baltic states' accession to NATO and Putin going "bad".

    It's easy to compress timelines when looking at the past, but Putin was acting fairly sensibly long after 2004. All the attempts to explain this in terms of NATO membership or the Iraq war fall down on the same point, and until someone even tries to account for that huge time lag, I do not take such a view seriously.
    You might be right. I’d have to go back and look
    at the timelines. But we agree there was a time when Putin was “sensible” - and that seems to be Liddle’s point (tho I haven’t read the article, just the headline, and Liddle does say some foolish things to provoke)

    Either way Andrew Neil is quite right. One big reason we hate the new mad Putin is that he wants to crush free speech and dissent. Free speech means seeing printed opinions you might fiercely dislike
    Free speech also means being allowed to whine about Woke and being cancelled when someone highlights all-to-predictable contrarianism, or in this case just reproduces an image of the headline of an article. Then everyone can point & laugh at those whiners and their endless attempts to pretend being challenged is some kind of censorship.

    It’s great.
    In my experience, criticism of the Spectator nearly always comes from a peculiar subset of people who genuinely dislike its viewpoint yet secretly would love to be published inside it, as it is so prestigious. A curious phenomenon
    It's interesting. A decade or so ago I was a regular reader of the Speccy and found it a pleasant zippy-in-places recreational read. I now see it as bow-tie reactionary faux man-of-the-world drivel you'd have to pay me serious money to allow through the letterbox. So, has it changed or have I changed? Bit of both, I guess, but I think it's mainly me. The last 10 or 12 years, coinciding with not having to earn a living, I've made a concerted effort to really *think* about things rather than forever chasing around in a daze, swilling coffee, running for trains and planes, and it's made a big difference. It's been the decade of my enlightenment - with my Spectator habit one of its minor casualties.
    lol. It seems to be coping without your subscription
    Maybe They must be paying for cheaper, step down in quality, hacks.
    I doubt they need to. The Speccy has a subscription of 112,000 and rising.

    It is also now the longest running current affairs magazine in history.
  • GallowgateGallowgate Posts: 19,437
    kinabalu said:

    Dura_Ace said:

    Blimey...

    David Clark 🇺🇦

    @David_K_Clark·3h

    The Russians are struggling and taking heavy casualties. They are beatable. Our best chance to defeat Putin’s threat to Europe is now. We should be giving Ukraine everything it wants. Despite the risks, that should include a no-fly zone. Putin’s victory would be the greater risk.

    https://twitter.com/David_K_Clark/status/1497490959235440641


    David Clark 🇺🇦
    @David_K_Clark·3h

    He will not nuke us because we’ve shot down some of his planes.

    Fucking ludicrous. To do a No Fly Zone you've got to be prepared to a) shoot down Russian aircraft and b) do SEAD/DEAD on the Russian side of the border.

    NFZ is basically speedrunning the process of going to war with Russia.
    I'd be worried if a mindset that denigrates any solution not flirting with WW3 as "appeasement" starts to take hold in influential places.
    Russia is literally flirting with WW3. By invading Ukraine. There is no getting away from that.
  • Carnyx said:

    Carnyx said:

    Leon said:

    Farooq said:

    Leon said:

    Fck me, I immediately thought this was a piece from years ago, but last week. The Spikedtator..




    It’s a perfectly legitimate view. One held by Emmanuel Macron, I believe

    The Putin of 10 years ago was a very different beast. Lucid, clever, sane. A ruthless patriot, a brutal soldier, but amenable to logic. Perhaps we could have handled him better; certainly our rapid expansion of NATO right up to his borders, immediately after the humiliating collapse of the USSR now appears questionable

    Does any of this excuse Putin’s satanic and pointless assault on Ukraine? Of course not. It’s pure evil. It’s also pointless even for mad dog Putin, it might well backfire quickly and even if he “wins” in the short term he loses in the end. What’s the endgame for him? I can’t see a good one
    Your analysis doesn't account for the long gap -- some 6-8 years -- between the Baltic states' accession to NATO and Putin going "bad".

    It's easy to compress timelines when looking at the past, but Putin was acting fairly sensibly long after 2004. All the attempts to explain this in terms of NATO membership or the Iraq war fall down on the same point, and until someone even tries to account for that huge time lag, I do not take such a view seriously.
    You might be right. I’d have to go back and look
    at the timelines. But we agree there was a time when Putin was “sensible” - and that seems to be Liddle’s point (tho I haven’t read the article, just the headline, and Liddle does say some foolish things to provoke)

    Either way Andrew Neil is quite right. One big reason we hate the new mad Putin is that he wants to crush free speech and dissent. Free speech means seeing printed opinions you might fiercely dislike
    Free speech also means being allowed to whine about Woke and being cancelled when someone highlights all-to-predictable contrarianism, or in this case just reproduces an image of the headline of an article. Then everyone can point & laugh at those whiners and their endless attempts to pretend being challenged is some kind of censorship.

    It’s great.
    That was one of the interesting things about the runup to indyref 1. The BBC and newspaper journalists went absolutely berserk at seeing direct and often highly intelligent criticism of their output published on social media and the net more generally. Remember in the old days that they could simply bin Letters to the Editor. In the 2010s, not so much ... though BBC Scotland journos, and IIRC one Graun journalist, did start switching off comments on their pieces - quite ironic as the level of debate was rather better than the general UK politics part of the BBC news website.

    I am not sure that Mr Neil has recovered from the shock.
    I guess traditional media being challenged by other platforms & individuals is a big theme of the last 20 years, and traditional hacks' outrage at the lèse-majesté of these upstarts is an eternal joy. I also think there's a cultural gap, in that the more delicate sorts confused the standard ripping the pish (or flyting to be posh) of say Scotpol twitter as abuse or threats.
    Oh yes. Friends of ours from down south moved to Scotland about the time. He was absolutely convinced the BBC in Glasgow had suffered mass physical intimidfation besieged by huge demonstrations. I burst out laughing and explained that if BBC Scotland were being intimidated by babies with balloons then perhaps they weren't being exactly balanced ...
    Once a disgruntled ex Labour voter egging Murphy was portrayed as the start of all subsequent acts of political violence, fissure and discord in the UK (©Blair McTuba etc), it doesn't leave much room for measured analysis.
  • darkagedarkage Posts: 5,346
    A lot of British people have been stuck in Ukraine as they cannot get visas for their wives/partners so they now have no choice but to stay. In doing so they are putting themselves in extreme danger.

    What is actually noticeable about the Home Office is that, confronted with this reality, they have not changed the requirement for a visa or the process to enter the UK. The extent of their "flexibility" is to increase the number of staff processing visa applications. The superficially helpful looking tweet simply says that Ukranians can apply for a visa under existing visa rules, which is a bureaucratic process requiring form filling and evidence, not ideal if you are trying to flee a warzone.

    Meanwhile up to a thousand people a day arrive on dinghies across the channel and are set free upon landing. The priorities are completely wrong. I would suggest that the Home office should be granting temporary visas on arrival to Ukranian passport holders, under the current circumstances.
  • ping said:

    I wonder if, what ultimately will do it for Putin, is the last few years of budget cuts etc, that have enabled him to balance his budget and build up his war chest.

    He’ll have to rely on ever greater repression to stifle dissent. That strategy has its limits.

    If he gets bogged down in an expensive war, what does he do, then?

    Slashing budgets further - along with shaking down the oligarchs is pretty high risk, but that’s probably what he’ll have to do.

    Interesting times for Vlad.

    Vlad is being impaled on his own decisions.
  • darkage said:

    A lot of British people have been stuck in Ukraine as they cannot get visas for their wives/partners so they now have no choice but to stay. In doing so they are putting themselves in extreme danger.

