"With the attack on the hospital, it was tragic that three people lost their lives, but logic tells me that 3 casualties isn't consistent with bombing an operational maternity hospital."
What was interesting was that while Labrov, the foreign minister was claiming that the hospital was not a maternity hospital at all, but housed only the military, the Russian Ambassador to the UN was admitting it was a maternity hospital. However, the shell/bomb had missed it, causing only a crater in front. In the picture he showed, all the windows had been blown in yet he denied any casualties. Had you been in any of the wards, imagine what broken glass acting as shrapnel would have done to any patient?
One or both must be lying, and lying poorly. It's as if only useful idiots were being targetted. When you shoot yourself in the foot like that, you don't need Ukranian propaganda.
And then thirdly, the Russian military denied it was even them who dropped the bomb. I completely agree, Russian propaganda isn't to be trusted (obviously) and is a total mess. However, it is a verified fact that casualty numbers from the attack are extremely low, not consistent in my opinion with it being an active maternity hospital.
They were awfully quick to rule out terror….which makes me wonder if there’s something about the perpetrators they haven’t told us yet - all we know is they’re local residents in their thirties.
If we are to achieve net zero, how is there any common sense in trying to produce more CO2?
This is the time to massively invest in renewables and nuclear.
They are entirely compatible. 1. We need power next winter. If we can't get replacement gas then our gas-fired power stations are in trouble. Without them we have a big hole in our capabilities as we bet the farm on cheap gas imports to maximise profits. We may need to keep burning coal a bit longer whilst we change our capabilities. 2. We must invest into renewables. Not just erecting wind farms but actually making the turbines. Invest into tidal so that we can harness the huge tidal surges. Mass produced solar panels so that every house can have one. 3. But having done all that we still need oil. We aren't about to replace next week every truck engine with hydrogen so we need oil. We still need plastic so we still need oil. Better to use our own oil than be on the hook to someone else (see gas, point 1) 4. Nuclear is a massive dead end. We can't produce our own nuclear power stations any more from an engineering point of view, and even from a construction point of view they are very very very slow to put up and at vast cost. Better to sink the money into cheaper cleaner faster alternatives.
I have a Tesla on order to sit alongside our Ioniq EV. And I am advocating more domestic oil and gas production. The two are not incompatible.
I find the lack of UK focus on tidal power a deeply tragic reflection on our political classes and interest groups.
All the benefits of wind/solar but super super predictable, basically free power.
Recently went to a talk by these people https://www.ourtide.org/ who are trying to just raise awareness of the pro/cons of each option.
If we committed to doing tidal then ramping up north sea gas/oil in the short term would make sense (at least then we would have a plan) instead we go for the harder nuclear options.
MrB
It's not free - to say so harms the case for it.
It has a price in £ per Mw of capacity.
Less than nuclear. probably bit more than gas. It would be interesting to see the price vs wind taking into account the requirement for excess capacity for wind.
True, free is the wrong term
I just think it is quite different other renewables in how predictable it is. It would almost certainly be cheaper than nuclear per Mw but it doesn't come with a different set downsides.
"With the attack on the hospital, it was tragic that three people lost their lives, but logic tells me that 3 casualties isn't consistent with bombing an operational maternity hospital."
What was interesting was that while Labrov, the foreign minister was claiming that the hospital was not a maternity hospital at all, but housed only the military, the Russian Ambassador to the UN was admitting it was a maternity hospital. However, the shell/bomb had missed it, causing only a crater in front. In the picture he showed, all the windows had been blown in yet he denied any casualties. Had you been in any of the wards, imagine what broken glass acting as shrapnel would have done to any patient?
One or both must be lying, and lying poorly. It's as if only useful idiots were being targetted. When you shoot yourself in the foot like that, you don't need Ukranian propaganda.
Just possibly - fighting was getting closer and close to the hospital. So there were very few mothers-to-be there - mostly evacuated or sent to other places. But it is still a hospital.....
I don't think Putin is evil, though he does have a significant disconnect, common (if not universal) in powerful statespeople, with the human consequences of his actions. Though perhaps he is tormented by them in private, as Thatcher was about the British casualties (though I believe not the enemy casualties) in the Falklands. Madeline Albright was asked if half a million casualties was an acceptable death toll in Iraq, and she answered 'yes' without batting an eyelid. Perhaps that's the sort of attitude you need (or just think you need) to run a big country.
Exactly how far would Putin have to go, for you to accept he is evil?
He has personally authorised a brutal, unprovoked invasion on an unthreatening neighbouring state, utilising, as a military method, the indiscriminate slaughter of civilians: men, women and children. The purpose being to restore the “greatness” of the lost Russian empire
What more does he have to do? Roast the dead babies? Nuke Warsaw? Batter your Nan to death with a brick, on Whitechapel Road?
I have difficulty subscribing to the notion of anyone being evil - I think we are naturally good, and we can become, by degrees, disconnected from our natural goodness. I'd say that Putin has become very disconnected, and is probably full of anger, resentment and wrath, but 'evil' is just a caricature. It's a glib label that prevents us from exploring the motivations of people that we oppose.
"good" is a just a glib label too then. As is "degrees", "natural", "wrath", and "we". Let's just not use any words at all because they oversimplify the rich spectral is-ness of being.
Or do we only pick on the word "evil"? Because... reasons?
I suppose because assigning someone as 'evil' implies a sort of power, or substance, or energy. I don't believe it has those attributes. Like darkness is just the absence of light, evil acts are just a failure to be our true selves.
If someone has the ability to slaughter innocents while even some onlookers say "the truth is in the middle", then that someone has an awesome amount of evil power.
The UK had a deliberate policy of civilian bombing in world war 2 - did we have awesome evil power?
Comparing Putin's current slaughter of Ukrainians to those fighting Hitler in WW2 is considerably stupider than Boris's really stupid comparison of Ukrainian defence and Brexit.
So if the cause is just, it's OK to slaughter the innocents?
All I am saying is that I believe that there is some evidence to show that attempts were made by the invaders to minimise civilian casualties. With the invasion stalling, and techniques changing, there has been an enormous human cost, and Putin bears the responsibility for that. However, let's not attribute that to some sort of sadism, when callous determination to achieve military goals is a more likely explanation.
If we are to achieve net zero, how is there any common sense in trying to produce more CO2?
This is the time to massively invest in renewables and nuclear.
They are entirely compatible. 1. We need power next winter. If we can't get replacement gas then our gas-fired power stations are in trouble. Without them we have a big hole in our capabilities as we bet the farm on cheap gas imports to maximise profits. We may need to keep burning coal a bit longer whilst we change our capabilities. 2. We must invest into renewables. Not just erecting wind farms but actually making the turbines. Invest into tidal so that we can harness the huge tidal surges. Mass produced solar panels so that every house can have one. 3. But having done all that we still need oil. We aren't about to replace next week every truck engine with hydrogen so we need oil. We still need plastic so we still need oil. Better to use our own oil than be on the hook to someone else (see gas, point 1) 4. Nuclear is a massive dead end. We can't produce our own nuclear power stations any more from an engineering point of view, and even from a construction point of view they are very very very slow to put up and at vast cost. Better to sink the money into cheaper cleaner faster alternatives.
I have a Tesla on order to sit alongside our Ioniq EV. And I am advocating more domestic oil and gas production. The two are not incompatible.
On 4 nuclear may not be a dead end in the UK - but it depends on whether Rolls Royce’s mini nuke design works.
