(Of course I'm making the rather silly assumption that they'd derive capability from possible threats, rather than from how shiny something is.)
Well, that's the starting point but that focus becomes diffuse due to...
Political imperatives that mean as much as possible has to be based in Scotland, it all has to be made in the UK and they have to keep funding things the Daily Mail comments section obsesses over like the BoBMF.
Incompetence.
Corruption.
Inherent small-C conservatism of 1* ranks and up.
I for one will never take the MoD seriously till they scrap the Red Arrows. And the Household Cavalry's equines. The forces are now so small that those are significant detriments.
Soft power. the cavalry pays its way in increased tourism to London
Reagan structures a whole european tour round a riding photo op with HMQ
[bonus titbit from that article: FO begged Queenie not to use thye words "special relationship, cos they loathe them. Quite right.]
I didn't know the Armed Forces were part of the tourist industry ... and as for the good Mr Reagan, isn't that pony he is on one of HMtQ's stable, rather than the HC?
If you consider that just about every country has a ceremonial element, for good PR, historical, recruitment and retention, yes tourist reasons among others then the UK having a ceremonial element which includes donkeys is not the great crime you think it might be.
HC(av, btw) have their horses, the Micks have their wolfhound, the fusiliers their goat, and so on; many of the Scottish regiments don't even wear trousers on parade I mean how impractical is that and many if not most other regiments prance around in funny looking uniforms that would be out of place in, say, Estonia right now.
Thanks. I don't know that wearing a kilt on special parade is quite as bad as wearing a whole horse and associated tack. PLus the kilt and sporran don't have to be fed and watered and de-shited day in day out.
Oh yes, some need for ceremonial, and some interesting stuff coming up this morning. But it's when it starts to bite into the overall mission that I wonder - as with DA's point re the Arrows consuming 5% of the fast jet pilots etc. in a way which won't help keep them very current.
Just struck btw by the way in which modern squaddies these days appear in public in the sandy equivalent of DPM - didn't they use to appear in public in plain khaki (green/brown, whatever, but unpatterned)? A cynic might think the MoD was trying to make them look more ally to make up for the cuts. But it does seem to be a wider military fashion worldwide. Even influencing some navies. Modern equivalent of the pelisse I daresay.
We haven't been to war in quite some time and it's a way of reminding everyone, soldiers included, that the army does go to war, and this is how the army dressed in the most recent one of which.
As for previously it was very rare for squaddies to appear in uniform in public and then it would I suppose have depended upon why. Plain khaki sounds like 1950s battledress when are we talking here.
Has BoZo managed to uninvite himself from the EU summit? Below is interesting in the context of the Times reporting that Number 10 “sorry” on the Brexit-Ukraine remarks… rather suggests that an invite from Charles Michel to Thursday’s EU summit might have been being pondered (Biden is going too, same day as special NATO summit)…. https://twitter.com/carlbildt/status/1505278978550022145
.. indeed briefing from UK end to British journalists to this effect last week. Foreign Sec Truss attended the Foreign Affairs Council, so there is a precedent here.
This is worth reading in full …highlights that B Johnson and others lied about the evacuation from Afghanistan and the wider administrative chaos …short and illuminating on many levels: https://committees.parliament.uk/writtenevidence/107001/pdf
Bloody hell
this is the actual testimony of Josie Stewart. Fab stuff
35. I cannot fathom why either Philip Barton or Nigel Casey would have intentionally lied to the Committee, but I believe that they must have done so both in the letter dated 17 January and in the oral testimony given on 25 January. I have tried to imagine but cannot conceive of any way this could have been an honest mistake. Nigel Casey explicitly testified that he had searched his emails and found nothing of relevance, yet when I searched my emails for “PM” and “Nowzad” I found more than one email referencing “the PM’s decision on Nowzad” and with Nigel Casey in copy. So the only possible explanations are that a) Nigel Casey had deleted his emails (which everyone who had worked on the Afghanistan crisis had been ordered by Diptel not to do); b) he did not know how to use the “CTRL-F” function in Outlook, or searched for something other than “PM” and “Nowzad”; c) he found the emails but somehow concluded they were not relevant, despite mentioning ‘the PM’s decision on Nowzad’; or d) he was lying.
This is worth reading in full …highlights that B Johnson and others lied about the evacuation from Afghanistan and the wider administrative chaos …short and illuminating on many levels: https://committees.parliament.uk/writtenevidence/107001/pdf
Bloody hell
this is the actual testimony of Josie Stewart. Fab stuff
35. I cannot fathom why either Philip Barton or Nigel Casey would have intentionally lied to the Committee, but I believe that they must have done so both in the letter dated 17 January and in the oral testimony given on 25 January. I have tried to imagine but cannot conceive of any way this could have been an honest mistake. Nigel Casey explicitly testified that he had searched his emails and found nothing of relevance, yet when I searched my emails for “PM” and “Nowzad” I found more than one email referencing “the PM’s decision on Nowzad” and with Nigel Casey in copy. So the only possible explanations are that a) Nigel Casey had deleted his emails (which everyone who had worked on the Afghanistan crisis had been ordered by Diptel not to do); b) he did not know how to use the “CTRL-F” function in Outlook, or searched for something other than “PM” and “Nowzad”; c) he found the emails but somehow concluded they were not relevant, despite mentioning ‘the PM’s decision on Nowzad’; or d) he was lying.
Sajid Javid joins Rishi Sunak in having to argue that night is day on behalf of the prime minister over the Brexit/Ukraine row: "I don't accept that he was comparing the UK to Ukraine." Which is nonsense, of course. https://twitter.com/KevinASchofield/status/1505807648448565250/photo/1
So what interpretation did he offer for this ?
"I know that it's the instinct of the people of this country, like the people of Ukraine, to choose freedom, every time. I can give you a couple of famous recent examples. "When the British people voted for Brexit in such large, large numbers, I don't believe it was because they were remotely hostile to foreigners. "It's because they wanted to be free to do things differently and for this country to be able to run itself."...
That both the UK and Ukraine are in the category of countries with a freedom loving people. That doesn’t mean that the UK is equivalent to Ukraine
Yes, Boris’ quote about “Ukraine and Brexit” really isn’t that offensive. You can see what he’s trying to say. It was emotionally misjudged but not an obviously foolish or outrageous statement
But the misjudgement (or canny trolling?) got his opponents to hyper-ventilate, which then made the news
I’m cynical enough to go with canny trolling. The words were carefully chosen. You would hope for better, but that’s the PM the UK has. For now.
You said exactly the same thing about the refugee cock up. If you don't like what you hear you call it trolling rather than accepting it is true. It is true as was the refugee issue. I'm not a troll. I don't even have a twitter account, but I was fully aware of the refugee issue and had an immediate reaction to Boris' statement.
Doesn't look good if your reaction to everything you don't like is 'trolls'.
@StillWaters my apologies, wrong person. Please ignore my post. Sorry.
No problem. Just to be clear I think you were being trolled by Boris, not a troll yourself!
On the refugee issue, I tend to view it as, initially, a combination of cock up and bureaucratic inflexibility. Where Patel was at fault was politically not realising it was a problem (I find it hard to believe that she could be personally unmoved by the situation) and being unable / unwilling to devote the focus and energy to sorting it out.
I don't know how the new system works, so no idea whether the criticisms are justified, but it seems to be these are criticisms of execution rather than of principle at this point, so definitely an improvement. Let's hope that it works.
(The only person on here I accuse of being a troll is Heathener. Because she is. A spinner of Putin-preferred lines with a compromised VPN that is on an anti-spamming blacklist and was also used by two previous trolls)
Re your comments on cock up and bureaucratic inflexibility I am sure you are right. FYI I get involved in numerous campaigns where individuals and groups have been badly or unfairly treated by Govt departments (nothing to do with politics). The level of incompetence is mind boggling. However what I do find is a massive amount of resources are then put into avoiding taking any action or making changes often disproportionate to any cost involved. We see these scandals arise over and over again. There are many more at a lower level of seriousness.
Also for those who think we gained freedoms by leaving the EU, our ombudsman offerings are very flawed with lots of gaps that people and groups fall through. Private member's bills with cross party support invariably fail to fill these gaps. The last and effective resolution was the ECJ has now gone, so many groups are left in limbo with nobody to investigate.
Eh? We are still subject to the jurisdiction of the ECtHR, our domestic courts can be asked to and do enforce ECHR rights and they are a part of our domestic law.
Domestic courts are still required to enforce these laws unless they have been changed and there are almost no examples of this so far.
David, I don't want to bore people online with this but I am involved in pension campaigns where this is an issue. We have had a number of successes in the ECJ, but these will now stop. We have also tried to get the law changed on a number of occasions with all party support and also support from the Parliamentary Ombudsman whose hands are tied so would like to see a change in the law, but these are always opposed by Governments. There are cases which just fall through the gaps. In the case of pension and mortgage cases you can fall fail of the limitation act, which is daft for a mortgage or pension. The FOS will ignore the limitation act, but the PHSO won't because they are legally bound so if you come under that jurisdiction you are stuffed (random result). PHSO also can't investigate GAD so if that is an issue you are stuffed, although an exception was made for Equitable Life, but nobody else. The PO has done an awful job re the PPF and again hides behind the Limitation Act. Ex civil servants can fall between the PHSO and the Whitley Council so fail to get an investigation.
Is that enough of a pile of issues for you. Just about the only success achieved with this pile of crap is the ECJ.
@BartholomewRoberts I noticed you liked David's comment. We have discussed this before. I don't know if you remember but you wished me good luck with the campaign I am involved in sometime ago. I have been involved in these campaigns for 10 years now. I am afraid real life isn't like theory. There are plenty of holes where people can't get justice. MPs are pretty powerless. We have all party support and the vast majority are Tories. It makes not a jot of difference, other than a deal being done in backroom, but if that happens it will be a one off. I am aware of similar campaigns relating to other groups.
Every time you hear of a scandal (Windrush, blood contamination, Equitable Life) remember there is a pile of others under the radar that are less serious that nobody hears of.
Has BoZo managed to uninvite himself from the EU summit? Below is interesting in the context of the Times reporting that Number 10 “sorry” on the Brexit-Ukraine remarks… rather suggests that an invite from Charles Michel to Thursday’s EU summit might have been being pondered (Biden is going too, same day as special NATO summit)…. https://twitter.com/carlbildt/status/1505278978550022145
.. indeed briefing from UK end to British journalists to this effect last week. Foreign Sec Truss attended the Foreign Affairs Council, so there is a precedent here.
She says she has seen five foreign secretaries come and go over the past six years, and at times she felt she couldn't trust them as they kept saying they would get her home.
"How many foreign secretaries does it take?" she asks.
She says what has happened now with her being freed "should have happened six years ago".
Sajid Javid joins Rishi Sunak in having to argue that night is day on behalf of the prime minister over the Brexit/Ukraine row: "I don't accept that he was comparing the UK to Ukraine." Which is nonsense, of course. https://twitter.com/KevinASchofield/status/1505807648448565250/photo/1
So what interpretation did he offer for this ?
"I know that it's the instinct of the people of this country, like the people of Ukraine, to choose freedom, every time. I can give you a couple of famous recent examples. "When the British people voted for Brexit in such large, large numbers, I don't believe it was because they were remotely hostile to foreigners. "It's because they wanted to be free to do things differently and for this country to be able to run itself."...
That both the UK and Ukraine are in the category of countries with a freedom loving people. That doesn’t mean that the UK is equivalent to Ukraine
Yes, Boris’ quote about “Ukraine and Brexit” really isn’t that offensive. You can see what he’s trying to say. It was emotionally misjudged but not an obviously foolish or outrageous statement
But the misjudgement (or canny trolling?) got his opponents to hyper-ventilate, which then made the news
I’m cynical enough to go with canny trolling. The words were carefully chosen. You would hope for better, but that’s the PM the UK has. For now.
You said exactly the same thing about the refugee cock up. If you don't like what you hear you call it trolling rather than accepting it is true. It is true as was the refugee issue. I'm not a troll. I don't even have a twitter account, but I was fully aware of the refugee issue and had an immediate reaction to Boris' statement.
Doesn't look good if your reaction to everything you don't like is 'trolls'.
@StillWaters my apologies, wrong person. Please ignore my post. Sorry.
No problem. Just to be clear I think you were being trolled by Boris, not a troll yourself!
On the refugee issue, I tend to view it as, initially, a combination of cock up and bureaucratic inflexibility. Where Patel was at fault was politically not realising it was a problem (I find it hard to believe that she could be personally unmoved by the situation) and being unable / unwilling to devote the focus and energy to sorting it out.
I don't know how the new system works, so no idea whether the criticisms are justified, but it seems to be these are criticisms of execution rather than of principle at this point, so definitely an improvement. Let's hope that it works.
(The only person on here I accuse of being a troll is Heathener. Because she is. A spinner of Putin-preferred lines with a compromised VPN that is on an anti-spamming blacklist and was also used by two previous trolls)
Re your comments on cock up and bureaucratic inflexibility I am sure you are right. FYI I get involved in numerous campaigns where individuals and groups have been badly or unfairly treated by Govt departments (nothing to do with politics). The level of incompetence is mind boggling. However what I do find is a massive amount of resources are then put into avoiding taking any action or making changes often disproportionate to any cost involved. We see these scandals arise over and over again. There are many more at a lower level of seriousness.
Also for those who think we gained freedoms by leaving the EU, our ombudsman offerings are very flawed with lots of gaps that people and groups fall through. Private member's bills with cross party support invariably fail to fill these gaps. The last and effective resolution was the ECJ has now gone, so many groups are left in limbo with nobody to investigate.
Eh? We are still subject to the jurisdiction of the ECtHR, our domestic courts can be asked to and do enforce ECHR rights and they are a part of our domestic law.
Domestic courts are still required to enforce these laws unless they have been changed and there are almost no examples of this so far.
David, I don't want to bore people online with this but I am involved in pension campaigns where this is an issue. We have had a number of successes in the ECJ, but these will now stop. We have also tried to get the law changed on a number of occasions with all party support and also support from the Parliamentary Ombudsman whose hands are tied so would like to see a change in the law, but these are always opposed by Governments. There are cases which just fall through the gaps. In the case of pension and mortgage cases you can fall fail of the limitation act, which is daft for a mortgage or pension. The FOS will ignore the limitation act, but the PHSO won't because they are legally bound so if you come under that jurisdiction you are stuffed (random result). PHSO also can't investigate GAD so if that is an issue you are stuffed, although an exception was made for Equitable Life, but nobody else. The PO has done an awful job re the PPF and again hides behind the Limitation Act. Ex civil servants can fall between the PHSO and the Whitley Council so fail to get an investigation.
Is that enough of a pile of issues for you. Just about the only success achieved with this pile of crap is the ECJ.
@BartholomewRoberts I noticed you liked David's comment. We have discussed this before. I don't know if you remember but you wished me good luck with the campaign I am involved in sometime ago. I have been involved in these campaigns for 10 years now. I am afraid real life isn't like theory. There are plenty of holes where people can't get justice. MPs are pretty powerless. We have all party support and the vast majority are Tories. It makes not a jot of difference, other than a deal being done in backroom, but if that happens it will be a one off. I am aware of similar campaigns relating to other groups.
Every time you hear of a scandal (Windrush, blood contamination, Equitable Life) remember there is a pile of others under the radar that are less serious that nobody hears of.
If Parliament isn't doing its job, it should be held to account better. Whether that be through domestic media, Parliament or domestic courts.
I don't believe we need the ECJ to do any of that.
No prizes for guessing which episode of Polish-Russian history Medvedev omits:
This morning, 🇷🇺Dmitry Medvedev decided to post a lengthy letter 🇵🇱"On Poland" - it is a curious mix of Soviet and pan-Slavic mythology with mockery, dire criticism and veiled threats against Poland - here are the key points 🧵
If Vladolf attacks Poland then we go to war. It is 1939 redux.