    What is actually noticeable about the Home Office is that, confronted with this reality, they have not changed the requirement for a visa or the process to enter the UK. The extent of their "flexibility" is to increase the number of staff processing visa applications. The superficially helpful looking tweet simply says that Ukranians can apply for a visa under existing visa rules, which is a bureaucratic process requiring form filling and evidence, not ideal if you are trying to flee a warzone.

    Meanwhile up to a thousand people a day arrive on dinghies across the channel and are set free upon landing. The priorities are completely wrong. I would suggest that the Home office should be granting temporary visas on arrival to Ukranian passport holders, under the current circumstances.
    Good point, any Ukrainian married or closely related to a British citizen should be offered visas as a matter of urgency. We should also be planning to take in refugees.
  • tlg86tlg86 Posts: 26,142
    Dura_Ace said:

    BigRich said:

    Dura_Ace said:

    Text from my oldest Russian friend (the one I went to fucking Vladivostok with to buy a JDM Pajero). He has lived and worked in Kyeeff for years.

    COMRADE IS RUNNING. XAXAXA.

    (XAXA = Russian LOL)

    There's your real time reportage from the front line.

    I know the Russian sense of hummer is different form ours and sometimes dark, but can somebody explain this?

    by 'COMRADE IS RUNNING' is he joking that the Russian army is running away? or the Ukrainians are?
    He is referring to himself. He is running west toward Poland. In a Hyundai Kona so he's probably dead now.
    Hopefully not! How easy is it for a Russian to pretend to be Ukrainian?
  • Yeah, right…..

    The Kremlin says Putin gave Russia's army the order to stop the advance on Ukraine yesterday, even though clashes continued throughout last night, in anticipation of negotiations with Kyiv.

    Dmitry Peskov now says Ukraine refused talks and Russia has resumed its full assault.


    https://twitter.com/maxseddon/status/1497553967684849669
  • BigRichBigRich Posts: 3,492
    Chameleon said:

    The Ukrainian MoD is getting really quite graphic. They've just posted a video clearly showing 5+ Russians who have burnt to death trying to escape from their Rosgvardiya vehicle, then panning up to show many more Rosgvardiya vehicles reduced to husks. Just tragic.

    It's weird that we haven't seen evidence of the crashed IL-76s, especially given that the US have confirmed the downings. But there's plenty of evidence that Russians are taking massive casualties from some of their shody practices.

    Is it possible that the IL-76 was shot-down or crashed, but did not have 100 parasuters onboard at the time?
  • HeathenerHeathener Posts: 7,084
    Russian cargo ship seized in the English channel by French authorities:

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10551807/Cargo-ship-thought-belong-one-companies-hit-sanctions-SEIZED-English-Channel.html

    Historically I've far from been a fan of French foreign policy but they're doing okay.
  • ” Maybe they believe their own propaganda: the Ukrainians will meet the Russian liberators with flowers, and everything will be wrapped up in several days.

    "Ukrainians see they can fight back. This war could become a very serious problem for Russia.”


    https://twitter.com/maxseddon/status/1497556316621004800?

    And a terminal problem for Putin.
  • Penz has gone full Truss (and not looking glaikit she probably pulls off the Thatch tribute act a bit more succesfully)..


  • Czech Republic

    [Translated]

    The government has approved the supply of weapons to Ukraine. We send machine guns, submachine guns, sniper rifles and pistols and their corresponding ammunition worth a total of 188 million crowns.

    At the same time, we will provide transportation to a place that Ukrainians choose.

    We are doing everything we can to help Ukraine.


    https://twitter.com/P_Fiala/status/1497501014664044556?s=20&t=1cbGUm_A1UdcaR4-6Klt7Q

    They’ve also closed their air space….
  • kinabalukinabalu Posts: 42,011
    Alistair said:

    .

    IanB2 said:

    Fck me, I immediately thought this was a piece from years ago, but last week. The Spikedtator..




    The Spectator prints all sorts of rubbish. Indeed more rubbish than sensible content, as a rule.
    Its fans including Neil and some PBers are always going on about how successful it is. Interesting to speculate how much the rubbish has contributed to that success.
    Just out of interest have you actually read the article or are you only commenting in ignorance based on a front page?

    I haven't read it as I don't have a subscription but I might actually buy a copy just to see what Liddle (who I really, REALLY dislike) is saying.

    I would suggest that it is only at that point that it is reasonable to make any valid criticisms rather than just blind knee jerk reactions.
    Is Liddle making a career out of deliberately being hated? To paraphrase Machiavelli, it is far more profitable to be disliked than loved?
    I am sure that the basic premise is right but I just get the impression, having had a fair few personal contacts with him, that Liddle is just an amazingly arrogant and obnoxious character.
    The "I'm only being an obnoxioius prick for money" defence isn't really that great a deflection anyways.
    It's strikingly common with modern alt-righters, saying stupid nasty things in an arch "am I joking or am I not?" way. It's rather irritating.
  • Penz has gone full Truss (and not looking glaikit she probably pulls off the Thatch tribute act a bit more succesfully)..


    "Penny Mordaunt!" Sunil said, perking up.
  • mwadamsmwadams Posts: 3,575
    kinabalu said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Farooq said:

    Leon said:

    Fck me, I immediately thought this was a piece from years ago, but last week. The Spikedtator..




    It’s a perfectly legitimate view. One held by Emmanuel Macron, I believe

    The Putin of 10 years ago was a very different beast. Lucid, clever, sane. A ruthless patriot, a brutal soldier, but amenable to logic. Perhaps we could have handled him better; certainly our rapid expansion of NATO right up to his borders, immediately after the humiliating collapse of the USSR now appears questionable

    Does any of this excuse Putin’s satanic and pointless assault on Ukraine? Of course not. It’s pure evil. It’s also pointless even for mad dog Putin, it might well backfire quickly and even if he “wins” in the short term he loses in the end. What’s the endgame for him? I can’t see a good one
    Your analysis doesn't account for the long gap -- some 6-8 years -- between the Baltic states' accession to NATO and Putin going "bad".

    It's easy to compress timelines when looking at the past, but Putin was acting fairly sensibly long after 2004. All the attempts to explain this in terms of NATO membership or the Iraq war fall down on the same point, and until someone even tries to account for that huge time lag, I do not take such a view seriously.
    You might be right. I’d have to go back and look
    at the timelines. But we agree there was a time when Putin was “sensible” - and that seems to be Liddle’s point (tho I haven’t read the article, just the headline, and Liddle does say some foolish things to provoke)

    Either way Andrew Neil is quite right. One big reason we hate the new mad Putin is that he wants to crush free speech and dissent. Free speech means seeing printed opinions you might fiercely dislike
    Free speech also means being allowed to whine about Woke and being cancelled when someone highlights all-to-predictable contrarianism, or in this case just reproduces an image of the headline of an article. Then everyone can point & laugh at those whiners and their endless attempts to pretend being challenged is some kind of censorship.

    It’s great.
    In my experience, criticism of the Spectator nearly always comes from a peculiar subset of people who genuinely dislike its viewpoint yet secretly would love to be published inside it, as it is so prestigious. A curious phenomenon
    It's interesting. A decade or so ago I was a regular reader of the Speccy and found it a pleasant zippy-in-places recreational read. I now see it as bow-tie reactionary faux man-of-the-world drivel you'd have to pay me serious money to allow through the letterbox. So, has it changed or have I changed? Bit of both, I guess, but I think it's mainly me. The last 10 or 12 years, coinciding with not having to earn a living, I've made a concerted effort to really *think* about things rather than forever chasing around in a daze, swilling coffee, running for trains and planes, and it's made a big difference. It's been the decade of my enlightenment - with my Spectator habit one of its minor casualties.
    I think I'm broadly in agreement with your "it's me not you" Speccy break-up. My tolerance for contrarian opinion that is delivered with a slight "I may be too clever to believe all this but you probably aren't" wink has declined precipitously.
  • kinabalu said:

    Alistair said:

    .

