Three PB faces from tonight’s 18th birthday party – politicalbetting.com
Three PB faces from tonight’s 18th birthday party – politicalbetting.com
Above in the pic are Anthony Daly, Peter the Punter and Stodge -just three of the 40+ attendees at PB’s 18th birthday party. The event was hosted by Smarkets at their dockside offices and provided excellent food and drink.
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Glad it was such a success. Stops me feeling quite so guilty.
https://twitter.com/JavierBlas/status/1499041308257701890
Urals oil just straight up isn't selling, even at a massive discount.
I can see why Putin wants martial law for when it starts to bite.
No one looks like I imagine them.
Ain't that always the drawback of Internet communication?
Peter the Punter looks hard.
I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made;
Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee,
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.
And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight’s all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet’s wings.
I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,
I hear it in the deep heart’s core.
"for peace comes dropping slow"
Alas, it does ....
No doubt the average age of attendee was 107, but I do miss a proper drink and I would have liked to have gone and put faces to names.
New York is pathetically abstinent compared to London.
Say after we've sacrificed Ukraine to avoid the nukes, Vlad goes after Poland (please don't bore me with his logistical difficulties in getting this done) and we defend it.
And he doesn't launch his nukes.
You can't say anything to Ukraine because it's gone. But what would you say?
Russian police arrest Elena Osipova for protesting in Saint Petersburg against the war.
She is a survivor of the Siege of Leningrad, which lasted 2 years and 4 months, claiming the lives of more than 1 million Russians.
https://twitter.com/visegrad24/status/1499139576518131715
We're not defending them with a straight out direct war, but we're defending them by proxy and that's every bit as significant.
The way the war is going, I am increasingly optimistic that Ukraine could win it. I am nigh on certain that Russia will lose it. The middle between those options is what I'm not sure about.
Russian army showing the TG boys how it's done.
We are just days away from scenes like this:
https://youtu.be/7QkJjWIHFSA
Blue Remembered Hills
Adlestrop
Innisfree
The one about dissolving the people by Brecht
Haha.
One of my favourite things about PB
The bee-loud glade.
Dropping slow.
Well I liked that
Hope to make one some day.
Interest rates up from 9.5 to 20%
Rouble down by a third
Financial system cut off
Stock Market closed
Banks on the verge of collapse
Martial law planned for tomorrow
They are even calling up reservists. Newsnight showed a RT video of a group of smiling reservists who Mark Urban wryly noted looked distinctly mature i.e over 50.
I’ll tell you now and I’ll tell you firmly
I don’t never want to go to Burnley
What they do there don’t concern me
Why would anybody make the journey?
I’ll tell you know and I’ll tell you flatly
I don’t never want to go to Gatley
I don’t even want to go to Batley
Where is that place exactly
Do I wanna to go to Redditch?
I wouldn’t visit in a souped-up sheddish
what am I some kind of Nebbish?
No I don’t want to go to Reddish
I’ll tell you now and I’ll tell you briefley
I don’t never want to go to Keighley
I’ll tell you now, just like I told Elsa Lanchester…
I don’t ever want to go to… Cumbernauld
https://www.flightradar24.com/data/aircraft/g-xatw#2aff2667
We don't have to declare war on Putin. We can make the Ukrainian International Brigade one of the largest and best equipped armies in the world. We can declare airstrips in Poland to be Ukrainian territory and fill them with newly painted planes. We can get every military drone in the western world on its way to Ukraine.
I'd rather we took the risk of doing things like this to save Ukraine than just shrug when they die.
7 days in we get our first sighting of the SAS trained Ukrainian special forces trained in insurgency, they'll be causing carnage behind the front line.
We won the minute it became obvious he wouldn't get Ukraine in a handful of days. Whether he takes all of Ukraine now or ceasesfires is imo a 50-50, but he won't dare risk going further anytime soon. That's good enough for now.
This is the new PB competition.
One of them is @Leon.