Russian proverb (which doesn’t rhyme in English): A chicken isn't a bird and Poland isn't a country.
There is also a wildly offensive variant about women.
Ha, just read a version of that proverb in a piece by the BBC’s Allan Little! Pretty good I think, conclusion mainly that virtually all our leaders have been dumb ****s. Interesting to be reminded of a period when Yeltsin was a player rather than the drunken comedy act which is pretty all he seems to be in the collective memory nowadays.
This is worth reading in full …highlights that B Johnson and others lied about the evacuation from Afghanistan and the wider administrative chaos …short and illuminating on many levels: https://committees.parliament.uk/writtenevidence/107001/pdf
Bloody hell
this is the actual testimony of Josie Stewart. Fab stuff
35. I cannot fathom why either Philip Barton or Nigel Casey would have intentionally lied to the Committee, but I believe that they must have done so both in the letter dated 17 January and in the oral testimony given on 25 January. I have tried to imagine but cannot conceive of any way this could have been an honest mistake. Nigel Casey explicitly testified that he had searched his emails and found nothing of relevance, yet when I searched my emails for “PM” and “Nowzad” I found more than one email referencing “the PM’s decision on Nowzad” and with Nigel Casey in copy. So the only possible explanations are that a) Nigel Casey had deleted his emails (which everyone who had worked on the Afghanistan crisis had been ordered by Diptel not to do); b) he did not know how to use the “CTRL-F” function in Outlook, or searched for something other than “PM” and “Nowzad”; c) he found the emails but somehow concluded they were not relevant, despite mentioning ‘the PM’s decision on Nowzad’; or d) he was lying.
Why is forwarding a message relevant?
I have no idea what the outlook shortcuts are, but if that's wrong I think we can guess what she meant.
This is worth reading in full …highlights that B Johnson and others lied about the evacuation from Afghanistan and the wider administrative chaos …short and illuminating on many levels: https://committees.parliament.uk/writtenevidence/107001/pdf
Bloody hell
this is the actual testimony of Josie Stewart. Fab stuff
35. I cannot fathom why either Philip Barton or Nigel Casey would have intentionally lied to the Committee, but I believe that they must have done so both in the letter dated 17 January and in the oral testimony given on 25 January. I have tried to imagine but cannot conceive of any way this could have been an honest mistake. Nigel Casey explicitly testified that he had searched his emails and found nothing of relevance, yet when I searched my emails for “PM” and “Nowzad” I found more than one email referencing “the PM’s decision on Nowzad” and with Nigel Casey in copy. So the only possible explanations are that a) Nigel Casey had deleted his emails (which everyone who had worked on the Afghanistan crisis had been ordered by Diptel not to do); b) he did not know how to use the “CTRL-F” function in Outlook, or searched for something other than “PM” and “Nowzad”; c) he found the emails but somehow concluded they were not relevant, despite mentioning ‘the PM’s decision on Nowzad’; or d) he was lying.
Has BoZo managed to uninvite himself from the EU summit? Below is interesting in the context of the Times reporting that Number 10 “sorry” on the Brexit-Ukraine remarks… rather suggests that an invite from Charles Michel to Thursday’s EU summit might have been being pondered (Biden is going too, same day as special NATO summit)…. https://twitter.com/carlbildt/status/1505278978550022145
.. indeed briefing from UK end to British journalists to this effect last week. Foreign Sec Truss attended the Foreign Affairs Council, so there is a precedent here.
FWIW, I think if Finland or Sweden were attacked, we would find ourselves in a shooting war with Russia. And that's why neither country will be attacked.
I'm not so sure about that. In fact, I think Finland is in a very invidious position. They look as if they might join NATO, but haven't actually done so. Possibly the worst of all worlds.
Now represents, theoretically, an opportunity for Putin to act which may not be available later. Extremely unlikely we may think, but who knows what the thinking is in the bunker.
NATO is a red line. If anyone attempts to invade they get incinerated by NATO air power. Not so, Finland. Membership brings benefits.
Hmmm. I'm inclined to think that it is a mistake to continue making it clear to Putin / Russia that they still have hope of succeeding in Ukraine.
(Of course I'm making the rather silly assumption that they'd derive capability from possible threats, rather than from how shiny something is.)
Well, that's the starting point but that focus becomes diffuse due to...
Political imperatives that mean as much as possible has to be based in Scotland, it all has to be made in the UK and they have to keep funding things the Daily Mail comments section obsesses over like the BoBMF.
Incompetence.
Corruption.
Inherent small-C conservatism of 1* ranks and up.
I for one will never take the MoD seriously till they scrap the Red Arrows. And the Household Cavalry's equines. The forces are now so small that those are significant detriments.
Soft power. the cavalry pays its way in increased tourism to London
Reagan structures a whole european tour round a riding photo op with HMQ
[bonus titbit from that article: FO begged Queenie not to use thye words "special relationship, cos they loathe them. Quite right.]
I didn't know the Armed Forces were part of the tourist industry ... and as for the good Mr Reagan, isn't that pony he is on one of HMtQ's stable, rather than the HC?
If you consider that just about every country has a ceremonial element, for good PR, historical, recruitment and retention, yes tourist reasons among others then the UK having a ceremonial element which includes donkeys is not the great crime you think it might be.
HC(av, btw) have their horses, the Micks have their wolfhound, the fusiliers their goat, and so on; many of the Scottish regiments don't even wear trousers on parade I mean how impractical is that and many if not most other regiments prance around in funny looking uniforms that would be out of place in, say, Estonia right now.
Thanks. I don't know that wearing a kilt on special parade is quite as bad as wearing a whole horse and associated tack. PLus the kilt and sporran don't have to be fed and watered and de-shited day in day out.
Oh yes, some need for ceremonial, and some interesting stuff coming up this morning. But it's when it starts to bite into the overall mission that I wonder - as with DA's point re the Arrows consuming 5% of the fast jet pilots etc. in a way which won't help keep them very current.
Just struck btw by the way in which modern squaddies these days appear in public in the sandy equivalent of DPM - didn't they use to appear in public in plain khaki (green/brown, whatever, but unpatterned)? A cynic might think the MoD was trying to make them look more ally to make up for the cuts. But it does seem to be a wider military fashion worldwide. Even influencing some navies. Modern equivalent of the pelisse I daresay.
We haven't been to war in quite some time and it's a way of reminding everyone, soldiers included, that the army does go to war, and this is how the army dressed in the most recent one of which.
As for previously it was very rare for squaddies to appear in uniform in public and then it would I suppose have depended upon why. Plain khaki sounds like 1950s battledress when are we talking here.
She says she has seen five foreign secretaries come and go over the past six years, and at times she felt she couldn't trust them as they kept saying they would get her home.
"How many foreign secretaries does it take?" she asks.
She says what has happened now with her being freed "should have happened six years ago".
Worrying development that the House of Commons authorities appear to have let a Labour MP draw a blacklist of parliamentary reporters to the Nazanin press conference and then used their ample resources to enforce it.
Number of outlets banned from press conference today.
Shashank Joshi @shashj Treating civilians as combatants on the basis that they haven’t fled a city by your bogus deadline is about as war crime-y as it gets.
Say what you will about Putin and his acolytes (and as the old joke goes, in Russia you cannot), but when they decide to go full Nazi they commit to it.
They are going full Stalinist. The seizure of people and making them disappear far away, executions, lists of people being picked up etc., starving people into submission etc. They did not need to learn this from the Nazis. They simply need to repeat what previous Russian leaders did in their own recent history.
Constantly referring to this regime as Nazi-like is wrong because it somehow assumes that Russia had to learn all this appalling behaviour from others when the truth is that it has behaved appallingly to its own and other people in exactly this way. It is copying its own playbook not another country's.
That's a pretty strange post, given that the "intellectual" inspiration for later Putinism have been the likes of Dugin and Ilyin, two bona fide fascists. I don't really feel the need to correct you if you want to trace a line from Putin back to Stalin, but telling people that they're wrong to point out the fascist underpinning of Putin's regime is strange when it's probably the most accurate descriptor.
There is nothing strange about pointing out that Putin is copying what Stalin did. What is strange is the need to refer to the Nazis when describing Russia's behaviour when there are direct examples of exactly the same behaviour in Russia's own history. It's as if there is a need to downplay the very obvious likenesses between Putin and earlier Russian leaders, specifically Stalin, not least because Putin himself has praised what Stalin achieved and bemoaned the loss of the Russian Empire he created.
The Nazis were not the sole embodiment of evil in 20th century Europe. Stalinism and what he got the Soviets to do were quite as evil. Putin may choose to airbrush his and Soviet crimes from history. We in the West should not.
Having just finished Anne Applebaum's "Red Famine: Stalin's War on Ukraine" the parallels are striking - down to the same lies.
Certainly Stalin found it useful to break the Ukranian peasant class, but the extraction of grain was also key to his industrialisation programme. Not just to feed his new urban industrial workers, but also to export. Grain exports were one of his few sources of Foreign exchange, and that was essential to restructure an agricultural economy into an industrial one. Starving Ukraine served two purposes.
On that note, I see the Russians stole 5 ships of Ukrainian grain yesterday. Perhaps they are attempting Holodomor 2.0
There’s a column in the NYT which says Putin’s new plan is to create so many refugees, pouring into the EU/NATO, that the West pressures Zelenskyy into agreeing a peace deal that looks good for Putin
Sounds plausible. 10m Ukes have already been displaced inside and outside their country. It might work, as well
He might get a peace deal by that route (though I doubt it). Removal of sanctions is another matter.
He is utterly trashing his country, financially, morally and reputationally.
The way I see it, is this. Putin's Regime cannot go down any further in our estimation. The Wayne Couzens of countries. Beyond forgiveness or redemption.
However, we can't do anything more than we are doing. The US has already said that they won't intervene. Russia still has nukes, wheat and oil; there will be many countries outside the west willing to deal with them - almost irrespective of what they do in Ukraine.
Now that they have found themselves in this position, there are no limits exist on their atrocities. They can just go ahead and kill and enslave Ukraine. They will just laugh at the idea of war crimes, because they don't have any interest in courts or justice. They have crossed a rubicon, like a serial killer - what's the difference between 2 and 20 victims?
No one believed 3 weeks ago that Russia would bomb civilians. The idea that something like Mariupol could happen was beyond contemplation. If there is no hope of a client state in Ukraine, or any sort of conventional victory, and they are utterly condemned by the 'west' why wouldn't they just utterly crush and ruin the country? Plunder its resources etc. The nature of global inequality is such that there will still be many countries willing to deal with them.
I don't think this is being alarmist or being dramatic; I think it is a very likely course of events. It seems that we are being drawn, inexorably and inevitably, in to war with Russia; because the situation described above is morally intolerable. It becomes a battle for the future of civilisation.
Destroying cities is what they do.
Aleppo
Grozny
All that is true. But the aims of those wars were different. Both were 'two sided' conflicts. They are not all that different to the wars fought by the UK and the US. So whilst the methods were abhorrent, they are not really comparable.
The war in Ukraine is different, in that it is overtly being driven by an idea of imperial expansion. If the model works in Ukraine, then why would it stop there?
As NATO troops are in NATO nations.
Hence Putin is unlikely to expand beyond Ukraine or any non NATO member seeking to join NATO
I agree. Other than the obvious reason, it is now apparent he would get absolutely stuffed. It's interesting to compare this now to the past when it was assumed Russian forces would only take a few days overrun Europe.
Despite years of defence cuts, it's clear that the military strength of a united NATO is terrifying.
Yep - you’d back us over them every day if the week. But in three years Trump or an acolyte is likely to be US president. That will change plenty. If Putin can hold on until then he may be home free.
Trump is now saying he would 'bomb the shit out of Russia' over its Ukraine invasion using jets with Chinese flags put on them.
(Of course I'm making the rather silly assumption that they'd derive capability from possible threats, rather than from how shiny something is.)
Well, that's the starting point but that focus becomes diffuse due to...
Political imperatives that mean as much as possible has to be based in Scotland, it all has to be made in the UK and they have to keep funding things the Daily Mail comments section obsesses over like the BoBMF.
Incompetence.
Corruption.
Inherent small-C conservatism of 1* ranks and up.
I for one will never take the MoD seriously till they scrap the Red Arrows. And the Household Cavalry's equines. The forces are now so small that those are significant detriments.
Soft power. the cavalry pays its way in increased tourism to London
Reagan structures a whole european tour round a riding photo op with HMQ
[bonus titbit from that article: FO begged Queenie not to use thye words "special relationship, cos they loathe them. Quite right.]
I didn't know the Armed Forces were part of the tourist industry ... and as for the good Mr Reagan, isn't that pony he is on one of HMtQ's stable, rather than the HC?
If you consider that just about every country has a ceremonial element, for good PR, historical, recruitment and retention, yes tourist reasons among others then the UK having a ceremonial element which includes donkeys is not the great crime you think it might be.
HC(av, btw) have their horses, the Micks have their wolfhound, the fusiliers their goat, and so on; many of the Scottish regiments don't even wear trousers on parade I mean how impractical is that and many if not most other regiments prance around in funny looking uniforms that would be out of place in, say, Estonia right now.
Thanks. I don't know that wearing a kilt on special parade is quite as bad as wearing a whole horse and associated tack. PLus the kilt and sporran don't have to be fed and watered and de-shited day in day out.
Oh yes, some need for ceremonial, and some interesting stuff coming up this morning. But it's when it starts to bite into the overall mission that I wonder - as with DA's point re the Arrows consuming 5% of the fast jet pilots etc. in a way which won't help keep them very current.
Just struck btw by the way in which modern squaddies these days appear in public in the sandy equivalent of DPM - didn't they use to appear in public in plain khaki (green/brown, whatever, but unpatterned)? A cynic might think the MoD was trying to make them look more ally to make up for the cuts. But it does seem to be a wider military fashion worldwide. Even influencing some navies. Modern equivalent of the pelisse I daresay.
Re the plain trousers they all seemed to wear plain green “lightweights” with either a DPM jacket/smock or one of those horrific scratchy jumpers. dPM trousers were more for actual “work”. Think it changed when the new pattern camouflage came in with Iraq 2 (?) - probably realised the plain lightwieights were absolutely pointless.
Has BoZo managed to uninvite himself from the EU summit? Below is interesting in the context of the Times reporting that Number 10 “sorry” on the Brexit-Ukraine remarks… rather suggests that an invite from Charles Michel to Thursday’s EU summit might have been being pondered (Biden is going too, same day as special NATO summit)…. https://twitter.com/carlbildt/status/1505278978550022145
.. indeed briefing from UK end to British journalists to this effect last week. Foreign Sec Truss attended the Foreign Affairs Council, so there is a precedent here.
Why does a man who campaigned for us to leave the EU want to go to an EU meeting? Just bizarre.
Because the EU cannot have a successful defence and security strategy without the UK's cooperation and involvement
So you're saying that Brexit has weakened security in Europe? No wonder Putin wanted it to happen.
That is upto Europe, but what has weakened Europe far beyond brexit is the utter failure by Germany and others to devise an energy policy that does not result in paying vast sums of money every day to Putin enabling his arming of his war machine, and the action now required would crash their economy
Incredible. As you know he knows he is lying. Kinda sums up the whole regime really.
I make it a rule never to believe a woman is spying for us until Boris confirms it in public.
It's funny how the Russians always seem to zero in on Britain, like we're the real enemy number 1. I suspect it's a peer rivalry thing: they are not so stupid as to think they can go toe to toe with the USA anymore but the Brits are a more realistic target where they share a long history of mutual Cold War espionage, and still Anglo Saxon like the Americans. No real incentive to try to be nice unlike their relationship with Germany. If you're too weak to challenge the big guy, you beat up the sidekick.
Andrew Neil @afneil · 3h Europe hasn’t seen anything like this since World War II. Russians are digging in around cities as if they plan a long siege. Civilian casualties aren’t incidental. They are central to the dictator’s war strategy.