    IanB2 said:

    Fck me, I immediately thought this was a piece from years ago, but last week. The Spikedtator..




    The Spectator prints all sorts of rubbish. Indeed more rubbish than sensible content, as a rule.
    Its fans including Neil and some PBers are always going on about how successful it is. Interesting to speculate how much the rubbish has contributed to that success.
    Just out of interest have you actually read the article or are you only commenting in ignorance based on a front page?

    I haven't read it as I don't have a subscription but I might actually buy a copy just to see what Liddle (who I really, REALLY dislike) is saying.

    I would suggest that it is only at that point that it is reasonable to make any valid criticisms rather than just blind knee jerk reactions.
    Is Liddle making a career out of deliberately being hated? To paraphrase Machiavelli, it is far more profitable to be disliked than loved?
    I am sure that the basic premise is right but I just get the impression, having had a fair few personal contacts with him, that Liddle is just an amazingly arrogant and obnoxious character.
    The "I'm only being an obnoxioius prick for money" defence isn't really that great a deflection anyways.
    It's strikingly common with modern alt-righters, saying stupid nasty things in an arch "am I joking or am I not?" way. It's rather irritating.
    'and it's got 3m views on Youtube so it's fine'
  • Penz has gone full Truss (and not looking glaikit she probably pulls off the Thatch tribute act a bit more succesfully)..


    That’s one scary photograph! Vlad would be proud….
  • Penz has gone full Truss (and not looking glaikit she probably pulls off the Thatch tribute act a bit more succesfully)..


    Unlimited support is so lazy and misleading. Unlimited would be declaring war against Russia not to mention not taking party donations from ex Putin cronies. If she thinks we should be doing more, which I would agree with, then she should spell out what that means rather than pretend it can be unlimited.
  • FishingFishing Posts: 4,993
    Farooq said:

    I'm all for the French policing the channel and seizing ships belonging to a pariah nation that's being run by a megalomaniac.

    And just as soon as they're finished with those Russian ships, they can start.

    I doubt there are many Scottish ships in the Channel unfortunately.
  • Czech Republic

    [Translated]

    The government has approved the supply of weapons to Ukraine. We send machine guns, submachine guns, sniper rifles and pistols and their corresponding ammunition worth a total of 188 million crowns.

    At the same time, we will provide transportation to a place that Ukrainians choose.

    We are doing everything we can to help Ukraine.


    https://twitter.com/P_Fiala/status/1497501014664044556?s=20&t=1cbGUm_A1UdcaR4-6Klt7Q

    They’ve also closed their air space….

    A list of the NATO countries which haven't would be interesting.
  • FrankBoothFrankBooth Posts: 9,797
    Leon said:

    This is a fascinating subplot to the war. Eastern Europe turning on Germany. It's not just Ukraine


    “It’s in Poland’s interest that Ukraine wins this war, but it’s not in Germany’s interest,” says one of Poland’s main geopolitical experts @BartosiakJacek

    🇵🇱🇺🇦🇩🇪

    https://twitter.com/visegrad24/status/1497198633246154756?s=20&t=G_q2S_ZCwuxeyVs1BfFChw

    I simply cannot believe that the German public would accept taking Russia's side or even being neutral. Whether their officialdom understands that I don't know.
  • I think “other equipment” *cough* helmets */cough* doing a lot of heavy lifting there….

    All NATO countries have decided to send arms, ammunition and other equipment to Ukraine.. ALL.. 👍

    https://twitter.com/naknudsen/status/1497499799188393990
  • WhisperingOracleWhisperingOracle Posts: 9,117
    edited February 2022

    Czech Republic

    [Translated]

    The government has approved the supply of weapons to Ukraine. We send machine guns, sub-machine guns, sniper rifles and pistols and their corresponding ammunition worth a total of 188 million crowns.

    At the same time, we will provide transportation to a place that Ukrainians choose.

    We are doing everything we can to help Ukraine.


    https://twitter.com/P_Fiala/status/1497501014664044556?s=20&t=1cbGUm_A1UdcaR4-6Klt7Q

    They’ve also closed their air space….

    A list of the NATO countries which haven't would be interesting.
    Arms, probably a north-south divide, with Germany added to the Southern half. Other equipment I expect is very likely all.
  • LeonLeon Posts: 54,905
    mwadams said:

    kinabalu said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Farooq said:

    Leon said:

    Fck me, I immediately thought this was a piece from years ago, but last week. The Spikedtator..




    It’s a perfectly legitimate view. One held by Emmanuel Macron, I believe

    The Putin of 10 years ago was a very different beast. Lucid, clever, sane. A ruthless patriot, a brutal soldier, but amenable to logic. Perhaps we could have handled him better; certainly our rapid expansion of NATO right up to his borders, immediately after the humiliating collapse of the USSR now appears questionable

    Does any of this excuse Putin’s satanic and pointless assault on Ukraine? Of course not. It’s pure evil. It’s also pointless even for mad dog Putin, it might well backfire quickly and even if he “wins” in the short term he loses in the end. What’s the endgame for him? I can’t see a good one
    Your analysis doesn't account for the long gap -- some 6-8 years -- between the Baltic states' accession to NATO and Putin going "bad".

    It's easy to compress timelines when looking at the past, but Putin was acting fairly sensibly long after 2004. All the attempts to explain this in terms of NATO membership or the Iraq war fall down on the same point, and until someone even tries to account for that huge time lag, I do not take such a view seriously.
    You might be right. I’d have to go back and look
    at the timelines. But we agree there was a time when Putin was “sensible” - and that seems to be Liddle’s point (tho I haven’t read the article, just the headline, and Liddle does say some foolish things to provoke)

    Either way Andrew Neil is quite right. One big reason we hate the new mad Putin is that he wants to crush free speech and dissent. Free speech means seeing printed opinions you might fiercely dislike
    Free speech also means being allowed to whine about Woke and being cancelled when someone highlights all-to-predictable contrarianism, or in this case just reproduces an image of the headline of an article. Then everyone can point & laugh at those whiners and their endless attempts to pretend being challenged is some kind of censorship.

    It’s great.
    In my experience, criticism of the Spectator nearly always comes from a peculiar subset of people who genuinely dislike its viewpoint yet secretly would love to be published inside it, as it is so prestigious. A curious phenomenon
    It's interesting. A decade or so ago I was a regular reader of the Speccy and found it a pleasant zippy-in-places recreational read. I now see it as bow-tie reactionary faux man-of-the-world drivel you'd have to pay me serious money to allow through the letterbox. So, has it changed or have I changed? Bit of both, I guess, but I think it's mainly me. The last 10 or 12 years, coinciding with not having to earn a living, I've made a concerted effort to really *think* about things rather than forever chasing around in a daze, swilling coffee, running for trains and planes, and it's made a big difference. It's been the decade of my enlightenment - with my Spectator habit one of its minor casualties.
    I think I'm broadly in agreement with your "it's me not you" Speccy break-up. My tolerance for contrarian opinion that is delivered with a slight "I may be too clever to believe all this but you probably aren't" wink has declined precipitously.
    Jesus. You’re STILL whining about the Spectator?

    As I said before, it’s disguised jealousy of its success and prestige

    TBF you can see the same in some right wing American critiques of the NYT
  • williamglennwilliamglenn Posts: 51,436
    @ZelenskyyUa
    thank my friend Mr. President of 🇹🇷 @RTErdogan and the people of 🇹🇷 for their strong support. The ban on the passage of 🇷🇺 warships to the Black Sea and significant military and humanitarian support for 🇺🇦 are extremely important today. The people of 🇺🇦 will never forget that!


    https://twitter.com/ZelenskyyUa/status/1497564078897774598
  • Penz has gone full Truss (and not looking glaikit she probably pulls off the Thatch tribute act a bit more succesfully)..


