"Whatever political disagreements any of us have with Liz Truss - and I have many deep differences with her - we should not fall for this transparent Russian attempt to divert. The only person responsible for Putin’s despicable nuclear threat is Putin."
No, that is dim of Nicola.
You meet a lunatic with an axe who wants to murder his wife. He asks about her whereabouts. You truthfully tell him. The person responsible for the ensuing despicable axe murder is the husband, but you don't come out looking great either.
This let's all get behind the Trussster nonsense is inexplicable. Never seen anyone so far out of their depth.
Truss cannot be useless and consequential at the same time. It doesn't excuse how enthusiastic some outlets are to parrot the Kremlin line.
Sturgeon got the tone right there. It's a good intervention, politically, as the SNP need to find a way to be relevant in a UK Gov dominant issue.
The other thing would be to propose a deal with Germany over offshore wind.
"Truss cannot be useless and consequential at the same time."
Well of course she can. She is a useless person in a consequential position.
You reckon Putin is breathlessly waiting on every Truss tweet, moving Russian subs into position based on the number of flags in the background?
It's just that in a tense and worrying crisis she seems to be in this different place - the one called LizTrussfornextConLeaderland - and it's not what you want. It's fair to express that opinion, I think, even with a war on.
After your 'mistake' earlier, I'd have thought you'd have quietened down about Truss.
These uppity women going for the top job, eh? Can't have that...
Oh do stop it. It was my one and only follow-up and merely an explanation of why I don't rate her. Attributing it to sexism is *such* a cheap shot.
It isn't, really. If the situation was reversed, it's exactly what you would be calling.
Just had a little fun spamming the Russian embassy email links.
I think I might do that daily.
If you go up Highgate West Hill, by Highgate Ponds, you will find about half way up the entrance to the Russian Trade Delegation to the UK.
I have been past many times but it never seems to be open. Maybe I will try again when I am nearby later this week. I have some trade I would like to do with them.
Perhaps others might like to do likewise.
Btw the number is 020 8340 1907 if you want to order something by phone
The Ukraine-Russia peace talks ended with no results, the two sides agreed to meet at the Polish-Belarus border in the upcoming days.
Putin will keep agreeing to talks because it makes him look reasonable via RT to his domestic audience. His demands are a complete non starter though, so right now those talks aren't going to get anywhere - not even to mention the fact he (I think) isn't bringing up Donbass as the Ukrainians will need to negotiate separately with those individuals.
Of course. "They won't agree to our ceasefire conditions because they want to keep their nazis" etc.
Doesn't look Putin is ready to back down: he said a deal "is possible only if Russia’s legitimate security interests are unconditionally taken into account.
Those interests include:
– recognition of Russian sovereignty over Crimea – demilitarization and denazification of the Ukrainian state – ensuring its neutral status
Ukraine said it was open to neutrality, but hard to see how they agree to the rest after all that's happened."
We should grab at this, even if it sticks in the throat. It’s close to what I’ve been proposing since this kicked off.
Ukraine to stay neutral and demilitarise; Crimea to be recognised as Russian.
I don’t know what denazification means, except the deposition of the Ukrainian government. But we can’t agree to that.
Why should Ukraine lay down its weapons?
I mean, I can see the other things - no NATO (fine) and Crimea should never have been part of Ukraine.
But ultimately, Russia doesn't get to choose its neighbour government, or whether they are allowed an army - especially when it is Russia who goes around invading other countries.
Demilitarisation of Ukraine is a non-starter.
After this, so should neutrality be.
After this, Ukraine ought to be expedited into NATO to prevent a re-run of this ever happening again.
Additionally of course, next year Putin will have fresh demands, will identify agreement 'breaches', etc...
Who says?
It is tempting to write Putin off as mad, or insatiable, or Hitler, but those don’t help the overall analysis of how we should respond to minimise bloodshed.
There's a definite change in Putin's behaviour between now and pre-pandemic.
I don't know why, there are loads of theories, but the Putin of 2014 or 2019 would not have taken such a reckless gamble.
Perhaps on occasions, polling outcomes should cede to the moral case.
Morality, other than what is found in religious texts, in a democracy is ultimately determined by the majority of public opinion which the elected government then follows into policy and law
Come now Ayatollah Khomeini.
Hmmm. The man with the small moustache demonstrated an immorality "in (initially at least) a democracy ... ultimately determined by the majority of public opinion which the elected government then follow(ed) into policy and law".
Hitler on no level represented Christian morality no but he did represent the views of enough Germans for the Nazis to win most seats in the German Parliament in the 1930s.
Absent religious morality, morality is just simply the view of the majority of public opinion at the time, which in turn through the elected government then influences lawmaking
I can't think of a more nebulous construct than "morality". Nonetheless "morality is just simply the view of the majority of public opinion at the time" must be just plain wrong. If public opinion is immoral (e.g. support in WW2 Germany for anti-Semitism) it is by definition not moral.
I am not religious but I see the ten commandments as a pretty reasonable moral code. TV Evangelists or Catholic Priests espousing the ten commandments but ignoring a handful when it suits them is not "religious morality".
Anti Semitism is only immoral to Jews ie in religious terms as it is in opposition to the Torah and also to the Christian morality of love thy neighbour as set out in the New Testament.
There is nothing automatically immoral about anti Semitism beyond that religious morality if a majority of the public become anti Semitic. Indeed in parts of the Arab world today anti Semitism is rife unfortunately, as it is in parts of the far left
There's a tiny memorial to the Holodomor at the base of Calton Hill in Edinburgh. Must have been past it scores of times before I first stopped to read it.
Given the attention other genocides get, it seems rather neglected. Perhaps no longer.
Doesn't look Putin is ready to back down: he said a deal "is possible only if Russia’s legitimate security interests are unconditionally taken into account.
Those interests include:
– recognition of Russian sovereignty over Crimea – demilitarization and denazification of the Ukrainian state – ensuring its neutral status
Ukraine said it was open to neutrality, but hard to see how they agree to the rest after all that's happened."
We should grab at this, even if it sticks in the throat. It’s close to what I’ve been proposing since this kicked off.
Ukraine to stay neutral and demilitarise; Crimea to be recognised as Russian.
I don’t know what denazification means, except the deposition of the Ukrainian government. But we can’t agree to that.
Nothing to do with us whether Ukraine wants to be neutral or renounce it’s claim Crimea on. However it is our job to support Ukraine in not agreeing to do such things under duress with a gun to its head.
Yes, they may well agree things now that stirred up westerners dont like but they need to decide what they think best.
I am confused how they could commit to neutrality even if they conceded it - not being in NATO hasnt prevented support even if it doesn't mean full backing and aspiration to join the EU one day seems to remain.
Doesn't look Putin is ready to back down: he said a deal "is possible only if Russia’s legitimate security interests are unconditionally taken into account.
Those interests include:
– recognition of Russian sovereignty over Crimea – demilitarization and denazification of the Ukrainian state – ensuring its neutral status
Ukraine said it was open to neutrality, but hard to see how they agree to the rest after all that's happened."
We should grab at this, even if it sticks in the throat. It’s close to what I’ve been proposing since this kicked off.
Ukraine to stay neutral and demilitarise; Crimea to be recognised as Russian.
I don’t know what denazification means, except the deposition of the Ukrainian government. But we can’t agree to that.
Why should Ukraine lay down its weapons?
I mean, I can see the other things - no NATO (fine) and Crimea should never have been part of Ukraine.
But ultimately, Russia doesn't get to choose its neighbour government, or whether they are allowed an army - especially when it is Russia who goes around invading other countries.
It is choosing, though. It’s choosing right now. I know it sticks in the liberal craw (and I’m much more liberal than you), but if we want to avoid more butchery…
In the first instance this is a judgment call for Ukraine, but it is NATO’s weaponry and US/EU economic heft that are Ukraine are calling upon here.
But it's not obvious that we would be avoiding more butchery. Ukraine lays down its weapons. Russia pauses briefly, then reinvades, and is able to visit considerably more butchery due to a lack of Ukrainian defence. We're into ethnic cleansing scenarios. And then Russia, empowered, moves on to Estonia...
Yes. There are times when you are faced with a situation where a disagreeable compromise is the least worst option, but this isn't one of them.
This is a situation where a line has to be drawn, and if we don't draw it here we will be faced with the necessity of drawing it somewhere closer to home later.
I agree.
Putin will really hate Zelenskyy and the Ukrainians now because they have made a fool of him. The destruction of Ukrainian cities will be personal.
The problem for others in the regime is that Putin has just destroyed all of the progress since 1998 and burned every bridge. Dr Evil is not a good look for Putin, and I suspect that some big changes are coming in Moscow.
Just had a little fun spamming the Russian embassy email links.
I think I might do that daily.
If you go up Highgate West Hill, by Highgate Ponds, you will find about half way up the entrance to the Russian Trade Delegation to the UK.
I have been past many times but it never seems to be open. Maybe I will try again when I am nearby later this week. I have some trade I would like to do with them.
Perhaps others might like to do likewise.
Btw the number is 020 8340 1907 if you want to order something by phone
Perhaps on occasions, polling outcomes should cede to the moral case.
Morality, other than what is found in religious texts, in a democracy is ultimately determined by the majority of public opinion which the elected government then follows into policy and law
Come now Ayatollah Khomeini.
Hmmm. The man with the small moustache demonstrated an immorality "in (initially at least) a democracy ... ultimately determined by the majority of public opinion which the elected government then follow(ed) into policy and law".
Hitler on no level represented Christian morality no but he did represent the views of enough Germans for the Nazis to win most seats in the German Parliament in the 1930s.
Absent religious morality, morality is just simply the view of the majority of public opinion at the time, which in turn through the elected government then influences lawmaking
No it really isn't. People have a basic understanding of personal morality that goes far beyond merely the societal norm and is there irrespective of religious belief. Indeed in many cases both religious belief and 'public opinion' actively work against this innate moral sense.
Peoples' personal morality is what the majority of them think is right at the time.
In the 1930s most Germans voted for the Nazis and the Nationalists. Hitler represented what most Germans' personal morality was for that period.
Religious morality however is set in stone in religious texts like the Bible, Torah and Koran regardless of public opinion
Ah, I get it now. You don’t believe any of this guff you just write it for fun. Fair play.
I agree with you entirely but Russia's Useful Green Idiots have been opposing the bit in bold.
@Richard_Tyndall is 100% right we need hydrocarbons to get us through the transition to clean energy and we should be developing our own instead of importing it from Putin and Sheiks.
The loony elements of the Green movement oppose any and all exploration and extraction of domestic hydrocarbons. That does play into the hands of the likes of Putin who simply ignore those loons and do as they please.
Dixiedean:
One may say the same about those who have fought tooth and nail to prevent anything to restrict the demand side. We hear surprisingly little about that from the other side. It's going to take both to get anywhere near.
Somebody made a good point, it isn't just green policy that's preventing fracking in the UK, its nimby-ism. Just as everybody supports other people paying higher taxes, so everybody supports cheaper gas drawn from fields near others.
To make it work, the government needs incentives for people to agree for their areas to be fracked.
In case you've missed it, my attitude to NIMBYs is long-established. I have as little respect for NIMBYs here as I do anywhere and they would if it were up to me get the exact same response as I'd give them elsewhere. Fuck NIMBYs.
However incentivising areas that get fracked is a very good idea, and is what the Americans have done very successfully.
That’s easy - let local authorities rather than central government levy taxes on production. If everyone in your district gets a cheque instead of a council tax bill, people might suddenly be in favour of it.
Trouble with this, is that knowing the average Local Authority, they'll waste the entire windfall on some ill thought-out scheme to invest in Dutch tulips, and end up demanding a council tax increase instead.
A better system would be that say 80% of the windfall was distributed as a council tax reduction (but in no way controlled by the council), and 20% went directly to the council budget. That would provide the right incentives all round, but prevent local councils from doing too much stupid stuff with the windfall. (This would be a better arrangement than all the S106 planning stuff too).
The irony with fracking is that there is virtually nothing for the nimby's to get excided about anyway - if it didn't need lots of planning consent etc, they would never even notice it happening - it's just that somehow the crusties have convinced the world fracking will result in the four horsemen of the apocalypse appearing on the street.
Visit the Fylde. It's very posh people with 4 and 5 bedroom houses and multiple cars. I don't think they are brainwashed by crusties for their heavily Tory voting habits. Yet almost every house has anti-fracking posters.
I don’t get the Fylde. Isn’t it next to Blackpool? Where is the money coming from?
Always been a mystery to me too! There used to be a lot of longish-distance commuters to Manchester from the Fylde (another place with a definite article) but less so nowadays. There's a lot of retirement there.
Thanks.
In my geeky local govt re-org fantasy, I’d provisionally bundled the Fylde (and Poulton-le-Fylde from the Wyre) into a Blackpool metro.
I’m guessing it would cause uproar.
It would, yes! More uproar in Fylde, I think, than Wyre. I don't think many from Lytham or Kirkham have much cause to go to Blackpool.
Hospital services?
Fair point, yes - also, potentially, sixth form education.
