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.
However. It's a lot easier to maintain an autocracy when you have huge export revenue. So it's a bit of a catch 22 unfortunately. We simply need more reliable supply from all sources and less demand from everybody.
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.
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.
I think you rather overestimate your ability to get anywhere before the Bomb drops - let alone afterwards. 9/11 taught us that all civilian aircraft are weapons (so planners will want them out of the sky) and the transition to war plan from the Square Leg Exercise had fuel rationing brought in rather early (and the planners will remember last September!). If you are truly thinking of getting out then I suspect you should be going today - rather than maybe in two weeks time.
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.
However. It's a lot easier to maintain an autocracy when you have huge export revenue. So it's a bit of a catch 22 unfortunately. We simply need more reliable supply from all sources and less demand from everybody.
That's the definition of a recession/depression isn't it ?
OT: Unalloyed joyous news from our suppliers this morning.
Boris Johnson is turning away Ukranian refugees to appease his anti-immigrant base support and shore up votes for the next election, according to a former Conservative minister.
Don't believe that. It is bound to take time for a department entirely focused on bureaucratic impediments and built on a default disbelief of any story, no matter how compelling and vouched, to an open door policy. And this starts from the top.
On the positive side a client my daughter was helping through her charity work got refugee status yesterday. He and his family were here from Aleppo (seriously). It took the system more than 2 years to give him that status which allows him to work. In Syria he was a qualified doctor. Everyone loses from a system like that.
David Gauke FBPE no less- what a surprise
It’s always Brexit with you, as I recall someone or other saying.
A lot of folk worrying about IHT can save themselves the bother now. Inflation, especially energy inflation, is going to solve the problem of all those stacks of supposed inheritance cash lying around waiting for Sunak to lay his grubby mitts on.
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.
My personal theory is that the Poles tried to not let a good crisis go to waste. They saw an opportunity to get rid of their ex-GDR hooptie Fulcrums and have them replaced for free with F-16s. The very public announcement was an attempt to bounce the US into agreeing the plan on a wave of public opinion. The Pentagon told them to get fucked.
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.
I think you overestimate your ability to get anywhere before the Bomb drops - let alone afterwards. 9/11 taught us that all civilian aircraft are weapons (so planners will want them out of the sky) and the transition to war plan from the Square Leg Exercise had fuel rationing brought in rather early (and the planners will remember last September!). If you are truly thinking of getting out then I suspect you should be going today - rather than maybe in two weeks time.
Timing is everything, I agree. At the moment the trigger point would be a detonation of a tactical nuke in Ukraine. A few days of escalation and last ditch diplomacy likely to ensue before armageddon.
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.
But back then the Empire was British. The Indians were British.
So they're covered by the claim of "Britain alone". Britain covered the entire British Empire.
Hence Windrush etc generations later - the Windrush migrants were Britons before and after they migrated which is why they never had any paperwork for acquiring British citizenship - they didn't need to acquire that which they already had.
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.
Ukraine had a plebiscite. Every region voted for independence from Russia. In the Donbass, 81% voted for independence.
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 think there is still a problem. You have to transport whatever it is to your country, and that's a link that can easily be severed.
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.
My personal theory is that the Poles tried to not let a good crisis go to waste. They saw an opportunity to get rid of their ex-GDR hooptie Fulcrums and have them replaced for free with F-16s. The very public announcement was an attempt to bounce the US into agreeing the plan on a wave of public opinion. The Pentagon told them to get fucked.
This could be tactically quite useful. It focuses all the escalation talk on a few warplanes that may be of limited use anyway, and reinforces that the US is taking care not to escalate. Meanwhile Ukraine gets ongoing top ups of defensive weaponry and Turkish drones.
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.
My personal theory is that the Poles tried to not let a good crisis go to waste. They saw an opportunity to get rid of their ex-GDR hooptie Fulcrums and have them replaced for free with F-16s. The very public announcement was an attempt to bounce the US into agreeing the plan on a wave of public opinion. The Pentagon told them to get fucked.
Poland’s had a good war thus far. That little finesse would have made it a great war. In more ways than one.
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.
Ukraine had a plebiscite. Every region voted for independence from Russia. In the Donbass, 81% voted for independence.
John Major was Prime Minister then.
It is perfectly reasonable for the matter to be revisited.
> 30 years is a definition of a generation that might even get past HYUFD.
Boris Johnson is turning away Ukranian refugees to appease his anti-immigrant base support and shore up votes for the next election, according to a former Conservative minister.
Don't believe that. It is bound to take time for a department entirely focused on bureaucratic impediments and built on a default disbelief of any story, no matter how compelling and vouched, to an open door policy. And this starts from the top.
On the positive side a client my daughter was helping through her charity work got refugee status yesterday. He and his family were here from Aleppo (seriously). It took the system more than 2 years to give him that status which allows him to work. In Syria he was a qualified doctor. Everyone loses from a system like that.
David Gauke FBPE no less- what a surprise
It’s always Brexit with you, as I recall someone or other saying.
Is this an unfair sky hatchet job on the Tory party,
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.
I mostly agree, save for one part. Given what the Germans did in the Soviet Union, it was inevitable that the Red Army would take savage revenge when they invaded the Reich. We (by which I mean the Western Allies) suffered less, but we still took brutal revenge on both Germany and Japan.
*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.
I had pet rats as a child. They are really delightful and charming animals and I am finding this whole discussion rather horrible!
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.
Ukraine had a plebiscite. Every region voted for independence from Russia. In the Donbass, 81% voted for independence.
John Major was Prime Minister then.
It is perfectly reasonable for the matter to be revisited.
> 30 years is a definition of a generation that might even get past HYUFD.
And if they'd voted for a government that wanted to revisit it, you might even have a point.
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.
Ukraine had a plebiscite. Every region voted for independence from Russia. In the Donbass, 81% voted for independence.
John Major was Prime Minister then.
It is perfectly reasonable for the matter to be revisited.
> 30 years is a definition of a generation that might even get past HYUFD.
You said it was a point we should have insisted on much earlier. Too early?
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.
I think you overestimate your ability to get anywhere before the Bomb drops - let alone afterwards. 9/11 taught us that all civilian aircraft are weapons (so planners will want them out of the sky) and the transition to war plan from the Square Leg Exercise had fuel rationing brought in rather early (and the planners will remember last September!). If you are truly thinking of getting out then I suspect you should be going today - rather than maybe in two weeks time.
Timing is everything, I agree. At the moment the trigger point would be a detonation of a tactical nuke in Ukraine. A few days of escalation and last ditch diplomacy likely to ensue before armageddon.
If a nuke goes off everything will be grounded and the aviation fuel impounded for government use. I'd also expect the ferries to stop sailing.
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.
If enough of the things are let off, it won't matter. You'll get all the fallout from the US. Nowhere north of the trade winds is going to be any good.
Southern hemisphere only, I reckon. Preferably somewhere reasonably warm in case of global cooling.
It has to be self-sufficient in food and not prone to anarchy.
Doesn't leave a lot - particularly if Australia and New Zealand are on the hit list.
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.
However. It's a lot easier to maintain an autocracy when you have huge export revenue. So it's a bit of a catch 22 unfortunately. We simply need more reliable supply from all sources and less demand from everybody.
That's the definition of a recession/depression isn't it ?
OT: Unalloyed joyous news from our suppliers this morning.