This is worth reading in full …highlights that B Johnson and others lied about the evacuation from Afghanistan and the wider administrative chaos …short and illuminating on many levels: https://committees.parliament.uk/writtenevidence/107001/pdf
Bloody hell
this is the actual testimony of Josie Stewart. Fab stuff
35. I cannot fathom why either Philip Barton or Nigel Casey would have intentionally lied to the Committee, but I believe that they must have done so both in the letter dated 17 January and in the oral testimony given on 25 January. I have tried to imagine but cannot conceive of any way this could have been an honest mistake. Nigel Casey explicitly testified that he had searched his emails and found nothing of relevance, yet when I searched my emails for “PM” and “Nowzad” I found more than one email referencing “the PM’s decision on Nowzad” and with Nigel Casey in copy. So the only possible explanations are that a) Nigel Casey had deleted his emails (which everyone who had worked on the Afghanistan crisis had been ordered by Diptel not to do); b) he did not know how to use the “CTRL-F” function in Outlook, or searched for something other than “PM” and “Nowzad”; c) he found the emails but somehow concluded they were not relevant, despite mentioning ‘the PM’s decision on Nowzad’; or d) he was lying.
Has BoZo managed to uninvite himself from the EU summit? Below is interesting in the context of the Times reporting that Number 10 “sorry” on the Brexit-Ukraine remarks… rather suggests that an invite from Charles Michel to Thursday’s EU summit might have been being pondered (Biden is going too, same day as special NATO summit)…. https://twitter.com/carlbildt/status/1505278978550022145
.. indeed briefing from UK end to British journalists to this effect last week. Foreign Sec Truss attended the Foreign Affairs Council, so there is a precedent here.
Has BoZo managed to uninvite himself from the EU summit? Below is interesting in the context of the Times reporting that Number 10 “sorry” on the Brexit-Ukraine remarks… rather suggests that an invite from Charles Michel to Thursday’s EU summit might have been being pondered (Biden is going too, same day as special NATO summit)…. https://twitter.com/carlbildt/status/1505278978550022145
.. indeed briefing from UK end to British journalists to this effect last week. Foreign Sec Truss attended the Foreign Affairs Council, so there is a precedent here.
Why does a man who campaigned for us to leave the EU want to go to an EU meeting? Just bizarre.
Because the EU cannot have a successful defence and security strategy without the UK's cooperation and involvement
So you're saying that Brexit has weakened security in Europe? No wonder Putin wanted it to happen.
That is upto Europe, but what has weakened Europe far beyond brexit is the utter failure by Germany and others to devise an energy policy that does not result in paying vast sums of money every day to Putin enabling his arming of his war machine, and the action now required would crash their economy
Merkel's energy policy is a disaster for Europe
EU, not Europe .
I'd draw a larger canvas than that - Merkel's Ostpolitik was the disaster, which goes beyond energy. TBF to Brussels, Merkel pushed NS2 through in the of Euco opposition, including legal action in the EU Court.
There's a piece around at the moment about arms sales to Russia in the period 2015-2020, which is startling.
You are a Ukrainian in 1940 or 1941. You are 30. You saw the horrors of the Holodomor visited upon you and your family just ten years before. Do you go and fight for the people who did that to you, or do you go and fight for the people fighting them?
I don't know (evading fighting for either side would be tempting if possible), and I'm reluctant to pass judgment 80 years later on anyone in that situation, especially as I'm no kind of expert on Ukraine - my knowledge of Bandera comes largely from the Wikipedia article.
My mother's hostility to Ukraine was not so much, as I said, with Bandera's decision to ally with the Nazis, or even with his anti-semitism - even she recognised that we can't really judge countries on the decisions of individuals. What she found unforgivable was that he was commemorated as a hero right up to the time of her death, as I understand remains the case up to the present day.
I don't offer that as an excuse for Putin launching a war, of course, I was replying to a question about how come Russians and Ukrainians are at loggerheads when they seem ethnically quite similar. The past - Holodomor and Nazi collaboration alike - casts far longer shadows than is understood by most people in Britain. I wish it were otherwise.
Incredible. As you know he knows he is lying. Kinda sums up the whole regime really.
I make it a rule never to believe a woman is spying for us until Boris confirms it in public.
It's funny how the Russians always seem to zero in on Britain, like we're the real enemy number 1. I suspect it's a peer rivalry thing: they are not so stupid as to think they can go toe to toe with the USA anymore but the Brits are a more realistic target where they share a long history of mutual Cold War espionage, and still Anglo Saxon like the Americans. No real incentive to try to be nice unlike their relationship with Germany. If you're too weak to challenge the big guy, you beat up the sidekick.
It goes all the way back to the Sidney Riley. A belief in the British being the ultimate in spies, among a certain type of paranoid Russian.
There is a non-trivial chunk of the KGB/FSB/Whatever that still think the Cambridge Five were actually a brilliant triple agent program the British ran against Russia.....
Has BoZo managed to uninvite himself from the EU summit? Below is interesting in the context of the Times reporting that Number 10 “sorry” on the Brexit-Ukraine remarks… rather suggests that an invite from Charles Michel to Thursday’s EU summit might have been being pondered (Biden is going too, same day as special NATO summit)…. https://twitter.com/carlbildt/status/1505278978550022145
.. indeed briefing from UK end to British journalists to this effect last week. Foreign Sec Truss attended the Foreign Affairs Council, so there is a precedent here.
Has BoZo managed to uninvite himself from the EU summit? Below is interesting in the context of the Times reporting that Number 10 “sorry” on the Brexit-Ukraine remarks… rather suggests that an invite from Charles Michel to Thursday’s EU summit might have been being pondered (Biden is going too, same day as special NATO summit)…. https://twitter.com/carlbildt/status/1505278978550022145
.. indeed briefing from UK end to British journalists to this effect last week. Foreign Sec Truss attended the Foreign Affairs Council, so there is a precedent here.
Why does a man who campaigned for us to leave the EU want to go to an EU meeting? Just bizarre.
Because the EU cannot have a successful defence and security strategy without the UK's cooperation and involvement
So you're saying that Brexit has weakened security in Europe? No wonder Putin wanted it to happen.
That is upto Europe, but what has weakened Europe far beyond brexit is the utter failure by Germany and others to devise an energy policy that does not result in paying vast sums of money every day to Putin enabling his arming of his war machine, and the action now required would crash their economy
Merkel's energy policy is a disaster for Europe
Germany is working hard to rectify their mistake. What are we doing to rectify ours?
This is worth reading in full …highlights that B Johnson and others lied about the evacuation from Afghanistan and the wider administrative chaos …short and illuminating on many levels: https://committees.parliament.uk/writtenevidence/107001/pdf
Bloody hell
this is the actual testimony of Josie Stewart. Fab stuff
35. I cannot fathom why either Philip Barton or Nigel Casey would have intentionally lied to the Committee, but I believe that they must have done so both in the letter dated 17 January and in the oral testimony given on 25 January. I have tried to imagine but cannot conceive of any way this could have been an honest mistake. Nigel Casey explicitly testified that he had searched his emails and found nothing of relevance, yet when I searched my emails for “PM” and “Nowzad” I found more than one email referencing “the PM’s decision on Nowzad” and with Nigel Casey in copy. So the only possible explanations are that a) Nigel Casey had deleted his emails (which everyone who had worked on the Afghanistan crisis had been ordered by Diptel not to do); b) he did not know how to use the “CTRL-F” function in Outlook, or searched for something other than “PM” and “Nowzad”; c) he found the emails but somehow concluded they were not relevant, despite mentioning ‘the PM’s decision on Nowzad’; or d) he was lying.
Sajid Javid joins Rishi Sunak in having to argue that night is day on behalf of the prime minister over the Brexit/Ukraine row: "I don't accept that he was comparing the UK to Ukraine." Which is nonsense, of course. https://twitter.com/KevinASchofield/status/1505807648448565250/photo/1
So what interpretation did he offer for this ?
"I know that it's the instinct of the people of this country, like the people of Ukraine, to choose freedom, every time. I can give you a couple of famous recent examples. "When the British people voted for Brexit in such large, large numbers, I don't believe it was because they were remotely hostile to foreigners. "It's because they wanted to be free to do things differently and for this country to be able to run itself."...
That both the UK and Ukraine are in the category of countries with a freedom loving people. That doesn’t mean that the UK is equivalent to Ukraine
Yes, Boris’ quote about “Ukraine and Brexit” really isn’t that offensive. You can see what he’s trying to say. It was emotionally misjudged but not an obviously foolish or outrageous statement
But the misjudgement (or canny trolling?) got his opponents to hyper-ventilate, which then made the news
I’m cynical enough to go with canny trolling. The words were carefully chosen. You would hope for better, but that’s the PM the UK has. For now.
You said exactly the same thing about the refugee cock up. If you don't like what you hear you call it trolling rather than accepting it is true. It is true as was the refugee issue. I'm not a troll. I don't even have a twitter account, but I was fully aware of the refugee issue and had an immediate reaction to Boris' statement.
Doesn't look good if your reaction to everything you don't like is 'trolls'.
@StillWaters my apologies, wrong person. Please ignore my post. Sorry.
No problem. Just to be clear I think you were being trolled by Boris, not a troll yourself!
On the refugee issue, I tend to view it as, initially, a combination of cock up and bureaucratic inflexibility. Where Patel was at fault was politically not realising it was a problem (I find it hard to believe that she could be personally unmoved by the situation) and being unable / unwilling to devote the focus and energy to sorting it out.
I don't know how the new system works, so no idea whether the criticisms are justified, but it seems to be these are criticisms of execution rather than of principle at this point, so definitely an improvement. Let's hope that it works.
(The only person on here I accuse of being a troll is Heathener. Because she is. A spinner of Putin-preferred lines with a compromised VPN that is on an anti-spamming blacklist and was also used by two previous trolls)
Re your comments on cock up and bureaucratic inflexibility I am sure you are right. FYI I get involved in numerous campaigns where individuals and groups have been badly or unfairly treated by Govt departments (nothing to do with politics). The level of incompetence is mind boggling. However what I do find is a massive amount of resources are then put into avoiding taking any action or making changes often disproportionate to any cost involved. We see these scandals arise over and over again. There are many more at a lower level of seriousness.
Also for those who think we gained freedoms by leaving the EU, our ombudsman offerings are very flawed with lots of gaps that people and groups fall through. Private member's bills with cross party support invariably fail to fill these gaps. The last and effective resolution was the ECJ has now gone, so many groups are left in limbo with nobody to investigate.
Eh? We are still subject to the jurisdiction of the ECtHR, our domestic courts can be asked to and do enforce ECHR rights and they are a part of our domestic law.
Domestic courts are still required to enforce these laws unless they have been changed and there are almost no examples of this so far.
David, I don't want to bore people online with this but I am involved in pension campaigns where this is an issue. We have had a number of successes in the ECJ, but these will now stop. We have also tried to get the law changed on a number of occasions with all party support and also support from the Parliamentary Ombudsman whose hands are tied so would like to see a change in the law, but these are always opposed by Governments. There are cases which just fall through the gaps. In the case of pension and mortgage cases you can fall fail of the limitation act, which is daft for a mortgage or pension. The FOS will ignore the limitation act, but the PHSO won't because they are legally bound so if you come under that jurisdiction you are stuffed (random result). PHSO also can't investigate GAD so if that is an issue you are stuffed, although an exception was made for Equitable Life, but nobody else. The PO has done an awful job re the PPF and again hides behind the Limitation Act. Ex civil servants can fall between the PHSO and the Whitley Council so fail to get an investigation.
Is that enough of a pile of issues for you. Just about the only success achieved with this pile of crap is the ECJ.
@BartholomewRoberts I noticed you liked David's comment. We have discussed this before. I don't know if you remember but you wished me good luck with the campaign I am involved in sometime ago. I have been involved in these campaigns for 10 years now. I am afraid real life isn't like theory. There are plenty of holes where people can't get justice. MPs are pretty powerless. We have all party support and the vast majority are Tories. It makes not a jot of difference, other than a deal being done in backroom, but if that happens it will be a one off. I am aware of similar campaigns relating to other groups.
Every time you hear of a scandal (Windrush, blood contamination, Equitable Life) remember there is a pile of others under the radar that are less serious that nobody hears of.
If Parliament isn't doing its job, it should be held to account better. Whether that be through domestic media, Parliament or domestic courts.
I don't believe we need the ECJ to do any of that.
It's cloud cuckoo land though. You are avoiding the point that there are plenty of injustice that fall through the cracks that are out of remit of domestic courts or ombudsman.
We keep hearing of scandals where we say it must never happen again, yet it always does. Below these are loads more that are complex and lower profile so never hit the media. The ECJ is not a panacea, but it helped, many pensioners would now be in poverty if not for their decisions and through no fault of their own. Our Govt did nothing.
Incredible. As you know he knows he is lying. Kinda sums up the whole regime really.
I make it a rule never to believe a woman is spying for us until Boris confirms it in public.
It's funny how the Russians always seem to zero in on Britain, like we're the real enemy number 1. I suspect it's a peer rivalry thing: they are not so stupid as to think they can go toe to toe with the USA anymore but the Brits are a more realistic target where they share a long history of mutual Cold War espionage, and still Anglo Saxon like the Americans. No real incentive to try to be nice unlike their relationship with Germany. If you're too weak to challenge the big guy, you beat up the sidekick.
The tradition in Russia, since its encounters with MI6 after World War II, is very much to see Britain as the duplicitous "brain" of western power networks, oiling the wheels of diplomacy and espionage between various nations, and America as the brawn. This is why Dugin devoted such special mention to separating Britain from Europe in his "Foundations of Geopolitics", which became a manual for the Russian military from the late '90s onwards.
Has BoZo managed to uninvite himself from the EU summit? Below is interesting in the context of the Times reporting that Number 10 “sorry” on the Brexit-Ukraine remarks… rather suggests that an invite from Charles Michel to Thursday’s EU summit might have been being pondered (Biden is going too, same day as special NATO summit)…. https://twitter.com/carlbildt/status/1505278978550022145
.. indeed briefing from UK end to British journalists to this effect last week. Foreign Sec Truss attended the Foreign Affairs Council, so there is a precedent here.
Why does a man who campaigned for us to leave the EU want to go to an EU meeting? Just bizarre.
Because the EU cannot have a successful defence and security strategy without the UK's cooperation and involvement
So you're saying that Brexit has weakened security in Europe? No wonder Putin wanted it to happen.
No, security in Europe is done via NATO which the UK remains a full partner in.
If Charles Michel is trying to shoehorn the EU onto NATO's territory then that's him that is clowning around.
So why is Boris humping Michel's leg like an overexcited spaniel wanting to shoehorn himself into this gathering of sclerotic no-marks on thursday?
Well Security is not done via NATO because not all EU members are NATO members (for multiple reasons).
However the Western Europe consists of the EU, the UK, Norway Switzerland (usually neutral) and a few other very small countries.
So if there are defence decisions that need to be made you can't just leave it to either NATO or the EU as both of them are missing some important countries.
I might have to get that; I've have never understood the hatred of 'official' Russians for Ukrainians. The comments about relationships that we are hearing surely make it clear that they are very similar peoples, if not the same, just speaking a different language!
They are, but there are two hideous crimes that have polluted the relationship for decades. The Holodomor in the 1930s literally starved huge numbers of Ukranians to death, because Stalin collectivised them and then confiscated the wheat for expoert. Conversely, Bandera led a large number of Ukrainians to collaborate with the Nazis, and remains celebrated today in countless Ukrainian memorials (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stepan_Bandera?msclkid=d8e7922ea8f411eca9a3867070865b47). My Russian-born mother, whose family had suffered in the war (her aunt starved to death in the siege of Leningrad), loathed the (pre-Zelensky - this was 20 years ago) Ukrainian leadership for that reason - she felt it wasn't so much that there were collaborators, since every country had some, but that they were still seen by many as heroes.