    Unlimited support is so lazy and misleading. Unlimited would be declaring war against Russia not to mention not taking party donations from ex Putin cronies. If she thinks we should be doing more, which I would agree with, then she should spell out what that means rather than pretend it can be unlimited.
    Oh, I'd agree, but she's got grass roots to appeal to rather than us.
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 70,790

    Penz has gone full Truss (and not looking glaikit she probably pulls off the Thatch tribute act a bit more succesfully)..


    The virtue signalling / self promotion combination is a bit on the strong side, even if you have some sympathy with the sentiments.
  • kinabalukinabalu Posts: 42,011

    kinabalu said:

    Dura_Ace said:

    Blimey...

    David Clark 🇺🇦

    @David_K_Clark·3h

    The Russians are struggling and taking heavy casualties. They are beatable. Our best chance to defeat Putin’s threat to Europe is now. We should be giving Ukraine everything it wants. Despite the risks, that should include a no-fly zone. Putin’s victory would be the greater risk.

    https://twitter.com/David_K_Clark/status/1497490959235440641


    David Clark 🇺🇦
    @David_K_Clark·3h

    He will not nuke us because we’ve shot down some of his planes.

    Fucking ludicrous. To do a No Fly Zone you've got to be prepared to a) shoot down Russian aircraft and b) do SEAD/DEAD on the Russian side of the border.

    NFZ is basically speedrunning the process of going to war with Russia.
    I'd be worried if a mindset that denigrates any solution not flirting with WW3 as "appeasement" starts to take hold in influential places.
    Russia is literally flirting with WW3. By invading Ukraine. There is no getting away from that.
    Yep. There's only one aggressor here. For me, 2 things are crucial when assessing the risk of escalation. Is Putin rational? To what extent does he rule alone?
  • TresTres Posts: 2,689

    Fck me, I immediately thought this was a piece from years ago, but last week. The Spikedtator..




    The Spectator seems increasingly to be pushing an anti-British viewpoint. But why?
  • mwadamsmwadams Posts: 3,575
    Leon said:

    mwadams said:

    kinabalu said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Farooq said:

    Leon said:

    Fck me, I immediately thought this was a piece from years ago, but last week. The Spikedtator..




    It’s a perfectly legitimate view. One held by Emmanuel Macron, I believe

    The Putin of 10 years ago was a very different beast. Lucid, clever, sane. A ruthless patriot, a brutal soldier, but amenable to logic. Perhaps we could have handled him better; certainly our rapid expansion of NATO right up to his borders, immediately after the humiliating collapse of the USSR now appears questionable

    Does any of this excuse Putin’s satanic and pointless assault on Ukraine? Of course not. It’s pure evil. It’s also pointless even for mad dog Putin, it might well backfire quickly and even if he “wins” in the short term he loses in the end. What’s the endgame for him? I can’t see a good one
    Your analysis doesn't account for the long gap -- some 6-8 years -- between the Baltic states' accession to NATO and Putin going "bad".

    It's easy to compress timelines when looking at the past, but Putin was acting fairly sensibly long after 2004. All the attempts to explain this in terms of NATO membership or the Iraq war fall down on the same point, and until someone even tries to account for that huge time lag, I do not take such a view seriously.
    You might be right. I’d have to go back and look
    at the timelines. But we agree there was a time when Putin was “sensible” - and that seems to be Liddle’s point (tho I haven’t read the article, just the headline, and Liddle does say some foolish things to provoke)

    Either way Andrew Neil is quite right. One big reason we hate the new mad Putin is that he wants to crush free speech and dissent. Free speech means seeing printed opinions you might fiercely dislike
    Free speech also means being allowed to whine about Woke and being cancelled when someone highlights all-to-predictable contrarianism, or in this case just reproduces an image of the headline of an article. Then everyone can point & laugh at those whiners and their endless attempts to pretend being challenged is some kind of censorship.

    It’s great.
    In my experience, criticism of the Spectator nearly always comes from a peculiar subset of people who genuinely dislike its viewpoint yet secretly would love to be published inside it, as it is so prestigious. A curious phenomenon
    It's interesting. A decade or so ago I was a regular reader of the Speccy and found it a pleasant zippy-in-places recreational read. I now see it as bow-tie reactionary faux man-of-the-world drivel you'd have to pay me serious money to allow through the letterbox. So, has it changed or have I changed? Bit of both, I guess, but I think it's mainly me. The last 10 or 12 years, coinciding with not having to earn a living, I've made a concerted effort to really *think* about things rather than forever chasing around in a daze, swilling coffee, running for trains and planes, and it's made a big difference. It's been the decade of my enlightenment - with my Spectator habit one of its minor casualties.
    I think I'm broadly in agreement with your "it's me not you" Speccy break-up. My tolerance for contrarian opinion that is delivered with a slight "I may be too clever to believe all this but you probably aren't" wink has declined precipitously.
    Jesus. You’re STILL whining about the Spectator?

    As I said before, it’s disguised jealousy of its success and prestige

    TBF you can see the same in some right wing American critiques of the NYT
    I can keep whining for hours. I had a break and some noodles to boost my ability to sustain the jealousy.
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 70,790
    Leon said:

    mwadams said:

    kinabalu said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Farooq said:

    Leon said:

    Fck me, I immediately thought this was a piece from years ago, but last week. The Spikedtator..




    It’s a perfectly legitimate view. One held by Emmanuel Macron, I believe

    The Putin of 10 years ago was a very different beast. Lucid, clever, sane. A ruthless patriot, a brutal soldier, but amenable to logic. Perhaps we could have handled him better; certainly our rapid expansion of NATO right up to his borders, immediately after the humiliating collapse of the USSR now appears questionable

    Does any of this excuse Putin’s satanic and pointless assault on Ukraine? Of course not. It’s pure evil. It’s also pointless even for mad dog Putin, it might well backfire quickly and even if he “wins” in the short term he loses in the end. What’s the endgame for him? I can’t see a good one
    Your analysis doesn't account for the long gap -- some 6-8 years -- between the Baltic states' accession to NATO and Putin going "bad".

    It's easy to compress timelines when looking at the past, but Putin was acting fairly sensibly long after 2004. All the attempts to explain this in terms of NATO membership or the Iraq war fall down on the same point, and until someone even tries to account for that huge time lag, I do not take such a view seriously.
    You might be right. I’d have to go back and look
    at the timelines. But we agree there was a time when Putin was “sensible” - and that seems to be Liddle’s point (tho I haven’t read the article, just the headline, and Liddle does say some foolish things to provoke)

    Either way Andrew Neil is quite right. One big reason we hate the new mad Putin is that he wants to crush free speech and dissent. Free speech means seeing printed opinions you might fiercely dislike
    Free speech also means being allowed to whine about Woke and being cancelled when someone highlights all-to-predictable contrarianism, or in this case just reproduces an image of the headline of an article. Then everyone can point & laugh at those whiners and their endless attempts to pretend being challenged is some kind of censorship.

    It’s great.
    In my experience, criticism of the Spectator nearly always comes from a peculiar subset of people who genuinely dislike its viewpoint yet secretly would love to be published inside it, as it is so prestigious. A curious phenomenon
    It's interesting. A decade or so ago I was a regular reader of the Speccy and found it a pleasant zippy-in-places recreational read. I now see it as bow-tie reactionary faux man-of-the-world drivel you'd have to pay me serious money to allow through the letterbox. So, has it changed or have I changed? Bit of both, I guess, but I think it's mainly me. The last 10 or 12 years, coinciding with not having to earn a living, I've made a concerted effort to really *think* about things rather than forever chasing around in a daze, swilling coffee, running for trains and planes, and it's made a big difference. It's been the decade of my enlightenment - with my Spectator habit one of its minor casualties.
    I think I'm broadly in agreement with your "it's me not you" Speccy break-up. My tolerance for contrarian opinion that is delivered with a slight "I may be too clever to believe all this but you probably aren't" wink has declined precipitously.
    Jesus. You’re STILL whining about the Spectator?