Not necessarily. I'm talking about unnecessary usage that's all. I go into people's houses sometimes and have to take off several layers. It is genuinely uncomfortably warm. Turn down your thermostats by a couple of degrees. Don't heat rooms you don't use. My ex- neighbours have 4 cars between 4, two of them SUV's, and drive to the next street to visit mother/granny when it would be as quick to walk. Often in two cars. Shops lit up when closed as bright as when open. Even having appliances on standby. There hasn't been much of a move to inform anyone of just how much can be saved with just these few, painless acts.
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.
It's impossible to engage in this conversation without sounding like a gammon or a UK-hater, but - the declaration of war was that *this country* is at war with Germany; the BEF was UK plus a Canadian division; and the point of "Britain alone" was that we were sitting and being thwacked, not thwacking anyone else in large quantities, and it was us getting blitzed, not our empire. The relevant combatants were the mainly UK RAF with, yes, some very gallant assistance, and the UK RN in the channel.
Max Hastings rightly says that Churchill's narrative aboutt the whole thing was only "narrowly plausible," but the Britain alone element is one of the more credible bits of it. It wasn't New Delhi getting bombed.
I think Putin will retain a good deal of support purely by pursuing a Trumpesque theme of "make Russia great again". Russia has been screwed in multiple ways over the last 20 years, notably by its own leaders but also by the West, and "strong leader who sorts it out" must have a big constituency. It's murderous nonsense, especially when it results in an invasion, but I don't doubt the support for it.
There is an odd mis-perception of what politics in Russia is like. It's not a giant gulag. If you demonstrate against the war, the police will drag you away, possibly beat you, and throw you in a cell for a day or two, and that in most cases seems to be it - nasty, but not life-threatening. There are several well-known exceptions which show total unscrupulousness when the regime feels like it but on the whole it's fairly standard authoritarian regime stuff, comparable with Turkey and a bunch of other places that we don't think about much. There has even been a fair amount of tolerance of liberal media in Moscow - we're reading about outlets being closed down or restricted, but I suspect most of us (including me) didn't know they were tolerated up to now.
On the other hand, it's easy to underestimate the total lack of information that most Russians have about issues outside their immediate experience. Many Russians have limited interest in travelling abroad or accessing foreign media, much like other big countries (travel around in Nebraska and ask folk when they next plan to visit France and you'll get some baffled looks). They know there's a war on and the West is angry, and no doubt hope the army will win soon without too much bloodshed and things will calm down.
The one group who really know what's going on and could do something about it is the military. They will be very frustrated with the problems in the war, but for the time being mainly focused on winning it. They may be tempted to sue for peace eventually, but for now I suspect their pressure is in the opposite direction - for systematic rather than sporadic bombardment of cities and none of this humanitarian corridor stuff. Hoping they seize power and get rid of Putin may not be sensible.
As I said in reply to Leon a couple of days ago, I see Putin as a czarist militarist and have no sympathy whatever for him or his war, although for family reasons I'm not instinctively anti-Russian. But ultimately he's a symptom rather than a cause, and we need to avoid feeding the idea that the West is out to encircle Russia and damage it as much as we can. We are largely spectators and should avoid becoming part of the problem. Our policy up to now - sanctions on Russia, defensive arms to Ukraine - feels right. But the objective should be to support a settlement that ends the killing and reduces the paranoia level - not to achieve a "victory" to leverage regime change in Russia - because ultimately that may mean fighting to the last Ukrainian to achieve a resulting change for the worse.
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.
If "women" can be redefined to mean whatever men say it means, can we women do the same? In the name of gender equality I mean? Could we, ooh I don't know, instead of calling them men call them potential rapists and murderers instead. After all, the vast majority of rapes and murders are committed by men and some women feel very strongly about this and so what if they're a minority, their feelings matter. Feelings are what count. Have I got this right?
So. There we have it. "Men" is now old hat. Men who use it are VAMs (Violence Accepting Misogynists). The correct term is now PRaM. Men who object are throwing toys out of their prams as well as being a PRaM.
You have legitimate concerns to this, you say.
I'm sorry. But these are "not valid". (Copyright Nicola Sturgeon).
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.
My personal theory is that the Poles tried to not let a good crisis go to waste. They saw an opportunity to get rid of their ex-GDR hooptie Fulcrums and have them replaced for free with F-16s. The very public announcement was an attempt to bounce the US into agreeing the plan on a wave of public opinion. The Pentagon told them to get fucked.
This could be tactically quite useful. It focuses all the escalation talk on a few warplanes that may be of limited use anyway, and reinforces that the US is taking care not to escalate. Meanwhile Ukraine gets ongoing top ups of defensive weaponry and Turkish drones.
Turkey do have a vested interest preserving Ukraine as the next Bayraktar UAS (the bigger and more sophisticated Akinci) uses Ukranian designed and built engines.
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 think there is still a problem. You have to transport whatever it is to your country, and that's a link that can easily be severed.
On the other hand, the theory of comparative advantage tells you that aurarky is a highly inefficient way to organise your economy, and the economic gains that come from specialisation could also prove critical in a conflict. The UK was highly dependent on imported good and fuel during WW1 and WW2 and we still won.
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.
Ukraine had a plebiscite. Every region voted for independence from Russia. In the Donbass, 81% voted for independence.
John Major was Prime Minister then.
It is perfectly reasonable for the matter to be revisited.
> 30 years is a definition of a generation that might even get past HYUFD.
Any region of any country that hasn't recently voted to remain part of said country is liable to legal annexation by Russia?
*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.
I had pet rats as a child. They are really delightful and charming animals and I am finding this whole discussion rather horrible!
Are you sure it was not a filigree Siberian hamster?
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 think there is still a problem. You have to transport whatever it is to your country, and that's a link that can easily be severed.
On the other hand, the theory of comparative advantage tells you that aurarky is a highly inefficient way to organise your economy, and the economic gains that come from specialisation could also prove critical in a conflict. The UK was highly dependent on imported good and fuel during WW1 and WW2 and we still won.
Just disagreeing with the claim that there is "nothing wrong" with being dependent on other countries. There is a risk associated with it.
Boris Johnson is turning away Ukranian refugees to appease his anti-immigrant base support and shore up votes for the next election, according to a former Conservative minister.
Don't believe that. It is bound to take time for a department entirely focused on bureaucratic impediments and built on a default disbelief of any story, no matter how compelling and vouched, to an open door policy. And this starts from the top.
On the positive side a client my daughter was helping through her charity work got refugee status yesterday. He and his family were here from Aleppo (seriously). It took the system more than 2 years to give him that status which allows him to work. In Syria he was a qualified doctor. Everyone loses from a system like that.
David Gauke FBPE no less- what a surprise
It’s always Brexit with you, as I recall someone or other saying.
Is this an unfair sky hatchet job on the Tory party,
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.
Ukraine had a plebiscite. Every region voted for independence from Russia. In the Donbass, 81% voted for independence.
John Major was Prime Minister then.
It is perfectly reasonable for the matter to be revisited.
> 30 years is a definition of a generation that might even get past HYUFD.
And if they'd voted for a government that wanted to revisit it, you might even have a point.
They didn't.
I think peoples in a disputed territory have a right to call and hold a border poll. It is obviously not the case that the whole country gets to decide.
Let us suppose -- as seems to be the prevailing pb.com orthodoxy -- that Ukraine would have easily won a poll in the Donbas.
Then, it was very stupid not to have held one in accord with Minsk II.
