Totally off topic, but younger son, who is trying to return from an exhibition in Amsterdam, has done so by sea because of the massive queues at security at the airport! So it's not just Heathrow! So he's now on his way to Heathrow to fly back home to Bangkok. Wonder what the situation will be when he gets to Heathrow.
I do keep hearing about air travel chaos. I'm meant to be starting serious foreign travel again, after a long break, and it's not encouraging me. Maybe best to just stay put for now.
I’ve gone through LGW without incident several times now….
Think I'm just looking for excuses - got used to staying still and the world revolving around me rather than the other way around.
Don’t.
Someone I know got used to doing absolutely nothing and seeing no one during covid. Like a hermit
Even when covid ended she maintained this new monastic isolation. She went from being sociable and active and keen on travel, to inertia, isolation, staying-at-home
Recently this person was diagnosed with a terminal illness and was given a few short months to live, at most. And she is now UNABLE to travel. Much as she might want to
She now bitterly regrets the ~3 years spent in self imposed confinement and it wasn’t even Covid that got her, in the end
You’re in your 60s. You can still see the world. Do it before you no longer can
Well it's not a Covid thing and, like I say, I have travelled a lot previously.
But, yes, there are some trips I'd like to do and if I don't do them through inertia that wouldn't be great.
This opens the door for a lament. I'm 47. I have recently become rather more acutely aware of the finity of my remaining years. What's brought this about is looking at OS maps. I've walked a lot in Britain, but there's so much more I haven't done than I have, and it seems rather too much to achieve in my remaining years of fitness. I get maybe three, four days to myself, free of parental responsibility each year. Obviously that will grow as the kids get older, but I'll be 59 by the time my youngest is 18. I long for the freedom I could have had in my 20s before kids came along. I should have been so much more focused on what I wanted to do, and done it myself. I should have spent several long weekends a year in the Highlands of Scotland reaching the inaccessible places. I should have walked up every Wainwright. I should have cycled the whole of the North of England, the whole of Ireland. I should never, ever have replied to the question 'do anything this weekend' with 'oh, not much.'
I've never felt the need (or indeed had the budget) to go everywhere in the world. If I die without seeing Rome or Ljubljana or Australia or South America, well, shrug, you can't do everything. If I never dive or bungee jump, well, so be it. But there are things I really did want to do, but they never seemed pressing, and now I'm married with kids I may never get the chance.
If you are young, care not what plans your friends or girlfriends make: if there are things you want to do, do them. You will never have more time and energy than you do now.
It is, always, later than you think
Gotta say you are missing a bit of the wider world
Rome is tremendous, a top ten must-see city (but avoid the summer)
Ljubljana you can skip. Pleasant but unexceptional
Australia is absolutely essential for its insane fauna. Everything else, the Barrier Reef, the Kimberley Coast, the endless Outback, the Queensland rainforests, the glorious Northern Territory, even Uluru, you can sort of find somewhere else, in some form
But NOTHING is like your first glimpse of a real live kangaroo in the wild. Under the gum trees. Staring at you. And then there's the wombats, koalas, wallabies, dingos, quolls, bilbys. pademelons, sugar gliders. platypi and the Ruffous Bettong. It is the nearest you can get to a different planet but equally as full of life
If you possibly can, go to Australia at least once and see a tree kangaroo fall out of a eucalypt
I mean, I have left the UK. I've been to a few of the world's big must see places, like Paris and New York. And if the weekend after next you plonked me in Rome I'm sure I'd have a very lovely time. But it is the experiences in these islands my heart yearns for - I think because I might so easily have done them when I had the time.
I might yet get to Australia. My sister-in-law's partner is Australian; they have a small baby, and are thinking of moving there. They are assuming we will visit regularly. And I'd very much like to see a kangaroo and all the other fellas. But, what, £10,000 and 24 hours travelling to get a family of five to Australia? Realistically we can only do it once, if at all. Whereas the Cuillins? You can get there with a tankful of petrol. I ought to have done that already. Why haven't I? So many years of fitting in with other people's plans when I might have made my own.
The trick to extensive travel is to live overseas and use that as a springboard for adventures. Im fortunate that as a result, I don’t particularly need to go back to Southern Africa, Asia, or Australasia again, even though time and money allowing that would be great and there are one or two small holes in the map there for me. Sri Lanka and a couple more Stans in Asia, Madagascar in Southern Africa, the pacific islands. I could live my whole life without ever going back to China or Russia.
While Ive done snippets, what I really want to do is an updated version of the old Grand Tour but that’s a thankless dream with small children. Overland through Roman and renaissance Italy to Greece, and then further back in time to Egypt, Jordan and the very beginning in Turkey. And if I was feeling really adventurous Ethiopia. Then a barmy army tour in the Caribbean to relax after all that. Followed by a long USA road trip. I’ve done 90% of the places with undrinkable tap water that appeal to me but have seen surprisingly little of the OECD.
You've done it the right way round, tho?
Travel in much of Lat Am and Africa and central or south Asia is HARD. So you need to do it when you are younger and more energetic
Europe, north America and east Asia can wait til middle age (tho I guess there is a good argument that its better to absorb the cultural richness of Europe/Asia/USA when you are impressionable)
Fuck it. I revert to my lifelong rule: Never refuse travel or sex. Always take the opportunity to do either, if it is there
The few times I have broken this Golden Rule I have ALWAYS regretted it
If Russia loses, all the people on Left and Right in the West that demanded a "compromise" that "accepts Russia's legitimate interests" will shift to accusing the West of having sucked Putin into a deliberate trap to crush Moscow
None of these people will rethink their positions
Prediction: this will also be the position of the Putin regime, or whatever more extreme despotism succeeds it, and that of most of the Russian population along with it. They think they're entitled to conquer and subjugate their neighbours at will, and when the plan goes wrong it's the fault of everyone but themselves. They're irredeemable.
Even if the Putin regime falls and is replaced by a more hard line government, that government is unlikely to last very long.
There is a growing sense of collapse on the Russian side. Rumours of an army mutiny are growing, and the reports that Kadyrov is sending forces "to support" the regime (not clear where but even, possibly, Moscow) suggests we may, just possibly, already be in some kind of end game. It appears that Kherson may fall even as early as this week, and the collapse of Russian forces in the Donbas seems to be accelerating, with UAF units getting close to Luhansk. Putin is said to be in Sochi, but as with the Czar in Pskov, that is no guarantee that he is safer there than in the capital.
Any new regime in Russia will need to deal with significant internal headwinds, and not least the Kadyrovtsi. The renewal of the Azerbaijani assault on Armenia is also yet another sign that the authority of Putin is draining away.
Personally, those who told me that, irrespective of morality or our own fundamental interests, the West should come to terms with Putin, now look more than just "wrong". The Baltic and Poland have been warning about Putin for 20 years. They were right and now the views of the front line states should count for a lot more than the discredited position of "compromise" with the rapist regime. Putin is likely to fall eventually, and that is a good thing, because irrespective of the short term, Russia has to change and it can not change with him still in the Kremlin. "Clinging hold of nurse, for fear of getting something worse" is the perennial mistake of Western statecraft when dealing with Moscow and it fails every time.
For many people in countries that border Russia, the top pressing interest is in 'removing the threat', and this can be achieved through the 'defeat of Russia', even though that means 'embracing the chaos' that follows.
But the end game of what you are describing is the disintegration of Russia in to multiple statelets, run by a collection of warlords and dubious 'businessmen'; who inherit collections of nuclear weapons and other significant military infrastructure; who have no interest in constitutional democracy, and who 'work with' powers like China and Iran, and with a population who 'blame the west' for the second disintegration of the former Russian State and the chaos and poverty that ensues.
I've got no real embarrassment about looking at the situation and concluding that there may just be some merit in 'clinging to nurse'. We need to remember what happened in Iraq with Saddam Hussein or Gaddafi in Libya.
So what is your actual policy proposal ? That we force Ukraine to accept Russian territorial seizures, and just live with the enormous damage they have wreaked ?
All those complaining that those backing Ukraine 'have no endgame' don't seem to have any problem with their own equally uncertain, and far less justified position.
From all I have seen and read, I would go with the long term position of the west towards Russia as the 'least worst/only viable option' - IE Putin gets an 'off ramp' and there is some kind of 'deal' that secures the independence and sovereignty of Ukraine within the EU orbit, as well as the independence of Russia in relation to China, and some restoration of trade with Russia.
This puts me in a total minority and will evoke many Hitler comparisons but it is a product of doing my best to think objectively about the situation, despite initially being in the 'beat back Russia' camp at the start of the campaign.
If you want to just 'embrace chaos' then you should reflect on what happened in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya or indeed in the Soviet union in the early 1990s which ultimately led to the arrival of Putin on the scene. You are taking a massive risk. If it works it will be because you were lucky.
You're not addressing the arguments, just a phrase.
As I've pointed out, Applebaum isn't arguing that we depose Putin, or even seek to encourage such a thing. She saying, and I agree with her, that Putin's survival or otherwise simply isn't in our gift. The consequences of a defeat of his invasion are something Russia will decide.
If you're arguing that the west should treat a defeated Russia with a degree of magnanimity, then I wouldn't disagree. But what are you actually arguing for, rather than against ?
@Nigelb The manner of his 'defeat', if this is to occur (which is not certain) will impact on whether his regime 'survives' or not. So I would disagree with Applebaums characterisation of the situation, in this respect.