And the thing is we do need baseline power and there are no easy solutions there. If the wind doesn’t blow for a few days no amount of storage is going to help
It doesn't depend on whether they work (although having a nuclear sub reactor parked in your town is going to bring out a tsunami of NIMBY's). It depends on the cost. Of siting, planning permission, building, maintaining, defending, decommissioning. Boris hasn't told us any of the answers to those.
The nuke mini reactors are nearly certainly going to go on the sites of existing nuclear power stations. They have a fairly small footprint, and the sites have very large amounts of land "behind the fences". There are also the existing turbine halls to take the steam generated, the connections to the grid etc.
If you listen to the anti-nuke types, they are extremely worried by the possibility that because of this, the mini-nukes won't even get a "proper"* planning enquiry.
*One lasting decades.
Still nothing on the relative costs.
And they are still a new form of energy generation - that might have significant teething problems. A lot being taken on good faith - never wise with the nuclear industry.
The question on costs is hard to gauge at this point. They are, of course, a modification of existing nuclear reactor designs for submarines. The sizing seems to suggest something quite close to the reactors for the next generation of Trident submarines (PWR3).
So, rather than being a whole new design, they will be an evolution of an existing design. I would suspect that many components, such as the pressure vessel, will be very, very similar.
The resistance to the mini-nuke idea from the backers of traditional sized nuclear power stations has been interesting. They claimed that the re-use of military technology was an "unfair advantage". Which speaks volumes, to me.
If these mini-nukes turn out to be an order of magnitude cheaper than the RN gets charged, somebody might just say "Hang on a minute...."
I don't know how much RR have had in development assistance. I know £200m has been announced, but it is likely to be way more. For a fraction of that, the Government could have got tidal power stations moving forward several years ago.
If Starmer goes on the attack on this, the Government is in World Of Pain.... And frankly, it will serve them right.
How has COVID affected the temper of pb.com threads?
Many recent threads -- this one included -- seem to become exceptionally ill-tempered rather quickly. COVID seems to have overwhelmed some people's ability to process or even acknowledge conflicting points of view.
There is good argument that Russia would not have launched the invasion without Putin's paranoia, exacerbated by COVID.
My guess is Boris would be in more trouble without COVID. In benign & placid times, his shortcomings would be even more apparent.
(OTH, there is a good argument that President Donald Trump would be romping through his second term, without his disastrous response to COVID).
I'm not convinced about Russia, given that they already invaded in 2014, fully 5 years before Covid. An argument can be made for it, but it's tough to account for that past behaviour.
I think there would have been a low-level war in the Donbas regardless of COVID.
Without COVID, I doubt if Putin would have risked an enormous invasion.
Without COVID and the consequent absence of travel/tourism/visitors, I doubt if the populations of Russia, or elsewhere, would be so inward-looking. The importance of meeting people from other countries regularly, one-to-one, through tourism or exchange or cultural activities is one of the great bulwarks against war.
The boundaries in the East of Ukraine/Crimea were wrong -- unpopular though it is to say this. Just as the boundaries of Serbia prior to the secession of Kosovo were wrong. There was always going to be a problem in East Ukraine, but it did not have to end this way.
A way that is probably the worst of all for both Russia and Ukraine.
Why were the boundaries of Crimea and Donbas wrong?
Just to remind you, in 1991 54% of Crimeans voted in a referendum to break away from the USSR and stay with Ukraine as it became an independent state.
I know there are opinion polls that say different now but they are conducted in a shall we say, less than free and fair manner.
Thank you for reminding me of this, yet again.
It is not unreasonable to revisit the matter since 1991.
John Major was PM then, but he is not PM now. Because the matter is regularly revisited in elections.
All plebiscites are held under difficult conditions.
We will have to wait and see how it all needs. But, I expect Ukraine will now lose more territory than just Donbas/Crimea.
No, it's not unreasonable to revisit things.
It is unreasonable to illegally invade a country, stage fixed elections, and then complain when people point out that they may actually not be representative, which is what Russia has done in Crimea and the Donbass. There is very little independent evidence to suggest a significant, independent separatist movement existed in Crimea, which had far more freedom and autonomy in Ukraine with its own Parliament and President than it has within Russia. The only agitation to the contrary in Crimea came from the Russian Navy, who are hardly impartial observers! In the Donbass, even less. Only a fraction of it is controlled by Russia and even there their popularity is at best shaky.
So I will keep reminding you of it, because if you say 'the boundaries were wrong' which goes against the limited evidence we have, it is incumbent upon you to substantiate that statement.
Crimea voted 54 % to leave the USSR and join an independent Ukraine in 1991. It takes a 2 per cent swing to change the result.
It is perfectly reasonable for regions with separatist/secessionist ambitions -- be they Quebec, Scotland, Catalunya, Crimea -- to have the question revisited every 10 or so years.
The plebiscite could and should have been carried out before Russia invaded.
The Crimean Parliament before invasion had 80 out of 100 seats for Yanukovych.
That is evidence of at least very substantial support for the Russian-backed Yanukovych.
Your arguments seems to be Ukraine could easily have won the plebiscites -- in which case ... err ... it would have been sensible to hold them.
Were there demands for a referendum?
Anyway that was 2014. The big question is how would people in Crimea feel about it now? Pro-Russians areas elsewhere in Ukraine certainly seem to have, er, changed their minds.
I have no idea whether "Pro-Russians areas elsewhere in Ukraine certainly seem to have, er, changed their minds."
I have no idea what the "people in Crimea feel about its now". Nor have you.
If only we could think of some independent way to test what members of an electorate feel on an important public question such as sovereignty ?
You mean like a presidential election? Where pro-Russian candidates once had a chance of winning and have, since 2014, got nowhere in Ukraine.
If we are to achieve net zero, how is there any common sense in trying to produce more CO2?
This is the time to massively invest in renewables and nuclear.
They are entirely compatible. 1. We need power next winter. If we can't get replacement gas then our gas-fired power stations are in trouble. Without them we have a big hole in our capabilities as we bet the farm on cheap gas imports to maximise profits. We may need to keep burning coal a bit longer whilst we change our capabilities. 2. We must invest into renewables. Not just erecting wind farms but actually making the turbines. Invest into tidal so that we can harness the huge tidal surges. Mass produced solar panels so that every house can have one. 3. But having done all that we still need oil. We aren't about to replace next week every truck engine with hydrogen so we need oil. We still need plastic so we still need oil. Better to use our own oil than be on the hook to someone else (see gas, point 1) 4. Nuclear is a massive dead end. We can't produce our own nuclear power stations any more from an engineering point of view, and even from a construction point of view they are very very very slow to put up and at vast cost. Better to sink the money into cheaper cleaner faster alternatives.
I have a Tesla on order to sit alongside our Ioniq EV. And I am advocating more domestic oil and gas production. The two are not incompatible.
I find the lack of UK focus on tidal power a deeply tragic reflection on our political classes and interest groups.
All the benefits of wind/solar but super super predictable, basically free power.
Recently went to a talk by these people https://www.ourtide.org/ who are trying to just raise awareness of the pro/cons of each option.
If we committed to doing tidal then ramping up north sea gas/oil in the short term would make sense (at least then we would have a plan) instead we go for the harder nuclear options.
MrB
Any ideas on how we make this happen? I can write letters, press releases, social media posts etc. I'm all in on this, let's just do it now.
To be honest I'm not really sure. The main parties don't seem to be too bothered, but I might be wrong on this.