Up to recently, it was possible to see the past being buried, since virtually everyone involved is now dead. Young Russians mostly see WW2 as a historical issue, much as we see WW1 - how many people in Britain in the last 30 years have brooded about the sins of the Kaiser? Conversely, opinion polls before the invasion showed over 30% of Ukrainians regretting the loss of the Soviet Union, and hostility to Russians as a people was mainly the province of the far right. One of the consequences of the invasion is to set all that back another generation or two. There are plenty of reports from Ukraine of people who felt a natural affinity to Russia, who voted for pro-Russian parties and detested Ukrainian ultra-nationalists, but who now feel completely betrayed and alienated by Russia. Like most imperialist projects, it's both horrible and ultimately self-defeating, since Putin has actually forged a Ukrainian national unity and common purpose that wasn't there before.
More anything it reminds me of Yugoslavia. Under Tito, lots of people had got used to getting over the Serb/Croat/Bosnian divide and many declined to identify with any of the rthnic groups in surveys - they said they were simply Yugoslavs. After Tito died, absent-mindedly neglecting to groom an heir, the country fell apart and nationalist leaders set about organising massacres to pursue their perceived identities. Each atrocity in turn reinforced extremists in the victimised ethnic group, and new hatreds were generated which are only now starting to fade.
You are a Ukrainian in 1940 or 1941. You are 30. You saw the horrors of the Holodomor visited upon you and your family just ten years before. Do you go and fight for the people who did that to you, or do you go and fight for the people fighting them?
The same was true in the Baltic states, where the Soviets pursued a campaign of mass murder in 1939-40.
As I've posted before, if the Nazi's hadn't been so insanely fixated on the idea of Slavs (etc) being sub-human they would probably have won.
If they hadn't believed in race war, then the war would not have happened as it did anyway.
As far as collaborators are concerned, the evidence would suggest the the propensity to collaborate, rather than an attraction to any given ideology, is the determining factor. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collaboration_in_German-occupied_Ukraine ...According to Timothy Snyder, "something that is never said, because it's inconvenient for precisely everyone, is that more Ukrainian Communists collaborated with the Germans, than did Ukrainian nationalists." Snyder also points out that very many of those who collaborated with the German occupation also collaborated with the Soviet policies in the 1930s...
Quite, although there's still the issue of Lebensraum, which might come up again in many years.
However the Timothy Snyder post is interesting. Was it repeated elsewhere, is there an issue about some people always gravitating to the government or toadying to the bully. I have a dim memory of reading something akin to that in the Channel Islands.
Snyder has published extensively on the Holocaust, and his conclusion was that the level of local participation - and the proportion of the Jewish population which was killed - related far more to the extent to which state institutions had been completely destroyed, than any pre-War measure of antisemitism in a given country.
She says she has seen five foreign secretaries come and go over the past six years, and at times she felt she couldn't trust them as they kept saying they would get her home.
"How many foreign secretaries does it take?" she asks.
She says what has happened now with her being freed "should have happened six years ago".
Worrying development that the House of Commons authorities appear to have let a Labour MP draw a blacklist of parliamentary reporters to the Nazanin press conference and then used their ample resources to enforce it.
Number of outlets banned from press conference today.
This entire story hasn't put Boris in a particularly good light, so presumably the concern is that Boris's goons in the media will want to do a hit job on her.
I was vaguely sympathetic to Russia before the start of this. I am so glad that I never went particularly far down that rabbit hole.
Anyone who has been supportive of the Russian Regime in the past must be feeling very stupid now.
I was supportive of them in the past - it was silly of me to believe some of the more egregious propaganda. But I don't feel stupid supporting their intervention in Syria, because there I think there they were on the right side. Here, they are the aggressor and we've got it right to support the Government of Ukraine against them.
So despite sources briefing The Times that Boris Johnson regretted how his Ukraine/Brexit words had come across, his spokesman insists he won't withdraw them.
Has BoZo managed to uninvite himself from the EU summit? Below is interesting in the context of the Times reporting that Number 10 “sorry” on the Brexit-Ukraine remarks… rather suggests that an invite from Charles Michel to Thursday’s EU summit might have been being pondered (Biden is going too, same day as special NATO summit)…. https://twitter.com/carlbildt/status/1505278978550022145
.. indeed briefing from UK end to British journalists to this effect last week. Foreign Sec Truss attended the Foreign Affairs Council, so there is a precedent here.
Why does a man who campaigned for us to leave the EU want to go to an EU meeting? Just bizarre.
Because the EU cannot have a successful defence and security strategy without the UK's cooperation and involvement
So you're saying that Brexit has weakened security in Europe? No wonder Putin wanted it to happen.
That is upto Europe, but what has weakened Europe far beyond brexit is the utter failure by Germany and others to devise an energy policy that does not result in paying vast sums of money every day to Putin enabling his arming of his war machine, and the action now required would crash their economy
Merkel's energy policy is a disaster for Europe
Germany is working hard to rectify their mistake. What are we doing to rectify ours?
If you are referring to brexit then that is not a mistake
Germany will take years to wean herself off Putin's gas
Mike does this same piece seemingly every month or two, and its the same issue every time, the age disparity. Which he doesn't mention again. 50% going to university over the past 10 years versus ~15% going among people who are now 60+. And the ramp up was extremely steep in the early noughties i.e. people who are now 30-40s.
Until we control for the difference in those attending university against age, all it really does is act as a proxy for age, which is clear from all the other metrics. Oldies are incredibly Tory leaning, younger people Labour.
She says she has seen five foreign secretaries come and go over the past six years, and at times she felt she couldn't trust them as they kept saying they would get her home.
"How many foreign secretaries does it take?" she asks.
She says what has happened now with her being freed "should have happened six years ago".
Worrying development that the House of Commons authorities appear to have let a Labour MP draw a blacklist of parliamentary reporters to the Nazanin press conference and then used their ample resources to enforce it.
Number of outlets banned from press conference today.
This entire story hasn't put Boris in a particularly good light, so presumably the concern is that Boris's goons in the media will want to do a hit job on her.
What's it to do with him? This is a Labour MP (guessing fron context Siddiq?).
Has BoZo managed to uninvite himself from the EU summit? Below is interesting in the context of the Times reporting that Number 10 “sorry” on the Brexit-Ukraine remarks… rather suggests that an invite from Charles Michel to Thursday’s EU summit might have been being pondered (Biden is going too, same day as special NATO summit)…. https://twitter.com/carlbildt/status/1505278978550022145
.. indeed briefing from UK end to British journalists to this effect last week. Foreign Sec Truss attended the Foreign Affairs Council, so there is a precedent here.
Why does a man who campaigned for us to leave the EU want to go to an EU meeting? Just bizarre.
Because the EU cannot have a successful defence and security strategy without the UK's cooperation and involvement
So you're saying that Brexit has weakened security in Europe? No wonder Putin wanted it to happen.
That is upto Europe, but what has weakened Europe far beyond brexit is the utter failure by Germany and others to devise an energy policy that does not result in paying vast sums of money every day to Putin enabling his arming of his war machine, and the action now required would crash their economy
Merkel's energy policy is a disaster for Europe
Germany is working hard to rectify their mistake. What are we doing to rectify ours?
Has BoZo managed to uninvite himself from the EU summit? Below is interesting in the context of the Times reporting that Number 10 “sorry” on the Brexit-Ukraine remarks… rather suggests that an invite from Charles Michel to Thursday’s EU summit might have been being pondered (Biden is going too, same day as special NATO summit)…. https://twitter.com/carlbildt/status/1505278978550022145
.. indeed briefing from UK end to British journalists to this effect last week. Foreign Sec Truss attended the Foreign Affairs Council, so there is a precedent here.
Why does a man who campaigned for us to leave the EU want to go to an EU meeting? Just bizarre.
Because the EU cannot have a successful defence and security strategy without the UK's cooperation and involvement
So you're saying that Brexit has weakened security in Europe? No wonder Putin wanted it to happen.
That is upto Europe, but what has weakened Europe far beyond brexit is the utter failure by Germany and others to devise an energy policy that does not result in paying vast sums of money every day to Putin enabling his arming of his war machine, and the action now required would crash their economy
Merkel's energy policy is a disaster for Europe
Germany is working hard to rectify their mistake. What are we doing to rectify ours?
If you are referring to brexit then that is not a mistake
Germany will take years to wean herself off Putin's gas
So despite sources briefing The Times that Boris Johnson regretted how his Ukraine/Brexit words had come across, his spokesman insists he won't withdraw them.
Mike does this same piece seemingly every month or two, and its the same issue every time, the age disparity. Which he doesn't mention again. 50% going to university over the past 10 years versus 15% going among people who are now 60%+.
Until we control for the difference in those attending university against age, all it really does is act as a proxy for age, which is clear from all the other metrics. Oldies are incredibly Tory leaning, younger people Labour.
So every month or two, the same people can look down their noses at the citizens of Hartlepool....
Has BoZo managed to uninvite himself from the EU summit? Below is interesting in the context of the Times reporting that Number 10 “sorry” on the Brexit-Ukraine remarks… rather suggests that an invite from Charles Michel to Thursday’s EU summit might have been being pondered (Biden is going too, same day as special NATO summit)…. https://twitter.com/carlbildt/status/1505278978550022145
.. indeed briefing from UK end to British journalists to this effect last week. Foreign Sec Truss attended the Foreign Affairs Council, so there is a precedent here.
Why does a man who campaigned for us to leave the EU want to go to an EU meeting? Just bizarre.
Because the EU cannot have a successful defence and security strategy without the UK's cooperation and involvement
So you're saying that Brexit has weakened security in Europe? No wonder Putin wanted it to happen.
No, security in Europe is done via NATO which the UK remains a full partner in.
If Charles Michel is trying to shoehorn the EU onto NATO's territory then that's him that is clowning around.
So why is Boris humping Michel's leg like an overexcited spaniel wanting to shoehorn himself into this gathering of sclerotic no-marks on thursday?
Well Security is not done via NATO because not all EU members are NATO members (for multiple reasons).
However the Western Europe consists of the EU, the UK, Norway Switzerland (usually neutral) and a few other very small countries.
So if there are defence decisions that need to be made you can't just leave it to either NATO or the EU as both of them are missing some important countries.
I think what's missing from that last comment is that the EU has been Balkanised on their response to Russia/Ukraine, and that there are still cracks below the surface.
The same is imo possible in NATO.
What happens if it is proposed that Ukraine 'volunteer legionnaires' are trained in Poland or Romania? Or even that a 'safe haven' be established under NATO protection in Western Ukraine - which may become a possibility / necessity if Putin is really deporting populations and sending his troops in with death-lists?
Also, these are the next Presidents of the EU Council, after Macron. Change of style?
This is worth reading in full …highlights that B Johnson and others lied about the evacuation from Afghanistan and the wider administrative chaos …short and illuminating on many levels: https://committees.parliament.uk/writtenevidence/107001/pdf
Bloody hell
this is the actual testimony of Josie Stewart. Fab stuff
35. I cannot fathom why either Philip Barton or Nigel Casey would have intentionally lied to the Committee, but I believe that they must have done so both in the letter dated 17 January and in the oral testimony given on 25 January. I have tried to imagine but cannot conceive of any way this could have been an honest mistake. Nigel Casey explicitly testified that he had searched his emails and found nothing of relevance, yet when I searched my emails for “PM” and “Nowzad” I found more than one email referencing “the PM’s decision on Nowzad” and with Nigel Casey in copy. So the only possible explanations are that a) Nigel Casey had deleted his emails (which everyone who had worked on the Afghanistan crisis had been ordered by Diptel not to do); b) he did not know how to use the “CTRL-F” function in Outlook, or searched for something other than “PM” and “Nowzad”; c) he found the emails but somehow concluded they were not relevant, despite mentioning ‘the PM’s decision on Nowzad’; or d) he was lying.
Why is forwarding a message relevant?
It's about his lying about knowledge of how the decision was taken.
This Pen Farthing thing. I know why Johnson authorised the evac of the animals. Nothing to do with Carrie.
If you look at the profiles of Johnson/Conservative supporters on twatter, about 80% of them will say in their bio they’re an animal lover and their pic’s often a badly taken selfie of a late-middle aged person with a dog, cat, cockatiel, pangolin, whatever.
I love animals, got two dogs, fish, grew up with loads of pets. But it’s not something I’d consider being such a big part of me that I’d stick it in a social media bio.
Johnson is once again displaying his razor sharp political instincts.
Sajid Javid joins Rishi Sunak in having to argue that night is day on behalf of the prime minister over the Brexit/Ukraine row: "I don't accept that he was comparing the UK to Ukraine." Which is nonsense, of course. https://twitter.com/KevinASchofield/status/1505807648448565250/photo/1
So what interpretation did he offer for this ?
"I know that it's the instinct of the people of this country, like the people of Ukraine, to choose freedom, every time. I can give you a couple of famous recent examples. "When the British people voted for Brexit in such large, large numbers, I don't believe it was because they were remotely hostile to foreigners. "It's because they wanted to be free to do things differently and for this country to be able to run itself."...
That both the UK and Ukraine are in the category of countries with a freedom loving people. That doesn’t mean that the UK is equivalent to Ukraine
Yes, Boris’ quote about “Ukraine and Brexit” really isn’t that offensive. You can see what he’s trying to say. It was emotionally misjudged but not an obviously foolish or outrageous statement
But the misjudgement (or canny trolling?) got his opponents to hyper-ventilate, which then made the news
I’m cynical enough to go with canny trolling. The words were carefully chosen. You would hope for better, but that’s the PM the UK has. For now.
You said exactly the same thing about the refugee cock up. If you don't like what you hear you call it trolling rather than accepting it is true. It is true as was the refugee issue. I'm not a troll. I don't even have a twitter account, but I was fully aware of the refugee issue and had an immediate reaction to Boris' statement.
Doesn't look good if your reaction to everything you don't like is 'trolls'.
@StillWaters my apologies, wrong person. Please ignore my post. Sorry.
No problem. Just to be clear I think you were being trolled by Boris, not a troll yourself!
On the refugee issue, I tend to view it as, initially, a combination of cock up and bureaucratic inflexibility. Where Patel was at fault was politically not realising it was a problem (I find it hard to believe that she could be personally unmoved by the situation) and being unable / unwilling to devote the focus and energy to sorting it out.
I don't know how the new system works, so no idea whether the criticisms are justified, but it seems to be these are criticisms of execution rather than of principle at this point, so definitely an improvement. Let's hope that it works.
(The only person on here I accuse of being a troll is Heathener. Because she is. A spinner of Putin-preferred lines with a compromised VPN that is on an anti-spamming blacklist and was also used by two previous trolls)
Re your comments on cock up and bureaucratic inflexibility I am sure you are right. FYI I get involved in numerous campaigns where individuals and groups have been badly or unfairly treated by Govt departments (nothing to do with politics). The level of incompetence is mind boggling. However what I do find is a massive amount of resources are then put into avoiding taking any action or making changes often disproportionate to any cost involved. We see these scandals arise over and over again. There are many more at a lower level of seriousness.
Also for those who think we gained freedoms by leaving the EU, our ombudsman offerings are very flawed with lots of gaps that people and groups fall through. Private member's bills with cross party support invariably fail to fill these gaps. The last and effective resolution was the ECJ has now gone, so many groups are left in limbo with nobody to investigate.
Eh? We are still subject to the jurisdiction of the ECtHR, our domestic courts can be asked to and do enforce ECHR rights and they are a part of our domestic law.
Domestic courts are still required to enforce these laws unless they have been changed and there are almost no examples of this so far.