FWIW, I am hearing from friends with contacts in Russia that there are some very serious conversations going on across the regime and we may see some serious attempt to "resolve" the problem quite soon. If and it is a very big IF, Putin holds off attacks on civilian targets and the road to Kyiv stays open as primised to Macron, then the talks can continue. Russian side privately admitting that the situation is difficult, and things are still very dangerous,
My guess is that if the Ukrainians can hang on for another week, then the exit ramp will be looking very attractive to the Kremlin, "Neutral and no return of Crimea" seems to be the bottom line, but there are still a lot of issues to work through on the Russian side.
BTW if I were Oleksander Lukashenka tonight I would be feeling very nervous indeed.
A very hopeful and encouraging post. From much further away, that's my kind of feeling today, too.
Perhaps on occasions, polling outcomes should cede to the moral case.
Morality, other than what is found in religious texts, in a democracy is ultimately determined by the majority of public opinion which the elected government then follows into policy and law
Come now Ayatollah Khomeini.
Hmmm. The man with the small moustache demonstrated an immorality "in (initially at least) a democracy ... ultimately determined by the majority of public opinion which the elected government then follow(ed) into policy and law".
Hitler on no level represented Christian morality no but he did represent the views of enough Germans for the Nazis to win most seats in the German Parliament in the 1930s.
Absent religious morality, morality is just simply the view of the majority of public opinion at the time, which in turn through the elected government then influences lawmaking
I can't think of a more nebulous construct than "morality". Nonetheless "morality is just simply the view of the majority of public opinion at the time" must be just plain wrong. If public opinion is immoral (e.g. support in WW2 Germany for anti-Semitism) it is by definition not moral.
I am not religious but I see the ten commandments as a pretty reasonable moral code. TV Evangelists or Catholic Priests espousing the ten commandments but ignoring a handful when it suits them is not "religious morality".
Anti Semitism is only immoral to Jews ie in religious terms as it is in opposition to the Torah and also to the Christian morality of love thy neighbour as set out in the New Testament.
There is nothing automatically immoral about anti Semitism beyond that religious morality if a majority of the public become anti Semitic. Indeed in parts of the Arab world today anti Semitism is rife unfortunately, as it is in parts of the far left
You really do have so much more in common with Jeremy Corbyn than you realise. Two peas in a pod!
No, I am not an anti Semite.
However if Corbyn had won a majority at the last general election then the majority of the British population would have shifted to a more anti Semitic morality based on the views of some of Corbyn's supporters
So Boris would stay PM in his nuclear bunker with a Conservative majority while he is launching retaliatory Trident nuclear missile strikes against Moscow and St Petersburg
Boris wouldn't have a seat though....
One man, one vote...
How do you do first past the post when there are no posts left standing?
As anyone who played footy at school can attest to can make a post out of anything - bags, rubble, even your friends....
I agree with you entirely but Russia's Useful Green Idiots have been opposing the bit in bold.
@Richard_Tyndall is 100% right we need hydrocarbons to get us through the transition to clean energy and we should be developing our own instead of importing it from Putin and Sheiks.
The loony elements of the Green movement oppose any and all exploration and extraction of domestic hydrocarbons. That does play into the hands of the likes of Putin who simply ignore those loons and do as they please.
Dixiedean:
One may say the same about those who have fought tooth and nail to prevent anything to restrict the demand side. We hear surprisingly little about that from the other side. It's going to take both to get anywhere near.
Somebody made a good point, it isn't just green policy that's preventing fracking in the UK, its nimby-ism. Just as everybody supports other people paying higher taxes, so everybody supports cheaper gas drawn from fields near others.
To make it work, the government needs incentives for people to agree for their areas to be fracked.
In case you've missed it, my attitude to NIMBYs is long-established. I have as little respect for NIMBYs here as I do anywhere and they would if it were up to me get the exact same response as I'd give them elsewhere. Fuck NIMBYs.
However incentivising areas that get fracked is a very good idea, and is what the Americans have done very successfully.
That’s easy - let local authorities rather than central government levy taxes on production. If everyone in your district gets a cheque instead of a council tax bill, people might suddenly be in favour of it.
Trouble with this, is that knowing the average Local Authority, they'll waste the entire windfall on some ill thought-out scheme to invest in Dutch tulips, and end up demanding a council tax increase instead.
A better system would be that say 80% of the windfall was distributed as a council tax reduction (but in no way controlled by the council), and 20% went directly to the council budget. That would provide the right incentives all round, but prevent local councils from doing too much stupid stuff with the windfall. (This would be a better arrangement than all the S106 planning stuff too).
The irony with fracking is that there is virtually nothing for the nimby's to get excided about anyway - if it didn't need lots of planning consent etc, they would never even notice it happening - it's just that somehow the crusties have convinced the world fracking will result in the four horsemen of the apocalypse appearing on the street.
Visit the Fylde. It's very posh people with 4 and 5 bedroom houses and multiple cars. I don't think they are brainwashed by crusties for their heavily Tory voting habits. Yet almost every house has anti-fracking posters.
I don’t get the Fylde. Isn’t it next to Blackpool? Where is the money coming from?
Always been a mystery to me too! There used to be a lot of longish-distance commuters to Manchester from the Fylde (another place with a definite article) but less so nowadays. There's a lot of retirement there.
Thanks.
In my geeky local govt re-org fantasy, I’d provisionally bundled the Fylde (and Poulton-le-Fylde from the Wyre) into a Blackpool metro.
I’m guessing it would cause uproar.
It would, yes! More uproar in Fylde, I think, than Wyre. I don't think many from Lytham or Kirkham have much cause to go to Blackpool.
Hospital services?
Fair point, yes - also, potentially, sixth form education.
In that case, perhaps my fantasy stands in the sense that Lytham etc do use Blackpool’s services and, rightly, should both vote for and pay for them.
Edit: as far as I can tell, Fylde is in Blackpool’s Travel To Work Area, so yeh they can bloody well suck it up.
Doesn't look Putin is ready to back down: he said a deal "is possible only if Russia’s legitimate security interests are unconditionally taken into account.
Those interests include:
– recognition of Russian sovereignty over Crimea – demilitarization and denazification of the Ukrainian state – ensuring its neutral status
Ukraine said it was open to neutrality, but hard to see how they agree to the rest after all that's happened."
We should grab at this, even if it sticks in the throat. It’s close to what I’ve been proposing since this kicked off.
Ukraine to stay neutral and demilitarise; Crimea to be recognised as Russian.
I don’t know what denazification means, except the deposition of the Ukrainian government. But we can’t agree to that.
Why should Ukraine lay down its weapons?
I mean, I can see the other things - no NATO (fine) and Crimea should never have been part of Ukraine.
But ultimately, Russia doesn't get to choose its neighbour government, or whether they are allowed an army - especially when it is Russia who goes around invading other countries.
It is choosing, though. It’s choosing right now. I know it sticks in the liberal craw (and I’m much more liberal than you), but if we want to avoid more butchery…
In the first instance this is a judgment call for Ukraine, but it is NATO’s weaponry and US/EU economic heft that are Ukraine are calling upon here.
But it's not obvious that we would be avoiding more butchery. Ukraine lays down its weapons. Russia pauses briefly, then reinvades, and is able to visit considerably more butchery due to a lack of Ukrainian defence. We're into ethnic cleansing scenarios. And then Russia, empowered, moves on to Estonia...
Yes. There are times when you are faced with a situation where a disagreeable compromise is the least worst option, but this isn't one of them.
This is a situation where a line has to be drawn, and if we don't draw it here we will be faced with the necessity of drawing it somewhere closer to home later.
I agree.
Putin will really hate Zelenskyy and the Ukrainians now because they have made a fool of him. The destruction of Ukrainian cities will be personal.
In addition, the attack on Ukraine is not the first evil thing Putin's regime has done. It is one of a series of attacks they have committed, including two on our shores.
I'd find it hard to accept any assurances from Putin. If I were to shake his hand, I'd check the number of fingers I had afterwards.
Sadly, for peace to happen, Putin has to go. But in going, he might start a wider war. And his replacement might be worse.
But Putin really has to go. The wider world cannot trust any deal they make with him or his regime.
FWIW, I am hearing from friends with contacts in Russia that there are some very serious conversations going on across the regime and we may see some serious attempt to "resolve" the problem quite soon. If and it is a very big IF, Putin holds off attacks on civilian targets and the road to Kyiv stays open as primised to Macron, then the talks can continue. Russian side privately admitting that the situation is difficult, and things are still very dangerous,
My guess is that if the Ukrainians can hang on for another week, then the exit ramp will be looking very attractive to the Kremlin, "Neutral and no return of Crimea" seems to be the bottom line, but there are still a lot of issues to work through on the Russian side.
BTW if I were Oleksander Lukashenka tonight I would be feeling very nervous indeed.
That looks like a landing zone if there is to be one. Implementation of Minsk II with the removal of the constitutional obligations on Ukraine; Crimea to be punted into the long grass with a putative separate agreement. As Russia is supposedly committed to Minsk it could be presented as a face-saving win for Moscow.
Just had a little fun spamming the Russian embassy email links.
I think I might do that daily.
If you go up Highgate West Hill, by Highgate Ponds, you will find about half way up the entrance to the Russian Trade Delegation to the UK.
I have been past many times but it never seems to be open. Maybe I will try again when I am nearby later this week. I have some trade I would like to do with them.
Perhaps others might like to do likewise.
Btw the number is 020 8340 1907 if you want to order something by phone
I agree with you entirely but Russia's Useful Green Idiots have been opposing the bit in bold.
@Richard_Tyndall is 100% right we need hydrocarbons to get us through the transition to clean energy and we should be developing our own instead of importing it from Putin and Sheiks.
The loony elements of the Green movement oppose any and all exploration and extraction of domestic hydrocarbons. That does play into the hands of the likes of Putin who simply ignore those loons and do as they please.
Dixiedean:
One may say the same about those who have fought tooth and nail to prevent anything to restrict the demand side. We hear surprisingly little about that from the other side. It's going to take both to get anywhere near.
Somebody made a good point, it isn't just green policy that's preventing fracking in the UK, its nimby-ism. Just as everybody supports other people paying higher taxes, so everybody supports cheaper gas drawn from fields near others.
To make it work, the government needs incentives for people to agree for their areas to be fracked.
In case you've missed it, my attitude to NIMBYs is long-established. I have as little respect for NIMBYs here as I do anywhere and they would if it were up to me get the exact same response as I'd give them elsewhere. Fuck NIMBYs.
However incentivising areas that get fracked is a very good idea, and is what the Americans have done very successfully.
That’s easy - let local authorities rather than central government levy taxes on production. If everyone in your district gets a cheque instead of a council tax bill, people might suddenly be in favour of it.
Trouble with this, is that knowing the average Local Authority, they'll waste the entire windfall on some ill thought-out scheme to invest in Dutch tulips, and end up demanding a council tax increase instead.
A better system would be that say 80% of the windfall was distributed as a council tax reduction (but in no way controlled by the council), and 20% went directly to the council budget. That would provide the right incentives all round, but prevent local councils from doing too much stupid stuff with the windfall. (This would be a better arrangement than all the S106 planning stuff too).
The irony with fracking is that there is virtually nothing for the nimby's to get excided about anyway - if it didn't need lots of planning consent etc, they would never even notice it happening - it's just that somehow the crusties have convinced the world fracking will result in the four horsemen of the apocalypse appearing on the street.
Visit the Fylde. It's very posh people with 4 and 5 bedroom houses and multiple cars. I don't think they are brainwashed by crusties for their heavily Tory voting habits. Yet almost every house has anti-fracking posters.
I don’t get the Fylde. Isn’t it next to Blackpool? Where is the money coming from?
Always been a mystery to me too! There used to be a lot of longish-distance commuters to Manchester from the Fylde (another place with a definite article) but less so nowadays. There's a lot of retirement there.
Masses. St Annes is a retirement village pretty much.
There's a tiny memorial to the Holodomor at the base of Calton Hill in Edinburgh. Must have been past it scores of times before I first stopped to read it.
Given the attention other genocides get, it seems rather neglected. Perhaps no longer.
There's a tiny memorial to the Holodomor at the base of Calton Hill in Edinburgh. Must have been past it scores of times before I first stopped to read it.
Given the attention other genocides get, it seems rather neglected. Perhaps no longer.
Perhaps on occasions, polling outcomes should cede to the moral case.
Morality, other than what is found in religious texts, in a democracy is ultimately determined by the majority of public opinion which the elected government then follows into policy and law
Come now Ayatollah Khomeini.
Hmmm. The man with the small moustache demonstrated an immorality "in (initially at least) a democracy ... ultimately determined by the majority of public opinion which the elected government then follow(ed) into policy and law".
Hitler on no level represented Christian morality no but he did represent the views of enough Germans for the Nazis to win most seats in the German Parliament in the 1930s.
Absent religious morality, morality is just simply the view of the majority of public opinion at the time, which in turn through the elected government then influences lawmaking
I can't think of a more nebulous construct than "morality". Nonetheless "morality is just simply the view of the majority of public opinion at the time" must be just plain wrong. If public opinion is immoral (e.g. support in WW2 Germany for anti-Semitism) it is by definition not moral.
I am not religious but I see the ten commandments as a pretty reasonable moral code. TV Evangelists or Catholic Priests espousing the ten commandments but ignoring a handful when it suits them is not "religious morality".
Anti Semitism is only immoral to Jews ie in religious terms as it is in opposition to the Torah and also to the Christian morality of love thy neighbour as set out in the New Testament.