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 think there is still a problem. You have to transport whatever it is to your country, and that's a link that can easily be severed.
On the other hand, the theory of comparative advantage tells you that aurarky is a highly inefficient way to organise your economy, and the economic gains that come from specialisation could also prove critical in a conflict. The UK was highly dependent on imported good and fuel during WW1 and WW2 and we still won.
That's true, but we spent an awful lot of blood and treasure on keeping those import routes open. 3,500 ships, 72,000 lives.
A lot of folk worrying about IHT can save themselves the bother now. Inflation, especially energy inflation, is going to solve the problem of all those stacks of supposed inheritance cash lying around waiting for Sunak to lay his grubby mitts on.
It’s the “lawyers” (sic) I feel sorry for.
Hardly, given all the further rises in house prices to inherit via house price inflation, especially in London and the Home Counties
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.
I think you overestimate your ability to get anywhere before the Bomb drops - let alone afterwards. 9/11 taught us that all civilian aircraft are weapons (so planners will want them out of the sky) and the transition to war plan from the Square Leg Exercise had fuel rationing brought in rather early (and the planners will remember last September!). If you are truly thinking of getting out then I suspect you should be going today - rather than maybe in two weeks time.
Timing is everything, I agree. At the moment the trigger point would be a detonation of a tactical nuke in Ukraine. A few days of escalation and last ditch diplomacy likely to ensue before armageddon.
Learn to sail and buy your own ocean-going group boat stocked with food.
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.
Ukraine had a plebiscite. Every region voted for independence from Russia. In the Donbass, 81% voted for independence.
John Major was Prime Minister then.
It is perfectly reasonable for the matter to be revisited.
> 30 years is a definition of a generation that might even get past HYUFD.
And if they'd voted for a government that wanted to revisit it, you might even have a point.
They didn't.
I think peoples in a disputed territory have a right to call and hold a border poll. It is obviously not the case that the whole country gets to decide.
Let us suppose -- as seems to be the prevailing pb.com orthodoxy -- that Ukraine would have easily won a poll in the Donbas.
Then, it was very stupid not to have held one in accord with Minsk II.
You are talking straight out of your backside.
They did have a poll in the Donbas, it was won by 81% in the Donbas and no government was ever elected since to hold another one. 🤦♂️
An external aggressor, who lost the last border poll, doesn't get to just invade to force another one and rig the results. That's not democracy. If the people who "dispute" the border want to change it democratically the way to do that is to win an election with a mandate for a referendum pledging a new poll - that never happened.
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.
I think you overestimate your ability to get anywhere before the Bomb drops - let alone afterwards. 9/11 taught us that all civilian aircraft are weapons (so planners will want them out of the sky) and the transition to war plan from the Square Leg Exercise had fuel rationing brought in rather early (and the planners will remember last September!). If you are truly thinking of getting out then I suspect you should be going today - rather than maybe in two weeks time.
Timing is everything, I agree. At the moment the trigger point would be a detonation of a tactical nuke in Ukraine. A few days of escalation and last ditch diplomacy likely to ensue before armageddon.
Learn to sail and buy your own ocean-going group boat stocked with food.
Good luck.
And don't skimp on the sextant work. Beidou and glonass may no longer be your friends.
Not sure if regime change is a good objective, seems like it might risk nuclear war.
But I don't really see a way out for Putin. Even if he wins the war in Ukraine and installs a government and eventually some kind of normality comes back... why would the West drop the sanctions?
He's woken Europe up - they are going to be spending a lot more on their military now, and presumably will have far superior armed forces very soon, if they don't already.
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.
Ukraine had a plebiscite. Every region voted for independence from Russia. In the Donbass, 81% voted for independence.
John Major was Prime Minister then.
It is perfectly reasonable for the matter to be revisited.
> 30 years is a definition of a generation that might even get past HYUFD.
Any region of any country that hasn't recently voted to remain part of said country is liable to legal annexation by Russia?
Sturgeon better hurry up!
From previous attempts at this conversation - apparently "old borders" are sacrosanct. Because reasons.
We have also had 2 polls that show that there is high support for the Ukraine and low support for anything like leaving in the East and South of Ukraine. But apparently polls don't count.
I think Putin will retain a good deal of support purely by pursuing a Trumpesque theme of "make Russia great again". Russia has been screwed in multiple ways over the last 20 years, notably by its own leaders but also by the West, and "strong leader who sorts it out" must have a big constituency. It's murderous nonsense, especially when it results in an invasion, but I don't doubt the support for it.
There is an odd mis-perception of what politics in Russia is like. It's not a giant gulag. If you demonstrate against the war, the police will drag you away, possibly beat you, and throw you in a cell for a day or two, and that in most cases seems to be it - nasty, but not life-threatening. There are several well-known exceptions which show total unscrupulousness when the regime feels like it but on the whole it's fairly standard authoritarian regime stuff, comparable with Turkey and a bunch of other places that we don't think about much. There has even been a fair amount of tolerance of liberal media in Moscow - we're reading about outlets being closed down or restricted, but I suspect most of us (including me) didn't know they were tolerated up to now.
On the other hand, it's easy to underestimate the total lack of information that most Russians have about issues outside their immediate experience. Many Russians have limited interest in travelling abroad or accessing foreign media, much like other big countries (travel around in Nebraska and ask folk when they next plan to visit France and you'll get some baffled looks). They know there's a war on and the West is angry, and no doubt hope the army will win soon without too much bloodshed and things will calm down.
The one group who really know what's going on and could do something about it is the military. They will be very frustrated with the problems in the war, but for the time being mainly focused on winning it. They may be tempted to sue for peace eventually, but for now I suspect their pressure is in the opposite direction - for systematic rather than sporadic bombardment of cities and none of this humanitarian corridor stuff. Hoping they seize power and get rid of Putin may not be sensible.
As I said in reply to Leon a couple of days ago, I see Putin as a czarist militarist and have no sympathy whatever for him or his war, although for family reasons I'm not instinctively anti-Russian. But ultimately he's a symptom rather than a cause, and we need to avoid feeding the idea that the West is out to encircle Russia and damage it as much as we can. We are largely spectators and should avoid becoming part of the problem. Our policy up to now - sanctions on Russia, defensive arms to Ukraine - feels right. But the objective should be to support a settlement that ends the killing and reduces the paranoia level - not to achieve a "victory" to leverage regime change in Russia - because ultimately that may mean fighting to the last Ukrainian to achieve a resulting change for the worse.
I think your posts on Russia have been really exemplary.
I know a substantial number of Russian academics (both in Russia and in the West).
They all deplore the war & despise Putin.
But they (almost) all believe that the West is out to get Russia. Not Putin -- Russia.
And most of them believe that Crimea or Donbas or Odessa are Russian. So, although Putin is despised, there is considerate sympathy for his aims -- even among educated Russians.
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.
Ukraine had a plebiscite. Every region voted for independence from Russia. In the Donbass, 81% voted for independence.
John Major was Prime Minister then.
It is perfectly reasonable for the matter to be revisited.
> 30 years is a definition of a generation that might even get past HYUFD.
And if they'd voted for a government that wanted to revisit it, you might even have a point.
They didn't.
I think peoples in a disputed territory have a right to call and hold a border poll. It is obviously not the case that the whole country gets to decide.
Let us suppose -- as seems to be the prevailing pb.com orthodoxy -- that Ukraine would have easily won a poll in the Donbas.
Then, it was very stupid not to have held one in accord with Minsk II.