David, I don't want to bore people online with this but I am involved in pension campaigns where this is an issue. We have had a number of successes in the ECJ, but these will now stop. We have also tried to get the law changed on a number of occasions with all party support and also support from the Parliamentary Ombudsman whose hands are tied so would like to see a change in the law, but these are always opposed by Governments. There are cases which just fall through the gaps. In the case of pension and mortgage cases you can fall fail of the limitation act, which is daft for a mortgage or pension. The FOS will ignore the limitation act, but the PHSO won't because they are legally bound so if you come under that jurisdiction you are stuffed (random result). PHSO also can't investigate GAD so if that is an issue you are stuffed, although an exception was made for Equitable Life, but nobody else. The PO has done an awful job re the PPF and again hides behind the Limitation Act. Ex civil servants can fall between the PHSO and the Whitley Council so fail to get an investigation.
Is that enough of a pile of issues for you. Just about the only success achieved with this pile of crap is the ECJ.
@BartholomewRoberts I noticed you liked David's comment. We have discussed this before. I don't know if you remember but you wished me good luck with the campaign I am involved in sometime ago. I have been involved in these campaigns for 10 years now. I am afraid real life isn't like theory. There are plenty of holes where people can't get justice. MPs are pretty powerless. We have all party support and the vast majority are Tories. It makes not a jot of difference, other than a deal being done in backroom, but if that happens it will be a one off. I am aware of similar campaigns relating to other groups.
Every time you hear of a scandal (Windrush, blood contamination, Equitable Life) remember there is a pile of others under the radar that are less serious that nobody hears of.
If Parliament isn't doing its job, it should be held to account better. Whether that be through domestic media, Parliament or domestic courts.
I don't believe we need the ECJ to do any of that.
It's cloud cuckoo land though. You are avoiding the point that there are plenty of injustice that fall through the cracks that are out of remit of domestic courts or ombudsman.
We keep hearing of scandals where we say it must never happen again, yet it always does. Below these are loads more that are complex and lower profile so never hit the media. The ECJ is not a panacea, but it helped, many pensioners would now be in poverty if not for their decisions and through no fault of their own. Our Govt did nothing.
Here is another example: Event 1996, statue limitation expires in 2011 for legal action regardless of aware of issue or not. Event in 2012 it becomes aware of negligence in 1996. QC says rock solid case if not for statute of limitation. Outside of remit of all ombudsmen. Ombudsman asks Govt to let them investigate. Govt refuses.
I might have to get that; I've have never understood the hatred of 'official' Russians for Ukrainians. The comments about relationships that we are hearing surely make it clear that they are very similar peoples, if not the same, just speaking a different language!
They are, but there are two hideous crimes that have polluted the relationship for decades. The Holodomor in the 1930s literally starved huge numbers of Ukranians to death, because Stalin collectivised them and then confiscated the wheat for expoert. Conversely, Bandera led a large number of Ukrainians to collaborate with the Nazis, and remains celebrated today in countless Ukrainian memorials (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stepan_Bandera?msclkid=d8e7922ea8f411eca9a3867070865b47). My Russian-born mother, whose family had suffered in the war (her aunt starved to death in the siege of Leningrad), loathed the (pre-Zelensky - this was 20 years ago) Ukrainian leadership for that reason - she felt it wasn't so much that there were collaborators, since every country had some, but that they were still seen by many as heroes.
Up to recently, it was possible to see the past being buried, since virtually everyone involved is now dead. Young Russians mostly see WW2 as a historical issue, much as we see WW1 - how many people in Britain in the last 30 years have brooded about the sins of the Kaiser? Conversely, opinion polls before the invasion showed over 30% of Ukrainians regretting the loss of the Soviet Union, and hostility to Russians as a people was mainly the province of the far right. One of the consequences of the invasion is to set all that back another generation or two. There are plenty of reports from Ukraine of people who felt a natural affinity to Russia, who voted for pro-Russian parties and detested Ukrainian ultra-nationalists, but who now feel completely betrayed and alienated by Russia. Like most imperialist projects, it's both horrible and ultimately self-defeating, since Putin has actually forged a Ukrainian national unity and common purpose that wasn't there before.
More anything it reminds me of Yugoslavia. Under Tito, lots of people had got used to getting over the Serb/Croat/Bosnian divide and many declined to identify with any of the rthnic groups in surveys - they said they were simply Yugoslavs. After Tito died, absent-mindedly neglecting to groom an heir, the country fell apart and nationalist leaders set about organising massacres to pursue their perceived identities. Each atrocity in turn reinforced extremists in the victimised ethnic group, and new hatreds were generated which are only now starting to fade.
You are a Ukrainian in 1940 or 1941. You are 30. You saw the horrors of the Holodomor visited upon you and your family just ten years before. Do you go and fight for the people who did that to you, or do you go and fight for the people fighting them?
The same was true in the Baltic states, where the Soviets pursued a campaign of mass murder in 1939-40.
As I've posted before, if the Nazi's hadn't been so insanely fixated on the idea of Slavs (etc) being sub-human they would probably have won.
If they hadn't believed in race war, then the war would not have happened as it did anyway.
As far as collaborators are concerned, the evidence would suggest the the propensity to collaborate, rather than an attraction to any given ideology, is the determining factor. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collaboration_in_German-occupied_Ukraine ...According to Timothy Snyder, "something that is never said, because it's inconvenient for precisely everyone, is that more Ukrainian Communists collaborated with the Germans, than did Ukrainian nationalists." Snyder also points out that very many of those who collaborated with the German occupation also collaborated with the Soviet policies in the 1930s...
Quite, although there's still the issue of Lebensraum, which might come up again in many years.
However the Timothy Snyder post is interesting. Was it repeated elsewhere, is there an issue about some people always gravitating to the government or toadying to the bully. I have a dim memory of reading something akin to that in the Channel Islands.
My theory was that in the event of the Germans invading the UK -
- One third of the population would have taken to the hills to fight to the death - One third of the population wouldn't have noticed, unless the football was interrupted. - One third would have lined up round the block for a black armband and a clipboard.
On your first point, 10% would have taken to the hills to fight to the death, after the event another 50% would have said they were also in the hills. I imagine that proportion applies roughly to most resistance movements.
While living in Sunderland around 1960 I met several people who claimed to have been on the Jarrow March 24 years earlier. Some must have taken time out from school.
Same applies to legendary Pistols & Clash concerts, more people at them than at Live Aid by numbers of anecdotes.
Many said that the Blind Beggar pub and the balcony at the former Iranian Embassy should have been reused as Olympic venues.
Both have, according to sworn statements ("On my mothers grave"...), a capacity of millions.
When Dylan went electric - that was a MASSIVE gig. Millions there.
I was actually - and honestly - at the Iranian Embassy siege. I was part of it. It was right next to my halls at Imperial and we used to loiter outside and watch developments. Somebody wheeled a piano out there, would you believe, and we used to have a singsong. Students.
And - spooky or what - I've been to the Blind Beggar too. During my Lehmans time, I took off one lunchtime to go see it and have a drink there. It was an odd hobby of mine back then - visiting London pubs where something notorious had happened. In that one, as some will know, Ronnie Kray shot down and killed George Cornell. You'd never know, though, based on when I visited. Pretty normal looking boozer. No 'edge' in it at all. Even doing food.
Has BoZo managed to uninvite himself from the EU summit? Below is interesting in the context of the Times reporting that Number 10 “sorry” on the Brexit-Ukraine remarks… rather suggests that an invite from Charles Michel to Thursday’s EU summit might have been being pondered (Biden is going too, same day as special NATO summit)…. https://twitter.com/carlbildt/status/1505278978550022145
.. indeed briefing from UK end to British journalists to this effect last week. Foreign Sec Truss attended the Foreign Affairs Council, so there is a precedent here.
Why does a man who campaigned for us to leave the EU want to go to an EU meeting? Just bizarre.
Because the EU cannot have a successful defence and security strategy without the UK's cooperation and involvement
So you're saying that Brexit has weakened security in Europe? No wonder Putin wanted it to happen.
That is upto Europe, but what has weakened Europe far beyond brexit is the utter failure by Germany and others to devise an energy policy that does not result in paying vast sums of money every day to Putin enabling his arming of his war machine, and the action now required would crash their economy
Merkel's energy policy is a disaster for Europe
Germany is working hard to rectify their mistake. What are we doing to rectify ours?
If you are referring to brexit then that is not a mistake
Germany will take years to wean herself off Putin's gas
Of course Brexit was a mistake
You have your view but I am delighted we left the EU despite voting remain and nothing that has happened since has changed my mind that we are better as an independent country
Andrew Neil @afneil · 3h Europe hasn’t seen anything like this since World War II. Russians are digging in around cities as if they plan a long siege. Civilian casualties aren’t incidental. They are central to the dictator’s war strategy.
This Pen Farthing thing. I know why Johnson authorised the evac of the animals. Nothing to do with Carrie.
If you look at the profiles of Johnson/Conservative supporters on twatter, about 80% of them will say in their bio they’re an animal lover and their pic’s often a badly taken selfie of a late-middle aged person with a dog, cat, cockatiel, pangolin, whatever.
I love animals, got two dogs, fish, grew up with loads of pets. But it’s not something I’d consider being such a big part of me that I’d stick it in a social media bio.
Johnson is once again displaying his razor sharp political instincts.
I suspect more Britons love animals than asylum seekers.
I wonder what they'd choose to spend the money on if the public and political mood delivers them a big increase in budget?
Probably...
Reverse the cut in the E-7 buy Restore SEAD capability lost with Tornado by joining the Germans in Eurofighter ECR Throw money at Ajax until it works Buy a tracked APC/IFV to replace the cancelled Warrior CSP More A400M to reverse the recent cut in tactical airlift Accelerate AS90 and MLRS replacement to this decade Loads of Bayraktar TB2 because that's fashionable More StarStreak
Can't really do much for the RN as there is nowhere to build any more ships and it's not politically possible to build them outside the UK.
For all forces, increased stocks of munitions might be a comparatively cheap and quick way to increase the effectiveness of existing equipment ?
There isn't actually a surfeit of secure sites to store it giving the MoD's mania for selling real estate (except any of its 17 golf courses) but, yes, that would be an excellent proposal.
What's wrong with using Boxer off the shelf instead of messing around with Ajax? I've not been keeping up but can only assume MoD doesn't want to admit the Germans are better at the (wheeled) panzer business than UK plc. Or maybe less in the way of sweeties such as directorships.
Anther issue is absurd lists of requirements that are utterly unique to the UK. Such as the insistence on retaining rifled barrels for tank guns because of HESH. Even after FN demonstrated a finned projectile from a smoothbore which could do HESH
I thought we had an artificially slow build rate for surface ships imposed by the Treasury, which increased their costs, in order to retain a skills' base.
I don't see why that cannot be sped up. They could even build some more - perhaps even half way back to the number we were to have before they were halved (or whatever it was).
There's also quite the catalogue of salami slicing delays to save relative pin-money publicised a few week ago.
I think the Boxer/Ajax issue is that we want both tracked and wheeled.
There are good off the shelf alternatives for Ajax, however.
The replacement 155mm self propelled gun replacements could also be brought forward.
Mike does this same piece seemingly every month or two, and its the same issue every time, the age disparity. Which he doesn't mention again. 50% going to university over the past 10 years versus 15% going among people who are now 60%+.
Until we control for the difference in those attending university against age, all it really does is act as a proxy for age, which is clear from all the other metrics. Oldies are incredibly Tory leaning, younger people Labour.
So every month or two, the same people can look down their noses at the citizens of Hartlepool....
I come to PB for accurate information and informed debate. I find this particular type of article very frustrating, as it isn't actually telling us anything we don't know i.e. age disparity in voting intentions, and we have done the flaws in it many many times. Its the equivalent of the continued early reporting of COVID deaths focusing on date reported rather than date of death.
I would be interested in seeing carefully crafted stats where there is a control for age. I would presume Tories might well still be behind, but none of us actually know what the size of that difference is.
This Pen Farthing thing. I know why Johnson authorised the evac of the animals. Nothing to do with Carrie.
If you look at the profiles of Johnson/Conservative supporters on twatter, about 80% of them will say in their bio they’re an animal lover and their pic’s often a badly taken selfie of a late-middle aged person with a dog, cat, cockatiel, pangolin, whatever.
I love animals, got two dogs, fish, grew up with loads of pets. But it’s not something I’d consider being such a big part of me that I’d stick it in a social media bio.
Johnson is once again displaying his razor sharp political instincts.
I suspect more Britons love animals than asylum seekers.
Quite, lovely woofie doggies vs dirty brown benefits claimants. No contest.
Has BoZo managed to uninvite himself from the EU summit? Below is interesting in the context of the Times reporting that Number 10 “sorry” on the Brexit-Ukraine remarks… rather suggests that an invite from Charles Michel to Thursday’s EU summit might have been being pondered (Biden is going too, same day as special NATO summit)…. https://twitter.com/carlbildt/status/1505278978550022145
.. indeed briefing from UK end to British journalists to this effect last week. Foreign Sec Truss attended the Foreign Affairs Council, so there is a precedent here.
Why does a man who campaigned for us to leave the EU want to go to an EU meeting? Just bizarre.
Because the EU cannot have a successful defence and security strategy without the UK's cooperation and involvement
So you're saying that Brexit has weakened security in Europe? No wonder Putin wanted it to happen.
That is upto Europe, but what has weakened Europe far beyond brexit is the utter failure by Germany and others to devise an energy policy that does not result in paying vast sums of money every day to Putin enabling his arming of his war machine, and the action now required would crash their economy
Merkel's energy policy is a disaster for Europe
Germany is working hard to rectify their mistake. What are we doing to rectify ours?
If you are referring to brexit then that is not a mistake
Germany will take years to wean herself off Putin's gas
Of course Brexit was a mistake
You have your view but I am delighted we left the EU despite voting remain and nothing that has happened since has changed my mind that we are better as an independent country
I might have to get that; I've have never understood the hatred of 'official' Russians for Ukrainians. The comments about relationships that we are hearing surely make it clear that they are very similar peoples, if not the same, just speaking a different language!
They are, but there are two hideous crimes that have polluted the relationship for decades. The Holodomor in the 1930s literally starved huge numbers of Ukranians to death, because Stalin collectivised them and then confiscated the wheat for expoert. Conversely, Bandera led a large number of Ukrainians to collaborate with the Nazis, and remains celebrated today in countless Ukrainian memorials (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stepan_Bandera?msclkid=d8e7922ea8f411eca9a3867070865b47). My Russian-born mother, whose family had suffered in the war (her aunt starved to death in the siege of Leningrad), loathed the (pre-Zelensky - this was 20 years ago) Ukrainian leadership for that reason - she felt it wasn't so much that there were collaborators, since every country had some, but that they were still seen by many as heroes.
Up to recently, it was possible to see the past being buried, since virtually everyone involved is now dead. Young Russians mostly see WW2 as a historical issue, much as we see WW1 - how many people in Britain in the last 30 years have brooded about the sins of the Kaiser? Conversely, opinion polls before the invasion showed over 30% of Ukrainians regretting the loss of the Soviet Union, and hostility to Russians as a people was mainly the province of the far right. One of the consequences of the invasion is to set all that back another generation or two. There are plenty of reports from Ukraine of people who felt a natural affinity to Russia, who voted for pro-Russian parties and detested Ukrainian ultra-nationalists, but who now feel completely betrayed and alienated by Russia. Like most imperialist projects, it's both horrible and ultimately self-defeating, since Putin has actually forged a Ukrainian national unity and common purpose that wasn't there before.
More anything it reminds me of Yugoslavia. Under Tito, lots of people had got used to getting over the Serb/Croat/Bosnian divide and many declined to identify with any of the rthnic groups in surveys - they said they were simply Yugoslavs. After Tito died, absent-mindedly neglecting to groom an heir, the country fell apart and nationalist leaders set about organising massacres to pursue their perceived identities. Each atrocity in turn reinforced extremists in the victimised ethnic group, and new hatreds were generated which are only now starting to fade.