I am cautioning against the rhetoric of 'beating back Putin' to the point where the regime collapses. This is taking unnecessary risks of nuclear escalation, and/or a failed state. This is my objection to the 'embrace the chaos' thinking going on.
In the end, it is the west who are determining the outcome of the war in Ukraine because the hard reality is without western aid Ukraine would not be succeeding. They are doing a great job and I support them, but they turned things round by persuading the west to back them significantly.
I don't think we can meddle with succession and agree with Applebaum on that point. There is a succession problem already with Putin's regime, which will apply irrespective of what happens because of Putins age/health. However, observing from a long distance, there is a successor in Dmitry Medvedev who was well regarded by European leaders when he was president from 2008-2012.
It may just be a case of better the devil you know.
I don't think the west can finetune the outcome really. Not to the extent of choosing between granular types of Russian defeats. And even if they could I'm not sure how useful it would be since it's highly uncertain how Putin will react and how others in Russia will react to Putin's reaction.
This. It's a delusion to think that we can meaningfully influence internal Russian politics, except to the extent that we defend our interests and values and reward them for moves towards better international behaviour.
Russians are responsible for Russian choices. Not the West. The West is responsible for our reactions to those choices, and in this instance that has to be clear that (1) there is no reward for aggression, and, (2) we are not going to meddle in internal Russian affairs.
Yes the 'aggression brings no gain' outcome is imo the key here. I've never really looked at this as a war. For me it presents more accurately as a crime with a perp and a victim.
What I wouldn't want to see, however, is bellicosity of the "right, we'll teach these Russian bastards" sort. Fact is, if Putin ends up gaining little or nothing having gone all-in on this "operation" that is in practice a terrible defeat.
So let's get there and then see what happens.
Gaining little or nothing isn't enough. They need to pay reparations to Ukraine for their crime too.
For this war to end three things need to happen.
1: Russia needs to be expelled from all of Crimea, the Donbas and other territory it is occupying. 2: Russia needs to agree compensation to Ukraine for the damages it has inflicted. 3: Russia needs to sign a peace treaty recognising all of Ukraine, including Crimea and Donbas, as Ukrainian.
We'll see. I do, however, sense you straying into the sort of bellicosity I specifically said I didn't want to see. But if all of that remains on internet forums rather than in decision rooms I guess it's ok.
Perhaps it is worth thinking why you think that asking a county invading another country to completely stop invading another country and go back to the status quo ante is bellicose?
It isn't and I didn't say it was. I can spot bellicosity. Eg an earlier contribution from that particular poster - "we'll let them keep Moscow" - is the sort of thing I mean.
No, they can't keep Moscow. I'm taking that.
But you know what I mean. The tone. It's understandable, because this was and is an outrage from Putin (and therefore Russia), and so a brutal revenge rears its head, and like I say - ok on the internet but I'd hope decisions in the west (all of this assuming Russia truly is in permanent retreat now) aren't driven by that.
No, I don't know what you mean. How is it bellicose.
Moscow is their territory, in the past when countries lost wars their territory was often divided by the winners of the war - eg see what happened to Berlin post-war.
To be saying that the Russians can keep Moscow is the opposite of bellicose, it is bloody generous under the circumstances.
Man on the internet says he's being generous to allow the Russians to keep Moscow.
Just listen to yourself.
You have a problem with people on the internet having opinions?
Yes Russia keeping Moscow is extremely generous. You objecting to that makes me think maybe we should have Ukraine annex some Russian territory once all this is over to help secure the peace.
What do you think Russia's price should be for starting and losing a war of aggression?
Would be hilarious if the Ukrainians took the entire Black Sea Coast including Rostov.
Morally wrong and illegal, but hilarious.
Would it be illegal? Given they're the defenders in this was not the aggressor state.
If that's in the peace treaty it could be morally right and legal, but I don't expect it as people are still far too generous to Russia.
I don’t think it would be illegal to invade Russia under these circumstances but it would be illegal to annex part of it, aggressor or no.
Exhibit A - the West Bank.
It wouldn't be illegal, if the peace treaty recognised it.
Israel has legally expanded beyond its original borders and signed peace treaties now with some of its neighbours recognising that, even if the West Bank/Gaza strip issues aren't resolved yet.
If Russia loses, all the people on Left and Right in the West that demanded a "compromise" that "accepts Russia's legitimate interests" will shift to accusing the West of having sucked Putin into a deliberate trap to crush Moscow
None of these people will rethink their positions
Prediction: this will also be the position of the Putin regime, or whatever more extreme despotism succeeds it, and that of most of the Russian population along with it. They think they're entitled to conquer and subjugate their neighbours at will, and when the plan goes wrong it's the fault of everyone but themselves. They're irredeemable.
Even if the Putin regime falls and is replaced by a more hard line government, that government is unlikely to last very long.
There is a growing sense of collapse on the Russian side. Rumours of an army mutiny are growing, and the reports that Kadyrov is sending forces "to support" the regime (not clear where but even, possibly, Moscow) suggests we may, just possibly, already be in some kind of end game. It appears that Kherson may fall even as early as this week, and the collapse of Russian forces in the Donbas seems to be accelerating, with UAF units getting close to Luhansk. Putin is said to be in Sochi, but as with the Czar in Pskov, that is no guarantee that he is safer there than in the capital.
Any new regime in Russia will need to deal with significant internal headwinds, and not least the Kadyrovtsi. The renewal of the Azerbaijani assault on Armenia is also yet another sign that the authority of Putin is draining away.
Personally, those who told me that, irrespective of morality or our own fundamental interests, the West should come to terms with Putin, now look more than just "wrong". The Baltic and Poland have been warning about Putin for 20 years. They were right and now the views of the front line states should count for a lot more than the discredited position of "compromise" with the rapist regime. Putin is likely to fall eventually, and that is a good thing, because irrespective of the short term, Russia has to change and it can not change with him still in the Kremlin. "Clinging hold of nurse, for fear of getting something worse" is the perennial mistake of Western statecraft when dealing with Moscow and it fails every time.
For many people in countries that border Russia, the top pressing interest is in 'removing the threat', and this can be achieved through the 'defeat of Russia', even though that means 'embracing the chaos' that follows.
But the end game of what you are describing is the disintegration of Russia in to multiple statelets, run by a collection of warlords and dubious 'businessmen'; who inherit collections of nuclear weapons and other significant military infrastructure; who have no interest in constitutional democracy, and who 'work with' powers like China and Iran, and with a population who 'blame the west' for the second disintegration of the former Russian State and the chaos and poverty that ensues.
I've got no real embarrassment about looking at the situation and concluding that there may just be some merit in 'clinging to nurse'. We need to remember what happened in Iraq with Saddam Hussein or Gaddafi in Libya.
So what is your actual policy proposal ? That we force Ukraine to accept Russian territorial seizures, and just live with the enormous damage they have wreaked ?
All those complaining that those backing Ukraine 'have no endgame' don't seem to have any problem with their own equally uncertain, and far less justified position.
From all I have seen and read, I would go with the long term position of the west towards Russia as the 'least worst/only viable option' - IE Putin gets an 'off ramp' and there is some kind of 'deal' that secures the independence and sovereignty of Ukraine within the EU orbit, as well as the independence of Russia in relation to China, and some restoration of trade with Russia.
This puts me in a total minority and will evoke many Hitler comparisons but it is a product of doing my best to think objectively about the situation, despite initially being in the 'beat back Russia' camp at the start of the campaign.
If you want to just 'embrace chaos' then you should reflect on what happened in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya or indeed in the Soviet union in the early 1990s which ultimately led to the arrival of Putin on the scene. You are taking a massive risk. If it works it will be because you were lucky.
You're not addressing the arguments, just a phrase.
As I've pointed out, Applebaum isn't arguing that we depose Putin, or even seek to encourage such a thing. She saying, and I agree with her, that Putin's survival or otherwise simply isn't in our gift. The consequences of a defeat of his invasion are something Russia will decide.
If you're arguing that the west should treat a defeated Russia with a degree of magnanimity, then I wouldn't disagree. But what are you actually arguing for, rather than against ?
@Nigelb The manner of his 'defeat', if this is to occur (which is not certain) will impact on whether his regime 'survives' or not. So I would disagree with Applebaums characterisation of the situation, in this respect.
I am cautioning against the rhetoric of 'beating back Putin' to the point where the regime collapses. This is taking unnecessary risks of nuclear escalation, and/or a failed state. This is my objection to the 'embrace the chaos' thinking going on.
In the end, it is the west who are determining the outcome of the war in Ukraine because the hard reality is without western aid Ukraine would not be succeeding. They are doing a great job and I support them, but they turned things round by persuading the west to back them significantly.
I don't think we can meddle with succession and agree with Applebaum on that point. There is a succession problem already with Putin's regime, which will apply irrespective of what happens because of Putins age/health. However, observing from a long distance, there is a successor in Dmitry Medvedev who was well regarded by European leaders when he was president from 2008-2012.
It may just be a case of better the devil you know.
I don't think the west can finetune the outcome really. Not to the extent of choosing between granular types of Russian defeats. And even if they could I'm not sure how useful it would be since it's highly uncertain how Putin will react and how others in Russia will react to Putin's reaction.
This. It's a delusion to think that we can meaningfully influence internal Russian politics, except to the extent that we defend our interests and values and reward them for moves towards better international behaviour.