    As I said before, it’s disguised jealousy of its success and prestige

    TBF you can see the same in some right wing American critiques of the NYT
    I think jealousy of a magazine is probably confined to writer (& possibly flint knapping) circles.
  • Czech Republic

    [Translated]

    The government has approved the supply of weapons to Ukraine. We send machine guns, submachine guns, sniper rifles and pistols and their corresponding ammunition worth a total of 188 million crowns.

    At the same time, we will provide transportation to a place that Ukrainians choose.

    We are doing everything we can to help Ukraine.


    https://twitter.com/P_Fiala/status/1497501014664044556?s=20&t=1cbGUm_A1UdcaR4-6Klt7Q

    They’ve also closed their air space….

    A list of the NATO countries which haven't would be interesting.
    The only ones which have are:

    “Done nothing” UK - first, now private jets too
    Poland - a biggie as most Aeroflot flights to Western Europe have a significant detour
    Czechia - makes Poland’s ban even worse
    Bulgaria
    Estonia

    The other Baltics would seriously screw up Aeroflot but may be understandably nervous.

    If Germany joined in Polands ban would become orders of magnitude worse…
  • Leon said:

    This is a fascinating subplot to the war. Eastern Europe turning on Germany. It's not just Ukraine


    “It’s in Poland’s interest that Ukraine wins this war, but it’s not in Germany’s interest,” says one of Poland’s main geopolitical experts @BartosiakJacek

    🇵🇱🇺🇦🇩🇪

    https://twitter.com/visegrad24/status/1497198633246154756?s=20&t=G_q2S_ZCwuxeyVs1BfFChw

    I simply cannot believe that the German public would accept taking Russia's side or even being neutral. Whether their officialdom understands that I don't know.
    Germany's view as to the independence and freedom of Eastern Europe has always been 'interesting'.

    Though its business profits which they're interested in now rather than territorial expansion.
  • algarkirkalgarkirk Posts: 12,443
    edited February 2022
    kinabalu said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Farooq said:

    Leon said:

    Fck me, I immediately thought this was a piece from years ago, but last week. The Spikedtator..




    It’s a perfectly legitimate view. One held by Emmanuel Macron, I believe

    The Putin of 10 years ago was a very different beast. Lucid, clever, sane. A ruthless patriot, a brutal soldier, but amenable to logic. Perhaps we could have handled him better; certainly our rapid expansion of NATO right up to his borders, immediately after the humiliating collapse of the USSR now appears questionable

    Does any of this excuse Putin’s satanic and pointless assault on Ukraine? Of course not. It’s pure evil. It’s also pointless even for mad dog Putin, it might well backfire quickly and even if he “wins” in the short term he loses in the end. What’s the endgame for him? I can’t see a good one
    Your analysis doesn't account for the long gap -- some 6-8 years -- between the Baltic states' accession to NATO and Putin going "bad".

    It's easy to compress timelines when looking at the past, but Putin was acting fairly sensibly long after 2004. All the attempts to explain this in terms of NATO membership or the Iraq war fall down on the same point, and until someone even tries to account for that huge time lag, I do not take such a view seriously.
    You might be right. I’d have to go back and look
    at the timelines. But we agree there was a time when Putin was “sensible” - and that seems to be Liddle’s point (tho I haven’t read the article, just the headline, and Liddle does say some foolish things to provoke)

    Either way Andrew Neil is quite right. One big reason we hate the new mad Putin is that he wants to crush free speech and dissent. Free speech means seeing printed opinions you might fiercely dislike
    Free speech also means being allowed to whine about Woke and being cancelled when someone highlights all-to-predictable contrarianism, or in this case just reproduces an image of the headline of an article. Then everyone can point & laugh at those whiners and their endless attempts to pretend being challenged is some kind of censorship.

    It’s great.
    In my experience, criticism of the Spectator nearly always comes from a peculiar subset of people who genuinely dislike its viewpoint yet secretly would love to be published inside it, as it is so prestigious. A curious phenomenon
    It's interesting. A decade or so ago I was a regular reader of the Speccy and found it a pleasant zippy-in-places recreational read. I now see it as bow-tie reactionary faux man-of-the-world drivel you'd have to pay me serious money to allow through the letterbox. So, has it changed or have I changed? Bit of both, I guess, but I think it's mainly me. The last 10 or 12 years, coinciding with not having to earn a living, I've made a concerted effort to really *think* about things rather than forever chasing around in a daze, swilling coffee, running for trains and planes, and it's made a big difference. It's been the decade of my enlightenment - with my Spectator habit one of its minor casualties.
    On and off Speccie reader for decades. Currently off. A few reasons:

    Its diversity is good, but it currently lacks a coherent editorial world view. it should be the voice of a considered philosophically coherent conservatism. It isn't.

    Bias is good; but careful slanting of facts and fact selection isn't.

    It's too incestuous (politically) in its people makeup.

    It reviews too many incrowd/luvvie books and books which are not worth publishing (usually the same thing). Its 'arts' covers too much trashy self regarding junk.

    It shows insufficient regard for ordinary poor people and their lives and at the same time is not intelligent enough. (In this regard the NS is starting to overtake it - much improved recently).

    It has too much illiterate economics.

    Too many of its writers are self absorbed.

    I exempt Matthew Parris from all of this.

    PS You can get its gist online for free, but don't tell them.

  • pingping Posts: 3,805
    Leon said:

    mwadams said:

    kinabalu said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Farooq said:

    Leon said:

    Fck me, I immediately thought this was a piece from years ago, but last week. The Spikedtator..




    It’s a perfectly legitimate view. One held by Emmanuel Macron, I believe

    The Putin of 10 years ago was a very different beast. Lucid, clever, sane. A ruthless patriot, a brutal soldier, but amenable to logic. Perhaps we could have handled him better; certainly our rapid expansion of NATO right up to his borders, immediately after the humiliating collapse of the USSR now appears questionable

    Does any of this excuse Putin’s satanic and pointless assault on Ukraine? Of course not. It’s pure evil. It’s also pointless even for mad dog Putin, it might well backfire quickly and even if he “wins” in the short term he loses in the end. What’s the endgame for him? I can’t see a good one
    Your analysis doesn't account for the long gap -- some 6-8 years -- between the Baltic states' accession to NATO and Putin going "bad".

    It's easy to compress timelines when looking at the past, but Putin was acting fairly sensibly long after 2004. All the attempts to explain this in terms of NATO membership or the Iraq war fall down on the same point, and until someone even tries to account for that huge time lag, I do not take such a view seriously.
    You might be right. I’d have to go back and look
    at the timelines. But we agree there was a time when Putin was “sensible” - and that seems to be Liddle’s point (tho I haven’t read the article, just the headline, and Liddle does say some foolish things to provoke)

    Either way Andrew Neil is quite right. One big reason we hate the new mad Putin is that he wants to crush free speech and dissent. Free speech means seeing printed opinions you might fiercely dislike
    Free speech also means being allowed to whine about Woke and being cancelled when someone highlights all-to-predictable contrarianism, or in this case just reproduces an image of the headline of an article. Then everyone can point & laugh at those whiners and their endless attempts to pretend being challenged is some kind of censorship.

