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Something to ponder – politicalbetting.com

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  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 116,709
    edited May 2022

    ClippP said:

    HYUFD said:

    Tiverton and Honiton Conservatives pick Helen Hurford as their candidate for the by election. A local, she was born in Tiverton and has been a headteacher and run a Honiton based business

    https://twitter.com/simonjamesjupp/status/1528436681879191556?s=20&t=bPTuvAnBFkHb8EHZOaR0qg

    Was the academy primary school where she was Head for a couple of years the Honiton based business, young HY?
    She's entitled to her 15mins of fame. But come the 24th June it's back to the day job me thinks.

    I think she has an excellent chance of holding it. The Tories got 60% of the vote in Tiverton and Honiton in 2019, it was a Leave area and even on current polls the Conservatives would hold it comfortably.

    As a local woman who has worked in the area she is the ideal candidate to hold the seat too given the circumstances of the by election from the LDs.

    So while Labour should still gain Wakefield which had a much smaller Tory majority in 2019, I think Tiverton and Honiton will now be a narrow Conservative hold
  • GaryLGaryL Posts: 131
    kle4 said:

    GaryL said:

    GaryL said:

    Aslan said:

    GaryL said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    GaryL said:

    Foxy said:

    Farooq said:

    So it's obvious that Scottish football is far inferior to English. The question is, why?

    It depends on what you want out of your football team. Trophies are clearly important to fans, but not the only reason to support. Teams up and down the Leagues get people paying to watch teams that never win anything, apart from ocassional division trophies, and often not many of those. It is intrinsic to the structure of both Leagues and Cups that most teams have virtually empty trophy cabinets.

    It is possible to devise a system for a League with perpetual turnover at the top. The American Football Leagues do this via a draft system, so the bottom teams get preference for the players coming up from the College system. The equivalent here would be Norwich not being relegated and having both the money and right to buy in Haarland. Interesting maybe, but is it what we want?
    That's what the Super League scummers wanted, but just for the Euroelite.
    Ironically the nfl is much more socialist than premier league Honestly can't understand the mentality of a 60 year old man supporting a team like Carlisle united
    What? I mean, big picture-wise the appropriate advice to any adult who claims to support a football team is Get a life, but how do age, sex and Carlisle come in to it?
    Just an example of an older man pointlessly wasting their time on a lost cause
    Like those sad tossers still backing Putin-style ethnonationalist kleptocracy. Western democracy is the future.
    Why are you obsessed with putin,, does he threaten your manhood with his macho ways,,
    More importantly he kills women and children and bombs hospitals

    Everyone who values freedom and democracy should vow to rid the world of this monster
    We all want that it is a question of how we arrive at this objective and how many innocent Ukrainians we are prepared to sacrifice
    It isn't us sacrificing them. They are at the flashpoint of this confrontation through no fault of theirs, or ours for that matter. Their choice, or not, to fight on and sacrifice is theirs to make.

    I don't know why people still try out the 'people dying is bad, therefore Ukraine should give up/people should stop supporting them' dodge after all this time. Trying to present it as deriving from compassion doesn't disguise that that is the argument being made, as a logical follow on from the attempt to flip responsibility for any deaths onto, say, us. The flipping is the giveaway about what argument is actually being made, even when it is not outright stated.

    The 'compassion' line tries to make the idea of supporting Ukrainians in their resistance to be a complex issue ('but but, it means some people will die'), but in fact it is very simple indeed. Some things are. If they are willing to keep fighting, there are zero difficult issues around the morality of that. Some might want to take a hard nosed realpolitik view about the costs to ourselves, but that is not the position of the 'compassionate' crowd.
    To be fair it's not the ukrainian people making the choice is it It's zelensky in conjunction with the US govt flooding arms into the country ten of thousands dead in mariupol and the city destroyed did the ukrainian people want that
  • dixiedeandixiedean Posts: 27,835

    dixiedean said:

    So close, but what an amazing season anyway. Credit to Man City, deserved Champions, though Liverpool would have deserved it too, any club that gets over 90 points ought to be Champions.

    The Premier League is incredible, isn't it? Well done City.

    But it's FPTP.
    Aslan said:

    The LibDems want STV? Jesus wept.

    "A new dawn has broken, but we are still bloody counting!"

    I think the left is making a mistake with PR. Before the referendum UKIP + Tories were often >52%. That would mean a much further right government.
    As a Lefty, I would have no problem with that.
    If the Tory/UKIP vote was 50% plus then they should be the government.
    I have a problem with majorities bulldozing their measures through against the wishes of 2 in 3 voters.
    And yes. That includes 2005. The most egregious of the lot.
    But, it means Brexit would probably have happened regardless. I don't think you can 'game' any political point of view out of the system by making elections more proportional.

    You can by gerrymandering.
    But Brexit happens because it had the support of 50%+. That's democracy. I may think it's idiocy. But I can take it cos I'm in a minority.
    The problem with FPTP is I have to put up with stuff I don't like when I'm in the majority. As indeed may you.
  • GaryLGaryL Posts: 131
    Point is Ukraine is being turned into Vietnam 2 in europe
  • FarooqFarooq Posts: 10,775
    GaryL said:

    Point is Ukraine is being turned into Vietnam 2 in europe

    It's more like Ukraine 2. Russia's at it again.
  • CarnyxCarnyx Posts: 39,123
    edited May 2022

    Carnyx said:

    Carnyx said:

    Carnyx said:

    malcolmg said:

    Carnyx said:

    Carnyx said:

    Carnyx said:

    By the way, if NZ is any guide, any move to PR will lead to various breakaway attempts by assorted gadflies and nutters, and a certain period of instability.

    Over time though we could expect there to be five main parties represented (and assorted nationalists), to wit: Con, Lab, LD, Green and Reform.

    Lab would alternate between Lab/Green and Lab/LD coalitions.

    Con would alternate between Con/Ref and Con/LD coalitions.

    One confounding factor is the SNP and their ability to hold Westminster to random for repeated Indy refs. This needs to be sorted one way or another before PR can really be “safe”.

    You can make exactly the same argument about the LDs or indeed any other third//fourth party. I'm sure the LDs will seek to reverse Brexit and have another referendum, for instance, and as for Ref .... So that argument is moot - it's part and parcel of such a voting system.
    The difference is, third parties in most polities don’t seek to dissolve the actual state.

    It would be daft for Westminster to put itself in a position which strengthened those who literally wish its end.
    You're confusing anarchists and autonomists.
    No, I’m not.

    I simply note that the SNP’s chief policy is to break up the UK.

    If you are “the UK”, you’d want to avoid that.
    That's to split the state - not dissolve it. Dissolve the union of 1707, yes. But that's a different thing.
    Ignorance is breathtaking.
    I didn't know you and I were total anarchists, not to mention subversives.*

    *NB. This is a sarcastic reply, for the benefit of anyone who doesn't know the difference between an independista and an anarcista.
    I’m afraid you’re talking garbage.

    Scottish independence means the end of the UK. Continue to make the case for independence, if you like, but don’t pretend that’s not the case.
    That's an intensely Britnat attitude, or could be taken as one - that the state is the borders of 1707, sorry 1800, sorry 1922, sorry 1956 ...

    Also, I don't recall (genuinely) if you were here for 2014 and the run up, but the Unionist attitude was emphatically that the UK would continue even if Scotland was independent.
    It was indeed.

    ‘How dare you Nats suggest that the UK would not continue? The departure of you oat munching benefit junkies would be but a flesh wound.’
    Indeed. Gardenwalker is at serious risk of becoming an unperson. I did try to warn him ...
    Wasn't the attitude more that there would be a successor state to the UK (which would get the pound, UN Security Council seat etc...), rather than the UK per se continuing? Just as the Russian Federation was (well outside Ukraine, ironically) recognised as the successor state to the USSR.
    No. Simply that the UK would continue as was, same name and everything, short the Scots obvs. It does have NI to be 'United' with, I presume.
  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 53,766
    GaryL said:

    Point is Ukraine is being turned into Vietnam 2 in europe

    So, you think that the Vietnamese regret everyday that they fought the French and the Americans?
  • GaryLGaryL Posts: 131
    This from the telegraph tonite

    Western resolve set to be tested as key US and EU figures want Ukraine to cede territory to Russia and make peace

    The inevitable outcome may be a compromise preserving Ukrainian sovereignty and ceding territory to Russia, a New York Times editorial said

    ByRoland Oliphant, SENIOR FOREIGN CORRESPONDENT22 May 2022 • 8:03pm

  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 53,766

    GaryL said:

    GaryL said:

    Aslan said:

    GaryL said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    GaryL said:

    Foxy said:

    Farooq said:

    So it's obvious that Scottish football is far inferior to English. The question is, why?

    It depends on what you want out of your football team. Trophies are clearly important to fans, but not the only reason to support. Teams up and down the Leagues get people paying to watch teams that never win anything, apart from ocassional division trophies, and often not many of those. It is intrinsic to the structure of both Leagues and Cups that most teams have virtually empty trophy cabinets.

    It is possible to devise a system for a League with perpetual turnover at the top. The American Football Leagues do this via a draft system, so the bottom teams get preference for the players coming up from the College system. The equivalent here would be Norwich not being relegated and having both the money and right to buy in Haarland. Interesting maybe, but is it what we want?
    That's what the Super League scummers wanted, but just for the Euroelite.
    Ironically the nfl is much more socialist than premier league Honestly can't understand the mentality of a 60 year old man supporting a team like Carlisle united
    What? I mean, big picture-wise the appropriate advice to any adult who claims to support a football team is Get a life, but how do age, sex and Carlisle come in to it?
    Just an example of an older man pointlessly wasting their time on a lost cause
    Like those sad tossers still backing Putin-style ethnonationalist kleptocracy. Western democracy is the future.
    Why are you obsessed with putin,, does he threaten your manhood with his macho ways,,
    More importantly he kills women and children and bombs hospitals

    Everyone who values freedom and democracy should vow to rid the world of this monster
    We all want that it is a question of how we arrive at this objective and how many innocent Ukrainians we are prepared to sacrifice
    Ask the democratically elected Ukrainian government - it’s their sacrifice, by their people.
    It seems quaint to think that it's still their choice. The US has $40bn of aid on order, I don't see Uncle Joe being very happy to ask for a refund.
    So, the Ukrainian people are being forced to resist the invader, because they don't want to embarrass Joe Biden.

    Well, I guess it's a view.
  • Big_G_NorthWalesBig_G_NorthWales Posts: 60,001
    ClippP said:

    HYUFD said:

    Tiverton and Honiton Conservatives pick Helen Hurford as their candidate for the by election. A local, she was born in Tiverton and has been a headteacher and run a Honiton based business

    https://twitter.com/simonjamesjupp/status/1528436681879191556?s=20&t=bPTuvAnBFkHb8EHZOaR0qg

    Was the academy primary school where she was Head for a couple of years the Honiton based business, young HY?
    Good choice to be fair
  • GaryLGaryL Posts: 131
    Point is sensible leaders in the west realise this war is going nowhere and costing thousands of lives
  • FairlieredFairliered Posts: 3,866
    HYUFD said:

    ClippP said:

    HYUFD said:

    Tiverton and Honiton Conservatives pick Helen Hurford as their candidate for the by election. A local, she was born in Tiverton and has been a headteacher and run a Honiton based business

    https://twitter.com/simonjamesjupp/status/1528436681879191556?s=20&t=bPTuvAnBFkHb8EHZOaR0qg

    Was the academy primary school where she was Head for a couple of years the Honiton based business, young HY?
    She's entitled to her 15mins of fame. But come the 24th June it's back to the day job me thinks.

    I think she has an excellent chance of holding it. The Tories got 60% of the vote in Tiverton and Honiton in 2019, it was a Leave area and even on current polls the Conservatives would hold it comfortably.

    As a local woman who has worked in the area she is the ideal candidate to hold the seat too given the circumstances of the by election from the LDs.

    So while Labour should still gain Wakefield which had a much smaller Tory majority in 2019, I think Tiverton and Honiton will now be a narrow Conservative hold
    So, do you think that Bill Hill’s 9/4 for the Conservatives is worth a punt?
  • FarooqFarooq Posts: 10,775
    GaryL said:

    This from the telegraph tonite

    Western resolve set to be tested as key US and EU figures want Ukraine to cede territory to Russia and make peace

    The inevitable outcome may be a compromise preserving Ukrainian sovereignty and ceding territory to Russia, a New York Times editorial said

    ByRoland Oliphant, SENIOR FOREIGN CORRESPONDENT22 May 2022 • 8:03pm

    And that is called paying the Dane-geld;
    But we’ve proved it again and again,
    That if once you have paid him the Dane-geld
    You never get rid of the Dane.
  • Big_G_NorthWalesBig_G_NorthWales Posts: 60,001
    GaryL said:

    kle4 said:

    GaryL said:

    GaryL said:

    Aslan said:

    GaryL said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    GaryL said:

    Foxy said:

    Farooq said:

    So it's obvious that Scottish football is far inferior to English. The question is, why?

    It depends on what you want out of your football team. Trophies are clearly important to fans, but not the only reason to support. Teams up and down the Leagues get people paying to watch teams that never win anything, apart from ocassional division trophies, and often not many of those. It is intrinsic to the structure of both Leagues and Cups that most teams have virtually empty trophy cabinets.

    It is possible to devise a system for a League with perpetual turnover at the top. The American Football Leagues do this via a draft system, so the bottom teams get preference for the players coming up from the College system. The equivalent here would be Norwich not being relegated and having both the money and right to buy in Haarland. Interesting maybe, but is it what we want?
    That's what the Super League scummers wanted, but just for the Euroelite.
    Ironically the nfl is much more socialist than premier league Honestly can't understand the mentality of a 60 year old man supporting a team like Carlisle united
    What? I mean, big picture-wise the appropriate advice to any adult who claims to support a football team is Get a life, but how do age, sex and Carlisle come in to it?
    Just an example of an older man pointlessly wasting their time on a lost cause
    Like those sad tossers still backing Putin-style ethnonationalist kleptocracy. Western democracy is the future.
    Why are you obsessed with putin,, does he threaten your manhood with his macho ways,,
    More importantly he kills women and children and bombs hospitals

    Everyone who values freedom and democracy should vow to rid the world of this monster
    We all want that it is a question of how we arrive at this objective and how many innocent Ukrainians we are prepared to sacrifice
    It isn't us sacrificing them. They are at the flashpoint of this confrontation through no fault of theirs, or ours for that matter. Their choice, or not, to fight on and sacrifice is theirs to make.

    I don't know why people still try out the 'people dying is bad, therefore Ukraine should give up/people should stop supporting them' dodge after all this time. Trying to present it as deriving from compassion doesn't disguise that that is the argument being made, as a logical follow on from the attempt to flip responsibility for any deaths onto, say, us. The flipping is the giveaway about what argument is actually being made, even when it is not outright stated.