There is nothing automatically immoral about anti Semitism beyond that religious morality if a majority of the public become anti Semitic. Indeed in parts of the Arab world today anti Semitism is rife unfortunately, as it is in parts of the far left
You really do have so much more in common with Jeremy Corbyn than you realise. Two peas in a pod!
No, I am not an anti Semite.
However if Corbyn had won a majority at the last general election then the majority of the British population would have shifted to a more anti Semitic morality based on the views of some of Corbyn's supporters
Another ridiculous post. Do you think because Johnson won the election the majority of the British population would have shifted to a more who-gives-a-shit-about-the-truth morality?
FWIW, I am hearing from friends with contacts in Russia that there are some very serious conversations going on across the regime and we may see some serious attempt to "resolve" the problem quite soon. If and it is a very big IF, Putin holds off attacks on civilian targets and the road to Kyiv stays open as primised to Macron, then the talks can continue. Russian side privately admitting that the situation is difficult, and things are still very dangerous,
My guess is that if the Ukrainians can hang on for another week, then the exit ramp will be looking very attractive to the Kremlin, "Neutral and no return of Crimea" seems to be the bottom line, but there are still a lot of issues to work through on the Russian side.
BTW if I were Oleksander Lukashenka tonight I would be feeling very nervous indeed.
That looks like a landing zone if there is to be one. Implementation of Minsk II with the removal of the constitutional obligations on Ukraine; Crimea to be punted into the long grass with a putative separate agreement. As Russia is supposedly committed to Minsk it could be presented as a face-saving win for Moscow.
What about the West? Even if Ukraine and Russia do a deal, the West might decide it wants to go ahead and F8ck Russia's economy anyhow.
Can Ukraine deliver its Western friends,given Putin threatened some serious Western allies?
Macron has had a good Ukraine crisis (so far). He put a huge effort into seeking a diplomatic solution before the Russian invasion, but has been at the forefront of efforts to contain Putin and support Ukraine since then.
I need to really ruin a few Russian people's day. Any suggestions?
It's not the Russians, Omnium. They are great people. It is Putin and his henchmen.
I am currently reading my Dad's war letters home from the front in North Africa, 1940/42. He didn't hate the Germans. He respected them. He hated Hitler, and the Nazis, with a passion.
If he could maintain the important distinction then, when Rommel's boys were literally trying to shoot his bollox off, surely we from the comfort of our homes can maintain the distinction between ordinary Russians and the pigshits that lead them?
I agree with you entirely but Russia's Useful Green Idiots have been opposing the bit in bold.
@Richard_Tyndall is 100% right we need hydrocarbons to get us through the transition to clean energy and we should be developing our own instead of importing it from Putin and Sheiks.
The loony elements of the Green movement oppose any and all exploration and extraction of domestic hydrocarbons. That does play into the hands of the likes of Putin who simply ignore those loons and do as they please.
Dixiedean:
One may say the same about those who have fought tooth and nail to prevent anything to restrict the demand side. We hear surprisingly little about that from the other side. It's going to take both to get anywhere near.
Somebody made a good point, it isn't just green policy that's preventing fracking in the UK, its nimby-ism. Just as everybody supports other people paying higher taxes, so everybody supports cheaper gas drawn from fields near others.
To make it work, the government needs incentives for people to agree for their areas to be fracked.
In case you've missed it, my attitude to NIMBYs is long-established. I have as little respect for NIMBYs here as I do anywhere and they would if it were up to me get the exact same response as I'd give them elsewhere. Fuck NIMBYs.
However incentivising areas that get fracked is a very good idea, and is what the Americans have done very successfully.
That’s easy - let local authorities rather than central government levy taxes on production. If everyone in your district gets a cheque instead of a council tax bill, people might suddenly be in favour of it.
Trouble with this, is that knowing the average Local Authority, they'll waste the entire windfall on some ill thought-out scheme to invest in Dutch tulips, and end up demanding a council tax increase instead.
A better system would be that say 80% of the windfall was distributed as a council tax reduction (but in no way controlled by the council), and 20% went directly to the council budget. That would provide the right incentives all round, but prevent local councils from doing too much stupid stuff with the windfall. (This would be a better arrangement than all the S106 planning stuff too).
The irony with fracking is that there is virtually nothing for the nimby's to get excided about anyway - if it didn't need lots of planning consent etc, they would never even notice it happening - it's just that somehow the crusties have convinced the world fracking will result in the four horsemen of the apocalypse appearing on the street.
Wow,
This is wrong on two counts.
Firstly, there's no windfall right now as fracking is not currently economic in the UK.
Secondly, I have spent an awful lot of time around this industry, and holy fuck you would notice. Getting the rig into position. Drilling 24 hours a day. And then the sound of the diesel compressors getting the water pressure up. Yeah, you'd notice.
Hmm. I have drilled maybe two dozen onshore oil wells in the UK in my career. And the local restrictions generally mean there is very little disturbance to the community. As a norm no activity that caused any level of noise is permitted between 8pm and 7am. That includes hard drilling, tripping, running casing etc. Much of the time if those operations were necessary we would just stop and circulate for the whole night (which is why we all wanted to work nightshift). Even the generators are in special sound proofed containers. On one in Kent the noise from the ventilators on the cold storage unit next door was louder than the generators. Literally. We had to get the owners to switch them off for a while so the local inspectors could measure the noise from the generators.
This is not to support fracking as a process since personally I think it is unsuited to the densely populated UK. But noise pollution is not one of the issues.
I agree with you entirely but Russia's Useful Green Idiots have been opposing the bit in bold.
@Richard_Tyndall is 100% right we need hydrocarbons to get us through the transition to clean energy and we should be developing our own instead of importing it from Putin and Sheiks.
The loony elements of the Green movement oppose any and all exploration and extraction of domestic hydrocarbons. That does play into the hands of the likes of Putin who simply ignore those loons and do as they please.
Dixiedean:
One may say the same about those who have fought tooth and nail to prevent anything to restrict the demand side. We hear surprisingly little about that from the other side. It's going to take both to get anywhere near.
Somebody made a good point, it isn't just green policy that's preventing fracking in the UK, its nimby-ism. Just as everybody supports other people paying higher taxes, so everybody supports cheaper gas drawn from fields near others.
To make it work, the government needs incentives for people to agree for their areas to be fracked.
In case you've missed it, my attitude to NIMBYs is long-established. I have as little respect for NIMBYs here as I do anywhere and they would if it were up to me get the exact same response as I'd give them elsewhere. Fuck NIMBYs.
However incentivising areas that get fracked is a very good idea, and is what the Americans have done very successfully.
That’s easy - let local authorities rather than central government levy taxes on production. If everyone in your district gets a cheque instead of a council tax bill, people might suddenly be in favour of it.
Trouble with this, is that knowing the average Local Authority, they'll waste the entire windfall on some ill thought-out scheme to invest in Dutch tulips, and end up demanding a council tax increase instead.
A better system would be that say 80% of the windfall was distributed as a council tax reduction (but in no way controlled by the council), and 20% went directly to the council budget. That would provide the right incentives all round, but prevent local councils from doing too much stupid stuff with the windfall. (This would be a better arrangement than all the S106 planning stuff too).
The irony with fracking is that there is virtually nothing for the nimby's to get excided about anyway - if it didn't need lots of planning consent etc, they would never even notice it happening - it's just that somehow the crusties have convinced the world fracking will result in the four horsemen of the apocalypse appearing on the street.
Visit the Fylde. It's very posh people with 4 and 5 bedroom houses and multiple cars. I don't think they are brainwashed by crusties for their heavily Tory voting habits. Yet almost every house has anti-fracking posters.
I don’t get the Fylde. Isn’t it next to Blackpool? Where is the money coming from?
Always been a mystery to me too! There used to be a lot of longish-distance commuters to Manchester from the Fylde (another place with a definite article) but less so nowadays. There's a lot of retirement there.
Thanks.
In my geeky local govt re-org fantasy, I’d provisionally bundled the Fylde (and Poulton-le-Fylde from the Wyre) into a Blackpool metro.
I’m guessing it would cause uproar.
Particularly as a lot of it looks towards Preston rather than the donkeylashers.
Doesn't look Putin is ready to back down: he said a deal "is possible only if Russia’s legitimate security interests are unconditionally taken into account.
Those interests include:
– recognition of Russian sovereignty over Crimea – demilitarization and denazification of the Ukrainian state – ensuring its neutral status
Ukraine said it was open to neutrality, but hard to see how they agree to the rest after all that's happened."
We should grab at this, even if it sticks in the throat. It’s close to what I’ve been proposing since this kicked off.
Ukraine to stay neutral and demilitarise; Crimea to be recognised as Russian.
I don’t know what denazification means, except the deposition of the Ukrainian government. But we can’t agree to that.
Why should Ukraine lay down its weapons?
I mean, I can see the other things - no NATO (fine) and Crimea should never have been part of Ukraine.
But ultimately, Russia doesn't get to choose its neighbour government, or whether they are allowed an army - especially when it is Russia who goes around invading other countries.
It is choosing, though. It’s choosing right now. I know it sticks in the liberal craw (and I’m much more liberal than you), but if we want to avoid more butchery…
In the first instance this is a judgment call for Ukraine, but it is NATO’s weaponry and US/EU economic heft that are Ukraine are calling upon here.
But it's not obvious that we would be avoiding more butchery. Ukraine lays down its weapons. Russia pauses briefly, then reinvades, and is able to visit considerably more butchery due to a lack of Ukrainian defence. We're into ethnic cleansing scenarios. And then Russia, empowered, moves on to Estonia...
Yes. There are times when you are faced with a situation where a disagreeable compromise is the least worst option, but this isn't one of them.
This is a situation where a line has to be drawn, and if we don't draw it here we will be faced with the necessity of drawing it somewhere closer to home later.
I agree.
Putin will really hate Zelenskyy and the Ukrainians now because they have made a fool of him. The destruction of Ukrainian cities will be personal.
The problem for others in the regime is that Putin has just destroyed all of the progress since 1998 and burned every bridge. Dr Evil is not a good look for Putin, and I suspect that some big changes are coming in Moscow.
Putin's power ultimately rests on nothing but fear. Giving concessions just helps him to maintain the illusion and continue to intimidate others externally as well as internally. Ukraine has drawn a line in the sand, and we should follow their example.
I agree with you entirely but Russia's Useful Green Idiots have been opposing the bit in bold.
@Richard_Tyndall is 100% right we need hydrocarbons to get us through the transition to clean energy and we should be developing our own instead of importing it from Putin and Sheiks.
The loony elements of the Green movement oppose any and all exploration and extraction of domestic hydrocarbons. That does play into the hands of the likes of Putin who simply ignore those loons and do as they please.
Dixiedean:
One may say the same about those who have fought tooth and nail to prevent anything to restrict the demand side. We hear surprisingly little about that from the other side. It's going to take both to get anywhere near.
Somebody made a good point, it isn't just green policy that's preventing fracking in the UK, its nimby-ism. Just as everybody supports other people paying higher taxes, so everybody supports cheaper gas drawn from fields near others.
To make it work, the government needs incentives for people to agree for their areas to be fracked.
In case you've missed it, my attitude to NIMBYs is long-established. I have as little respect for NIMBYs here as I do anywhere and they would if it were up to me get the exact same response as I'd give them elsewhere. Fuck NIMBYs.
However incentivising areas that get fracked is a very good idea, and is what the Americans have done very successfully.
That’s easy - let local authorities rather than central government levy taxes on production. If everyone in your district gets a cheque instead of a council tax bill, people might suddenly be in favour of it.
Trouble with this, is that knowing the average Local Authority, they'll waste the entire windfall on some ill thought-out scheme to invest in Dutch tulips, and end up demanding a council tax increase instead.
A better system would be that say 80% of the windfall was distributed as a council tax reduction (but in no way controlled by the council), and 20% went directly to the council budget. That would provide the right incentives all round, but prevent local councils from doing too much stupid stuff with the windfall. (This would be a better arrangement than all the S106 planning stuff too).
The irony with fracking is that there is virtually nothing for the nimby's to get excided about anyway - if it didn't need lots of planning consent etc, they would never even notice it happening - it's just that somehow the crusties have convinced the world fracking will result in the four horsemen of the apocalypse appearing on the street.
Visit the Fylde. It's very posh people with 4 and 5 bedroom houses and multiple cars. I don't think they are brainwashed by crusties for their heavily Tory voting habits. Yet almost every house has anti-fracking posters.
I don’t get the Fylde. Isn’t it next to Blackpool? Where is the money coming from?
Always been a mystery to me too! There used to be a lot of longish-distance commuters to Manchester from the Fylde (another place with a definite article) but less so nowadays. There's a lot of retirement there.
Thanks.
In my geeky local govt re-org fantasy, I’d provisionally bundled the Fylde (and Poulton-le-Fylde from the Wyre) into a Blackpool metro.
I’m guessing it would cause uproar.
Particularly as a lot of it looks towards Preston rather than the donkeylashers.
Apparently not, according to the 2011 TTWAs, which admittedly need to be updated.
I need to really ruin a few Russian people's day. Any suggestions?
It's not the Russians, Omnium. They are great people. It is Putin and his henchmen.
I am currently reading my Dad's war letters home from the front in North Africa, 1940/42. He didn't hate the Germans. He respected them. He hated Hitler, and the Nazis, with a passion.