    It’s great.
    In my experience, criticism of the Spectator nearly always comes from a peculiar subset of people who genuinely dislike its viewpoint yet secretly would love to be published inside it, as it is so prestigious. A curious phenomenon
    It's interesting. A decade or so ago I was a regular reader of the Speccy and found it a pleasant zippy-in-places recreational read. I now see it as bow-tie reactionary faux man-of-the-world drivel you'd have to pay me serious money to allow through the letterbox. So, has it changed or have I changed? Bit of both, I guess, but I think it's mainly me. The last 10 or 12 years, coinciding with not having to earn a living, I've made a concerted effort to really *think* about things rather than forever chasing around in a daze, swilling coffee, running for trains and planes, and it's made a big difference. It's been the decade of my enlightenment - with my Spectator habit one of its minor casualties.
    I think I'm broadly in agreement with your "it's me not you" Speccy break-up. My tolerance for contrarian opinion that is delivered with a slight "I may be too clever to believe all this but you probably aren't" wink has declined precipitously.
    Jesus. You’re STILL whining about the Spectator?

    As I said before, it’s disguised jealousy of its success and prestige

    TBF you can see the same in some right wing American critiques of the NYT
    Are you pretending you aren’t on the payroll?
  • @ZelenskyyUa
    thank my friend Mr. President of 🇹🇷 @RTErdogan and the people of 🇹🇷 for their strong support. The ban on the passage of 🇷🇺 warships to the Black Sea and significant military and humanitarian support for 🇺🇦 are extremely important today. The people of 🇺🇦 will never forget that!


    https://twitter.com/ZelenskyyUa/status/1497564078897774598

    Hmm..
  • LeonLeon Posts: 54,905
    Crikey. Something cheerier

    Primrose Hill is RAMMED. It’s a lovely spring day and a Saturday but every single cafe, bar, restaurant is jammers, inside and out. Like the peak of summer, like the sunniest Saturday in July

    Wonderful to see. Lots of foreign voices too. French, German, Italian, American. Are the tourists coming back?

    Such a glorious contrast to the total misery of this time last year


  • nico679nico679 Posts: 6,263

    @ZelenskyyUa
    thank my friend Mr. President of 🇹🇷 @RTErdogan and the people of 🇹🇷 for their strong support. The ban on the passage of 🇷🇺 warships to the Black Sea and significant military and humanitarian support for 🇺🇦 are extremely important today. The people of 🇺🇦 will never forget that!


    https://twitter.com/ZelenskyyUa/status/1497564078897774598

    I thought that wasn’t possible due to to international agreements on allowing ships to return to their home bases .
  • Tres said:

    Fck me, I immediately thought this was a piece from years ago, but last week. The Spikedtator..




    The Spectator seems increasingly to be pushing an anti-British viewpoint. But why?
    There's probably some psychology at play. For years the Speccie crowd has been yearning for Britain to be ruled by, if not Boris, someone like him. Now the great man himself is in charge and it isn't all it was cracked up to be. That must be a hellava coming down.
  • Leon said:

    Crikey. Something cheerier

    Primrose Hill is RAMMED. It’s a lovely spring day and a Saturday but every single cafe, bar, restaurant is jammers, inside and out. Like the peak of summer, like the sunniest Saturday in July

    Wonderful to see. Lots of foreign voices too. French, German, Italian, American. Are the tourists coming back?

    Such a glorious contrast to the total misery of this time last year


    That last, golden summer of 1914..
  • geoffwgeoffw Posts: 8,688

    Burn...


    Andrew Neil
    @afneil
    ·
    1h
    I appreciate academia is pretty much a one-party state these days and little dissent is tolerated from the left-wing consensus, which you so ably represent. But magazines are still relatively free: I won’t apologise for not forcing my views on my editors or their columnists.

    https://twitter.com/afneil/status/1497520306281324552

    Amazing that the oppressive forces of Woke permitted Brillo, publisher of that courageous Samizdat publication The Spectator, to make that tweet.

    The Spectator’s right to provide tireless support for pro-Putin, far-right politicians across Europe and beyond is an important, non-negotiable freedom.

    Twaddle

  • williamglennwilliamglenn Posts: 51,436
    nico679 said:

    @ZelenskyyUa
    thank my friend Mr. President of 🇹🇷 @RTErdogan and the people of 🇹🇷 for their strong support. The ban on the passage of 🇷🇺 warships to the Black Sea and significant military and humanitarian support for 🇺🇦 are extremely important today. The people of 🇺🇦 will never forget that!


    https://twitter.com/ZelenskyyUa/status/1497564078897774598

    I thought that wasn’t possible due to to international agreements on allowing ships to return to their home bases .
    I think Zelensky is just trying to bounce Erdogan into doing more.
  • GallowgateGallowgate Posts: 19,437
    nico679 said:

    @ZelenskyyUa
    thank my friend Mr. President of 🇹🇷 @RTErdogan and the people of 🇹🇷 for their strong support. The ban on the passage of 🇷🇺 warships to the Black Sea and significant military and humanitarian support for 🇺🇦 are extremely important today. The people of 🇺🇦 will never forget that!


    https://twitter.com/ZelenskyyUa/status/1497564078897774598

    I thought that wasn’t possible due to to international agreements on allowing ships to return to their home bases .
    I mean invading other sovereign nations is also not allowed under international agreements.
  • kinabalukinabalu Posts: 42,011
    edited February 2022

    Penz has gone full Truss (and not looking glaikit she probably pulls off the Thatch tribute act a bit more succesfully)..


    My saver bet (hedging SKS and Sunak) for Next PM - and with how her price has moved since it's one I'm glad I did rather than wish I hadn't.
  • Shockingly, not a piss take.


  • Leon said:

    Germany, WTAF


    "Ukraine’s Ambassador to Germany, Andrij Melnyk, says he is baffled by the response he has received from German officials after asking for military aid.

    He says that ministers he has talked to say “you Ukrainians have only a few hours left. There is no point in helping you now”.
    Show this thread"



    https://twitter.com/visegrad24/status/1497528484868071424?s=20&t=Vx3tabRTJfv-XPumhPzI0g

    Back in the day, of course, it was Germany wot invaded Ukraine. :lol:
  • Powerful. A Ukrainian approaches unknown soldiers and yells at them to say "palyanitsa". Realizing they're Russian, he tells them they can't tell him not to videotape, as Ukrainians constitution allows him to.

    https://twitter.com/christogrozev/status/1497530385273602053

    I suppose an equivalent in Britain would be a Scot asking someone English to pronounce “loch”.
  • Powerful. A Ukrainian approaches unknown soldiers and yells at them to say "palyanitsa". Realizing they're Russian, he tells them they can't tell him not to videotape, as Ukrainians constitution allows him to.

    https://twitter.com/christogrozev/status/1497530385273602053

    I suppose an equivalent in Britain would be a Scot asking someone English to pronounce “loch”.

    Och aye!
  • WhisperingOracleWhisperingOracle Posts: 9,117
    edited February 2022

    Penz has gone full Truss (and not looking glaikit she probably pulls off the Thatch tribute act a bit more succesfully)..


    Maybe not a a position I'd entirely with, but to me she looks very se... er, an interesting political development, nonetheless.

    I think she's still definitely in contention, much more seriously. More competent than Truss.
  • LeonLeon Posts: 54,905
    algarkirk said:

    kinabalu said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Farooq said:

    Leon said:

    Fck me, I immediately thought this was a piece from years ago, but last week. The Spikedtator..




    It’s a perfectly legitimate view. One held by Emmanuel Macron, I believe

    The Putin of 10 years ago was a very different beast. Lucid, clever, sane. A ruthless patriot, a brutal soldier, but amenable to logic. Perhaps we could have handled him better; certainly our rapid expansion of NATO right up to his borders, immediately after the humiliating collapse of the USSR now appears questionable

    Does any of this excuse Putin’s satanic and pointless assault on Ukraine? Of course not. It’s pure evil. It’s also pointless even for mad dog Putin, it might well backfire quickly and even if he “wins” in the short term he loses in the end. What’s the endgame for him? I can’t see a good one
    Your analysis doesn't account for the long gap -- some 6-8 years -- between the Baltic states' accession to NATO and Putin going "bad".

