The 'hard' problem is this: it is not all about Putin. His leadership and regime is supported by a vast majority. What we are seeing is in part the will of the people. In the end, the will and resolve of its people, and their imperial delusions and claims over large parts of Europe, have to be broken. I think it is an error to think that this is necessarily over if/when Putin and Lavrov get removed.
I am very pessimistic. I doubt that even this proposal would work. Russia and its delusions need to be defeated and be seen to be defeated, if there is to be even a chance of a reset. But how on earth is that going to happen?
I fear that Russia will retreat into its Stalinist past, Ukraine will be destroyed in the way that Syria was destroyed, people will die in the most appalling circumstances and those who have got out will stay out for much longer than we or they anticipate.
It will be a new Cold War and we will be lucky if the hot war in Ukraine does not extend elsewhere.
I mainly wrote this to see if there was any possible way out and in response to the discussion the other day about possible solutions over Crimea etc.
To cheer myself up even further, given that Sellafield and BaE are not a million miles from where I'm living, we're certainly prime targets for a nuclear strike. Still, better than surviving in an irradiated wasteland I suppose.
Most of the Lake District, especially towards Carlisle is actually however more likely to survive a nuclear attack than 90% of the rest of the UK
There used to be substantial nuclear warhead storage facilities at Longtown, just outside Carlisle. If they are still there they would be a definite target.
Even if they're not, they'd probably still be a target, on the basis that everything that could be a threat (real or imagined) ends up a target.
Just as "nuclear-free" New Zealand still had/has weapons pointed at it - because what if the Kiwis are lying about being nuclear-free?
I don't think VVP's position is remotely under threat. He gets to define what victory is and can therefore declare it at any time.
It is interesting how he never says shit about Turkey who are providing more help than anybody outside the US. TuAF have regular A400M movements between Ankara and Rzesow in Poland to bring more TB2s and MAM-Ls.
I suspect Putin is playing what he thinks is the long game with Erdogan where despite certain rivalries, not least in Syria, he can get into a partnership similar to the one he has with Xi Jinping, this time covering Western Asia and parts of South Europe.
Putin's objectives for Ukraine are clear, as he has spoken and written at length about them. I don't see any reason not to take his words at face value. In summary:
1. Keep Ukraine in 2. Keep the West out 3. Eliminate any Ukrainian identity that is independent from Russia.
I am sure he's serious about those objectives. He believes he's dealing with with real problems, but as far as I can tell doesn't realise he himself created the problems noted above.
So we have someone who sees his role as a destiny. Absolutely everything is sacrificed for his strategic objectives yet the place is run opportunistically as a Mafia operation.
The 'hard' problem is this: it is not all about Putin. His leadership and regime is supported by a vast majority. What we are seeing is in part the will of the people. In the end, the will and resolve of its people, and their imperial delusions and claims over large parts of Europe, have to be broken. I think it is an error to think that this is necessarily over if/when Putin and Lavrov get removed.
I am very pessimistic. I doubt that even this proposal would work. Russia and its delusions need to be defeated and be seen to be defeated, if there is to be even a chance of a reset. But how on earth is that going to happen?
I fear that Russia will retreat into its Stalinist past, Ukraine will be destroyed in the way that Syria was destroyed, people will die in the most appalling circumstances and those who have got out will stay out for much longer than we or they anticipate.
It will be a new Cold War and we will be lucky if the hot war in Ukraine does not extend elsewhere.
I mainly wrote this to see if there was any possible way out and in response to the discussion the other day about possible solutions over Crimea etc.
To cheer myself up even further, given that Sellafield and BaE are not a million miles from where I'm living, we're certainly prime targets for a nuclear strike. Still, better than surviving in an irradiated wasteland I suppose.
Most of the Lake District, especially towards Carlisle is actually however more likely to survive a nuclear attack than 90% of the rest of the UK
That map it literal garbage - even with an attack on the UK of a dozen strategic level warheads (and the Russians like 'em big), the lethal fallout zones merge.
Everyone dies. Unless you plan on being elsewhere for a few hundred years.
Can I put in a request to Russia to be inside one of the zones where you are just obliterated? I don't want to survive a large scale nuclear attack on the UK, because surviving means hell on earth followed by death anyway.
So whilst I get that the right are delighted that Bercow has been found to be a bully and disgraced, I am confused as to how the same people can also be delighted that Patel has been found to be a bully and remains Home Secretary.
Standards apply equally or they are not standards.
It just shows up the left for being just as willing to turn a blind eye as the right. I sense a parallel with Salmond.
This is more of a problem for the "good guys"; no one expects the Tories to be saints (especially this iteration).
Bearing in mind of course that Bercow was Conservative Party member and MP for 29 years and a Labour member for 12 months or less. If someone is a bully they tend to show those characteristics right through their lives.
But Labour knowingly bought the damaged goods....
The checks on someone simply becoming a member are massively less rigorous than the checks on becoming an MP, I would have thought.
You can of course believe that he has become a bully recently and his behaviour was fine during all those years in the Tory Party but it is not really credible. Labour have acted as soon as the verdict came out, to have refused membership would surely have meant prejudging the outcome. By that criteria Patel should have been out on her ear months ago.
The 'hard' problem is this: it is not all about Putin. His leadership and regime is supported by a vast majority. What we are seeing is in part the will of the people. In the end, the will and resolve of its people, and their imperial delusions and claims over large parts of Europe, have to be broken. I think it is an error to think that this is necessarily over if/when Putin and Lavrov get removed.
I am very pessimistic. I doubt that even this proposal would work. Russia and its delusions need to be defeated and be seen to be defeated, if there is to be even a chance of a reset. But how on earth is that going to happen?
I fear that Russia will retreat into its Stalinist past, Ukraine will be destroyed in the way that Syria was destroyed, people will die in the most appalling circumstances and those who have got out will stay out for much longer than we or they anticipate.
It will be a new Cold War and we will be lucky if the hot war in Ukraine does not extend elsewhere.
I mainly wrote this to see if there was any possible way out and in response to the discussion the other day about possible solutions over Crimea etc.
To cheer myself up even further, given that Sellafield and BaE are not a million miles from where I'm living, we're certainly prime targets for a nuclear strike. Still, better than surviving in an irradiated wasteland I suppose.
Most of the Lake District, especially towards Carlisle is actually however more likely to survive a nuclear attack than 90% of the rest of the UK
There used to be substantial nuclear warhead storage facilities at Longtown, just outside Carlisle. If they are still there they would be a definite target.
Much of it has been closed though there is still a munitions depot there.
Though why Cyclefree is whinging about it when most of the Lake District would survive even when London and the Home Counties bar Clacton and Margate, most of the South, Birmingham, Manchester and Newcastle and most of the North, Glasgow and Edinburgh and South Wales would have been wiped out is beyond me
So whilst I get that the right are delighted that Bercow has been found to be a bully and disgraced, I am confused as to how the same people can also be delighted that Patel has been found to be a bully and remains Home Secretary.
Standards apply equally or they are not standards.
It just shows up the left for being just as willing to turn a blind eye as the right. I sense a parallel with Salmond.
This is more of a problem for the "good guys"; no one expects the Tories to be saints (especially this iteration).
Bearing in mind of course that Bercow was Conservative Party member and MP for 29 years and a Labour member for 12 months or less. If someone is a bully they tend to show those characteristics right through their lives.
But Labour knowingly bought the damaged goods....
The checks on someone simply becoming a member are massively less rigorous than the checks on becoming an MP, I would have thought.
You can of course believe that he has become a bully recently and his behaviour was fine during all those years in the Tory Party but it is not really credible. Labour have acted as soon as the verdict came out, to have refused membership would surely have meant prejudging the outcome. By that criteria Patel should have been out on her ear months ago.
Being a bully is an opportunistic thing, and the opportunities aren't really there for a backbench MP/shadow this and that like they are for the Speaker.
This morning you told the British public you literally can't define what a woman is. What's the plan, lift up random objects until you find one that rattles?
Cooper's is the correct response. You have a bunch of people using a word in subtly different ways in subtly different contexts and trying really hard not to see the other people's point of view. If you use it in one of the ways they don't themselves use they get really, really angry. So STFU.
This whole debate is a fruitless distraction from the real inequalities that women still face. I went to a work dinner last night *on International Women's Day* at which there were 18 men and no women, unless you count the ones serving the food.
I've worked in mixed gender teams for the last 13 years, and the majority of my managers have been women. My current team was, at one point, entirely female apart from me. It hasn't been a problem for me at all. But I think it is evidence that, in some areas, women are simply not an oppressed minority in the workplace and to carry on with this narrative is divisive and counter productive. The remaining pockets of sexism and misogyny should be tackled, but under the banner of gender equality, rather than through perpetrating the idea that all of society is inherently sexist.
I once worked in an entirely female team except myself. My manager was female too. What it showed to me that sexism will always exist where one gender dominated. One team building event was held at a day spa with make up and pampering sessions. I was told they would do something different the next time!
The 'hard' problem is this: it is not all about Putin. His leadership and regime is supported by a vast majority. What we are seeing is in part the will of the people. In the end, the will and resolve of its people, and their imperial delusions and claims over large parts of Europe, have to be broken. I think it is an error to think that this is necessarily over if/when Putin and Lavrov get removed.
I am very pessimistic. I doubt that even this proposal would work. Russia and its delusions need to be defeated and be seen to be defeated, if there is to be even a chance of a reset. But how on earth is that going to happen?
I fear that Russia will retreat into its Stalinist past, Ukraine will be destroyed in the way that Syria was destroyed, people will die in the most appalling circumstances and those who have got out will stay out for much longer than we or they anticipate.
It will be a new Cold War and we will be lucky if the hot war in Ukraine does not extend elsewhere.
I mainly wrote this to see if there was any possible way out and in response to the discussion the other day about possible solutions over Crimea etc.
To cheer myself up even further, given that Sellafield and BaE are not a million miles from where I'm living, we're certainly prime targets for a nuclear strike. Still, better than surviving in an irradiated wasteland I suppose.
Most of the Lake District, especially towards Carlisle is actually however more likely to survive a nuclear attack than 90% of the rest of the UK
There used to be substantial nuclear warhead storage facilities at Longtown, just outside Carlisle. If they are still there they would be a definite target.
Much of it has been closed though there is still a munitions depot there.
Though why Cyclefree is whinging about it when most of the Lake District would survive even when London and the Home Counties bar Clacton and Margate, most of the South, Birmingham, Manchester and Newcastle and most of the North, Glasgow and Edinburgh and South Wales would have been wiped out is beyond me
The Bercow/Patel bully takes are exactly the same as the Corbyn/Johnson racist takes: a lot of people don't care about the bullying or the racism, they care that they can accuse the other side of doing it to score political points.
The reality, of course, is that both Bercow and Patel are bullies and neither should hold public office; while both Corbyn and Johnson are racists, and likewise should be nowhere near any position of power.
The 'hard' problem is this: it is not all about Putin. His leadership and regime is supported by a vast majority. What we are seeing is in part the will of the people. In the end, the will and resolve of its people, and their imperial delusions and claims over large parts of Europe, have to be broken. I think it is an error to think that this is necessarily over if/when Putin and Lavrov get removed.
I am very pessimistic. I doubt that even this proposal would work. Russia and its delusions need to be defeated and be seen to be defeated, if there is to be even a chance of a reset. But how on earth is that going to happen?
I fear that Russia will retreat into its Stalinist past, Ukraine will be destroyed in the way that Syria was destroyed, people will die in the most appalling circumstances and those who have got out will stay out for much longer than we or they anticipate.
It will be a new Cold War and we will be lucky if the hot war in Ukraine does not extend elsewhere.
I mainly wrote this to see if there was any possible way out and in response to the discussion the other day about possible solutions over Crimea etc.
To cheer myself up even further, given that Sellafield and BaE are not a million miles from where I'm living, we're certainly prime targets for a nuclear strike. Still, better than surviving in an irradiated wasteland I suppose.
Most of the Lake District, especially towards Carlisle is actually however more likely to survive a nuclear attack than 90% of the rest of the UK
There used to be substantial nuclear warhead storage facilities at Longtown, just outside Carlisle. If they are still there they would be a definite target.
Much of it has been closed though there is still a munitions depot there.
Though why Cyclefree is whinging about it when most of the Lake District would survive even when London and the Home Counties bar Clacton and Margate, most of the South, Birmingham, Manchester and Newcastle and most of the North, Glasgow and Edinburgh and South Wales would have been wiped out is beyond me
We'd all be wiped out you idiot!
Honestly, to place any faith in some random estate agent map published in the Standard just shows how gullible you are.
The 'hard' problem is this: it is not all about Putin. His leadership and regime is supported by a vast majority. What we are seeing is in part the will of the people. In the end, the will and resolve of its people, and their imperial delusions and claims over large parts of Europe, have to be broken. I think it is an error to think that this is necessarily over if/when Putin and Lavrov get removed.
In a way, yes.
But in a way, no.
Putin's regime has spent two decades demolishing press freedoms in Russia. The media has slowly become the regime's mouthpiece - or else. Therefore much of the Russian public is fed Putin's worldview, and not any opposing view.
The situation is what it is. People are protesting against Putin's regime, but they are a minority. Even if it is a significant minority, it is still a minority. There are deeper nationalist forces at play. It feels a bit like China 3 decades ago and Tiannamen Square - a country decisively moving in one direction. Of course we have sympathy for the 'losers' in such a scenario, but it shouldn't impact on how we view the threat from the regime.
There are big differences, though. China wasn't prosecuting a war of aggression which it was in danger of losing. Nor was its economy collapsing as a result of western sanctions. And there was no real opposition within the existing state structure (Navalny and his followers).
FWIW I was reading the comments of a British expat working out in Russia (who is keeping his head down and hoping to stay out there) on another forum; his take is that there is tremendous support for Putin amongst Russians, based on their proud nationalism and obsession with WWII as great as ours. He reckons that when the truth (about the casualties and lack of military success) finally reaches Russians, rather than blame Putin they'll mostly blame the West, and we'll be in a new cold war.
The stories Russians tell themselves about WW2 are not entirely in keeping with the facts are they, though. They ignore their alliance with Nazi Germany, their provision of material to the Nazis at a time when Britain was fighting Germany and British pilots were being killed by them, their carve up of Poland and wholesale slaughter of Polish officers and others, their aggression to Finland and the Baltic States, the appalling treatment they meted out to returning Russian prisoners of war, the wholesale rapes of German women and the atrocities they then inflicted on the countries they occupied. Oh and the huge amount of military hardware they received from the Allies to help them fight.
And they won't learn it because telling the truth in Russia is dangerous, historical inquiry into and access to archives is banned and they prefer to believe in national myths rather than take a good hard look at themselves. Yes Russia has been horribly invaded. But it has also been a horribly aggressive country at least as often. Ask the Poles, for instance.
The 'hard' problem is this: it is not all about Putin. His leadership and regime is supported by a vast majority. What we are seeing is in part the will of the people. In the end, the will and resolve of its people, and their imperial delusions and claims over large parts of Europe, have to be broken. I think it is an error to think that this is necessarily over if/when Putin and Lavrov get removed.
I am very pessimistic. I doubt that even this proposal would work. Russia and its delusions need to be defeated and be seen to be defeated, if there is to be even a chance of a reset. But how on earth is that going to happen?