If he could maintain the important distinction then, when Rommel's boys were literally trying to shoot his bollox off, surely we from the comfort of our homes can maintain the distinction between ordinary Russians and the pigshits that lead them?
I've no ill-will towards Russians,
However they are collectively responsible for all their arseholeness of far too many years.
Even if they're not then being unfair to them is the best way of ridding ourselves from Putin.
There's a tiny memorial to the Holodomor at the base of Calton Hill in Edinburgh. Must have been past it scores of times before I first stopped to read it.
Given the attention other genocides get, it seems rather neglected. Perhaps no longer.
I don’t think the UK’s really had a consequential FS since Robin Cook. British PMs have tended to be their own FS.
It may be time for a new kind of FS, maybe from the Lords, someone with long diplomatic experience.
From my experience in government (spanning three decades now, on and off) I think the best ministers are those who are interested in policy and know enough to challenge their officials but don't share their assumptions. So, for instance, you had perhaps our greatest foreign secretary of the last century, Bevin, who laid the groundwork for the containment of Russia after the Second World War. Or, again, our most transformative recent Chancellor, Nigel Lawson. Both had a clear set of goals they wanted to achieve, knew enough not to be overawed by their officials, but both were comfortable in, and understood, Government and how it works, and pragmatic enough to value Civil Service advice as to how best to achieve their goals.
The current SPAD-safe seat-Lords trajectory is particularly badly suited to producing people like that.
FWIW, I am hearing from friends with contacts in Russia that there are some very serious conversations going on across the regime and we may see some serious attempt to "resolve" the problem quite soon. If and it is a very big IF, Putin holds off attacks on civilian targets and the road to Kyiv stays open as primised to Macron, then the talks can continue. Russian side privately admitting that the situation is difficult, and things are still very dangerous,
My guess is that if the Ukrainians can hang on for another week, then the exit ramp will be looking very attractive to the Kremlin, "Neutral and no return of Crimea" seems to be the bottom line, but there are still a lot of issues to work through on the Russian side.
BTW if I were Oleksander Lukashenka tonight I would be feeling very nervous indeed.
That looks like a landing zone if there is to be one. Implementation of Minsk II with the removal of the constitutional obligations on Ukraine; Crimea to be punted into the long grass with a putative separate agreement. As Russia is supposedly committed to Minsk it could be presented as a face-saving win for Moscow.
What about the West? Even if Ukraine and Russia do a deal, the West might decide it wants to go ahead and F8ck Russia's economy anyhow.
Can Ukraine deliver its Western friends,given Putin threatened some serious Western allies?
Sanctions to be removed once the security provisions of Minsk II are implemented ie Once Russian and proxy troops are removed. I can't see Western governments trusting Russia with 40% of its gas supplies again, nor do I suspect foreign companies will invest in Russia with the same enthusiasm. The Russian economy will still be hit.
I also don't think Ukraine will agree to transfer Crimea to Russia. There needs to be a fudge on that. ie Russia holds onto Crimea but Crimean related sanctions remain. Both sides pretend to negotiate a permanent solution.
FWIW, I am hearing from friends with contacts in Russia that there are some very serious conversations going on across the regime and we may see some serious attempt to "resolve" the problem quite soon. If and it is a very big IF, Putin holds off attacks on civilian targets and the road to Kyiv stays open as primised to Macron, then the talks can continue. Russian side privately admitting that the situation is difficult, and things are still very dangerous,
My guess is that if the Ukrainians can hang on for another week, then the exit ramp will be looking very attractive to the Kremlin, "Neutral and no return of Crimea" seems to be the bottom line, but there are still a lot of issues to work through on the Russian side.
BTW if I were Oleksander Lukashenka tonight I would be feeling very nervous indeed.
That looks like a landing zone if there is to be one. Implementation of Minsk II with the removal of the constitutional obligations on Ukraine; Crimea to be punted into the long grass with a putative separate agreement. As Russia is supposedly committed to Minsk it could be presented as a face-saving win for Moscow.
What about the West? Even if Ukraine and Russia do a deal, the West might decide it wants to go ahead and F8ck Russia's economy anyhow.
Can Ukraine deliver its Western friends,given Putin threatened some serious Western allies?
Yeah, this is the next potential problem, in either direction. There are very much three interested groups: Russia, Ukraine, The West. Obviously the latter are not officially involved, but they have a huge say in all of this.
The genie is out of the bottle. There's no way this ends with Russia getting most of what it wanted anyway and everything going back to normal.
I don’t think the UK’s really had a consequential FS since Robin Cook. British PMs have tended to be their own FS.
It may be time for a new kind of FS, maybe from the Lords, someone with long diplomatic experience.
Was he a particularly consequential FS? He wasn’t FS at the time of his most memorable contribution (opposition to the Iraq war). He tried to do some stuff early on around ethical foreign policy, but ultimately Blair decided it wasn’t a part he wanted to go down.
A hugely unstable, huge country of Russia, is never in the interests in the West. That's why they'll gratefully take a chance to de-escalate economically and militarily if it works out, but with NATO defences bolstered for ever.
There's a tiny memorial to the Holodomor at the base of Calton Hill in Edinburgh. Must have been past it scores of times before I first stopped to read it.
Given the attention other genocides get, it seems rather neglected. Perhaps no longer.
I don't recognise it. Do you remember which side of the hill it's on?
I think the northern side, at the bottom of the steps as you walk towards Leith. On the right. I think. Sadly, I haven't been able to get to Edinburgh for a few years.
During the Cold War, Russia targeted New Zealand and Australia. They believed that all the anti-nuclear stuff was just a front, and anyway, why not. Multiple nukes per city - the death toll would have been most of the population.
I agree with you entirely but Russia's Useful Green Idiots have been opposing the bit in bold.
@Richard_Tyndall is 100% right we need hydrocarbons to get us through the transition to clean energy and we should be developing our own instead of importing it from Putin and Sheiks.
The loony elements of the Green movement oppose any and all exploration and extraction of domestic hydrocarbons. That does play into the hands of the likes of Putin who simply ignore those loons and do as they please.
Dixiedean:
One may say the same about those who have fought tooth and nail to prevent anything to restrict the demand side. We hear surprisingly little about that from the other side. It's going to take both to get anywhere near.
Somebody made a good point, it isn't just green policy that's preventing fracking in the UK, its nimby-ism. Just as everybody supports other people paying higher taxes, so everybody supports cheaper gas drawn from fields near others.
To make it work, the government needs incentives for people to agree for their areas to be fracked.
In case you've missed it, my attitude to NIMBYs is long-established. I have as little respect for NIMBYs here as I do anywhere and they would if it were up to me get the exact same response as I'd give them elsewhere. Fuck NIMBYs.
However incentivising areas that get fracked is a very good idea, and is what the Americans have done very successfully.
That’s easy - let local authorities rather than central government levy taxes on production. If everyone in your district gets a cheque instead of a council tax bill, people might suddenly be in favour of it.
Trouble with this, is that knowing the average Local Authority, they'll waste the entire windfall on some ill thought-out scheme to invest in Dutch tulips, and end up demanding a council tax increase instead.
A better system would be that say 80% of the windfall was distributed as a council tax reduction (but in no way controlled by the council), and 20% went directly to the council budget. That would provide the right incentives all round, but prevent local councils from doing too much stupid stuff with the windfall. (This would be a better arrangement than all the S106 planning stuff too).
The irony with fracking is that there is virtually nothing for the nimby's to get excided about anyway - if it didn't need lots of planning consent etc, they would never even notice it happening - it's just that somehow the crusties have convinced the world fracking will result in the four horsemen of the apocalypse appearing on the street.
Visit the Fylde. It's very posh people with 4 and 5 bedroom houses and multiple cars. I don't think they are brainwashed by crusties for their heavily Tory voting habits. Yet almost every house has anti-fracking posters.
I don’t get the Fylde. Isn’t it next to Blackpool? Where is the money coming from?
Always been a mystery to me too! There used to be a lot of longish-distance commuters to Manchester from the Fylde (another place with a definite article) but less so nowadays. There's a lot of retirement there.
Masses. St Annes is a retirement village pretty much.
I had never been to St. Annes before I had children. My day trips to the seaside as a child were to North Wales. I think my parents were maybe a bit sniffy about the Fylde coast (as if Rhyl is any less lowbrow!). But St. Annes is rather wonderful. Wedged between Lytham and Blackpool, it is midway between the two of them in spirit too. Fun – it has a pier, and donkeys, and inflatables on the beach, and a boating lake – but not too much fun – you wouldn’t go there for a day’s drinking. An absolutely massive beach, when the tide’s out. And even when it’s mostly in. Doktor Hotfingers (whose credentials I doubt, frankly) playing a medley of songs you hate on the promenade. If you’ve got children under 7 there are few better places you can spend a day. Getting a lump in my throat of happy nostalgia now thinking about it – not least because I don’t know if we will ever go again as a family, now the kids are older with tastes more high octane. St. Annes represents golden years I knew were golden but didn’t really grasp how quickly they would pass. Not that having slightly older children isn’t wonderful too, of course; not to mention considerably easier. But of, the magic of those early years. (Admittedly, realistically, magic often realised in retrospect when they were in bed and you had got through another day intact, but still.)
Edit – a further memory of coming out of a café on the front, having just arrived in St. Annes, with my three-year-old, and seeing the beach. A note of gleeful incredulity in her voice as she took in the scene before her: “Sea – donkeys – pier – slides – it a summer holiday!”. That is St. Annes, to me.
I agree with you entirely but Russia's Useful Green Idiots have been opposing the bit in bold.
@Richard_Tyndall is 100% right we need hydrocarbons to get us through the transition to clean energy and we should be developing our own instead of importing it from Putin and Sheiks.
The loony elements of the Green movement oppose any and all exploration and extraction of domestic hydrocarbons. That does play into the hands of the likes of Putin who simply ignore those loons and do as they please.
Dixiedean:
One may say the same about those who have fought tooth and nail to prevent anything to restrict the demand side. We hear surprisingly little about that from the other side. It's going to take both to get anywhere near.
Somebody made a good point, it isn't just green policy that's preventing fracking in the UK, its nimby-ism. Just as everybody supports other people paying higher taxes, so everybody supports cheaper gas drawn from fields near others.
To make it work, the government needs incentives for people to agree for their areas to be fracked.
While I agree with this in principle, the problem is that it is by no means clear that on-shore shale (i.e fracking) is economic in the UK.
If you look at the various shale gas regions in the US - the Marcellus, Fayetville, Antrim, Haynesvlle, etc. - you find that a couple are being developed at pace, and a couple of basically been abandoned. Why? Because if it costs $3 to get gas out the ground in the Marcellus and $12 in the Antrim, then that Antrim shale is not economic. If the gas price is $7, then the Marcellus operators are making out like banditos, while the Antrim ones simply aren't drilling.
There are good reasons to think that on-shore shale in the UK is going to be significantly more expensive to develop than in the US. Firstly, we're simply a lot more populated. Most US shale gas is in regions with big ranches and not a lot of people. Land is cheap. Disruption is small. Secondly, the US has a large number of drilling rigs. There are plenty of oil/gas drilling workers and day rates are low. Thirdly, we simply don't know enough about the geology to know whether the Bowland shale is like the Marcellus (or better), or like the Antrim (or worse). And the willingness of oil and gas companies to take both significant geological and pricing risk in the UK is not high.
I would suggest that there are a couple of things - above and beyond removing the ban on fracking that can be done. The most important of these would be tax incentives to gas generators to enter into long term supply contracts with UK shale gas operators would be the most important. This would remove the price risk for an IGas or other UK shale gas player. It would also enable the UK to (relatively) quickly get a handle on what the right price of Bowland shale gas is likely to be. (And it's not a million miles different to what the German government did with solar.)
OK, in the short term you may be right. In the longer term, the cheapest form of energy generation is already from Renewables, we should wean ourselves off fossil fuels not only for the sake of the planet but also to avoid future price spikes and to avoid being dependent on other countries for our energy.
The question is not really about where the vast majority of electricity generation should come from - and that is renewables.
It is how do we deal with times when the sun isn't shining and the wind isn't blowing?
At that time you need backups - and natural gas is clearly the best choice. It is energy dense. It can be powered up (or down) very quickly at times of need. It is relatively unpolluting. And one can store several months of usage, should you so desire.
I think that transition can be made quite short. There is a need for Russian gas right now because we're not there yet on renewables but within I suspect two or three years the combination of more renewables, better efficiency, more LNG supplies and storage, Europe can supply all its gas needs with existing supplies (North Sea, LNG, Algeria etc) without requiring Russia and prices will start coming down on the overall energy mix.
So we have a gap of a couple of years. I would suggest filling it with coal, at least for energy security where you may not need to burn it at all. Cheap to store, requires little capital investment.
It would be much easier and cleaner to just allow more gas exploration and development. Not least because even when we have completed the energy transition we are still going to need the 40% of every barrel of oil that doesn't get burned.
There's a tiny memorial to the Holodomor at the base of Calton Hill in Edinburgh. Must have been past it scores of times before I first stopped to read it.
Given the attention other genocides get, it seems rather neglected. Perhaps no longer.
