Good morning. Bright sunny day and what nowadays constitutes a busy day for me ahead. Two u3a Group meetings, both of which I have to drive to.
Are the front pages, and the TV News programmes just a teeny bit more positive about the Ukraine situation?
I'd like to be feeling positive about how Ukraine is going but I'm not really.
The "talks" feel artificial to me, mainly for show, an addition to the fighting not a potential alternative to it.
I think there's a lot of war to go yet on this.
War is just diplomacy by other means. Talks to often, maybe even usually, take place before the guns fall silent.
John Simpson has a peice on BBC website about what the Turkish understand could be basis of a deal, based on talking directly to Putin. Seems do-able if Ukr swallow a lot of bile and accept loss of territory. But how long would the deal last?
It's an interesting article. The one question not addressed is Western sanctions - I assume Putin would want those removed, not clear if that is likely to happen any time soon.
One of the things that we'll need to look out for however this ends, is how quickly the forces of "business as usual" attempt to get things "back to normal". Such as relaxation of sanctions (just imagine the pent-up demand for Gucci shoes) and resiling from upping military spend. Those on the front-line (Baltics, Poland) may take a different view from the rearguard.
Agreed - I’m sure LVMH etc will be desperate for business as usual but it all depends on how it ends.
If Putin got removed, accidentally fell out of a window then depending on who took over relaxation of sanctions should by tied to reduction of Nukes by Russia apart from withdrawal from Ukraine and a DMZ near the border. I know it’s asking for the moon on a stick but it’s a one time opportunity to try and get Russia defanged whilst we have most leverage.
I think if Putin was still there and withdrew from Ukraine then I could see certain sanctions such as flights and western companies closing being lifted as need to show it wasn’t the ordinary Russians we were trying to hurt.
But keep major sanctions on Russian state linked people and companies until they are ready to talk sensibly about de-escalation and hostile acts - for a start handing over the Salisbury poisoners - and make it clear any sanctions will be snapped back if any back-sliding.
If Putin disappears it will be important not to humiliate Russia for the actions of Putin. Sanctions against oligarchs who cannot demonstrate the source of their wealth should remain IMO though. Russia could even be encouraged to improve it's democratic and constitutional structure to work toward associate status of the EU perhaps
It's really hard to think of examples where sanctions have produced a change in behaviour. Countries under sanctions generally just seem to become more insular; That's what happened in North Korea and Cuba. As an example of the adverse consequeneces, Russians have traditionally been able to use VPNs to get uncensored internet, but now the western payment networks have cut off their methods of payments so that won't work any more. Strategically they have a lot of other problems: China isn't cooperating, so the Russian economy will just become more oriented towards China, and the leverage the West has will gradually decline.
The point of sanctions here was supposed to be to support Ukraine, so if Ukraine want to cut a deal involving the lifting of sanctions from a position of relative strength everybody else should go along with it.
The white supremacist regime in South Africa was pretty hammered by sanctions. I think De Klerk acknowledged this.
Some say it was the sporting and cultural isolation that had the most impact there.
And the ANC believe and believed that it was their own internal efforts (politically, and as uMkhonto we Sizwe), with outside interference having a minimal effect. Now they would say that, but on the other hand they were there at the time. There is a lot of pushback against what is seen as a claim that it was liberal white men who won the day. I have been expressly warned in South Africa, more than once, against claiming to have stood shoulder to shoulder with them against the regime.
Oh yes, the struggle and resistance from inside surely counted for more than outside sanctions. I just meant that, on the sanctions, it was the sporting and cultural boycott that I gather had the most impact.
NPXMP has suggested in the last couple of days that Ukraine is favoured by the West purely because it has a superior media operation to Russia,?
I don't think NP ever said it but it is undoubtedly at least partially true. Of course people are going to row in behind the faction with the more fierce meme game. That's the power of social media. #tractors #lol
Good/evil and right/wrong are pre-2010 dichotomies that no longer apply.
Read the accounts coming out of Mariupol. It’s not a fucking meme game; it’s a medieval siege with shells and bombs.
I think @Dura_Ace is a little embarrassed by how wrongly he's called the whole conflict, and is throwing out random shit.
No one else seems remotely embarrassed by how wrongly they’ve called the whole conflict to the point of blithely finding new wrong ways to call it, seems a bit unfair to pick on him.
The RUSI, our professional military think tank, which has about as much Information as anyone, was completely taken by surprise by the course of the war. None of us had any real clue as to how it would turn out. And we still don't.
Yes - I can't think of anyone who predicted that if Russia went Full Tonto, they would end up bogged down, rather than sweeping to victory.
Or was that what the Defense Sec. was saying when he joked about the Crimean War?
Our Boris, it turns out, was right when he predicted “the end of tank battles”
When a humble NLAW costs $20k, yet it can destroy a tank costing $3m, the maths says: enough tanks already
That's great if you're fighting (apparently) Russia. In a competently executed combined arms operation your infantry will rarely be getting within ATGM range of MBTs and if they do there's a good chance they'll be killed as soon as they fire the round. Hence the very poor record of ATGMs vs Israel and coalition forces in Iraq.
That's asymmetric warfare the other way round, though. Israeli tanks vs Israeli ATGMs - particularly the stand-off ones - might not fare quite so well. Line of sight ATGMs are last generation.