You are a Ukrainian in 1940 or 1941. You are 30. You saw the horrors of the Holodomor visited upon you and your family just ten years before. Do you go and fight for the people who did that to you, or do you go and fight for the people fighting them?
The same was true in the Baltic states, where the Soviets pursued a campaign of mass murder in 1939-40.
As I've posted before, if the Nazi's hadn't been so insanely fixated on the idea of Slavs (etc) being sub-human they would probably have won.
If they hadn't believed in race war, then the war would not have happened as it did anyway.
As far as collaborators are concerned, the evidence would suggest the the propensity to collaborate, rather than an attraction to any given ideology, is the determining factor. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collaboration_in_German-occupied_Ukraine ...According to Timothy Snyder, "something that is never said, because it's inconvenient for precisely everyone, is that more Ukrainian Communists collaborated with the Germans, than did Ukrainian nationalists." Snyder also points out that very many of those who collaborated with the German occupation also collaborated with the Soviet policies in the 1930s...
Quite, although there's still the issue of Lebensraum, which might come up again in many years.
However the Timothy Snyder post is interesting. Was it repeated elsewhere, is there an issue about some people always gravitating to the government or toadying to the bully. I have a dim memory of reading something akin to that in the Channel Islands.
My theory was that in the event of the Germans invading the UK -
- One third of the population would have taken to the hills to fight to the death - One third of the population wouldn't have noticed, unless the football was interrupted. - One third would have lined up round the block for a black armband and a clipboard.
On your first point, 10% would have taken to the hills to fight to the death, after the event another 50% would have said they were also in the hills. I imagine that proportion applies roughly to most resistance movements.
While living in Sunderland around 1960 I met several people who claimed to have been on the Jarrow March 24 years earlier. Some must have taken time out from school.
Same applies to legendary Pistols & Clash concerts, more people at them than at Live Aid by numbers of anecdotes.
Many said that the Blind Beggar pub and the balcony at the former Iranian Embassy should have been reused as Olympic venues.
Both have, according to sworn statements ("On my mothers grave"...), a capacity of millions.
When Dylan went electric - that was a MASSIVE gig. Millions there.
I was actually - and honestly - at the Iranian Embassy siege. I was part of it. It was right next to my halls at Imperial and we used to loiter outside and watch developments. Somebody wheeled a piano out there, would you believe, and we used to have a singsong. Students.
And - spooky or what - I've been to the Blind Beggar too. During my Lehmans time, I took off one lunchtime to go see it and have a drink there. It was an odd hobby of mine back then - visiting London pubs where something notorious had happened. In that one, as some will know, Ronnie Kray shot down and killed George Cornell. You'd never know, though, based on when I visited. Pretty normal looking boozer. No 'edge' in it at all. Even doing food.
I've had a couple of pints there too. Legend has it that Ronnie took out Cornell just for calling him a fat poof; somewhat unsympathetically expressed but couldn't be said to be untruthful.
Has BoZo managed to uninvite himself from the EU summit? Below is interesting in the context of the Times reporting that Number 10 “sorry” on the Brexit-Ukraine remarks… rather suggests that an invite from Charles Michel to Thursday’s EU summit might have been being pondered (Biden is going too, same day as special NATO summit)…. https://twitter.com/carlbildt/status/1505278978550022145
.. indeed briefing from UK end to British journalists to this effect last week. Foreign Sec Truss attended the Foreign Affairs Council, so there is a precedent here.
Why does a man who campaigned for us to leave the EU want to go to an EU meeting? Just bizarre.
Because the EU cannot have a successful defence and security strategy without the UK's cooperation and involvement
So you're saying that Brexit has weakened security in Europe? No wonder Putin wanted it to happen.
That is upto Europe, but what has weakened Europe far beyond brexit is the utter failure by Germany and others to devise an energy policy that does not result in paying vast sums of money every day to Putin enabling his arming of his war machine, and the action now required would crash their economy
Merkel's energy policy is a disaster for Europe
Germany is working hard to rectify their mistake. What are we doing to rectify ours?
If you are referring to brexit then that is not a mistake
Germany will take years to wean herself off Putin's gas
Of course Brexit was a mistake
You have your view but I am delighted we left the EU despite voting remain and nothing that has happened since has changed my mind that we are better as an independent country
She says she has seen five foreign secretaries come and go over the past six years, and at times she felt she couldn't trust them as they kept saying they would get her home.
"How many foreign secretaries does it take?" she asks.
She says what has happened now with her being freed "should have happened six years ago".
Worrying development that the House of Commons authorities appear to have let a Labour MP draw a blacklist of parliamentary reporters to the Nazanin press conference and then used their ample resources to enforce it.
Number of outlets banned from press conference today.
The moment that the Russian Space program committed suicide, the question was where to get replacement launches for the remaining phase 1 satellite. Phase II was already going on Indian launchers.
SpaceX are the only launch provider with capacity. Or the capability to do anything inside 2 years.
And they have another reason, aside from mere money. Various SpaceX hating companies are trying to sell the pitch (especially in the Congressional arena in the US) that their vertical integration gives them an unfair advantage, rather than actually come up with cheap launch themselves.
If SpaceX launches satellites for a competitor (Starlink), that gives them a cast iron, throw-the-case-out-in-first-10-minutes rebuttal to such attacks.
I might have to get that; I've have never understood the hatred of 'official' Russians for Ukrainians. The comments about relationships that we are hearing surely make it clear that they are very similar peoples, if not the same, just speaking a different language!
They are, but there are two hideous crimes that have polluted the relationship for decades. The Holodomor in the 1930s literally starved huge numbers of Ukranians to death, because Stalin collectivised them and then confiscated the wheat for expoert. Conversely, Bandera led a large number of Ukrainians to collaborate with the Nazis, and remains celebrated today in countless Ukrainian memorials (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stepan_Bandera?msclkid=d8e7922ea8f411eca9a3867070865b47). My Russian-born mother, whose family had suffered in the war (her aunt starved to death in the siege of Leningrad), loathed the (pre-Zelensky - this was 20 years ago) Ukrainian leadership for that reason - she felt it wasn't so much that there were collaborators, since every country had some, but that they were still seen by many as heroes.
Up to recently, it was possible to see the past being buried, since virtually everyone involved is now dead. Young Russians mostly see WW2 as a historical issue, much as we see WW1 - how many people in Britain in the last 30 years have brooded about the sins of the Kaiser? Conversely, opinion polls before the invasion showed over 30% of Ukrainians regretting the loss of the Soviet Union, and hostility to Russians as a people was mainly the province of the far right. One of the consequences of the invasion is to set all that back another generation or two. There are plenty of reports from Ukraine of people who felt a natural affinity to Russia, who voted for pro-Russian parties and detested Ukrainian ultra-nationalists, but who now feel completely betrayed and alienated by Russia. Like most imperialist projects, it's both horrible and ultimately self-defeating, since Putin has actually forged a Ukrainian national unity and common purpose that wasn't there before.
More anything it reminds me of Yugoslavia. Under Tito, lots of people had got used to getting over the Serb/Croat/Bosnian divide and many declined to identify with any of the rthnic groups in surveys - they said they were simply Yugoslavs. After Tito died, absent-mindedly neglecting to groom an heir, the country fell apart and nationalist leaders set about organising massacres to pursue their perceived identities. Each atrocity in turn reinforced extremists in the victimised ethnic group, and new hatreds were generated which are only now starting to fade.
You are a Ukrainian in 1940 or 1941. You are 30. You saw the horrors of the Holodomor visited upon you and your family just ten years before. Do you go and fight for the people who did that to you, or do you go and fight for the people fighting them?
The same was true in the Baltic states, where the Soviets pursued a campaign of mass murder in 1939-40.
As I've posted before, if the Nazi's hadn't been so insanely fixated on the idea of Slavs (etc) being sub-human they would probably have won.
If they hadn't believed in race war, then the war would not have happened as it did anyway.
As far as collaborators are concerned, the evidence would suggest the the propensity to collaborate, rather than an attraction to any given ideology, is the determining factor. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collaboration_in_German-occupied_Ukraine ...According to Timothy Snyder, "something that is never said, because it's inconvenient for precisely everyone, is that more Ukrainian Communists collaborated with the Germans, than did Ukrainian nationalists." Snyder also points out that very many of those who collaborated with the German occupation also collaborated with the Soviet policies in the 1930s...
Quite, although there's still the issue of Lebensraum, which might come up again in many years.
However the Timothy Snyder post is interesting. Was it repeated elsewhere, is there an issue about some people always gravitating to the government or toadying to the bully. I have a dim memory of reading something akin to that in the Channel Islands.
My theory was that in the event of the Germans invading the UK -
- One third of the population would have taken to the hills to fight to the death - One third of the population wouldn't have noticed, unless the football was interrupted. - One third would have lined up round the block for a black armband and a clipboard.
On your first point, 10% would have taken to the hills to fight to the death, after the event another 50% would have said they were also in the hills. I imagine that proportion applies roughly to most resistance movements.
While living in Sunderland around 1960 I met several people who claimed to have been on the Jarrow March 24 years earlier. Some must have taken time out from school.
Same applies to legendary Pistols & Clash concerts, more people at them than at Live Aid by numbers of anecdotes.
Many said that the Blind Beggar pub and the balcony at the former Iranian Embassy should have been reused as Olympic venues.
Both have, according to sworn statements ("On my mothers grave"...), a capacity of millions.
When Dylan went electric - that was a MASSIVE gig. Millions there.
I was actually - and honestly - at the Iranian Embassy siege. I was part of it. It was right next to my halls at Imperial and we used to loiter outside and watch developments. Somebody wheeled a piano out there, would you believe, and we used to have a singsong. Students.
And - spooky or what - I've been to the Blind Beggar too. During my Lehmans time, I took off one lunchtime to go see it and have a drink there. It was an odd hobby of mine back then - visiting London pubs where something notorious had happened. In that one, as some will know, Ronnie Kray shot down and killed George Cornell. You'd never know, though, based on when I visited. Pretty normal looking boozer. No 'edge' in it at all. Even doing food.
I've had a couple of pints there too. Legend has it that Ronnie took out Cornell just for calling him a fat poof; somewhat unsympathetically expressed but couldn't be said to be untruthful.
Yep, Ron was both oversized and very much a member of the LGBTQ community.
Although I guess with him, on the size, it WAS mainly muscle.
I might have to get that; I've have never understood the hatred of 'official' Russians for Ukrainians. The comments about relationships that we are hearing surely make it clear that they are very similar peoples, if not the same, just speaking a different language!
They are, but there are two hideous crimes that have polluted the relationship for decades. The Holodomor in the 1930s literally starved huge numbers of Ukranians to death, because Stalin collectivised them and then confiscated the wheat for expoert. Conversely, Bandera led a large number of Ukrainians to collaborate with the Nazis, and remains celebrated today in countless Ukrainian memorials (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stepan_Bandera?msclkid=d8e7922ea8f411eca9a3867070865b47). My Russian-born mother, whose family had suffered in the war (her aunt starved to death in the siege of Leningrad), loathed the (pre-Zelensky - this was 20 years ago) Ukrainian leadership for that reason - she felt it wasn't so much that there were collaborators, since every country had some, but that they were still seen by many as heroes.
Up to recently, it was possible to see the past being buried, since virtually everyone involved is now dead. Young Russians mostly see WW2 as a historical issue, much as we see WW1 - how many people in Britain in the last 30 years have brooded about the sins of the Kaiser? Conversely, opinion polls before the invasion showed over 30% of Ukrainians regretting the loss of the Soviet Union, and hostility to Russians as a people was mainly the province of the far right. One of the consequences of the invasion is to set all that back another generation or two. There are plenty of reports from Ukraine of people who felt a natural affinity to Russia, who voted for pro-Russian parties and detested Ukrainian ultra-nationalists, but who now feel completely betrayed and alienated by Russia. Like most imperialist projects, it's both horrible and ultimately self-defeating, since Putin has actually forged a Ukrainian national unity and common purpose that wasn't there before.
More anything it reminds me of Yugoslavia. Under Tito, lots of people had got used to getting over the Serb/Croat/Bosnian divide and many declined to identify with any of the rthnic groups in surveys - they said they were simply Yugoslavs. After Tito died, absent-mindedly neglecting to groom an heir, the country fell apart and nationalist leaders set about organising massacres to pursue their perceived identities. Each atrocity in turn reinforced extremists in the victimised ethnic group, and new hatreds were generated which are only now starting to fade.
You are a Ukrainian in 1940 or 1941. You are 30. You saw the horrors of the Holodomor visited upon you and your family just ten years before. Do you go and fight for the people who did that to you, or do you go and fight for the people fighting them?
The same was true in the Baltic states, where the Soviets pursued a campaign of mass murder in 1939-40.
As I've posted before, if the Nazi's hadn't been so insanely fixated on the idea of Slavs (etc) being sub-human they would probably have won.
If they hadn't believed in race war, then the war would not have happened as it did anyway.
As far as collaborators are concerned, the evidence would suggest the the propensity to collaborate, rather than an attraction to any given ideology, is the determining factor. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collaboration_in_German-occupied_Ukraine ...According to Timothy Snyder, "something that is never said, because it's inconvenient for precisely everyone, is that more Ukrainian Communists collaborated with the Germans, than did Ukrainian nationalists." Snyder also points out that very many of those who collaborated with the German occupation also collaborated with the Soviet policies in the 1930s...
Quite, although there's still the issue of Lebensraum, which might come up again in many years.
However the Timothy Snyder post is interesting. Was it repeated elsewhere, is there an issue about some people always gravitating to the government or toadying to the bully. I have a dim memory of reading something akin to that in the Channel Islands.
My theory was that in the event of the Germans invading the UK -
- One third of the population would have taken to the hills to fight to the death - One third of the population wouldn't have noticed, unless the football was interrupted. - One third would have lined up round the block for a black armband and a clipboard.
On your first point, 10% would have taken to the hills to fight to the death, after the event another 50% would have said they were also in the hills. I imagine that proportion applies roughly to most resistance movements.
While living in Sunderland around 1960 I met several people who claimed to have been on the Jarrow March 24 years earlier. Some must have taken time out from school.
Same applies to legendary Pistols & Clash concerts, more people at them than at Live Aid by numbers of anecdotes.
Many said that the Blind Beggar pub and the balcony at the former Iranian Embassy should have been reused as Olympic venues.
Both have, according to sworn statements ("On my mothers grave"...), a capacity of millions.
When Dylan went electric - that was a MASSIVE gig. Millions there.
I was actually - and honestly - at the Iranian Embassy siege. I was part of it. It was right next to my halls at Imperial and we used to loiter outside and watch developments. Somebody wheeled a piano out there, would you believe, and we used to have a singsong. Students.
And - spooky or what - I've been to the Blind Beggar too. During my Lehmans time, I took off one lunchtime to go see it and have a drink there. It was an odd hobby of mine back then - visiting London pubs where something notorious had happened. In that one, as some will know, Ronnie Kray shot down and killed George Cornell. You'd never know, though, based on when I visited. Pretty normal looking boozer. No 'edge' in it at all. Even doing food.
I've had a couple of pints there too. Legend has it that Ronnie took out Cornell just for calling him a fat poof; somewhat unsympathetically expressed but couldn't be said to be untruthful.
And here's the song that was supposedly playing on the jukebox:
Andy Wightman is an interesting character. Green MSP in the last Parliament, and was their nominee on the Salmond Inquiry. A serious land-reform activist and notably independent thinker. Fell out with his party over gender and was subjected to a surprisingly high level of vitriol. Left the Party and stood, unsuccessfully, as an Independent.
Significantly, he had very great reservations about Sturgeon's account at the inquiry. We've read many times of the supposed demise of Nicola and I certainly don't expect this to terminate her but, you never know.