I fear that Russia will retreat into its Stalinist past, Ukraine will be destroyed in the way that Syria was destroyed, people will die in the most appalling circumstances and those who have got out will stay out for much longer than we or they anticipate.
It will be a new Cold War and we will be lucky if the hot war in Ukraine does not extend elsewhere.
I mainly wrote this to see if there was any possible way out and in response to the discussion the other day about possible solutions over Crimea etc.
To cheer myself up even further, given that Sellafield and BaE are not a million miles from where I'm living, we're certainly prime targets for a nuclear strike. Still, better than surviving in an irradiated wasteland I suppose.
Most of the Lake District, especially towards Carlisle is actually however more likely to survive a nuclear attack than 90% of the rest of the UK
There used to be substantial nuclear warhead storage facilities at Longtown, just outside Carlisle. If they are still there they would be a definite target.
Much of it has been closed though there is still a munitions depot there.
Though why Cyclefree is whinging about it when most of the Lake District would survive even when London and the Home Counties bar Clacton and Margate, most of the South, Birmingham, Manchester and Newcastle and most of the North, Glasgow and Edinburgh and South Wales would have been wiped out is beyond me
"Would survive" = looks ok on a comedy map cooked up by an online estate agent.
Moscow spokesperson claiming biological weapons are being developed in Ukraine
I honestly wonder why they bother with these ridiculous fabrications. No one outside Russia is going to believe them and Russian public opinion is in the bag anyway.
The Bercow/Patel bully takes are exactly the same as the Corbyn/Johnson racist takes. The reality is that a lot of people don't care about the bullying or the racism, they care that they can accuse the other side of doing it to score political points.
The reality, of course, is that both Bercow and Patel are bullies and neither should hold public office; while both Corbyn and Johnson are racists, and likewise should be nowhere near any position of power.
Agree strongly with the main point but on the being racist issue I don't know if they are themselves racist or not, but clearly both Corbyn and Johnson are happy to tolerate (a bit of) racism for boosting their own positions.
This crisis might last quite a while. The popularity of the PM, Kaja Kallas, has rocketed and many have said to me how relieved they are that she is in charge. All the attempts by Putinist subversion to promote the populist right wing over the past few years have come to nothing.
Estonia is ready to deal with whatever next this crisis throws up.
Yes, I think the "next it'll be the Baltic States, then Poland" fears have been generally allayed, partly due to the difficulties the Russians are having even in Ukraine, and also the very solid NATO reassurances that any attack on a NATO state will be seen as an act of war against the whole alliance.
I know it's a side-issue but looking at the Estonian polls, although it shows an uptick in the governing party's ratings from a rather low level, the real breakthrough seems to be Estonia 2000, who sound from Wikipedia like the Estonian wing of the (British) Liberal Democrats: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estonia_200 - now on 20% from a zero standing start. What do you make of them, Cicero?
So whilst I get that the right are delighted that Bercow has been found to be a bully and disgraced, I am confused as to how the same people can also be delighted that Patel has been found to be a bully and remains Home Secretary.
Standards apply equally or they are not standards.
It just shows up the left for being just as willing to turn a blind eye as the right. I sense a parallel with Salmond.
This is more of a problem for the "good guys"; no one expects the Tories to be saints (especially this iteration).
Bearing in mind of course that Bercow was Conservative Party member and MP for 29 years and a Labour member for 12 months or less. If someone is a bully they tend to show those characteristics right through their lives.
I remember being surprised that one of William Hague's last acts as an MP, when he was Leader of the House, was to attempt to remove Bercow as Speaker. He was unsuccessful. As Hague has always struck me as being a pretty good egg I was mystified at why he would want his last act in the Commons to be something which appeared so petty and vindictive.
Given what we now know about Bercow it becomes perfectly understandable. As Leader of the House, Hague would have had a lot of interactions with Bercow and seen what he was about.
This morning you told the British public you literally can't define what a woman is. What's the plan, lift up random objects until you find one that rattles?
Cooper's is the correct response. You have a bunch of people using a word in subtly different ways in subtly different contexts and trying really hard not to see the other people's point of view. If you use it in one of the ways they don't themselves use they get really, really angry. So STFU.
This whole debate is a fruitless distraction from the real inequalities that women still face. I went to a work dinner last night *on International Women's Day* at which there were 18 men and no women, unless you count the ones serving the food.
I've worked in mixed gender teams for the last 13 years, and the majority of my managers have been women. My current team was, at one point, entirely female apart from me. It hasn't been a problem for me at all. But I think it is evidence that, in some areas, women are simply not an oppressed minority in the workplace and to carry on with this narrative is divisive and counter productive. The remaining pockets of sexism and misogyny should be tackled, but under the banner of gender equality, rather than through perpetrating the idea that all of society is inherently sexist.
I once worked in an entirely female team except myself. My manager was female too. What it showed to me that sexism will always exist where one gender dominated. One team building event was held at a day spa with make up and pampering sessions. I was told they would do something different the next time!
To be fair I would probably enjoy a spa day more than some kind of aggressively male team building event. Although the whole idea of team building exercises is horrible anyway.
This morning you told the British public you literally can't define what a woman is. What's the plan, lift up random objects until you find one that rattles?
Cooper's is the correct response. You have a bunch of people using a word in subtly different ways in subtly different contexts and trying really hard not to see the other people's point of view. If you use it in one of the ways they don't themselves use they get really, really angry. So STFU.
This whole debate is a fruitless distraction from the real inequalities that women still face. I went to a work dinner last night *on International Women's Day* at which there were 18 men and no women, unless you count the ones serving the food.
I've worked in mixed gender teams for the last 13 years, and the majority of my managers have been women. My current team was, at one point, entirely female apart from me. It hasn't been a problem for me at all. But I think it is evidence that, in some areas, women are simply not an oppressed minority in the workplace and to carry on with this narrative is divisive and counter productive. The remaining pockets of sexism and misogyny should be tackled, but under the banner of gender equality, rather than through perpetrating the idea that all of society is inherently sexist.
I once worked in an entirely female team except myself. My manager was female too. What it showed to me that sexism will always exist where one gender dominated. One team building event was held at a day spa with make up and pampering sessions. I was told they would do something different the next time!
A colleague had that happen a while back. He caused a bit of problem by going along and enthusiastically (he is one of those happy extroverts) joining in, face packs, pedicures, the lot.
About half the team were upset that he hadn't just stayed away....
So whilst I get that the right are delighted that Bercow has been found to be a bully and disgraced, I am confused as to how the same people can also be delighted that Patel has been found to be a bully and remains Home Secretary.
Standards apply equally or they are not standards.
It just shows up the left for being just as willing to turn a blind eye as the right. I sense a parallel with Salmond.
This is more of a problem for the "good guys"; no one expects the Tories to be saints (especially this iteration).
Bearing in mind of course that Bercow was Conservative Party member and MP for 29 years and a Labour member for 12 months or less. If someone is a bully they tend to show those characteristics right through their lives.
But Labour knowingly bought the damaged goods....
Routinely accepting a membership application in the context of what were then inconclusive allegations is hardly "buying" damaged goods. What matters is that as soon as the result of the parliamentary investigation was published, his membership has been suspended as the usual internal process kicks in. Given that he has shown not the slightest contrition, it's a racing certainty that Bercow's membership will be cancelled in the near future.
Mr. Observer, Johnson's a moron, but the Corbyn comparison is once again a case of bad and worse, not equals.
A number of MPs left the Labour Party under Corbyn due to the concerns of Jews. Under Johnson, loathsome as he is, we have ethnic minority Cabinet ministers including the Chancellor and favourite to succeed him, and Home Secretary.
The fact is this: Boris Johnson is both professionally and personally unacceptable as PM. He has neither the character nor the competence for the position. And yet he remains far better (or less bad) an option than the far left Corbyn ever was. Pretending they're the same is nonsense. The right wing equivalent of Corbyn would be a man who marched with banners of Hitler and swastika flags. For all his flaws, which are numerous, Johnson never did that.
The Bercow/Patel bully takes are exactly the same as the Corbyn/Johnson racist takes. The reality is that a lot of people don't care about the bullying or the racism, they care that they can accuse the other side of doing it to score political points.
The reality, of course, is that both Bercow and Patel are bullies and neither should hold public office; while both Corbyn and Johnson are racists, and likewise should be nowhere near any position of power.
Agree strongly with the main point but on the being racist issue I don't know if they are themselves racist or not, but clearly both Corbyn and Johnson are happy to tolerate (a bit of) racism for boosting their own positions.
I think both have made clear that they have no problem with people being disparaged on the basis of their ethnicity. In my book, that makes them racists.
This morning you told the British public you literally can't define what a woman is. What's the plan, lift up random objects until you find one that rattles?
Rowling was responding to Annelise Dodds, no? In any case, Labour are in a royal mess over this. Like with Brexit, they're trying and failing to ride two horses on an issue where opinions are polarised.
I think it's different to Brexit because it involves two very small minorities, who are very intensely angry. Other people may have opinions one way or the other, but it doesn't really motivate them. In contrast, at least 60% of the population had quite a strong opinion on Brexit, at least after the referendum.
The correct way to play the politics in a situation like this is not to ride either of the horses.
The problem is that you can't simply ignore the issue, because decisions are being made that do come down on one side or the other.
You can't quite ignore the issue to the extent that there are concrete policy implications (Hillary transitioned from male to female then killed somebody with an axe, do they get sent to the men's prison or the women's prison or what?) but you can totally ignore the semantic foodfights. It's actually easier to get to a sane policy without the semantic foodfights, because they make it harder to answer "it depends".
Cabinet apparently pilled into Patel over her failure on the refugee schemes and as a result Michael Gove will run the sponsorship visa scheme and a new minister will be appointed for refugees who will operate across both departments
Seems the cabinet are sidelining Patel which hopefully will be the pre cursor to her removal
I think it is important to recognise that the situation is increasingly dynamic. Tickets on the buses from St. Petersburg to Tallinn routes are selling for hundreds, even thousands of Euros. Every train or bus is full, so it is clear than large numbers of Russians are getting out as quickly as they can.
Friends over the border are reporting that panic buying has literally emptied supermarkets, and the availability of foreign goods as basically stopped. The banking system is under considerable pressure as people try to retrieve whatever cash they can get. Hard currency has disappeared from the banking system and a black market for hard currency offers rates for cash that are way below whatever official market rates may be. Industry is discovering just how integrated into western supply chains that Russia is. In a matter of maybe three months large chunks of Russian industry will no longer be able to function.
It is only now that the majority of Russians are beginning to sense that there is something seriously wrong. The Russian media continues to push the propaganda bullshit of the regime, but rumours of horrific losses are beginning to cut through, albeit very slowly.
In Tallinn, Blinken came last night and continued to make the point that any attack in this direction would be answered with full force. In fact the Baltic now feels like a pretty safe place to be and neither does it feel like the "West Berlin" of Richard Milnes piece in the FT today. More troops and air cover are coming, and in any event the nearest viable Russian attack force is over a thousand miles away.
We are bedding down for a long crisis, with preparations for long stays for the Ukrainian refugees, it will be a struggle to cope with large numbers, given that the population of Estonia is only 1.3 million. Yet, the country has come together, with even the Russian speakers now recognising that Putin is our collective enemy. The horror at the barbaric actions of the Russian army is deeply felt, and Ukrainian colours are everywhere.
This crisis might last quite a while. The popularity of the PM, Kaja Kallas, has rocketed and many have said to me how relieved they are that she is in charge. All the attempts by Putinist subversion to promote the populist right wing over the past few years have come to nothing.
Estonia is ready to deal with whatever next this crisis throws up.
Thanks for a great post as usual.
One question, are there any concerns about any of the Russians entering Estonia or is everyone convinced that they are genuinely anti-Putin and trying to flee from him?
My take on Cicero's excellent post is that the crisis is going to wipe out the Russian middle class, such as it is - they'll either emigrate or be ruined - and they'll be left with oligarchs and lots of sullen workers.
There's a real possibility it becomes another North Korea.
Or at least, whatever it is a geographically large, diverse country/empire becomes when it becomes internationally isolated.
This crisis might last quite a while. The popularity of the PM, Kaja Kallas, has rocketed and many have said to me how relieved they are that she is in charge. All the attempts by Putinist subversion to promote the populist right wing over the past few years have come to nothing.
Estonia is ready to deal with whatever next this crisis throws up.
Yes, I think the "next it'll be the Baltic States, then Poland" fears have been generally allayed, partly due to the difficulties the Russians are having even in Ukraine, and also the very solid NATO reassurances that any attack on a NATO state will be seen as an act of war against the whole alliance.
Of course, Finland doesn't have the same NATO reassurances. The last Tsar was Grand Duke of Finland...
Will be interesting to see how the debate develops there.
Moscow spokesperson claiming biological weapons are being developed in Ukraine
More like bio weapons are being used in Ukr.
Ye.
I’ve been picking up on a fair amount of projection from the Russians.
Terrifying.
This war could get seriously nasty. I think there’s a lot of naïveté in the west (and on PB) that Russia has proven itself to be militarily shit in the first fortnight.
The Bercow/Patel bully takes are exactly the same as the Corbyn/Johnson racist takes. The reality is that a lot of people don't care about the bullying or the racism, they care that they can accuse the other side of doing it to score political points.
The reality, of course, is that both Bercow and Patel are bullies and neither should hold public office; while both Corbyn and Johnson are racists, and likewise should be nowhere near any position of power.
Agree strongly with the main point but on the being racist issue I don't know if they are themselves racist or not, but clearly both Corbyn and Johnson are happy to tolerate (a bit of) racism for boosting their own positions.
I think both have made clear that they have no problem with people being disparaged on the basis of their ethnicity. In my book, that makes them racists.
Yeah, as I often point out "racists" is far too broad and we would benefit from more precise and distinct terminology around it.
Someone who believes in treating people equally and fairly but is willing to go along with racist dog whistles for self promotion is different to someone who also believes in treating people equally and fairly but is blind to the racism of their friends.
Both are quite different again from white supremacists.
Cabinet apparently pilled into Patel over her failure on the refugee schemes and as a result Michael Gove will run the sponsorship visa scheme and a new minister will be appointed for refugees who will operate across both departments
Seems the cabinet are sidelining Patel which hopefully will be the pre cursor to her removal
On topic - the arguments about this go back to Pinochet and beyond.
Remember in the world we live, the terrorists of NI are specifically protected from prosecution - because they have made it clear that is the one thing that would get them away from their 6 figure salaries and back to the Armalites... The occasionally exception is jailed for an old offence - those are the ones that don't have friends anymore.
What is one more deal with one more devil?
The problem is getting him to take such an "out" - he will, following the pattern of all such leaders, have got to the stage of identifying himself with the State. The destruction of Putin, according to Putin, will mean the destruction of Russia.
In a way, it is true. The Greater Russia he and his ilk propose cannot live in peace with it's neighbours - the whole point of GR is that it doesn't live in *peace* with its neighbours. More, that they live in fear.
It is quite clear that the acceptable results, for the West (and probably Ukraine) are either Russia gives up it's Imperial ambitions in Ukraine, or that Ukraine is given military guarantees. These guarantees would have to be of the level of what Israel gets from the US.