On P&O we have had the usual moaning about the weakness of UK labour laws. And this is undoubtedly true when compared to the French, for example. But the result is by far the most dynamic employment market in Europe, far lower structual unemployment and a much higher activity rate than most. So it is pretty tough for those that lose out, particularly where they have got a pretty cosy number going, but it is generally good for us and we should not lose sight of the net benefits.
In the P&O case the failure to consult about prospective redundancy makes the dismissals unfair. P&O have sought to "compensate" employees for the lack of consultation but that only works if the employees accept it. The suggestion is that they are going to bring in much cheaper crews to man the vessels at much lower rates of pay. This means, unless they are simply closing certain routes, that there is no redundancy at all and the employees, unless bought off, will be entitled to compensation which will include loss of wages until they find alternative employment, subject to a cap. If I was the government I would be looking to throw a spanner in those works by challenging the right of these replacement employees to work in UK waters or ports.
I also suspect that P&O's problems has a lot more to do with the current cost of fuel than the cost of labour. Difficult to do much about the former, of course.
I think a lot of Red Wall Brexit voters will look at what has happened with P&O and think that this is exactly the sort of thing they were voting to stop and they will be wondering why the government is letting it happen.
Was funny. In another place I saw several posters getting increasingly irate at the idea that the P&O scandal had anything to do with Brexit. It doesn't of course, but the point being made is exactly what you posted - wasn't Brexit supposed to stop companies replacing Brits with cheap eastern Europeans and give people better job security?
This is the mega clash between the possible Brexits. The Singapore-on-Thames Brexiteer will be delighted with what has happened, a flexible labour market providing a solution to keep the business afloat and the owners rich. The Workers Collectivist Brexiteer is aghast as instead of stopping the forrin taking our jobs for less pay our sovvrinty has instead been utterly complicit.
There is no way to reconcile two utterly conflicting goals for Brexit. We can't have both labour flexibility for more profits and British Jobs for British Workers. Expect more scandals.
Broadly agree. But there is one difference. In the EU the UK government had no power over the right to work of 500,000,000 people. A flexible labour market was compulsory. It is now undeniably a UK government matter.
Of course there are competing ideas of how a UK government should act. That's how multi party democracy works. That's not a bug, it's a feature of Brexit. It is now within its powers, and wasn't before.
Expect more self interested complaining. All the alternatives are worse.
Good morning. Bright sunny day and what nowadays constitutes a busy day for me ahead. Two u3a Group meetings, both of which I have to drive to.
Are the front pages, and the TV News programmes just a teeny bit more positive about the Ukraine situation?
I'd like to be feeling positive about how Ukraine is going but I'm not really.
The "talks" feel artificial to me, mainly for show, an addition to the fighting not a potential alternative to it.
I think there's a lot of war to go yet on this.
War is just diplomacy by other means. Talks to often, maybe even usually, take place before the guns fall silent.
Hannah Arendt would disagree, I can remember writing an essay about that as an undergraduate.
Yeah it's a snazzy phrase but it's utter bollocks.
That's true of most such phrases to a greater or lesser degree. I enjoy trying to pick apart the most unobjectionable and seemingly correct ones with ever more creative interpretation.
It's worse than bollocks - it's an implicit justification for characters like Putin going to war to get what they want.
It probably wasn't as much bollocks many hundreds of years ago. Testing your neighbour's strength and all that. But it is now.
On P&O we have had the usual moaning about the weakness of UK labour laws. And this is undoubtedly true when compared to the French, for example. But the result is by far the most dynamic employment market in Europe, far lower structual unemployment and a much higher activity rate than most. So it is pretty tough for those that lose out, particularly where they have got a pretty cosy number going, but it is generally good for us and we should not lose sight of the net benefits.
In the P&O case the failure to consult about prospective redundancy makes the dismissals unfair. P&O have sought to "compensate" employees for the lack of consultation but that only works if the employees accept it. The suggestion is that they are going to bring in much cheaper crews to man the vessels at much lower rates of pay. This means, unless they are simply closing certain routes, that there is no redundancy at all and the employees, unless bought off, will be entitled to compensation which will include loss of wages until they find alternative employment, subject to a cap. If I was the government I would be looking to throw a spanner in those works by challenging the right of these replacement employees to work in UK waters or ports.
I also suspect that P&O's problems has a lot more to do with the current cost of fuel than the cost of labour. Difficult to do much about the former, of course.
I think a lot of Red Wall Brexit voters will look at what has happened with P&O and think that this is exactly the sort of thing they were voting to stop and they will be wondering why the government is letting it happen.
Yes, they will and it will help Labour. The wider question however is tricky. Unless the criminal law is involved (and usually it isn't) then for all the thunderous noises from unions and MPs legally these are civil matters. And, with very rare exceptions, in employment/contractual relationships as long as you are prepared to pay the price in damages/compensation AND take the adverse publicity you will get your way, though at a price.
It is vanishingly unlikely that any court will compel reinstatement.
P+O have clearly decided to take the commercial hit. Just like Putin. I hope they both fail.
But most of the huffing and puffing can be dismissed. Quantum will be the question.
The Government should impose sanctions
We all know it needs P&Os parent for the flagship Freeports though
Comments
Israeli tanks vs Israeli ATGMs - particularly the stand-off ones - might not fare quite so well.
Line of sight ATGMs are last generation.
Of course there are competing ideas of how a UK government should act. That's how multi party democracy works. That's not a bug, it's a feature of Brexit. It is now within its powers, and wasn't before.
Expect more self interested complaining. All the alternatives are worse.
We all know it needs P&Os parent for the flagship Freeports though