FWIW, I am hearing from friends with contacts in Russia that there are some very serious conversations going on across the regime and we may see some serious attempt to "resolve" the problem quite soon. If and it is a very big IF, Putin holds off attacks on civilian targets and the road to Kyiv stays open as primised to Macron, then the talks can continue. Russian side privately admitting that the situation is difficult, and things are still very dangerous,
My guess is that if the Ukrainians can hang on for another week, then the exit ramp will be looking very attractive to the Kremlin, "Neutral and no return of Crimea" seems to be the bottom line, but there are still a lot of issues to work through on the Russian side.
BTW if I were Oleksander Lukashenka tonight I would be feeling very nervous indeed.
That looks like a landing zone if there is to be one. Implementation of Minsk II with the removal of the constitutional obligations on Ukraine; Crimea to be punted into the long grass with a putative separate agreement. As Russia is supposedly committed to Minsk it could be presented as a face-saving win for Moscow.
What about the West? Even if Ukraine and Russia do a deal, the West might decide it wants to go ahead and F8ck Russia's economy anyhow.
Can Ukraine deliver its Western friends,given Putin threatened some serious Western allies?
Yeah, this is the next potential problem, in either direction. There are very much three interested groups: Russia, Ukraine, The West. Obviously the latter are not officially involved, but they have a huge say in all of this.
The genie is out of the bottle. There's no way this ends with Russia getting most of what it wanted anyway and everything going back to normal.
But the West's say needs to be necessarily subsumed to that of Ukraine. We cannot be using them as a bargaining chip to get what we want and we need to be true to our word and our proclaimed beliefs and allow them to make the free and fair decision which they believe is in their own best interests.
If, for example, Ukraine decided the best result they could hope for was to remain free but neutral with their defences intact and backed up by the West but with Crimea and the Donbas lost (I am not saying they will, but if they did) then it should not be for the West to make any protest about that just because we might believe it is letting Putin off the hook. Even though in my opinion it would be.
I agree with you entirely but Russia's Useful Green Idiots have been opposing the bit in bold.
@Richard_Tyndall is 100% right we need hydrocarbons to get us through the transition to clean energy and we should be developing our own instead of importing it from Putin and Sheiks.
The loony elements of the Green movement oppose any and all exploration and extraction of domestic hydrocarbons. That does play into the hands of the likes of Putin who simply ignore those loons and do as they please.
Dixiedean:
One may say the same about those who have fought tooth and nail to prevent anything to restrict the demand side. We hear surprisingly little about that from the other side. It's going to take both to get anywhere near.
Somebody made a good point, it isn't just green policy that's preventing fracking in the UK, its nimby-ism. Just as everybody supports other people paying higher taxes, so everybody supports cheaper gas drawn from fields near others.
To make it work, the government needs incentives for people to agree for their areas to be fracked.
In case you've missed it, my attitude to NIMBYs is long-established. I have as little respect for NIMBYs here as I do anywhere and they would if it were up to me get the exact same response as I'd give them elsewhere. Fuck NIMBYs.
However incentivising areas that get fracked is a very good idea, and is what the Americans have done very successfully.
That’s easy - let local authorities rather than central government levy taxes on production. If everyone in your district gets a cheque instead of a council tax bill, people might suddenly be in favour of it.
Trouble with this, is that knowing the average Local Authority, they'll waste the entire windfall on some ill thought-out scheme to invest in Dutch tulips, and end up demanding a council tax increase instead.
A better system would be that say 80% of the windfall was distributed as a council tax reduction (but in no way controlled by the council), and 20% went directly to the council budget. That would provide the right incentives all round, but prevent local councils from doing too much stupid stuff with the windfall. (This would be a better arrangement than all the S106 planning stuff too).
The irony with fracking is that there is virtually nothing for the nimby's to get excided about anyway - if it didn't need lots of planning consent etc, they would never even notice it happening - it's just that somehow the crusties have convinced the world fracking will result in the four horsemen of the apocalypse appearing on the street.
Wow,
This is wrong on two counts.
Firstly, there's no windfall right now as fracking is not currently economic in the UK.
Secondly, I have spent an awful lot of time around this industry, and holy fuck you would notice. Getting the rig into position. Drilling 24 hours a day. And then the sound of the diesel compressors getting the water pressure up. Yeah, you'd notice.
Hmm. I have drilled maybe two dozen onshore oil wells in the UK in my career. And the local restrictions generally mean there is very little disturbance to the community. As a norm no activity that caused any level of noise is permitted between 8pm and 7am. That includes hard drilling, tripping, running casing etc. Much of the time if those operations were necessary we would just stop and circulate for the whole night (which is why we all wanted to work nightshift). Even the generators are in special sound proofed containers. On one in Kent the noise from the ventilators on the cold storage unit next door was louder than the generators. Literally. We had to get the owners to switch them off for a while so the local inspectors could measure the noise from the generators.
This is not to support fracking as a process since personally I think it is unsuited to the densely populated UK. But noise pollution is not one of the issues.
I think what you highlight there is the difference in drilling between the UK where everything is done to minimise annoyance and the USA where because of the lack of a local (long-term) population everything is done to maximise profit and minimise costs.
During the Cold War, Russia targeted New Zealand and Australia. They believed that all the anti-nuclear stuff was just a front, and anyway, why not. Multiple nukes per city - the death toll would have been most of the population.
I think it was in Schlosser's excellent Command and Control that before the first arms limitation and reduction treaties, the US had run out of all conceivable targets in the USSR and Warsaw Pact countries that could be of any military or infrastructure significance, but still had lots of warheads left without a target, so they targetted every single post office in the greater Moscow area as well.
Well, if he'd done it in October it would have caused enormous problems in Europe.
But done at the beginning of March, when the Germans are only using 4GW of natural gas in power gen, it's not anywhere near as big a threat.
How long would it take for us or the Germans to get other measures in place for next winter to ensure security of supply? LNG is going to be in short supply for delivery, and you can't just build coal plants or enough renewables that quickly. In the case of Germany, they'll have to build terminals - how long would that take?
Whatever, I cannot see many countries taking much gas from Germany in the medium term unless te terms are *very* good. You don't want them to just switch off the tap.
Doable on my understanding, but eyewateringly expensive. Means filling every storage facility with top dollar LNG over the summer months to get through next winter. Good thing though is every subsequent winter will be easier.
I think they need to get their chequebooks out for storage for next winter. Six months moratorium on Russian gas, then they can take a view on whether to switch supplies back on in the Autumn.
As @rcs1000 says, lucky for us the invasion wasn't earlier. Thank Xi and his Olympics.
OK. Germany has a lot of gas storage - about four months of average usage. (Or about ten weeks in Winter.)
If Germany was the only purchaser of spot LNG cargoes in the world, then it could fill up its storage facilities to the brim by the end of the summer, and then could (expensively) ride out next winter.
But it's a bit more complex than that.
You see while some countries have lots of long-term LNG supply contracts (South Korea, Japan), others don't (errr... us).
And this worked out brilliantly for the UK for a long time. You see, long-term LNG prices were around $11-12mmbtu, and spot prices were $8-9. British generators made out like banditos.
Unfortunately, two things then happened. Firstly, the biggest source of spot LNG (US shale gas) disappeared. During the pandemic, the gas price fell, and drilling stopped. This meant the US was no longer exporting as many cargoes. Secondly, Russia began to wave their big dick around and started cutting gas supplies to Europe (with the express goal of depleting storage facilities). This meant that there was more bidding on LNG cargoes to the extent that ships bound for Asia under contract were turning round heading to Europe.
In the short to medium term, what needs to happen is that everyone (world-wide) needs to do more coal generation. You can already see this happening in the US where the price of Powder River Basin coal has doubled. More coal generating in the US and Australia means more gas available for export. More coal generating in the UK and Europe means less need for gas. And coal production can be ramped up more easily than natural gas, often by simply adding extra shifts at open pit mines.
European countries also need to commit to long term LNG supply contracts. And yes, that includes us in the UK. A dozen LNG projects are stalled because of a lack of willingness of European buyers to commit to decade long contracts. If Europe stepped up, we could see a lot of these come through.
FWIW, I am hearing from friends with contacts in Russia that there are some very serious conversations going on across the regime and we may see some serious attempt to "resolve" the problem quite soon. If and it is a very big IF, Putin holds off attacks on civilian targets and the road to Kyiv stays open as primised to Macron, then the talks can continue. Russian side privately admitting that the situation is difficult, and things are still very dangerous,
My guess is that if the Ukrainians can hang on for another week, then the exit ramp will be looking very attractive to the Kremlin, "Neutral and no return of Crimea" seems to be the bottom line, but there are still a lot of issues to work through on the Russian side.
BTW if I were Oleksander Lukashenka tonight I would be feeling very nervous indeed.
That looks like a landing zone if there is to be one. Implementation of Minsk II with the removal of the constitutional obligations on Ukraine; Crimea to be punted into the long grass with a putative separate agreement. As Russia is supposedly committed to Minsk it could be presented as a face-saving win for Moscow.
What about the West? Even if Ukraine and Russia do a deal, the West might decide it wants to go ahead and F8ck Russia's economy anyhow.
Can Ukraine deliver its Western friends,given Putin threatened some serious Western allies?
Yeah, this is the next potential problem, in either direction. There are very much three interested groups: Russia, Ukraine, The West. Obviously the latter are not officially involved, but they have a huge say in all of this.
The genie is out of the bottle. There's no way this ends with Russia getting most of what it wanted anyway and everything going back to normal.
But the West's say needs to be necessarily subsumed to that of Ukraine. We cannot be using them as a bargaining chip to get what we want and we need to be true to our word and our proclaimed beliefs and allow them to make the free and fair decision which they believe is in their own best interests.
If, for example, Ukraine decided the best result they could hope for was to remain free but neutral with their defences intact and backed up by the West but with Crimea and the Donbas lost (I am not saying they will, but if they did) then it should not be for the West to make any protest about that just because we might believe it is letting Putin off the hook. Even though in my opinion it would be.
The Ukraine gets to say. The EU and NATO have precisely no say in the Russian surrender talks.
Have we covered this? A very interesting insight into the worldview of Putin's government, in an article written on the assumption of a very quick victory, and mistakenly published anyway when said victory didn't quite materialise:
There's a tiny memorial to the Holodomor at the base of Calton Hill in Edinburgh. Must have been past it scores of times before I first stopped to read it.
Given the attention other genocides get, it seems rather neglected. Perhaps no longer.
Yes, @Roger was equally surprised by this last week - I think justifiably, because it's not part of our consciousness in the way that the holocaust was. It's not majored on in schools, it's not a cultural reference point. I think, personally, it ought to be rather better known. Perhaps after the current unpleasantness it might be.
There's a tiny memorial to the Holodomor at the base of Calton Hill in Edinburgh. Must have been past it scores of times before I first stopped to read it.
Given the attention other genocides get, it seems rather neglected. Perhaps no longer.
I don't recognise it. Do you remember which side of the hill it's on?
I think the northern side, at the bottom of the steps as you walk towards Leith. On the right. I think. Sadly, I haven't been able to get to Edinburgh for a few years.
The Ukrainian consulate is just on the other side of the road from there.
During the Cold War, Russia targeted New Zealand and Australia. They believed that all the anti-nuclear stuff was just a front, and anyway, why not. Multiple nukes per city - the death toll would have been most of the population.
I think it was in Schlosser's excellent Command and Control that before the first arms limitation and reduction treaties, the US had run out of all conceivable targets in the USSR and Warsaw Pact countries that could be of any military or infrastructure significance, but still had lots of warheads left without a target, so they targetted every single post office in the greater Moscow area as well.
There was a telephone exchange in Moscow that seemed to be especially hated, IIRC, The US airforce missiles, bombers and the US Navy missiles were all targeting it.
When they invented SIOP, they found out that said telephone exchange was about 200 meters from the next piece of ridiculous overkill as well.
I agree with you entirely but Russia's Useful Green Idiots have been opposing the bit in bold.
@Richard_Tyndall is 100% right we need hydrocarbons to get us through the transition to clean energy and we should be developing our own instead of importing it from Putin and Sheiks.
The loony elements of the Green movement oppose any and all exploration and extraction of domestic hydrocarbons. That does play into the hands of the likes of Putin who simply ignore those loons and do as they please.
Dixiedean:
One may say the same about those who have fought tooth and nail to prevent anything to restrict the demand side. We hear surprisingly little about that from the other side. It's going to take both to get anywhere near.
Somebody made a good point, it isn't just green policy that's preventing fracking in the UK, its nimby-ism. Just as everybody supports other people paying higher taxes, so everybody supports cheaper gas drawn from fields near others.
To make it work, the government needs incentives for people to agree for their areas to be fracked.
In case you've missed it, my attitude to NIMBYs is long-established. I have as little respect for NIMBYs here as I do anywhere and they would if it were up to me get the exact same response as I'd give them elsewhere. Fuck NIMBYs.
However incentivising areas that get fracked is a very good idea, and is what the Americans have done very successfully.
That’s easy - let local authorities rather than central government levy taxes on production. If everyone in your district gets a cheque instead of a council tax bill, people might suddenly be in favour of it.
Trouble with this, is that knowing the average Local Authority, they'll waste the entire windfall on some ill thought-out scheme to invest in Dutch tulips, and end up demanding a council tax increase instead.
A better system would be that say 80% of the windfall was distributed as a council tax reduction (but in no way controlled by the council), and 20% went directly to the council budget. That would provide the right incentives all round, but prevent local councils from doing too much stupid stuff with the windfall. (This would be a better arrangement than all the S106 planning stuff too).