1991 is not so far removed from 1998. The Belfast Agreement was endorsed by a clear majority North and South. It's clear that most people in Northern Ireland would currently vote to remain in the UK. Why have a further vote when it's clear what the result would be?
A lot of folk worrying about IHT can save themselves the bother now. Inflation, especially energy inflation, is going to solve the problem of all those stacks of supposed inheritance cash lying around waiting for Sunak to lay his grubby mitts on.
It’s the “lawyers” (sic) I feel sorry for.
Most UK inheritance is in houses.
UK Housing £9.2T [1] UK Deposits £3.5T [2] UK Gilts £1.9T [3] Value of FTSE £1.8T [4]
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 am aware of that. But the Indian Army was, largely, in India. No?
It did, of course, contribute significantly to the defeat of Japan and was active elsewhere. But it was not in a position to do all that much while the Battle of Britain raged.
It's a broadbrush statement, but Britain did stand alone for a period of time during WW2. And its not "pretty shameful" to remind ourselves of that fact.
A lot of folk worrying about IHT can save themselves the bother now. Inflation, especially energy inflation, is going to solve the problem of all those stacks of supposed inheritance cash lying around waiting for Sunak to lay his grubby mitts on.
It’s the “lawyers” (sic) I feel sorry for.
Most UK inheritance is in houses.
UK Housing £9.2T [1] UK Deposits £3.5T [2] UK Gilts £1.9T [3] Value of FTSE £1.8T [4]
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.
Russia signed a deal with Ukraine for a naval base in Crimea during his presidency - the issue of plebiscites simply didn't exists back then, during an administration most likely to have looked sympathetically at them. The idea that they could usefully have taken place during the subsequent conflict with Russia is fanciful.
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?
Hi Nick, Interesting question. In fact the whole political spectrum of Estonia, with the exception of (the Populist/Ultra Nationalist/Agrarian) EKRE party, is probably inside the UK Liberal Democrats. Eesti 200 is an interesting fusion of the FDP and the Greens, and is making considerable progress. The PM´s party, Reform (classical Liberal), lost popularity after they went into coalition with Centre (populist Social Liberal) but Kaja Kallas has impressed with her success in putting out the Estonian point of view. The big losers are Centre and EKRE because both, in different ways, are seen as having made rather insidious compromises with Russia. I thnk my bet for the next coalition might be Reform/Eesti 200 and, depending on the electoral maths, maybe the SDE (Social Democrats) or Isamaa (Centre-right Conservatives). So clearly I think Eesti 200 will make it into the Riigikogu in May next year, but Reform has a more solid grass roots organisation and therefore I think that they will still be the biggest party.
That might explain part of their performance thus far.
Putin said "Send reinforcements, we are going to advance." The Generals heard "Send nine and fourpence. We are going to a dance."
That being said, the Russian Militaries performance in the field of interpretive dance, frankly, sucks.
Funny, pretty sure I heard Putin say the plan was to overthrow the Ukr government and get rid of all the drug addicts and nazi when this started. I'm sure the on-going military clusterfuck has had nothing to do with his new tone.
We should not believe a word. It is all lies.
As was discussed downthread this is like a drug cartel got hold of a shed load of nukes.
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.
My personal theory is that the Poles tried to not let a good crisis go to waste. They saw an opportunity to get rid of their ex-GDR hooptie Fulcrums and have them replaced for free with F-16s. The very public announcement was an attempt to bounce the US into agreeing the plan on a wave of public opinion. The Pentagon told them to get fucked.
That's nonsense, since that public statement said they would pay for the F16s. ...At the same time, Poland requests the United States to provide us with used aircraft with corresponding operational capabilities. Poland is ready to immediately establish the conditions of purchase of the planes. ...
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.
I think you overestimate your ability to get anywhere before the Bomb drops - let alone afterwards. 9/11 taught us that all civilian aircraft are weapons (so planners will want them out of the sky) and the transition to war plan from the Square Leg Exercise had fuel rationing brought in rather early (and the planners will remember last September!). If you are truly thinking of getting out then I suspect you should be going today - rather than maybe in two weeks time.
Timing is everything, I agree. At the moment the trigger point would be a detonation of a tactical nuke in Ukraine. A few days of escalation and last ditch diplomacy likely to ensue before armageddon.
Learn to sail and buy your own ocean-going group boat stocked with food.
Good luck.
E-bay has a fallout detector for sale. "Showing some light general use"
Has there not been an MOD Ukraine update these past two days?
Every morning:
Fighting north-west of Kyiv remains ongoing with Russian forces failing to make any significant breakthroughs.
The cities of Kharkiv, Chernihiv, Sumy and Mariupol remain encircled by Russian forces and continue to suffer heavy Russian shelling.
Ukrainian air defences appear to have enjoyed considerable success against Russia’s modern combat aircraft, probably preventing them achieving any degree of control of the air.
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 think there is still a problem. You have to transport whatever it is to your country, and that's a link that can easily be severed.
On the other hand, the theory of comparative advantage tells you that aurarky is a highly inefficient way to organise your economy, and the economic gains that come from specialisation could also prove critical in a conflict. The UK was highly dependent on imported good and fuel during WW1 and WW2 and we still won.
That's true, but we spent an awful lot of blood and treasure on keeping those import routes open. 3,500 ships, 72,000 lives.
Yes my grandad was an engineer in the merchant navy during ww2, he survived a torpedo attack in the Indian Ocean that sank his ship. He spent a few weeks in Ceylon as it was then before transferring to another ship at Trinco.
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.
The Nazis did enlist them on their side, but because they simultaneously considered Ukrainians racially inferior Slavs they tended to end up with the worst antisemitic nationalists eg Stepan Bandera. Bandera ended up working for West German intelligence after the war and was almost certainly assassinated by the Soviets. His well tended grave in Munich seems to have fresh flowers and Ukrainian flags laid there regularly which is…creepy.
Has there not been an MOD Ukraine update these past two days?
Every morning:
Fighting north-west of Kyiv remains ongoing with Russian forces failing to make any significant breakthroughs.
The cities of Kharkiv, Chernihiv, Sumy and Mariupol remain encircled by Russian forces and continue to suffer heavy Russian shelling.
Ukrainian air defences appear to have enjoyed considerable success against Russia’s modern combat aircraft, probably preventing them achieving any degree of control of the air.
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.
Ukraine had a plebiscite. Every region voted for independence from Russia. In the Donbass, 81% voted for independence.
John Major was Prime Minister then.
It is perfectly reasonable for the matter to be revisited.
> 30 years is a definition of a generation that might even get past HYUFD.
And if they'd voted for a government that wanted to revisit it, you might even have a point.
They didn't.
I think peoples in a disputed territory have a right to call and hold a border poll. It is obviously not the case that the whole country gets to decide.
Let us suppose -- as seems to be the prevailing pb.com orthodoxy -- that Ukraine would have easily won a poll in the Donbas.
Then, it was very stupid not to have held one in accord with Minsk II.
1991 is not so far removed from 1998. The Belfast Agreement was endorsed by a clear majority North and South. It's clear that most people in Northern Ireland would currently vote to remain in the UK. Why have a further vote when it's clear what the result would be?
Is it clear what the result would be?
I think the reason why the Scots were allowed to have a referendum is precisely because English politicians like Cameron & Clegg thought "it was clear what the result would be".
The campaign changed peoples minds rather dramatically.