    The 'compassion' line tries to make the idea of supporting Ukrainians in their resistance to be a complex issue ('but but, it means some people will die'), but in fact it is very simple indeed. Some things are. If they are willing to keep fighting, there are zero difficult issues around the morality of that. Some might want to take a hard nosed realpolitik view about the costs to ourselves, but that is not the position of the 'compassionate' crowd.
    To be fair it's not the ukrainian people making the choice is it It's zelensky in conjunction with the US govt flooding arms into the country ten of thousands dead in mariupol and the city destroyed did the ukrainian people want that
    You are a Putin apologists and shame on you
  • nico679nico679 Posts: 4,530
    GaryL said:

    This from the telegraph tonite

    Western resolve set to be tested as key US and EU figures want Ukraine to cede territory to Russia and make peace

    The inevitable outcome may be a compromise preserving Ukrainian sovereignty and ceding territory to Russia, a New York Times editorial said

    ByRoland Oliphant, SENIOR FOREIGN CORRESPONDENT22 May 2022 • 8:03pm

    It’s unfortunately the only way the war ends . Russia is not going to give up its land bridge to Crimea and Ukraine can at least save the majority of the country and start re-building .
  • glwglw Posts: 9,535
    GaryL said:

    Point is sensible leaders in the west realise this war is going nowhere and costing thousands of lives

    Bollocks do they. Sensible leaders realise that Ukraine has the resolve to fight Russia indefinitely if they armed to do so. But can Russia keep going? Probably not, they will have to escalate or fold. And I suspect that the number of Russian military leaders confident of their ability to wage a greater war is declining by the day. Hell, even Putin probably realises he's fucked it up.
  • LostPasswordLostPassword Posts: 14,772
    Farooq said:

    Heathener said:

    Heathener said:

    GaryL said:

    GaryL said:

    Aslan said:

    GaryL said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    GaryL said:

    Foxy said:

    Farooq said:

    So it's obvious that Scottish football is far inferior to English. The question is, why?

    It depends on what you want out of your football team. Trophies are clearly important to fans, but not the only reason to support. Teams up and down the Leagues get people paying to watch teams that never win anything, apart from ocassional division trophies, and often not many of those. It is intrinsic to the structure of both Leagues and Cups that most teams have virtually empty trophy cabinets.

    It is possible to devise a system for a League with perpetual turnover at the top. The American Football Leagues do this via a draft system, so the bottom teams get preference for the players coming up from the College system. The equivalent here would be Norwich not being relegated and having both the money and right to buy in Haarland. Interesting maybe, but is it what we want?
    That's what the Super League scummers wanted, but just for the Euroelite.
    Ironically the nfl is much more socialist than premier league Honestly can't understand the mentality of a 60 year old man supporting a team like Carlisle united
    What? I mean, big picture-wise the appropriate advice to any adult who claims to support a football team is Get a life, but how do age, sex and Carlisle come in to it?
    Just an example of an older man pointlessly wasting their time on a lost cause
    Like those sad tossers still backing Putin-style ethnonationalist kleptocracy. Western democracy is the future.
    Why are you obsessed with putin,, does he threaten your manhood with his macho ways,,
    More importantly he kills women and children and bombs hospitals

    Everyone who values freedom and democracy should vow to rid the world of this monster
    We all want that it is a question of how we arrive at this objective and how many innocent Ukrainians we are prepared to sacrifice
    Did you learn that line in the Kremlin?
    If he did then they need to sharpen up their use of English, especially if they want to conquer the world.

    That's the trouble with these oligarchs. They're not very good at what they do. Hitler was a great example of a really crap general. A complete buffoon militarily, like Putin.

    I may have got the invasion completely wrong but I did say it was based on them not having much chance of winning. And so it has come to pass. A rubbish army with poor equipment led by a lunatic who doesn't know what he's doing.
    Hitler made one really big call correctly that most generals would have got wrong - the stand fast in 1941 when the USSR counter attacked at Moscow. Almost certainly avoided a catastrophe for the German army.
    Happily for the rest of the world he then repeated this tactic for the next 4 years with disastrous consequences. For instance in Normandy it allowed the panzer divisions to be chewed up in range of the naval guns, rather than retreating inland to allow for a more strategic counter offensive.
    Yes indeed.

    Stalingrad for example was most certainly not an example of his finest hour. The annihilation of the German Sixth Army probably turned the entire war.

    Prior to that, opening up two fronts was idiocy and there were a series of other spectacular blunders, including Dunkirk of course.
    Worth mentioning that judging the likelihood of a war breaking out by the objective probability of winning is a bad methodology - the side starting a war, since the industrial revolution, has ended up losing, more often than not.
    Not taking your word on this. Naming who "started" a war is itself often contested. Sounds very dubious indeed.
    There are a number of possible explanations for the observation.

    1. The victor writes the story of the war, and is much more likely to do so in a way that is flattering to them - as the innocent victim of unprovoked aggression, rather than as a bloodthirsty aggressor.

    2. Democracies are generally better at waging war, because they are more productive, meritocratic, inventive and cohesive and less corrupt societies, but they are less likely to start wars, because of the costs that they impose.

    3. Everyone prefers to get what they can without a war, and so a country generally only fights a war when the other side in a dispute refuses to accommodate demands made. This generally indicates a willingness to fight, and the defenders generally have the advantage. Despite what might often be said about fighting to the death, generally speaking most people do not fight lost causes, and aggressors tend to misjudge the extent to which resistance to them would be a lost cause.
  • FarooqFarooq Posts: 10,775
    @rcs1000

    Is this PJohnson?
  • rottenboroughrottenborough Posts: 58,038
    GaryL said:

    Point is sensible leaders in the west realise this war is going nowhere and costing thousands of lives

    Which war is that then?

    Certainly not the one taking place in Ukraine.
  • FoxyFoxy Posts: 44,052
    HYUFD said:

    ClippP said:

    HYUFD said:

    Tiverton and Honiton Conservatives pick Helen Hurford as their candidate for the by election. A local, she was born in Tiverton and has been a headteacher and run a Honiton based business

    https://twitter.com/simonjamesjupp/status/1528436681879191556?s=20&t=bPTuvAnBFkHb8EHZOaR0qg

    Was the academy primary school where she was Head for a couple of years the Honiton based business, young HY?
    She's entitled to her 15mins of fame. But come the 24th June it's back to the day job me thinks.

    I think she has an excellent chance of holding it. The Tories got 60% of the vote in Tiverton and Honiton in 2019, it was a Leave area and even on current polls the Conservatives would hold it comfortably.

    As a local woman who has worked in the area she is the ideal candidate to hold the seat too given the circumstances of the by election from the LDs.

    So while Labour should still gain Wakefield which had a much smaller Tory majority in 2019, I think Tiverton and Honiton will now be a narrow Conservative hold
    Yes, I have a bet on the Tories in T+H, as I just think it too high of hill for the LDs. I think Labour will win Wakefield, which is probably the more impirtant seat for political readers of tea leaves and entrails. The odds are pretty unattractive though.
  • GaryLGaryL Posts: 131
    nico679 said:

    GaryL said:

    This from the telegraph tonite

    Western resolve set to be tested as key US and EU figures want Ukraine to cede territory to Russia and make peace

    The inevitable outcome may be a compromise preserving Ukrainian sovereignty and ceding territory to Russia, a New York Times editorial said

    ByRoland Oliphant, SENIOR FOREIGN CORRESPONDENT22 May 2022 • 8:03pm

    It’s unfortunately the only way the war ends . Russia is not going to give up its land bridge to Crimea and Ukraine can at least save the majority of the country and start re-building .
    Exactly compromises have to be made many in the west now realise this and I think sense will start to prevail
    Remember when Russia invaded czechoslovakia in 1968 we did nothing then
  • GaryLGaryL Posts: 131
    I also think you are hearing the sound of compromise as Russia is starting to win in the donbass
  • Luckyguy1983Luckyguy1983 Posts: 25,042
    rcs1000 said:

    GaryL said:

    GaryL said:

    Aslan said:

    GaryL said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    GaryL said:

    Foxy said:

    Farooq said:

    So it's obvious that Scottish football is far inferior to English. The question is, why?

    It depends on what you want out of your football team. Trophies are clearly important to fans, but not the only reason to support. Teams up and down the Leagues get people paying to watch teams that never win anything, apart from ocassional division trophies, and often not many of those. It is intrinsic to the structure of both Leagues and Cups that most teams have virtually empty trophy cabinets.

    It is possible to devise a system for a League with perpetual turnover at the top. The American Football Leagues do this via a draft system, so the bottom teams get preference for the players coming up from the College system. The equivalent here would be Norwich not being relegated and having both the money and right to buy in Haarland. Interesting maybe, but is it what we want?
    That's what the Super League scummers wanted, but just for the Euroelite.
    Ironically the nfl is much more socialist than premier league Honestly can't understand the mentality of a 60 year old man supporting a team like Carlisle united
    What? I mean, big picture-wise the appropriate advice to any adult who claims to support a football team is Get a life, but how do age, sex and Carlisle come in to it?
    Just an example of an older man pointlessly wasting their time on a lost cause
    Like those sad tossers still backing Putin-style ethnonationalist kleptocracy. Western democracy is the future.
    Why are you obsessed with putin,, does he threaten your manhood with his macho ways,,
    More importantly he kills women and children and bombs hospitals

    Everyone who values freedom and democracy should vow to rid the world of this monster
    We all want that it is a question of how we arrive at this objective and how many innocent Ukrainians we are prepared to sacrifice
    Ask the democratically elected Ukrainian government - it’s their sacrifice, by their people.
    It seems quaint to think that it's still their choice. The US has $40bn of aid on order, I don't see Uncle Joe being very happy to ask for a refund.
    So, the Ukrainian people are being forced to resist the invader, because they don't want to embarrass Joe Biden.

    Well, I guess it's a view.
    How much agency do you suppose the people really have? Any civilian or group of civilians objecting to the war would be on a very sticky wicket, surely you see that? The leader of the pro-Russian opposition party was imprisoned as a POW.

    Sadly, Ukraine doesn't get to be an independent country; it gets to be a Russian-sponsored one or a US-sponsored one. It has chosen the latter, for understandable reasons, and it's naive to think Zelensky will do anything out of step with Uncle Sam any more than Yanukovich would have done anything to piss Putin off.
  • GaryLGaryL Posts: 131

    rcs1000 said:

    GaryL said:

    GaryL said:

    Aslan said:

    GaryL said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    GaryL said:

    Foxy said:

    Farooq said:

    So it's obvious that Scottish football is far inferior to English. The question is, why?

    It depends on what you want out of your football team. Trophies are clearly important to fans, but not the only reason to support. Teams up and down the Leagues get people paying to watch teams that never win anything, apart from ocassional division trophies, and often not many of those. It is intrinsic to the structure of both Leagues and Cups that most teams have virtually empty trophy cabinets.

    It is possible to devise a system for a League with perpetual turnover at the top. The American Football Leagues do this via a draft system, so the bottom teams get preference for the players coming up from the College system. The equivalent here would be Norwich not being relegated and having both the money and right to buy in Haarland. Interesting maybe, but is it what we want?
    That's what the Super League scummers wanted, but just for the Euroelite.
    Ironically the nfl is much more socialist than premier league Honestly can't understand the mentality of a 60 year old man supporting a team like Carlisle united
    What? I mean, big picture-wise the appropriate advice to any adult who claims to support a football team is Get a life, but how do age, sex and Carlisle come in to it?
    Just an example of an older man pointlessly wasting their time on a lost cause
    Like those sad tossers still backing Putin-style ethnonationalist kleptocracy. Western democracy is the future.
    Why are you obsessed with putin,, does he threaten your manhood with his macho ways,,
    More importantly he kills women and children and bombs hospitals

    Everyone who values freedom and democracy should vow to rid the world of this monster
    We all want that it is a question of how we arrive at this objective and how many innocent Ukrainians we are prepared to sacrifice
    Ask the democratically elected Ukrainian government - it’s their sacrifice, by their people.
    It seems quaint to think that it's still their choice. The US has $40bn of aid on order, I don't see Uncle Joe being very happy to ask for a refund.
    So, the Ukrainian people are being forced to resist the invader, because they don't want to embarrass Joe Biden.

    Well, I guess it's a view.
    How much agency do you suppose the people really have? Any civilian or group of civilians objecting to the war would be on a very sticky wicket, surely you see that? The leader of the pro-Russian opposition party was imprisoned as a POW.

    Sadly, Ukraine doesn't get to be an independent country; it gets to be a Russian-sponsored one or a US-sponsored one. It has chosen the latter, for understandable reasons, and it's naive to think Zelensky will do anything out of step with Uncle Sam any more than Yanukovich would have done anything to piss Putin off.
    Exactly very good post
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 43,606
    Farooq said:

    Heathener said:

    Heathener said:

    GaryL said:

    GaryL said:

    Aslan said:

    GaryL said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    GaryL said:

    Foxy said:

    Farooq said:

    So it's obvious that Scottish football is far inferior to English. The question is, why?

    It depends on what you want out of your football team. Trophies are clearly important to fans, but not the only reason to support. Teams up and down the Leagues get people paying to watch teams that never win anything, apart from ocassional division trophies, and often not many of those. It is intrinsic to the structure of both Leagues and Cups that most teams have virtually empty trophy cabinets.

    It is possible to devise a system for a League with perpetual turnover at the top. The American Football Leagues do this via a draft system, so the bottom teams get preference for the players coming up from the College system. The equivalent here would be Norwich not being relegated and having both the money and right to buy in Haarland. Interesting maybe, but is it what we want?
    That's what the Super League scummers wanted, but just for the Euroelite.
    Ironically the nfl is much more socialist than premier league Honestly can't understand the mentality of a 60 year old man supporting a team like Carlisle united
    What? I mean, big picture-wise the appropriate advice to any adult who claims to support a football team is Get a life, but how do age, sex and Carlisle come in to it?
    Just an example of an older man pointlessly wasting their time on a lost cause
    Like those sad tossers still backing Putin-style ethnonationalist kleptocracy. Western democracy is the future.
    Why are you obsessed with putin,, does he threaten your manhood with his macho ways,,
    More importantly he kills women and children and bombs hospitals

    Everyone who values freedom and democracy should vow to rid the world of this monster
    We all want that it is a question of how we arrive at this objective and how many innocent Ukrainians we are prepared to sacrifice
    Did you learn that line in the Kremlin?
    If he did then they need to sharpen up their use of English, especially if they want to conquer the world.

    That's the trouble with these oligarchs. They're not very good at what they do. Hitler was a great example of a really crap general. A complete buffoon militarily, like Putin.

    I may have got the invasion completely wrong but I did say it was based on them not having much chance of winning. And so it has come to pass. A rubbish army with poor equipment led by a lunatic who doesn't know what he's doing.
    Hitler made one really big call correctly that most generals would have got wrong - the stand fast in 1941 when the USSR counter attacked at Moscow. Almost certainly avoided a catastrophe for the German army.
    Happily for the rest of the world he then repeated this tactic for the next 4 years with disastrous consequences. For instance in Normandy it allowed the panzer divisions to be chewed up in range of the naval guns, rather than retreating inland to allow for a more strategic counter offensive.
    Yes indeed.

    Stalingrad for example was most certainly not an example of his finest hour. The annihilation of the German Sixth Army probably turned the entire war.

    Prior to that, opening up two fronts was idiocy and there were a series of other spectacular blunders, including Dunkirk of course.
    Worth mentioning that judging the likelihood of a war breaking out by the objective probability of winning is a bad methodology - the side starting a war, since the industrial revolution, has ended up losing, more often than not.
    Not taking your word on this. Naming who "started" a war is itself often contested. Sounds very dubious indeed.
    Paraguay - 1870
    France -1870
    Germany/Austria Hungary - 1914
    Japan - 1937/1941
    Germany - 1939

    Just to stay with.
  • Andy_JSAndy_JS Posts: 26,279
    "Weekend Essay
    Covid was liberalism’s endgame
    Liberal individualism has an innate tendency towards authoritarianism
    BY MATTHEW CRAWFORD"

    https://unherd.com/2022/05/covid-was-liberalisms-endgame/
  • FoxyFoxy Posts: 44,052
    GaryL said:

    kle4 said:

    GaryL said:

    GaryL said:

    Aslan said:

    GaryL said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    GaryL said:

    Foxy said:

    Farooq said:

    So it's obvious that Scottish football is far inferior to English. The question is, why?