The irony with fracking is that there is virtually nothing for the nimby's to get excided about anyway - if it didn't need lots of planning consent etc, they would never even notice it happening - it's just that somehow the crusties have convinced the world fracking will result in the four horsemen of the apocalypse appearing on the street.
Wow,
This is wrong on two counts.
Firstly, there's no windfall right now as fracking is not currently economic in the UK.
Secondly, I have spent an awful lot of time around this industry, and holy fuck you would notice. Getting the rig into position. Drilling 24 hours a day. And then the sound of the diesel compressors getting the water pressure up. Yeah, you'd notice.
Hmm. I have drilled maybe two dozen onshore oil wells in the UK in my career. And the local restrictions generally mean there is very little disturbance to the community. As a norm no activity that caused any level of noise is permitted between 8pm and 7am. That includes hard drilling, tripping, running casing etc. Much of the time if those operations were necessary we would just stop and circulate for the whole night (which is why we all wanted to work nightshift). Even the generators are in special sound proofed containers. On one in Kent the noise from the ventilators on the cold storage unit next door was louder than the generators. Literally. We had to get the owners to switch them off for a while so the local inspectors could measure the noise from the generators.
This is not to support fracking as a process since personally I think it is unsuited to the densely populated UK. But noise pollution is not one of the issues.
I think what you highlight there is the difference in drilling between the UK where everything is done to minimise annoyance and the USA where because of the lack of a local (long-term) population everything is done to maximise profit and minimise costs.
I thought it had something to do with mineral rights being the property of the land owner?
Perhaps on occasions, polling outcomes should cede to the moral case.
Morality, other than what is found in religious texts, in a democracy is ultimately determined by the majority of public opinion which the elected government then follows into policy and law
Come now Ayatollah Khomeini.
Hmmm. The man with the small moustache demonstrated an immorality "in (initially at least) a democracy ... ultimately determined by the majority of public opinion which the elected government then follow(ed) into policy and law".
Hitler on no level represented Christian morality no but he did represent the views of enough Germans for the Nazis to win most seats in the German Parliament in the 1930s.
Absent religious morality, morality is just simply the view of the majority of public opinion at the time, which in turn through the elected government then influences lawmaking
I can't think of a more nebulous construct than "morality". Nonetheless "morality is just simply the view of the majority of public opinion at the time" must be just plain wrong. If public opinion is immoral (e.g. support in WW2 Germany for anti-Semitism) it is by definition not moral.
I am not religious but I see the ten commandments as a pretty reasonable moral code. TV Evangelists or Catholic Priests espousing the ten commandments but ignoring a handful when it suits them is not "religious morality".
Anti Semitism is only immoral to Jews ie in religious terms as it is in opposition to the Torah and also to the Christian morality of love thy neighbour as set out in the New Testament.
There is nothing automatically immoral about anti Semitism beyond that religious morality if a majority of the public become anti Semitic. Indeed in parts of the Arab world today anti Semitism is rife unfortunately, as it is in parts of the far left
FWIW, I am hearing from friends with contacts in Russia that there are some very serious conversations going on across the regime and we may see some serious attempt to "resolve" the problem quite soon. If and it is a very big IF, Putin holds off attacks on civilian targets and the road to Kyiv stays open as primised to Macron, then the talks can continue. Russian side privately admitting that the situation is difficult, and things are still very dangerous,
My guess is that if the Ukrainians can hang on for another week, then the exit ramp will be looking very attractive to the Kremlin, "Neutral and no return of Crimea" seems to be the bottom line, but there are still a lot of issues to work through on the Russian side.
BTW if I were Oleksander Lukashenka tonight I would be feeling very nervous indeed.
That looks like a landing zone if there is to be one. Implementation of Minsk II with the removal of the constitutional obligations on Ukraine; Crimea to be punted into the long grass with a putative separate agreement. As Russia is supposedly committed to Minsk it could be presented as a face-saving win for Moscow.
What about the West? Even if Ukraine and Russia do a deal, the West might decide it wants to go ahead and F8ck Russia's economy anyhow.
Can Ukraine deliver its Western friends,given Putin threatened some serious Western allies?
Yeah, this is the next potential problem, in either direction. There are very much three interested groups: Russia, Ukraine, The West. Obviously the latter are not officially involved, but they have a huge say in all of this.
The genie is out of the bottle. There's no way this ends with Russia getting most of what it wanted anyway and everything going back to normal.
But the West's say needs to be necessarily subsumed to that of Ukraine. We cannot be using them as a bargaining chip to get what we want and we need to be true to our word and our proclaimed beliefs and allow them to make the free and fair decision which they believe is in their own best interests.
If, for example, Ukraine decided the best result they could hope for was to remain free but neutral with their defences intact and backed up by the West but with Crimea and the Donbas lost (I am not saying they will, but if they did) then it should not be for the West to make any protest about that just because we might believe it is letting Putin off the hook. Even though in my opinion it would be.
The Ukraine gets to say. The EU and NATO have precisely no say in the Russian surrender talks.
That's not realistic, nor is anything that is sold as a Russian surrender going to work. If NATO as a whole doesn't want Ukraine to join, it won't.
During the Cold War, Russia targeted New Zealand and Australia. They believed that all the anti-nuclear stuff was just a front, and anyway, why not. Multiple nukes per city - the death toll would have been most of the population.
Most of the major cities in Australia eg Sydney and Melbourne and the capital Canberra were assumed to be wiped out even on that analysis. However remember Australia is so vast most of it is well away from those population centres even if the people who live elsewhere live in less hospitable conditions.
Of all major western nations, New Zealand would probably be targeted near last in a nuclear war with Russia or China. New Zealand is not in NATO, does not neighbour Russia, is on the other side of the world from the USA and Europe, is not known to have nuclear weapons and is not in the Australia-UK-USA defence pact v China either while Taiwan or Japan or South Korea are more likely targets for Chinese attacks and invasion and much closer to China.
India and Pakistan might be reasonably safe however there is the not insignificant prospect both could end up in nuclear war with the other
Perhaps on occasions, polling outcomes should cede to the moral case.
Morality, other than what is found in religious texts, in a democracy is ultimately determined by the majority of public opinion which the elected government then follows into policy and law
Come now Ayatollah Khomeini.
Hmmm. The man with the small moustache demonstrated an immorality "in (initially at least) a democracy ... ultimately determined by the majority of public opinion which the elected government then follow(ed) into policy and law".
Hitler on no level represented Christian morality no but he did represent the views of enough Germans for the Nazis to win most seats in the German Parliament in the 1930s.
Absent religious morality, morality is just simply the view of the majority of public opinion at the time, which in turn through the elected government then influences lawmaking
I can't think of a more nebulous construct than "morality". Nonetheless "morality is just simply the view of the majority of public opinion at the time" must be just plain wrong. If public opinion is immoral (e.g. support in WW2 Germany for anti-Semitism) it is by definition not moral.
I am not religious but I see the ten commandments as a pretty reasonable moral code. TV Evangelists or Catholic Priests espousing the ten commandments but ignoring a handful when it suits them is not "religious morality".
Anti Semitism is only immoral to Jews ie in religious terms as it is in opposition to the Torah and also to the Christian morality of love thy neighbour as set out in the New Testament.
There is nothing automatically immoral about anti Semitism beyond that religious morality if a majority of the public become anti Semitic. Indeed in parts of the Arab world today anti Semitism is rife unfortunately, as it is in parts of the far left
There is nothing immoral about antisemitism?
Have you lost your mind?
I thought you were the one who gave him a donkey avatar?
FWIW, I am hearing from friends with contacts in Russia that there are some very serious conversations going on across the regime and we may see some serious attempt to "resolve" the problem quite soon. If and it is a very big IF, Putin holds off attacks on civilian targets and the road to Kyiv stays open as primised to Macron, then the talks can continue. Russian side privately admitting that the situation is difficult, and things are still very dangerous,
My guess is that if the Ukrainians can hang on for another week, then the exit ramp will be looking very attractive to the Kremlin, "Neutral and no return of Crimea" seems to be the bottom line, but there are still a lot of issues to work through on the Russian side.
BTW if I were Oleksander Lukashenka tonight I would be feeling very nervous indeed.
That looks like a landing zone if there is to be one. Implementation of Minsk II with the removal of the constitutional obligations on Ukraine; Crimea to be punted into the long grass with a putative separate agreement. As Russia is supposedly committed to Minsk it could be presented as a face-saving win for Moscow.
What about the West? Even if Ukraine and Russia do a deal, the West might decide it wants to go ahead and F8ck Russia's economy anyhow.
Can Ukraine deliver its Western friends,given Putin threatened some serious Western allies?
Yeah, this is the next potential problem, in either direction. There are very much three interested groups: Russia, Ukraine, The West. Obviously the latter are not officially involved, but they have a huge say in all of this.
The genie is out of the bottle. There's no way this ends with Russia getting most of what it wanted anyway and everything going back to normal.
But the West's say needs to be necessarily subsumed to that of Ukraine. We cannot be using them as a bargaining chip to get what we want and we need to be true to our word and our proclaimed beliefs and allow them to make the free and fair decision which they believe is in their own best interests.
If, for example, Ukraine decided the best result they could hope for was to remain free but neutral with their defences intact and backed up by the West but with Crimea and the Donbas lost (I am not saying they will, but if they did) then it should not be for the West to make any protest about that just because we might believe it is letting Putin off the hook. Even though in my opinion it would be.
The Ukraine gets to say. The EU and NATO have precisely no say in the Russian surrender talks.
That's not realistic, nor is anything that is sold as a Russian surrender going to work. If NATO don't want Ukraine to join, it won't.
Well, if he'd done it in October it would have caused enormous problems in Europe.
But done at the beginning of March, when the Germans are only using 4GW of natural gas in power gen, it's not anywhere near as big a threat.
How long would it take for us or the Germans to get other measures in place for next winter to ensure security of supply? LNG is going to be in short supply for delivery, and you can't just build coal plants or enough renewables that quickly. In the case of Germany, they'll have to build terminals - how long would that take?
Whatever, I cannot see many countries taking much gas from Germany in the medium term unless te terms are *very* good. You don't want them to just switch off the tap.
Doable on my understanding, but eyewateringly expensive. Means filling every storage facility with top dollar LNG over the summer months to get through next winter. Good thing though is every subsequent winter will be easier.
I think they need to get their chequebooks out for storage for next winter. Six months moratorium on Russian gas, then they can take a view on whether to switch supplies back on in the Autumn.
As @rcs1000 says, lucky for us the invasion wasn't earlier. Thank Xi and his Olympics.
OK. Germany has a lot of gas storage - about four months of average usage. (Or about ten weeks in Winter.)
If Germany was the only purchaser of spot LNG cargoes in the world, then it could fill up its storage facilities to the brim by the end of the summer, and then could (expensively) ride out next winter.
But it's a bit more complex than that.
You see while some countries have lots of long-term LNG supply contracts (South Korea, Japan), others don't (errr... us).
And this worked out brilliantly for the UK for a long time. You see, long-term LNG prices were around $11-12mmbtu, and spot prices were $8-9. British generators made out like banditos.
Unfortunately, two things then happened. Firstly, the biggest source of spot LNG (US shale gas) disappeared. During the pandemic, the gas price fell, and drilling stopped. This meant the US was no longer exporting as many cargoes. Secondly, Russia began to wave their big dick around and started cutting gas supplies to Europe (with the express goal of depleting storage facilities). This meant that there was more bidding on LNG cargoes to the extent that ships bound for Asia under contract were turning round heading to Europe.
In the short to medium term, what needs to happen is that everyone (world-wide) needs to do more coal generation. You can already see this happening in the US where the price of Powder River Basin coal has doubled. More coal generating in the US and Australia means more gas available for export. More coal generating in the UK and Europe means less need for gas. And coal production can be ramped up more easily than natural gas, often by simply adding extra shifts at open pit mines.
European countries also need to commit to long term LNG supply contracts. And yes, that includes us in the UK. A dozen LNG projects are stalled because of a lack of willingness of European buyers to commit to decade long contracts. If Europe stepped up, we could see a lot of these come through.
Do these, and you wean Europe off Russian gas.
We also rather desperately need to look for an alternative to the now defunct Rough gas storage field. Contrary to the Guardian spin it wasn't shut because the Government didn't want to spend the £750 million a year it would cost to maintain it. It was shut because even after spending that money it was almost certain it would not be useable due to the degradation of the reservoir. We have spent a long time looking for alternatives but that has now mostly been knocked on the head because everyone has been saying gas has no future. That needs to change.
But the West's say needs to be necessarily subsumed to that of Ukraine. We cannot be using them as a bargaining chip to get what we want and we need to be true to our word and our proclaimed beliefs and allow them to make the free and fair decision which they believe is in their own best interests.
If, for example, Ukraine decided the best result they could hope for was to remain free but neutral with their defences intact and backed up by the West but with Crimea and the Donbas lost (I am not saying they will, but if they did) then it should not be for the West to make any protest about that just because we might believe it is letting Putin off the hook. Even though in my opinion it would be.
The Ukraine gets to say. The EU and NATO have precisely no say in the Russian surrender talks.
Yes, that's right, but we might be involved at one remove - as part of a potential deal, it could be agreed that the matter was settled and further sanctions were not needed, and we (western countries) might be asked to agree (as I expect we would, in that happy if rather unlikely event).