To a Greater Russian Nationalist, either situation is unacceptable. So, the price of peace is the end of Greater Russian Nationalism dominating Russian politics.....
The price of peace also requires Russia accepting it's true position in the world - and given that that position is now economically way worse than it was even 2 weeks ago that isn't going to be something they are likely to do.
This is indeed Russia's Suez, where all their great power delusions are being laid bare. We took a hell of a long time to get over that and they will be the same.
We were forced to retreat. That has yet to happen to Russia.
Rare that I think one of Cyclefree's headers is wrong, but it does not feel appropriate for "the West" to promote hard red lines for peace. It is Ukrainian's who are dying, having their lives turned upside down and enduring bombing and starvation. Our job should be to strengthen their negotiating position and give them as much support as possible, but not to direct the solutions.
If the Russian elite feel it is time to topple Putin and can do so, fantastic, but if Zelensky thinks the best answer is to deal with Putin, formally lose Crimea to Russia and perhaps an independent Donbass and Luhansk in return for an end to the war, we should support him.
I agree that this is Ukraine's decision. I just don't see how they can trust a Russia led by Putin. He lies. All the time. His promises are worthless.
This crisis might last quite a while. The popularity of the PM, Kaja Kallas, has rocketed and many have said to me how relieved they are that she is in charge. All the attempts by Putinist subversion to promote the populist right wing over the past few years have come to nothing.
Estonia is ready to deal with whatever next this crisis throws up.
Yes, I think the "next it'll be the Baltic States, then Poland" fears have been generally allayed, partly due to the difficulties the Russians are having even in Ukraine, and also the very solid NATO reassurances that any attack on a NATO state will be seen as an act of war against the whole alliance.
(SnipP
Putin is taking the long game. Yes, immediate fears of conventional attacks have diminished - the Russian army is not going to roll westwards past Ukraine - but we can expect more of the same sh*t from Russia that we've seen over the last fifteen years. There are three strands to his actions: to interfere with democratic votes (to get Russian-friendly people in); use various means to split his enemies; and if they all fail, to use illegal means such as poisonings and warfare.
Putin is evil. Putin is a fascist. The sooner people realise that is the beast we are dealing with, the better.
The 'hard' problem is this: it is not all about Putin. His leadership and regime is supported by a vast majority. What we are seeing is in part the will of the people. In the end, the will and resolve of its people, and their imperial delusions and claims over large parts of Europe, have to be broken. I think it is an error to think that this is necessarily over if/when Putin and Lavrov get removed.
I am very pessimistic. I doubt that even this proposal would work. Russia and its delusions need to be defeated and be seen to be defeated, if there is to be even a chance of a reset. But how on earth is that going to happen?
I fear that Russia will retreat into its Stalinist past, Ukraine will be destroyed in the way that Syria was destroyed, people will die in the most appalling circumstances and those who have got out will stay out for much longer than we or they anticipate.
It will be a new Cold War and we will be lucky if the hot war in Ukraine does not extend elsewhere.
I mainly wrote this to see if there was any possible way out and in response to the discussion the other day about possible solutions over Crimea etc.
To cheer myself up even further, given that Sellafield and BaE are not a million miles from where I'm living, we're certainly prime targets for a nuclear strike. Still, better than surviving in an irradiated wasteland I suppose.
More generally, when the USSR broke up, the West simply assumed the boundaries of the SSRs should be the boundaries of the completely new countries.
This created war in Armenia & Azerbaijan over Nagorno-Karabakh, war in Georgia over Ossetia & Abkhasia, war in Russia over Chechnya, war in Moldova over Transnistria, war in Ukraine over Crimea/Donbas,
Many of these ethnic conflicts long predated the USSR or even Imperial Russia. The wars did not happen just because of Russian meddling, though that did exacerbate them.
The boundary disputes should all have been resolved by UN plebiscites. We are now going to pay a very heavy price for not insisting on this simple point much earlier.
It should be a condition of NATO membership/EU membership that boundary disputes are resolved by calling plebiscites.
Minority ethnic groups can call for border polls in disputed areas & the polls are carried out with independent observers (much like the settlement in N. Ireland in the Good Friday Agreement).
Arguments about boundaries in Eastern Europe created WW1 and WW2. On our present trajectory, we are going for the hat trick.
The 'hard' problem is this: it is not all about Putin. His leadership and regime is supported by a vast majority. What we are seeing is in part the will of the people. In the end, the will and resolve of its people, and their imperial delusions and claims over large parts of Europe, have to be broken. I think it is an error to think that this is necessarily over if/when Putin and Lavrov get removed.
I am very pessimistic. I doubt that even this proposal would work. Russia and its delusions need to be defeated and be seen to be defeated, if there is to be even a chance of a reset. But how on earth is that going to happen?
I fear that Russia will retreat into its Stalinist past, Ukraine will be destroyed in the way that Syria was destroyed, people will die in the most appalling circumstances and those who have got out will stay out for much longer than we or they anticipate.
It will be a new Cold War and we will be lucky if the hot war in Ukraine does not extend elsewhere.
I mainly wrote this to see if there was any possible way out and in response to the discussion the other day about possible solutions over Crimea etc.
To cheer myself up even further, given that Sellafield and BaE are not a million miles from where I'm living, we're certainly prime targets for a nuclear strike. Still, better than surviving in an irradiated wasteland I suppose.
Most of the Lake District, especially towards Carlisle is actually however more likely to survive a nuclear attack than 90% of the rest of the UK
There used to be substantial nuclear warhead storage facilities at Longtown, just outside Carlisle. If they are still there they would be a definite target.
Much of it has been closed though there is still a munitions depot there.
Though why Cyclefree is whinging about it when most of the Lake District would survive even when London and the Home Counties bar Clacton and Margate, most of the South, Birmingham, Manchester and Newcastle and most of the North, Glasgow and Edinburgh and South Wales would have been wiped out is beyond me
We'd all be wiped out you idiot!
Honestly, to place any faith in some random estate agent map published in the Standard just shows how gullible you are.
If you don't live in or in the commuter belt of a major city or near a military base then you at least have a chance of surviving the initial blast and much of the aftershock even if there is not much to live for afterwards.
Though as I have already made clear I do not support any action in Ukraine beyond sanctions and certainly no no fly zone or troops
I have made a spreadsheet detailing exit options. It's important to weigh up all the factors: yes, distance from blast and fallout is one, but you don't have to be that far away to achieve this because realistically WW3 involving Russia wouldn't be a world war, it would be a complete destruction of most of Europe, North America and Russia.
Other important factors on the spreadsheet include: capacity and frequency of flights, i.e. can I rely on getting out quickly and secure a ticket when everyone else is also trying to do so; COVID entry requirements - no point trying to escape somewhere that requires special paperwork prepared weeks in advance before they let you in, when you need to get out quickly; cost of living: in the event of apocalypse your UK bank is likely to default, and your equity investments become illiquid (and your real estate become radioactive dust) so you need somewhere you can live fairly cheaply on the cash you managed to get out; self-sufficiency - this is where somewhere like Seychelles fails. It needs to be a destination with its own agricultural and industrial capacity.
My workings were pointing me strongly towards Chile until I realised the COVID paperwork requires you to apply at least a month in advance. Otherwise on my list there is Brazil, Morocco and (Western) Ireland. The latter is a bit more uncomfortably close to the action but the Republic is unlikely to be directly nuked, and it has the advantages of quick exit, visa free travel and the English language. Morocco ticks many of the boxes including low cost of living, but they are going through a once in a generation drought at the moment.
The 'hard' problem is this: it is not all about Putin. His leadership and regime is supported by a vast majority. What we are seeing is in part the will of the people. In the end, the will and resolve of its people, and their imperial delusions and claims over large parts of Europe, have to be broken. I think it is an error to think that this is necessarily over if/when Putin and Lavrov get removed.
I am very pessimistic. I doubt that even this proposal would work. Russia and its delusions need to be defeated and be seen to be defeated, if there is to be even a chance of a reset. But how on earth is that going to happen?
I fear that Russia will retreat into its Stalinist past, Ukraine will be destroyed in the way that Syria was destroyed, people will die in the most appalling circumstances and those who have got out will stay out for much longer than we or they anticipate.
It will be a new Cold War and we will be lucky if the hot war in Ukraine does not extend elsewhere.
I mainly wrote this to see if there was any possible way out and in response to the discussion the other day about possible solutions over Crimea etc.
To cheer myself up even further, given that Sellafield and BaE are not a million miles from where I'm living, we're certainly prime targets for a nuclear strike. Still, better than surviving in an irradiated wasteland I suppose.
Most of the Lake District, especially towards Carlisle is actually however more likely to survive a nuclear attack than 90% of the rest of the UK
There used to be substantial nuclear warhead storage facilities at Longtown, just outside Carlisle. If they are still there they would be a definite target.
Even if they're not, they'd probably still be a target, on the basis that everything that could be a threat (real or imagined) ends up a target.
Just as "nuclear-free" New Zealand still had/has weapons pointed at it - because what if the Kiwis are lying about being nuclear-free?
Does it now? I would expect it would be well down Putin's target list, it is not in NATO and miles away from anywhere and has no defence pact with the UK and US like Australia.
Safer still might be the likes of South Africa which abstained on the UN vote to condemn Russia's invasion of Ukraine, is not in NATO and in the southern hemisphere if it all kicked off in the North.
NATO nations and Russia and its few remaining allies could be wiped out and theoretically South Africa still survive
The 'hard' problem is this: it is not all about Putin. His leadership and regime is supported by a vast majority. What we are seeing is in part the will of the people. In the end, the will and resolve of its people, and their imperial delusions and claims over large parts of Europe, have to be broken. I think it is an error to think that this is necessarily over if/when Putin and Lavrov get removed.
I am very pessimistic. I doubt that even this proposal would work. Russia and its delusions need to be defeated and be seen to be defeated, if there is to be even a chance of a reset. But how on earth is that going to happen?
I fear that Russia will retreat into its Stalinist past, Ukraine will be destroyed in the way that Syria was destroyed, people will die in the most appalling circumstances and those who have got out will stay out for much longer than we or they anticipate.
It will be a new Cold War and we will be lucky if the hot war in Ukraine does not extend elsewhere.
I mainly wrote this to see if there was any possible way out and in response to the discussion the other day about possible solutions over Crimea etc.
To cheer myself up even further, given that Sellafield and BaE are not a million miles from where I'm living, we're certainly prime targets for a nuclear strike. Still, better than surviving in an irradiated wasteland I suppose.
Most of the Lake District, especially towards Carlisle is actually however more likely to survive a nuclear attack than 90% of the rest of the UK
There used to be substantial nuclear warhead storage facilities at Longtown, just outside Carlisle. If they are still there they would be a definite target.
Much of it has been closed though there is still a munitions depot there.
Though why Cyclefree is whinging about it when most of the Lake District would survive even when London and the Home Counties bar Clacton and Margate, most of the South, Birmingham, Manchester and Newcastle and most of the North, Glasgow and Edinburgh and South Wales would have been wiped out is beyond me
The 'hard' problem is this: it is not all about Putin. His leadership and regime is supported by a vast majority. What we are seeing is in part the will of the people. In the end, the will and resolve of its people, and their imperial delusions and claims over large parts of Europe, have to be broken. I think it is an error to think that this is necessarily over if/when Putin and Lavrov get removed.
In a way, yes.
But in a way, no.
Putin's regime has spent two decades demolishing press freedoms in Russia. The media has slowly become the regime's mouthpiece - or else. Therefore much of the Russian public is fed Putin's worldview, and not any opposing view.
The situation is what it is. People are protesting against Putin's regime, but they are a minority. Even if it is a significant minority, it is still a minority. There are deeper nationalist forces at play. It feels a bit like China 3 decades ago and Tiannamen Square - a country decisively moving in one direction. Of course we have sympathy for the 'losers' in such a scenario, but it shouldn't impact on how we view the threat from the regime.
There are big differences, though. China wasn't prosecuting a war of aggression which it was in danger of losing. Nor was its economy collapsing as a result of western sanctions. And there was no real opposition within the existing state structure (Navalny and his followers).
FWIW I was reading the comments of a British expat working out in Russia (who is keeping his head down and hoping to stay out there) on another forum; his take is that there is tremendous support for Putin amongst Russians, based on their proud nationalism and obsession with WWII as great as ours. He reckons that when the truth (about the casualties and lack of military success) finally reaches Russians, rather than blame Putin they'll mostly blame the West, and we'll be in a new cold war.
The stories Russians tell themselves about WW2 are not entirely in keeping with the facts are they, though. They ignore their alliance with Nazi Germany, their provision of material to the Nazis at a time when Britain was fighting Germany and British pilots were being killed by them, their carve up of Poland and wholesale slaughter of Polish officers and others, their aggression to Finland and the Baltic States, the appalling treatment they meted out to returning Russian prisoners of war, the wholesale rapes of German women and the atrocities they then inflicted on the countries they occupied. Oh and the huge amount of military hardware they received from the Allies to help them fight.
And they won't learn it because telling the truth in Russia is dangerous, historical inquiry into and access to archives is banned and they prefer to believe in national myths rather than take a good hard look at themselves. Yes Russia has been horribly invaded. But it has also been a horribly aggressive country at least as often. Ask the Poles, for instance.
For sure. Although neither your first point about having a distorted view of the war and preferring to believe in their national myths, nor your second point about not having a cold look at their historical aggression, are unique to Russia.
This crisis might last quite a while. The popularity of the PM, Kaja Kallas, has rocketed and many have said to me how relieved they are that she is in charge. All the attempts by Putinist subversion to promote the populist right wing over the past few years have come to nothing.
Estonia is ready to deal with whatever next this crisis throws up.
Yes, I think the "next it'll be the Baltic States, then Poland" fears have been generally allayed, partly due to the difficulties the Russians are having even in Ukraine, and also the very solid NATO reassurances that any attack on a NATO state will be seen as an act of war against the whole alliance.
(SnipP
Putin is taking the long game. Yes, immediate fears of conventional attacks have diminished - the Russian army is not going to roll westwards past Ukraine - but we can expect more of the same sh*t from Russia that we've seen over the last fifteen years. There are three strands to his actions: to interfere with democratic votes (to get Russian-friendly people in); use various means to split his enemies; and if they all fail, to use illegal means such as poisonings and warfare.
Putin is evil. Putin is a fascist. The sooner people realise that is the beast we are dealing with, the better.
Yes, and I don't think he or his mafia are going anywhere. The depressing realisation is that Russia will need to be contained, indefinitely, and denied the economic opportunity to rebuild its war machine.
The 'hard' problem is this: it is not all about Putin. His leadership and regime is supported by a vast majority. What we are seeing is in part the will of the people. In the end, the will and resolve of its people, and their imperial delusions and claims over large parts of Europe, have to be broken. I think it is an error to think that this is necessarily over if/when Putin and Lavrov get removed.
I am very pessimistic. I doubt that even this proposal would work. Russia and its delusions need to be defeated and be seen to be defeated, if there is to be even a chance of a reset. But how on earth is that going to happen?
I fear that Russia will retreat into its Stalinist past, Ukraine will be destroyed in the way that Syria was destroyed, people will die in the most appalling circumstances and those who have got out will stay out for much longer than we or they anticipate.