    It depends on what you want out of your football team. Trophies are clearly important to fans, but not the only reason to support. Teams up and down the Leagues get people paying to watch teams that never win anything, apart from ocassional division trophies, and often not many of those. It is intrinsic to the structure of both Leagues and Cups that most teams have virtually empty trophy cabinets.

    It is possible to devise a system for a League with perpetual turnover at the top. The American Football Leagues do this via a draft system, so the bottom teams get preference for the players coming up from the College system. The equivalent here would be Norwich not being relegated and having both the money and right to buy in Haarland. Interesting maybe, but is it what we want?
    That's what the Super League scummers wanted, but just for the Euroelite.
    Ironically the nfl is much more socialist than premier league Honestly can't understand the mentality of a 60 year old man supporting a team like Carlisle united
    What? I mean, big picture-wise the appropriate advice to any adult who claims to support a football team is Get a life, but how do age, sex and Carlisle come in to it?
    Just an example of an older man pointlessly wasting their time on a lost cause
    Like those sad tossers still backing Putin-style ethnonationalist kleptocracy. Western democracy is the future.
    Why are you obsessed with putin,, does he threaten your manhood with his macho ways,,
    More importantly he kills women and children and bombs hospitals

    Everyone who values freedom and democracy should vow to rid the world of this monster
    We all want that it is a question of how we arrive at this objective and how many innocent Ukrainians we are prepared to sacrifice
    It isn't us sacrificing them. They are at the flashpoint of this confrontation through no fault of theirs, or ours for that matter. Their choice, or not, to fight on and sacrifice is theirs to make.

    I don't know why people still try out the 'people dying is bad, therefore Ukraine should give up/people should stop supporting them' dodge after all this time. Trying to present it as deriving from compassion doesn't disguise that that is the argument being made, as a logical follow on from the attempt to flip responsibility for any deaths onto, say, us. The flipping is the giveaway about what argument is actually being made, even when it is not outright stated.

    The 'compassion' line tries to make the idea of supporting Ukrainians in their resistance to be a complex issue ('but but, it means some people will die'), but in fact it is very simple indeed. Some things are. If they are willing to keep fighting, there are zero difficult issues around the morality of that. Some might want to take a hard nosed realpolitik view about the costs to ourselves, but that is not the position of the 'compassionate' crowd.
    To be fair it's not the ukrainian people making the choice is it It's zelensky in conjunction with the US govt flooding arms into the country ten of thousands dead in mariupol and the city destroyed did the ukrainian people want that
    To state the obvious, it wasn't Ukraine that flattened Mariopol, nor Poltava, nor Sievero-Donetsk.

    If Russia really cared for these places it wouldn't level them with artillery and exterminate or deport their citizens to Siberia.
  • nico679nico679 Posts: 4,530
    So the DM are now going after Sue Gray . It’s deeply troubling that much of the UKs press wouldn’t look out of place in North Korea with the vomit inducing levels of sycophancy towards Johnson our Dear Leader !

  • glwglw Posts: 9,535
    GaryL said:

    I also think you are hearing the sound of compromise as Russia is starting to win in the donbass

    That is a pro Russia narrative that Russia wants spread, because Russia would like to freeze their dismal gains soon or even right now, before America starts supplying ever more advanced arms to Ukraine in quantities that will allow Ukraine to push Russia back. I've no doubt a lot of Quislings will be making the same point repeatedly over the next few months. But the Ukrainian government is quite clear that ceding territory for peace, or deferred war, is a non-starter.
  • GaryLGaryL Posts: 131
    glw said:

    GaryL said:

    Point is sensible leaders in the west realise this war is going nowhere and costing thousands of lives

    Bollocks do they. Sensible leaders realise that Ukraine has the resolve to fight Russia indefinitely if they armed to do so. But can Russia keep going? Probably not, they will have to escalate or fold. And I suspect that the number of Russian military leaders confident of their ability to wage a greater war is declining by the day. Hell, even Putin probably realises he's fucked it up.
    So why the sounds of compromise from the west tonite you don't do that if you are winning
  • ClippPClippP Posts: 1,667

    ClippP said:

    HYUFD said:

    Tiverton and Honiton Conservatives pick Helen Hurford as their candidate for the by election. A local, she was born in Tiverton and has been a headteacher and run a Honiton based business

    https://twitter.com/simonjamesjupp/status/1528436681879191556?s=20&t=bPTuvAnBFkHb8EHZOaR0qg

    Was the academy primary school where she was Head for a couple of years the Honiton based business, young HY?
    Good choice to be fair
    Before she headed off to work in Dubai? Or have I got that wrong?
  • kyf_100kyf_100 Posts: 3,911
    Farooq said:

    @rcs1000

    Is this PJohnson?

    The rouble has recovered, so perhaps they've found the funds to start paying him again...
  • GaryLGaryL Posts: 131
    Farooq said:

    @rcs1000

    Is this PJohnson?

    Crying to the Mods again be a man and debate me
  • Richard_TyndallRichard_Tyndall Posts: 30,846

    rcs1000 said:

    GaryL said:

    GaryL said:

    Aslan said:

    GaryL said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    GaryL said:

    Foxy said:

    Farooq said:

    So it's obvious that Scottish football is far inferior to English. The question is, why?

    It depends on what you want out of your football team. Trophies are clearly important to fans, but not the only reason to support. Teams up and down the Leagues get people paying to watch teams that never win anything, apart from ocassional division trophies, and often not many of those. It is intrinsic to the structure of both Leagues and Cups that most teams have virtually empty trophy cabinets.

    It is possible to devise a system for a League with perpetual turnover at the top. The American Football Leagues do this via a draft system, so the bottom teams get preference for the players coming up from the College system. The equivalent here would be Norwich not being relegated and having both the money and right to buy in Haarland. Interesting maybe, but is it what we want?
    That's what the Super League scummers wanted, but just for the Euroelite.
    Ironically the nfl is much more socialist than premier league Honestly can't understand the mentality of a 60 year old man supporting a team like Carlisle united
    What? I mean, big picture-wise the appropriate advice to any adult who claims to support a football team is Get a life, but how do age, sex and Carlisle come in to it?
    Just an example of an older man pointlessly wasting their time on a lost cause
    Like those sad tossers still backing Putin-style ethnonationalist kleptocracy. Western democracy is the future.
    Why are you obsessed with putin,, does he threaten your manhood with his macho ways,,
    More importantly he kills women and children and bombs hospitals

    Everyone who values freedom and democracy should vow to rid the world of this monster
    We all want that it is a question of how we arrive at this objective and how many innocent Ukrainians we are prepared to sacrifice
    Ask the democratically elected Ukrainian government - it’s their sacrifice, by their people.
    It seems quaint to think that it's still their choice. The US has $40bn of aid on order, I don't see Uncle Joe being very happy to ask for a refund.
    So, the Ukrainian people are being forced to resist the invader, because they don't want to embarrass Joe Biden.

    Well, I guess it's a view.
    How much agency do you suppose the people really have? Any civilian or group of civilians objecting to the war would be on a very sticky wicket, surely you see that? The leader of the pro-Russian opposition party was imprisoned as a POW.

    Sadly, Ukraine doesn't get to be an independent country; it gets to be a Russian-sponsored one or a US-sponsored one. It has chosen the latter, for understandable reasons, and it's naive to think Zelensky will do anything out of step with Uncle Sam any more than Yanukovich would have done anything to piss Putin off.
    It really is sad how you have become such an apologist for Russian aggression. You seem to have found a fellow traveller in GaryL whose whole raison d'etre on here seems to be to undermine the Ukrainian cause.
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 116,709
    edited May 2022

    HYUFD said:

    ClippP said:

    HYUFD said:

    Tiverton and Honiton Conservatives pick Helen Hurford as their candidate for the by election. A local, she was born in Tiverton and has been a headteacher and run a Honiton based business

    https://twitter.com/simonjamesjupp/status/1528436681879191556?s=20&t=bPTuvAnBFkHb8EHZOaR0qg

    Was the academy primary school where she was Head for a couple of years the Honiton based business, young HY?
    She's entitled to her 15mins of fame. But come the 24th June it's back to the day job me thinks.

    I think she has an excellent chance of holding it. The Tories got 60% of the vote in Tiverton and Honiton in 2019, it was a Leave area and even on current polls the Conservatives would hold it comfortably.

    As a local woman who has worked in the area she is the ideal candidate to hold the seat too given the circumstances of the by election from the LDs.

    So while Labour should still gain Wakefield which had a much smaller Tory majority in 2019, I think Tiverton and Honiton will now be a narrow Conservative hold
    So, do you think that Bill Hill’s 9/4 for the Conservatives is worth a punt?
    Yes, the candidate is far better than the Tory candidate in North Shropshire who was a man from Birmingham with no real local connections and added to the big Tory majority in 2019 there that should be enough.

    Indeed, given the LD candidate is a male army officer and the Tory candidate is now a local woman teacher, if anything the Tory candidate looks more like a LD candidate and the LD candidate more like a classic Tory candidate
  • glwglw Posts: 9,535
    GaryL said:

    glw said:

    GaryL said:

    Point is sensible leaders in the west realise this war is going nowhere and costing thousands of lives

    Bollocks do they. Sensible leaders realise that Ukraine has the resolve to fight Russia indefinitely if they armed to do so. But can Russia keep going? Probably not, they will have to escalate or fold. And I suspect that the number of Russian military leaders confident of their ability to wage a greater war is declining by the day. Hell, even Putin probably realises he's fucked it up.
    So why the sounds of compromise from the west tonite you don't do that if you are winning
    Ukraine is unwilling to cede territory. The Russian military needs to bleed, burn, and the survivors go home. America will provide the means to do that.
  • FarooqFarooq Posts: 10,775
    GaryL said:

    Farooq said:

    @rcs1000

    Is this PJohnson?

    Crying to the Mods again be a man and debate me
    "again"?
    Interesting
  • kjhkjh Posts: 10,457
    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    ClippP said:

    HYUFD said:

    Tiverton and Honiton Conservatives pick Helen Hurford as their candidate for the by election. A local, she was born in Tiverton and has been a headteacher and run a Honiton based business

    https://twitter.com/simonjamesjupp/status/1528436681879191556?s=20&t=bPTuvAnBFkHb8EHZOaR0qg

    Was the academy primary school where she was Head for a couple of years the Honiton based business, young HY?
    She's entitled to her 15mins of fame. But come the 24th June it's back to the day job me thinks.

    I think she has an excellent chance of holding it. The Tories got 60% of the vote in Tiverton and Honiton in 2019, it was a Leave area and even on current polls the Conservatives would hold it comfortably.

    As a local woman who has worked in the area she is the ideal candidate to hold the seat too given the circumstances of the by election from the LDs.

    So while Labour should still gain Wakefield which had a much smaller Tory majority in 2019, I think Tiverton and Honiton will now be a narrow Conservative hold
    So, do you think that Bill Hill’s 9/4 for the Conservatives is worth a punt?
    Yes, the candidate is far better than the Tory candidate in North Shropshire who was a man from Birmingham with no real local connections and added to the big Tory majority in 2019 there that should be enough
    From what little I have read she seems a good selection.
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 43,606
    Foxy said:

    GaryL said:

    kle4 said:

    GaryL said:

    GaryL said:

    Aslan said:

    GaryL said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    GaryL said:

    Foxy said:

    Farooq said:

    So it's obvious that Scottish football is far inferior to English. The question is, why?

    It depends on what you want out of your football team. Trophies are clearly important to fans, but not the only reason to support. Teams up and down the Leagues get people paying to watch teams that never win anything, apart from ocassional division trophies, and often not many of those. It is intrinsic to the structure of both Leagues and Cups that most teams have virtually empty trophy cabinets.

    It is possible to devise a system for a League with perpetual turnover at the top. The American Football Leagues do this via a draft system, so the bottom teams get preference for the players coming up from the College system. The equivalent here would be Norwich not being relegated and having both the money and right to buy in Haarland. Interesting maybe, but is it what we want?
    That's what the Super League scummers wanted, but just for the Euroelite.
    Ironically the nfl is much more socialist than premier league Honestly can't understand the mentality of a 60 year old man supporting a team like Carlisle united
    What? I mean, big picture-wise the appropriate advice to any adult who claims to support a football team is Get a life, but how do age, sex and Carlisle come in to it?
    Just an example of an older man pointlessly wasting their time on a lost cause
    Like those sad tossers still backing Putin-style ethnonationalist kleptocracy. Western democracy is the future.
    Why are you obsessed with putin,, does he threaten your manhood with his macho ways,,
    More importantly he kills women and children and bombs hospitals

    Everyone who values freedom and democracy should vow to rid the world of this monster
    We all want that it is a question of how we arrive at this objective and how many innocent Ukrainians we are prepared to sacrifice
    It isn't us sacrificing them. They are at the flashpoint of this confrontation through no fault of theirs, or ours for that matter. Their choice, or not, to fight on and sacrifice is theirs to make.

    I don't know why people still try out the 'people dying is bad, therefore Ukraine should give up/people should stop supporting them' dodge after all this time. Trying to present it as deriving from compassion doesn't disguise that that is the argument being made, as a logical follow on from the attempt to flip responsibility for any deaths onto, say, us. The flipping is the giveaway about what argument is actually being made, even when it is not outright stated.

    The 'compassion' line tries to make the idea of supporting Ukrainians in their resistance to be a complex issue ('but but, it means some people will die'), but in fact it is very simple indeed. Some things are. If they are willing to keep fighting, there are zero difficult issues around the morality of that. Some might want to take a hard nosed realpolitik view about the costs to ourselves, but that is not the position of the 'compassionate' crowd.
    To be fair it's not the ukrainian people making the choice is it It's zelensky in conjunction with the US govt flooding arms into the country ten of thousands dead in mariupol and the city destroyed did the ukrainian people want that
    To state the obvious, it wasn't Ukraine that flattened Mariopol, nor Poltava, nor Sievero-Donetsk.

    If Russia really cared for these places it wouldn't level them with artillery and exterminate or deport their citizens to Siberia.
    Russian Kulture - the Kremlin version of it, anyway.
  • GaryLGaryL Posts: 131
    glw said:

    GaryL said:

    glw said:

    GaryL said:

    Point is sensible leaders in the west realise this war is going nowhere and costing thousands of lives

    Bollocks do they. Sensible leaders realise that Ukraine has the resolve to fight Russia indefinitely if they armed to do so. But can Russia keep going? Probably not, they will have to escalate or fold. And I suspect that the number of Russian military leaders confident of their ability to wage a greater war is declining by the day. Hell, even Putin probably realises he's fucked it up.
    So why the sounds of compromise from the west tonite you don't do that if you are winning
    Ukraine is unwilling to cede territory. The Russian military needs to bleed, burn, and the survivors go home. America will provide the means to do that.
    How long would that take,, months , years, never meanwhile the developing world starves and the western economies crash
  • tlg86tlg86 Posts: 25,164
    I see someone spread some fake news around Anfield this afternoon.