Russians are responsible for Russian choices. Not the West. The West is responsible for our reactions to those choices, and in this instance that has to be clear that (1) there is no reward for aggression, and, (2) we are not going to meddle in internal Russian affairs.
Yes the 'aggression brings no gain' outcome is imo the key here. I've never really looked at this as a war. For me it presents more accurately as a crime with a perp and a victim.
What I wouldn't want to see, however, is bellicosity of the "right, we'll teach these Russian bastards" sort. Fact is, if Putin ends up gaining little or nothing having gone all-in on this "operation" that is in practice a terrible defeat.
So let's get there and then see what happens.
Gaining little or nothing isn't enough. They need to pay reparations to Ukraine for their crime too.
For this war to end three things need to happen.
1: Russia needs to be expelled from all of Crimea, the Donbas and other territory it is occupying. 2: Russia needs to agree compensation to Ukraine for the damages it has inflicted. 3: Russia needs to sign a peace treaty recognising all of Ukraine, including Crimea and Donbas, as Ukrainian.
We'll see. I do, however, sense you straying into the sort of bellicosity I specifically said I didn't want to see. But if all of that remains on internet forums rather than in decision rooms I guess it's ok.
Perhaps it is worth thinking why you think that asking a county invading another country to completely stop invading another country and go back to the status quo ante is bellicose?
It isn't and I didn't say it was. I can spot bellicosity. Eg an earlier contribution from that particular poster - "we'll let them keep Moscow" - is the sort of thing I mean.
No, they can't keep Moscow. I'm taking that.
But you know what I mean. The tone. It's understandable, because this was and is an outrage from Putin (and therefore Russia), and so a brutal revenge rears its head, and like I say - ok on the internet but I'd hope decisions in the west (all of this assuming Russia truly is in permanent retreat now) aren't driven by that.
No, I don't know what you mean. How is it bellicose.
Moscow is their territory, in the past when countries lost wars their territory was often divided by the winners of the war - eg see what happened to Berlin post-war.
To be saying that the Russians can keep Moscow is the opposite of bellicose, it is bloody generous under the circumstances.
Man on the internet says he's being generous to allow the Russians to keep Moscow.
Just listen to yourself.
You have a problem with people on the internet having opinions?
Yes Russia keeping Moscow is extremely generous. You objecting to that makes me think maybe we should have Ukraine annex some Russian territory once all this is over to help secure the peace.
What do you think Russia's price should be for starting and losing a war of aggression?
Would be hilarious if the Ukrainians took the entire Black Sea Coast including Rostov.
Morally wrong and illegal, but hilarious.
Would it be illegal? Given they're the defenders in this was not the aggressor state.
If that's in the peace treaty it could be morally right and legal, but I don't expect it as people are still far too generous to Russia.
I don’t think it would be illegal to invade Russia under these circumstances but it would be illegal to annex part of it, aggressor or no.
Exhibit A - the West Bank.
There were mutterimgs on twitter earlier in the week Putin was mulling a full declaration of war. That would justify invasion of Russia to force an end.
Germany gets trenchant and justified criticism, but France's effort is truly pathetic
I don't know, it's a bit weird. The French have given some self-propelled howitzers that are well-regarded by the Ukrainians, and ATGMs. On the basis of the publicity I would have thought that they'd given a comparable amount of support as Germany.
Maybe it's just that there's no politicians pushing Macron to give more, while in Germany the Greens in the coalition are much keener one providing support, so you have this conflict on providing support out in the open.
If Russia loses, all the people on Left and Right in the West that demanded a "compromise" that "accepts Russia's legitimate interests" will shift to accusing the West of having sucked Putin into a deliberate trap to crush Moscow
None of these people will rethink their positions
Prediction: this will also be the position of the Putin regime, or whatever more extreme despotism succeeds it, and that of most of the Russian population along with it. They think they're entitled to conquer and subjugate their neighbours at will, and when the plan goes wrong it's the fault of everyone but themselves. They're irredeemable.
Even if the Putin regime falls and is replaced by a more hard line government, that government is unlikely to last very long.
There is a growing sense of collapse on the Russian side. Rumours of an army mutiny are growing, and the reports that Kadyrov is sending forces "to support" the regime (not clear where but even, possibly, Moscow) suggests we may, just possibly, already be in some kind of end game. It appears that Kherson may fall even as early as this week, and the collapse of Russian forces in the Donbas seems to be accelerating, with UAF units getting close to Luhansk. Putin is said to be in Sochi, but as with the Czar in Pskov, that is no guarantee that he is safer there than in the capital.
Any new regime in Russia will need to deal with significant internal headwinds, and not least the Kadyrovtsi. The renewal of the Azerbaijani assault on Armenia is also yet another sign that the authority of Putin is draining away.
Personally, those who told me that, irrespective of morality or our own fundamental interests, the West should come to terms with Putin, now look more than just "wrong". The Baltic and Poland have been warning about Putin for 20 years. They were right and now the views of the front line states should count for a lot more than the discredited position of "compromise" with the rapist regime. Putin is likely to fall eventually, and that is a good thing, because irrespective of the short term, Russia has to change and it can not change with him still in the Kremlin. "Clinging hold of nurse, for fear of getting something worse" is the perennial mistake of Western statecraft when dealing with Moscow and it fails every time.
For many people in countries that border Russia, the top pressing interest is in 'removing the threat', and this can be achieved through the 'defeat of Russia', even though that means 'embracing the chaos' that follows.
But the end game of what you are describing is the disintegration of Russia in to multiple statelets, run by a collection of warlords and dubious 'businessmen'; who inherit collections of nuclear weapons and other significant military infrastructure; who have no interest in constitutional democracy, and who 'work with' powers like China and Iran, and with a population who 'blame the west' for the second disintegration of the former Russian State and the chaos and poverty that ensues.
I've got no real embarrassment about looking at the situation and concluding that there may just be some merit in 'clinging to nurse'. We need to remember what happened in Iraq with Saddam Hussein or Gaddafi in Libya.
So what is your actual policy proposal ? That we force Ukraine to accept Russian territorial seizures, and just live with the enormous damage they have wreaked ?
All those complaining that those backing Ukraine 'have no endgame' don't seem to have any problem with their own equally uncertain, and far less justified position.
From all I have seen and read, I would go with the long term position of the west towards Russia as the 'least worst/only viable option' - IE Putin gets an 'off ramp' and there is some kind of 'deal' that secures the independence and sovereignty of Ukraine within the EU orbit, as well as the independence of Russia in relation to China, and some restoration of trade with Russia.
This puts me in a total minority and will evoke many Hitler comparisons but it is a product of doing my best to think objectively about the situation, despite initially being in the 'beat back Russia' camp at the start of the campaign.
If you want to just 'embrace chaos' then you should reflect on what happened in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya or indeed in the Soviet union in the early 1990s which ultimately led to the arrival of Putin on the scene. You are taking a massive risk. If it works it will be because you were lucky.
You're not addressing the arguments, just a phrase.
As I've pointed out, Applebaum isn't arguing that we depose Putin, or even seek to encourage such a thing. She saying, and I agree with her, that Putin's survival or otherwise simply isn't in our gift. The consequences of a defeat of his invasion are something Russia will decide.
If you're arguing that the west should treat a defeated Russia with a degree of magnanimity, then I wouldn't disagree. But what are you actually arguing for, rather than against ?
@Nigelb The manner of his 'defeat', if this is to occur (which is not certain) will impact on whether his regime 'survives' or not. So I would disagree with Applebaums characterisation of the situation, in this respect.
I am cautioning against the rhetoric of 'beating back Putin' to the point where the regime collapses. This is taking unnecessary risks of nuclear escalation, and/or a failed state. This is my objection to the 'embrace the chaos' thinking going on.
In the end, it is the west who are determining the outcome of the war in Ukraine because the hard reality is without western aid Ukraine would not be succeeding. They are doing a great job and I support them, but they turned things round by persuading the west to back them significantly.
I don't think we can meddle with succession and agree with Applebaum on that point. There is a succession problem already with Putin's regime, which will apply irrespective of what happens because of Putins age/health. However, observing from a long distance, there is a successor in Dmitry Medvedev who was well regarded by European leaders when he was president from 2008-2012.
It may just be a case of better the devil you know.
I don't think the west can finetune the outcome really. Not to the extent of choosing between granular types of Russian defeats. And even if they could I'm not sure how useful it would be since it's highly uncertain how Putin will react and how others in Russia will react to Putin's reaction.
Precisely. Worrying about the potential outcomes is fine, but its not going to be as predictable or controllable as everyone would like.
If Russia loses, all the people on Left and Right in the West that demanded a "compromise" that "accepts Russia's legitimate interests" will shift to accusing the West of having sucked Putin into a deliberate trap to crush Moscow
None of these people will rethink their positions
Prediction: this will also be the position of the Putin regime, or whatever more extreme despotism succeeds it, and that of most of the Russian population along with it. They think they're entitled to conquer and subjugate their neighbours at will, and when the plan goes wrong it's the fault of everyone but themselves. They're irredeemable.
Even if the Putin regime falls and is replaced by a more hard line government, that government is unlikely to last very long.
There is a growing sense of collapse on the Russian side. Rumours of an army mutiny are growing, and the reports that Kadyrov is sending forces "to support" the regime (not clear where but even, possibly, Moscow) suggests we may, just possibly, already be in some kind of end game. It appears that Kherson may fall even as early as this week, and the collapse of Russian forces in the Donbas seems to be accelerating, with UAF units getting close to Luhansk. Putin is said to be in Sochi, but as with the Czar in Pskov, that is no guarantee that he is safer there than in the capital.