    It's easy to compress timelines when looking at the past, but Putin was acting fairly sensibly long after 2004. All the attempts to explain this in terms of NATO membership or the Iraq war fall down on the same point, and until someone even tries to account for that huge time lag, I do not take such a view seriously.
    You might be right. I’d have to go back and look
    at the timelines. But we agree there was a time when Putin was “sensible” - and that seems to be Liddle’s point (tho I haven’t read the article, just the headline, and Liddle does say some foolish things to provoke)

    Either way Andrew Neil is quite right. One big reason we hate the new mad Putin is that he wants to crush free speech and dissent. Free speech means seeing printed opinions you might fiercely dislike
    Free speech also means being allowed to whine about Woke and being cancelled when someone highlights all-to-predictable contrarianism, or in this case just reproduces an image of the headline of an article. Then everyone can point & laugh at those whiners and their endless attempts to pretend being challenged is some kind of censorship.

    It’s great.
    In my experience, criticism of the Spectator nearly always comes from a peculiar subset of people who genuinely dislike its viewpoint yet secretly would love to be published inside it, as it is so prestigious. A curious phenomenon
    It's interesting. A decade or so ago I was a regular reader of the Speccy and found it a pleasant zippy-in-places recreational read. I now see it as bow-tie reactionary faux man-of-the-world drivel you'd have to pay me serious money to allow through the letterbox. So, has it changed or have I changed? Bit of both, I guess, but I think it's mainly me. The last 10 or 12 years, coinciding with not having to earn a living, I've made a concerted effort to really *think* about things rather than forever chasing around in a daze, swilling coffee, running for trains and planes, and it's made a big difference. It's been the decade of my enlightenment - with my Spectator habit one of its minor casualties.
    On and off Speccie reader for decades. Currently off. A few reasons:

    Its diversity is good, but it currently lacks a coherent editorial world view. it should be the voice of a considered philosophically coherent conservatism. It isn't.

    Bias is good; but careful slanting of facts and fact selection isn't.

    It's too incestuous (politically) in its people makeup.

    It reviews too many incrowd/luvvie books and books which are not worth publishing (usually the same thing). Its 'arts' covers too much trashy self regarding junk.

    It shows insufficient regard for ordinary poor people and their lives and at the same time is not intelligent enough. (In this regard the NS is starting to overtake it - much improved recently).

    It has too much illiterate economics.

    Too many of its writers are self absorbed.

    I exempt Matthew Parris from all of this.

    PS You can get its gist online for free, but don't tell them.

    Alternatively, the editors at the Spectator have realised that the future of an intellectual, highly prestigious but ancient current affairs magazine lies in appealing to a younger net-savvy readership, not the elderly gents who populate PB?

    This would explain why so many of the pensioners on here have decided it is in decline, yet mysteriously it is racking up record sales, unlike almost every other printed journal in the western world
  • Dura_AceDura_Ace Posts: 13,677

    Penz has gone full Truss (and not looking glaikit she probably pulls off the Thatch tribute act a bit more succesfully)..


    Strong Vivienne Rook energy.
  • CarnyxCarnyx Posts: 42,683

    Shockingly, not a piss take.


    Eh? First thing I spot is that that UF is upside down = Mayday signal of distress.
  • ping said:

    Leon said:

    mwadams said:

    kinabalu said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Farooq said:

    Leon said:

    Fck me, I immediately thought this was a piece from years ago, but last week. The Spikedtator..




    It’s a perfectly legitimate view. One held by Emmanuel Macron, I believe

    The Putin of 10 years ago was a very different beast. Lucid, clever, sane. A ruthless patriot, a brutal soldier, but amenable to logic. Perhaps we could have handled him better; certainly our rapid expansion of NATO right up to his borders, immediately after the humiliating collapse of the USSR now appears questionable

    Does any of this excuse Putin’s satanic and pointless assault on Ukraine? Of course not. It’s pure evil. It’s also pointless even for mad dog Putin, it might well backfire quickly and even if he “wins” in the short term he loses in the end. What’s the endgame for him? I can’t see a good one
    Your analysis doesn't account for the long gap -- some 6-8 years -- between the Baltic states' accession to NATO and Putin going "bad".

    It's easy to compress timelines when looking at the past, but Putin was acting fairly sensibly long after 2004. All the attempts to explain this in terms of NATO membership or the Iraq war fall down on the same point, and until someone even tries to account for that huge time lag, I do not take such a view seriously.
    You might be right. I’d have to go back and look
    at the timelines. But we agree there was a time when Putin was “sensible” - and that seems to be Liddle’s point (tho I haven’t read the article, just the headline, and Liddle does say some foolish things to provoke)

    Either way Andrew Neil is quite right. One big reason we hate the new mad Putin is that he wants to crush free speech and dissent. Free speech means seeing printed opinions you might fiercely dislike
    Free speech also means being allowed to whine about Woke and being cancelled when someone highlights all-to-predictable contrarianism, or in this case just reproduces an image of the headline of an article. Then everyone can point & laugh at those whiners and their endless attempts to pretend being challenged is some kind of censorship.

    It’s great.
    In my experience, criticism of the Spectator nearly always comes from a peculiar subset of people who genuinely dislike its viewpoint yet secretly would love to be published inside it, as it is so prestigious. A curious phenomenon
    It's interesting. A decade or so ago I was a regular reader of the Speccy and found it a pleasant zippy-in-places recreational read. I now see it as bow-tie reactionary faux man-of-the-world drivel you'd have to pay me serious money to allow through the letterbox. So, has it changed or have I changed? Bit of both, I guess, but I think it's mainly me. The last 10 or 12 years, coinciding with not having to earn a living, I've made a concerted effort to really *think* about things rather than forever chasing around in a daze, swilling coffee, running for trains and planes, and it's made a big difference. It's been the decade of my enlightenment - with my Spectator habit one of its minor casualties.
    I think I'm broadly in agreement with your "it's me not you" Speccy break-up. My tolerance for contrarian opinion that is delivered with a slight "I may be too clever to believe all this but you probably aren't" wink has declined precipitously.
    Jesus. You’re STILL whining about the Spectator?

    As I said before, it’s disguised jealousy of its success and prestige

    TBF you can see the same in some right wing American critiques of the NYT
    Are you pretending you aren’t on the payroll?
    Leon is anti-woke
    Putin is anti-woke
  • LeonLeon Posts: 54,905
    kinabalu said:

    Penz has gone full Truss (and not looking glaikit she probably pulls off the Thatch tribute act a bit more succesfully)..


    My saver bet (hedging SKS and Sunak) for Next PM - and with how her price has moved since it's one I'm glad I did rather than wish I hadn't.
    Flattering photo of her. Very well taken and chosen

    She looks like a much hotter version of Le Pen, and a sexier more dominatrix version of mid-period Thatch

    Clever PR
  • MightyAlexMightyAlex Posts: 1,650
    Seems Russian warships may be banned from the Black sea.

    I thank my friend Mr. President of 🇹🇷 @RTErdogan and the people of 🇹🇷 for their strong support. The ban on the passage of 🇷🇺 warships to the Black Sea and significant military and humanitarian support for 🇺🇦 are extremely important today. The people of 🇺🇦 will never forget that!

    https://twitter.com/ZelenskyyUa/status/1497564078897774598
  • LeonLeon Posts: 54,905
    Farooq said:

    Leon said:

    kinabalu said:

    Penz has gone full Truss (and not looking glaikit she probably pulls off the Thatch tribute act a bit more succesfully)..