    :lol:
  • Richard_TyndallRichard_Tyndall Posts: 30,846
    dixiedean said:

    dixiedean said:

    So close, but what an amazing season anyway. Credit to Man City, deserved Champions, though Liverpool would have deserved it too, any club that gets over 90 points ought to be Champions.

    The Premier League is incredible, isn't it? Well done City.

    But it's FPTP.
    Aslan said:

    The LibDems want STV? Jesus wept.

    "A new dawn has broken, but we are still bloody counting!"

    I think the left is making a mistake with PR. Before the referendum UKIP + Tories were often >52%. That would mean a much further right government.
    As a Lefty, I would have no problem with that.
    If the Tory/UKIP vote was 50% plus then they should be the government.
    I have a problem with majorities bulldozing their measures through against the wishes of 2 in 3 voters.
    And yes. That includes 2005. The most egregious of the lot.
    But, it means Brexit would probably have happened regardless. I don't think you can 'game' any political point of view out of the system by making elections more proportional.

    You can by gerrymandering.
    But Brexit happens because it had the support of 50%+. That's democracy. I may think it's idiocy. But I can take it cos I'm in a minority.
    The problem with FPTP is I have to put up with stuff I don't like when I'm in the majority. As indeed may you.
    Isn't that the problem with any voting system. It is dishonest to suggest that most people in a constituency get the MP they voted for under PR any more than under FPTP. What they get is the MP they least object to and personally I don't think that is much better. Coalition Government is a coalition of politicians and parties, not a coalition of voters and again most voters will still not get the Government they want under PR any more than under FPTP.
  • LostPasswordLostPassword Posts: 14,772

    dixiedean said:

    So close, but what an amazing season anyway. Credit to Man City, deserved Champions, though Liverpool would have deserved it too, any club that gets over 90 points ought to be Champions.

    The Premier League is incredible, isn't it? Well done City.

    But it's FPTP.
    Aslan said:

    The LibDems want STV? Jesus wept.

    "A new dawn has broken, but we are still bloody counting!"

    I think the left is making a mistake with PR. Before the referendum UKIP + Tories were often >52%. That would mean a much further right government.
    As a Lefty, I would have no problem with that.
    If the Tory/UKIP vote was 50% plus then they should be the government.
    I have a problem with majorities bulldozing their measures through against the wishes of 2 in 3 voters.
    And yes. That includes 2005. The most egregious of the lot.
    Yes. If we'd had PR, and Blair had been turfed out of office after GE2005, I think that would have been pretty good for British politics following Iraq.

    Instead FPTP kept Blair in place.
    I think STV/PR can either disrupt a cosy consensus or the tyranny of a majority, as it allows new views/opinions to be reflected much earlier; however, it's perfectly possible for the political establishment to try and "lock" fringe parties out of power for a long time, if ultimately to their chagrin.

    The Swedish Democrats are one such example, as are Sinn Fein in Eire.
    Most of the time the refusal of mainstream parties to deal with a party in this sort of situation, like Sinn Fein say, is because it would be unpopular with their voters for them to do so.

    Suppose there's a SF/FF coalition after the next Irish general election. The result is most likely to be the end of FF.

    I think the main point is that it's easier for voters to get what they want with STV/PR, because voters can vote honestly for what they want, and that has a direct influence on the public debate. With FPTP people's true political opinions are somewhat obscured by tactical voting considerations - so we really don't know what the true level of support for the Liberal Democrats is, and the Remain-supporting establishment was surprised by the strength of support for Leave.

    This will only lead to an endless nirvana for progressive politics when progressive politics gets better at winning the public debate. But I do think the public debate should be better with STV/PR, because there's a chance of it escaping from a series of false dichotomies.
  • Andy_JSAndy_JS Posts: 26,279
    edited May 2022
    Andy_JS said:

    "Weekend Essay
    Covid was liberalism’s endgame
    Liberal individualism has an innate tendency towards authoritarianism
    BY MATTHEW CRAWFORD"

    https://unherd.com/2022/05/covid-was-liberalisms-endgame/

    "Our regime is founded on two rival pictures of the human subject. The Lockean one regards us as rational, self-governing creatures. It locates reason in a common human endowment — common sense, more or less — and underwrites a basically democratic or majoritarian form of politics. There are no secrets to governing. The second, rival picture insists we are irrationally proud, and in need of being governed. This Hobbesian picture is more hortatory than the first; it needs us to think of ourselves as vulnerable, so the state can play the role of saving us. It underwrites a technocratic, progressive form of politics.

    The Lockean assumption has been quietly put to bed over the last 30 years, and we have fully embraced the Hobbesian alternative.

    The Nineties saw the rise of new currents in the social sciences that emphasise the cognitive incompetence of human beings, deposing the “rational actor” model of human behaviour. This gave us nudge theory , a way to alter people’s behaviour without having to persuade them of anything. It would be hard to overstate the degree to which this approach has been institutionalised, on both sides of the Atlantic. The innovation achieved here is in the way government conceives its subjects: not as citizens whose considered consent must be secured, but as particles to be steered through a science of behaviour management that relies on our pre-reflective cognitive biases."
  • GaryLGaryL Posts: 131
    More from the telegraph tonight

    It is the greatest triumph of an underdog since David slew Goliath: Ukraine's defeat of Russia at Kyiv and Kharkiv have revealed Russia as a paper tiger, the collapse of Mr Putin's army is inevitable and Ukraine can win the war if only the Western alliance holds its nerve.

    Or is that nothing but a fantasy, out of touch with the cold realities of the balance of power, Russia's nuclear status and its battlefield successes on the southern front?

    Isn't the inevitable outcome of the war a grotty compromise that preserves Ukrainian sovereignty, but cedes Russia some territory? And if so, shouldn't the West push Kyiv to accept that reality before more lives are lost?

  • FoxyFoxy Posts: 44,052
    GaryL said:

    glw said:

    GaryL said:

    glw said:

    GaryL said:

    Point is sensible leaders in the west realise this war is going nowhere and costing thousands of lives

    Bollocks do they. Sensible leaders realise that Ukraine has the resolve to fight Russia indefinitely if they armed to do so. But can Russia keep going? Probably not, they will have to escalate or fold. And I suspect that the number of Russian military leaders confident of their ability to wage a greater war is declining by the day. Hell, even Putin probably realises he's fucked it up.
    So why the sounds of compromise from the west tonite you don't do that if you are winning
    Ukraine is unwilling to cede territory. The Russian military needs to bleed, burn, and the survivors go home. America will provide the means to do that.
    How long would that take,, months , years, never meanwhile the developing world starves and the western economies crash
    At current rates of loss, the Russian army will no longer be capable of offensive operations soon. Whether it becomes a stalemate or a rout at that point is unclear.

    If a stalemate though, there will be no end to sanctions.
  • GaryLGaryL Posts: 131
    Time for realpolitik guys not Marvel comic fantasies
  • glwglw Posts: 9,535
    edited May 2022
    GaryL said:

    glw said:

    GaryL said:

    glw said:

    GaryL said:

    Point is sensible leaders in the west realise this war is going nowhere and costing thousands of lives

    Bollocks do they. Sensible leaders realise that Ukraine has the resolve to fight Russia indefinitely if they armed to do so. But can Russia keep going? Probably not, they will have to escalate or fold. And I suspect that the number of Russian military leaders confident of their ability to wage a greater war is declining by the day. Hell, even Putin probably realises he's fucked it up.
    So why the sounds of compromise from the west tonite you don't do that if you are winning
    Ukraine is unwilling to cede territory. The Russian military needs to bleed, burn, and the survivors go home. America will provide the means to do that.
    How long would that take,, months , years, never meanwhile the developing world starves and the western economies crash
    I'm confident the West can afford to arm Ukraine to fight Russia indefinitely. Russia's problems are only beginning.
  • Luckyguy1983Luckyguy1983 Posts: 25,042

    rcs1000 said:

    GaryL said:

    GaryL said:

    Aslan said:

    GaryL said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    GaryL said:

    Foxy said:

    Farooq said:

    So it's obvious that Scottish football is far inferior to English. The question is, why?

    It depends on what you want out of your football team. Trophies are clearly important to fans, but not the only reason to support. Teams up and down the Leagues get people paying to watch teams that never win anything, apart from ocassional division trophies, and often not many of those. It is intrinsic to the structure of both Leagues and Cups that most teams have virtually empty trophy cabinets.

    It is possible to devise a system for a League with perpetual turnover at the top. The American Football Leagues do this via a draft system, so the bottom teams get preference for the players coming up from the College system. The equivalent here would be Norwich not being relegated and having both the money and right to buy in Haarland. Interesting maybe, but is it what we want?
    That's what the Super League scummers wanted, but just for the Euroelite.
    Ironically the nfl is much more socialist than premier league Honestly can't understand the mentality of a 60 year old man supporting a team like Carlisle united
    What? I mean, big picture-wise the appropriate advice to any adult who claims to support a football team is Get a life, but how do age, sex and Carlisle come in to it?
    Just an example of an older man pointlessly wasting their time on a lost cause
    Like those sad tossers still backing Putin-style ethnonationalist kleptocracy. Western democracy is the future.
    Why are you obsessed with putin,, does he threaten your manhood with his macho ways,,
    More importantly he kills women and children and bombs hospitals

    Everyone who values freedom and democracy should vow to rid the world of this monster
    We all want that it is a question of how we arrive at this objective and how many innocent Ukrainians we are prepared to sacrifice
    Ask the democratically elected Ukrainian government - it’s their sacrifice, by their people.
    It seems quaint to think that it's still their choice. The US has $40bn of aid on order, I don't see Uncle Joe being very happy to ask for a refund.
    So, the Ukrainian people are being forced to resist the invader, because they don't want to embarrass Joe Biden.

    Well, I guess it's a view.
    How much agency do you suppose the people really have? Any civilian or group of civilians objecting to the war would be on a very sticky wicket, surely you see that? The leader of the pro-Russian opposition party was imprisoned as a POW.

    Sadly, Ukraine doesn't get to be an independent country; it gets to be a Russian-sponsored one or a US-sponsored one. It has chosen the latter, for understandable reasons, and it's naive to think Zelensky will do anything out of step with Uncle Sam any more than Yanukovich would have done anything to piss Putin off.
    It really is sad how you have become such an apologist for Russian aggression. You seem to have found a fellow traveller in GaryL whose whole raison d'etre on here seems to be to undermine the Ukrainian cause.
    I have not become anything, I've always been very skeptical of US foreign policy, and that's lead me to be more supportive of Russia's actions than I would otherwise be. At times, that's lead me to have egg on my face, believing Russian propaganda. I'd like to think I've learned my lesson there. However, propaganda goes two ways, and at the moment, we're fed quite a lot of it, and the lack of any alternative narrative gives a very unbalanced news diet. Personally, whether paid or unpaid, I don't see why we'd mind GaryL (or my good self) expressing that viewpoint on occasion. It's like everyone's worldview is so brittle that exposure to something in opposition could shatter it.
  • rottenboroughrottenborough Posts: 58,038
    GaryL said:

    I also think you are hearing the sound of compromise as Russia is starting to win in the donbass

    Is there much left in the vodka bottle,,,?
  • FarooqFarooq Posts: 10,775
    Andy_JS said:

    "Weekend Essay
    Covid was liberalism’s endgame
    Liberal individualism has an innate tendency towards authoritarianism
    BY MATTHEW CRAWFORD"

    https://unherd.com/2022/05/covid-was-liberalisms-endgame/

    I got as far as where it started to sneer at evidence-based medicine.
    Tell me, does the article go on to explain why illiberal policies are somehow the fault of liberalism, as opposed to politicians acting in illiberal ways, or does it continue to gaslight all the way through?
  • Richard_TyndallRichard_Tyndall Posts: 30,846
    Andy_JS said:

    Andy_JS said:

    "Weekend Essay
    Covid was liberalism’s endgame
    Liberal individualism has an innate tendency towards authoritarianism
    BY MATTHEW CRAWFORD"

    https://unherd.com/2022/05/covid-was-liberalisms-endgame/

    "Our regime is founded on two rival pictures of the human subject. The Lockean one regards us as rational, self-governing creatures. It locates reason in a common human endowment — common sense, more or less — and underwrites a basically democratic or majoritarian form of politics. There are no secrets to governing. The second, rival picture insists we are irrationally proud, and in need of being governed. This Hobbesian picture is more hortatory than the first; it needs us to think of ourselves as vulnerable, so the state can play the role of saving us. It underwrites a technocratic, progressive form of politics.

    The Lockean assumption has been quietly put to bed over the last 30 years, and we have fully embraced the Hobbesian alternative.

    The Nineties saw the rise of new currents in the social sciences that emphasise the cognitive incompetence of human beings, deposing the “rational actor” model of human behaviour. This gave us nudge theory , a way to alter people’s behaviour without having to persuade them of anything. It would be hard to overstate the degree to which this approach has been institutionalised, on both sides of the Atlantic. The innovation achieved here is in the way government conceives its subjects: not as citizens whose considered consent must be secured, but as particles to be steered through a science of behaviour management that relies on our pre-reflective cognitive biases."
    Governments have always tried to embrace the Hobbesian narrative. It doesn't make it any more right now than it did 30 years ago. In the end the Lockean model is the more accurate reflection of the human condition.
  • GaryLGaryL Posts: 131
    Foxy said:

    GaryL said:

    glw said:

    GaryL said:

    glw said:

    GaryL said:

    Point is sensible leaders in the west realise this war is going nowhere and costing thousands of lives

    Bollocks do they. Sensible leaders realise that Ukraine has the resolve to fight Russia indefinitely if they armed to do so. But can Russia keep going? Probably not, they will have to escalate or fold. And I suspect that the number of Russian military leaders confident of their ability to wage a greater war is declining by the day. Hell, even Putin probably realises he's fucked it up.
    So why the sounds of compromise from the west tonite you don't do that if you are winning
    Ukraine is unwilling to cede territory. The Russian military needs to bleed, burn, and the survivors go home. America will provide the means to do that.
    How long would that take,, months , years, never meanwhile the developing world starves and the western economies crash
    At current rates of loss, the Russian army will no longer be capable of offensive operations soon. Whether it becomes a stalemate or a rout at that point is unclear.

    If a stalemate though, there will be no end to sanctions.
    I always find doctors some of the most gullible in believing everything they read in the msm, I get my information from many sources
  • FoxyFoxy Posts: 44,052
    Farooq said:

    Andy_JS said:

    "Weekend Essay
    Covid was liberalism’s endgame
    Liberal individualism has an innate tendency towards authoritarianism
    BY MATTHEW CRAWFORD"

    https://unherd.com/2022/05/covid-was-liberalisms-endgame/

    I got as far as where it started to sneer at evidence-based medicine.
    Tell me, does the article go on to explain why illiberal policies are somehow the fault of liberalism, as opposed to politicians acting in illiberal ways, or does it continue to gaslight all the way through?
    Sounds like a lot of passive-aggressive gobbledegook to me.
  • LostPasswordLostPassword Posts: 14,772

    Farooq said:

    Heathener said:

    Heathener said:

    GaryL said:

    GaryL said:

    Aslan said:

    GaryL said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    GaryL said:

    Foxy said:

    Farooq said:

    So it's obvious that Scottish football is far inferior to English. The question is, why?