Any new regime in Russia will need to deal with significant internal headwinds, and not least the Kadyrovtsi. The renewal of the Azerbaijani assault on Armenia is also yet another sign that the authority of Putin is draining away.
Personally, those who told me that, irrespective of morality or our own fundamental interests, the West should come to terms with Putin, now look more than just "wrong". The Baltic and Poland have been warning about Putin for 20 years. They were right and now the views of the front line states should count for a lot more than the discredited position of "compromise" with the rapist regime. Putin is likely to fall eventually, and that is a good thing, because irrespective of the short term, Russia has to change and it can not change with him still in the Kremlin. "Clinging hold of nurse, for fear of getting something worse" is the perennial mistake of Western statecraft when dealing with Moscow and it fails every time.
For many people in countries that border Russia, the top pressing interest is in 'removing the threat', and this can be achieved through the 'defeat of Russia', even though that means 'embracing the chaos' that follows.
But the end game of what you are describing is the disintegration of Russia in to multiple statelets, run by a collection of warlords and dubious 'businessmen'; who inherit collections of nuclear weapons and other significant military infrastructure; who have no interest in constitutional democracy, and who 'work with' powers like China and Iran, and with a population who 'blame the west' for the second disintegration of the former Russian State and the chaos and poverty that ensues.
I've got no real embarrassment about looking at the situation and concluding that there may just be some merit in 'clinging to nurse'. We need to remember what happened in Iraq with Saddam Hussein or Gaddafi in Libya.
So what is your actual policy proposal ? That we force Ukraine to accept Russian territorial seizures, and just live with the enormous damage they have wreaked ?
All those complaining that those backing Ukraine 'have no endgame' don't seem to have any problem with their own equally uncertain, and far less justified position.
From all I have seen and read, I would go with the long term position of the west towards Russia as the 'least worst/only viable option' - IE Putin gets an 'off ramp' and there is some kind of 'deal' that secures the independence and sovereignty of Ukraine within the EU orbit, as well as the independence of Russia in relation to China, and some restoration of trade with Russia.
This puts me in a total minority and will evoke many Hitler comparisons but it is a product of doing my best to think objectively about the situation, despite initially being in the 'beat back Russia' camp at the start of the campaign.
If you want to just 'embrace chaos' then you should reflect on what happened in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya or indeed in the Soviet union in the early 1990s which ultimately led to the arrival of Putin on the scene. You are taking a massive risk. If it works it will be because you were lucky.
You're not addressing the arguments, just a phrase.
As I've pointed out, Applebaum isn't arguing that we depose Putin, or even seek to encourage such a thing. She saying, and I agree with her, that Putin's survival or otherwise simply isn't in our gift. The consequences of a defeat of his invasion are something Russia will decide.
If you're arguing that the west should treat a defeated Russia with a degree of magnanimity, then I wouldn't disagree. But what are you actually arguing for, rather than against ?
@Nigelb The manner of his 'defeat', if this is to occur (which is not certain) will impact on whether his regime 'survives' or not. So I would disagree with Applebaums characterisation of the situation, in this respect.
I am cautioning against the rhetoric of 'beating back Putin' to the point where the regime collapses. This is taking unnecessary risks of nuclear escalation, and/or a failed state. This is my objection to the 'embrace the chaos' thinking going on.
In the end, it is the west who are determining the outcome of the war in Ukraine because the hard reality is without western aid Ukraine would not be succeeding. They are doing a great job and I support them, but they turned things round by persuading the west to back them significantly.
I don't think we can meddle with succession and agree with Applebaum on that point. There is a succession problem already with Putin's regime, which will apply irrespective of what happens because of Putins age/health. However, observing from a long distance, there is a successor in Dmitry Medvedev who was well regarded by European leaders when he was president from 2008-2012.
It may just be a case of better the devil you know.
I don't think the west can finetune the outcome really. Not to the extent of choosing between granular types of Russian defeats. And even if they could I'm not sure how useful it would be since it's highly uncertain how Putin will react and how others in Russia will react to Putin's reaction.
This. It's a delusion to think that we can meaningfully influence internal Russian politics, except to the extent that we defend our interests and values and reward them for moves towards better international behaviour.
Russians are responsible for Russian choices. Not the West. The West is responsible for our reactions to those choices, and in this instance that has to be clear that (1) there is no reward for aggression, and, (2) we are not going to meddle in internal Russian affairs.
Yes the 'aggression brings no gain' outcome is imo the key here. I've never really looked at this as a war. For me it presents more accurately as a crime with a perp and a victim.
What I wouldn't want to see, however, is bellicosity of the "right, we'll teach these Russian bastards" sort. Fact is, if Putin ends up gaining little or nothing having gone all-in on this "operation" that is in practice a terrible defeat.
So let's get there and then see what happens.
Gaining little or nothing isn't enough. They need to pay reparations to Ukraine for their crime too.
For this war to end three things need to happen.
1: Russia needs to be expelled from all of Crimea, the Donbas and other territory it is occupying. 2: Russia needs to agree compensation to Ukraine for the damages it has inflicted. 3: Russia needs to sign a peace treaty recognising all of Ukraine, including Crimea and Donbas, as Ukrainian.
We'll see. I do, however, sense you straying into the sort of bellicosity I specifically said I didn't want to see. But if all of that remains on internet forums rather than in decision rooms I guess it's ok.
Perhaps it is worth thinking why you think that asking a county invading another country to completely stop invading another country and go back to the status quo ante is bellicose?
It isn't and I didn't say it was. I can spot bellicosity. Eg an earlier contribution from that particular poster - "we'll let them keep Moscow" - is the sort of thing I mean.
No, they can't keep Moscow. I'm taking that.
But you know what I mean. The tone. It's understandable, because this was and is an outrage from Putin (and therefore Russia), and so a brutal revenge rears its head, and like I say - ok on the internet but I'd hope decisions in the west (all of this assuming Russia truly is in permanent retreat now) aren't driven by that.
No, I don't know what you mean. How is it bellicose.
Moscow is their territory, in the past when countries lost wars their territory was often divided by the winners of the war - eg see what happened to Berlin post-war.
To be saying that the Russians can keep Moscow is the opposite of bellicose, it is bloody generous under the circumstances.
Man on the internet says he's being generous to allow the Russians to keep Moscow.
Just listen to yourself.
You have a problem with people on the internet having opinions?
Yes Russia keeping Moscow is extremely generous. You objecting to that makes me think maybe we should have Ukraine annex some Russian territory once all this is over to help secure the peace.
What do you think Russia's price should be for starting and losing a war of aggression?
Would be hilarious if the Ukrainians took the entire Black Sea Coast including Rostov.
Morally wrong and illegal, but hilarious.
Would it be illegal? Given they're the defenders in this was not the aggressor state.
If that's in the peace treaty it could be morally right and legal, but I don't expect it as people are still far too generous to Russia.
I don’t think it would be illegal to invade Russia under these circumstances but it would be illegal to annex part of it, aggressor or no.
Exhibit A - the West Bank.
While we're on about that sort of thing, I (and note that this is random man on internet, not anyone with any sort of responsibility for anything) can't help trying to manufacture a scenario where Kaliningrad is no longer part of Russia. Because it's so annoyingly untidy. Perhaps Ukraine could insist that Kaliningrad is given to Poland as reparation for all the support Poland has had to give to Ukraine?
Totally off topic, but younger son, who is trying to return from an exhibition in Amsterdam, has done so by sea because of the massive queues at security at the airport! So it's not just Heathrow! So he's now on his way to Heathrow to fly back home to Bangkok. Wonder what the situation will be when he gets to Heathrow.
I do keep hearing about air travel chaos. I'm meant to be starting serious foreign travel again, after a long break, and it's not encouraging me. Maybe best to just stay put for now.
I’ve gone through LGW without incident several times now….
Think I'm just looking for excuses - got used to staying still and the world revolving around me rather than the other way around.
Don’t.
Someone I know got used to doing absolutely nothing and seeing no one during covid. Like a hermit
Even when covid ended she maintained this new monastic isolation. She went from being sociable and active and keen on travel, to inertia, isolation, staying-at-home
Recently this person was diagnosed with a terminal illness and was given a few short months to live, at most. And she is now UNABLE to travel. Much as she might want to
She now bitterly regrets the ~3 years spent in self imposed confinement and it wasn’t even Covid that got her, in the end
You’re in your 60s. You can still see the world. Do it before you no longer can
Well it's not a Covid thing and, like I say, I have travelled a lot previously.
But, yes, there are some trips I'd like to do and if I don't do them through inertia that wouldn't be great.
This opens the door for a lament. I'm 47. I have recently become rather more acutely aware of the finity of my remaining years. What's brought this about is looking at OS maps. I've walked a lot in Britain, but there's so much more I haven't done than I have, and it seems rather too much to achieve in my remaining years of fitness. I get maybe three, four days to myself, free of parental responsibility each year. Obviously that will grow as the kids get older, but I'll be 59 by the time my youngest is 18. I long for the freedom I could have had in my 20s before kids came along. I should have been so much more focused on what I wanted to do, and done it myself. I should have spent several long weekends a year in the Highlands of Scotland reaching the inaccessible places. I should have walked up every Wainwright. I should have cycled the whole of the North of England, the whole of Ireland. I should never, ever have replied to the question 'do anything this weekend' with 'oh, not much.'