It will be a new Cold War and we will be lucky if the hot war in Ukraine does not extend elsewhere.
I mainly wrote this to see if there was any possible way out and in response to the discussion the other day about possible solutions over Crimea etc.
To cheer myself up even further, given that Sellafield and BaE are not a million miles from where I'm living, we're certainly prime targets for a nuclear strike. Still, better than surviving in an irradiated wasteland I suppose.
Most of the Lake District, especially towards Carlisle is actually however more likely to survive a nuclear attack than 90% of the rest of the UK
That map it literal garbage - even with an attack on the UK of a dozen strategic level warheads (and the Russians like 'em big), the lethal fallout zones merge.
Everyone dies. Unless you plan on being elsewhere for a few hundred years.
Can I put in a request to Russia to be inside one of the zones where you are just obliterated? I don't want to survive a large scale nuclear attack on the UK, because surviving means hell on earth followed by death anyway.
Contact the Russian embassy and let them know about the secret high-value military facility located nearby. That should do the trick.
A bit of a tangent but we haven't seen much in the way of offensive cyber operations, have we? Maybe the implication is that it really was what the Russians said it was, voluntary rather than state-directed.
"Hackers are free people, just like artists who wake up in the morning in a good mood and start painting," as Putin put it.
Hackers are Very Online, and Very Online people have been strongly against the invasion, so maybe he's finding it hard to motivate them.
No newspaper delivery today here in rural Dorset this morning.
I immediately checked the internet to make sure the world was still alive.
Sign of the times.
Your newsagent isn't a branch of McColls by any chance. Apparently the firm's having difficulties.
I haven't been able to understand why this hasn't happened sooner. Their USP seems to be "the most expensive symbol group convenience store possible" - both their Co-op and then Morrisons distribution deals have been beset with difficulties, and anyone in the trade will tell you what an old school bunch of shits they are to deal with.
The Isa brothers (who own Euro Garages and now Asda) were interested until it was pointed out that they couldn't acquire a business so heavily reliant on a long Morrisons contract. Now Mozzas are interested in buying out hundreds of stores if the group collapses to have yet another attempt at having its own convenience store estate to compete with Tesco and Sainsburys.
Honestly I don't know what happens next. My village store is a McColls and would be hugely improved by converting to a different symbol group not run by profiteering shark bastards.
I think it is important to recognise that the situation is increasingly dynamic. Tickets on the buses from St. Petersburg to Tallinn routes are selling for hundreds, even thousands of Euros. Every train or bus is full, so it is clear than large numbers of Russians are getting out as quickly as they can.
Friends over the border are reporting that panic buying has literally emptied supermarkets, and the availability of foreign goods as basically stopped. The banking system is under considerable pressure as people try to retrieve whatever cash they can get. Hard currency has disappeared from the banking system and a black market for hard currency offers rates for cash that are way below whatever official market rates may be. Industry is discovering just how integrated into western supply chains that Russia is. In a matter of maybe three months large chunks of Russian industry will no longer be able to function.
It is only now that the majority of Russians are beginning to sense that there is something seriously wrong. The Russian media continues to push the propaganda bullshit of the regime, but rumours of horrific losses are beginning to cut through, albeit very slowly.
In Tallinn, Blinken came last night and continued to make the point that any attack in this direction would be answered with full force. In fact the Baltic now feels like a pretty safe place to be and neither does it feel like the "West Berlin" of Richard Milnes piece in the FT today. More troops and air cover are coming, and in any event the nearest viable Russian attack force is over a thousand miles away.
We are bedding down for a long crisis, with preparations for long stays for the Ukrainian refugees, it will be a struggle to cope with large numbers, given that the population of Estonia is only 1.3 million. Yet, the country has come together, with even the Russian speakers now recognising that Putin is our collective enemy. The horror at the barbaric actions of the Russian army is deeply felt, and Ukrainian colours are everywhere.
This crisis might last quite a while. The popularity of the PM, Kaja Kallas, has rocketed and many have said to me how relieved they are that she is in charge. All the attempts by Putinist subversion to promote the populist right wing over the past few years have come to nothing.
Estonia is ready to deal with whatever next this crisis throws up.
Thanks for a great post as usual.
One question, are there any concerns about any of the Russians entering Estonia or is everyone convinced that they are genuinely anti-Putin and trying to flee from him?
My take on Cicero's excellent post is that the crisis is going to wipe out the Russian middle class, such as it is - they'll either emigrate or be ruined - and they'll be left with oligarchs and lots of sullen workers.
There's a real possibility it becomes another North Korea.
Or at least, whatever it is a geographically large, diverse country/empire becomes when it becomes internationally isolated.
The 'hard' problem is this: it is not all about Putin. His leadership and regime is supported by a vast majority. What we are seeing is in part the will of the people. In the end, the will and resolve of its people, and their imperial delusions and claims over large parts of Europe, have to be broken. I think it is an error to think that this is necessarily over if/when Putin and Lavrov get removed.
In a way, yes.
But in a way, no.
Putin's regime has spent two decades demolishing press freedoms in Russia. The media has slowly become the regime's mouthpiece - or else. Therefore much of the Russian public is fed Putin's worldview, and not any opposing view.
The situation is what it is. People are protesting against Putin's regime, but they are a minority. Even if it is a significant minority, it is still a minority. There are deeper nationalist forces at play. It feels a bit like China 3 decades ago and Tiannamen Square - a country decisively moving in one direction. Of course we have sympathy for the 'losers' in such a scenario, but it shouldn't impact on how we view the threat from the regime.
There are big differences, though. China wasn't prosecuting a war of aggression which it was in danger of losing. Nor was its economy collapsing as a result of western sanctions. And there was no real opposition within the existing state structure (Navalny and his followers).
FWIW I was reading the comments of a British expat working out in Russia (who is keeping his head down and hoping to stay out there) on another forum; his take is that there is tremendous support for Putin amongst Russians, based on their proud nationalism and obsession with WWII as great as ours. He reckons that when the truth (about the casualties and lack of military success) finally reaches Russians, rather than blame Putin they'll mostly blame the West, and we'll be in a new cold war.
The stories Russians tell themselves about WW2 are not entirely in keeping with the facts are they, though. They ignore their alliance with Nazi Germany, their provision of material to the Nazis at a time when Britain was fighting Germany and British pilots were being killed by them, their carve up of Poland and wholesale slaughter of Polish officers and others, their aggression to Finland and the Baltic States, the appalling treatment they meted out to returning Russian prisoners of war, the wholesale rapes of German women and the atrocities they then inflicted on the countries they occupied. Oh and the huge amount of military hardware they received from the Allies to help them fight.
And they won't learn it because telling the truth in Russia is dangerous, historical inquiry into and access to archives is banned and they prefer to believe in national myths rather than take a good hard look at themselves. Yes Russia has been horribly invaded. But it has also been a horribly aggressive country at least as often. Ask the Poles, for instance.
And one of the groups/peoples/language users to which they've been very aggressive over the years have been the Ukrainians. I think I'm right in thinking that when the Germans originally arrived in Ukraine they were treated as liberators and had the Nazis not believed that all Slavs were what the name suggested had behaved like the ruthless and stupid b'stards they were they could probably have enlisted them on their side.
The 'hard' problem is this: it is not all about Putin. His leadership and regime is supported by a vast majority. What we are seeing is in part the will of the people. In the end, the will and resolve of its people, and their imperial delusions and claims over large parts of Europe, have to be broken. I think it is an error to think that this is necessarily over if/when Putin and Lavrov get removed.
In a way, yes.
But in a way, no.
Putin's regime has spent two decades demolishing press freedoms in Russia. The media has slowly become the regime's mouthpiece - or else. Therefore much of the Russian public is fed Putin's worldview, and not any opposing view.
The situation is what it is. People are protesting against Putin's regime, but they are a minority. Even if it is a significant minority, it is still a minority. There are deeper nationalist forces at play. It feels a bit like China 3 decades ago and Tiannamen Square - a country decisively moving in one direction. Of course we have sympathy for the 'losers' in such a scenario, but it shouldn't impact on how we view the threat from the regime.
There are big differences, though. China wasn't prosecuting a war of aggression which it was in danger of losing. Nor was its economy collapsing as a result of western sanctions. And there was no real opposition within the existing state structure (Navalny and his followers).
FWIW I was reading the comments of a British expat working out in Russia (who is keeping his head down and hoping to stay out there) on another forum; his take is that there is tremendous support for Putin amongst Russians, based on their proud nationalism and obsession with WWII as great as ours. He reckons that when the truth (about the casualties and lack of military success) finally reaches Russians, rather than blame Putin they'll mostly blame the West, and we'll be in a new cold war.
The stories Russians tell themselves about WW2 are not entirely in keeping with the facts are they, though. They ignore their alliance with Nazi Germany, their provision of material to the Nazis at a time when Britain was fighting Germany and British pilots were being killed by them, their carve up of Poland and wholesale slaughter of Polish officers and others, their aggression to Finland and the Baltic States, the appalling treatment they meted out to returning Russian prisoners of war, the wholesale rapes of German women and the atrocities they then inflicted on the countries they occupied. Oh and the huge amount of military hardware they received from the Allies to help them fight.
And they won't learn it because telling the truth in Russia is dangerous, historical inquiry into and access to archives is banned and they prefer to believe in national myths rather than take a good hard look at themselves. Yes Russia has been horribly invaded. But it has also been a horribly aggressive country at least as often. Ask the Poles, for instance.
For sure. Although neither your first point about having a distorted view of the war and preferring to believe in their national myths, nor your second point about not having a cold look at their historical aggression, are unique to Russia.
Indeed. There is a comparison with Britain. The "Britain alone in 1940" myth for one. Ask Polish airmen. Or those nations which were then part of the Empire.
A bit of a tangent but we haven't seen much in the way of offensive cyber operations, have we? Maybe the implication is that it really was what the Russians said it was, voluntary rather than state-directed.
"Hackers are free people, just like artists who wake up in the morning in a good mood and start painting," as Putin put it.
Hackers are Very Online, and Very Online people have been strongly against the invasion, so maybe he's finding it hard to motivate them.
I've been wondering this as well. Another couple of potential factors: he is waiting to use them at the 'right' time; or that their previous actions have allowed their targets to put up some defences.
On topic - the arguments about this go back to Pinochet and beyond.
Remember in the world we live, the terrorists of NI are specifically protected from prosecution - because they have made it clear that is the one thing that would get them away from their 6 figure salaries and back to the Armalites... The occasionally exception is jailed for an old offence - those are the ones that don't have friends anymore.
What is one more deal with one more devil?
The problem is getting him to take such an "out" - he will, following the pattern of all such leaders, have got to the stage of identifying himself with the State. The destruction of Putin, according to Putin, will mean the destruction of Russia.
In a way, it is true. The Greater Russia he and his ilk propose cannot live in peace with it's neighbours - the whole point of GR is that it doesn't live in *peace* with its neighbours. More, that they live in fear.
It is quite clear that the acceptable results, for the West (and probably Ukraine) are either Russia gives up it's Imperial ambitions in Ukraine, or that Ukraine is given military guarantees. These guarantees would have to be of the level of what Israel gets from the US.
To a Greater Russian Nationalist, either situation is unacceptable. So, the price of peace is the end of Greater Russian Nationalism dominating Russian politics.....
The price of peace also requires Russia accepting it's true position in the world - and given that that position is now economically way worse than it was even 2 weeks ago that isn't going to be something they are likely to do.
This is indeed Russia's Suez, where all their great power delusions are being laid bare. We took a hell of a long time to get over that and they will be the same.
We were forced to retreat. That has yet to happen to Russia.
Rare that I think one of Cyclefree's headers is wrong, but it does not feel appropriate for "the West" to promote hard red lines for peace. It is Ukrainian's who are dying, having their lives turned upside down and enduring bombing and starvation. Our job should be to strengthen their negotiating position and give them as much support as possible, but not to direct the solutions.
If the Russian elite feel it is time to topple Putin and can do so, fantastic, but if Zelensky thinks the best answer is to deal with Putin, formally lose Crimea to Russia and perhaps an independent Donbass and Luhansk in return for an end to the war, we should support him.
I agree that this is Ukraine's decision. I just don't see how they can trust a Russia led by Putin. He lies. All the time. His promises are worthless.
Anyway all pretty hypothetical really.
I am not sure it is a matter of trust but expediency and stopping the ongoing suffering. I expect it is very rare indeed to find peace agreements where all sides have good trust and faith in each other, yet peace agreements often follow wars.
The 'hard' problem is this: it is not all about Putin. His leadership and regime is supported by a vast majority. What we are seeing is in part the will of the people. In the end, the will and resolve of its people, and their imperial delusions and claims over large parts of Europe, have to be broken. I think it is an error to think that this is necessarily over if/when Putin and Lavrov get removed.
I am very pessimistic. I doubt that even this proposal would work. Russia and its delusions need to be defeated and be seen to be defeated, if there is to be even a chance of a reset. But how on earth is that going to happen?
I fear that Russia will retreat into its Stalinist past, Ukraine will be destroyed in the way that Syria was destroyed, people will die in the most appalling circumstances and those who have got out will stay out for much longer than we or they anticipate.
It will be a new Cold War and we will be lucky if the hot war in Ukraine does not extend elsewhere.
I mainly wrote this to see if there was any possible way out and in response to the discussion the other day about possible solutions over Crimea etc.
To cheer myself up even further, given that Sellafield and BaE are not a million miles from where I'm living, we're certainly prime targets for a nuclear strike. Still, better than surviving in an irradiated wasteland I suppose.
Most of the Lake District, especially towards Carlisle is actually however more likely to survive a nuclear attack than 90% of the rest of the UK
There used to be substantial nuclear warhead storage facilities at Longtown, just outside Carlisle. If they are still there they would be a definite target.
That map though - you'd need to drop the Tsar Bomba on Aberdeen to have the impact it shows...
The 'hard' problem is this: it is not all about Putin. His leadership and regime is supported by a vast majority. What we are seeing is in part the will of the people. In the end, the will and resolve of its people, and their imperial delusions and claims over large parts of Europe, have to be broken. I think it is an error to think that this is necessarily over if/when Putin and Lavrov get removed.
In a way, yes.
But in a way, no.
Putin's regime has spent two decades demolishing press freedoms in Russia. The media has slowly become the regime's mouthpiece - or else. Therefore much of the Russian public is fed Putin's worldview, and not any opposing view.
The situation is what it is. People are protesting against Putin's regime, but they are a minority. Even if it is a significant minority, it is still a minority. There are deeper nationalist forces at play. It feels a bit like China 3 decades ago and Tiannamen Square - a country decisively moving in one direction. Of course we have sympathy for the 'losers' in such a scenario, but it shouldn't impact on how we view the threat from the regime.
There are big differences, though. China wasn't prosecuting a war of aggression which it was in danger of losing. Nor was its economy collapsing as a result of western sanctions. And there was no real opposition within the existing state structure (Navalny and his followers).
FWIW I was reading the comments of a British expat working out in Russia (who is keeping his head down and hoping to stay out there) on another forum; his take is that there is tremendous support for Putin amongst Russians, based on their proud nationalism and obsession with WWII as great as ours. He reckons that when the truth (about the casualties and lack of military success) finally reaches Russians, rather than blame Putin they'll mostly blame the West, and we'll be in a new cold war.