FWIW, I am hearing from friends with contacts in Russia that there are some very serious conversations going on across the regime and we may see some serious attempt to "resolve" the problem quite soon. If and it is a very big IF, Putin holds off attacks on civilian targets and the road to Kyiv stays open as primised to Macron, then the talks can continue. Russian side privately admitting that the situation is difficult, and things are still very dangerous,
My guess is that if the Ukrainians can hang on for another week, then the exit ramp will be looking very attractive to the Kremlin, "Neutral and no return of Crimea" seems to be the bottom line, but there are still a lot of issues to work through on the Russian side.
BTW if I were Oleksander Lukashenka tonight I would be feeling very nervous indeed.
That looks like a landing zone if there is to be one. Implementation of Minsk II with the removal of the constitutional obligations on Ukraine; Crimea to be punted into the long grass with a putative separate agreement. As Russia is supposedly committed to Minsk it could be presented as a face-saving win for Moscow.
What about the West? Even if Ukraine and Russia do a deal, the West might decide it wants to go ahead and F8ck Russia's economy anyhow.
Can Ukraine deliver its Western friends,given Putin threatened some serious Western allies?
Yeah, this is the next potential problem, in either direction. There are very much three interested groups: Russia, Ukraine, The West. Obviously the latter are not officially involved, but they have a huge say in all of this.
The genie is out of the bottle. There's no way this ends with Russia getting most of what it wanted anyway and everything going back to normal.
But the West's say needs to be necessarily subsumed to that of Ukraine. We cannot be using them as a bargaining chip to get what we want and we need to be true to our word and our proclaimed beliefs and allow them to make the free and fair decision which they believe is in their own best interests.
If, for example, Ukraine decided the best result they could hope for was to remain free but neutral with their defences intact and backed up by the West but with Crimea and the Donbas lost (I am not saying they will, but if they did) then it should not be for the West to make any protest about that just because we might believe it is letting Putin off the hook. Even though in my opinion it would be.
The Ukraine gets to say. The EU and NATO have precisely no say in the Russian surrender talks.
David Crockett : [Crockett is about to be executed by the Mexicans] You tell the general I'm willing to discuss the terms of surrender. You tell him; if he'll order his men to put down their weapons and line up, I'll take them to Sam Houston and I'll try my best to save most of them. That said; Sam's a mite twitchy, so no promises.
FWIW, I am hearing from friends with contacts in Russia that there are some very serious conversations going on across the regime and we may see some serious attempt to "resolve" the problem quite soon. If and it is a very big IF, Putin holds off attacks on civilian targets and the road to Kyiv stays open as primised to Macron, then the talks can continue. Russian side privately admitting that the situation is difficult, and things are still very dangerous,
My guess is that if the Ukrainians can hang on for another week, then the exit ramp will be looking very attractive to the Kremlin, "Neutral and no return of Crimea" seems to be the bottom line, but there are still a lot of issues to work through on the Russian side.
BTW if I were Oleksander Lukashenka tonight I would be feeling very nervous indeed.
That looks like a landing zone if there is to be one. Implementation of Minsk II with the removal of the constitutional obligations on Ukraine; Crimea to be punted into the long grass with a putative separate agreement. As Russia is supposedly committed to Minsk it could be presented as a face-saving win for Moscow.
What about the West? Even if Ukraine and Russia do a deal, the West might decide it wants to go ahead and F8ck Russia's economy anyhow.
Can Ukraine deliver its Western friends,given Putin threatened some serious Western allies?
Yeah, this is the next potential problem, in either direction. There are very much three interested groups: Russia, Ukraine, The West. Obviously the latter are not officially involved, but they have a huge say in all of this.
The genie is out of the bottle. There's no way this ends with Russia getting most of what it wanted anyway and everything going back to normal.
But the West's say needs to be necessarily subsumed to that of Ukraine. We cannot be using them as a bargaining chip to get what we want and we need to be true to our word and our proclaimed beliefs and allow them to make the free and fair decision which they believe is in their own best interests.
If, for example, Ukraine decided the best result they could hope for was to remain free but neutral with their defences intact and backed up by the West but with Crimea and the Donbas lost (I am not saying they will, but if they did) then it should not be for the West to make any protest about that just because we might believe it is letting Putin off the hook. Even though in my opinion it would be.
The Ukraine gets to say. The EU and NATO have precisely no say in the Russian surrender talks.
That's not realistic, nor is anything that is sold as a Russian surrender going to work. If NATO don't want Ukraine to join, it won't.
The Ukraine gets to say.
Not entirely. It can only choose membership if it would be accepted.
FWIW, I am hearing from friends with contacts in Russia that there are some very serious conversations going on across the regime and we may see some serious attempt to "resolve" the problem quite soon. If and it is a very big IF, Putin holds off attacks on civilian targets and the road to Kyiv stays open as primised to Macron, then the talks can continue. Russian side privately admitting that the situation is difficult, and things are still very dangerous,
My guess is that if the Ukrainians can hang on for another week, then the exit ramp will be looking very attractive to the Kremlin, "Neutral and no return of Crimea" seems to be the bottom line, but there are still a lot of issues to work through on the Russian side.
BTW if I were Oleksander Lukashenka tonight I would be feeling very nervous indeed.
That looks like a landing zone if there is to be one. Implementation of Minsk II with the removal of the constitutional obligations on Ukraine; Crimea to be punted into the long grass with a putative separate agreement. As Russia is supposedly committed to Minsk it could be presented as a face-saving win for Moscow.
What about the West? Even if Ukraine and Russia do a deal, the West might decide it wants to go ahead and F8ck Russia's economy anyhow.
Can Ukraine deliver its Western friends,given Putin threatened some serious Western allies?
Yeah, this is the next potential problem, in either direction. There are very much three interested groups: Russia, Ukraine, The West. Obviously the latter are not officially involved, but they have a huge say in all of this.
The genie is out of the bottle. There's no way this ends with Russia getting most of what it wanted anyway and everything going back to normal.
But the West's say needs to be necessarily subsumed to that of Ukraine. We cannot be using them as a bargaining chip to get what we want and we need to be true to our word and our proclaimed beliefs and allow them to make the free and fair decision which they believe is in their own best interests.
If, for example, Ukraine decided the best result they could hope for was to remain free but neutral with their defences intact and backed up by the West but with Crimea and the Donbas lost (I am not saying they will, but if they did) then it should not be for the West to make any protest about that just because we might believe it is letting Putin off the hook. Even though in my opinion it would be.
Some might be disappointed if they did that but they need to make the best choice they think they can, as you say. Commentators though not governments would likely moan.
However thatd be no reason for the West to relax its actions against Russia. The West cannot dictate to Ukraine what options it must accept, likewise Russia cannot make the West relaxing a condition of its offer to Ukraine. The sanctions are due to invading, withdrawing wouldn't reduce the need for consequences.
There's a tiny memorial to the Holodomor at the base of Calton Hill in Edinburgh. Must have been past it scores of times before I first stopped to read it.
Given the attention other genocides get, it seems rather neglected. Perhaps no longer.
I need to really ruin a few Russian people's day. Any suggestions?
Are you in a position to lead a counter offensive against their eastern flank from the sea?
I was joking earlier that Finland has some land it could take back I believe. Whilst Putin rabble of an army of scared kids is fully committed in a lost war.
FWIW, I am hearing from friends with contacts in Russia that there are some very serious conversations going on across the regime and we may see some serious attempt to "resolve" the problem quite soon. If and it is a very big IF, Putin holds off attacks on civilian targets and the road to Kyiv stays open as primised to Macron, then the talks can continue. Russian side privately admitting that the situation is difficult, and things are still very dangerous,
My guess is that if the Ukrainians can hang on for another week, then the exit ramp will be looking very attractive to the Kremlin, "Neutral and no return of Crimea" seems to be the bottom line, but there are still a lot of issues to work through on the Russian side.
BTW if I were Oleksander Lukashenka tonight I would be feeling very nervous indeed.
That looks like a landing zone if there is to be one. Implementation of Minsk II with the removal of the constitutional obligations on Ukraine; Crimea to be punted into the long grass with a putative separate agreement. As Russia is supposedly committed to Minsk it could be presented as a face-saving win for Moscow.
What about the West? Even if Ukraine and Russia do a deal, the West might decide it wants to go ahead and F8ck Russia's economy anyhow.
Can Ukraine deliver its Western friends,given Putin threatened some serious Western allies?
Yeah, this is the next potential problem, in either direction. There are very much three interested groups: Russia, Ukraine, The West. Obviously the latter are not officially involved, but they have a huge say in all of this.
The genie is out of the bottle. There's no way this ends with Russia getting most of what it wanted anyway and everything going back to normal.
But the West's say needs to be necessarily subsumed to that of Ukraine. We cannot be using them as a bargaining chip to get what we want and we need to be true to our word and our proclaimed beliefs and allow them to make the free and fair decision which they believe is in their own best interests.
If, for example, Ukraine decided the best result they could hope for was to remain free but neutral with their defences intact and backed up by the West but with Crimea and the Donbas lost (I am not saying they will, but if they did) then it should not be for the West to make any protest about that just because we might believe it is letting Putin off the hook. Even though in my opinion it would be.
The Ukraine gets to say. The EU and NATO have precisely no say in the Russian surrender talks.
David Crockett : [Crockett is about to be executed by the Mexicans] You tell the general I'm willing to discuss the terms of surrender. You tell him; if he'll order his men to put down their weapons and line up, I'll take them to Sam Houston and I'll try my best to save most of them. That said; Sam's a mite twitchy, so no promises.
If I've got Nick Palmer at my back with his 12-bore..
The shift in Europe has been impressive. I just hope people hold their nerve. The only concession I would make to Putin is a referendum on Crimea. But it would have to be done by international observers and since Putin decided to recognise Donbass independence why not Crimean independence as an option?
The point is surely, that climate policies and lockdown were sold to us as reductions to the risks in our lives.
In the event, all they did was shift the balance of the risk.
Nobody told us that giving up gas drilling might give a madman who controls a lot of gas supply the upper hand.
I think you have to join up about 50 dots, some of which are not only on different pages but completely different books, in order to link Greta Thornberg to the invasion of Ukraine.
This is a rabbit hole which only the Far Right could manage to find itself going down.
You really don't and I suspect you know that.
No you really do and I suspect you know that.
Look I know leftists are desperate for the 'green lobby created Putin' narrative not to get out, hence the IPCC's very convenient report today.
I would suggest to you that you are too late. Its already out there.
It is certainly out there that's for sure.
Doesn't mean anyone sensible believes it. And anyway, surely the correct response is to prioritise even more investment in renewables so we can move away from Russion gas.
Indeed. I don't quite follow how prioritising an alternative supply of energy (renewables), and campaigning to reduce the demand for, and use of, fossil fuels, somehow makes us more reliant on foreign gas. Surely the folk to blame are the ones who have said, progressively. Climate change doesn't exist/ isn't important/there's nowt we can do anyways. So keep flying, driving and denying subsidies for windmills. And planning permission. And don't you dare put taxes on any of it.
It doesn't.
What does is the madness about not drilling for our own gas in places like Lancashire or Cambo so we are compelled to rely upon imports instead.
That's an entirely different argument. If we want to not rely on foreign energy it needs to be multi-pronged. That means both increased domestic supply, and lower domestic demand. It needs more nuclear, renewables, and drilling. Less flying, driving and thermostats turned down. Folk need to be wearing jumpers in the living room. All of this and more. And we'd still need to import far into the future. None of which makes it Greta's fault in the slightest. Which I realise isn't what you were arguing. But was where I started.
I agree with you entirely but Russia's Useful Green Idiots have been opposing the bit in bold.
@Richard_Tyndall is 100% right we need hydrocarbons to get us through the transition to clean energy and we should be developing our own instead of importing it from Putin and Sheiks.
The loony elements of the Green movement oppose any and all exploration and extraction of domestic hydrocarbons. That does play into the hands of the likes of Putin who simply ignore those loons and do as they please.
We have more than enough hydrocarbons *if* we had gotten serious about the transition and gotten on with it! It’s the loony elements of the conservative movement who keep slowing things down.
This is simply factually incorrect.
We don't even have enough hydrocarbons for today without having to pay the Sheikhs and Putin etc let alone for the entire transition.
We need to invest in extracting our own hydrocarbons to uncouple ourselves from unsavoury overseas characters as an interim solution and invest in long-term zero carbon solutions.
The problem with you and your style is you let the fictional, idealised perfect be the enemy of the good but realistic option.
It is simply factually correct.
Firstly, read what I said. I said "*if* we had gotten serious". So, if we had done things differently 10 or 20 years ago, we wouldn't be where we are.
Perhaps regret can only get us so far, you might suggest. OK, so where are we now? We know that if we burn everything in known hydrocarbon reserves around the world, the climate is completely f***ed. We need to transition quickly. There is very little point investing in new sources of hydrocarbons. It just takes too long, and there's more than we can afford to use! We can invest more quickly in green technologies and energy efficiency.
The problem with you and your style is that you are clinging to the past, unwilling and unable(?) to face what the transition entails.