I've never felt the need (or indeed had the budget) to go everywhere in the world. If I die without seeing Rome or Ljubljana or Australia or South America, well, shrug, you can't do everything. If I never dive or bungee jump, well, so be it. But there are things I really did want to do, but they never seemed pressing, and now I'm married with kids I may never get the chance.
If you are young, care not what plans your friends or girlfriends make: if there are things you want to do, do them. You will never have more time and energy than you do now.
That's a very nice post - and I do know what you mean - but tbh I'm not 100% with the governing sentiment.
When I die it won't be all the things I didn't do that prey on my mind. It'll more be certain things I did do that I wish I hadn't.
Germany gets trenchant and justified criticism, but France's effort is truly pathetic
France, Germany et al look a bit better (but not that much better) if you add in EU military aid. As far as I can see these data cover bilateral aid only.
Totally off topic, but younger son, who is trying to return from an exhibition in Amsterdam, has done so by sea because of the massive queues at security at the airport! So it's not just Heathrow! So he's now on his way to Heathrow to fly back home to Bangkok. Wonder what the situation will be when he gets to Heathrow.
I do keep hearing about air travel chaos. I'm meant to be starting serious foreign travel again, after a long break, and it's not encouraging me. Maybe best to just stay put for now.
I’ve gone through LGW without incident several times now….
Think I'm just looking for excuses - got used to staying still and the world revolving around me rather than the other way around.
Don’t.
Someone I know got used to doing absolutely nothing and seeing no one during covid. Like a hermit
Even when covid ended she maintained this new monastic isolation. She went from being sociable and active and keen on travel, to inertia, isolation, staying-at-home
Recently this person was diagnosed with a terminal illness and was given a few short months to live, at most. And she is now UNABLE to travel. Much as she might want to
She now bitterly regrets the ~3 years spent in self imposed confinement and it wasn’t even Covid that got her, in the end
You’re in your 60s. You can still see the world. Do it before you no longer can
Well it's not a Covid thing and, like I say, I have travelled a lot previously.
But, yes, there are some trips I'd like to do and if I don't do them through inertia that wouldn't be great.
This opens the door for a lament. I'm 47. I have recently become rather more acutely aware of the finity of my remaining years. What's brought this about is looking at OS maps. I've walked a lot in Britain, but there's so much more I haven't done than I have, and it seems rather too much to achieve in my remaining years of fitness. I get maybe three, four days to myself, free of parental responsibility each year. Obviously that will grow as the kids get older, but I'll be 59 by the time my youngest is 18. I long for the freedom I could have had in my 20s before kids came along. I should have been so much more focused on what I wanted to do, and done it myself. I should have spent several long weekends a year in the Highlands of Scotland reaching the inaccessible places. I should have walked up every Wainwright. I should have cycled the whole of the North of England, the whole of Ireland. I should never, ever have replied to the question 'do anything this weekend' with 'oh, not much.'
I've never felt the need (or indeed had the budget) to go everywhere in the world. If I die without seeing Rome or Ljubljana or Australia or South America, well, shrug, you can't do everything. If I never dive or bungee jump, well, so be it. But there are things I really did want to do, but they never seemed pressing, and now I'm married with kids I may never get the chance.
If you are young, care not what plans your friends or girlfriends make: if there are things you want to do, do them. You will never have more time and energy than you do now.
That's a very nice post - and I do know what you mean - but tbh I'm not 100% with the governing sentiment.
When I die it won't be all the things I didnt do that prey on my mind. It'll more be certain things I did do that I wish I hadn't.
My gravestone will say "I wish I had spent more time on PB.com".
One man was arrested for simply saying "who elected him?" loudly. Another forcibly moved on from a public place for an inoffensive placard. How on Earth do the police have such powers in this country? Free speech is so flimsy in the UK.
Totally off topic, but younger son, who is trying to return from an exhibition in Amsterdam, has done so by sea because of the massive queues at security at the airport! So it's not just Heathrow! So he's now on his way to Heathrow to fly back home to Bangkok. Wonder what the situation will be when he gets to Heathrow.
I do keep hearing about air travel chaos. I'm meant to be starting serious foreign travel again, after a long break, and it's not encouraging me. Maybe best to just stay put for now.
I’ve gone through LGW without incident several times now….
Think I'm just looking for excuses - got used to staying still and the world revolving around me rather than the other way around.
Don’t.
Someone I know got used to doing absolutely nothing and seeing no one during covid. Like a hermit
Even when covid ended she maintained this new monastic isolation. She went from being sociable and active and keen on travel, to inertia, isolation, staying-at-home
Recently this person was diagnosed with a terminal illness and was given a few short months to live, at most. And she is now UNABLE to travel. Much as she might want to
She now bitterly regrets the ~3 years spent in self imposed confinement and it wasn’t even Covid that got her, in the end
You’re in your 60s. You can still see the world. Do it before you no longer can
Well it's not a Covid thing and, like I say, I have travelled a lot previously.
But, yes, there are some trips I'd like to do and if I don't do them through inertia that wouldn't be great.
This opens the door for a lament. I'm 47. I have recently become rather more acutely aware of the finity of my remaining years. What's brought this about is looking at OS maps. I've walked a lot in Britain, but there's so much more I haven't done than I have, and it seems rather too much to achieve in my remaining years of fitness. I get maybe three, four days to myself, free of parental responsibility each year. Obviously that will grow as the kids get older, but I'll be 59 by the time my youngest is 18. I long for the freedom I could have had in my 20s before kids came along. I should have been so much more focused on what I wanted to do, and done it myself. I should have spent several long weekends a year in the Highlands of Scotland reaching the inaccessible places. I should have walked up every Wainwright. I should have cycled the whole of the North of England, the whole of Ireland. I should never, ever have replied to the question 'do anything this weekend' with 'oh, not much.'
I've never felt the need (or indeed had the budget) to go everywhere in the world. If I die without seeing Rome or Ljubljana or Australia or South America, well, shrug, you can't do everything. If I never dive or bungee jump, well, so be it. But there are things I really did want to do, but they never seemed pressing, and now I'm married with kids I may never get the chance.
If you are young, care not what plans your friends or girlfriends make: if there are things you want to do, do them. You will never have more time and energy than you do now.
It is, always, later than you think
Gotta say you are missing a bit of the wider world
Rome is tremendous, a top ten must-see city (but avoid the summer)
Ljubljana you can skip. Pleasant but unexceptional
Australia is absolutely essential for its insane fauna. Everything else, the Barrier Reef, the Kimberley Coast, the endless Outback, the Queensland rainforests, the glorious Northern Territory, even Uluru, you can sort of find somewhere else, in some form
But NOTHING is like your first glimpse of a real live kangaroo in the wild. Under the gum trees. Staring at you. And then there's the wombats, koalas, wallabies, dingos, quolls, bilbys. pademelons, sugar gliders. platypi and the Ruffous Bettong. It is the nearest you can get to a different planet but equally as full of life
If you possibly can, go to Australia at least once and see a tree kangaroo fall out of a eucalypt
I mean, I have left the UK. I've been to a few of the world's big must see places, like Paris and New York. And if the weekend after next you plonked me in Rome I'm sure I'd have a very lovely time. But it is the experiences in these islands my heart yearns for - I think because I might so easily have done them when I had the time.
I might yet get to Australia. My sister-in-law's partner is Australian; they have a small baby, and are thinking of moving there. They are assuming we will visit regularly. And I'd very much like to see a kangaroo and all the other fellas. But, what, £10,000 and 24 hours travelling to get a family of five to Australia? Realistically we can only do it once, if at all. Whereas the Cuillins? You can get there with a tankful of petrol. I ought to have done that already. Why haven't I? So many years of fitting in with other people's plans when I might have made my own.
I hear you. On the other hand, you have almost certainly been an infinitely better father than me. My kids tell me they've forgiven me for being Not There so much, but I feel a fair amount of guilt, and I am sure I have done them harm. And yet I have seen the world in my selfishness (and my job, to be fair)
Something has to give, doesn't it?
However, your despair is foolish. You say you'll be done parenting at 59 - well 59 is nothing. I'm in my late 50s and just spent 3 months doing non stop travel from America to Armenia and back. And it was brilliant
Vow to yourself that you will do all this when you are 59, and do it
And don't spend £10k taking the entire family to Oz, it's really not worth it. You need to see it alone, or at most in a couple, so you can really get out there to the remote places. Remoteness is the point of Oz. The Atherton Tablelands! Kakadu! Coober Pedy! Arnhemland!
I have been fortunate to have a personal situation whereby I can do a lot of travelling by myself ; I've been up to Scotland a couple of times and also across northern Europe on various self indulgent train rides.
What I realised is something that I knew already from my backpacking in South East Asia two decades ago, even though there are some quite good memories, It all becomes pretty pointless and mundane very quickly.
I only get some kind of meaning and purpose and enjoyment out of life where I am helping other people in some way, this is not really achieved through travelling somewhere by myself.
NOTE - This is just my own 'lived experience'/ opinion, I'm not commenting on other people.