The stories Russians tell themselves about WW2 are not entirely in keeping with the facts are they, though. They ignore their alliance with Nazi Germany, their provision of material to the Nazis at a time when Britain was fighting Germany and British pilots were being killed by them, their carve up of Poland and wholesale slaughter of Polish officers and others, their aggression to Finland and the Baltic States, the appalling treatment they meted out to returning Russian prisoners of war, the wholesale rapes of German women and the atrocities they then inflicted on the countries they occupied. Oh and the huge amount of military hardware they received from the Allies to help them fight.
And they won't learn it because telling the truth in Russia is dangerous, historical inquiry into and access to archives is banned and they prefer to believe in national myths rather than take a good hard look at themselves. Yes Russia has been horribly invaded. But it has also been a horribly aggressive country at least as often. Ask the Poles, for instance.
And one of the groups/peoples/language users to which they've been very aggressive over the years have been the Ukrainians. I think I'm right in thinking that when the Germans originally arrived in Ukraine they were treated as liberators and had the Nazis not believed that all Slavs were what the name suggested had behaved like the ruthless and stupid b'stards they were they could probably have enlisted them on their side.
These things get remembered. On both sides.
Quite. The Ukrainian famine in the 1930's.
And today we have people in Mariopol without food, water, shelter, electricity in sub-zero temperatures, conditions described by the Red Cross on the Today programme as "apocalyptic".
I have made a spreadsheet detailing exit options. It's important to weigh up all the factors: yes, distance from blast and fallout is one, but you don't have to be that far away to achieve this because realistically WW3 involving Russia wouldn't be a world war, it would be a complete destruction of most of Europe, North America and Russia.
Other important factors on the spreadsheet include: capacity and frequency of flights, i.e. can I rely on getting out quickly and secure a ticket when everyone else is also trying to do so; COVID entry requirements - no point trying to escape somewhere that requires special paperwork prepared weeks in advance before they let you in, when you need to get out quickly; cost of living: in the event of apocalypse your UK bank is likely to default, and your equity investments become illiquid (and your real estate become radioactive dust) so you need somewhere you can live fairly cheaply on the cash you managed to get out; self-sufficiency - this is where somewhere like Seychelles fails. It needs to be a destination with its own agricultural and industrial capacity.
My workings were pointing me strongly towards Chile until I realised the COVID paperwork requires you to apply at least a month in advance. Otherwise on my list there is Brazil, Morocco and (Western) Ireland. The latter is a bit more uncomfortably close to the action but the Republic is unlikely to be directly nuked, and it has the advantages of quick exit, visa free travel and the English language. Morocco ticks many of the boxes including low cost of living, but they are going through a once in a generation drought at the moment.
Ireland has the benefit of generally prevailing SW winds too.
The 'hard' problem is this: it is not all about Putin. His leadership and regime is supported by a vast majority. What we are seeing is in part the will of the people. In the end, the will and resolve of its people, and their imperial delusions and claims over large parts of Europe, have to be broken. I think it is an error to think that this is necessarily over if/when Putin and Lavrov get removed.
I am very pessimistic. I doubt that even this proposal would work. Russia and its delusions need to be defeated and be seen to be defeated, if there is to be even a chance of a reset. But how on earth is that going to happen?
I fear that Russia will retreat into its Stalinist past, Ukraine will be destroyed in the way that Syria was destroyed, people will die in the most appalling circumstances and those who have got out will stay out for much longer than we or they anticipate.
It will be a new Cold War and we will be lucky if the hot war in Ukraine does not extend elsewhere.
I mainly wrote this to see if there was any possible way out and in response to the discussion the other day about possible solutions over Crimea etc.
To cheer myself up even further, given that Sellafield and BaE are not a million miles from where I'm living, we're certainly prime targets for a nuclear strike. Still, better than surviving in an irradiated wasteland I suppose.
More generally, when the USSR broke up, the West simply assumed the boundaries of the SSRs should be the boundaries of the completely new countries.
This created war in Armenia & Azerbaijan over Nagorno-Karabakh, war in Georgia over Ossetia & Abkhasia, war in Russia over Chechnya, war in Moldova over Transnistria, war in Ukraine over Crimea/Donbas,
Many of these ethnic conflicts long predated the USSR or even Imperial Russia. The wars did not happen just because of Russian meddling, though that did exacerbate them.
The boundary disputes should all have been resolved by UN plebiscites. We are now going to pay a very heavy price for not insisting on this simple point much earlier.
It should be a condition of NATO membership/EU membership that boundary disputes are resolved by calling plebiscites.
Minority ethnic groups can call for border polls in disputed areas & the polls are carried out with independent observers (much like the settlement in N. Ireland in the Good Friday Agreement).
Arguments about boundaries in Eastern Europe created WW1 and WW2. On our present trajectory, we are going for the hat trick.
Why did not Ukraine hold such a plebiscite when it was governed by a Putin puppet ?
I have made a spreadsheet detailing exit options. It's important to weigh up all the factors: yes, distance from blast and fallout is one, but you don't have to be that far away to achieve this because realistically WW3 involving Russia wouldn't be a world war, it would be a complete destruction of most of Europe, North America and Russia.
Other important factors on the spreadsheet include: capacity and frequency of flights, i.e. can I rely on getting out quickly and secure a ticket when everyone else is also trying to do so; COVID entry requirements - no point trying to escape somewhere that requires special paperwork prepared weeks in advance before they let you in, when you need to get out quickly; cost of living: in the event of apocalypse your UK bank is likely to default, and your equity investments become illiquid (and your real estate become radioactive dust) so you need somewhere you can live fairly cheaply on the cash you managed to get out; self-sufficiency - this is where somewhere like Seychelles fails. It needs to be a destination with its own agricultural and industrial capacity.
My workings were pointing me strongly towards Chile until I realised the COVID paperwork requires you to apply at least a month in advance. Otherwise on my list there is Brazil, Morocco and (Western) Ireland. The latter is a bit more uncomfortably close to the action but the Republic is unlikely to be directly nuked, and it has the advantages of quick exit, visa free travel and the English language. Morocco ticks many of the boxes including low cost of living, but they are going through a once in a generation drought at the moment.
A lot of West Germans bought second homes in, or moved to, the west of Ireland during the Cold War because of a belief it would be a safe haven during a nuclear war.
This is one (minor) factor behind the horrendous level of house prices there.
The 'hard' problem is this: it is not all about Putin. His leadership and regime is supported by a vast majority. What we are seeing is in part the will of the people. In the end, the will and resolve of its people, and their imperial delusions and claims over large parts of Europe, have to be broken. I think it is an error to think that this is necessarily over if/when Putin and Lavrov get removed.
In a way, yes.
But in a way, no.
Putin's regime has spent two decades demolishing press freedoms in Russia. The media has slowly become the regime's mouthpiece - or else. Therefore much of the Russian public is fed Putin's worldview, and not any opposing view.
The situation is what it is. People are protesting against Putin's regime, but they are a minority. Even if it is a significant minority, it is still a minority. There are deeper nationalist forces at play. It feels a bit like China 3 decades ago and Tiannamen Square - a country decisively moving in one direction. Of course we have sympathy for the 'losers' in such a scenario, but it shouldn't impact on how we view the threat from the regime.
There are big differences, though. China wasn't prosecuting a war of aggression which it was in danger of losing. Nor was its economy collapsing as a result of western sanctions. And there was no real opposition within the existing state structure (Navalny and his followers).
FWIW I was reading the comments of a British expat working out in Russia (who is keeping his head down and hoping to stay out there) on another forum; his take is that there is tremendous support for Putin amongst Russians, based on their proud nationalism and obsession with WWII as great as ours. He reckons that when the truth (about the casualties and lack of military success) finally reaches Russians, rather than blame Putin they'll mostly blame the West, and we'll be in a new cold war.
The stories Russians tell themselves about WW2 are not entirely in keeping with the facts are they, though. They ignore their alliance with Nazi Germany, their provision of material to the Nazis at a time when Britain was fighting Germany and British pilots were being killed by them, their carve up of Poland and wholesale slaughter of Polish officers and others, their aggression to Finland and the Baltic States, the appalling treatment they meted out to returning Russian prisoners of war, the wholesale rapes of German women and the atrocities they then inflicted on the countries they occupied. Oh and the huge amount of military hardware they received from the Allies to help them fight.
And they won't learn it because telling the truth in Russia is dangerous, historical inquiry into and access to archives is banned and they prefer to believe in national myths rather than take a good hard look at themselves. Yes Russia has been horribly invaded. But it has also been a horribly aggressive country at least as often. Ask the Poles, for instance.
For sure. Although neither your first point about having a distorted view of the war and preferring to believe in their national myths, nor your second point about not having a cold look at their historical aggression, are unique to Russia.
Indeed. There is a comparison with Britain. The "Britain alone in 1940" myth for one. Ask Polish airmen. Or those nations which were then part of the Empire.
That's ridiculous. It isn't a myth. Of course, there were combatants from the Empire/Commonwealth and displaced folk from defeated countries made a very significant contribution - they are justly celebrated - but Britain was very largely fighting on her own until Hitler attacked the USSR and the USA entered the war.
The 'hard' problem is this: it is not all about Putin. His leadership and regime is supported by a vast majority. What we are seeing is in part the will of the people. In the end, the will and resolve of its people, and their imperial delusions and claims over large parts of Europe, have to be broken. I think it is an error to think that this is necessarily over if/when Putin and Lavrov get removed.
I am very pessimistic. I doubt that even this proposal would work. Russia and its delusions need to be defeated and be seen to be defeated, if there is to be even a chance of a reset. But how on earth is that going to happen?
I fear that Russia will retreat into its Stalinist past, Ukraine will be destroyed in the way that Syria was destroyed, people will die in the most appalling circumstances and those who have got out will stay out for much longer than we or they anticipate.
It will be a new Cold War and we will be lucky if the hot war in Ukraine does not extend elsewhere.
I mainly wrote this to see if there was any possible way out and in response to the discussion the other day about possible solutions over Crimea etc.
To cheer myself up even further, given that Sellafield and BaE are not a million miles from where I'm living, we're certainly prime targets for a nuclear strike. Still, better than surviving in an irradiated wasteland I suppose.
Most of the Lake District, especially towards Carlisle is actually however more likely to survive a nuclear attack than 90% of the rest of the UK
There used to be substantial nuclear warhead storage facilities at Longtown, just outside Carlisle. If they are still there they would be a definite target.
That map though - you'd need to drop the Tsar Bomba on Aberdeen to have the impact it shows...
Interestingly - quite literally. Play with good ole NUKEMAP, and that seem to be what he has done, literally. Dropped a Tsar Bomb at test yield (50Mt) on a bunch of cities....
No newspaper delivery today here in rural Dorset this morning.
I immediately checked the internet to make sure the world was still alive.
Sign of the times.
Your newsagent isn't a branch of McColls by any chance. Apparently the firm's having difficulties.
I haven't been able to understand why this hasn't happened sooner. Their USP seems to be "the most expensive symbol group convenience store possible" - both their Co-op and then Morrisons distribution deals have been beset with difficulties, and anyone in the trade will tell you what an old school bunch of shits they are to deal with.
The Isa brothers (who own Euro Garages and now Asda) were interested until it was pointed out that they couldn't acquire a business so heavily reliant on a long Morrisons contract. Now Mozzas are interested in buying out hundreds of stores if the group collapses to have yet another attempt at having its own convenience store estate to compete with Tesco and Sainsburys.
Honestly I don't know what happens next. My village store is a McColls and would be hugely improved by converting to a different symbol group not run by profiteering shark bastards.
Same here. The Post Office is very efficient, as appears to be the newsagency side, but the grocery side is utter rubbish. The shop-fitting and general layout is appalling and it would appear that the way the staff are treated would disgrace the 19thC.
A genuine attempt to stop Russian athletes from starving, or a cynical attempt to stop them emigrating?
The problem with that approach, is that for most athletes the money is very much a secondary consideration to the actual competition. They’ll be going to places where they can compete.
I have made a spreadsheet detailing exit options. It's important to weigh up all the factors: yes, distance from blast and fallout is one, but you don't have to be that far away to achieve this because realistically WW3 involving Russia wouldn't be a world war, it would be a complete destruction of most of Europe, North America and Russia.
Other important factors on the spreadsheet include: capacity and frequency of flights, i.e. can I rely on getting out quickly and secure a ticket when everyone else is also trying to do so; COVID entry requirements - no point trying to escape somewhere that requires special paperwork prepared weeks in advance before they let you in, when you need to get out quickly; cost of living: in the event of apocalypse your UK bank is likely to default, and your equity investments become illiquid (and your real estate become radioactive dust) so you need somewhere you can live fairly cheaply on the cash you managed to get out; self-sufficiency - this is where somewhere like Seychelles fails. It needs to be a destination with its own agricultural and industrial capacity.
My workings were pointing me strongly towards Chile until I realised the COVID paperwork requires you to apply at least a month in advance. Otherwise on my list there is Brazil, Morocco and (Western) Ireland. The latter is a bit more uncomfortably close to the action but the Republic is unlikely to be directly nuked, and it has the advantages of quick exit, visa free travel and the English language. Morocco ticks many of the boxes including low cost of living, but they are going through a once in a generation drought at the moment.
Ireland has the benefit of generally prevailing SW winds too.
Which is why the ongoing SSW (sudden stratospheric warming) in the Northern Hemisphere is ill-timed, as it typically leads to blocking and Easterly winds for at least a few weeks. A regular feature of recent springs.
I have made a spreadsheet detailing exit options. It's important to weigh up all the factors: yes, distance from blast and fallout is one, but you don't have to be that far away to achieve this because realistically WW3 involving Russia wouldn't be a world war, it would be a complete destruction of most of Europe, North America and Russia.
Other important factors on the spreadsheet include: capacity and frequency of flights, i.e. can I rely on getting out quickly and secure a ticket when everyone else is also trying to do so; COVID entry requirements - no point trying to escape somewhere that requires special paperwork prepared weeks in advance before they let you in, when you need to get out quickly; cost of living: in the event of apocalypse your UK bank is likely to default, and your equity investments become illiquid (and your real estate become radioactive dust) so you need somewhere you can live fairly cheaply on the cash you managed to get out; self-sufficiency - this is where somewhere like Seychelles fails. It needs to be a destination with its own agricultural and industrial capacity.
My workings were pointing me strongly towards Chile until I realised the COVID paperwork requires you to apply at least a month in advance. Otherwise on my list there is Brazil, Morocco and (Western) Ireland. The latter is a bit more uncomfortably close to the action but the Republic is unlikely to be directly nuked, and it has the advantages of quick exit, visa free travel and the English language. Morocco ticks many of the boxes including low cost of living, but they are going through a once in a generation drought at the moment.
Ireland has the benefit of generally prevailing SW winds too.
Over the last couple of decades the US military has had quite a presence at Shannon airport.
*ON TOPIC What to do when you corner a rat, and in turns on you? Just stamp on its head till it goes squish. Drown it in a bucket. Pick it up by its tail, wave it’s head against wall. And then go and get your rabies jabs asap.
"LEGACY BENEFITS FIGHT GOES ON Four legacy benefits claimants who lost a case against the DWP for excluding them from the £20 uplift given to universal credit (UC) claimants have applied for permission to appeal.