Or maybe all of them. 😉
You have to guess which one.
An inva vodka pkacs in Edinburgh. My GF is hot, my frienda are mental.
Viva la Ukraine
I love PB
Somewhere among the clouds above;
Those that I fight I do not hate,
Those that I guard I do not love;
My country is Kiltartan Cross,
My countrymen Kiltartan’s poor,
No likely end could bring them loss
Or leave them happier than before.
Nor law, nor duty bade me fight,
Nor public men, nor cheering crowds,
A lonely impulse of delight
Drove to this tumult in the clouds;
I balanced all, brought all to mind,
The years to come seemed waste of breath,
A waste of breath the years behind
In balance with this life, this death."
"Those that I fight I do not hate,
Those that I guard I do not love"
How many Russian conscripts feel like that tonight?
⏫Approve: 45 % (+6)
⏬Disapprove: 48 % (-7)
This is the highest level of support for President Macron in a Kantar poll since July 2017.
Kantar, 28/02/22
Parading round, and round, and round:
To thoughtless youth it pleasure yields,
And lures from cities and from fields,
To sell their liberty for charms
Of tawdry lace, and glittering arms;
And when Ambition’s voice commands,
To march, and fight, and fall, in foreign lands.
I hate that drum’s discordant sound,
Parading round, and round, and round:
To me it talks of ravag’d plains,
And burning towns, and ruin’d swains,
And mangled limbs, and dying groans,
And widow’s tears, and orphans moans;
And all that misery’s hand bestows,
To fill the catalogue of human woes.
But I really can't believe he'd thus kill himself because the world stopped him taking Ukraine
Spring and war.
"Today we have naming of parts. Yesterday,
We had daily cleaning. And tomorrow morning,
We shall have what to do after firing. But to-day,
Today we have naming of parts. Japonica
Glistens like coral in all of the neighbouring gardens,
And today we have naming of parts.
This is the lower sling swivel. And this
Is the upper sling swivel, whose use you will see,
When you are given your slings. And this is the piling swivel,
Which in your case you have not got. The branches
Hold in the gardens their silent, eloquent gestures,
Which in our case we have not got.
This is the safety-catch, which is always released
With an easy flick of the thumb. And please do not let me
See anyone using his finger. You can do it quite easy
If you have any strength in your thumb. The blossoms
Are fragile and motionless, never letting anyone see
Any of them using their finger.
And this you can see is the bolt. The purpose of this
Is to open the breech, as you see. We can slide it
Rapidly backwards and forwards: we call this
Easing the spring. And rapidly backwards and forwards
The early bees are assaulting and fumbling the flowers:
They call it easing the Spring.
They call it easing the Spring: it is perfectly easy
If you have any strength in your thumb: like the bolt,
And the breech, and the cocking-piece, and the point of balance,
Which in our case we have not got; and the almond-blossom
Silent in all of the gardens and the bees going backwards and forwards,
For today we have naming of parts."
Just as a matter of interest, how is Putin going to have the troops and equipment to maintain order in Ukraine, avoid revolution at home, and invade Poland?
And don't forget Poland would be a massively harder target than Ukraine. Even before we discuss its NATO membership, it has more modern F16s (J block) than Ukraine had old Mig-29s. And it has more (and more modern) anti-tank missiles, tanks, etc etc.
If Russia struggled in the Ukraine, how do you think they'd do in Poland?
Thanks to Shadsy for organising it, and thanks to all the PBers there for making it a memorable occasion.
I'd have a guess at what is wrong with him but it would only be a guess.
Does Russia have a 25th Amendment?
We were once a superpower. We once had an empire. We bankrupted ourselves after two World Wars and could not hold on. We retreated, mostly with good grace but certainly without much bloodshed. While we may have some nostalgia in parts for what we once were, we know there is no going back. That way lies insanity. If any leader tries to make us so again, we would laugh at them. Yet we have values which we will defend. Thus far and no further. There is pride in that.