The key to travelling alone is
1. Get out and meet people wherever you go. That's a huge joy, and you can only really do it if you are alone. Never turn down an invite for a drink/meal/chat. It is amazing what adventures you will have
2. On top of that, have a purpose. It is not necessary, if you follow rule 1, but it does help. So make it your aim to go somewhere REALLY mad, or try and see some IMPOSSIBLY rare animal, or explore your family's history in South Sudan, or try a city/region that no else goes to. Detroit. Somewhere in Liberia. Sakhalin. South Wales
If you travel solo to the obvious touristy places then yes, it will soon get mundane. Also, no one will want to offer you that drink/chat/meal, because the locals see tourists all the time and they are bored of them, or just want to exploit them for cash
A carriage of the Royal train, modified especially to carry Queen Elizabeth II’s coffin, lies unused after plans for the nation to turn out to show its respects were scrapped over fears for public safety and disruption.
It's a shame that the railway isn't getting used in all this.
Yes. Having a procession through Scotland then skipping Northern England entirely to go straight to London is not a good look. I am pretty sure the Queen would not have approved.
I would certainly have gone out to stand somewhere by the ECML, but I have zero chance of getting to London.
As I understand it, the problems were
1) Slow moving train that attracts people who may never have been near a train line before. 2) 1) mean that you would have to have staff at every place that the public can approach the track. 3) Inevitably, people would start climbing fences etc 4) Accidents are then certain.
And yet both Churchill and King George VI had funeral trains, albeit not over such a long run.
If railways are too hard to police, then just use the car and follow the old A1.
They covered nearly 200 miles in Scotland - it is only twice that distance from Edinburgh to London.
Random bit of trivia. When Bobby Kennedy's body was taken from New York to DC back in 1968, two onlookers were killed and four injured in an accident in New Jersey.
I guess Stalin’s funeral meats wins the prize for funereal death tolls, anything between 100 to 1000s, in the modern age anyway. Horribly appropriate for the grisly, old bastard.
If Russia loses, all the people on Left and Right in the West that demanded a "compromise" that "accepts Russia's legitimate interests" will shift to accusing the West of having sucked Putin into a deliberate trap to crush Moscow
None of these people will rethink their positions
Prediction: this will also be the position of the Putin regime, or whatever more extreme despotism succeeds it, and that of most of the Russian population along with it. They think they're entitled to conquer and subjugate their neighbours at will, and when the plan goes wrong it's the fault of everyone but themselves. They're irredeemable.
Even if the Putin regime falls and is replaced by a more hard line government, that government is unlikely to last very long.
There is a growing sense of collapse on the Russian side. Rumours of an army mutiny are growing, and the reports that Kadyrov is sending forces "to support" the regime (not clear where but even, possibly, Moscow) suggests we may, just possibly, already be in some kind of end game. It appears that Kherson may fall even as early as this week, and the collapse of Russian forces in the Donbas seems to be accelerating, with UAF units getting close to Luhansk. Putin is said to be in Sochi, but as with the Czar in Pskov, that is no guarantee that he is safer there than in the capital.
Any new regime in Russia will need to deal with significant internal headwinds, and not least the Kadyrovtsi. The renewal of the Azerbaijani assault on Armenia is also yet another sign that the authority of Putin is draining away.
Personally, those who told me that, irrespective of morality or our own fundamental interests, the West should come to terms with Putin, now look more than just "wrong". The Baltic and Poland have been warning about Putin for 20 years. They were right and now the views of the front line states should count for a lot more than the discredited position of "compromise" with the rapist regime. Putin is likely to fall eventually, and that is a good thing, because irrespective of the short term, Russia has to change and it can not change with him still in the Kremlin. "Clinging hold of nurse, for fear of getting something worse" is the perennial mistake of Western statecraft when dealing with Moscow and it fails every time.
For many people in countries that border Russia, the top pressing interest is in 'removing the threat', and this can be achieved through the 'defeat of Russia', even though that means 'embracing the chaos' that follows.
But the end game of what you are describing is the disintegration of Russia in to multiple statelets, run by a collection of warlords and dubious 'businessmen'; who inherit collections of nuclear weapons and other significant military infrastructure; who have no interest in constitutional democracy, and who 'work with' powers like China and Iran, and with a population who 'blame the west' for the second disintegration of the former Russian State and the chaos and poverty that ensues.
I've got no real embarrassment about looking at the situation and concluding that there may just be some merit in 'clinging to nurse'. We need to remember what happened in Iraq with Saddam Hussein or Gaddafi in Libya.
So what is your actual policy proposal ? That we force Ukraine to accept Russian territorial seizures, and just live with the enormous damage they have wreaked ?
All those complaining that those backing Ukraine 'have no endgame' don't seem to have any problem with their own equally uncertain, and far less justified position.
From all I have seen and read, I would go with the long term position of the west towards Russia as the 'least worst/only viable option' - IE Putin gets an 'off ramp' and there is some kind of 'deal' that secures the independence and sovereignty of Ukraine within the EU orbit, as well as the independence of Russia in relation to China, and some restoration of trade with Russia.
This puts me in a total minority and will evoke many Hitler comparisons but it is a product of doing my best to think objectively about the situation, despite initially being in the 'beat back Russia' camp at the start of the campaign.
If you want to just 'embrace chaos' then you should reflect on what happened in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya or indeed in the Soviet union in the early 1990s which ultimately led to the arrival of Putin on the scene. You are taking a massive risk. If it works it will be because you were lucky.
You're not addressing the arguments, just a phrase.
As I've pointed out, Applebaum isn't arguing that we depose Putin, or even seek to encourage such a thing. She saying, and I agree with her, that Putin's survival or otherwise simply isn't in our gift. The consequences of a defeat of his invasion are something Russia will decide.
If you're arguing that the west should treat a defeated Russia with a degree of magnanimity, then I wouldn't disagree. But what are you actually arguing for, rather than against ?
@Nigelb The manner of his 'defeat', if this is to occur (which is not certain) will impact on whether his regime 'survives' or not. So I would disagree with Applebaums characterisation of the situation, in this respect.
I am cautioning against the rhetoric of 'beating back Putin' to the point where the regime collapses. This is taking unnecessary risks of nuclear escalation, and/or a failed state. This is my objection to the 'embrace the chaos' thinking going on.
In the end, it is the west who are determining the outcome of the war in Ukraine because the hard reality is without western aid Ukraine would not be succeeding. They are doing a great job and I support them, but they turned things round by persuading the west to back them significantly.
I don't think we can meddle with succession and agree with Applebaum on that point. There is a succession problem already with Putin's regime, which will apply irrespective of what happens because of Putins age/health. However, observing from a long distance, there is a successor in Dmitry Medvedev who was well regarded by European leaders when he was president from 2008-2012.
It may just be a case of better the devil you know.
I don't think the west can finetune the outcome really. Not to the extent of choosing between granular types of Russian defeats. And even if they could I'm not sure how useful it would be since it's highly uncertain how Putin will react and how others in Russia will react to Putin's reaction.
This. It's a delusion to think that we can meaningfully influence internal Russian politics, except to the extent that we defend our interests and values and reward them for moves towards better international behaviour.
Russians are responsible for Russian choices. Not the West. The West is responsible for our reactions to those choices, and in this instance that has to be clear that (1) there is no reward for aggression, and, (2) we are not going to meddle in internal Russian affairs.
Yes the 'aggression brings no gain' outcome is imo the key here. I've never really looked at this as a war. For me it presents more accurately as a crime with a perp and a victim.
What I wouldn't want to see, however, is bellicosity of the "right, we'll teach these Russian bastards" sort. Fact is, if Putin ends up gaining little or nothing having gone all-in on this "operation" that is in practice a terrible defeat.
So let's get there and then see what happens.
Gaining little or nothing isn't enough. They need to pay reparations to Ukraine for their crime too.
For this war to end three things need to happen.
1: Russia needs to be expelled from all of Crimea, the Donbas and other territory it is occupying. 2: Russia needs to agree compensation to Ukraine for the damages it has inflicted. 3: Russia needs to sign a peace treaty recognising all of Ukraine, including Crimea and Donbas, as Ukrainian.
We'll see. I do, however, sense you straying into the sort of bellicosity I specifically said I didn't want to see. But if all of that remains on internet forums rather than in decision rooms I guess it's ok.
Perhaps it is worth thinking why you think that asking a county invading another country to completely stop invading another country and go back to the status quo ante is bellicose?
It isn't and I didn't say it was. I can spot bellicosity. Eg an earlier contribution from that particular poster - "we'll let them keep Moscow" - is the sort of thing I mean.
No, they can't keep Moscow. I'm taking that.
But you know what I mean. The tone. It's understandable, because this was and is an outrage from Putin (and therefore Russia), and so a brutal revenge rears its head, and like I say - ok on the internet but I'd hope decisions in the west (all of this assuming Russia truly is in permanent retreat now) aren't driven by that.
No, I don't know what you mean. How is it bellicose.
Moscow is their territory, in the past when countries lost wars their territory was often divided by the winners of the war - eg see what happened to Berlin post-war.
To be saying that the Russians can keep Moscow is the opposite of bellicose, it is bloody generous under the circumstances.
If Russia loses, all the people on Left and Right in the West that demanded a "compromise" that "accepts Russia's legitimate interests" will shift to accusing the West of having sucked Putin into a deliberate trap to crush Moscow
None of these people will rethink their positions
Prediction: this will also be the position of the Putin regime, or whatever more extreme despotism succeeds it, and that of most of the Russian population along with it. They think they're entitled to conquer and subjugate their neighbours at will, and when the plan goes wrong it's the fault of everyone but themselves. They're irredeemable.