Their appeal is likely to focus on the fact that the High Court accepted the DWP’s claim that the purpose of the uplift was to compensate people who had recently lost their job.
Yet the uplift was given to everyone on UC, regardless of whether they had been in work recently or not.
In fact, at the time, the DWP said that the reason legacy benefits claimants were left out was simply because it was not possible to alter the aged legacy benefit software to give them the uplift. "
*ON TOPIC What to do when you corner a rat, and in turns on you? Just stamp on its head till it goes squish. Drown it in a bucket. Pick it up by its tail, wave it’s head against wall. And then go and get your rabies jabs asap.
I don't really know why one would want to corner a rat, unless one is a sadist. It's not an efficient extermination method to corner individual rats.
*ON TOPIC What to do when you corner a rat, and in turns on you? Just stamp on its head till it goes squish. Drown it in a bucket. Pick it up by its tail, wave it’s head against wall. And then go and get your rabies jabs asap.
Naah don't touch it, fish it out with a garden fork.
Dictators underestimate the strength of democracies because they see only weakness in leaders who submit themselves to the risk of regime change in free elections. They see robust oppositions and free press as vulnerabilities to the system, making it harder to control from the top. They do not realise that those are the qualities behind the resilience and adaptability that have made liberal democracy the most successful model for organising society in the history of human civilisation.
There is a reason why young, educated Russians with access to the truth are leaving. They know what happens in the end when a dictator stakes everything on a bet that the future belongs to militarised nationalist delusion. It is a bet Putin loses. He loses faster if he is wrong about the willingness of citizens in free democracies to make sacrifices and withstand some economic pain to help their neighbours and defend their way of life. I think he is wrong. I hope he is wrong
This is related to a debate I've had many times with @Leon regarding "divisions" and "wokeness" and all the other nonsense he's obsessed with.
Russia actively promotes divisions and discord in the west because they think it makes us weak, and Leon agrees. I fundamentally disagree. Our free debate, our willingness to challenge ourselves, to perpetually evolve thanks to the way the young always present challenges to the old, the vulnerable challenge the strong, the opposition challenge the government etc . . . that is our greatest strength, not our weakness.
It is what prevents us from turning into ossified, kleptocratic and yes sclerotic regimes like Putin's Russia with Potemkin militaries and grand delusions of greatness.
As long as we challenge ourselves more than our enemies can ever challenge us, our diversity of opinion has a deep groundswell of hidden strength there - not weakness.
In feeding our divisions, while shutting down their own, Russia only challenges us to be stronger not weaker - and Russia only weakens itself.
There's definitely some room for middle ground on this. An America torn apart between Trumpist loons and AOC types is not as strong and united as it could be. We need a battle of ideas but we also need people who are not convinced that their opponents are inherently scum and have nothing to contribute.
The Trumpist loons and AOC loons (they're both loons) are extremely problematic in their own right, 100% agreed. However while a rotten extreme, they kind of demonstrate my point. "Strong and united" is what the dictators think makes for a good society, but it doesn't.
While both terrible, the Trumpist loons and AOC loons hate each other with such a symbiotic passion that they're constantly challenging and exposing each other, which feeds into my statement about "as long as we challenge ourselves more than our enemies can ever challenge us" - the AOC types challenge and expose the Trump types and vice-versa in a way that doesn't happen in Russia with nobody exposing the kleptocrats.
This means that when an external aggressor like Putin forces the GOP and Democrats to set aside their differences and fight the common external threat instead that there is a deeper underlying strength there, which dictators like Putin will never understand.
I have made a spreadsheet detailing exit options. It's important to weigh up all the factors: yes, distance from blast and fallout is one, but you don't have to be that far away to achieve this because realistically WW3 involving Russia wouldn't be a world war, it would be a complete destruction of most of Europe, North America and Russia.
Other important factors on the spreadsheet include: capacity and frequency of flights, i.e. can I rely on getting out quickly and secure a ticket when everyone else is also trying to do so; COVID entry requirements - no point trying to escape somewhere that requires special paperwork prepared weeks in advance before they let you in, when you need to get out quickly; cost of living: in the event of apocalypse your UK bank is likely to default, and your equity investments become illiquid (and your real estate become radioactive dust) so you need somewhere you can live fairly cheaply on the cash you managed to get out; self-sufficiency - this is where somewhere like Seychelles fails. It needs to be a destination with its own agricultural and industrial capacity.
My workings were pointing me strongly towards Chile until I realised the COVID paperwork requires you to apply at least a month in advance. Otherwise on my list there is Brazil, Morocco and (Western) Ireland. The latter is a bit more uncomfortably close to the action but the Republic is unlikely to be directly nuked, and it has the advantages of quick exit, visa free travel and the English language. Morocco ticks many of the boxes including low cost of living, but they are going through a once in a generation drought at the moment.
Ireland has the benefit of generally prevailing SW winds too.
Over the last couple of decades the US military has had quite a presence at Shannon airport.
That's the downside and does factor in the calculations. It's a transit point but could be a target. No presumably would be Belfast. So the safest location looks to be Kerry or Cork. If they were really going for broke then Cork could be a target as a major pharmaceutical manufacturing location for Europe.
Might be wave 3 though. Wave 1 Ukraine and Eastern European countries, wave 2 the major NATO powers, wave 3 mop up anything that might help the US or NATO to recover. So get to Ireland first, then hop on a refugee flight to South America and hope they have a more welcoming attitude than our home office.
The 'hard' problem is this: it is not all about Putin. His leadership and regime is supported by a vast majority. What we are seeing is in part the will of the people. In the end, the will and resolve of its people, and their imperial delusions and claims over large parts of Europe, have to be broken. I think it is an error to think that this is necessarily over if/when Putin and Lavrov get removed.
In a way, yes.
But in a way, no.
Putin's regime has spent two decades demolishing press freedoms in Russia. The media has slowly become the regime's mouthpiece - or else. Therefore much of the Russian public is fed Putin's worldview, and not any opposing view.
The situation is what it is. People are protesting against Putin's regime, but they are a minority. Even if it is a significant minority, it is still a minority. There are deeper nationalist forces at play. It feels a bit like China 3 decades ago and Tiannamen Square - a country decisively moving in one direction. Of course we have sympathy for the 'losers' in such a scenario, but it shouldn't impact on how we view the threat from the regime.
There are big differences, though. China wasn't prosecuting a war of aggression which it was in danger of losing. Nor was its economy collapsing as a result of western sanctions. And there was no real opposition within the existing state structure (Navalny and his followers).
FWIW I was reading the comments of a British expat working out in Russia (who is keeping his head down and hoping to stay out there) on another forum; his take is that there is tremendous support for Putin amongst Russians, based on their proud nationalism and obsession with WWII as great as ours. He reckons that when the truth (about the casualties and lack of military success) finally reaches Russians, rather than blame Putin they'll mostly blame the West, and we'll be in a new cold war.
The stories Russians tell themselves about WW2 are not entirely in keeping with the facts are they, though. They ignore their alliance with Nazi Germany, their provision of material to the Nazis at a time when Britain was fighting Germany and British pilots were being killed by them, their carve up of Poland and wholesale slaughter of Polish officers and others, their aggression to Finland and the Baltic States, the appalling treatment they meted out to returning Russian prisoners of war, the wholesale rapes of German women and the atrocities they then inflicted on the countries they occupied. Oh and the huge amount of military hardware they received from the Allies to help them fight.
And they won't learn it because telling the truth in Russia is dangerous, historical inquiry into and access to archives is banned and they prefer to believe in national myths rather than take a good hard look at themselves. Yes Russia has been horribly invaded. But it has also been a horribly aggressive country at least as often. Ask the Poles, for instance.
And one of the groups/peoples/language users to which they've been very aggressive over the years have been the Ukrainians. I think I'm right in thinking that when the Germans originally arrived in Ukraine they were treated as liberators and had the Nazis not believed that all Slavs were what the name suggested had behaved like the ruthless and stupid b'stards they were they could probably have enlisted them on their side.
These things get remembered. On both sides.
Quite. The Ukrainian famine in the 1930's.
And today we have people in Mariopol without food, water, shelter, electricity in sub-zero temperatures, conditions described by the Red Cross on the Today programme as "apocalyptic".
Putin and his regime are evil.
What has been laid out for all to see is the Russian way of waging war is blitzkrieg. When that fails, they go for long-range demolition. Of houses, schools, churches, civilians. They are happy to be "liberators" of piles of rubble.
If I can't have it, you can't have it either. Very Russian.
This morning you told the British public you literally can't define what a woman is. What's the plan, lift up random objects until you find one that rattles?
Cooper's is the correct response. You have a bunch of people using a word in subtly different ways in subtly different contexts and trying really hard not to see the other people's point of view. If you use it in one of the ways they don't themselves use they get really, really angry. So STFU.
What utter bollocks. The Equality Act 2010 refers to sex. If Labour are in favour of it then they need to engage with what that term means and that there is a female sex consisting of women. For a Labour MP, ostensibly in favour of equality for women, to refuse to answer this question gives no confidence that they will stand up for the existing rights of women and rights for women more generally.
This morning you told the British public you literally can't define what a woman is. What's the plan, lift up random objects until you find one that rattles?
Cooper's is the correct response. You have a bunch of people using a word in subtly different ways in subtly different contexts and trying really hard not to see the other people's point of view. If you use it in one of the ways they don't themselves use they get really, really angry. So STFU.
This whole debate is a fruitless distraction from the real inequalities that women still face. I went to a work dinner last night *on International Women's Day* at which there were 18 men and no women, unless you count the ones serving the food.
I've worked in mixed gender teams for the last 13 years, and the majority of my managers have been women. My current team was, at one point, entirely female apart from me. It hasn't been a problem for me at all. But I think it is evidence that, in some areas, women are simply not an oppressed minority in the workplace and to carry on with this narrative is divisive and counter productive. The remaining pockets of sexism and misogyny should be tackled, but under the banner of gender equality, rather than through perpetrating the idea that all of society is inherently sexist.
Women are not oppressed, discriminated against or sexually assaulted because of their gender. But because of their sex. It is sexual equality which is needed.
Thread on Putin’s “Mafia State” and why that will heighten the impact of sanctions:
Let's discuss Russian economy. Many underestimate its dependency upon technological import. Russia's so deeply integrated into Western technological chains that severing these ties will lead to its collapse. Sanctions are already effective and can be made even more efficient🧵
It also implies that “damaging” Ukraine may be sufficient - conquest not necessary
It's an interesting thread - and makes a point similar to that of the Guardian article from the Russian-born US academic that I linked earlier. Putin and his gang are a criminal enterprise and we need to be careful not to project onto them analysis based on the more familiar workings of our own types of state.
I also see that, after oil and gold, charcoal briquettes represent Russia's biggest export. So we need a BBQ boycott this summer.....
Oil and gold. Yummy.
Top Tip of the Week: fill up every petrol/fuel tank/container/receptacle you can lay you mucky hands on. To the brim. The ride hasn’t even begun yet..
The 'hard' problem is this: it is not all about Putin. His leadership and regime is supported by a vast majority. What we are seeing is in part the will of the people. In the end, the will and resolve of its people, and their imperial delusions and claims over large parts of Europe, have to be broken. I think it is an error to think that this is necessarily over if/when Putin and Lavrov get removed.
I am very pessimistic. I doubt that even this proposal would work. Russia and its delusions need to be defeated and be seen to be defeated, if there is to be even a chance of a reset. But how on earth is that going to happen?
I fear that Russia will retreat into its Stalinist past, Ukraine will be destroyed in the way that Syria was destroyed, people will die in the most appalling circumstances and those who have got out will stay out for much longer than we or they anticipate.
It will be a new Cold War and we will be lucky if the hot war in Ukraine does not extend elsewhere.
I mainly wrote this to see if there was any possible way out and in response to the discussion the other day about possible solutions over Crimea etc.
To cheer myself up even further, given that Sellafield and BaE are not a million miles from where I'm living, we're certainly prime targets for a nuclear strike. Still, better than surviving in an irradiated wasteland I suppose.
More generally, when the USSR broke up, the West simply assumed the boundaries of the SSRs should be the boundaries of the completely new countries.
This created war in Armenia & Azerbaijan over Nagorno-Karabakh, war in Georgia over Ossetia & Abkhasia, war in Russia over Chechnya, war in Moldova over Transnistria, war in Ukraine over Crimea/Donbas,
Many of these ethnic conflicts long predated the USSR or even Imperial Russia. The wars did not happen just because of Russian meddling, though that did exacerbate them.
The boundary disputes should all have been resolved by UN plebiscites. We are now going to pay a very heavy price for not insisting on this simple point much earlier.
It should be a condition of NATO membership/EU membership that boundary disputes are resolved by calling plebiscites.
Minority ethnic groups can call for border polls in disputed areas & the polls are carried out with independent observers (much like the settlement in N. Ireland in the Good Friday Agreement).
Arguments about boundaries in Eastern Europe created WW1 and WW2. On our present trajectory, we are going for the hat trick.
Why did not Ukraine hold such a plebiscite when it was governed by a Putin puppet ?
Like it or not, Viktor Yanukovych won a Presidential election in 2010. The election was judged free and fair by international observers.
Calling him a puppet is .. err ... tendentious.
Now, of course, it is way too late for plebiscites. The boundaries will be set by war. My guess is that they will be much less favourable to Ukraine.
The whole episode has been, and will continue to be, absolutely disastrous for Ukraine, for Russia and for the West.
It is perfectly reasonable to point out that a different trajectory was possible.
Extinction Rebellion have said they're planning a new wave of protests to cause "maximum nonviolent disruption" at UK oil refineries next month.
Comes amid reports that average energy bills could hit £4,000 this year and concerns about Britain's energy security.
The justification?
"The Ukraine conflict and the climate crisis have the same underlying cause: the imperialist pursuit of land and resources for profit, concentrating power in the hands of toxic individuals and corporations."
The 'hard' problem is this: it is not all about Putin. His leadership and regime is supported by a vast majority. What we are seeing is in part the will of the people. In the end, the will and resolve of its people, and their imperial delusions and claims over large parts of Europe, have to be broken. I think it is an error to think that this is necessarily over if/when Putin and Lavrov get removed.
In a way, yes.
But in a way, no.
Putin's regime has spent two decades demolishing press freedoms in Russia. The media has slowly become the regime's mouthpiece - or else. Therefore much of the Russian public is fed Putin's worldview, and not any opposing view.
The situation is what it is. People are protesting against Putin's regime, but they are a minority. Even if it is a significant minority, it is still a minority. There are deeper nationalist forces at play. It feels a bit like China 3 decades ago and Tiannamen Square - a country decisively moving in one direction. Of course we have sympathy for the 'losers' in such a scenario, but it shouldn't impact on how we view the threat from the regime.
There are big differences, though. China wasn't prosecuting a war of aggression which it was in danger of losing. Nor was its economy collapsing as a result of western sanctions. And there was no real opposition within the existing state structure (Navalny and his followers).
FWIW I was reading the comments of a British expat working out in Russia (who is keeping his head down and hoping to stay out there) on another forum; his take is that there is tremendous support for Putin amongst Russians, based on their proud nationalism and obsession with WWII as great as ours. He reckons that when the truth (about the casualties and lack of military success) finally reaches Russians, rather than blame Putin they'll mostly blame the West, and we'll be in a new cold war.