    It depends on what you want out of your football team. Trophies are clearly important to fans, but not the only reason to support. Teams up and down the Leagues get people paying to watch teams that never win anything, apart from ocassional division trophies, and often not many of those. It is intrinsic to the structure of both Leagues and Cups that most teams have virtually empty trophy cabinets.

    It is possible to devise a system for a League with perpetual turnover at the top. The American Football Leagues do this via a draft system, so the bottom teams get preference for the players coming up from the College system. The equivalent here would be Norwich not being relegated and having both the money and right to buy in Haarland. Interesting maybe, but is it what we want?
    That's what the Super League scummers wanted, but just for the Euroelite.
    Ironically the nfl is much more socialist than premier league Honestly can't understand the mentality of a 60 year old man supporting a team like Carlisle united
    What? I mean, big picture-wise the appropriate advice to any adult who claims to support a football team is Get a life, but how do age, sex and Carlisle come in to it?
    Just an example of an older man pointlessly wasting their time on a lost cause
    Like those sad tossers still backing Putin-style ethnonationalist kleptocracy. Western democracy is the future.
    Why are you obsessed with putin,, does he threaten your manhood with his macho ways,,
    More importantly he kills women and children and bombs hospitals

    Everyone who values freedom and democracy should vow to rid the world of this monster
    We all want that it is a question of how we arrive at this objective and how many innocent Ukrainians we are prepared to sacrifice
    Did you learn that line in the Kremlin?
    If he did then they need to sharpen up their use of English, especially if they want to conquer the world.

    That's the trouble with these oligarchs. They're not very good at what they do. Hitler was a great example of a really crap general. A complete buffoon militarily, like Putin.

    I may have got the invasion completely wrong but I did say it was based on them not having much chance of winning. And so it has come to pass. A rubbish army with poor equipment led by a lunatic who doesn't know what he's doing.
    Hitler made one really big call correctly that most generals would have got wrong - the stand fast in 1941 when the USSR counter attacked at Moscow. Almost certainly avoided a catastrophe for the German army.
    Happily for the rest of the world he then repeated this tactic for the next 4 years with disastrous consequences. For instance in Normandy it allowed the panzer divisions to be chewed up in range of the naval guns, rather than retreating inland to allow for a more strategic counter offensive.
    Yes indeed.

    Stalingrad for example was most certainly not an example of his finest hour. The annihilation of the German Sixth Army probably turned the entire war.

    Prior to that, opening up two fronts was idiocy and there were a series of other spectacular blunders, including Dunkirk of course.
    Worth mentioning that judging the likelihood of a war breaking out by the objective probability of winning is a bad methodology - the side starting a war, since the industrial revolution, has ended up losing, more often than not.
    Not taking your word on this. Naming who "started" a war is itself often contested. Sounds very dubious indeed.
    Paraguay - 1870
    France -1870
    Germany/Austria Hungary - 1914
    Japan - 1937/1941
    Germany - 1939

    Just to stay with.
    Let's take Germany as an example. Suppose they had won the war and defeated Britain (no US in the war). How would they have written the history of the war?

    The history of the war would have had them coming to the defence of ethnic Germans in Poland who were under unprovoked aggression, and then defeating France and Britain who had attacked an innocent Germany. A different victor to the war, and yet the aggressor would still have lost. I mean, Britain did declare war on Germany, rather than vice versa.
  • GaryLGaryL Posts: 131

    rcs1000 said:

    GaryL said:

    GaryL said:

    Aslan said:

    GaryL said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    GaryL said:

    Foxy said:

    Farooq said:

    So it's obvious that Scottish football is far inferior to English. The question is, why?

    It depends on what you want out of your football team. Trophies are clearly important to fans, but not the only reason to support. Teams up and down the Leagues get people paying to watch teams that never win anything, apart from ocassional division trophies, and often not many of those. It is intrinsic to the structure of both Leagues and Cups that most teams have virtually empty trophy cabinets.

    It is possible to devise a system for a League with perpetual turnover at the top. The American Football Leagues do this via a draft system, so the bottom teams get preference for the players coming up from the College system. The equivalent here would be Norwich not being relegated and having both the money and right to buy in Haarland. Interesting maybe, but is it what we want?
    That's what the Super League scummers wanted, but just for the Euroelite.
    Ironically the nfl is much more socialist than premier league Honestly can't understand the mentality of a 60 year old man supporting a team like Carlisle united
    What? I mean, big picture-wise the appropriate advice to any adult who claims to support a football team is Get a life, but how do age, sex and Carlisle come in to it?
    Just an example of an older man pointlessly wasting their time on a lost cause
    Like those sad tossers still backing Putin-style ethnonationalist kleptocracy. Western democracy is the future.
    Why are you obsessed with putin,, does he threaten your manhood with his macho ways,,
    More importantly he kills women and children and bombs hospitals

    Everyone who values freedom and democracy should vow to rid the world of this monster
    We all want that it is a question of how we arrive at this objective and how many innocent Ukrainians we are prepared to sacrifice
    Ask the democratically elected Ukrainian government - it’s their sacrifice, by their people.
    It seems quaint to think that it's still their choice. The US has $40bn of aid on order, I don't see Uncle Joe being very happy to ask for a refund.
    So, the Ukrainian people are being forced to resist the invader, because they don't want to embarrass Joe Biden.

    Well, I guess it's a view.
    How much agency do you suppose the people really have? Any civilian or group of civilians objecting to the war would be on a very sticky wicket, surely you see that? The leader of the pro-Russian opposition party was imprisoned as a POW.

    Sadly, Ukraine doesn't get to be an independent country; it gets to be a Russian-sponsored one or a US-sponsored one. It has chosen the latter, for understandable reasons, and it's naive to think Zelensky will do anything out of step with Uncle Sam any more than Yanukovich would have done anything to piss Putin off.
    It really is sad how you have become such an apologist for Russian aggression. You seem to have found a fellow traveller in GaryL whose whole raison d'etre on here seems to be to undermine the Ukrainian cause.
    I have not become anything, I've always been very skeptical of US foreign policy, and that's lead me to be more supportive of Russia's actions than I would otherwise be. At times, that's lead me to have egg on my face, believing Russian propaganda. I'd like to think I've learned my lesson there. However, propaganda goes two ways, and at the moment, we're fed quite a lot of it, and the lack of any alternative narrative gives a very unbalanced news diet. Personally, whether paid or unpaid, I don't see why we'd mind GaryL (or my good self) expressing that viewpoint on occasion. It's like everyone's worldview is so brittle that exposure to something in opposition could shatter it.
    Exactly one sided debate is no good for anyone this is a forum full of well educated well off people who should enjoy robust debate
  • FoxyFoxy Posts: 44,052
    GaryL said:

    Foxy said:

    GaryL said:

    glw said:

    GaryL said:

    glw said:

    GaryL said:

    Point is sensible leaders in the west realise this war is going nowhere and costing thousands of lives

    Bollocks do they. Sensible leaders realise that Ukraine has the resolve to fight Russia indefinitely if they armed to do so. But can Russia keep going? Probably not, they will have to escalate or fold. And I suspect that the number of Russian military leaders confident of their ability to wage a greater war is declining by the day. Hell, even Putin probably realises he's fucked it up.
    So why the sounds of compromise from the west tonite you don't do that if you are winning
    Ukraine is unwilling to cede territory. The Russian military needs to bleed, burn, and the survivors go home. America will provide the means to do that.
    How long would that take,, months , years, never meanwhile the developing world starves and the western economies crash
    At current rates of loss, the Russian army will no longer be capable of offensive operations soon. Whether it becomes a stalemate or a rout at that point is unclear.

    If a stalemate though, there will be no end to sanctions.
    I always find doctors some of the most gullible in believing everything they read in the msm, I get my information from many sources
    Nah, Russia is toast. Its the Russo-Japanese war revisited, with revolution to come. Oligarchs and their lapdogs should flee while they can.
  • Big_G_NorthWalesBig_G_NorthWales Posts: 60,001
    GaryL said:

    Foxy said:

    GaryL said:

    glw said:

    GaryL said:

    glw said:

    GaryL said:

    Point is sensible leaders in the west realise this war is going nowhere and costing thousands of lives

    Bollocks do they. Sensible leaders realise that Ukraine has the resolve to fight Russia indefinitely if they armed to do so. But can Russia keep going? Probably not, they will have to escalate or fold. And I suspect that the number of Russian military leaders confident of their ability to wage a greater war is declining by the day. Hell, even Putin probably realises he's fucked it up.
    So why the sounds of compromise from the west tonite you don't do that if you are winning
    Ukraine is unwilling to cede territory. The Russian military needs to bleed, burn, and the survivors go home. America will provide the means to do that.
    How long would that take,, months , years, never meanwhile the developing world starves and the western economies crash
    At current rates of loss, the Russian army will no longer be capable of offensive operations soon. Whether it becomes a stalemate or a rout at that point is unclear.

    If a stalemate though, there will be no end to sanctions.
    I always find doctors some of the most gullible in believing everything they read in the msm, I get my information from many sources
    Kremlin and a bottle of vodka
  • Richard_TyndallRichard_Tyndall Posts: 30,846

    rcs1000 said:

    GaryL said:

    GaryL said:

    Aslan said:

    GaryL said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    GaryL said:

    Foxy said:

    Farooq said:

    So it's obvious that Scottish football is far inferior to English. The question is, why?

    It depends on what you want out of your football team. Trophies are clearly important to fans, but not the only reason to support. Teams up and down the Leagues get people paying to watch teams that never win anything, apart from ocassional division trophies, and often not many of those. It is intrinsic to the structure of both Leagues and Cups that most teams have virtually empty trophy cabinets.

    It is possible to devise a system for a League with perpetual turnover at the top. The American Football Leagues do this via a draft system, so the bottom teams get preference for the players coming up from the College system. The equivalent here would be Norwich not being relegated and having both the money and right to buy in Haarland. Interesting maybe, but is it what we want?
    That's what the Super League scummers wanted, but just for the Euroelite.
    Ironically the nfl is much more socialist than premier league Honestly can't understand the mentality of a 60 year old man supporting a team like Carlisle united
    What? I mean, big picture-wise the appropriate advice to any adult who claims to support a football team is Get a life, but how do age, sex and Carlisle come in to it?
    Just an example of an older man pointlessly wasting their time on a lost cause
    Like those sad tossers still backing Putin-style ethnonationalist kleptocracy. Western democracy is the future.
    Why are you obsessed with putin,, does he threaten your manhood with his macho ways,,
    More importantly he kills women and children and bombs hospitals

    Everyone who values freedom and democracy should vow to rid the world of this monster
    We all want that it is a question of how we arrive at this objective and how many innocent Ukrainians we are prepared to sacrifice
    Ask the democratically elected Ukrainian government - it’s their sacrifice, by their people.
    It seems quaint to think that it's still their choice. The US has $40bn of aid on order, I don't see Uncle Joe being very happy to ask for a refund.
    So, the Ukrainian people are being forced to resist the invader, because they don't want to embarrass Joe Biden.

    Well, I guess it's a view.
    How much agency do you suppose the people really have? Any civilian or group of civilians objecting to the war would be on a very sticky wicket, surely you see that? The leader of the pro-Russian opposition party was imprisoned as a POW.

    Sadly, Ukraine doesn't get to be an independent country; it gets to be a Russian-sponsored one or a US-sponsored one. It has chosen the latter, for understandable reasons, and it's naive to think Zelensky will do anything out of step with Uncle Sam any more than Yanukovich would have done anything to piss Putin off.
    It really is sad how you have become such an apologist for Russian aggression. You seem to have found a fellow traveller in GaryL whose whole raison d'etre on here seems to be to undermine the Ukrainian cause.
    I have not become anything, I've always been very skeptical of US foreign policy, and that's lead me to be more supportive of Russia's actions than I would otherwise be. At times, that's lead me to have egg on my face, believing Russian propaganda. I'd like to think I've learned my lesson there. However, propaganda goes two ways, and at the moment, we're fed quite a lot of it, and the lack of any alternative narrative gives a very unbalanced news diet. Personally, whether paid or unpaid, I don't see why we'd mind GaryL (or my good self) expressing that viewpoint on occasion. It's like everyone's worldview is so brittle that exposure to something in opposition could shatter it.
    We object because this site is supposed to be about rational, evidence based discussion, not lunatic propaganda pushed by an apologist for genocide.

    If you truly can't see the difference between right and wrong on this particular issue then you are completely lost. I genuinely believe you are following the same line as those who excused or supported the Anschluss in 1938.
  • BournvilleBournville Posts: 303
    GaryL said:

    glw said:

    GaryL said:

    glw said:

    GaryL said:

    Point is sensible leaders in the west realise this war is going nowhere and costing thousands of lives

    Bollocks do they. Sensible leaders realise that Ukraine has the resolve to fight Russia indefinitely if they armed to do so. But can Russia keep going? Probably not, they will have to escalate or fold. And I suspect that the number of Russian military leaders confident of their ability to wage a greater war is declining by the day. Hell, even Putin probably realises he's fucked it up.
    So why the sounds of compromise from the west tonite you don't do that if you are winning
    Ukraine is unwilling to cede territory. The Russian military needs to bleed, burn, and the survivors go home. America will provide the means to do that.
    How long would that take,, months , years, never meanwhile the developing world starves and the western economies crash
    Ceasefire tomorrow wouldn't stop the depression we're barrelling into (although it would probably save hundreds of thousands from starvation). Right now, there's too much money chasing not enough goods (food, fuel, computer components), exacerbating the inflation caused by mass money-printing during the pandemic. A ceasefire tomorrow wouldn't increase the supply of goods. Ukraine's coast is still occupied, so it can't export grain. The West will almost certainly retain its sanctions on Russia while it occupies Ukrainian territory, so the global oil and gas markets will still be disrupted. And the Azovstal plant, which produced a hefty chunk of the processed neon and helium used to manufacture circuitboards and other computer components globally, has been flattened, so there will almost certainly be continued shortages of these materials for years.
  • rottenboroughrottenborough Posts: 58,038
    GaryL said:

    Time for realpolitik guys not Marvel comic fantasies

    Absolutely.

  • FarooqFarooq Posts: 10,775
    GaryL said:

    Foxy said:

    GaryL said:

    glw said:

    GaryL said:

    glw said:

    GaryL said:

    Point is sensible leaders in the west realise this war is going nowhere and costing thousands of lives

    Bollocks do they. Sensible leaders realise that Ukraine has the resolve to fight Russia indefinitely if they armed to do so. But can Russia keep going? Probably not, they will have to escalate or fold. And I suspect that the number of Russian military leaders confident of their ability to wage a greater war is declining by the day. Hell, even Putin probably realises he's fucked it up.
    So why the sounds of compromise from the west tonite you don't do that if you are winning
    Ukraine is unwilling to cede territory. The Russian military needs to bleed, burn, and the survivors go home. America will provide the means to do that.
    How long would that take,, months , years, never meanwhile the developing world starves and the western economies crash
    At current rates of loss, the Russian army will no longer be capable of offensive operations soon. Whether it becomes a stalemate or a rout at that point is unclear.