Even if the Putin regime falls and is replaced by a more hard line government, that government is unlikely to last very long.
There is a growing sense of collapse on the Russian side. Rumours of an army mutiny are growing, and the reports that Kadyrov is sending forces "to support" the regime (not clear where but even, possibly, Moscow) suggests we may, just possibly, already be in some kind of end game. It appears that Kherson may fall even as early as this week, and the collapse of Russian forces in the Donbas seems to be accelerating, with UAF units getting close to Luhansk. Putin is said to be in Sochi, but as with the Czar in Pskov, that is no guarantee that he is safer there than in the capital.
Any new regime in Russia will need to deal with significant internal headwinds, and not least the Kadyrovtsi. The renewal of the Azerbaijani assault on Armenia is also yet another sign that the authority of Putin is draining away.
Personally, those who told me that, irrespective of morality or our own fundamental interests, the West should come to terms with Putin, now look more than just "wrong". The Baltic and Poland have been warning about Putin for 20 years. They were right and now the views of the front line states should count for a lot more than the discredited position of "compromise" with the rapist regime. Putin is likely to fall eventually, and that is a good thing, because irrespective of the short term, Russia has to change and it can not change with him still in the Kremlin. "Clinging hold of nurse, for fear of getting something worse" is the perennial mistake of Western statecraft when dealing with Moscow and it fails every time.
For many people in countries that border Russia, the top pressing interest is in 'removing the threat', and this can be achieved through the 'defeat of Russia', even though that means 'embracing the chaos' that follows.
But the end game of what you are describing is the disintegration of Russia in to multiple statelets, run by a collection of warlords and dubious 'businessmen'; who inherit collections of nuclear weapons and other significant military infrastructure; who have no interest in constitutional democracy, and who 'work with' powers like China and Iran, and with a population who 'blame the west' for the second disintegration of the former Russian State and the chaos and poverty that ensues.
I've got no real embarrassment about looking at the situation and concluding that there may just be some merit in 'clinging to nurse'. We need to remember what happened in Iraq with Saddam Hussein or Gaddafi in Libya.
So what is your actual policy proposal ? That we force Ukraine to accept Russian territorial seizures, and just live with the enormous damage they have wreaked ?
All those complaining that those backing Ukraine 'have no endgame' don't seem to have any problem with their own equally uncertain, and far less justified position.
From all I have seen and read, I would go with the long term position of the west towards Russia as the 'least worst/only viable option' - IE Putin gets an 'off ramp' and there is some kind of 'deal' that secures the independence and sovereignty of Ukraine within the EU orbit, as well as the independence of Russia in relation to China, and some restoration of trade with Russia.
This puts me in a total minority and will evoke many Hitler comparisons but it is a product of doing my best to think objectively about the situation, despite initially being in the 'beat back Russia' camp at the start of the campaign.
If you want to just 'embrace chaos' then you should reflect on what happened in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya or indeed in the Soviet union in the early 1990s which ultimately led to the arrival of Putin on the scene. You are taking a massive risk. If it works it will be because you were lucky.
You're not addressing the arguments, just a phrase.
As I've pointed out, Applebaum isn't arguing that we depose Putin, or even seek to encourage such a thing. She saying, and I agree with her, that Putin's survival or otherwise simply isn't in our gift. The consequences of a defeat of his invasion are something Russia will decide.
If you're arguing that the west should treat a defeated Russia with a degree of magnanimity, then I wouldn't disagree. But what are you actually arguing for, rather than against ?
@Nigelb The manner of his 'defeat', if this is to occur (which is not certain) will impact on whether his regime 'survives' or not. So I would disagree with Applebaums characterisation of the situation, in this respect.
I am cautioning against the rhetoric of 'beating back Putin' to the point where the regime collapses. This is taking unnecessary risks of nuclear escalation, and/or a failed state. This is my objection to the 'embrace the chaos' thinking going on.
In the end, it is the west who are determining the outcome of the war in Ukraine because the hard reality is without western aid Ukraine would not be succeeding. They are doing a great job and I support them, but they turned things round by persuading the west to back them significantly.
I don't think we can meddle with succession and agree with Applebaum on that point. There is a succession problem already with Putin's regime, which will apply irrespective of what happens because of Putins age/health. However, observing from a long distance, there is a successor in Dmitry Medvedev who was well regarded by European leaders when he was president from 2008-2012.
It may just be a case of better the devil you know.
I don't think the west can finetune the outcome really. Not to the extent of choosing between granular types of Russian defeats. And even if they could I'm not sure how useful it would be since it's highly uncertain how Putin will react and how others in Russia will react to Putin's reaction.
This. It's a delusion to think that we can meaningfully influence internal Russian politics, except to the extent that we defend our interests and values and reward them for moves towards better international behaviour.
Russians are responsible for Russian choices. Not the West. The West is responsible for our reactions to those choices, and in this instance that has to be clear that (1) there is no reward for aggression, and, (2) we are not going to meddle in internal Russian affairs.
Yes the 'aggression brings no gain' outcome is imo the key here. I've never really looked at this as a war. For me it presents more accurately as a crime with a perp and a victim.
What I wouldn't want to see, however, is bellicosity of the "right, we'll teach these Russian bastards" sort. Fact is, if Putin ends up gaining little or nothing having gone all-in on this "operation" that is in practice a terrible defeat.
So let's get there and then see what happens.
Gaining little or nothing isn't enough. They need to pay reparations to Ukraine for their crime too.
For this war to end three things need to happen.
1: Russia needs to be expelled from all of Crimea, the Donbas and other territory it is occupying. 2: Russia needs to agree compensation to Ukraine for the damages it has inflicted. 3: Russia needs to sign a peace treaty recognising all of Ukraine, including Crimea and Donbas, as Ukrainian.
We'll see. I do, however, sense you straying into the sort of bellicosity I specifically said I didn't want to see. But if all of that remains on internet forums rather than in decision rooms I guess it's ok.
Perhaps it is worth thinking why you think that asking a county invading another country to completely stop invading another country and go back to the status quo ante is bellicose?
It isn't and I didn't say it was. I can spot bellicosity. Eg an earlier contribution from that particular poster - "we'll let them keep Moscow" - is the sort of thing I mean.
No, they can't keep Moscow. I'm taking that.
But you know what I mean. The tone. It's understandable, because this was and is an outrage from Putin (and therefore Russia), and so a brutal revenge rears its head, and like I say - ok on the internet but I'd hope decisions in the west (all of this assuming Russia truly is in permanent retreat now) aren't driven by that.
No, I don't know what you mean. How is it bellicose.
Moscow is their territory, in the past when countries lost wars their territory was often divided by the winners of the war - eg see what happened to Berlin post-war.
To be saying that the Russians can keep Moscow is the opposite of bellicose, it is bloody generous under the circumstances.
Man on the internet says he's being generous to allow the Russians to keep Moscow.
Just listen to yourself.
You have a problem with people on the internet having opinions?
Yes Russia keeping Moscow is extremely generous. You objecting to that makes me think maybe we should have Ukraine annex some Russian territory once all this is over to help secure the peace.
What do you think Russia's price should be for starting and losing a war of aggression?
Would be hilarious if the Ukrainians took the entire Black Sea Coast including Rostov.
Morally wrong and illegal, but hilarious.
Would it be illegal? Given they're the defenders in this was not the aggressor state.
If that's in the peace treaty it could be morally right and legal, but I don't expect it as people are still far too generous to Russia.
I don’t think it would be illegal to invade Russia under these circumstances but it would be illegal to annex part of it, aggressor or no.
Exhibit A - the West Bank.
While we're on about that sort of thing, I (and note that this is random man on internet, not anyone with any sort of responsibility for anything) can't help trying to manufacture a scenario where Kaliningrad is no longer part of Russia. Because it's so annoyingly untidy. Perhaps Ukraine could insist that Kaliningrad is given to Poland as reparation for all the support Poland has had to give to Ukraine?
Yes I know this is daft. But still.
No-one in the area wants Kaliningrad - because the population is fairly ultra-nationalist Russian, and Poland and neighbours aren't interested in either ethnic cleansing or colonial adventures with a hostile local population.
IIRC there were some discussion of this when the Soviet Union fell.
Germany gets trenchant and justified criticism, but France's effort is truly pathetic
I don't know, it's a bit weird. The French have given some self-propelled howitzers that are well-regarded by the Ukrainians, and ATGMs. On the basis of the publicity I would have thought that they'd given a comparable amount of support as Germany.
Maybe it's just that there's no politicians pushing Macron to give more, while in Germany the Greens in the coalition are much keener one providing support, so you have this conflict on providing support out in the open.
It means that Liz Truss was right when she said the jury was out on Macron.
Totally off topic, but younger son, who is trying to return from an exhibition in Amsterdam, has done so by sea because of the massive queues at security at the airport! So it's not just Heathrow! So he's now on his way to Heathrow to fly back home to Bangkok. Wonder what the situation will be when he gets to Heathrow.
I do keep hearing about air travel chaos. I'm meant to be starting serious foreign travel again, after a long break, and it's not encouraging me. Maybe best to just stay put for now.
I’ve gone through LGW without incident several times now….
Think I'm just looking for excuses - got used to staying still and the world revolving around me rather than the other way around.
Don’t.