Feels like the sort of thing a pension fund might want to invest in but they would need the strike price of the power to be binding/guaranteed (like nuclear)
Certainly from the talk I was at they tech seems to be where wind was 10-15 years ago, costs are coming down. Other parts of the world seem to just be able to get on with it.
The history of how many, many Asians were forced out of Africa, after various countries gained independence is neglected. It wasn't just the lunatic cannibal chap who did this.
"Those without Kenyan citizenship soon became subject to increasing discrimination by the ruling government, led by Jomo Kenyatta. Despite the entrepreneurial success of the community, in 1970, 70% of the economically active Asian population consisted of wage and salary earners, and 30% worked for the civil service. A policy of Africanisation meant many were sacked in favour of black Africans.[25] The Kenyan Immigration Act 1967 required Asians to acquire work permits, whilst a Trade Licensing Act passed in the same year limited the areas of the country in which non-Kenyans could engage in trade.[26] In the late 1960s and early 1970s, faced with a dim future in Africa, many Asians choose to utilise their British passports and settle in the United Kingdom. "
Fair comment - but those circumstances will not be dissimilar to many of today’s ‘economic migrants’.
The graphic shows the evolution in how confident people are that Russia will be defeated.
Encouraging for Ukraine, discouraging for Putin. A nation confidently united, like that, can literally never be defeated. Unless he deports them ALL to Siberia
I still don't see path to them regaining Donbas (never mind Crimea), but if they remain united like that it means the Leadership can presumably hold firmer against offering concessions to the Russians as the price for peace, on the basis that the Ukrainian people would rather not pay some prices.
I don't see why they couldn't get the Donbass back under some scenarios. I wouldn't rule out Crimea either. However that's easy for me to say, I'm not the one facing a humanitarian crisis. Unless Putin is prepared to use WMD (horrible thought) or starts calling up masses of reserves - 500,000? - it is hard to see him winning a military victory so long as the Ukrainian air force keeps flying and their army isn't decimated. I believe the Ukrainians are busy training reservists - I thought I saw a figure of 250,000 - which would give them superior numbers. Hopefully all the Nato weapons are getting there.
VVP never articulated the aims or schedule of Operation Ukrainian Freedom in anything other than the most ambiguous terms so he can declare victory whenever he wants.
We can surmise the aims were:
1. Regime change in Ukraine turning them into another gimp state like Belarus. 2. No NATO for Ukraine. 3. A more sustainable form for the DPR/LPR. 4. Land bridge to Crimea and deny Ukraine access to the Black Sea.
1. is looking like a stretch at the moment although they might get lucky and get Zeldisney. 2. That's a tick. 3. and 4. are looking achievable.
VVP might be inclined to settle for 2,3 & 4, work on getting sanctions lifted as the west eventually gets bored/greedy and then have another go 5-10 years hence and break off another piece.
I think Zelensky is untouchable now - he has such cult status that if killed, it would have the emotional impact of making Western audiences very pro-war. I also think he's better from the Russian perspective to a lot of the alternatives.
The problem for the Tories is that they can't propose policies on anything or even make a basic argument without being found to be lying.
We all have different opinions of this policy or that politician. But the base assumption was always that they wouldn't always tell egregious lies and wouldn't be putting their own self-interests above the country.
That assumption simply doesn't hold with this government. They are liars - pretty much all of them. They are lining the pockets of their party and their donors. They think the rule of law does not apply.
So how do they play the "trust us to deliver" card at the next election. Even their own hardcore Boris and Brexit vote can see they've been taken for mugs.
Do we really care if Bozza or Cruella are lying?
Johnson's speech in Blackpool yesterday was full of proclamations that he was the one true patriot statesman in the fight against Putin. His implication was if you weren't on Team Boris, you would invariably be a pro-Putin quisling traitor ,I am guessing that refers to, i.e. Starmer, Davey etc. etc. A patent falsehood.
And Braverman, she defended her lie with such emotion and conviction that one felt if she was armed, Streeting would now be a late and former MP. It was as though she believed her own BS.
It was said in Trump's USA we were in a post-truth state. We may already be at that point here. It is not that there is an economy with the actualitaire, these people are projecting absolute fiction as reality, and with a straight face.
The graphic shows the evolution in how confident people are that Russia will be defeated.
Encouraging for Ukraine, discouraging for Putin. A nation confidently united, like that, can literally never be defeated. Unless he deports them ALL to Siberia
I still don't see path to them regaining Donbas (never mind Crimea), but if they remain united like that it means the Leadership can presumably hold firmer against offering concessions to the Russians as the price for peace, on the basis that the Ukrainian people would rather not pay some prices.
I don't see why they couldn't get the Donbass back under some scenarios. I wouldn't rule out Crimea either. However that's easy for me to say, I'm not the one facing a humanitarian crisis. Unless Putin is prepared to use WMD (horrible thought) or starts calling up masses of reserves - 500,000? - it is hard to see him winning a military victory so long as the Ukrainian air force keeps flying and their army isn't decimated. I believe the Ukrainians are busy training reservists - I thought I saw a figure of 250,000 - which would give them superior numbers. Hopefully all the Nato weapons are getting there.
VVP never articulated the aims or schedule of Operation Ukrainian Freedom in anything other than the most ambiguous terms so he can declare victory whenever he wants.
We can surmise the aims were:
1. Regime change in Ukraine turning them into another gimp state like Belarus. 2. No NATO for Ukraine. 3. A more sustainable form for the DPR/LPR. 4. Land bridge to Crimea and deny Ukraine access to the Black Sea.
1. is looking like a stretch at the moment although they might get lucky and get Zeldisney. 2. That's a tick. 3. and 4. are looking achievable.
VVP might be inclined to settle for 2,3 & 4, work on getting sanctions lifted as the west eventually gets bored/greedy and then have another go 5-10 years hence and break off another piece.
This is all your anti-Western fever dream. 1 is not possible even if they kill Levensky. Russia isn't even getting new mayors accepted at the local level. They have no chance at a national one. 2 will only be achieved on the basis of Ukraine getting clear defense guarantees from the West that replicate the same benefits. 3 may be achievable but only because the Donbass is much lower importance than Ukraine than other issues. 4 is completely ridiculous. Even if they occupy a land bridge, the Ukrainians living there hate them and Russia will slowly bleed out. Plus, they are not even going to be able to reach Odessa before the war becomes a stalemate after a couple of routs already.
The much more realistic outcome of this is that the war becomes a stalemate in the next couple of weeks, Russia has unrealistic demands like yours and underestimates Ukrainian resolve, we have a long war with lots of deaths, the Russian economy defaults and enters a crisis, and the Russian people gradually get sick of their young men being killed for a war no-one wanted. At some point a couple years from now, Russia accepts defeat, gets minimal concessions and despite Putin's best efforts to say the 'special operation' achieved its minimum aims, he is humiliated.
If we are to achieve net zero, how is there any common sense in trying to produce more CO2?
This is the time to massively invest in renewables and nuclear.
They are entirely compatible. 1. We need power next winter. If we can't get replacement gas then our gas-fired power stations are in trouble. Without them we have a big hole in our capabilities as we bet the farm on cheap gas imports to maximise profits. We may need to keep burning coal a bit longer whilst we change our capabilities. 2. We must invest into renewables. Not just erecting wind farms but actually making the turbines. Invest into tidal so that we can harness the huge tidal surges. Mass produced solar panels so that every house can have one. 3. But having done all that we still need oil. We aren't about to replace next week every truck engine with hydrogen so we need oil. We still need plastic so we still need oil. Better to use our own oil than be on the hook to someone else (see gas, point 1) 4. Nuclear is a massive dead end. We can't produce our own nuclear power stations any more from an engineering point of view, and even from a construction point of view they are very very very slow to put up and at vast cost. Better to sink the money into cheaper cleaner faster alternatives.