    If a stalemate though, there will be no end to sanctions.
    I always find doctors some of the most gullible in believing everything they read in the msm, I get my information from many sources
    RT.
    The Kremlin's Twitter feed.
    George Galloway.
    ...
  • Sunil_PrasannanSunil_Prasannan Posts: 48,910

    Farooq said:

    Heathener said:

    Heathener said:

    GaryL said:

    GaryL said:

    Aslan said:

    GaryL said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    GaryL said:

    Foxy said:

    Farooq said:

    So it's obvious that Scottish football is far inferior to English. The question is, why?

    It depends on what you want out of your football team. Trophies are clearly important to fans, but not the only reason to support. Teams up and down the Leagues get people paying to watch teams that never win anything, apart from ocassional division trophies, and often not many of those. It is intrinsic to the structure of both Leagues and Cups that most teams have virtually empty trophy cabinets.

    It is possible to devise a system for a League with perpetual turnover at the top. The American Football Leagues do this via a draft system, so the bottom teams get preference for the players coming up from the College system. The equivalent here would be Norwich not being relegated and having both the money and right to buy in Haarland. Interesting maybe, but is it what we want?
    That's what the Super League scummers wanted, but just for the Euroelite.
    Ironically the nfl is much more socialist than premier league Honestly can't understand the mentality of a 60 year old man supporting a team like Carlisle united
    What? I mean, big picture-wise the appropriate advice to any adult who claims to support a football team is Get a life, but how do age, sex and Carlisle come in to it?
    Just an example of an older man pointlessly wasting their time on a lost cause
    Like those sad tossers still backing Putin-style ethnonationalist kleptocracy. Western democracy is the future.
    Why are you obsessed with putin,, does he threaten your manhood with his macho ways,,
    More importantly he kills women and children and bombs hospitals

    Everyone who values freedom and democracy should vow to rid the world of this monster
    We all want that it is a question of how we arrive at this objective and how many innocent Ukrainians we are prepared to sacrifice
    Did you learn that line in the Kremlin?
    If he did then they need to sharpen up their use of English, especially if they want to conquer the world.

    That's the trouble with these oligarchs. They're not very good at what they do. Hitler was a great example of a really crap general. A complete buffoon militarily, like Putin.

    I may have got the invasion completely wrong but I did say it was based on them not having much chance of winning. And so it has come to pass. A rubbish army with poor equipment led by a lunatic who doesn't know what he's doing.
    Hitler made one really big call correctly that most generals would have got wrong - the stand fast in 1941 when the USSR counter attacked at Moscow. Almost certainly avoided a catastrophe for the German army.
    Happily for the rest of the world he then repeated this tactic for the next 4 years with disastrous consequences. For instance in Normandy it allowed the panzer divisions to be chewed up in range of the naval guns, rather than retreating inland to allow for a more strategic counter offensive.
    Yes indeed.

    Stalingrad for example was most certainly not an example of his finest hour. The annihilation of the German Sixth Army probably turned the entire war.

    Prior to that, opening up two fronts was idiocy and there were a series of other spectacular blunders, including Dunkirk of course.
    Worth mentioning that judging the likelihood of a war breaking out by the objective probability of winning is a bad methodology - the side starting a war, since the industrial revolution, has ended up losing, more often than not.
    Not taking your word on this. Naming who "started" a war is itself often contested. Sounds very dubious indeed.
    Paraguay - 1870
    France -1870
    Germany/Austria Hungary - 1914
    Japan - 1937/1941
    Germany - 1939

    Just to stay with.
    Argentina - 1982
  • rottenboroughrottenborough Posts: 58,038
    Farooq said:

    GaryL said:

    Foxy said:

    GaryL said:

    glw said:

    GaryL said:

    glw said:

    GaryL said:

    Point is sensible leaders in the west realise this war is going nowhere and costing thousands of lives

    Bollocks do they. Sensible leaders realise that Ukraine has the resolve to fight Russia indefinitely if they armed to do so. But can Russia keep going? Probably not, they will have to escalate or fold. And I suspect that the number of Russian military leaders confident of their ability to wage a greater war is declining by the day. Hell, even Putin probably realises he's fucked it up.
    So why the sounds of compromise from the west tonite you don't do that if you are winning
    Ukraine is unwilling to cede territory. The Russian military needs to bleed, burn, and the survivors go home. America will provide the means to do that.
    How long would that take,, months , years, never meanwhile the developing world starves and the western economies crash
    At current rates of loss, the Russian army will no longer be capable of offensive operations soon. Whether it becomes a stalemate or a rout at that point is unclear.

    If a stalemate though, there will be no end to sanctions.
    I always find doctors some of the most gullible in believing everything they read in the msm, I get my information from many sources
    RT.
    The Kremlin's Twitter feed.
    George Galloway.
    ...
    Don't forget, Derby's very own apologist:




    Chris Williamson
    @DerbyChrisW
    ·
    May 21
    Looks like the sanctions against Russia are collapsing. Italy has massively increased imports of Russian oil. The sanctions are stupid and counterproductive. They should all be lifted immediately and the focus should be on a negotiated peace in #Ukraine

    https://twitter.com/DerbyChrisW/status/1528118402774183938
  • glwglw Posts: 9,535


    Don't forget, Derby's very own apologist:




    Chris Williamson
    @DerbyChrisW
    ·
    May 21
    Looks like the sanctions against Russia are collapsing. Italy has massively increased imports of Russian oil. The sanctions are stupid and counterproductive. They should all be lifted immediately and the focus should be on a negotiated peace in #Ukraine

    https://twitter.com/DerbyChrisW/status/1528118402774183938

    Thankfully idiots like him won't change what is happening. America is providing a huge amount of military aid, and when Ukraine starts receiving the kind of weapons that will tip the balance in their favour, rather than the stuff that was initially provided for a guerilla war, then the Russian military will see just how denuded they have been due to Communism and the kleptocracy that replaced it.
  • GaryLGaryL Posts: 131
    Nigelb said:

    GaryL said:

    Time for realpolitik guys not Marvel comic fantasies

    How much Ukraine territory are you proposing to give to the fascist autocrat ?
    And how much next time he invades ?

    Realpolitik is telling him to fuck off back to his own country.

    The countries proposing a ‘deal’, with “security guarantees’ for Ukraine - France and Germany (with Italy in tow), are those who underwrote the last set of security guarantees.
    How did that work out ?
    Why didn't we supply arms to czechoslovakia when Russia invaded in 1968
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 61,562

    GaryL said:

    glw said:

    GaryL said:

    glw said:

    GaryL said:

    Point is sensible leaders in the west realise this war is going nowhere and costing thousands of lives

    Bollocks do they. Sensible leaders realise that Ukraine has the resolve to fight Russia indefinitely if they armed to do so. But can Russia keep going? Probably not, they will have to escalate or fold. And I suspect that the number of Russian military leaders confident of their ability to wage a greater war is declining by the day. Hell, even Putin probably realises he's fucked it up.
    So why the sounds of compromise from the west tonite you don't do that if you are winning
    Ukraine is unwilling to cede territory. The Russian military needs to bleed, burn, and the survivors go home. America will provide the means to do that.
    How long would that take,, months , years, never meanwhile the developing world starves and the western economies crash
    Ceasefire tomorrow wouldn't stop the depression we're barrelling into (although it would probably save hundreds of thousands from starvation). Right now, there's too much money chasing not enough goods (food, fuel, computer components), exacerbating the inflation caused by mass money-printing during the pandemic. A ceasefire tomorrow wouldn't increase the supply of goods. Ukraine's coast is still occupied, so it can't export grain. The West will almost certainly retain its sanctions on Russia while it occupies Ukrainian territory, so the global oil and gas markets will still be disrupted. And the Azovstal plant, which produced a hefty chunk of the processed neon and helium used to manufacture circuitboards and other computer components globally, has been flattened, so there will almost certainly be continued shortages of these materials for years.
    Quicker to rebuild if the economically useless Russians are kicked out.
    Leaving them in possession of stolen territory just guarantees it continues to be useless.
  • rottenboroughrottenborough Posts: 58,038
    Foxy said:

    GaryL said:

    Foxy said:

    GaryL said:

    glw said:

    GaryL said:

    glw said:

    GaryL said:

    Point is sensible leaders in the west realise this war is going nowhere and costing thousands of lives

    Bollocks do they. Sensible leaders realise that Ukraine has the resolve to fight Russia indefinitely if they armed to do so. But can Russia keep going? Probably not, they will have to escalate or fold. And I suspect that the number of Russian military leaders confident of their ability to wage a greater war is declining by the day. Hell, even Putin probably realises he's fucked it up.
    So why the sounds of compromise from the west tonite you don't do that if you are winning
    Ukraine is unwilling to cede territory. The Russian military needs to bleed, burn, and the survivors go home. America will provide the means to do that.
    How long would that take,, months , years, never meanwhile the developing world starves and the western economies crash
    At current rates of loss, the Russian army will no longer be capable of offensive operations soon. Whether it becomes a stalemate or a rout at that point is unclear.

    If a stalemate though, there will be no end to sanctions.
    I always find doctors some of the most gullible in believing everything they read in the msm, I get my information from many sources
    Nah, Russia is toast. Its the Russo-Japanese war revisited, with revolution to come. Oligarchs and their lapdogs should flee while they can.
    Not sure about revolution. Seems just as likely that Vlad will be moved to a hospital for 'treatment' for various 'illnesses' and another group will take over from within the silovik who will find a way out of the morass of Ukraine and concentrate on the home land and its economy and rebuilding a shattered military no longer able to police its own borders.



  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 61,562
    GaryL said:

    Nigelb said:

    GaryL said:

    Time for realpolitik guys not Marvel comic fantasies

    How much Ukraine territory are you proposing to give to the fascist autocrat ?
    And how much next time he invades ?

    Realpolitik is telling him to fuck off back to his own country.

    The countries proposing a ‘deal’, with “security guarantees’ for Ukraine - France and Germany (with Italy in tow), are those who underwrote the last set of security guarantees.
    How did that work out ?
    Why didn't we supply arms to czechoslovakia when Russia invaded in 1968
    Mini me Stalin in the Kremlin doesn’t get the same free pass.
    How about you answer my questions ?
  • Luckyguy1983Luckyguy1983 Posts: 25,042

    rcs1000 said:

    GaryL said:

    GaryL said:

    Aslan said:

    GaryL said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    GaryL said:

    Foxy said:

    Farooq said:

    So it's obvious that Scottish football is far inferior to English. The question is, why?

    It depends on what you want out of your football team. Trophies are clearly important to fans, but not the only reason to support. Teams up and down the Leagues get people paying to watch teams that never win anything, apart from ocassional division trophies, and often not many of those. It is intrinsic to the structure of both Leagues and Cups that most teams have virtually empty trophy cabinets.

    It is possible to devise a system for a League with perpetual turnover at the top. The American Football Leagues do this via a draft system, so the bottom teams get preference for the players coming up from the College system. The equivalent here would be Norwich not being relegated and having both the money and right to buy in Haarland. Interesting maybe, but is it what we want?
    That's what the Super League scummers wanted, but just for the Euroelite.
    Ironically the nfl is much more socialist than premier league Honestly can't understand the mentality of a 60 year old man supporting a team like Carlisle united
    What? I mean, big picture-wise the appropriate advice to any adult who claims to support a football team is Get a life, but how do age, sex and Carlisle come in to it?
    Just an example of an older man pointlessly wasting their time on a lost cause
    Like those sad tossers still backing Putin-style ethnonationalist kleptocracy. Western democracy is the future.
    Why are you obsessed with putin,, does he threaten your manhood with his macho ways,,
    More importantly he kills women and children and bombs hospitals

    Everyone who values freedom and democracy should vow to rid the world of this monster
    We all want that it is a question of how we arrive at this objective and how many innocent Ukrainians we are prepared to sacrifice
    Ask the democratically elected Ukrainian government - it’s their sacrifice, by their people.
    It seems quaint to think that it's still their choice. The US has $40bn of aid on order, I don't see Uncle Joe being very happy to ask for a refund.
    So, the Ukrainian people are being forced to resist the invader, because they don't want to embarrass Joe Biden.

    Well, I guess it's a view.
    How much agency do you suppose the people really have? Any civilian or group of civilians objecting to the war would be on a very sticky wicket, surely you see that? The leader of the pro-Russian opposition party was imprisoned as a POW.

    Sadly, Ukraine doesn't get to be an independent country; it gets to be a Russian-sponsored one or a US-sponsored one. It has chosen the latter, for understandable reasons, and it's naive to think Zelensky will do anything out of step with Uncle Sam any more than Yanukovich would have done anything to piss Putin off.
    It really is sad how you have become such an apologist for Russian aggression. You seem to have found a fellow traveller in GaryL whose whole raison d'etre on here seems to be to undermine the Ukrainian cause.
    I have not become anything, I've always been very skeptical of US foreign policy, and that's lead me to be more supportive of Russia's actions than I would otherwise be. At times, that's lead me to have egg on my face, believing Russian propaganda. I'd like to think I've learned my lesson there. However, propaganda goes two ways, and at the moment, we're fed quite a lot of it, and the lack of any alternative narrative gives a very unbalanced news diet. Personally, whether paid or unpaid, I don't see why we'd mind GaryL (or my good self) expressing that viewpoint on occasion. It's like everyone's worldview is so brittle that exposure to something in opposition could shatter it.
    We object because this site is supposed to be about rational, evidence based discussion, not lunatic propaganda pushed by an apologist for genocide.

    If you truly can't see the difference between right and wrong on this particular issue then you are completely lost. I genuinely believe you are following the same line as those who excused or supported the Anschluss in 1938.
    You argue for 'rational evidence based discussion', but you follow with emotive rhetoric and references to the Nazis. The music is not matching the lyrics. I've stated that I oppose the invasion, but I don't feel the need to keep stating it to prove something, because I am a citizen of a third country, and I reserve the right to take a 'rational, evidence based' approach, and speak as I find.

    In doing so, I have occasionally posted a news snippet (never from RT, always reputable Western sources) that suggested that atrocities emerging at times in this war were not wholly supported by the evidence. That has always been met by posts like yours above.

    If a Political Betting forum where most are posting from the leafy shires has become so febrile, then how on earth (to return to my comment that sparked your rebuke) does the ordinary citizen of Ukraine register any kind of negative view on the fact that their country is envisaged as a permanent warzone?
  • GaryLGaryL Posts: 131
    More from the telegraph tonite

    That was the argument laid out in an editorial in the New York Times - sparking uproar in Kyiv amid growing fears about the resolve of elites in both the United States and Europe to see the conflict through.

    The piece, attributed to the paper’s Editorial Board, argued that Russia is too strong for Ukraine to defeat decisively on the battlefield; that the realistic outcome of the war will involve territorial concessions from Ukraine; and that President Joe Biden should make this clear to Volodymyr Zelensky sooner rather than later - including by placing clear limits on US support for Kyiv.

  • Andy_JSAndy_JS Posts: 26,279
    Farooq said:

    Andy_JS said:

    "Weekend Essay
    Covid was liberalism’s endgame
    Liberal individualism has an innate tendency towards authoritarianism
    BY MATTHEW CRAWFORD"

    https://unherd.com/2022/05/covid-was-liberalisms-endgame/

    I got as far as where it started to sneer at evidence-based medicine.
    Tell me, does the article go on to explain why illiberal policies are somehow the fault of liberalism, as opposed to politicians acting in illiberal ways, or does it continue to gaslight all the way through?
    Always read the whole of an article before commenting on it.
  • GaryLGaryL Posts: 131
    Western elites are clearly losing their resolve as Putin calculated they would
  • GaryLGaryL Posts: 131
    And more from the telegraph

    Despite Ukraine’s stunning successes around Kyiv and Kharkiv, “a decisive military victory for Ukraine over Russia, in which Ukraine regains all the territory Russia has seized since 2014, is not a realistic goal,” the newspaper wrote.