We've left the EU, what they do in terms of policy is now irrelevant to us, leave them alone
That's a strange thing to say. What the EU does in terms of policy obviously affects countries outside the EU. Just because we were once members, it doesn't mean we cease to have the right to have a European foreign policy.
Has BoZo managed to uninvite himself from the EU summit? Below is interesting in the context of the Times reporting that Number 10 “sorry” on the Brexit-Ukraine remarks… rather suggests that an invite from Charles Michel to Thursday’s EU summit might have been being pondered (Biden is going too, same day as special NATO summit)…. https://twitter.com/carlbildt/status/1505278978550022145
.. indeed briefing from UK end to British journalists to this effect last week. Foreign Sec Truss attended the Foreign Affairs Council, so there is a precedent here.
Why does a man who campaigned for us to leave the EU want to go to an EU meeting? Just bizarre.
Because the EU cannot have a successful defence and security strategy without the UK's cooperation and involvement
So you're saying that Brexit has weakened security in Europe? No wonder Putin wanted it to happen.
That is upto Europe, but what has weakened Europe far beyond brexit is the utter failure by Germany and others to devise an energy policy that does not result in paying vast sums of money every day to Putin enabling his arming of his war machine, and the action now required would crash their economy
Merkel's energy policy is a disaster for Europe
Germany is working hard to rectify their mistake. What are we doing to rectify ours?
If you are referring to brexit then that is not a mistake
Germany will take years to wean herself off Putin's gas
Of course Brexit was a mistake
You have your view but I am delighted we left the EU despite voting remain and nothing that has happened since has changed my mind that we are better as an independent country
Sajid Javid joins Rishi Sunak in having to argue that night is day on behalf of the prime minister over the Brexit/Ukraine row: "I don't accept that he was comparing the UK to Ukraine." Which is nonsense, of course. https://twitter.com/KevinASchofield/status/1505807648448565250/photo/1
So what interpretation did he offer for this ?
"I know that it's the instinct of the people of this country, like the people of Ukraine, to choose freedom, every time. I can give you a couple of famous recent examples. "When the British people voted for Brexit in such large, large numbers, I don't believe it was because they were remotely hostile to foreigners. "It's because they wanted to be free to do things differently and for this country to be able to run itself."...
That both the UK and Ukraine are in the category of countries with a freedom loving people. That doesn’t mean that the UK is equivalent to Ukraine
Yes, Boris’ quote about “Ukraine and Brexit” really isn’t that offensive. You can see what he’s trying to say. It was emotionally misjudged but not an obviously foolish or outrageous statement
But the misjudgement (or canny trolling?) got his opponents to hyper-ventilate, which then made the news
I’m cynical enough to go with canny trolling. The words were carefully chosen. You would hope for better, but that’s the PM the UK has. For now.
You said exactly the same thing about the refugee cock up. If you don't like what you hear you call it trolling rather than accepting it is true. It is true as was the refugee issue. I'm not a troll. I don't even have a twitter account, but I was fully aware of the refugee issue and had an immediate reaction to Boris' statement.
Doesn't look good if your reaction to everything you don't like is 'trolls'.
@StillWaters my apologies, wrong person. Please ignore my post. Sorry.
No problem. Just to be clear I think you were being trolled by Boris, not a troll yourself!
On the refugee issue, I tend to view it as, initially, a combination of cock up and bureaucratic inflexibility. Where Patel was at fault was politically not realising it was a problem (I find it hard to believe that she could be personally unmoved by the situation) and being unable / unwilling to devote the focus and energy to sorting it out.
I don't know how the new system works, so no idea whether the criticisms are justified, but it seems to be these are criticisms of execution rather than of principle at this point, so definitely an improvement. Let's hope that it works.
(The only person on here I accuse of being a troll is Heathener. Because she is. A spinner of Putin-preferred lines with a compromised VPN that is on an anti-spamming blacklist and was also used by two previous trolls)
Re your comments on cock up and bureaucratic inflexibility I am sure you are right. FYI I get involved in numerous campaigns where individuals and groups have been badly or unfairly treated by Govt departments (nothing to do with politics). The level of incompetence is mind boggling. However what I do find is a massive amount of resources are then put into avoiding taking any action or making changes often disproportionate to any cost involved. We see these scandals arise over and over again. There are many more at a lower level of seriousness.
Also for those who think we gained freedoms by leaving the EU, our ombudsman offerings are very flawed with lots of gaps that people and groups fall through. Private member's bills with cross party support invariably fail to fill these gaps. The last and effective resolution was the ECJ has now gone, so many groups are left in limbo with nobody to investigate.
Eh? We are still subject to the jurisdiction of the ECtHR, our domestic courts can be asked to and do enforce ECHR rights and they are a part of our domestic law.
Domestic courts are still required to enforce these laws unless they have been changed and there are almost no examples of this so far.
David, I don't want to bore people online with this but I am involved in pension campaigns where this is an issue. We have had a number of successes in the ECJ, but these will now stop. We have also tried to get the law changed on a number of occasions with all party support and also support from the Parliamentary Ombudsman whose hands are tied so would like to see a change in the law, but these are always opposed by Governments. There are cases which just fall through the gaps. In the case of pension and mortgage cases you can fall fail of the limitation act, which is daft for a mortgage or pension. The FOS will ignore the limitation act, but the PHSO won't because they are legally bound so if you come under that jurisdiction you are stuffed (random result). PHSO also can't investigate GAD so if that is an issue you are stuffed, although an exception was made for Equitable Life, but nobody else. The PO has done an awful job re the PPF and again hides behind the Limitation Act. Ex civil servants can fall between the PHSO and the Whitley Council so fail to get an investigation.
Is that enough of a pile of issues for you. Just about the only success achieved with this pile of crap is the ECJ.
@DavidL did you see my reply. I'm no lawyer so can't debate with you on the law. I did just note you also referred to UK cases. I believe one of the most important ones was in fact a German case that was of benefit to our pensioners who have lost much of their pensions. I have also heard (gossip rather than fact) that the Govt plans to reverse one of the decisions that impacts the poorest pensioners (I am dubious about this as it seems a bit odd). Note this is not a comment on the current Govt. I don't think it matters who is in power and in fact most of our most vocal support is from Tory MPs and those who have put forward 10 min bills have all been Tories.
Has BoZo managed to uninvite himself from the EU summit? Below is interesting in the context of the Times reporting that Number 10 “sorry” on the Brexit-Ukraine remarks… rather suggests that an invite from Charles Michel to Thursday’s EU summit might have been being pondered (Biden is going too, same day as special NATO summit)…. https://twitter.com/carlbildt/status/1505278978550022145
.. indeed briefing from UK end to British journalists to this effect last week. Foreign Sec Truss attended the Foreign Affairs Council, so there is a precedent here.
Why does a man who campaigned for us to leave the EU want to go to an EU meeting? Just bizarre.
Because the EU cannot have a successful defence and security strategy without the UK's cooperation and involvement
So you're saying that Brexit has weakened security in Europe? No wonder Putin wanted it to happen.
That is upto Europe, but what has weakened Europe far beyond brexit is the utter failure by Germany and others to devise an energy policy that does not result in paying vast sums of money every day to Putin enabling his arming of his war machine, and the action now required would crash their economy
Merkel's energy policy is a disaster for Europe
Germany is working hard to rectify their mistake. What are we doing to rectify ours?
If you are referring to brexit then that is not a mistake
Germany will take years to wean herself off Putin's gas
Of course Brexit was a mistake
You have your view but I am delighted we left the EU despite voting remain and nothing that has happened since has changed my mind that we are better as an independent country
I might have to get that; I've have never understood the hatred of 'official' Russians for Ukrainians. The comments about relationships that we are hearing surely make it clear that they are very similar peoples, if not the same, just speaking a different language!
They are, but there are two hideous crimes that have polluted the relationship for decades. The Holodomor in the 1930s literally starved huge numbers of Ukranians to death, because Stalin collectivised them and then confiscated the wheat for expoert. Conversely, Bandera led a large number of Ukrainians to collaborate with the Nazis, and remains celebrated today in countless Ukrainian memorials (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stepan_Bandera?msclkid=d8e7922ea8f411eca9a3867070865b47). My Russian-born mother, whose family had suffered in the war (her aunt starved to death in the siege of Leningrad), loathed the (pre-Zelensky - this was 20 years ago) Ukrainian leadership for that reason - she felt it wasn't so much that there were collaborators, since every country had some, but that they were still seen by many as heroes.
Up to recently, it was possible to see the past being buried, since virtually everyone involved is now dead. Young Russians mostly see WW2 as a historical issue, much as we see WW1 - how many people in Britain in the last 30 years have brooded about the sins of the Kaiser? Conversely, opinion polls before the invasion showed over 30% of Ukrainians regretting the loss of the Soviet Union, and hostility to Russians as a people was mainly the province of the far right. One of the consequences of the invasion is to set all that back another generation or two. There are plenty of reports from Ukraine of people who felt a natural affinity to Russia, who voted for pro-Russian parties and detested Ukrainian ultra-nationalists, but who now feel completely betrayed and alienated by Russia. Like most imperialist projects, it's both horrible and ultimately self-defeating, since Putin has actually forged a Ukrainian national unity and common purpose that wasn't there before.
More anything it reminds me of Yugoslavia. Under Tito, lots of people had got used to getting over the Serb/Croat/Bosnian divide and many declined to identify with any of the rthnic groups in surveys - they said they were simply Yugoslavs. After Tito died, absent-mindedly neglecting to groom an heir, the country fell apart and nationalist leaders set about organising massacres to pursue their perceived identities. Each atrocity in turn reinforced extremists in the victimised ethnic group, and new hatreds were generated which are only now starting to fade.
You are a Ukrainian in 1940 or 1941. You are 30. You saw the horrors of the Holodomor visited upon you and your family just ten years before. Do you go and fight for the people who did that to you, or do you go and fight for the people fighting them?
The same was true in the Baltic states, where the Soviets pursued a campaign of mass murder in 1939-40.
As I've posted before, if the Nazi's hadn't been so insanely fixated on the idea of Slavs (etc) being sub-human they would probably have won.
If they hadn't believed in race war, then the war would not have happened as it did anyway.
As far as collaborators are concerned, the evidence would suggest the the propensity to collaborate, rather than an attraction to any given ideology, is the determining factor. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collaboration_in_German-occupied_Ukraine ...According to Timothy Snyder, "something that is never said, because it's inconvenient for precisely everyone, is that more Ukrainian Communists collaborated with the Germans, than did Ukrainian nationalists." Snyder also points out that very many of those who collaborated with the German occupation also collaborated with the Soviet policies in the 1930s...
Quite, although there's still the issue of Lebensraum, which might come up again in many years.
However the Timothy Snyder post is interesting. Was it repeated elsewhere, is there an issue about some people always gravitating to the government or toadying to the bully. I have a dim memory of reading something akin to that in the Channel Islands.
My theory was that in the event of the Germans invading the UK -
- One third of the population would have taken to the hills to fight to the death - One third of the population wouldn't have noticed, unless the football was interrupted. - One third would have lined up round the block for a black armband and a clipboard.
On your first point, 10% would have taken to the hills to fight to the death, after the event another 50% would have said they were also in the hills. I imagine that proportion applies roughly to most resistance movements.
While living in Sunderland around 1960 I met several people who claimed to have been on the Jarrow March 24 years earlier. Some must have taken time out from school.
Same applies to legendary Pistols & Clash concerts, more people at them than at Live Aid by numbers of anecdotes.
Many said that the Blind Beggar pub and the balcony at the former Iranian Embassy should have been reused as Olympic venues.
Both have, according to sworn statements ("On my mothers grave"...), a capacity of millions.
When Dylan went electric - that was a MASSIVE gig. Millions there.
I was actually - and honestly - at the Iranian Embassy siege. I was part of it. It was right next to my halls at Imperial and we used to loiter outside and watch developments. Somebody wheeled a piano out there, would you believe, and we used to have a singsong. Students.
And - spooky or what - I've been to the Blind Beggar too. During my Lehmans time, I took off one lunchtime to go see it and have a drink there. It was an odd hobby of mine back then - visiting London pubs where something notorious had happened. In that one, as some will know, Ronnie Kray shot down and killed George Cornell. You'd never know, though, based on when I visited. Pretty normal looking boozer. No 'edge' in it at all. Even doing food.
I've had a couple of pints there too. Legend has it that Ronnie took out Cornell just for calling him a fat poof; somewhat unsympathetically expressed but couldn't be said to be untruthful.
And here's the song that was supposedly playing on the jukebox:
When I lived in Tower Hill, it was fairly common local knowledge that the Blind Beggar had been a tourist pub for years - the landlord used to make good money just on the people coming to see the place because of the Kray Connection.
There were some bars that were strictly locals-of-a-certain-stamp only, but that wasn't one of them... The House They Left Behind, maybe.....
Has BoZo managed to uninvite himself from the EU summit? Below is interesting in the context of the Times reporting that Number 10 “sorry” on the Brexit-Ukraine remarks… rather suggests that an invite from Charles Michel to Thursday’s EU summit might have been being pondered (Biden is going too, same day as special NATO summit)…. https://twitter.com/carlbildt/status/1505278978550022145
.. indeed briefing from UK end to British journalists to this effect last week. Foreign Sec Truss attended the Foreign Affairs Council, so there is a precedent here.
Why does a man who campaigned for us to leave the EU want to go to an EU meeting? Just bizarre.
Because the EU cannot have a successful defence and security strategy without the UK's cooperation and involvement
So you're saying that Brexit has weakened security in Europe? No wonder Putin wanted it to happen.
That is upto Europe, but what has weakened Europe far beyond brexit is the utter failure by Germany and others to devise an energy policy that does not result in paying vast sums of money every day to Putin enabling his arming of his war machine, and the action now required would crash their economy
Merkel's energy policy is a disaster for Europe
Germany is working hard to rectify their mistake. What are we doing to rectify ours?
If you are referring to brexit then that is not a mistake
Germany will take years to wean herself off Putin's gas
Of course Brexit was a mistake
You have your view but I am delighted we left the EU despite voting remain and nothing that has happened since has changed my mind that we are better as an independent country
Yet the other 27 don't seem to want to be independent countries. Quite odd it being just us. Is it because we are a particularly freedom loving people? I guess it must be.
Ukraine should take a leaf anyway. What's the point of fighting off the Russians only to then go and join the EU and sublimate themselves to Brussels?
Mike does this same piece seemingly every month or two, and its the same issue every time, the age disparity. Which he doesn't mention again. 50% going to university over the past 10 years versus 15% going among people who are now 60%+.
Until we control for the difference in those attending university against age, all it really does is act as a proxy for age, which is clear from all the other metrics. Oldies are incredibly Tory leaning, younger people Labour.
So every month or two, the same people can look down their noses at the citizens of Hartlepool....
If VVP wants to lob a few nukes he could do us a favour by starting with the capital of Brexitstan.
My theory was that in the event of the Germans invading the UK -
- One third of the population would have taken to the hills to fight to the death - One third of the population wouldn't have noticed, unless the football was interrupted. - One third would have lined up round the block for a black armband and a clipboard.
You are a Ukrainian in 1940 or 1941. You are 30. You saw the horrors of the Holodomor visited upon you and your family just ten years before. Do you go and fight for the people who did that to you, or do you go and fight for the people fighting them?
I don't know (evading fighting for either side would be tempting if possible), and I'm reluctant to pass judgment 80 years later on anyone in that situation, especially as I'm no kind of expert on Ukraine - my knowledge of Bandera comes largely from the Wikipedia article.
My mother's hostility to Ukraine was not so much, as I said, with Bandera's decision to ally with the Nazis, or even with his anti-semitism - even she recognised that we can't really judge countries on the decisions of individuals. What she found unforgivable was that he was commemorated as a hero right up to the time of her death, as I understand remains the case up to the present day.