My guess is a border poll in N Ireland would be very close -- especially if the Nationalists run a better campaign than the Unionists.
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 great faith in the will of the people, but democratic countries can still enter disputes, or even conflicts. And when push comes to shove, all countries will prioritise their own interests, as they should. So we should not be dependent for key resources on any other countries, regardless of their democratic credentials.
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.
My personal theory is that the Poles tried to not let a good crisis go to waste. They saw an opportunity to get rid of their ex-GDR hooptie Fulcrums and have them replaced for free with F-16s. The very public announcement was an attempt to bounce the US into agreeing the plan on a wave of public opinion. The Pentagon told them to get fucked.
That's nonsense, since that public statement said they would pay for the F16s. ...At the same time, Poland requests the United States to provide us with used aircraft with corresponding operational capabilities. Poland is ready to immediately establish the conditions of purchase of the planes. ...
Yeah, like they "paid" Germany for the Fulcrums in the first place. 1€ for 23 jets.
That might explain part of their performance thus far.
Putin said "Send reinforcements, we are going to advance." The Generals heard "Send nine and fourpence. We are going to a dance."
That being said, the Russian Militaries performance in the field of interpretive dance, frankly, sucks.
Funny, pretty sure I heard Putin say the plan was to overthrow the Ukr government and get rid of all the drug addicts and nazi when this started. I'm sure the on-going military clusterfuck has had nothing to do with his new tone.
We should not believe a word. It is all lies.
As was discussed downthread this is like a drug cartel got hold of a shed load of nukes.
Only one response needed to any statement from Russia: yeah, right.
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 am aware of that. But the Indian Army was, largely, in India. No?
It did, of course, contribute significantly to the defeat of Japan and was active elsewhere. But it was not in a position to do all that much while the Battle of Britain raged.
It's a broadbrush statement, but Britain did stand alone for a period of time during WW2. And its not "pretty shameful" to remind ourselves of that fact.
No, it was spread over the globe far and wide, places like Iraq, Malaya, Egypt, Sudan, Hong Kong, Singapore. There were also Indian Army forces fighting in France and evacuated from Dunkirk.
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.
If "women" can be redefined to mean whatever men say it means, can we women do the same? In the name of gender equality I mean? Could we, ooh I don't know, instead of calling them men call them potential rapists and murderers instead. After all, the vast majority of rapes and murders are committed by men and some women feel very strongly about this and so what if they're a minority, their feelings matter. Feelings are what count. Have I got this right?
So. There we have it. "Men" is now old hat. Men who use it are VAMs (Violence Accepting Misogynists). The correct term is now PRaM. Men who object are throwing toys out of their prams as well as being a PRaM.
You have legitimate concerns to this, you say.
I'm sorry. But these are "not valid". (Copyright Nicola Sturgeon).
I think Putin will retain a good deal of support purely by pursuing a Trumpesque theme of "make Russia great again". Russia has been screwed in multiple ways over the last 20 years, notably by its own leaders but also by the West, and "strong leader who sorts it out" must have a big constituency. It's murderous nonsense, especially when it results in an invasion, but I don't doubt the support for it.
There is an odd mis-perception of what politics in Russia is like. It's not a giant gulag. If you demonstrate against the war, the police will drag you away, possibly beat you, and throw you in a cell for a day or two, and that in most cases seems to be it - nasty, but not life-threatening. There are several well-known exceptions which show total unscrupulousness when the regime feels like it but on the whole it's fairly standard authoritarian regime stuff, comparable with Turkey and a bunch of other places that we don't think about much. There has even been a fair amount of tolerance of liberal media in Moscow - we're reading about outlets being closed down or restricted, but I suspect most of us (including me) didn't know they were tolerated up to now.
On the other hand, it's easy to underestimate the total lack of information that most Russians have about issues outside their immediate experience. Many Russians have limited interest in travelling abroad or accessing foreign media, much like other big countries (travel around in Nebraska and ask folk when they next plan to visit France and you'll get some baffled looks). They know there's a war on and the West is angry, and no doubt hope the army will win soon without too much bloodshed and things will calm down.
The one group who really know what's going on and could do something about it is the military. They will be very frustrated with the problems in the war, but for the time being mainly focused on winning it. They may be tempted to sue for peace eventually, but for now I suspect their pressure is in the opposite direction - for systematic rather than sporadic bombardment of cities and none of this humanitarian corridor stuff. Hoping they seize power and get rid of Putin may not be sensible.
As I said in reply to Leon a couple of days ago, I see Putin as a czarist militarist and have no sympathy whatever for him or his war, although for family reasons I'm not instinctively anti-Russian. But ultimately he's a symptom rather than a cause, and we need to avoid feeding the idea that the West is out to encircle Russia and damage it as much as we can. We are largely spectators and should avoid becoming part of the problem. Our policy up to now - sanctions on Russia, defensive arms to Ukraine - feels right. But the objective should be to support a settlement that ends the killing and reduces the paranoia level - not to achieve a "victory" to leverage regime change in Russia - because ultimately that may mean fighting to the last Ukrainian to achieve a resulting change for the worse.
I think your posts on Russia have been really exemplary.
I know a substantial number of Russian academics (both in Russia and in the West).
They all deplore the war & despise Putin.
But they (almost) all believe that the West is out to get Russia. Not Putin -- Russia.
And most of them believe that Crimea or Donbas or Odessa are Russian. So, although Putin is despised, there is considerate sympathy for his aims -- even among educated Russians.
Are they aware that there are Russian islands claimed by Japan? That historically China claimed 1.5m sq km of Siberia? Do they want to let Kalinigrad go?
Kiev was in many ways the initial Russian city. It's birthplace. So perhaps the logical conclusion would be for the Russian state to be dissolved and incorporated into Ukraine with Kyiv as the capital? Now I think this is nonsense but no less justifiable than Mr Putin's thinking.
To be honest if Russians are mourning their country's decline they'd be better off finding ways to stop educated young people from leaving. The number of trains going from St Petersburg to Helsinki has doubled in recent days. I think the traffic is one way.
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.
Ukraine had a plebiscite. Every region voted for independence from Russia. In the Donbass, 81% voted for independence.
John Major was Prime Minister then.
It is perfectly reasonable for the matter to be revisited.
> 30 years is a definition of a generation that might even get past HYUFD.
And if they'd voted for a government that wanted to revisit it, you might even have a point.
They didn't.
I think peoples in a disputed territory have a right to call and hold a border poll. It is obviously not the case that the whole country gets to decide.
Let us suppose -- as seems to be the prevailing pb.com orthodoxy -- that Ukraine would have easily won a poll in the Donbas.
Then, it was very stupid not to have held one in accord with Minsk II.
1991 is not so far removed from 1998. The Belfast Agreement was endorsed by a clear majority North and South. It's clear that most people in Northern Ireland would currently vote to remain in the UK. Why have a further vote when it's clear what the result would be?
Is it clear what the result would be?
I think the reason why the Scots were allowed to have a referendum is precisely because English politicians like Cameron & Clegg thought "it was clear what the result would be".
The campaign changed peoples minds rather dramatically.
My guess is a border poll in N Ireland would be very close -- especially if the Nationalists run a better campaign than the Unionists.
There is zero chance of the NI Secretary allowing a border poll, especially when Unionist parties win more votes still than Nationalist parties. Unless the Alliance change their policy of opposing a border poll at the moment then Stormont would vote down a border poll anyway even if SF were largest party in May and proposed it.