    Ultimately, it said: “It will be Ukrainian leaders who will have to make the painful territorial decisions that any compromise will demand.”

  • FarooqFarooq Posts: 10,775
    Andy_JS said:

    Farooq said:

    Andy_JS said:

    "Weekend Essay
    Covid was liberalism’s endgame
    Liberal individualism has an innate tendency towards authoritarianism
    BY MATTHEW CRAWFORD"

    https://unherd.com/2022/05/covid-was-liberalisms-endgame/

    I got as far as where it started to sneer at evidence-based medicine.
    Tell me, does the article go on to explain why illiberal policies are somehow the fault of liberalism, as opposed to politicians acting in illiberal ways, or does it continue to gaslight all the way through?
    Always read the whole of an article before commenting on it.
    I told you as far as I read and asked whether it continued in the same vein.
    What I read was crap. Does it get better?
  • FoxyFoxy Posts: 44,052
    glw said:


    Don't forget, Derby's very own apologist:




    Chris Williamson
    @DerbyChrisW
    ·
    May 21
    Looks like the sanctions against Russia are collapsing. Italy has massively increased imports of Russian oil. The sanctions are stupid and counterproductive. They should all be lifted immediately and the focus should be on a negotiated peace in #Ukraine

    https://twitter.com/DerbyChrisW/status/1528118402774183938

    Thankfully idiots like him won't change what is happening. America is providing a huge amount of military aid, and when Ukraine starts receiving the kind of weapons that will tip the balance in their favour, rather than the stuff that was initially provided for a guerilla war, then the Russian military will see just how denuded they have been due to Communism and the kleptocracy that replaced it.
    Yes, the new Ukranian tank formations should be ready for the counter-offensive shortly, and the attrition of Russian equipment at current rates will destroy Russian offensive power within months.

    In terms of military advantage, NATO is doing very well. For a fairly modest expenditure, and by sending mothballed kit, NATO will have effectively disarmed its only major threat. Its a bargain for our defence budget.

    I can see why Russian apologists want a ceasefire.. It is a "stop the count" moment where they know they have reached high tide, and ahead is only defeat.
  • Sunil_PrasannanSunil_Prasannan Posts: 48,910


    If a Political Betting forum where most are posting from the leafy shires has become so febrile, then how on earth (to return to my comment that sparked your rebuke) does the ordinary citizen of Ukraine register any kind of negative view on the fact that their country is envisaged as a permanent warzone?

    Stefania mama, mama Stefania
  • FoxyFoxy Posts: 44,052

    Foxy said:

    GaryL said:

    Foxy said:

    GaryL said:

    glw said:

    GaryL said:

    glw said:

    GaryL said:

    Point is sensible leaders in the west realise this war is going nowhere and costing thousands of lives

    Bollocks do they. Sensible leaders realise that Ukraine has the resolve to fight Russia indefinitely if they armed to do so. But can Russia keep going? Probably not, they will have to escalate or fold. And I suspect that the number of Russian military leaders confident of their ability to wage a greater war is declining by the day. Hell, even Putin probably realises he's fucked it up.
    So why the sounds of compromise from the west tonite you don't do that if you are winning
    Ukraine is unwilling to cede territory. The Russian military needs to bleed, burn, and the survivors go home. America will provide the means to do that.
    How long would that take,, months , years, never meanwhile the developing world starves and the western economies crash
    At current rates of loss, the Russian army will no longer be capable of offensive operations soon. Whether it becomes a stalemate or a rout at that point is unclear.

    If a stalemate though, there will be no end to sanctions.
    I always find doctors some of the most gullible in believing everything they read in the msm, I get my information from many sources
    Nah, Russia is toast. Its the Russo-Japanese war revisited, with revolution to come. Oligarchs and their lapdogs should flee while they can.
    Not sure about revolution. Seems just as likely that Vlad will be moved to a hospital for 'treatment' for various 'illnesses' and another group will take over from within the silovik who will find a way out of the morass of Ukraine and concentrate on the home land and its economy and rebuilding a shattered military no longer able to police its own borders.
    Yes, the future of Russia is as an inward looking failed state.
  • GaryLGaryL Posts: 131
    Foxy said:

    glw said:


    Don't forget, Derby's very own apologist:




    Chris Williamson
    @DerbyChrisW
    ·
    May 21
    Looks like the sanctions against Russia are collapsing. Italy has massively increased imports of Russian oil. The sanctions are stupid and counterproductive. They should all be lifted immediately and the focus should be on a negotiated peace in #Ukraine

    https://twitter.com/DerbyChrisW/status/1528118402774183938

    Thankfully idiots like him won't change what is happening. America is providing a huge amount of military aid, and when Ukraine starts receiving the kind of weapons that will tip the balance in their favour, rather than the stuff that was initially provided for a guerilla war, then the Russian military will see just how denuded they have been due to Communism and the kleptocracy that replaced it.
    Yes, the new Ukranian tank formations should be ready for the counter-offensive shortly, and the attrition of Russian equipment at current rates will destroy Russian offensive power within months.

    In terms of military advantage, NATO is doing very well. For a fairly modest expenditure, and by sending mothballed kit, NATO will have effectively disarmed its only major threat. Its a bargain for our defence budget.

    I can see why Russian apologists want a ceasefire.. It is a "stop the count" moment where they know they have reached high tide, and ahead is only defeat.
    Clearly many western elites and the ny times disagree with you Foxy but after all I suppose doctors are always right
  • kle4kle4 Posts: 91,392
    GaryL said:

    Nigelb said:

    GaryL said:

    Time for realpolitik guys not Marvel comic fantasies

    How much Ukraine territory are you proposing to give to the fascist autocrat ?
    And how much next time he invades ?

    Realpolitik is telling him to fuck off back to his own country.

    The countries proposing a ‘deal’, with “security guarantees’ for Ukraine - France and Germany (with Italy in tow), are those who underwrote the last set of security guarantees.
    How did that work out ?
    Why didn't we supply arms to czechoslovakia when Russia invaded in 1968
    What a devastating point - things have happened differently in the past, and geopolitics is not consistent, I had never noticed that before.

    Thanfully, nations are not bound by precedent in international relations, the Russians cannot complain to the referee that we are helping oppose them now because we didn't in 1968.

  • GaryLGaryL Posts: 131

    rcs1000 said:

    GaryL said:

    GaryL said:

    Aslan said:

    GaryL said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    GaryL said:

    Foxy said:

    Farooq said:

    So it's obvious that Scottish football is far inferior to English. The question is, why?

    It depends on what you want out of your football team. Trophies are clearly important to fans, but not the only reason to support. Teams up and down the Leagues get people paying to watch teams that never win anything, apart from ocassional division trophies, and often not many of those. It is intrinsic to the structure of both Leagues and Cups that most teams have virtually empty trophy cabinets.

    It is possible to devise a system for a League with perpetual turnover at the top. The American Football Leagues do this via a draft system, so the bottom teams get preference for the players coming up from the College system. The equivalent here would be Norwich not being relegated and having both the money and right to buy in Haarland. Interesting maybe, but is it what we want?
    That's what the Super League scummers wanted, but just for the Euroelite.
    Ironically the nfl is much more socialist than premier league Honestly can't understand the mentality of a 60 year old man supporting a team like Carlisle united
    What? I mean, big picture-wise the appropriate advice to any adult who claims to support a football team is Get a life, but how do age, sex and Carlisle come in to it?
    Just an example of an older man pointlessly wasting their time on a lost cause
    Like those sad tossers still backing Putin-style ethnonationalist kleptocracy. Western democracy is the future.
    Why are you obsessed with putin,, does he threaten your manhood with his macho ways,,
    More importantly he kills women and children and bombs hospitals

    Everyone who values freedom and democracy should vow to rid the world of this monster
    We all want that it is a question of how we arrive at this objective and how many innocent Ukrainians we are prepared to sacrifice
    Ask the democratically elected Ukrainian government - it’s their sacrifice, by their people.
    It seems quaint to think that it's still their choice. The US has $40bn of aid on order, I don't see Uncle Joe being very happy to ask for a refund.
    So, the Ukrainian people are being forced to resist the invader, because they don't want to embarrass Joe Biden.

    Well, I guess it's a view.
    How much agency do you suppose the people really have? Any civilian or group of civilians objecting to the war would be on a very sticky wicket, surely you see that? The leader of the pro-Russian opposition party was imprisoned as a POW.

    Sadly, Ukraine doesn't get to be an independent country; it gets to be a Russian-sponsored one or a US-sponsored one. It has chosen the latter, for understandable reasons, and it's naive to think Zelensky will do anything out of step with Uncle Sam any more than Yanukovich would have done anything to piss Putin off.
    It really is sad how you have become such an apologist for Russian aggression. You seem to have found a fellow traveller in GaryL whose whole raison d'etre on here seems to be to undermine the Ukrainian cause.
    I have not become anything, I've always been very skeptical of US foreign policy, and that's lead me to be more supportive of Russia's actions than I would otherwise be. At times, that's lead me to have egg on my face, believing Russian propaganda. I'd like to think I've learned my lesson there. However, propaganda goes two ways, and at the moment, we're fed quite a lot of it, and the lack of any alternative narrative gives a very unbalanced news diet. Personally, whether paid or unpaid, I don't see why we'd mind GaryL (or my good self) expressing that viewpoint on occasion. It's like everyone's worldview is so brittle that exposure to something in opposition could shatter it.
    We object because this site is supposed to be about rational, evidence based discussion, not lunatic propaganda pushed by an apologist for genocide.

    If you truly can't see the difference between right and wrong on this particular issue then you are completely lost. I genuinely believe you are following the same line as those who excused or supported the Anschluss in 1938.
    You argue for 'rational evidence based discussion', but you follow with emotive rhetoric and references to the Nazis. The music is not matching the lyrics. I've stated that I oppose the invasion, but I don't feel the need to keep stating it to prove something, because I am a citizen of a third country, and I reserve the right to take a 'rational, evidence based' approach, and speak as I find.

    In doing so, I have occasionally posted a news snippet (never from RT, always reputable Western sources) that suggested that atrocities emerging at times in this war were not wholly supported by the evidence. That has always been met by posts like yours above.

    If a Political Betting forum where most are posting from the leafy shires has become so febrile, then how on earth (to return to my comment that sparked your rebuke) does the ordinary citizen of Ukraine register any kind of negative view on the fact that their country is envisaged as a permanent warzone?
    Sadly virtue signalling around this was has become a thing for a certain type of middle class person
  • FarooqFarooq Posts: 10,775
    I remember back in February when PJohnson was on here pushing the line that Russia was winning and it's best Ukraine rolls over.

    The last few months have not really supported that view. If only PJohnson was still here to defend these view. I'm sure as a reasonable person they have probably now changed their mind in the face of the evidence.
  • FoxyFoxy Posts: 44,052
    GaryL said:

    Western elites are clearly losing their resolve as Putin calculated they would

    Not at all. Didn't you see the Polish PM in Kyiv today, promising whatever it takes?

    You may not be aware that we have a free press, so newspapers here are not just government mouth pieces like in your country, so publish a variety of opinions.
  • GaryLGaryL Posts: 131
    kle4 said:

    GaryL said:

    Nigelb said:

    GaryL said:

    Time for realpolitik guys not Marvel comic fantasies

    How much Ukraine territory are you proposing to give to the fascist autocrat ?
    And how much next time he invades ?

    Realpolitik is telling him to fuck off back to his own country.

    The countries proposing a ‘deal’, with “security guarantees’ for Ukraine - France and Germany (with Italy in tow), are those who underwrote the last set of security guarantees.
    How did that work out ?
    Why didn't we supply arms to czechoslovakia when Russia invaded in 1968
    What a devastating point - things have happened differently in the past, and geopolitics is not consistent, I had never noticed that before.

    Thanfully, nations are not bound by precedent in international relations, the Russians cannot complain to the referee that we are helping oppose them now because we didn't in 1968.

    Maybe we had more sensible leaders then who knew the horrors of war
  • Luckyguy1983Luckyguy1983 Posts: 25,042
    I would be the way, once this war is over and boundaries laid out, be strongly in favour of stuffing Ukraine with so much Western force that Russia can never decide to go rambling through it again. Weapons are better when they are in the cupboard unused.
  • kle4kle4 Posts: 91,392
    GaryL said:

    Foxy said:

    glw said:


    Don't forget, Derby's very own apologist:




    Chris Williamson
    @DerbyChrisW
    ·
    May 21
    Looks like the sanctions against Russia are collapsing. Italy has massively increased imports of Russian oil. The sanctions are stupid and counterproductive. They should all be lifted immediately and the focus should be on a negotiated peace in #Ukraine

    https://twitter.com/DerbyChrisW/status/1528118402774183938

    Thankfully idiots like him won't change what is happening. America is providing a huge amount of military aid, and when Ukraine starts receiving the kind of weapons that will tip the balance in their favour, rather than the stuff that was initially provided for a guerilla war, then the Russian military will see just how denuded they have been due to Communism and the kleptocracy that replaced it.
    Yes, the new Ukranian tank formations should be ready for the counter-offensive shortly, and the attrition of Russian equipment at current rates will destroy Russian offensive power within months.

    In terms of military advantage, NATO is doing very well. For a fairly modest expenditure, and by sending mothballed kit, NATO will have effectively disarmed its only major threat. Its a bargain for our defence budget.

    I can see why Russian apologists want a ceasefire.. It is a "stop the count" moment where they know they have reached high tide, and ahead is only defeat.
    Clearly many western elites and the ny times disagree with you Foxy but after all I suppose doctors are always right
    Some Western elites and Russian apologists will not always be in opposition. On the contrary, it is no grand revelation that some elites have been apologists from the start and remain so. Now, I wouldn't think everyone proposing a ceasefire is an apologist, I think there's a lot of misguided attempts at realpolitik which just takes a very casual attitude toward Ukrainian statehood but which may not be quite the same thing.

    Besides which, I think you'll find Dr Foxy was proffering an opinion. There is no need for people to caveat every utterance so, I think we all know everyone is providing opinion, not gospel truths.
  • EabhalEabhal Posts: 5,781
    GaryL said:

    And more from the telegraph

    Despite Ukraine’s stunning successes around Kyiv and Kharkiv, “a decisive military victory for Ukraine over Russia, in which Ukraine regains all the territory Russia has seized since 2014, is not a realistic goal,” the newspaper wrote.

    Ultimately, it said: “It will be Ukrainian leaders who will have to make the painful territorial decisions that any compromise will demand.”

    This comment is exactly the same as one made on a different website, "wwnews.cryptomatters.net".

  • Luckyguy1983Luckyguy1983 Posts: 25,042
    GaryL said:

    rcs1000 said:

    GaryL said:

    GaryL said:

    Aslan said:

    GaryL said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    GaryL said:

    Foxy said:

    Farooq said:

    So it's obvious that Scottish football is far inferior to English. The question is, why?

    It depends on what you want out of your football team. Trophies are clearly important to fans, but not the only reason to support. Teams up and down the Leagues get people paying to watch teams that never win anything, apart from ocassional division trophies, and often not many of those. It is intrinsic to the structure of both Leagues and Cups that most teams have virtually empty trophy cabinets.