FWIW, I am hearing from friends with contacts in Russia that there are some very serious conversations going on across the regime and we may see some serious attempt to "resolve" the problem quite soon. If and it is a very big IF, Putin holds off attacks on civilian targets and the road to Kyiv stays open as primised to Macron, then the talks can continue. Russian side privately admitting that the situation is difficult, and things are still very dangerous,
My guess is that if the Ukrainians can hang on for another week, then the exit ramp will be looking very attractive to the Kremlin, "Neutral and no return of Crimea" seems to be the bottom line, but there are still a lot of issues to work through on the Russian side.
BTW if I were Oleksander Lukashenka tonight I would be feeling very nervous indeed.
That looks like a landing zone if there is to be one. Implementation of Minsk II with the removal of the constitutional obligations on Ukraine; Crimea to be punted into the long grass with a putative separate agreement. As Russia is supposedly committed to Minsk it could be presented as a face-saving win for Moscow.
What about the West? Even if Ukraine and Russia do a deal, the West might decide it wants to go ahead and F8ck Russia's economy anyhow.
Can Ukraine deliver its Western friends,given Putin threatened some serious Western allies?
Yeah, this is the next potential problem, in either direction. There are very much three interested groups: Russia, Ukraine, The West. Obviously the latter are not officially involved, but they have a huge say in all of this.
The genie is out of the bottle. There's no way this ends with Russia getting most of what it wanted anyway and everything going back to normal.
But the West's say needs to be necessarily subsumed to that of Ukraine. We cannot be using them as a bargaining chip to get what we want and we need to be true to our word and our proclaimed beliefs and allow them to make the free and fair decision which they believe is in their own best interests.
If, for example, Ukraine decided the best result they could hope for was to remain free but neutral with their defences intact and backed up by the West but with Crimea and the Donbas lost (I am not saying they will, but if they did) then it should not be for the West to make any protest about that just because we might believe it is letting Putin off the hook. Even though in my opinion it would be.
The Ukraine gets to say. The EU and NATO have precisely no say in the Russian surrender talks.
David Crockett : [Crockett is about to be executed by the Mexicans] You tell the general I'm willing to discuss the terms of surrender. You tell him; if he'll order his men to put down their weapons and line up, I'll take them to Sam Houston and I'll try my best to save most of them. That said; Sam's a mite twitchy, so no promises.
If I've got Nick Palmer at my back with his 12-bore..
Anti Semitism is only immoral to Jews ie in religious terms as it is in opposition to the Torah and also to the Christian morality of love thy neighbour as set out in the New Testament.
There is nothing automatically immoral about anti Semitism beyond that religious morality if a majority of the public become anti Semitic. Indeed in parts of the Arab world today anti Semitism is rife unfortunately, as it is in parts of the far left
There is nothing immoral about antisemitism?
Have you lost your mind?
I understand that HYUFD is defining morality purely in terms of religion, but being anti-semitic (or more generally racist) is immoral on wider grounds (based on common humanity) than whatever bearded chap in the sky we might believe in. In particular, a religion that decided to determine who it was for or against by the opinion of "the majority of the public" would not be worth the scrolls it's written on.
Joe Saward @joesaward · 6m The Russian GP promoter cancelled his JSBM subscription (perhaps he disagreed when I said we probably won't have another Russian GP for a generation). That was before I had a chance to inform him that his monthly payment had failed...
I don’t think the UK’s really had a consequential FS since Robin Cook. British PMs have tended to be their own FS.
It may be time for a new kind of FS, maybe from the Lords, someone with long diplomatic experience.
Was he a particularly consequential FS? He wasn’t FS at the time of his most memorable contribution (opposition to the Iraq war). He tried to do some stuff early on around ethical foreign policy, but ultimately Blair decided it wasn’t a part he wanted to go down.
Could possibly make a case for Hague.
Carrington was very good. Falklands wasn't his fault.
Comments
Runoff: Macron 56.5% Le Pen 43.5%. Macron 59.5% Pecresse 40.5%. Macron 64% Zemmour 36%.
https://twitter.com/agindre/status/1498334627919974405?s=20&t=HR0OV3qeyXrJ5GAJdGChIg
I have been past many times but it never seems to be open. Maybe I will try again when I am nearby later this week. I have some trade I would like to do with them.
Perhaps others might like to do likewise.
Btw the number is 020 8340 1907 if you want to order something by phone
http://playfoursquare.s3.amazonaws.com/pix/g7elXuowOICp6D8TvYnvqrFO9d7F3eRWOof_a3PEPNc.jpg
"They won't agree to our ceasefire conditions because they want to keep their nazis" etc.
Did you know that each time Putin lies, his desk grows a little longer? https://twitter.com/Loctier/status/1498335983103881216/photo/1
I don't know why, there are loads of theories, but the Putin of 2014 or 2019 would not have taken such a reckless gamble.
Given the attention other genocides get, it seems rather neglected. Perhaps no longer.
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Holodomor_Edinburgh_2019.jpg
I am confused how they could commit to neutrality even if they conceded it - not being in NATO hasnt prevented support even if it doesn't mean full backing and aspiration to join the EU one day seems to remain.
It may be time for a new kind of FS, maybe from the Lords, someone with long diplomatic experience.
However if Corbyn had won a majority at the last general election then the majority of the British population would have shifted to a more anti Semitic morality based on the views of some of Corbyn's supporters
Edit: as far as I can tell, Fylde is in Blackpool’s Travel To Work Area, so yeh they can bloody well suck it up.
I'd find it hard to accept any assurances from Putin. If I were to shake his hand, I'd check the number of fingers I had afterwards.
Sadly, for peace to happen, Putin has to go. But in going, he might start a wider war. And his replacement might be worse.
But Putin really has to go. The wider world cannot trust any deal they make with him or his regime.
Hunt again or Tugendhadt would be good Foreign Secretaries, the Labour alternative is David Lammy
PM me with any tips.
7 million, christ.
Can Ukraine deliver its Western friends,given Putin threatened some serious Western allies?
I am currently reading my Dad's war letters home from the front in North Africa, 1940/42. He didn't hate the Germans. He respected them. He hated Hitler, and the Nazis, with a passion.
If he could maintain the important distinction then, when Rommel's boys were literally trying to shoot his bollox off, surely we from the comfort of our homes can maintain the distinction between ordinary Russians and the pigshits that lead them?
This is not to support fracking as a process since personally I think it is unsuited to the densely populated UK. But noise pollution is not one of the issues.
However they are collectively responsible for all their arseholeness of far too many years.
Even if they're not then being unfair to them is the best way of ridding ourselves from Putin.
Good starting line for shuttle runs up the hill.
The current SPAD-safe seat-Lords trajectory is particularly badly suited to producing people like that.
Plus French Polynesia, Yukon in Canada, Iceland, Easter Island, Antarctica, South Africa, Tristan da Cunha and Perth and western Australia apparently
https://www.thecoolist.com/escape-nuclear-war/
I also don't think Ukraine will agree to transfer Crimea to Russia. There needs to be a fudge on that. ie Russia holds onto Crimea but Crimean related sanctions remain. Both sides pretend to negotiate a permanent solution.
The genie is out of the bottle. There's no way this ends with Russia getting most of what it wanted anyway and everything going back to normal.
Could possibly make a case for Hague.
https://twitter.com/RedfieldWilton/status/1498342246038523910?t=CqmKx603QS2Pe8abgNzjqg&s=19
But St. Annes is rather wonderful. Wedged between Lytham and Blackpool, it is midway between the two of them in spirit too. Fun – it has a pier, and donkeys, and inflatables on the beach, and a boating lake – but not too much fun – you wouldn’t go there for a day’s drinking. An absolutely massive beach, when the tide’s out. And even when it’s mostly in. Doktor Hotfingers (whose credentials I doubt, frankly) playing a medley of songs you hate on the promenade. If you’ve got children under 7 there are few better places you can spend a day. Getting a lump in my throat of happy nostalgia now thinking about it – not least because I don’t know if we will ever go again as a family, now the kids are older with tastes more high octane. St. Annes represents golden years I knew were golden but didn’t really grasp how quickly they would pass.
Not that having slightly older children isn’t wonderful too, of course; not to mention considerably easier. But of, the magic of those early years. (Admittedly, realistically, magic often realised in retrospect when they were in bed and you had got through another day intact, but still.)
Edit – a further memory of coming out of a café on the front, having just arrived in St. Annes, with my three-year-old, and seeing the beach. A note of gleeful incredulity in her voice as she took in the scene before her: “Sea – donkeys – pier – slides – it a summer holiday!”. That is St. Annes, to me.
It was a manufactured genocide. The results were foreseeable to anyone who cared.
But yes, there have been a fair few genocides that have killed one million+.
If, for example, Ukraine decided the best result they could hope for was to remain free but neutral with their defences intact and backed up by the West but with Crimea and the Donbas lost (I am not saying they will, but if they did) then it should not be for the West to make any protest about that just because we might believe it is letting Putin off the hook. Even though in my opinion it would be.
https://twitter.com/jason_corcoran/status/1498343208094478354
This is going to cause serious issues at home for Putin I would imagine if it carries on for long.
If Germany was the only purchaser of spot LNG cargoes in the world, then it could fill up its storage facilities to the brim by the end of the summer, and then could (expensively) ride out next winter.
But it's a bit more complex than that.
You see while some countries have lots of long-term LNG supply contracts (South Korea, Japan), others don't (errr... us).
And this worked out brilliantly for the UK for a long time. You see, long-term LNG prices were around $11-12mmbtu, and spot prices were $8-9. British generators made out like banditos.
Unfortunately, two things then happened. Firstly, the biggest source of spot LNG (US shale gas) disappeared. During the pandemic, the gas price fell, and drilling stopped. This meant the US was no longer exporting as many cargoes. Secondly, Russia began to wave their big dick around and started cutting gas supplies to Europe (with the express goal of depleting storage facilities). This meant that there was more bidding on LNG cargoes to the extent that ships bound for Asia under contract were turning round heading to Europe.
In the short to medium term, what needs to happen is that everyone (world-wide) needs to do more coal generation. You can already see this happening in the US where the price of Powder River Basin coal has doubled. More coal generating in the US and Australia means more gas available for export. More coal generating in the UK and Europe means less need for gas. And coal production can be ramped up more easily than natural gas, often by simply adding extra shifts at open pit mines.
European countries also need to commit to long term LNG supply contracts. And yes, that includes us in the UK. A dozen LNG projects are stalled because of a lack of willingness of European buyers to commit to decade long contracts. If Europe stepped up, we could see a lot of these come through.
Do these, and you wean Europe off Russian gas.
https://twitter.com/ParalympicsGB/status/1498342449726513158
could Paralympics GB pull out of the winter Paralympics over this?
First one to forget it's three days data combined loses.
https://twitter.com/Tom_deWaal/status/1498310064117059585
Ukraine's UN ambassador reads out texts between a Russian soldier and his mother moments before he was killed
https://twitter.com/i/status/1498329378907992068/video/1
When they invented SIOP, they found out that said telephone exchange was about 200 meters from the next piece of ridiculous overkill as well.
*Anyone* who uses reporting day....
Have you lost your mind?
Of all major western nations, New Zealand would probably be targeted near last in a nuclear war with Russia or China. New Zealand is not in NATO, does not neighbour Russia, is on the other side of the world from the USA and Europe, is not known to have nuclear weapons and is not in the Australia-UK-USA defence pact v China either while Taiwan or Japan or South Korea are more likely targets for Chinese attacks and invasion and much closer to China.
India and Pakistan might be reasonably safe however there is the not insignificant prospect both could end up in nuclear war with the other
No, clearly not, but I'd like to be a pain in the arse to a Russian every day from now on until Putin is toast.
Funny old world.
David Crockett : [Crockett is about to be executed by the Mexicans] You tell the general I'm willing to discuss the terms of surrender. You tell him; if he'll order his men to put down their weapons and line up, I'll take them to Sam Houston and I'll try my best to save most of them. That said; Sam's a mite twitchy, so no promises.
However thatd be no reason for the West to relax its actions against Russia. The West cannot dictate to Ukraine what options it must accept, likewise Russia cannot make the West relaxing a condition of its offer to Ukraine. The sanctions are due to invading, withdrawing wouldn't reduce the need for consequences.
But I found this on the south side ...
https://canmore.org.uk/site/306326/edinburgh-calton-hill-panel-of-st-wolodymyr
He can sod off out of the Donbass.
Terrible numbers for Sunak
https://redfieldandwiltonstrategies.com/latest-gb-voting-intention-28-february-2022/
Firstly, read what I said. I said "*if* we had gotten serious". So, if we had done things differently 10 or 20 years ago, we wouldn't be where we are.
Perhaps regret can only get us so far, you might suggest. OK, so where are we now? We know that if we burn everything in known hydrocarbon reserves around the world, the climate is completely f***ed. We need to transition quickly. There is very little point investing in new sources of hydrocarbons. It just takes too long, and there's more than we can afford to use! We can invest more quickly in green technologies and energy efficiency.
The problem with you and your style is that you are clinging to the past, unwilling and unable(?) to face what the transition entails.
Joe Saward
@joesaward
·
6m
The Russian GP promoter cancelled his JSBM subscription (perhaps he disagreed when I said we probably won't have another Russian GP for a generation). That was before I had a chance to inform him that his monthly payment had failed...
https://twitter.com/joesaward/status/1498348933118050304
But I do wonder if Haas has found new sponsors or whether Andretti's problem that he can't find a team to buy has been solved