I have a Tesla on order to sit alongside our Ioniq EV. And I am advocating more domestic oil and gas production. The two are not incompatible.
On 4 nuclear may not be a dead end in the UK - but it depends on whether Rolls Royce’s mini nuke design works.
And the thing is we do need baseline power and there are no easy solutions there. If the wind doesn’t blow for a few days no amount of storage is going to help
It doesn't depend on whether they work (although having a nuclear sub reactor parked in your town is going to bring out a tsunami of NIMBY's). It depends on the cost. Of siting, planning permission, building, maintaining, defending, decommissioning. Boris hasn't told us any of the answers to those.
The nuke mini reactors are nearly certainly going to go on the sites of existing nuclear power stations. They have a fairly small footprint, and the sites have very large amounts of land "behind the fences". There are also the existing turbine halls to take the steam generated, the connections to the grid etc.
If you listen to the anti-nuke types, they are extremely worried by the possibility that because of this, the mini-nukes won't even get a "proper"* planning enquiry.
*One lasting decades.
Still nothing on the relative costs.
And they are still a new form of energy generation - that might have significant teething problems. A lot being taken on good faith - never wise with the nuclear industry.
The question on costs is hard to gauge at this point. They are, of course, a modification of existing nuclear reactor designs for submarines. The sizing seems to suggest something quite close to the reactors for the next generation of Trident submarines (PWR3).
So, rather than being a whole new design, they will be an evolution of an existing design. I would suspect that many components, such as the pressure vessel, will be very, very similar.
The resistance to the mini-nuke idea from the backers of traditional sized nuclear power stations has been interesting. They claimed that the re-use of military technology was an "unfair advantage". Which speaks volumes, to me.
If these mini-nukes turn out to be an order of magnitude cheaper than the RN gets charged, somebody might just say "Hang on a minute...."
I don't know how much RR have had in development assistance. I know £200m has been announced, but it is likely to be way more. For a fraction of that, the Government could have got tidal power stations moving forward several years ago.
If Starmer goes on the attack on this, the Government is in World Of Pain.... And frankly, it will serve them right.
Doesn't everything nuclear always cost shitloads more and take shitloads longer than everyone breezily asserts at the start? These RR mini nukes will be no different.
If we are to achieve net zero, how is there any common sense in trying to produce more CO2?
This is the time to massively invest in renewables and nuclear.
They are entirely compatible. 1. We need power next winter. If we can't get replacement gas then our gas-fired power stations are in trouble. Without them we have a big hole in our capabilities as we bet the farm on cheap gas imports to maximise profits. We may need to keep burning coal a bit longer whilst we change our capabilities. 2. We must invest into renewables. Not just erecting wind farms but actually making the turbines. Invest into tidal so that we can harness the huge tidal surges. Mass produced solar panels so that every house can have one. 3. But having done all that we still need oil. We aren't about to replace next week every truck engine with hydrogen so we need oil. We still need plastic so we still need oil. Better to use our own oil than be on the hook to someone else (see gas, point 1) 4. Nuclear is a massive dead end. We can't produce our own nuclear power stations any more from an engineering point of view, and even from a construction point of view they are very very very slow to put up and at vast cost. Better to sink the money into cheaper cleaner faster alternatives.
I have a Tesla on order to sit alongside our Ioniq EV. And I am advocating more domestic oil and gas production. The two are not incompatible.
On 4 nuclear may not be a dead end in the UK - but it depends on whether Rolls Royce’s mini nuke design works.
And the thing is we do need baseline power and there are no easy solutions there. If the wind doesn’t blow for a few days no amount of storage is going to help
It doesn't depend on whether they work (although having a nuclear sub reactor parked in your town is going to bring out a tsunami of NIMBY's). It depends on the cost. Of siting, planning permission, building, maintaining, defending, decommissioning. Boris hasn't told us any of the answers to those.
The nuke mini reactors are nearly certainly going to go on the sites of existing nuclear power stations. They have a fairly small footprint, and the sites have very large amounts of land "behind the fences". There are also the existing turbine halls to take the steam generated, the connections to the grid etc.
If you listen to the anti-nuke types, they are extremely worried by the possibility that because of this, the mini-nukes won't even get a "proper"* planning enquiry.
*One lasting decades.
Still nothing on the relative costs.
And they are still a new form of energy generation - that might have significant teething problems. A lot being taken on good faith - never wise with the nuclear industry.
The question on costs is hard to gauge at this point. They are, of course, a modification of existing nuclear reactor designs for submarines. The sizing seems to suggest something quite close to the reactors for the next generation of Trident submarines (PWR3).
So, rather than being a whole new design, they will be an evolution of an existing design. I would suspect that many components, such as the pressure vessel, will be very, very similar.
The resistance to the mini-nuke idea from the backers of traditional sized nuclear power stations has been interesting. They claimed that the re-use of military technology was an "unfair advantage". Which speaks volumes, to me.
If these mini-nukes turn out to be an order of magnitude cheaper than the RN gets charged, somebody might just say "Hang on a minute...."
I don't know how much RR have had in development assistance. I know £200m has been announced, but it is likely to be way more. For a fraction of that, the Government could have got tidal power stations moving forward several years ago.
If Starmer goes on the attack on this, the Government is in World Of Pain.... And frankly, it will serve them right.
I don't know where you got the idea that they will be an "order of magnitude cheaper" than the RN pays for a reactor - I haven't seen a finalised price.
Building things to military specifications is generally more expensive though - see military vs civilian costs for ship building. There are good reasons for this.
If we are to achieve net zero, how is there any common sense in trying to produce more CO2?
This is the time to massively invest in renewables and nuclear.
You cannot get to net zero without a long transition and this war has turned the previous assumptions upside down
We have oil and gas reserves in the North Sea and the demand to free ourselves from importing Russian oil and gas, and from elsewhere, will become the over riding argument in the next few months and at present labour are on the wrong side of the argument
These discussions are going on across Europe right now as their use, especially Germany, of Russian oil and gas is providing Putin with all he needs to carry on his murderous military campaigns
Indeed I believe Germany are to reinstate coal fired power stations
I understand a new energy policy is to be announced by HMG this week that no doubt will annoy the greens but receive popular support
I would question the value of an energy policy whose aim is to annoy the greens. But that's a perennial problem with this government. Has it come up with any policy yet that is worth the paper it's written on?
This week HMG announces the energy policy going forward and this will be very popular as we become self sufficient in oil and gas
I am intrigued by your demand for the dash for North Sea gas Have you got Schlumberger shares? Perhaps you need to declare your interest.
Your comment is perhaps unintentionally illustrative. What happens in the North Sea will make not one iota of difference to the profitability of Schlumberger or any other oil field service company. In the international scheme of things the North Sea, whilst hugely important to domestic energy security, is utterly insignificant. Indeed that is why all these calls to shut down North Sea production are so deeply stupid. It won't make a blind bit of difference to how much oil and gas we use and will just mean we get it from alternative less savoury places where Schlumberger make bigger profits because environmental, safety and labour laws are less stringent.