Though I agree on the broader point, Cameron took risks on referendums, in Scotland Unionists scraped home (if Yes had won he would have resigned), on the EU though his gamble failed and his premiership was then over.
No PMs are going to willingly allow more referendums which if lost would lead to their resignation anytime soon. They are too unpredictable
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.
Ukraine had a plebiscite. Every region voted for independence from Russia. In the Donbass, 81% voted for independence.
John Major was Prime Minister then.
It is perfectly reasonable for the matter to be revisited.
> 30 years is a definition of a generation that might even get past HYUFD.
And if they'd voted for a government that wanted to revisit it, you might even have a point.
They didn't.
I think peoples in a disputed territory have a right to call and hold a border poll. It is obviously not the case that the whole country gets to decide.
Let us suppose -- as seems to be the prevailing pb.com orthodoxy -- that Ukraine would have easily won a poll in the Donbas.
Then, it was very stupid not to have held one in accord with Minsk II.
1991 is not so far removed from 1998. The Belfast Agreement was endorsed by a clear majority North and South. It's clear that most people in Northern Ireland would currently vote to remain in the UK. Why have a further vote when it's clear what the result would be?
Is it clear what the result would be?
I think the reason why the Scots were allowed to have a referendum is precisely because English politicians like Cameron & Clegg thought "it was clear what the result would be".
The campaign changed peoples minds rather dramatically.
My guess is a border poll in N Ireland would be very close -- especially if the Nationalists run a better campaign than the Unionists.
The Scottish nationalists won an election pledging a referendum.
Irish and "Russian" nationalists have not.
Is this so difficult for you to understand? What's your problem with democracy, Vlad?
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.
My personal theory is that the Poles tried to not let a good crisis go to waste. They saw an opportunity to get rid of their ex-GDR hooptie Fulcrums and have them replaced for free with F-16s. The very public announcement was an attempt to bounce the US into agreeing the plan on a wave of public opinion. The Pentagon told them to get fucked.
That's nonsense, since that public statement said they would pay for the F16s. ...At the same time, Poland requests the United States to provide us with used aircraft with corresponding operational capabilities. Poland is ready to immediately establish the conditions of purchase of the planes. ...
My guess is that that the State dept. is the one pushing back on such a deal.
Where would they be getting F16 C/D (such as the Poles already have), from? More recent F16s would surely require a great deal of re-training, different maintenance etc.
Another question - if they strip out the Western upgrades from the Polish Migs, do they have equipment to replace it with? Seems unlikely that they have all the original Russian gear sat in a warehouse.
Yet another - surely spare parts and maintenance must be a big issue for the Ukrainians with their existing aircraft?
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.
My personal theory is that the Poles tried to not let a good crisis go to waste. They saw an opportunity to get rid of their ex-GDR hooptie Fulcrums and have them replaced for free with F-16s. The very public announcement was an attempt to bounce the US into agreeing the plan on a wave of public opinion. The Pentagon told them to get fucked.
That's nonsense, since that public statement said they would pay for the F16s. ...At the same time, Poland requests the United States to provide us with used aircraft with corresponding operational capabilities. Poland is ready to immediately establish the conditions of purchase of the planes. ...
Yeah, like they "paid" Germany for the Fulcrums in the first place. 1€ for 23 jets.
Err? The Germans were looking to dump the Migs for scrap. The Poles offered to take them off their hands....
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.
Ukraine had a plebiscite. Every region voted for independence from Russia. In the Donbass, 81% voted for independence.
John Major was Prime Minister then.
It is perfectly reasonable for the matter to be revisited.
> 30 years is a definition of a generation that might even get past HYUFD.
And if they'd voted for a government that wanted to revisit it, you might even have a point.
They didn't.
I think peoples in a disputed territory have a right to call and hold a border poll. It is obviously not the case that the whole country gets to decide.
Let us suppose -- as seems to be the prevailing pb.com orthodoxy -- that Ukraine would have easily won a poll in the Donbas.
Then, it was very stupid not to have held one in accord with Minsk II.
1991 is not so far removed from 1998. The Belfast Agreement was endorsed by a clear majority North and South. It's clear that most people in Northern Ireland would currently vote to remain in the UK. Why have a further vote when it's clear what the result would be?
Is it clear what the result would be?
I think the reason why the Scots were allowed to have a referendum is precisely because English politicians like Cameron & Clegg thought "it was clear what the result would be".
The campaign changed peoples minds rather dramatically.
My guess is a border poll in N Ireland would be very close -- especially if the Nationalists run a better campaign than the Unionists.
The Scottish nationalists won an election pledging a referendum.
Irish and "Russian" nationalists have not.
Is this so difficult for you to understand? What's your problem with democracy, Vlad?
Russian flag waving minorities greeting Russian columns with bread and salt seem to be in very short supply. Indeed in places like Kharkiv, Mariopol or Kherson with significant Russian minorities the people seem rather keen on being Ukranian, whatever their ethnicity
*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.
I had pet rats as a child. They are really delightful and charming animals and I am finding this whole discussion rather horrible!
One of the more unpleasant experience of my life was while visiting a bloke in Edinburgh from whom I used to buy Ducati parts. He was a perfectly nice bloke but on this one visit to his new house which he was doing up, he discerned rat noises from his utility room and was consumed with an unholy blood lust. I had to stand by trying not to look like a softy as he pulled away appliances and cupboards, and then beat the unfortunate animal to death with a tire iron or similar. Not one of my prouder moments.
I just read the very kind comments and likes from several posters, thank you. I am glad that people from across the political spectrum are finding my contributions helpful. PTPs comment about Alistair Cooke did make me blush: he was a commentator who really was the very best. Anyway, back to work.
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.
Ukraine had a plebiscite. Every region voted for independence from Russia. In the Donbass, 81% voted for independence.
John Major was Prime Minister then.
It is perfectly reasonable for the matter to be revisited.
> 30 years is a definition of a generation that might even get past HYUFD.
And if they'd voted for a government that wanted to revisit it, you might even have a point.
They didn't.
I think peoples in a disputed territory have a right to call and hold a border poll. It is obviously not the case that the whole country gets to decide.
Let us suppose -- as seems to be the prevailing pb.com orthodoxy -- that Ukraine would have easily won a poll in the Donbas.
Then, it was very stupid not to have held one in accord with Minsk II.
1991 is not so far removed from 1998. The Belfast Agreement was endorsed by a clear majority North and South. It's clear that most people in Northern Ireland would currently vote to remain in the UK. Why have a further vote when it's clear what the result would be?
Is it clear what the result would be?
I think the reason why the Scots were allowed to have a referendum is precisely because English politicians like Cameron & Clegg thought "it was clear what the result would be".
The campaign changed peoples minds rather dramatically.
My guess is a border poll in N Ireland would be very close -- especially if the Nationalists run a better campaign than the Unionists.
The Scottish nationalists won an election pledging a referendum.
Irish and "Russian" nationalists have not.
Is this so difficult for you to understand? What's your problem with democracy, Vlad?
The plebiscites were part of Minsk 2, which democratically elected Ukrainian politicians signed up to.
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.
I remember seeing one old working estimate for a full-scale nuclear attack from the USSR that had about 15 million immediate dead, and a further 30 million dead over the next couple of weeks. Of course those estimates were likely to be on the low side as models tended to focus on blast and radiation, which are easy to model, and often excluded fire which is hard to model. Some people now think that fires would have accounted for the majority of immediate deaths. It's quite likely that within a few months 90% of the UK population would have died. The remaining 10% wouldn't be doing too well either what with all the disease, famine, and collapse of civilization.