    It is possible to devise a system for a League with perpetual turnover at the top. The American Football Leagues do this via a draft system, so the bottom teams get preference for the players coming up from the College system. The equivalent here would be Norwich not being relegated and having both the money and right to buy in Haarland. Interesting maybe, but is it what we want?
    That's what the Super League scummers wanted, but just for the Euroelite.
    Ironically the nfl is much more socialist than premier league Honestly can't understand the mentality of a 60 year old man supporting a team like Carlisle united
    What? I mean, big picture-wise the appropriate advice to any adult who claims to support a football team is Get a life, but how do age, sex and Carlisle come in to it?
    Just an example of an older man pointlessly wasting their time on a lost cause
    Like those sad tossers still backing Putin-style ethnonationalist kleptocracy. Western democracy is the future.
    Why are you obsessed with putin,, does he threaten your manhood with his macho ways,,
    More importantly he kills women and children and bombs hospitals

    Everyone who values freedom and democracy should vow to rid the world of this monster
    We all want that it is a question of how we arrive at this objective and how many innocent Ukrainians we are prepared to sacrifice
    Ask the democratically elected Ukrainian government - it’s their sacrifice, by their people.
    It seems quaint to think that it's still their choice. The US has $40bn of aid on order, I don't see Uncle Joe being very happy to ask for a refund.
    So, the Ukrainian people are being forced to resist the invader, because they don't want to embarrass Joe Biden.

    Well, I guess it's a view.
    How much agency do you suppose the people really have? Any civilian or group of civilians objecting to the war would be on a very sticky wicket, surely you see that? The leader of the pro-Russian opposition party was imprisoned as a POW.

    Sadly, Ukraine doesn't get to be an independent country; it gets to be a Russian-sponsored one or a US-sponsored one. It has chosen the latter, for understandable reasons, and it's naive to think Zelensky will do anything out of step with Uncle Sam any more than Yanukovich would have done anything to piss Putin off.
    It really is sad how you have become such an apologist for Russian aggression. You seem to have found a fellow traveller in GaryL whose whole raison d'etre on here seems to be to undermine the Ukrainian cause.
    I have not become anything, I've always been very skeptical of US foreign policy, and that's lead me to be more supportive of Russia's actions than I would otherwise be. At times, that's lead me to have egg on my face, believing Russian propaganda. I'd like to think I've learned my lesson there. However, propaganda goes two ways, and at the moment, we're fed quite a lot of it, and the lack of any alternative narrative gives a very unbalanced news diet. Personally, whether paid or unpaid, I don't see why we'd mind GaryL (or my good self) expressing that viewpoint on occasion. It's like everyone's worldview is so brittle that exposure to something in opposition could shatter it.
    We object because this site is supposed to be about rational, evidence based discussion, not lunatic propaganda pushed by an apologist for genocide.

    If you truly can't see the difference between right and wrong on this particular issue then you are completely lost. I genuinely believe you are following the same line as those who excused or supported the Anschluss in 1938.
    You argue for 'rational evidence based discussion', but you follow with emotive rhetoric and references to the Nazis. The music is not matching the lyrics. I've stated that I oppose the invasion, but I don't feel the need to keep stating it to prove something, because I am a citizen of a third country, and I reserve the right to take a 'rational, evidence based' approach, and speak as I find.

    In doing so, I have occasionally posted a news snippet (never from RT, always reputable Western sources) that suggested that atrocities emerging at times in this war were not wholly supported by the evidence. That has always been met by posts like yours above.

    If a Political Betting forum where most are posting from the leafy shires has become so febrile, then how on earth (to return to my comment that sparked your rebuke) does the ordinary citizen of Ukraine register any kind of negative view on the fact that their country is envisaged as a permanent warzone?
    Sadly virtue signalling around this was has become a thing for a certain type of middle class person
    Richard isn't that type of person.
  • kle4kle4 Posts: 91,392

    Farooq said:

    GaryL said:

    Foxy said:

    GaryL said:

    glw said:

    GaryL said:

    glw said:

    GaryL said:

    Point is sensible leaders in the west realise this war is going nowhere and costing thousands of lives

    Bollocks do they. Sensible leaders realise that Ukraine has the resolve to fight Russia indefinitely if they armed to do so. But can Russia keep going? Probably not, they will have to escalate or fold. And I suspect that the number of Russian military leaders confident of their ability to wage a greater war is declining by the day. Hell, even Putin probably realises he's fucked it up.
    So why the sounds of compromise from the west tonite you don't do that if you are winning
    Ukraine is unwilling to cede territory. The Russian military needs to bleed, burn, and the survivors go home. America will provide the means to do that.
    How long would that take,, months , years, never meanwhile the developing world starves and the western economies crash
    At current rates of loss, the Russian army will no longer be capable of offensive operations soon. Whether it becomes a stalemate or a rout at that point is unclear.

    If a stalemate though, there will be no end to sanctions.
    I always find doctors some of the most gullible in believing everything they read in the msm, I get my information from many sources
    RT.
    The Kremlin's Twitter feed.
    George Galloway.
    ...
    Don't forget, Derby's very own apologist:




    Chris Williamson
    @DerbyChrisW
    ·
    May 21
    Looks like the sanctions against Russia are collapsing. Italy has massively increased imports of Russian oil. The sanctions are stupid and counterproductive. They should all be lifted immediately and the focus should be on a negotiated peace in #Ukraine

    https://twitter.com/DerbyChrisW/status/1528118402774183938
    I find his sort utterly repellant. They think they are so profound and that calling for peace makes them noble, as if no one had ever thought peace was a good idea until they suggested it, then ignore anything that might make actual agreement complicated or costly. It's moral posturing of the worst kind, at best, and in his case probably just cover for his true thoughts.
  • EabhalEabhal Posts: 5,781
    GaryL said:

    Foxy said:

    glw said:


    Don't forget, Derby's very own apologist:




    Chris Williamson
    @DerbyChrisW
    ·
    May 21
    Looks like the sanctions against Russia are collapsing. Italy has massively increased imports of Russian oil. The sanctions are stupid and counterproductive. They should all be lifted immediately and the focus should be on a negotiated peace in #Ukraine

    https://twitter.com/DerbyChrisW/status/1528118402774183938

    Thankfully idiots like him won't change what is happening. America is providing a huge amount of military aid, and when Ukraine starts receiving the kind of weapons that will tip the balance in their favour, rather than the stuff that was initially provided for a guerilla war, then the Russian military will see just how denuded they have been due to Communism and the kleptocracy that replaced it.
    Yes, the new Ukranian tank formations should be ready for the counter-offensive shortly, and the attrition of Russian equipment at current rates will destroy Russian offensive power within months.

    In terms of military advantage, NATO is doing very well. For a fairly modest expenditure, and by sending mothballed kit, NATO will have effectively disarmed its only major threat. Its a bargain for our defence budget.

    I can see why Russian apologists want a ceasefire.. It is a "stop the count" moment where they know they have reached high tide, and ahead is only defeat.
    Clearly many western elites and the ny times disagree with you Foxy but after all I suppose doctors are always right
    Not the first Russian to have a problem with Doctors ;)
  • GaryLGaryL Posts: 131
    Foxy said:

    GaryL said:

    Western elites are clearly losing their resolve as Putin calculated they would

    Not at all. Didn't you see the Polish PM in Kyiv today, promising whatever it takes?

    You may not be aware that we have a free press, so newspapers here are not just government mouth pieces like in your country, so publish a variety of opinions.
    Poland is not the major player in this as I'm sure you know uk USA France and Germany are key countries I don't regard Poland as part of the western elite
  • Pagan2Pagan2 Posts: 8,629

    Pagan2 said:


    The labour party can bugger off. Voting systems do not belong to politicians and they should get no say in what we select as a people. You want to change the voting system you ask the people. Politicians are servants not masters and shouldn't be able to impose their terms of employment on us

    That's how I feel about changing the rules for how you can vote (by requiring ID). Do you agree?
    I wouldnt necessarily be opposed to it. For lesser rule changes like that and for example changing the age you can vote what I would like in fact to see a regular independent review every 20 years or so by an independent council which proposes rule changes they think make sense then a referendum where all changes people could tick yes or no. That keeps the referendums down to a manageable level. For major changes like changing the voting system you should have a single issue referendum.
  • FoxyFoxy Posts: 44,052
    GaryL said:

    kle4 said:

    GaryL said:

    Nigelb said:

    GaryL said:

    Time for realpolitik guys not Marvel comic fantasies

    How much Ukraine territory are you proposing to give to the fascist autocrat ?
    And how much next time he invades ?

    Realpolitik is telling him to fuck off back to his own country.

    The countries proposing a ‘deal’, with “security guarantees’ for Ukraine - France and Germany (with Italy in tow), are those who underwrote the last set of security guarantees.
    How did that work out ?
    Why didn't we supply arms to czechoslovakia when Russia invaded in 1968
    What a devastating point - things have happened differently in the past, and geopolitics is not consistent, I had never noticed that before.

    Thanfully, nations are not bound by precedent in international relations, the Russians cannot complain to the referee that we are helping oppose them now because we didn't in 1968.

    Maybe we had more sensible leaders then who knew the horrors of war
    The only nation that can stop the horrors of this war is the one that started it: Russia.

    Once it is defeated and in retreat, like after the defeats in Kyiv and Kharkiv, then the talks can start, and the reparations, return home of the Ukranians deported to Siberia can begin.
  • Jim_MillerJim_Miller Posts: 2,395
    GaryL is calling for a compromise peace to end the Russian invsion of Ukraine. I think there are compromises most of us would accept. Here are three, just to get us started:
    1. Putin gets life in solitary confinement rather than the death penalty.
    2. Belarus holds a free and fair election, supervised by the European Union
    3. Putin finally signs a peace treaty with Japan, and gives up those four disputed Kuril islands.

    I'm sure GaryL would agree with all three. Perhaps others would like to help him out by suggesting additional compromises.
  • kle4kle4 Posts: 91,392
    edited May 2022
    GaryL said:

    kle4 said:

    GaryL said:

    Nigelb said:

    GaryL said:

    Time for realpolitik guys not Marvel comic fantasies

    How much Ukraine territory are you proposing to give to the fascist autocrat ?
    And how much next time he invades ?

    Realpolitik is telling him to fuck off back to his own country.

    The countries proposing a ‘deal’, with “security guarantees’ for Ukraine - France and Germany (with Italy in tow), are those who underwrote the last set of security guarantees.
    How did that work out ?
    Why didn't we supply arms to czechoslovakia when Russia invaded in 1968
    What a devastating point - things have happened differently in the past, and geopolitics is not consistent, I had never noticed that before.

    Thanfully, nations are not bound by precedent in international relations, the Russians cannot complain to the referee that we are helping oppose them now because we didn't in 1968.

    Maybe we had more sensible leaders then who knew the horrors of war
    You are hilarious. War is indeed horrible, yet am I to believe there are no circumstances in which it is justified? Like, say, an invasion?

    More to the point, we the UK are not directly involved in the war, all it costs us is money and material. You think money and material is too much to provide to people who are fighting for their lives against an aggressor?

    You're just doing the moral switcharound again, trying to suggest helping people defend themselves is morally iffy because it 'prolongs' war, which as has already been noted is merely an argument that anyone who has ever been attacked should surrender immediately because 'war is horrible'.
  • GaryLGaryL Posts: 131
    Farooq said:

    I remember back in February when PJohnson was on here pushing the line that Russia was winning and it's best Ukraine rolls over.

    The last few months have not really supported that view. If only PJohnson was still here to defend these view. I'm sure as a reasonable person they have probably now changed their mind in the face of the evidence.

    Yes Russia suffered setbacks but sadly they are now winning in the donbass hence the conciliatory noises now being made in the west
  • rottenboroughrottenborough Posts: 58,038
    kle4 said:

    Farooq said:

    GaryL said:

    Foxy said:

    GaryL said:

    glw said:

    GaryL said:

    glw said:

    GaryL said:

    Point is sensible leaders in the west realise this war is going nowhere and costing thousands of lives

    Bollocks do they. Sensible leaders realise that Ukraine has the resolve to fight Russia indefinitely if they armed to do so. But can Russia keep going? Probably not, they will have to escalate or fold. And I suspect that the number of Russian military leaders confident of their ability to wage a greater war is declining by the day. Hell, even Putin probably realises he's fucked it up.
    So why the sounds of compromise from the west tonite you don't do that if you are winning
    Ukraine is unwilling to cede territory. The Russian military needs to bleed, burn, and the survivors go home. America will provide the means to do that.
    How long would that take,, months , years, never meanwhile the developing world starves and the western economies crash
    At current rates of loss, the Russian army will no longer be capable of offensive operations soon. Whether it becomes a stalemate or a rout at that point is unclear.

    If a stalemate though, there will be no end to sanctions.
    I always find doctors some of the most gullible in believing everything they read in the msm, I get my information from many sources
    RT.
    The Kremlin's Twitter feed.
    George Galloway.
    ...
    Don't forget, Derby's very own apologist:




    Chris Williamson
    @DerbyChrisW
    ·
    May 21
    Looks like the sanctions against Russia are collapsing. Italy has massively increased imports of Russian oil. The sanctions are stupid and counterproductive. They should all be lifted immediately and the focus should be on a negotiated peace in #Ukraine

    https://twitter.com/DerbyChrisW/status/1528118402774183938
    I find his sort utterly repellant. They think they are so profound and that calling for peace makes them noble, as if no one had ever thought peace was a good idea until they suggested it, then ignore anything that might make actual agreement complicated or costly. It's moral posturing of the worst kind, at best, and in his case probably just cover for his true thoughts.
    As far as I am concerned " negotiated peace" is code for giving Vlad a chunk of Ukraine in the East and then letting him rebuild and regroup for three years before a fresh assault.

  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 61,562
    edited May 2022
    Eabhal said:

    GaryL said:

    Foxy said:

    glw said:


    Don't forget, Derby's very own apologist:

    Chris Williamson
    @DerbyChrisW
    ·
    May 21
    Looks like the sanctions against Russia are collapsing. Italy has massively increased imports of Russian oil. The sanctions are stupid and counterproductive. They should all be lifted immediately and the focus should be on a negotiated peace in #Ukraine

    https://twitter.com/DerbyChrisW/status/1528118402774183938

    Thankfully idiots like him won't change what is happening. America is providing a huge amount of military aid, and when Ukraine starts receiving the kind of weapons that will tip the balance in their favour, rather than the stuff that was initially provided for a guerilla war, then the Russian military will see just how denuded they have been due to Communism and the kleptocracy that replaced it.
    Yes, the new Ukranian tank formations should be ready for the counter-offensive shortly, and the attrition of Russian equipment at current rates will destroy Russian offensive power within months.

    In terms of military advantage, NATO is doing very well. For a fairly modest expenditure, and by sending mothballed kit, NATO will have effectively disarmed its only major threat. Its a bargain for our defence budget.

    I can see why Russian apologists want a ceasefire.. It is a "stop the count" moment where they know they have reached high tide, and ahead is only defeat.
    Clearly many western elites and the ny times disagree with you Foxy but after all I suppose doctors are always right
    Not the first Russian to have a problem with Doctors ;)
    Nor is it the first time the NYT has got things grievously wrong on Ukraine, if we’re revisiting the Stalin era, as Gary seems to favour.
This discussion has been closed.