Indeed. My commentary is "never .. intentionally illustrative".
"Just possibly - fighting was getting closer and close to the hospital. So there were very few mothers-to-be there - mostly evacuated or sent to other places. But it is still a hospital....."
So the excuse for the low casualties is that they were incompetent - it fell in front of the hospital rather than destroying it. Perhaps they'll try harder next time. Use a hypersonic, vacuum bomb or something similar. In the meantime, we can criticise the Ukranians for exaggeration. I begin to think that they lie badly because it doesn't matter much. Only the domestic audience matters.
"Just possibly - fighting was getting closer and close to the hospital. So there were very few mothers-to-be there - mostly evacuated or sent to other places. But it is still a hospital....."
So the excuse for the low casualties is that they were incompetent - it fell in front of the hospital rather than destroying it. Perhaps they'll try harder next time. Use a hypersonic, vacuum bomb or something similar. In the meantime, we can criticise the Ukranians for exaggeration. I begin to think that they lie badly because it doesn't matter much. Only the domestic audience matters.
More that when they bombed a hospital, it was mostly empty. Because the Ukrainians were worried that the Russians might bomb the hospital.
Darn those Ukrainians for thinking that the Russians might do something they actually did and taking precautions.
I don't think Putin is evil, though he does have a significant disconnect, common (if not universal) in powerful statespeople, with the human consequences of his actions. Though perhaps he is tormented by them in private, as Thatcher was about the British casualties (though I believe not the enemy casualties) in the Falklands. Madeline Albright was asked if half a million casualties was an acceptable death toll in Iraq, and she answered 'yes' without batting an eyelid. Perhaps that's the sort of attitude you need (or just think you need) to run a big country.
Exactly how far would Putin have to go, for you to accept he is evil?
He has personally authorised a brutal, unprovoked invasion on an unthreatening neighbouring state, utilising, as a military method, the indiscriminate slaughter of civilians: men, women and children. The purpose being to restore the “greatness” of the lost Russian empire
What more does he have to do? Roast the dead babies? Nuke Warsaw? Batter your Nan to death with a brick, on Whitechapel Road?
I have difficulty subscribing to the notion of anyone being evil - I think we are naturally good, and we can become, by degrees, disconnected from our natural goodness. I'd say that Putin has become very disconnected, and is probably full of anger, resentment and wrath, but 'evil' is just a caricature. It's a glib label that prevents us from exploring the motivations of people that we oppose.
Part two of this is less of a philosophical argument - whilst Russia is the aggressor and Putin is responsible for this horrendous situation, I also believe that the truth of the atrocities of the invasion is less extreme than that which is being portrayed...
If we are to achieve net zero, how is there any common sense in trying to produce more CO2?
This is the time to massively invest in renewables and nuclear.
They are entirely compatible. 1. We need power next winter. If we can't get replacement gas then our gas-fired power stations are in trouble. Without them we have a big hole in our capabilities as we bet the farm on cheap gas imports to maximise profits. We may need to keep burning coal a bit longer whilst we change our capabilities. 2. We must invest into renewables. Not just erecting wind farms but actually making the turbines. Invest into tidal so that we can harness the huge tidal surges. Mass produced solar panels so that every house can have one. 3. But having done all that we still need oil. We aren't about to replace next week every truck engine with hydrogen so we need oil. We still need plastic so we still need oil. Better to use our own oil than be on the hook to someone else (see gas, point 1) 4. Nuclear is a massive dead end. We can't produce our own nuclear power stations any more from an engineering point of view, and even from a construction point of view they are very very very slow to put up and at vast cost. Better to sink the money into cheaper cleaner faster alternatives.
I have a Tesla on order to sit alongside our Ioniq EV. And I am advocating more domestic oil and gas production. The two are not incompatible.
On 4 nuclear may not be a dead end in the UK - but it depends on whether Rolls Royce’s mini nuke design works.
And the thing is we do need baseline power and there are no easy solutions there. If the wind doesn’t blow for a few days no amount of storage is going to help
It doesn't depend on whether they work (although having a nuclear sub reactor parked in your town is going to bring out a tsunami of NIMBY's). It depends on the cost. Of siting, planning permission, building, maintaining, defending, decommissioning. Boris hasn't told us any of the answers to those.
The nuke mini reactors are nearly certainly going to go on the sites of existing nuclear power stations. They have a fairly small footprint, and the sites have very large amounts of land "behind the fences". There are also the existing turbine halls to take the steam generated, the connections to the grid etc.
If you listen to the anti-nuke types, they are extremely worried by the possibility that because of this, the mini-nukes won't even get a "proper"* planning enquiry.
*One lasting decades.
Still nothing on the relative costs.
And they are still a new form of energy generation - that might have significant teething problems. A lot being taken on good faith - never wise with the nuclear industry.
The question on costs is hard to gauge at this point. They are, of course, a modification of existing nuclear reactor designs for submarines. The sizing seems to suggest something quite close to the reactors for the next generation of Trident submarines (PWR3).
So, rather than being a whole new design, they will be an evolution of an existing design. I would suspect that many components, such as the pressure vessel, will be very, very similar.
The resistance to the mini-nuke idea from the backers of traditional sized nuclear power stations has been interesting. They claimed that the re-use of military technology was an "unfair advantage". Which speaks volumes, to me.
If these mini-nukes turn out to be an order of magnitude cheaper than the RN gets charged, somebody might just say "Hang on a minute...."
I don't know how much RR have had in development assistance. I know £200m has been announced, but it is likely to be way more. For a fraction of that, the Government could have got tidal power stations moving forward several years ago.
If Starmer goes on the attack on this, the Government is in World Of Pain.... And frankly, it will serve them right.
Doesn't everything nuclear always cost shitloads more and take shitloads longer than everyone breezily asserts at the start? These RR mini nukes will be no different.
Exactly so. The promised economies of scale will never actually materialise. And the rationale for them only works if you have 10 at a site rather than one, so we'll have to press on regardless, eh?
Meanwhile, the cost for the decommissioning the UK's nuclear facilities was put at between £132 billion and £220 billion. Let's top that up, eh?
If we are to achieve net zero, how is there any common sense in trying to produce more CO2?
This is the time to massively invest in renewables and nuclear.
They are entirely compatible. 1. We need power next winter. If we can't get replacement gas then our gas-fired power stations are in trouble. Without them we have a big hole in our capabilities as we bet the farm on cheap gas imports to maximise profits. We may need to keep burning coal a bit longer whilst we change our capabilities. 2. We must invest into renewables. Not just erecting wind farms but actually making the turbines. Invest into tidal so that we can harness the huge tidal surges. Mass produced solar panels so that every house can have one. 3. But having done all that we still need oil. We aren't about to replace next week every truck engine with hydrogen so we need oil. We still need plastic so we still need oil. Better to use our own oil than be on the hook to someone else (see gas, point 1) 4. Nuclear is a massive dead end. We can't produce our own nuclear power stations any more from an engineering point of view, and even from a construction point of view they are very very very slow to put up and at vast cost. Better to sink the money into cheaper cleaner faster alternatives.
I have a Tesla on order to sit alongside our Ioniq EV. And I am advocating more domestic oil and gas production. The two are not incompatible.
On 4 nuclear may not be a dead end in the UK - but it depends on whether Rolls Royce’s mini nuke design works.