That could have been a model for Russia. A road not taken.
I’m trying to get my head around the idea of occupying a city that big.
The Road Not Taken
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
Written by Robert Frost for his good friend the poet Edward Thomas who was notoriously indecisive but who decided, eventually, to choose to go to fight in France where he was killed in 1917 at Arras.
https://twitter.com/trenttelenko/status/1499164245250002944?s=21
Though the terrain on Chat Moss isn't too dissimilar to Ukraine. They'd probably get bogged down on the M62.
Congratulations Mike and the gang.
Have the bridges been blown up? Are the roads too dangerous?
There's a good point about the southern part of the county being much dryer and therefore easier.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8a/Koppen-Geiger_Map_UKR_present.svg
“But Comrade Captain, the tyres on the truck…”
“I don’t give a f*** about the tyres, just f***ing move it!”
This is no case of petty right or wrong
That politicians or philosophers
Can judge. I hate not Germans, nor grow hot
With love of Englishmen, to please newspapers.
Beside my hate for one fat patriot
My hatred of the Kaiser is love true:—
A kind of god he is, banging a gong.
But I have not to choose between the two,
Or between justice and injustice. Dinned
With war and argument I read no more
Than in the storm smoking along the wind
Athwart the wood. Two witches' cauldrons roar.
From one the weather shall rise clear and gay;
Out of the other an England beautiful
And like her mother that died yesterday.
Little I know or care if, being dull,
I shall miss something that historians
Can rake out of the ashes when perchance
The phoenix broods serene above their ken.
But with the best and meanest Englishmen
I am one in crying, God save England, lest
We lose what never slaves and cattle blessed.
The ages made her that made us from dust:
She is all we know and live by, and we trust
She is good and must endure, loving her so:
And as we love ourselves we hate our foe.
It is not a great poem but perhaps appropriate to the Ukraine.
Where in the sun the sheep had come, now shadows gnarled with bark.
I came upon an abyss, my path fell away to doom -
Nature and nature's laws lay hidden here, somewhere in this gloom.
Till there came the sound of a song bird, I stretched into a sigh...
God said, let it be, and dawn came upon the sky.
I looked out now from darkness where all around was lit,
A new dawn breaking over me, making a fresh start.
Here Giant's were calling to brothers through the desolate rifts of time,
With dwarfs upon their shoulders, they sought the perfect rhyme.
It was here a riddle fell to me, could my future lead back to you?
If anything that could have been, happened to everyone too.
Courage helps us overcome, look lightly upon what would seem,
And lead us on to confront from start, all what has never been.
In time so unbounded, everything under this sun will be,
As by all veritable logic every ticking clock now is free.
It was then I had my vision, of a shepherd and the snake -
The serpent quashing him in nausea, until he bit the head right off the snake.
Our Sheppard engulfed with laughter, his spirit fine did soar,
With a clear voice, he cried to the sun
Was that life? Well then: Once more!
You don't need to parade up and down too much.
And sure, they can do the collective punishment thing, but that's a hard thing to maintain for any length of time.
"Several Russian warships have left Crimea and are heading to Odesa. An amphibious assault on Ukraine’s third largest city could come as soon as Thursday: U.S. officials"
Feels like Russia are doing loads of really high risk attacks for not much reason (see various VDV drops over the past few days). Given how telegraphed this attack has been, should be massive Russian casualties, with a lot of Neptunes and Javelins waiting for the landing vessels.
I do actually doubt terror tactics will work in the long term, but I fear that is what they are going to try.
Most investment funds, pensions and insurance companies are usually required to only hold "investment grade" bonds.
And investment grade is a minimum of BBB-.
B is (counts it) four or five rungs below BBB-.
That's a lot of investment funds and insurance companies and pension funds that will, as of tomorrow, no longer be able to hold Russian government debt.
https://www.reddit.com/r/ukraine/comments/t4xnn9/a_small_russian_unit_that_fully_surrendered_to/
Sara Wheeler reflects that the attack on Ukraine is not the war of the Russian people she has known."