    My saver bet (hedging SKS and Sunak) for Next PM - and with how her price has moved since it's one I'm glad I did rather than wish I hadn't.
    Flattering photo of her. Very well taken and chosen

    She looks like a much hotter version of Le Pen, and a sexier more dominatrix version of mid-period Thatch

    Clever PR
    !!
    Thatcher always looked best when ovulating. Like most women
  • @ZelenskyyUa
    thank my friend Mr. President of 🇹🇷 @RTErdogan and the people of 🇹🇷 for their strong support. The ban on the passage of 🇷🇺 warships to the Black Sea and significant military and humanitarian support for 🇺🇦 are extremely important today. The people of 🇺🇦 will never forget that!


    https://twitter.com/ZelenskyyUa/status/1497564078897774598

    “Turkey hasn’t made a decision to close the straits to Russian ships yet,” a senior Turkish official tells me

    So guess Zelensky was making a request with that tweet


    https://twitter.com/ragipsoylu/status/1497569348386496513
  • WhisperingOracleWhisperingOracle Posts: 9,117
    edited February 2022
    Leon said:

    kinabalu said:

    Penz has gone full Truss (and not looking glaikit she probably pulls off the Thatch tribute act a bit more succesfully)..


    My saver bet (hedging SKS and Sunak) for Next PM - and with how her price has moved since it's one I'm glad I did rather than wish I hadn't.
    Flattering photo of her. Very well taken and chosen

    She looks like a much hotter version of Le Pen, and a sexier more dominatrix version of mid-period Thatch

    Clever PR
    Actually I'd partly agree with his, although the association of Thatcher and physical attractiveness make me feel physically ill.

    She's also more competent than both Truss and Johnson, and probably Wallace as well.
  • IanB2IanB2 Posts: 49,833

    Leon said:

    Just wondering. Is this a rare if not unique occasion of a geopolitical event completely uniting PB?

    Do we have a single PB-er cheering on Putin and the Russians? I can’t think of one

    A momentous unanimity. Which says something in itself given the wide variety of opinions on here

    You REALLY have to be a contrarian to be cheering on Putin.

    Or a Trumpist Republican.

    Be entertaining if Putin's greatest achievement is keeping the White House Democrat controlled for a couple of decades.
    Sadly, Plato is no longer with us.
  • kle4kle4 Posts: 95,979

    Shockingly, not a piss take.


    Barf
  • Shockingly, not a piss take.


    Given that the original drawing is of Warhammer 40k’s Cadian Imperial Guard, who take a beating in pretty much every engagement, exist solely to be bailed out by the militarily superior Space Marines, and whose home planet is now an asteroid field, the comparison may be apt…
  • DougSealDougSeal Posts: 12,541
    IanB2 said:

    Leon said:

    Just wondering. Is this a rare if not unique occasion of a geopolitical event completely uniting PB?

    Do we have a single PB-er cheering on Putin and the Russians? I can’t think of one

    A momentous unanimity. Which says something in itself given the wide variety of opinions on here

    You REALLY have to be a contrarian to be cheering on Putin.

    Or a Trumpist Republican.

    Be entertaining if Putin's greatest achievement is keeping the White House Democrat controlled for a couple of decades.
    Sadly, Plato is no longer with us.
    Is Contrarian himself still about? Haven’t seen him for a while.
  • kinabalukinabalu Posts: 42,011
    Leon said:

    kinabalu said:

    Penz has gone full Truss (and not looking glaikit she probably pulls off the Thatch tribute act a bit more succesfully)..


    My saver bet (hedging SKS and Sunak) for Next PM - and with how her price has moved since it's one I'm glad I did rather than wish I hadn't.
    Flattering photo of her. Very well taken and chosen

    She looks like a much hotter version of Le Pen, and a sexier more dominatrix version of mid-period Thatch

    Clever PR
    Surprised you can detect "dominatrix" just from the face.
  • FrankBoothFrankBooth Posts: 9,797
    Zelensky is obviously a proud and brave man. However I worry that he might be so determined to keep Russian forces out of Kiev that they try and hold them outside and become a sitting target for massive Russian artillery. Instead they could retreat into the city and pick the Russian troops off one by one at street level.
  • Powerful. A Ukrainian approaches unknown soldiers and yells at them to say "palyanitsa". Realizing they're Russian, he tells them they can't tell him not to videotape, as Ukrainians constitution allows him to.

    https://twitter.com/christogrozev/status/1497530385273602053

    I suppose an equivalent in Britain would be a Scot asking someone English to pronounce “loch”.

    Actually that's how a Russian would say it. It's palyanytsya in Ukrainian. Y/I are different vowel sounds and the second y wouldn't appear there in Russian, also in Russian ts is always hard so tsya is impossible.
  • IanB2IanB2 Posts: 49,833
    Leon said:

    Anyone who “hates the Spectator” is of course free to set up and publish their own political magazine, make it the longest lived political magazine in the world, employ some of the most brilliant writers for decades, fashion it into the most prestigious magazine of its type on this earth, and make it so successful that after several centuries its sales are soaring and it now outsells national newspapers.

    Good luck

    Crap sells. It is hardly news.

    Our best selling newspaper is the Mail, after all. Case rests.
  • kinabalukinabalu Posts: 42,011
    DougSeal said:

    IanB2 said:

    Leon said:

    Just wondering. Is this a rare if not unique occasion of a geopolitical event completely uniting PB?

    Do we have a single PB-er cheering on Putin and the Russians? I can’t think of one

    A momentous unanimity. Which says something in itself given the wide variety of opinions on here

    You REALLY have to be a contrarian to be cheering on Putin.

    Or a Trumpist Republican.

    Be entertaining if Putin's greatest achievement is keeping the White House Democrat controlled for a couple of decades.
    Sadly, Plato is no longer with us.
    Is Contrarian himself still about? Haven’t seen him for a while.
    He's playing MISTY for us now.
  • Powerful. A Ukrainian approaches unknown soldiers and yells at them to say "palyanitsa". Realizing they're Russian, he tells them they can't tell him not to videotape, as Ukrainians constitution allows him to.

    https://twitter.com/christogrozev/status/1497530385273602053

    I suppose an equivalent in Britain would be a Scot asking someone English to pronounce “loch”.

    Och aye!
    The one that seriously sets my teeth on edge is “Syne” - who the feck put a Z in it?
  • Leon said:

    Farooq said:

    Leon said:

    kinabalu said:

    Penz has gone full Truss (and not looking glaikit she probably pulls off the Thatch tribute act a bit more succesfully)..


    My saver bet (hedging SKS and Sunak) for Next PM - and with how her price has moved since it's one I'm glad I did rather than wish I hadn't.
    Flattering photo of her. Very well taken and chosen

    She looks like a much hotter version of Le Pen, and a sexier more dominatrix version of mid-period Thatch

    Clever PR
    !!
    Thatcher always looked best when ovulating. Like most women
    Austin Powers: "Margaret Thatcher naked on a cold day! Margaret Thatcher naked on a cold day!"
  • Carnyx said:

    Shockingly, not a piss take.


    Eh? First thing I spot is that that UF is upside down = Mayday signal of distress.
    Ah, probably a Petersburg bot then.
  • CarnyxCarnyx Posts: 42,683
    edited February 2022
    Northstar said:

    Shockingly, not a piss take.


    Given that the original drawing is of Warhammer 40k’s Cadian Imperial Guard, who take a beating in pretty much every engagement, exist solely to be bailed out by the militarily superior Space Marines, and whose home planet is now an asteroid field, the comparison may be apt…
    I'm always impressed by the expertise available on PB. (Seriously.)
  • CarnyxCarnyx Posts: 42,683

    Powerful. A Ukrainian approaches unknown soldiers and yells at them to say "palyanitsa". Realizing they're Russian, he tells them they can't tell him not to videotape, as Ukrainians constitution allows him to.

    https://twitter.com/christogrozev/status/1497530385273602053

    I suppose an equivalent in Britain would be a Scot asking someone English to pronounce “loch”.

    Och aye!
    The one that seriously sets my teeth on edge is “Syne” - who the feck put a Z in it?
    The real test is to ask a Southron to describe the route from Milngavie to Rutherglen and then Anstruther.
This discussion has been closed.