And the thing is we do need baseline power and there are no easy solutions there. If the wind doesn’t blow for a few days no amount of storage is going to help
It doesn't depend on whether they work (although having a nuclear sub reactor parked in your town is going to bring out a tsunami of NIMBY's). It depends on the cost. Of siting, planning permission, building, maintaining, defending, decommissioning. Boris hasn't told us any of the answers to those.
The nuke mini reactors are nearly certainly going to go on the sites of existing nuclear power stations. They have a fairly small footprint, and the sites have very large amounts of land "behind the fences". There are also the existing turbine halls to take the steam generated, the connections to the grid etc.
If you listen to the anti-nuke types, they are extremely worried by the possibility that because of this, the mini-nukes won't even get a "proper"* planning enquiry.
*One lasting decades.
Still nothing on the relative costs.
And they are still a new form of energy generation - that might have significant teething problems. A lot being taken on good faith - never wise with the nuclear industry.
The question on costs is hard to gauge at this point. They are, of course, a modification of existing nuclear reactor designs for submarines. The sizing seems to suggest something quite close to the reactors for the next generation of Trident submarines (PWR3).
So, rather than being a whole new design, they will be an evolution of an existing design. I would suspect that many components, such as the pressure vessel, will be very, very similar.
The resistance to the mini-nuke idea from the backers of traditional sized nuclear power stations has been interesting. They claimed that the re-use of military technology was an "unfair advantage". Which speaks volumes, to me.
If these mini-nukes turn out to be an order of magnitude cheaper than the RN gets charged, somebody might just say "Hang on a minute...."
I don't know how much RR have had in development assistance. I know £200m has been announced, but it is likely to be way more. For a fraction of that, the Government could have got tidal power stations moving forward several years ago.
If Starmer goes on the attack on this, the Government is in World Of Pain.... And frankly, it will serve them right.
Doesn't everything nuclear always cost shitloads more and take shitloads longer than everyone breezily asserts at the start? These RR mini nukes will be no different.
Exactly so. The promised economies of scale will never actually materialise. And the rationale for them only works if you have 10 at a site rather than one, so we'll have to press on regardless, eh?
Meanwhile, the cost for the decommissioning the UK's nuclear facilities was put at between £132 billion and £220 billion. Let's top that up, eh?
Why are you so confident that lagoons will not suffer massive price increases over their proponent's projections?
I don't think Putin is evil, though he does have a significant disconnect, common (if not universal) in powerful statespeople, with the human consequences of his actions. Though perhaps he is tormented by them in private, as Thatcher was about the British casualties (though I believe not the enemy casualties) in the Falklands. Madeline Albright was asked if half a million casualties was an acceptable death toll in Iraq, and she answered 'yes' without batting an eyelid. Perhaps that's the sort of attitude you need (or just think you need) to run a big country.
Exactly how far would Putin have to go, for you to accept he is evil?
He has personally authorised a brutal, unprovoked invasion on an unthreatening neighbouring state, utilising, as a military method, the indiscriminate slaughter of civilians: men, women and children. The purpose being to restore the “greatness” of the lost Russian empire
What more does he have to do? Roast the dead babies? Nuke Warsaw? Batter your Nan to death with a brick, on Whitechapel Road?
I have difficulty subscribing to the notion of anyone being evil - I think we are naturally good, and we can become, by degrees, disconnected from our natural goodness. I'd say that Putin has become very disconnected, and is probably full of anger, resentment and wrath, but 'evil' is just a caricature. It's a glib label that prevents us from exploring the motivations of people that we oppose.
Part two of this is less of a philosophical argument - whilst Russia is the aggressor and Putin is responsible for this horrendous situation, I also believe that the truth of the atrocities of the invasion is less extreme than that which is being portrayed...
I don't think Putin is evil, though he does have a significant disconnect, common (if not universal) in powerful statespeople, with the human consequences of his actions. Though perhaps he is tormented by them in private, as Thatcher was about the British casualties (though I believe not the enemy casualties) in the Falklands. Madeline Albright was asked if half a million casualties was an acceptable death toll in Iraq, and she answered 'yes' without batting an eyelid. Perhaps that's the sort of attitude you need (or just think you need) to run a big country.
Exactly how far would Putin have to go, for you to accept he is evil?
He has personally authorised a brutal, unprovoked invasion on an unthreatening neighbouring state, utilising, as a military method, the indiscriminate slaughter of civilians: men, women and children. The purpose being to restore the “greatness” of the lost Russian empire
What more does he have to do? Roast the dead babies? Nuke Warsaw? Batter your Nan to death with a brick, on Whitechapel Road?
I have difficulty subscribing to the notion of anyone being evil - I think we are naturally good, and we can become, by degrees, disconnected from our natural goodness. I'd say that Putin has become very disconnected, and is probably full of anger, resentment and wrath, but 'evil' is just a caricature. It's a glib label that prevents us from exploring the motivations of people that we oppose.
Part two of this is less of a philosophical argument - whilst Russia is the aggressor and Putin is responsible for this horrendous situation, I also believe that the truth of the atrocities of the invasion is less extreme than that which is being portrayed. Ukraine gets applauded here for 'winning the information war', but inherent in that information war is accusing your opponents of indiscriminate (or even deliberate) butchery of civilians. The truth lies somewhere in the middle.
The Russians say that the Ukrainians are shelling their own citizens.
So you think there's some truth in that?
I don't believe the Russian propaganda. But what I find plausible are reports from Mariupol that the Azov brigade have been preventing civilians from leaving the city, and attempting to use them as human sheilds. With the attack on the hospital, it was tragic that three people lost their lives, but logic tells me that 3 casualties isn't consistent with bombing an operational maternity hospital.
Given that over 30k inhabitants has made it out already, you’d think someone might have confirmed that ?
"With the attack on the hospital, it was tragic that three people lost their lives, but logic tells me that 3 casualties isn't consistent with bombing an operational maternity hospital."
What was interesting was that while Labrov, the foreign minister was claiming that the hospital was not a maternity hospital at all, but housed only the military, the Russian Ambassador to the UN was admitting it was a maternity hospital. However, the shell/bomb had missed it, causing only a crater in front. In the picture he showed, all the windows had been blown in yet he denied any casualties. Had you been in any of the wards, imagine what broken glass acting as shrapnel would have done to any patient?
One or both must be lying, and lying poorly. It's as if only useful idiots were being targetted. When you shoot yourself in the foot like that, you don't need Ukranian propaganda.
It beggars belief that anyone should think the Russian propaganda even slightly likely, given their long history of targeting hospitals (see Syria, for example), and the plain fact that they’ve shelled and bombed most of the city.
“Vladimir Putin has 'finally agreed 'to face-to-face peace talks with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky after more than three weeks of war, it has been reported. The two leaders have let their diplomatic teams conduct peace talks on the neutral ground since shortly after the start of the conflict on February 24, but a BBC correspondent has confirmed the two will meet in person”
It may just be me, but the intensity of fighting does seem to have reduced in recent days. It may just be lack of targets. Or perhaps, informally, not so much a ceasefire as "if you don't move, we won't kill you while talks go on"? We can hope.
But we also have to hope for Putin not to make stupid demands of Ukraine. Less optimism there.
Or the crippling if Russian logistics means they pause is not one of choice but necessity.
"Just possibly - fighting was getting closer and close to the hospital. So there were very few mothers-to-be there - mostly evacuated or sent to other places. But it is still a hospital....."