I don't offer that as an excuse for Putin launching a war, of course, I was replying to a question about how come Russians and Ukrainians are at loggerheads when they seem ethnically quite similar. The past - Holodomor and Nazi collaboration alike - casts far longer shadows than is understood by most people in Britain. I wish it were otherwise.
People had a choice of siding with the evil Communist Russians, who had killed millions of them less than a decade earlier, or with the evil Nazis. They were trapped.
But my point was that the Holodomor came first, and everything that happened afterwards has to be seen in that context. Including today's war.
Has BoZo managed to uninvite himself from the EU summit? Below is interesting in the context of the Times reporting that Number 10 “sorry” on the Brexit-Ukraine remarks… rather suggests that an invite from Charles Michel to Thursday’s EU summit might have been being pondered (Biden is going too, same day as special NATO summit)…. https://twitter.com/carlbildt/status/1505278978550022145
.. indeed briefing from UK end to British journalists to this effect last week. Foreign Sec Truss attended the Foreign Affairs Council, so there is a precedent here.
Why does a man who campaigned for us to leave the EU want to go to an EU meeting? Just bizarre.
Because the EU cannot have a successful defence and security strategy without the UK's cooperation and involvement
So you're saying that Brexit has weakened security in Europe? No wonder Putin wanted it to happen.
That is upto Europe, but what has weakened Europe far beyond brexit is the utter failure by Germany and others to devise an energy policy that does not result in paying vast sums of money every day to Putin enabling his arming of his war machine, and the action now required would crash their economy
Merkel's energy policy is a disaster for Europe
Germany is working hard to rectify their mistake. What are we doing to rectify ours?
If you are referring to brexit then that is not a mistake
Germany will take years to wean herself off Putin's gas
Of course Brexit was a mistake
You have your view but I am delighted we left the EU despite voting remain and nothing that has happened since has changed my mind that we are better as an independent country
I would say don't click on the link if you don't want to see what is obvious from the quote...
Blood on the main square of Kherson. Looks like Russian occupation forces opened fire at a peaceful protest, after dispersing previous ones by shooting in the air and throwing flash-bangs.
Has BoZo managed to uninvite himself from the EU summit? Below is interesting in the context of the Times reporting that Number 10 “sorry” on the Brexit-Ukraine remarks… rather suggests that an invite from Charles Michel to Thursday’s EU summit might have been being pondered (Biden is going too, same day as special NATO summit)…. https://twitter.com/carlbildt/status/1505278978550022145
.. indeed briefing from UK end to British journalists to this effect last week. Foreign Sec Truss attended the Foreign Affairs Council, so there is a precedent here.
Why does a man who campaigned for us to leave the EU want to go to an EU meeting? Just bizarre.
Because the EU cannot have a successful defence and security strategy without the UK's cooperation and involvement
So you're saying that Brexit has weakened security in Europe? No wonder Putin wanted it to happen.
That is upto Europe, but what has weakened Europe far beyond brexit is the utter failure by Germany and others to devise an energy policy that does not result in paying vast sums of money every day to Putin enabling his arming of his war machine, and the action now required would crash their economy
Merkel's energy policy is a disaster for Europe
Germany is working hard to rectify their mistake. What are we doing to rectify ours?
If you are referring to brexit then that is not a mistake
Germany will take years to wean herself off Putin's gas
Of course Brexit was a mistake
You have your view but I am delighted we left the EU despite voting remain and nothing that has happened since has changed my mind that we are better as an independent country
No prizes for guessing which episode of Polish-Russian history Medvedev omits:
This morning, 🇷🇺Dmitry Medvedev decided to post a lengthy letter 🇵🇱"On Poland" - it is a curious mix of Soviet and pan-Slavic mythology with mockery, dire criticism and veiled threats against Poland - here are the key points 🧵
No prizes for guessing which episode of Polish-Russian history Medvedev omits:
This morning, 🇷🇺Dmitry Medvedev decided to post a lengthy letter 🇵🇱"On Poland" - it is a curious mix of Soviet and pan-Slavic mythology with mockery, dire criticism and veiled threats against Poland - here are the key points 🧵
Has BoZo managed to uninvite himself from the EU summit? Below is interesting in the context of the Times reporting that Number 10 “sorry” on the Brexit-Ukraine remarks… rather suggests that an invite from Charles Michel to Thursday’s EU summit might have been being pondered (Biden is going too, same day as special NATO summit)…. https://twitter.com/carlbildt/status/1505278978550022145
.. indeed briefing from UK end to British journalists to this effect last week. Foreign Sec Truss attended the Foreign Affairs Council, so there is a precedent here.
Why does a man who campaigned for us to leave the EU want to go to an EU meeting? Just bizarre.
Because the EU cannot have a successful defence and security strategy without the UK's cooperation and involvement
So you're saying that Brexit has weakened security in Europe? No wonder Putin wanted it to happen.
That is upto Europe, but what has weakened Europe far beyond brexit is the utter failure by Germany and others to devise an energy policy that does not result in paying vast sums of money every day to Putin enabling his arming of his war machine, and the action now required would crash their economy
Merkel's energy policy is a disaster for Europe
Germany is working hard to rectify their mistake. What are we doing to rectify ours?
If you are referring to brexit then that is not a mistake
Germany will take years to wean herself off Putin's gas
Of course Brexit was a mistake
You have your view but I am delighted we left the EU despite voting remain and nothing that has happened since has changed my mind that we are better as an independent country
Boris Romantschenko survived the concentration camps #Buchenwald, #Peenemünde, #Dora and #BergenBelsen. Now he has been killed by a bullet that hit his house in #Charkiv, #Ukraine. He was 96 years old. We are stunned.
Mike does this same piece seemingly every month or two, and its the same issue every time, the age disparity. Which he doesn't mention again. 50% going to university over the past 10 years versus 15% going among people who are now 60%+.
Until we control for the difference in those attending university against age, all it really does is act as a proxy for age, which is clear from all the other metrics. Oldies are incredibly Tory leaning, younger people Labour.
So every month or two, the same people can look down their noses at the citizens of Hartlepool....
Hartlepool seems to have become a totem for some on the batshit FBPE side to fixate on.
Has BoZo managed to uninvite himself from the EU summit? Below is interesting in the context of the Times reporting that Number 10 “sorry” on the Brexit-Ukraine remarks… rather suggests that an invite from Charles Michel to Thursday’s EU summit might have been being pondered (Biden is going too, same day as special NATO summit)…. https://twitter.com/carlbildt/status/1505278978550022145
.. indeed briefing from UK end to British journalists to this effect last week. Foreign Sec Truss attended the Foreign Affairs Council, so there is a precedent here.
Why does a man who campaigned for us to leave the EU want to go to an EU meeting? Just bizarre.
Because the EU cannot have a successful defence and security strategy without the UK's cooperation and involvement
So you're saying that Brexit has weakened security in Europe? No wonder Putin wanted it to happen.
That is upto Europe, but what has weakened Europe far beyond brexit is the utter failure by Germany and others to devise an energy policy that does not result in paying vast sums of money every day to Putin enabling his arming of his war machine, and the action now required would crash their economy
Merkel's energy policy is a disaster for Europe
Germany is working hard to rectify their mistake. What are we doing to rectify ours?
If you are referring to brexit then that is not a mistake
Germany will take years to wean herself off Putin's gas
Of course Brexit was a mistake
You have your view but I am delighted we left the EU despite voting remain and nothing that has happened since has changed my mind that we are better as an independent country
That does not change my view though I do want a closer relationship but not to rejoin
Quite interesting how many British people are incredulous about Russians believing state media, and yet so many gullibly suck up all the bullshit about the somewhat hard to find "benefits of Brexit" that they are told by Boris Johnson, a man that is proven to be a pathological liar.
Comments
As for previously it was very rare for squaddies to appear in uniform in public and then it would I suppose have depended upon why. Plain khaki sounds like 1950s battledress when are we talking here.
Every time you hear of a scandal (Windrush, blood contamination, Equitable Life) remember there is a pile of others under the radar that are less serious that nobody hears of.
https://twitter.com/Den4Callowland/status/1505667590739443715/photo/1
She says she has seen five foreign secretaries come and go over the past six years, and at times she felt she couldn't trust them as they kept saying they would get her home.
"How many foreign secretaries does it take?" she asks.
She says what has happened now with her being freed "should have happened six years ago".
I don't believe we need the ECJ to do any of that.
Pretty good I think, conclusion mainly that virtually all our leaders have been dumb ****s. Interesting to be reminded of a period when Yeltsin was a player rather than the drunken comedy act which is pretty all he seems to be in the collective memory nowadays.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-60767454
If Charles Michel is trying to shoehorn the EU onto NATO's territory then that's him that is clowning around.
Number of outlets banned from press conference today.
https://twitter.com/MrHarryCole/status/1505877812414226434
Merkel's energy policy is a disaster for Europe
@afneil
·
3h
Europe hasn’t seen anything like this since World War II. Russians are digging in around cities as if they plan a long siege. Civilian casualties aren’t incidental. They are central to the dictator’s war strategy.
https://twitter.com/afneil/status/1505842407417516032
Membership of a supranational organisation which seeks to align widget standards across industries = intolerable imposition on our sovereignty.
I'd draw a larger canvas than that - Merkel's Ostpolitik was the disaster, which goes beyond energy. TBF to Brussels, Merkel pushed NS2 through in the of Euco opposition, including legal action in the EU Court.
There's a piece around at the moment about arms sales to Russia in the period 2015-2020, which is startling.
My mother's hostility to Ukraine was not so much, as I said, with Bandera's decision to ally with the Nazis, or even with his anti-semitism - even she recognised that we can't really judge countries on the decisions of individuals. What she found unforgivable was that he was commemorated as a hero right up to the time of her death, as I understand remains the case up to the present day.
I don't offer that as an excuse for Putin launching a war, of course, I was replying to a question about how come Russians and Ukrainians are at loggerheads when they seem ethnically quite similar. The past - Holodomor and Nazi collaboration alike - casts far longer shadows than is understood by most people in Britain. I wish it were otherwise.
There is a non-trivial chunk of the KGB/FSB/Whatever that still think the Cambridge Five were actually a brilliant triple agent program the British ran against Russia.....
killer point, whatever.
We keep hearing of scandals where we say it must never happen again, yet it always does. Below these are loads more that are complex and lower profile so never hit the media. The ECJ is not a panacea, but it helped, many pensioners would now be in poverty if not for their decisions and through no fault of their own. Our Govt did nothing.
However the Western Europe consists of the EU, the UK, Norway Switzerland (usually neutral) and a few other very small countries.
So if there are defence decisions that need to be made you can't just leave it to either NATO or the EU as both of them are missing some important countries.
https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/boris-johnson-ukraine-resisting-invasion-brexit_uk_62386a23e4b0c727d480ba24
Germany will take years to wean herself off Putin's gas
Until we control for the difference in those attending university against age, all it really does is act as a proxy for age, which is clear from all the other metrics. Oldies are incredibly Tory leaning, younger people Labour.
https://twitter.com/yarotrof/status/1505879929749217286?t=A0wjr1y4ukfEYQa2u9bbUQ&s=19
SNAFUUK
The same is imo possible in NATO.
What happens if it is proposed that Ukraine 'volunteer legionnaires' are trained in Poland or Romania? Or even that a 'safe haven' be established under NATO protection in Western Ukraine - which may become a possibility / necessity if Putin is really deporting populations and sending his troops in with death-lists?
Also, these are the next Presidents of the EU Council, after Macron. Change of style?
If you look at the profiles of Johnson/Conservative supporters on twatter, about 80% of them will say in their bio they’re an animal lover and their pic’s often a badly taken selfie of a late-middle aged person with a dog, cat, cockatiel, pangolin, whatever.
I love animals, got two dogs, fish, grew up with loads of pets. But it’s not something I’d consider being such a big part of me that I’d stick it in a social media bio.
Johnson is once again displaying his razor sharp political instincts.
3000 pensioners lose much of their pension.
I was actually - and honestly - at the Iranian Embassy siege. I was part of it. It was right next to my halls at Imperial and we used to loiter outside and watch developments. Somebody wheeled a piano out there, would you believe, and we used to have a singsong. Students.
And - spooky or what - I've been to the Blind Beggar too. During my Lehmans time, I took off one lunchtime to go see it and have a drink there. It was an odd hobby of mine back then - visiting London pubs where something notorious had happened. In that one, as some will know, Ronnie Kray shot down and killed George Cornell. You'd never know, though, based on when I visited. Pretty normal looking boozer. No 'edge' in it at all. Even doing food.
I would be interested in seeing carefully crafted stats where there is a control for age. I would presume Tories might well still be behind, but none of us actually know what the size of that difference is.
https://www.ipsos.com/en-uk/conservatives-more-trusted-on-growing-economy-labour-more-trusted-on-reducing-cost-living?s=09
The moment that the Russian Space program committed suicide, the question was where to get replacement launches for the remaining phase 1 satellite. Phase II was already going on Indian launchers.
SpaceX are the only launch provider with capacity. Or the capability to do anything inside 2 years.
And they have another reason, aside from mere money. Various SpaceX hating companies are trying to sell the pitch (especially in the Congressional arena in the US) that their vertical integration gives them an unfair advantage, rather than actually come up with cheap launch themselves.
If SpaceX launches satellites for a competitor (Starlink), that gives them a cast iron, throw-the-case-out-in-first-10-minutes rebuttal to such attacks.
but Labour more trusted on reducing cost of living
Although I guess with him, on the size, it WAS mainly muscle.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q11ium_-Lv8
https://twitter.com/curatorian/status/1505871267689340928?s=20&t=ki2Sx0dc2nC5rvXaY8jpsQ
Turn the former polys back into polys.
It seems criminal that the government encourages so many kids to go to uni and rack up huge debts for degrees that are piss poor.
Reserve all uni places for the academically gifted.
"Andy Wightman warns Nicola Sturgeon he KNOWS who leaked Salmond inquiry files"
https://www.scottishdailyexpress.co.uk/news/politics/andy-wightman-warns-nicola-sturgeon-26514046
Andy Wightman is an interesting character. Green MSP in the last Parliament, and was their nominee on the Salmond Inquiry. A serious land-reform activist and notably independent thinker. Fell out with his party over gender and was subjected to a surprisingly high level of vitriol. Left the Party and stood, unsuccessfully, as an Independent.
Significantly, he had very great reservations about Sturgeon's account at the inquiry. We've read many times of the supposed demise of Nicola and I certainly don't expect this to terminate her but, you never know.
There were some bars that were strictly locals-of-a-certain-stamp only, but that wasn't one of them... The House They Left Behind, maybe.....
Ukraine should take a leaf anyway. What's the point of fighting off the Russians only to then go and join the EU and sublimate themselves to Brussels?
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/can-house-covered-75000-tins-12651180
But my point was that the Holodomor came first, and everything that happened afterwards has to be seen in that context. Including today's war.
Hyper-partisan G they should call you
https://whatukthinks.org/eu/questions/in-highsight-do-you-think-britain-was-right-or-wrong-to-vote-to-leave-the-eu/
https://twitter.com/juliaioffe/status/1505896663231172616
Blood on the main square of Kherson. Looks like Russian occupation forces opened fire at a peaceful protest, after dispersing previous ones by shooting in the air and throwing flash-bangs.
https://twitter.com/yarotrof/status/1505879929749217286?s=20&t=HAX61NO1i8T-izMeUKUknQ
Chief Foreign-Affairs Correspondent of The Wall Street Journal.
Almost as compelling as an @Leon diatribe
Almost as compelling as an @Leon diatribe
Didn’t survive “de-Nazification”:
Boris Romantschenko survived the concentration camps #Buchenwald, #Peenemünde, #Dora and #BergenBelsen. Now he has been killed by a bullet that hit his house in #Charkiv, #Ukraine. He was 96 years old. We are stunned.
https://twitter.com/Buchenwald_Dora/status/1505876638076215299
Odd.