The stories Russians tell themselves about WW2 are not entirely in keeping with the facts are they, though. They ignore their alliance with Nazi Germany, their provision of material to the Nazis at a time when Britain was fighting Germany and British pilots were being killed by them, their carve up of Poland and wholesale slaughter of Polish officers and others, their aggression to Finland and the Baltic States, the appalling treatment they meted out to returning Russian prisoners of war, the wholesale rapes of German women and the atrocities they then inflicted on the countries they occupied. Oh and the huge amount of military hardware they received from the Allies to help them fight.
And they won't learn it because telling the truth in Russia is dangerous, historical inquiry into and access to archives is banned and they prefer to believe in national myths rather than take a good hard look at themselves. Yes Russia has been horribly invaded. But it has also been a horribly aggressive country at least as often. Ask the Poles, for instance.
And one of the groups/peoples/language users to which they've been very aggressive over the years have been the Ukrainians. I think I'm right in thinking that when the Germans originally arrived in Ukraine they were treated as liberators and had the Nazis not believed that all Slavs were what the name suggested had behaved like the ruthless and stupid b'stards they were they could probably have enlisted them on their side.
These things get remembered. On both sides.
Quite. The Ukrainian famine in the 1930's.
And today we have people in Mariopol without food, water, shelter, electricity in sub-zero temperatures, conditions described by the Red Cross on the Today programme as "apocalyptic".
Putin and his regime are evil.
What has been laid out for all to see is the Russian way of waging war is blitzkrieg. When that fails, they go for long-range demolition. Of houses, schools, churches, civilians. They are happy to be "liberators" of piles of rubble.
If I can't have it, you can't have it either. Very Russian.
Indeed. "Scorched Earth" used to be the Russian strategy for retreat. It is now used for advance and, apparently, for stalemate, too. A near-synonym would be "Terror". Also a classic Russian tactic, exported world-wide.
Peaking high and dropping quick was always predicted for inflation, as part of post covid world economy reboot, the problem with war on top is how quick to drop and to what lingering level? If it lingers above 4 it will degrade incomes and any wage inflation only help to perpetuate the pain - therefore those of us on the right of centre must have union pay strikes crushed and not given into.
It’s poorer people such as poor pensioners and those people working 3 jobs but still on the breadline I feel sorry for.
The 'hard' problem is this: it is not all about Putin. His leadership and regime is supported by a vast majority. What we are seeing is in part the will of the people. In the end, the will and resolve of its people, and their imperial delusions and claims over large parts of Europe, have to be broken. I think it is an error to think that this is necessarily over if/when Putin and Lavrov get removed.
I am very pessimistic. I doubt that even this proposal would work. Russia and its delusions need to be defeated and be seen to be defeated, if there is to be even a chance of a reset. But how on earth is that going to happen?
I fear that Russia will retreat into its Stalinist past, Ukraine will be destroyed in the way that Syria was destroyed, people will die in the most appalling circumstances and those who have got out will stay out for much longer than we or they anticipate.
It will be a new Cold War and we will be lucky if the hot war in Ukraine does not extend elsewhere.
I mainly wrote this to see if there was any possible way out and in response to the discussion the other day about possible solutions over Crimea etc.
To cheer myself up even further, given that Sellafield and BaE are not a million miles from where I'm living, we're certainly prime targets for a nuclear strike. Still, better than surviving in an irradiated wasteland I suppose.
Most of the Lake District, especially towards Carlisle is actually however more likely to survive a nuclear attack than 90% of the rest of the UK
The 'hard' problem is this: it is not all about Putin. His leadership and regime is supported by a vast majority. What we are seeing is in part the will of the people. In the end, the will and resolve of its people, and their imperial delusions and claims over large parts of Europe, have to be broken. I think it is an error to think that this is necessarily over if/when Putin and Lavrov get removed.
In a way, yes.
But in a way, no.
Putin's regime has spent two decades demolishing press freedoms in Russia. The media has slowly become the regime's mouthpiece - or else. Therefore much of the Russian public is fed Putin's worldview, and not any opposing view.
The situation is what it is. People are protesting against Putin's regime, but they are a minority. Even if it is a significant minority, it is still a minority. There are deeper nationalist forces at play. It feels a bit like China 3 decades ago and Tiannamen Square - a country decisively moving in one direction. Of course we have sympathy for the 'losers' in such a scenario, but it shouldn't impact on how we view the threat from the regime.
There are big differences, though. China wasn't prosecuting a war of aggression which it was in danger of losing. Nor was its economy collapsing as a result of western sanctions. And there was no real opposition within the existing state structure (Navalny and his followers).
FWIW I was reading the comments of a British expat working out in Russia (who is keeping his head down and hoping to stay out there) on another forum; his take is that there is tremendous support for Putin amongst Russians, based on their proud nationalism and obsession with WWII as great as ours. He reckons that when the truth (about the casualties and lack of military success) finally reaches Russians, rather than blame Putin they'll mostly blame the West, and we'll be in a new cold war.
The stories Russians tell themselves about WW2 are not entirely in keeping with the facts are they, though. They ignore their alliance with Nazi Germany, their provision of material to the Nazis at a time when Britain was fighting Germany and British pilots were being killed by them, their carve up of Poland and wholesale slaughter of Polish officers and others, their aggression to Finland and the Baltic States, the appalling treatment they meted out to returning Russian prisoners of war, the wholesale rapes of German women and the atrocities they then inflicted on the countries they occupied. Oh and the huge amount of military hardware they received from the Allies to help them fight.
And they won't learn it because telling the truth in Russia is dangerous, historical inquiry into and access to archives is banned and they prefer to believe in national myths rather than take a good hard look at themselves. Yes Russia has been horribly invaded. But it has also been a horribly aggressive country at least as often. Ask the Poles, for instance.
And one of the groups/peoples/language users to which they've been very aggressive over the years have been the Ukrainians. I think I'm right in thinking that when the Germans originally arrived in Ukraine they were treated as liberators and had the Nazis not believed that all Slavs were what the name suggested had behaved like the ruthless and stupid b'stards they were they could probably have enlisted them on their side.
These things get remembered. On both sides.
Quite. The Ukrainian famine in the 1930's.
And today we have people in Mariopol without food, water, shelter, electricity in sub-zero temperatures, conditions described by the Red Cross on the Today programme as "apocalyptic".
Putin and his regime are evil.
What has been laid out for all to see is the Russian way of waging war is blitzkrieg. When that fails, they go for long-range demolition. Of houses, schools, churches, civilians. They are happy to be "liberators" of piles of rubble.
If I can't have it, you can't have it either. Very Russian.
They are happy to be genocidal murderers and destroyers of everything. As we are seeing on our TV screens every night.
Extinction Rebellion have said they're planning a new wave of protests to cause "maximum nonviolent disruption" at UK oil refineries next month.
Comes amid reports that average energy bills could hit £4,000 this year and concerns about Britain's energy security.
The justification?
"The Ukraine conflict and the climate crisis have the same underlying cause: the imperialist pursuit of land and resources for profit, concentrating power in the hands of toxic individuals and corporations."
Getting off fossil fuels is a good long-term solution, but we need more domestic hydrocarbons not less for the transition, instead of relying upon Russian and Middle Eastern exports.
These idiots would never go and protest in Russia.
I don't know whether anyone's written this — they must have done — but there's nothing wrong with being dependent on other countries for your energy sources provided they're fully democratic ones. The problem is being dependent on non-democratic countries, like Russia, Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, etc.
I have made a spreadsheet detailing exit options. It's important to weigh up all the factors: yes, distance from blast and fallout is one, but you don't have to be that far away to achieve this because realistically WW3 involving Russia wouldn't be a world war, it would be a complete destruction of most of Europe, North America and Russia.
Other important factors on the spreadsheet include: capacity and frequency of flights, i.e. can I rely on getting out quickly and secure a ticket when everyone else is also trying to do so; COVID entry requirements - no point trying to escape somewhere that requires special paperwork prepared weeks in advance before they let you in, when you need to get out quickly; cost of living: in the event of apocalypse your UK bank is likely to default, and your equity investments become illiquid (and your real estate become radioactive dust) so you need somewhere you can live fairly cheaply on the cash you managed to get out; self-sufficiency - this is where somewhere like Seychelles fails. It needs to be a destination with its own agricultural and industrial capacity.
My workings were pointing me strongly towards Chile until I realised the COVID paperwork requires you to apply at least a month in advance. Otherwise on my list there is Brazil, Morocco and (Western) Ireland. The latter is a bit more uncomfortably close to the action but the Republic is unlikely to be directly nuked, and it has the advantages of quick exit, visa free travel and the English language. Morocco ticks many of the boxes including low cost of living, but they are going through a once in a generation drought at the moment.
Ireland has the benefit of generally prevailing SW winds too.
Over the last couple of decades the US military has had quite a presence at Shannon airport.
That's the downside and does factor in the calculations. It's a transit point but could be a target. No presumably would be Belfast. So the safest location looks to be Kerry or Cork. If they were really going for broke then Cork could be a target as a major pharmaceutical manufacturing location for Europe.
Might be wave 3 though. Wave 1 Ukraine and Eastern European countries, wave 2 the major NATO powers, wave 3 mop up anything that might help the US or NATO to recover. So get to Ireland first, then hop on a refugee flight to South America and hope they have a more welcoming attitude than our home office.
A factor to bear in mind with Kerry is that, if the central Irish government is obliterated, Kerry is likely to fall under the suzerainty of the Healy-Raes. You might be safer in Mayo.
This morning you told the British public you literally can't define what a woman is. What's the plan, lift up random objects until you find one that rattles?
Cooper's is the correct response. You have a bunch of people using a word in subtly different ways in subtly different contexts and trying really hard not to see the other people's point of view. If you use it in one of the ways they don't themselves use they get really, really angry. So STFU.
What utter bollocks. The Equality Act 2010 refers to sex. If Labour are in favour of it then they need to engage with what that term means and that there is a female sex consisting of women. For a Labour MP, ostensibly in favour of equality for women, to refuse to answer this question gives no confidence that they will stand up for the existing rights of women and rights for women more generally.
This morning you told the British public you literally can't define what a woman is. What's the plan, lift up random objects until you find one that rattles?
Cooper's is the correct response. You have a bunch of people using a word in subtly different ways in subtly different contexts and trying really hard not to see the other people's point of view. If you use it in one of the ways they don't themselves use they get really, really angry. So STFU.
This whole debate is a fruitless distraction from the real inequalities that women still face. I went to a work dinner last night *on International Women's Day* at which there were 18 men and no women, unless you count the ones serving the food.
I've worked in mixed gender teams for the last 13 years, and the majority of my managers have been women. My current team was, at one point, entirely female apart from me. It hasn't been a problem for me at all. But I think it is evidence that, in some areas, women are simply not an oppressed minority in the workplace and to carry on with this narrative is divisive and counter productive. The remaining pockets of sexism and misogyny should be tackled, but under the banner of gender equality, rather than through perpetrating the idea that all of society is inherently sexist.
Women are not oppressed, discriminated against or sexually assaulted because of their gender. But because of their sex. It is sexual equality which is needed.
Fear not, a chap will be along to put you right shortly.
The 'hard' problem is this: it is not all about Putin. His leadership and regime is supported by a vast majority. What we are seeing is in part the will of the people. In the end, the will and resolve of its people, and their imperial delusions and claims over large parts of Europe, have to be broken. I think it is an error to think that this is necessarily over if/when Putin and Lavrov get removed.
In a way, yes.
But in a way, no.
Putin's regime has spent two decades demolishing press freedoms in Russia. The media has slowly become the regime's mouthpiece - or else. Therefore much of the Russian public is fed Putin's worldview, and not any opposing view.
The situation is what it is. People are protesting against Putin's regime, but they are a minority. Even if it is a significant minority, it is still a minority. There are deeper nationalist forces at play. It feels a bit like China 3 decades ago and Tiannamen Square - a country decisively moving in one direction. Of course we have sympathy for the 'losers' in such a scenario, but it shouldn't impact on how we view the threat from the regime.
There are big differences, though. China wasn't prosecuting a war of aggression which it was in danger of losing. Nor was its economy collapsing as a result of western sanctions. And there was no real opposition within the existing state structure (Navalny and his followers).
FWIW I was reading the comments of a British expat working out in Russia (who is keeping his head down and hoping to stay out there) on another forum; his take is that there is tremendous support for Putin amongst Russians, based on their proud nationalism and obsession with WWII as great as ours. He reckons that when the truth (about the casualties and lack of military success) finally reaches Russians, rather than blame Putin they'll mostly blame the West, and we'll be in a new cold war.
The stories Russians tell themselves about WW2 are not entirely in keeping with the facts are they, though. They ignore their alliance with Nazi Germany, their provision of material to the Nazis at a time when Britain was fighting Germany and British pilots were being killed by them, their carve up of Poland and wholesale slaughter of Polish officers and others, their aggression to Finland and the Baltic States, the appalling treatment they meted out to returning Russian prisoners of war, the wholesale rapes of German women and the atrocities they then inflicted on the countries they occupied. Oh and the huge amount of military hardware they received from the Allies to help them fight.
And they won't learn it because telling the truth in Russia is dangerous, historical inquiry into and access to archives is banned and they prefer to believe in national myths rather than take a good hard look at themselves. Yes Russia has been horribly invaded. But it has also been a horribly aggressive country at least as often. Ask the Poles, for instance.
For sure. Although neither your first point about having a distorted view of the war and preferring to believe in their national myths, nor your second point about not having a cold look at their historical aggression, are unique to Russia.
Indeed. There is a comparison with Britain. The "Britain alone in 1940" myth for one. Ask Polish airmen. Or those nations which were then part of the Empire.
That's ridiculous. It isn't a myth. Of course, there were combatants from the Empire/Commonwealth and displaced folk from defeated countries made a very significant contribution - they are justly celebrated - but Britain was very largely fighting on her own until Hitler attacked the USSR and the USA entered the war.
In WW2, the British army peaked at 2.9m men, the Indian army alone peaked at 2.5m.
Dismissing the contribution of the Empire and Commonwealth as mere combatants whilst we were fighting on our own is pretty shameful.
I don't know whether anyone's written this — they must have done — but there's nothing wrong with being dependent on other countries for your energy sources provided they're fully democratic ones. The problem is being dependent on non-democratic countries, like Russia, Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, etc.
A bigger problem is only have one or two external sources. Even when we mined our own coal, militant miners could hold us all to ransom. We need a diversity of energy sources, especially with renewables.
Wind isn't the answer. Solar isn't the answer. The answer is wind, solar, storage, nuclear, wave, tidal and probably a little bit of gas, even after the 2030s.
The 'hard' problem is this: it is not all about Putin. His leadership and regime is supported by a vast majority. What we are seeing is in part the will of the people. In the end, the will and resolve of its people, and their imperial delusions and claims over large parts of Europe, have to be broken. I think it is an error to think that this is necessarily over if/when Putin and Lavrov get removed.
In a way, yes.
But in a way, no.
Putin's regime has spent two decades demolishing press freedoms in Russia. The media has slowly become the regime's mouthpiece - or else. Therefore much of the Russian public is fed Putin's worldview, and not any opposing view.