So the excuse for the low casualties is that they were incompetent - it fell in front of the hospital rather than destroying it. Perhaps they'll try harder next time. Use a hypersonic, vacuum bomb or something similar. In the meantime, we can criticise the Ukranians for exaggeration. I begin to think that they lie badly because it doesn't matter much. Only the domestic audience matters.
More that when they bombed a hospital, it was mostly empty. Because the Ukrainians were worried that the Russians might bomb the hospital.
Darn those Ukrainians for thinking that the Russians might do something they actually did and taking precautions.
I am not 'darning' anyone for doing that. However, the specific emotional impact of the act was that a working maternity hospital, with the implied unthinkable carnage, had been bombed. Thankfully, the low level of actual casualties implies that this was not the case, for which we should all be thankful. But we still need to be extremely wary of these sorts of events, as they are used to soften public resistance to otherwise unpopular steps, such as attacking a nuclear power.
If we are to achieve net zero, how is there any common sense in trying to produce more CO2?
This is the time to massively invest in renewables and nuclear.
You’re conflating two things
1. We should try to reduce the usage of fossil fuels 2. To the extent we need to use fossil fuels for an interim period it is better to use domestically produced fossil fuels for economic/environmental/geopolitical reasons
If you can make a sensible economic return from new production in the UK, even assuming it will only have a limited lifespan, then it makes sense to do so as it can be better controlled than other sources
A humble man goes jogging Keeping fit And why does he do this? Because this is no ordinary man. This is Boris Johnson: plain, no frills, unassuming. But he knows he is leader of the free world & must keep in top condition for all of us. We are blessed.👍🇬🇧
tbf, I’m several stone lighter (he does look like an walrus in a hurry), but my running form isn’t vastly better.
A local gym offers running courses - According to the chap running them, he can massively improve most peoples speed *and* reduce their probability of injuring themselves.
Given some of the strange flopping about I see on the pavements, I think he is right.
I find the concept of evil itself to be inaccurate, unhelpful and rooted in superstition.
A moral relativist then
Who gets to define "evil". You? Me?
Such terms are relativist by definition.
I fear we are going to get "God" invoked if we're not careful, and the whole business of that somehow not being a human concept and therefore giving us a moral absolute. And there the argument will end if we're lucky
HY can't talk to us about God as he misquotes the Bible. I'm not about to get involved in a debate with him on the subject as he has nothing to say worth listening to.
My point was that evil in the human world is a defined concept not an absolute. I know several people who firmly believe Boris is evil and can point to the deliberately callous way they treat the poor / sick as evidence. When you aren't being reduced to penury and left humiliated and desperate by sneering politicians you won't accept that "evil" is a valid definition for the man. But it could be depending on perspective.
It’s been a long time since I studied theology, but relative vs absolute morality was a key philosophical discussion. I don’t think you can just state it as a fact like that
I can. In the modern world morality is relative. Something defined by societies and something that different societies have different views about. Now lets go back further in time towards absolute morality defined by religion. That is ALSO relative. Which religion are we considering? Is Christian absolutism compatible with other faith's own definitions? How about Catholic vs Eastern Orthodox vs Anglican etc etc?
I don’t really have the energy for this debate today (still getting over covid).
But most religions have similar core principles - “thou shalt not murder” for example - which are simply the building blocks of a functioning society rather than anything intrinsically religious.
But if you have a society which says murder is ok - let’s say the Thugee Cult* - then relative morality would say “it’s ok, it’s their belief system” while absolute morality says “murder is wrong”
For me morality is absolute - but equally I would be strict on the definitions vs try to overlay it with too many nice to haves.
* ignoring the debate on whether the Thugees were real or invented
Sure. Thou shall not commit murder. Unless its a crusade. Or the inquisition. Etc etc. Thou shall not commit adultery. Unless you are permitted.
The problem with all of this is that the definitions of things like "murder" are themselves flexible. And when the Pope - the literal voice of God - is sanctioning murder, where does the definition of evil sit?
Crusades were originally about protection of pilgrims and then morphed into a general invasion / raid / war of aggression. Not typically defined as “murder”.
The inquisition was, I would agree, evil. It was humans applying unacceptable methods in the pursuit of ideological purity
“Vladimir Putin has 'finally agreed 'to face-to-face peace talks with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky after more than three weeks of war, it has been reported. The two leaders have let their diplomatic teams conduct peace talks on the neutral ground since shortly after the start of the conflict on February 24, but a BBC correspondent has confirmed the two will meet in person”
Why do i not trust the Russians to use this meeting as bait to strike?
How has COVID affected the temper of pb.com threads?
Many recent threads -- this one included -- seem to become exceptionally ill-tempered rather quickly. COVID seems to have overwhelmed some people's ability to process or even acknowledge conflicting points of view.
There is good argument that Russia would not have launched the invasion without Putin's paranoia, exacerbated by COVID.
My guess is Boris would be in more trouble without COVID. In benign & placid times, his shortcomings would be even more apparent.
(OTH, there is a good argument that President Donald Trump would be romping through his second term, without his disastrous response to COVID).
I'm not convinced about Russia, given that they already invaded in 2014, fully 5 years before Covid. An argument can be made for it, but it's tough to account for that past behaviour.
I think there would have been a low-level war in the Donbas regardless of COVID.
Without COVID, I doubt if Putin would have risked an enormous invasion.
Without COVID and the consequent absence of travel/tourism/visitors, I doubt if the populations of Russia, or elsewhere, would be so inward-looking. The importance of meeting people from other countries regularly, one-to-one, through tourism or exchange or cultural activities is one of the great bulwarks against war.
The boundaries in the East of Ukraine/Crimea were wrong -- unpopular though it is to say this. Just as the boundaries of Serbia prior to the secession of Kosovo were wrong. There was always going to be a problem in East Ukraine, but it did not have to end this way.
A way that is probably the worst of all for both Russia and Ukraine.
It was the discovery of offshore gas in Crimea at the end of 2012 that meant Russia wanted it. It did not want Ukraine to have independent sources of energy and foreign currency.
I don't think Putin is evil, though he does have a significant disconnect, common (if not universal) in powerful statespeople, with the human consequences of his actions. Though perhaps he is tormented by them in private, as Thatcher was about the British casualties (though I believe not the enemy casualties) in the Falklands. Madeline Albright was asked if half a million casualties was an acceptable death toll in Iraq, and she answered 'yes' without batting an eyelid. Perhaps that's the sort of attitude you need (or just think you need) to run a big country.
Exactly how far would Putin have to go, for you to accept he is evil?
He has personally authorised a brutal, unprovoked invasion on an unthreatening neighbouring state, utilising, as a military method, the indiscriminate slaughter of civilians: men, women and children. The purpose being to restore the “greatness” of the lost Russian empire
What more does he have to do? Roast the dead babies? Nuke Warsaw? Batter your Nan to death with a brick, on Whitechapel Road?
I have difficulty subscribing to the notion of anyone being evil - I think we are naturally good, and we can become, by degrees, disconnected from our natural goodness. I'd say that Putin has become very disconnected, and is probably full of anger, resentment and wrath, but 'evil' is just a caricature. It's a glib label that prevents us from exploring the motivations of people that we oppose.
Part two of this is less of a philosophical argument - whilst Russia is the aggressor and Putin is responsible for this horrendous situation, I also believe that the truth of the atrocities of the invasion is less extreme than that which is being portrayed. Ukraine gets applauded here for 'winning the information war', but inherent in that information war is accusing your opponents of indiscriminate (or even deliberate) butchery of civilians. The truth lies somewhere in the middle.