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.
I think you overestimate your ability to get anywhere before the Bomb drops - let alone afterwards. 9/11 taught us that all civilian aircraft are weapons (so planners will want them out of the sky) and the transition to war plan from the Square Leg Exercise had fuel rationing brought in rather early (and the planners will remember last September!). If you are truly thinking of getting out then I suspect you should be going today - rather than maybe in two weeks time.
Timing is everything, I agree. At the moment the trigger point would be a detonation of a tactical nuke in Ukraine. A few days of escalation and last ditch diplomacy likely to ensue before armageddon.
Learn to sail and buy your own ocean-going group boat stocked with food.
Good luck.
And don't skimp on the sextant work. Beidou and glonass may no longer be your friends.
You'll need a really good watch/clock too. Won't be able to rely on nuclear clocks hooked up to the internet.
Most clocks/watches seem to be really rubbish in this regard, because they don't need to be any better.
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.
My personal theory is that the Poles tried to not let a good crisis go to waste. They saw an opportunity to get rid of their ex-GDR hooptie Fulcrums and have them replaced for free with F-16s. The very public announcement was an attempt to bounce the US into agreeing the plan on a wave of public opinion. The Pentagon told them to get fucked.
That's nonsense, since that public statement said they would pay for the F16s. ...At the same time, Poland requests the United States to provide us with used aircraft with corresponding operational capabilities. Poland is ready to immediately establish the conditions of purchase of the planes. ...
Yeah, like they "paid" Germany for the Fulcrums in the first place. 1€ for 23 jets.
It's a negotiation that would depend on the willingness of the seller. Were the Fulcrums any use at all to Germany, or just a liability ?
"Oz Katerji @OzKaterji As someone who has been a fierce critic of Boris Johnson for a long time, it must be said, as far as Ukrainians I speak to are concerned, he is the best ally Ukraine has. I honestly take no pleasure in reporting this but it’s indisputably true. Come here & ask people yourself."
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 am aware of that. But the Indian Army was, largely, in India. No?
It did, of course, contribute significantly to the defeat of Japan and was active elsewhere. But it was not in a position to do all that much while the Battle of Britain raged.
It's a broadbrush statement, but Britain did stand alone for a period of time during WW2. And its not "pretty shameful" to remind ourselves of that fact.
No, it was spread over the globe far and wide, places like Iraq, Malaya, Egypt, Sudan, Hong Kong, Singapore. There were also Indian Army forces fighting in France and evacuated from Dunkirk.
Careful, you’ll give Lozza Burgessian Fox conniptions.
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.
If there's some question like "do you favour amending the Equality Act so that in these situations where the courts have interpreted the law as X, it will instead be Y", that's something she could plausibly answer. Is that what they were asking her?
On the issue of Russia being screwed by the west. I'm less sure about the 90s but consider:
George Bush Snr going to Ukraine urging them not to leave the Soviet Union. Inheriting the Soviet Union seat on the security council Being allowed to join the G7 in spite of not meeting the appropriate criteria Post Iraq Condi Rice saying punish France and forgive Russia. That's right - forgive Russia
And bravo for getting the meme bang on, with the right word order
‘Russian warship, go fuck yourself’, is brilliant because the second half of the phrase is totally unexpected, after the initial two words - therefore more satisfying
"Oz Katerji @OzKaterji As someone who has been a fierce critic of Boris Johnson for a long time, it must be said, as far as Ukrainians I speak to are concerned, he is the best ally Ukraine has. I honestly take no pleasure in reporting this but it’s indisputably true. Come here & ask people yourself."
Where do interest rates peak, how many will be in negative equity or lose their homes?
Shades of 1990
Though that mainly affects those with large mortgages not over 65s who own their homes outright
You're a Tory councillor iirc, the Conservatives Thoroughly, Thoroughly deserve to lose the next election if this is the sort of tone deaf response that's being trotted out.
"Ben Judah @b_judah Worth noting that Zelensky views Johnson as his closest ally and has called him every day of the war to coordinate moves. Ukraine views the way that Britain led the push to arming Kyiv with Northern and Eastern Europeans as critical to its defence."
Comments
So it's a bit of a catch 22 unfortunately.
We simply need more reliable supply from all sources and less demand from everybody.
OT: Unalloyed joyous news from our suppliers this morning.
It’s the “lawyers” (sic) I feel sorry for.
So they're covered by the claim of "Britain alone". Britain covered the entire British Empire.
Hence Windrush etc generations later - the Windrush migrants were Britons before and after they migrated which is why they never had any paperwork for acquiring British citizenship - they didn't need to acquire that which they already had.
LAB: 41% (-1)
CON: 34% (-)
LDEM: 9% (-)
GRN: 4% (+1)
via @SavantaComRes, 04 - 06 Mar
Chgs. w/ 27 Feb
It is perfectly reasonable for the matter to be revisited.
> 30 years is a definition of a generation that might even get past HYUFD.
https://news.sky.com/story/ukraine-war-russia-has-become-the-worlds-most-sanctioned-country-but-is-the-uk-doing-enough-12559880
Or is Boris and Co not really having that great a war?
They didn't.
Southern hemisphere only, I reckon. Preferably somewhere reasonably warm in case of global cooling.
It has to be self-sufficient in food and not prone to anarchy.
Doesn't leave a lot - particularly if Australia and New Zealand are on the hit list.
I'm not sure it is worth the effort.
I go into people's houses sometimes and have to take off several layers. It is genuinely uncomfortably warm. Turn down your thermostats by a couple of degrees. Don't heat rooms you don't use.
My ex- neighbours have 4 cars between 4, two of them SUV's, and drive to the next street to visit mother/granny when it would be as quick to walk. Often in two cars.
Shops lit up when closed as bright as when open.
Even having appliances on standby.
There hasn't been much of a move to inform anyone of just how much can be saved with just these few, painless acts.
Max Hastings rightly says that Churchill's narrative aboutt the whole thing was only "narrowly plausible," but the Britain alone element is one of the more credible bits of it. It wasn't New Delhi getting bombed.
There is an odd mis-perception of what politics in Russia is like. It's not a giant gulag. If you demonstrate against the war, the police will drag you away, possibly beat you, and throw you in a cell for a day or two, and that in most cases seems to be it - nasty, but not life-threatening. There are several well-known exceptions which show total unscrupulousness when the regime feels like it but on the whole it's fairly standard authoritarian regime stuff, comparable with Turkey and a bunch of other places that we don't think about much. There has even been a fair amount of tolerance of liberal media in Moscow - we're reading about outlets being closed down or restricted, but I suspect most of us (including me) didn't know they were tolerated up to now.
On the other hand, it's easy to underestimate the total lack of information that most Russians have about issues outside their immediate experience. Many Russians have limited interest in travelling abroad or accessing foreign media, much like other big countries (travel around in Nebraska and ask folk when they next plan to visit France and you'll get some baffled looks). They know there's a war on and the West is angry, and no doubt hope the army will win soon without too much bloodshed and things will calm down.
The one group who really know what's going on and could do something about it is the military. They will be very frustrated with the problems in the war, but for the time being mainly focused on winning it. They may be tempted to sue for peace eventually, but for now I suspect their pressure is in the opposite direction - for systematic rather than sporadic bombardment of cities and none of this humanitarian corridor stuff. Hoping they seize power and get rid of Putin may not be sensible.