The situation is what it is. People are protesting against Putin's regime, but they are a minority. Even if it is a significant minority, it is still a minority. There are deeper nationalist forces at play. It feels a bit like China 3 decades ago and Tiannamen Square - a country decisively moving in one direction. Of course we have sympathy for the 'losers' in such a scenario, but it shouldn't impact on how we view the threat from the regime.
There are big differences, though. China wasn't prosecuting a war of aggression which it was in danger of losing. Nor was its economy collapsing as a result of western sanctions. And there was no real opposition within the existing state structure (Navalny and his followers).
FWIW I was reading the comments of a British expat working out in Russia (who is keeping his head down and hoping to stay out there) on another forum; his take is that there is tremendous support for Putin amongst Russians, based on their proud nationalism and obsession with WWII as great as ours. He reckons that when the truth (about the casualties and lack of military success) finally reaches Russians, rather than blame Putin they'll mostly blame the West, and we'll be in a new cold war.
The stories Russians tell themselves about WW2 are not entirely in keeping with the facts are they, though. They ignore their alliance with Nazi Germany, their provision of material to the Nazis at a time when Britain was fighting Germany and British pilots were being killed by them, their carve up of Poland and wholesale slaughter of Polish officers and others, their aggression to Finland and the Baltic States, the appalling treatment they meted out to returning Russian prisoners of war, the wholesale rapes of German women and the atrocities they then inflicted on the countries they occupied. Oh and the huge amount of military hardware they received from the Allies to help them fight.
And they won't learn it because telling the truth in Russia is dangerous, historical inquiry into and access to archives is banned and they prefer to believe in national myths rather than take a good hard look at themselves. Yes Russia has been horribly invaded. But it has also been a horribly aggressive country at least as often. Ask the Poles, for instance.
For sure. Although neither your first point about having a distorted view of the war and preferring to believe in their national myths, nor your second point about not having a cold look at their historical aggression, are unique to Russia.
Indeed. There is a comparison with Britain. The "Britain alone in 1940" myth for one. Ask Polish airmen. Or those nations which were then part of the Empire.
That's ridiculous. It isn't a myth. Of course, there were combatants from the Empire/Commonwealth and displaced folk from defeated countries made a very significant contribution - they are justly celebrated - but Britain was very largely fighting on her own until Hitler attacked the USSR and the USA entered the war.
Britain was not a single country fighting on its own. It was in charge of a still large Empire. It was the British Empire which was fighting. On its own, yes. But it was not a David.
I don't despair about Russia. Putin is fearful. He saw what happened to Gaddafi. He fears the colour revolutions that have taken place everywhere. He knows he is vulnerable. That could be paranoia but it could also be realistic. Why does he need such draconian laws, such an enormous security state to defend him? Why does a non-oligarchic western-oriented liberal democracy in Ukraine horrify him so much?
There could be a generational effect here. Pure anecdotally I don't think Putin's support among young Russians is what it is amongst their parents or grandparents. There is only so long you can use the 'chaos of the past' argument to maintain support. How will Putin continue paying for his war? Continue paying for his security state? Can he really hide the flattening of Kiev from his own population? I don't know but the doubt gives me hope in this dark time.
Comments
Just as "nuclear-free" New Zealand still had/has weapons pointed at it - because what if the Kiwis are lying about being nuclear-free?
Putin's objectives for Ukraine are clear, as he has spoken and written at length about them. I don't see any reason not to take his words at face value. In summary:
1. Keep Ukraine in
2. Keep the West out
3. Eliminate any Ukrainian identity that is independent from Russia.
I am sure he's serious about those objectives. He believes he's dealing with with real problems, but as far as I can tell doesn't realise he himself created the problems noted above.
So we have someone who sees his role as a destiny. Absolutely everything is sacrificed for his strategic objectives yet the place is run opportunistically as a Mafia operation.
It's completely delusional.
You can of course believe that he has become a bully recently and his behaviour was fine during all those years in the Tory Party but it is not really credible. Labour have acted as soon as the verdict came out, to have refused membership would surely have meant prejudging the outcome. By that criteria Patel should have been out on her ear months ago.
Though why Cyclefree is whinging about it when most of the Lake District would survive even when London and the Home Counties bar Clacton and Margate, most of the South, Birmingham, Manchester and Newcastle and most of the North, Glasgow and Edinburgh and South Wales would have been wiped out is beyond me
The reality, of course, is that both Bercow and Patel are bullies and neither should hold public office; while both Corbyn and Johnson are racists, and likewise should be nowhere near any position of power.
Honestly, to place any faith in some random estate agent map published in the Standard just shows how gullible you are.
And they won't learn it because telling the truth in Russia is dangerous, historical inquiry into and access to archives is banned and they prefer to believe in national myths rather than take a good hard look at themselves. Yes Russia has been horribly invaded. But it has also been a horribly aggressive country at least as often. Ask the Poles, for instance.
Self-parody.
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/personalandhouseholdfinances/incomeandwealth/articles/incomespendingandwealthhowdoyoucompare/2022-03-09
That'll be the time to get worried.
I know it's a side-issue but looking at the Estonian polls, although it shows an uptick in the governing party's ratings from a rather low level, the real breakthrough seems to be Estonia 2000, who sound from Wikipedia like the Estonian wing of the (British) Liberal Democrats: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estonia_200 - now on 20% from a zero standing start. What do you make of them, Cicero?
Or just not interested in what Zelensky had to say?
Given what we now know about Bercow it becomes perfectly understandable. As Leader of the House, Hague would have had a lot of interactions with Bercow and seen what he was about.
About half the team were upset that he hadn't just stayed away....
So, yet again, Starmer has done the right thing.
A number of MPs left the Labour Party under Corbyn due to the concerns of Jews. Under Johnson, loathsome as he is, we have ethnic minority Cabinet ministers including the Chancellor and favourite to succeed him, and Home Secretary.
The fact is this: Boris Johnson is both professionally and personally unacceptable as PM. He has neither the character nor the competence for the position. And yet he remains far better (or less bad) an option than the far left Corbyn ever was. Pretending they're the same is nonsense. The right wing equivalent of Corbyn would be a man who marched with banners of Hitler and swastika flags. For all his flaws, which are numerous, Johnson never did that.
Seems the cabinet are sidelining Patel which hopefully will be the pre cursor to her removal
Will be interesting to see how the debate develops there.
I’ve been picking up on a fair amount of projection from the Russians.
Terrifying.
This war could get seriously nasty. I think there’s a lot of naïveté in the west (and on PB) that Russia has proven itself to be militarily shit in the first fortnight.
Big chance they’ll escalate from here.
If so then there's no chance.
Someone who believes in treating people equally and fairly but is willing to go along with racist dog whistles for self promotion is different to someone who also believes in treating people equally and fairly but is blind to the racism of their friends.
Both are quite different again from white supremacists.
https://twitter.com/PippaCrerar/status/1501231127432155140
Anyway all pretty hypothetical really.
Putin is evil. Putin is a fascist. The sooner people realise that is the beast we are dealing with, the better.
This created war in Armenia & Azerbaijan over Nagorno-Karabakh, war in Georgia over Ossetia & Abkhasia, war in Russia over Chechnya, war in Moldova over Transnistria, war in Ukraine over Crimea/Donbas,
Many of these ethnic conflicts long predated the USSR or even Imperial Russia. The wars did not happen just because of Russian meddling, though that did exacerbate them.
The boundary disputes should all have been resolved by UN plebiscites. We are now going to pay a very heavy price for not insisting on this simple point much earlier.
It should be a condition of NATO membership/EU membership that boundary disputes are resolved by calling plebiscites.
Minority ethnic groups can call for border polls in disputed areas & the polls are carried out with independent observers (much like the settlement in N. Ireland in the Good Friday Agreement).
Arguments about boundaries in Eastern Europe created WW1 and WW2. On our present trajectory, we are going for the hat trick.
Though as I have already made clear I do not support any action in Ukraine beyond sanctions and certainly no no fly zone or troops
Other important factors on the spreadsheet include: capacity and frequency of flights, i.e. can I rely on getting out quickly and secure a ticket when everyone else is also trying to do so; COVID entry requirements - no point trying to escape somewhere that requires special paperwork prepared weeks in advance before they let you in, when you need to get out quickly; cost of living: in the event of apocalypse your UK bank is likely to default, and your equity investments become illiquid (and your real estate become radioactive dust) so you need somewhere you can live fairly cheaply on the cash you managed to get out; self-sufficiency - this is where somewhere like Seychelles fails. It needs to be a destination with its own agricultural and industrial capacity.
My workings were pointing me strongly towards Chile until I realised the COVID paperwork requires you to apply at least a month in advance. Otherwise on my list there is Brazil, Morocco and (Western) Ireland. The latter is a bit more uncomfortably close to the action but the Republic is unlikely to be directly nuked, and it has the advantages of quick exit, visa free travel and the English language. Morocco ticks many of the boxes including low cost of living, but they are going through a once in a generation drought at the moment.
Safer still might be the likes of South Africa which abstained on the UN vote to condemn Russia's invasion of Ukraine, is not in NATO and in the southern hemisphere if it all kicked off in the North.
NATO nations and Russia and its few remaining allies could be wiped out and theoretically South Africa still survive
"Hackers are free people, just like artists who wake up in the morning in a good mood and start painting," as Putin put it.
Hackers are Very Online, and Very Online people have been strongly against the invasion, so maybe he's finding it hard to motivate them.
The Isa brothers (who own Euro Garages and now Asda) were interested until it was pointed out that they couldn't acquire a business so heavily reliant on a long Morrisons contract. Now Mozzas are interested in buying out hundreds of stores if the group collapses to have yet another attempt at having its own convenience store estate to compete with Tesco and Sainsburys.
Honestly I don't know what happens next. My village store is a McColls and would be hugely improved by converting to a different symbol group not run by profiteering shark bastards.
I think I'm right in thinking that when the Germans originally arrived in Ukraine they were treated as liberators and had the Nazis not believed that all Slavs were what the name suggested had behaved like the ruthless and stupid b'stards they were they could probably have enlisted them on their side.
These things get remembered. On both sides.
And today we have people in Mariopol without food, water, shelter, electricity in sub-zero temperatures, conditions described by the Red Cross on the Today programme as "apocalyptic".
Putin and his regime are evil.
This is one (minor) factor behind the horrendous level of house prices there.
The shop-fitting and general layout is appalling and it would appear that the way the staff are treated would disgrace the 19thC.
https://twitter.com/autosport/status/1501486441137950722
A genuine attempt to stop Russian athletes from starving, or a cynical attempt to stop them emigrating?
The problem with that approach, is that for most athletes the money is very much a secondary consideration to the actual competition. They’ll be going to places where they can compete.
https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2022/02/25/fact-check-claim-us-biolabs-ukraine-disinformation/6937923001/
What to do when you corner a rat, and in turns on you? Just stamp on its head till it goes squish.
Drown it in a bucket.
Pick it up by its tail, wave it’s head against wall. And then go and get your rabies jabs asap.
Four legacy benefits claimants who lost a case against the DWP for excluding them from the £20 uplift given to universal credit (UC) claimants have applied for permission to appeal.
Their appeal is likely to focus on the fact that the High Court accepted the DWP’s claim that the purpose of the uplift was to compensate people who had recently lost their job.
Yet the uplift was given to everyone on UC, regardless of whether they had been in work recently or not.
In fact, at the time, the DWP said that the reason legacy benefits claimants were left out was simply because it was not possible to alter the aged legacy benefit software to give them the uplift. "
Benefits & Work charity news blog
https://twitter.com/shashj/status/1501503486248333317
https://www.parliament.uk/about/how/laws/secondary-legislation/
Secondary legislation is law created by ministers (or other bodies) under powers given to them by an Act of Parliament.
So yes, he might have made up the laws on his own in this case.
While both terrible, the Trumpist loons and AOC loons hate each other with such a symbiotic passion that they're constantly challenging and exposing each other, which feeds into my statement about "as long as we challenge ourselves more than our enemies can ever challenge us" - the AOC types challenge and expose the Trump types and vice-versa in a way that doesn't happen in Russia with nobody exposing the kleptocrats.
This means that when an external aggressor like Putin forces the GOP and Democrats to set aside their differences and fight the common external threat instead that there is a deeper underlying strength there, which dictators like Putin will never understand.
Division is its own strength, not weakness.
Might be wave 3 though. Wave 1 Ukraine and Eastern European countries, wave 2 the major NATO powers, wave 3 mop up anything that might help the US or NATO to recover. So get to Ireland first, then hop on a refugee flight to South America and hope they have a more welcoming attitude than our home office.
If I can't have it, you can't have it either. Very Russian.
What utter bollocks. The Equality Act 2010 refers to sex. If Labour are in favour of it then they need to engage with what that term means and that there is a female sex consisting of women. For a Labour MP, ostensibly in favour of equality for women, to refuse to answer this question gives no confidence that they will stand up for the existing rights of women and rights for women more generally. Women are not oppressed, discriminated against or sexually assaulted because of their gender. But because of their sex. It is sexual equality which is needed.
Top Tip of the Week: fill up every petrol/fuel tank/container/receptacle you can lay you mucky hands on. To the brim. The ride hasn’t even begun yet..
Calling him a puppet is .. err ... tendentious.
Now, of course, it is way too late for plebiscites. The boundaries will be set by war. My guess is that they will be much less favourable to Ukraine.
The whole episode has been, and will continue to be, absolutely disastrous for Ukraine, for Russia and for the West.
It is perfectly reasonable to point out that a different trajectory was possible.
Comes amid reports that average energy bills could hit £4,000 this year and concerns about Britain's energy security.
The justification?
"The Ukraine conflict and the climate crisis have the same underlying cause: the imperialist pursuit of land and resources for profit, concentrating power in the hands of toxic individuals and corporations."
https://twitter.com/Tony_Diver/status/1501501090570940418
It’s poorer people such as poor pensioners and those people working 3 jobs but still on the breadline I feel sorry for.
Getting off fossil fuels is a good long-term solution, but we need more domestic hydrocarbons not less for the transition, instead of relying upon Russian and Middle Eastern exports.
These idiots would never go and protest in Russia.
So have the UK and US finally killed this plan off? Was Polish suggestion ever really a runner ☹️
Are they not all currently in Rammerstien.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LS37SNYjg8w
Dismissing the contribution of the Empire and Commonwealth as mere combatants whilst we were fighting on our own is pretty shameful.
Wind isn't the answer. Solar isn't the answer. The answer is wind, solar, storage, nuclear, wave, tidal and probably a little bit of gas, even after the 2030s.
I don't despair about Russia. Putin is fearful. He saw what happened to Gaddafi. He fears the colour revolutions that have taken place everywhere. He knows he is vulnerable. That could be paranoia but it could also be realistic. Why does he need such draconian laws, such an enormous security state to defend him? Why does a non-oligarchic western-oriented liberal democracy in Ukraine horrify him so much?
There could be a generational effect here. Pure anecdotally I don't think Putin's support among young Russians is what it is amongst their parents or grandparents. There is only so long you can use the 'chaos of the past' argument to maintain support. How will Putin continue paying for his war? Continue paying for his security state? Can he really hide the flattening of Kiev from his own population? I don't know but the doubt gives me hope in this dark time.