The Russians say that the Ukrainians are shelling their own citizens.
So you think there's some truth in that?
I don't believe the Russian propaganda. But what I find plausible are reports from Mariupol that the Azov brigade have been preventing civilians from leaving the city, and attempting to use them as human sheilds. With the attack on the hospital, it was tragic that three people lost their lives, but logic tells me that 3 casualties isn't consistent with bombing an operational maternity hospital.
I don’t believe the Russian propaganda but I find plausible is the Russian propaganda
The graphic shows the evolution in how confident people are that Russia will be defeated.
Encouraging for Ukraine, discouraging for Putin. A nation confidently united, like that, can literally never be defeated. Unless he deports them ALL to Siberia
I still don't see path to them regaining Donbas (never mind Crimea), but if they remain united like that it means the Leadership can presumably hold firmer against offering concessions to the Russians as the price for peace, on the basis that the Ukrainian people would rather not pay some prices.
I don't see why they couldn't get the Donbass back under some scenarios. I wouldn't rule out Crimea either. However that's easy for me to say, I'm not the one facing a humanitarian crisis. Unless Putin is prepared to use WMD (horrible thought) or starts calling up masses of reserves - 500,000? - it is hard to see him winning a military victory so long as the Ukrainian air force keeps flying and their army isn't decimated. I believe the Ukrainians are busy training reservists - I thought I saw a figure of 250,000 - which would give them superior numbers. Hopefully all the Nato weapons are getting there.
VVP never articulated the aims or schedule of Operation Ukrainian Freedom in anything other than the most ambiguous terms so he can declare victory whenever he wants.
We can surmise the aims were:
1. Regime change in Ukraine turning them into another gimp state like Belarus. 2. No NATO for Ukraine. 3. A more sustainable form for the DPR/LPR. 4. Land bridge to Crimea and deny Ukraine access to the Black Sea.
1. is looking like a stretch at the moment although they might get lucky and get Zeldisney. 2. That's a tick. 3. and 4. are looking achievable.
VVP might be inclined to settle for 2,3 & 4, work on getting sanctions lifted as the west eventually gets bored/greedy and then have another go 5-10 years hence and break off another piece.
Your last paragraph is why 2,3&4 is not a workable deal. Russia promised before to respect Ukraine’s territorial integrity
The graphic shows the evolution in how confident people are that Russia will be defeated.
Encouraging for Ukraine, discouraging for Putin. A nation confidently united, like that, can literally never be defeated. Unless he deports them ALL to Siberia
I still don't see path to them regaining Donbas (never mind Crimea), but if they remain united like that it means the Leadership can presumably hold firmer against offering concessions to the Russians as the price for peace, on the basis that the Ukrainian people would rather not pay some prices.
I don't see why they couldn't get the Donbass back under some scenarios. I wouldn't rule out Crimea either. However that's easy for me to say, I'm not the one facing a humanitarian crisis. Unless Putin is prepared to use WMD (horrible thought) or starts calling up masses of reserves - 500,000? - it is hard to see him winning a military victory so long as the Ukrainian air force keeps flying and their army isn't decimated. I believe the Ukrainians are busy training reservists - I thought I saw a figure of 250,000 - which would give them superior numbers. Hopefully all the Nato weapons are getting there.
VVP never articulated the aims or schedule of Operation Ukrainian Freedom in anything other than the most ambiguous terms so he can declare victory whenever he wants.
We can surmise the aims were:
1. Regime change in Ukraine turning them into another gimp state like Belarus. 2. No NATO for Ukraine. 3. A more sustainable form for the DPR/LPR. 4. Land bridge to Crimea and deny Ukraine access to the Black Sea.
1. is looking like a stretch at the moment although they might get lucky and get Zeldisney. 2. That's a tick. 3. and 4. are looking achievable.
VVP might be inclined to settle for 2,3 & 4, work on getting sanctions lifted as the west eventually gets bored/greedy and then have another go 5-10 years hence and break off another piece.
Your last paragraph is why 2,3&4 is not a workable deal. Russia promised before to respect Ukraine’s territorial integrity
And we and the US promised, by treaty, to defend it (knowing we never could if the aggressor was Russia). If I was Ukraine I’d want a bit more than empty promises.
Comments
I just think it is quite different other renewables in how predictable it is. It would almost certainly be cheaper than nuclear per Mw but it doesn't come with a different set downsides.
Feels ideal to add to the mix.
I don't know how much RR have had in development assistance. I know £200m has been announced, but it is likely to be way more. For a fraction of that, the Government could have got tidal power stations moving forward several years ago.
If Starmer goes on the attack on this, the Government is in World Of Pain.... And frankly, it will serve them right.
Edit - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Ukrainian_local_elections
Feels like the sort of thing a pension fund might want to invest in but they would need the strike price of the power to be binding/guaranteed (like nuclear)
Certainly from the talk I was at they tech seems to be where wind was 10-15 years ago, costs are coming down. Other parts of the world seem to just be able to get on with it.
MrB
Johnson's speech in Blackpool yesterday was full of proclamations that he was the one true patriot statesman in the fight against Putin. His implication was if you weren't on Team Boris, you would invariably be a pro-Putin quisling traitor ,I am guessing that refers to, i.e. Starmer, Davey etc. etc. A patent falsehood.
And Braverman, she defended her lie with such emotion and conviction that one felt if she was armed, Streeting would now be a late and former MP. It was as though she believed her own BS.
It was said in Trump's USA we were in a post-truth state. We may already be at that point here. It is not that there is an economy with the actualitaire, these people are projecting absolute fiction as reality, and with a straight face.
If activist citizens increase the sanctions to close to a blockade...
The much more realistic outcome of this is that the war becomes a stalemate in the next couple of weeks, Russia has unrealistic demands like yours and underestimates Ukrainian resolve, we have a long war with lots of deaths, the Russian economy defaults and enters a crisis, and the Russian people gradually get sick of their young men being killed for a war no-one wanted. At some point a couple years from now, Russia accepts defeat, gets minimal concessions and despite Putin's best efforts to say the 'special operation' achieved its minimum aims, he is humiliated.
Building things to military specifications is generally more expensive though - see military vs civilian costs for ship building. There are good reasons for this.
NEW THREAD
"Just possibly - fighting was getting closer and close to the hospital. So there were very few mothers-to-be there - mostly evacuated or sent to other places. But it is still a hospital....."
So the excuse for the low casualties is that they were incompetent - it fell in front of the hospital rather than destroying it. Perhaps they'll try harder next time. Use a hypersonic, vacuum bomb or something similar. In the meantime, we can criticise the Ukranians for exaggeration. I begin to think that they lie badly because it doesn't matter much. Only the domestic audience matters.
Darn those Ukrainians for thinking that the Russians might do something they actually did and taking precautions.
Meanwhile, the cost for the decommissioning the UK's nuclear facilities was put at between £132 billion and £220 billion. Let's top that up, eh?
They are massive engineering structures.
1. We should try to reduce the usage of fossil fuels
2. To the extent we need to use fossil fuels for an interim period it is better to use domestically produced fossil fuels for economic/environmental/geopolitical reasons
If you can make a sensible economic return from new production in the UK, even assuming it will only have a limited lifespan, then it makes sense to do so as it can be better controlled than other sources
The inquisition was, I would agree, evil. It was humans applying unacceptable methods in the pursuit of ideological purity
That is why Ukraine can’t give it up.