As I said in reply to Leon a couple of days ago, I see Putin as a czarist militarist and have no sympathy whatever for him or his war, although for family reasons I'm not instinctively anti-Russian. But ultimately he's a symptom rather than a cause, and we need to avoid feeding the idea that the West is out to encircle Russia and damage it as much as we can. We are largely spectators and should avoid becoming part of the problem. Our policy up to now - sanctions on Russia, defensive arms to Ukraine - feels right. But the objective should be to support a settlement that ends the killing and reduces the paranoia level - not to achieve a "victory" to leverage regime change in Russia - because ultimately that may mean fighting to the last Ukrainian to achieve a resulting change for the worse.
So. There we have it. "Men" is now old hat. Men who use it are VAMs (Violence Accepting Misogynists). The correct term is now PRaM. Men who object are throwing toys out of their prams as well as being a PRaM.
You have legitimate concerns to this, you say.
I'm sorry. But these are "not valid". (Copyright Nicola Sturgeon).
Sturgeon better hurry up!
Hmmm. Needs revisiting.
Let us suppose -- as seems to be the prevailing pb.com orthodoxy -- that Ukraine would have easily won a poll in the Donbas.
Then, it was very stupid not to have held one in accord with Minsk II.
The Generals heard "Send nine and fourpence. We are going to a dance."
That being said, the Russian Militaries performance in the field of interpretive dance, frankly, sucks.
Good luck.
They did have a poll in the Donbas, it was won by 81% in the Donbas and no government was ever elected since to hold another one. 🤦♂️
An external aggressor, who lost the last border poll, doesn't get to just invade to force another one and rig the results. That's not democracy. If the people who "dispute" the border want to change it democratically the way to do that is to win an election with a mandate for a referendum pledging a new poll - that never happened.
But I don't really see a way out for Putin. Even if he wins the war in Ukraine and installs a government and eventually some kind of normality comes back... why would the West drop the sanctions?
He's woken Europe up - they are going to be spending a lot more on their military now, and presumably will have far superior armed forces very soon, if they don't already.
We have also had 2 polls that show that there is high support for the Ukraine and low support for anything like leaving in the East and South of Ukraine. But apparently polls don't count.
I know a substantial number of Russian academics (both in Russia and in the West).
They all deplore the war & despise Putin.
But they (almost) all believe that the West is out to get Russia. Not Putin -- Russia.
And most of them believe that Crimea or Donbas or Odessa are Russian. So, although Putin is despised, there is considerate sympathy for his aims -- even among educated Russians.
UK Housing £9.2T [1]
UK Deposits £3.5T [2]
UK Gilts £1.9T [3]
Value of FTSE £1.8T [4]
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/money/2021/oct/14/britains-homes-could-be-worth-92tn-on-open-market-report-shows
[2] Google "value of uk deposits" @ 1.3
[3] https://www.statista.com/statistics/1118604/market-value-of-government-bonds-in-the-united-kingdom/
[4] Google "market cap FTSE 100"
It did, of course, contribute significantly to the defeat of Japan and was active elsewhere. But it was not in a position to do all that much while the Battle of Britain raged.
It's a broadbrush statement, but Britain did stand alone for a period of time during WW2. And its not "pretty shameful" to remind ourselves of that fact.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viktor_Yanukovych#Reports_of_corruption_and_cronyism
Russia signed a deal with Ukraine for a naval base in Crimea during his presidency - the issue of plebiscites simply didn't exists back then, during an administration most likely to have looked sympathetically at them.
The idea that they could usefully have taken place during the subsequent conflict with Russia is fanciful.
We should not believe a word. It is all lies.
As was discussed downthread this is like a drug cartel got hold of a shed load of nukes.
...At the same time, Poland requests the United States to provide us with used aircraft with corresponding operational capabilities. Poland is ready to immediately establish the conditions of purchase of the planes. ...
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/133893351152?mkevt=1&mkcid=1&mkrid=710-53481-19255-0&campid=5338722076&customid=&toolid=10050
Fighting north-west of Kyiv remains ongoing with Russian forces failing to make any significant breakthroughs.
The cities of Kharkiv, Chernihiv, Sumy and Mariupol remain encircled by Russian forces and continue to suffer heavy Russian shelling.
Ukrainian air defences appear to have enjoyed considerable success against Russia’s modern combat aircraft, probably preventing them achieving any degree of control of the air.
https://twitter.com/DefenceHQ/status/1501438467103989762
I think the reason why the Scots were allowed to have a referendum is precisely because English politicians like Cameron & Clegg thought "it was clear what the result would be".
The campaign changed peoples minds rather dramatically.
My guess is a border poll in N Ireland would be very close -- especially if the Nationalists run a better campaign than the Unionists.
Kiev was in many ways the initial Russian city. It's birthplace. So perhaps the logical conclusion would be for the Russian state to be dissolved and incorporated into Ukraine with Kyiv as the capital? Now I think this is nonsense but no less justifiable than Mr Putin's thinking.
To be honest if Russians are mourning their country's decline they'd be better off finding ways to stop educated young people from leaving. The number of trains going from St Petersburg to Helsinki has doubled in recent days. I think the traffic is one way.
Though I agree on the broader point, Cameron took risks on referendums, in Scotland Unionists scraped home (if Yes had won he would have resigned), on the EU though his gamble failed and his premiership was then over.
No PMs are going to willingly allow more referendums which if lost would lead to their resignation anytime soon. They are too unpredictable
Irish and "Russian" nationalists have not.
Is this so difficult for you to understand? What's your problem with democracy, Vlad?
Where would they be getting F16 C/D (such as the Poles already have), from? More recent F16s would surely require a great deal of re-training, different maintenance etc.
Another question - if they strip out the Western upgrades from the Polish Migs, do they have equipment to replace it with? Seems unlikely that they have all the original Russian gear sat in a warehouse.
Yet another - surely spare parts and maintenance must be a big issue for the Ukrainians with their existing aircraft?
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m00154cl
Where is the 65 coming from - it will not affect anyone who own their homes outright, (especially those having had an inheritance !!!!!!!)
Most clocks/watches seem to be really rubbish in this regard, because they don't need to be any better.
Were the Fulcrums any use at all to Germany, or just a liability ?
"Oz Katerji
@OzKaterji
As someone who has been a fierce critic of Boris Johnson for a long time, it must be said, as far as Ukrainians I speak to are concerned, he is the best ally Ukraine has. I honestly take no pleasure in reporting this but it’s indisputably true. Come here & ask people yourself."
https://twitter.com/OzKaterji/status/1500927139570401283
George Bush Snr going to Ukraine urging them not to leave the Soviet Union.
Inheriting the Soviet Union seat on the security council
Being allowed to join the G7 in spite of not meeting the appropriate criteria
Post Iraq Condi Rice saying punish France and forgive Russia. That's right - forgive Russia
Can we please have some semblance of balance.
And bravo for getting the meme bang on, with the right word order
‘Russian warship, go fuck yourself’, is brilliant because the second half of the phrase is totally unexpected, after the initial two words - therefore more satisfying
With respect, your posts are rather sad.
@b_judah
Worth noting that Zelensky views Johnson as his closest ally and has called him every day of the war to coordinate moves. Ukraine views the way that Britain led the push to arming Kyiv with Northern and Eastern Europeans as critical to its defence."
https://twitter.com/b_judah/status/1499823048005926919