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m0014qf1
They take all the territory they want and kick out however much of the resident population they need to hold it. They kill or capture some anti-Russian politicians to make and example in other countries. Then they leave the rest.
That's winning, isn't it? If the goal is to build a sustainable pro-Russian state across the whole of the territory then maybe they can't do that, but that's not the only way to win, I think?
A friend of mine, who was a keen Corbyn supporter, a peacenik, and spent a lot of time helping refugees in the camps in France, just wrote on Facebook that whilst Russia should not have sent troops into Ukraine, "However the situation must be understood", followed by a link to an Oliver Stone's 2016 pro-Putin 'documentary' Ukraine on Fire.
Followed by a lot of comments backing his view. He was also pro-Assad and a chemical weapons denialist.
He then posts something else about media manipulation, followed by how the west are very duplicitous, and how the BBC's video of the missile attack on Karkiv seems to have come from Ukrannian-held territory, and why would Russian forces need to send a missile to destroy it when they were already in the city?
I know this guy. On a personal level he's lovely. But his views... Oh, his views.
I don't respond, but I'm so tempted. Worse, another friend - a genial, happy chap I'm very find of - 'liked' both comments.
https://twitter.com/russianforces/status/1499146779799040008?s=21
"The new age of disorder
Putin represents a world the Western mind can no longer comprehend. The belief that liberalism will inevitably prevail is an illusion that Europe must abandon if it is to win a war of his creation.
By John Gray" (£)
https://www.newstatesman.com/international-politics/geopolitics/2022/03/the-new-age-of-disorder
*) Yesterday's UN vote shows that Russia has few friends internationally on this matter.
*) It 'appears' that it has increased dissent in Russia.
*) A military 'win' will do nothing immediate to ease sanctions and help the Russian economy.
*) They will lose many young men and a heck of a lot of expensive military kit.
*) 'Keeping' the areas pro-Russian make take a lot of Russia's treasure.
This may set Russia back decades, for very little gain. Even gaining the oil and gas fields around the Crimea and Donbass (yes, part of his motivation will be oil 'n gas) will do him little good if he cannot purchase the kit internationally to exploit those fields, and no-one wants to buy the oil and gas.
Who’d have thought they were skimping on basic vehicle maintenance? So they’re running out of fuel, have tyres turning to dust after a bit of exercise, and don’t appear to be crewed by the more elite section of the Russian army. How long before they simply give up and go home?
If 6,000 dead Russians is correct - and the Americans are suggesting it might be - alongside a similar number injured and many more captured, have the Russians lost more than 20% of their manpower inside a week?
Meanwhile, the resupply convoys from Poland are heading over the border with a load more NLAWs and Stingers.
Don’t give up Ukraine, and Puck Futin! 🇺🇦
Ignore the queues at the banks, that credit cards and smartphone services have stopped working, that mortgage rates have doubled, that anything of intrinsic value has disappeared from shops, that the stock market is going to be closed for a fourth day…
Putin should be most worried about China, though. If he loses Xi, he’s fucked.
RIP to all the innocents btw. Apologies if my post(s) come across as rather cold and detached. I studied International Relations at university. That’s my excuse.
F-16 blocks are defined by numbers not letters. A 'J', that is an F-16C/DJ, is a Block 50/52 with the addition of the HARM missile avionics/launch computer and the AN/ASQ-213 HARM targeting system. This is a USAF only variant.
Poland have Block 50/52+ which adds JDAM capability, conformals and a few other upgrades.
Ukraine's Fulcrums have been through the MU1 upgrade program which improves the radar, adds GPS/GLONASS and lets them use Ukranian built versions of the R-27 Alamo. Some of the fleet (exact number unknown) have been through the MU2 upgrade in which Elbit adds a lot of Israeli avionics.