Someone I know got used to doing absolutely nothing and seeing no one during covid. Like a hermit
Even when covid ended she maintained this new monastic isolation. She went from being sociable and active and keen on travel, to inertia, isolation, staying-at-home
Recently this person was diagnosed with a terminal illness and was given a few short months to live, at most. And she is now UNABLE to travel. Much as she might want to
She now bitterly regrets the ~3 years spent in self imposed confinement and it wasn’t even Covid that got her, in the end
You’re in your 60s. You can still see the world. Do it before you no longer can
Well it's not a Covid thing and, like I say, I have travelled a lot previously.
But, yes, there are some trips I'd like to do and if I don't do them through inertia that wouldn't be great.
This opens the door for a lament. I'm 47. I have recently become rather more acutely aware of the finity of my remaining years. What's brought this about is looking at OS maps. I've walked a lot in Britain, but there's so much more I haven't done than I have, and it seems rather too much to achieve in my remaining years of fitness. I get maybe three, four days to myself, free of parental responsibility each year. Obviously that will grow as the kids get older, but I'll be 59 by the time my youngest is 18. I long for the freedom I could have had in my 20s before kids came along. I should have been so much more focused on what I wanted to do, and done it myself. I should have spent several long weekends a year in the Highlands of Scotland reaching the inaccessible places. I should have walked up every Wainwright. I should have cycled the whole of the North of England, the whole of Ireland. I should never, ever have replied to the question 'do anything this weekend' with 'oh, not much.'
I've never felt the need (or indeed had the budget) to go everywhere in the world. If I die without seeing Rome or Ljubljana or Australia or South America, well, shrug, you can't do everything. If I never dive or bungee jump, well, so be it. But there are things I really did want to do, but they never seemed pressing, and now I'm married with kids I may never get the chance.
If you are young, care not what plans your friends or girlfriends make: if there are things you want to do, do them. You will never have more time and energy than you do now.
It is, always, later than you think
Gotta say you are missing a bit of the wider world
Rome is tremendous, a top ten must-see city (but avoid the summer)
Ljubljana you can skip. Pleasant but unexceptional
Australia is absolutely essential for its insane fauna. Everything else, the Barrier Reef, the Kimberley Coast, the endless Outback, the Queensland rainforests, the glorious Northern Territory, even Uluru, you can sort of find somewhere else, in some form
But NOTHING is like your first glimpse of a real live kangaroo in the wild. Under the gum trees. Staring at you. And then there's the wombats, koalas, wallabies, dingos, quolls, bilbys. pademelons, sugar gliders. platypi and the Ruffous Bettong. It is the nearest you can get to a different planet but equally as full of life
If you possibly can, go to Australia at least once and see a tree kangaroo fall out of a eucalypt
I mean, I have left the UK. I've been to a few of the world's big must see places, like Paris and New York. And if the weekend after next you plonked me in Rome I'm sure I'd have a very lovely time. But it is the experiences in these islands my heart yearns for - I think because I might so easily have done them when I had the time.
I might yet get to Australia. My sister-in-law's partner is Australian; they have a small baby, and are thinking of moving there. They are assuming we will visit regularly. And I'd very much like to see a kangaroo and all the other fellas. But, what, £10,000 and 24 hours travelling to get a family of five to Australia? Realistically we can only do it once, if at all. Whereas the Cuillins? You can get there with a tankful of petrol. I ought to have done that already. Why haven't I? So many years of fitting in with other people's plans when I might have made my own.
I hear you. On the other hand, you have almost certainly been an infinitely better father than me. My kids tell me they've forgiven me for being Not There so much, but I feel a fair amount of guilt, and I am sure I have done them harm. And yet I have seen the world in my selfishness (and my job, to be fair)
Something has to give, doesn't it?
However, your despair is foolish. You say you'll be done parenting at 59 - well 59 is nothing. I'm in my late 50s and just spent 3 months doing non stop travel from America to Armenia and back. And it was brilliant
Vow to yourself that you will do all this when you are 59, and do it
And don't spend £10k taking the entire family to Oz, it's really not worth it. You need to see it alone, or at most in a couple, so you can really get out there to the remote places. Remoteness is the point of Oz. The Atherton Tablelands! Kakadu! Coober Pedy! Arnhemland!
If Russia loses, all the people on Left and Right in the West that demanded a "compromise" that "accepts Russia's legitimate interests" will shift to accusing the West of having sucked Putin into a deliberate trap to crush Moscow
None of these people will rethink their positions
Prediction: this will also be the position of the Putin regime, or whatever more extreme despotism succeeds it, and that of most of the Russian population along with it. They think they're entitled to conquer and subjugate their neighbours at will, and when the plan goes wrong it's the fault of everyone but themselves. They're irredeemable.
Even if the Putin regime falls and is replaced by a more hard line government, that government is unlikely to last very long.
There is a growing sense of collapse on the Russian side. Rumours of an army mutiny are growing, and the reports that Kadyrov is sending forces "to support" the regime (not clear where but even, possibly, Moscow) suggests we may, just possibly, already be in some kind of end game. It appears that Kherson may fall even as early as this week, and the collapse of Russian forces in the Donbas seems to be accelerating, with UAF units getting close to Luhansk. Putin is said to be in Sochi, but as with the Czar in Pskov, that is no guarantee that he is safer there than in the capital.
Any new regime in Russia will need to deal with significant internal headwinds, and not least the Kadyrovtsi. The renewal of the Azerbaijani assault on Armenia is also yet another sign that the authority of Putin is draining away.
Personally, those who told me that, irrespective of morality or our own fundamental interests, the West should come to terms with Putin, now look more than just "wrong". The Baltic and Poland have been warning about Putin for 20 years. They were right and now the views of the front line states should count for a lot more than the discredited position of "compromise" with the rapist regime. Putin is likely to fall eventually, and that is a good thing, because irrespective of the short term, Russia has to change and it can not change with him still in the Kremlin. "Clinging hold of nurse, for fear of getting something worse" is the perennial mistake of Western statecraft when dealing with Moscow and it fails every time.
For many people in countries that border Russia, the top pressing interest is in 'removing the threat', and this can be achieved through the 'defeat of Russia', even though that means 'embracing the chaos' that follows.
But the end game of what you are describing is the disintegration of Russia in to multiple statelets, run by a collection of warlords and dubious 'businessmen'; who inherit collections of nuclear weapons and other significant military infrastructure; who have no interest in constitutional democracy, and who 'work with' powers like China and Iran, and with a population who 'blame the west' for the second disintegration of the former Russian State and the chaos and poverty that ensues.
I've got no real embarrassment about looking at the situation and concluding that there may just be some merit in 'clinging to nurse'. We need to remember what happened in Iraq with Saddam Hussein or Gaddafi in Libya.
So what is your actual policy proposal ? That we force Ukraine to accept Russian territorial seizures, and just live with the enormous damage they have wreaked ?
All those complaining that those backing Ukraine 'have no endgame' don't seem to have any problem with their own equally uncertain, and far less justified position.
From all I have seen and read, I would go with the long term position of the west towards Russia as the 'least worst/only viable option' - IE Putin gets an 'off ramp' and there is some kind of 'deal' that secures the independence and sovereignty of Ukraine within the EU orbit, as well as the independence of Russia in relation to China, and some restoration of trade with Russia.
This puts me in a total minority and will evoke many Hitler comparisons but it is a product of doing my best to think objectively about the situation, despite initially being in the 'beat back Russia' camp at the start of the campaign.
If you want to just 'embrace chaos' then you should reflect on what happened in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya or indeed in the Soviet union in the early 1990s which ultimately led to the arrival of Putin on the scene. You are taking a massive risk. If it works it will be because you were lucky.
You're not addressing the arguments, just a phrase.
As I've pointed out, Applebaum isn't arguing that we depose Putin, or even seek to encourage such a thing. She saying, and I agree with her, that Putin's survival or otherwise simply isn't in our gift. The consequences of a defeat of his invasion are something Russia will decide.
If you're arguing that the west should treat a defeated Russia with a degree of magnanimity, then I wouldn't disagree. But what are you actually arguing for, rather than against ?
@Nigelb The manner of his 'defeat', if this is to occur (which is not certain) will impact on whether his regime 'survives' or not. So I would disagree with Applebaums characterisation of the situation, in this respect.
I am cautioning against the rhetoric of 'beating back Putin' to the point where the regime collapses. This is taking unnecessary risks of nuclear escalation, and/or a failed state. This is my objection to the 'embrace the chaos' thinking going on.
In the end, it is the west who are determining the outcome of the war in Ukraine because the hard reality is without western aid Ukraine would not be succeeding. They are doing a great job and I support them, but they turned things round by persuading the west to back them significantly.
I don't think we can meddle with succession and agree with Applebaum on that point. There is a succession problem already with Putin's regime, which will apply irrespective of what happens because of Putins age/health. However, observing from a long distance, there is a successor in Dmitry Medvedev who was well regarded by European leaders when he was president from 2008-2012.
It may just be a case of better the devil you know.
I don't think the west can finetune the outcome really. Not to the extent of choosing between granular types of Russian defeats. And even if they could I'm not sure how useful it would be since it's highly uncertain how Putin will react and how others in Russia will react to Putin's reaction.
This. It's a delusion to think that we can meaningfully influence internal Russian politics, except to the extent that we defend our interests and values and reward them for moves towards better international behaviour.
Russians are responsible for Russian choices. Not the West. The West is responsible for our reactions to those choices, and in this instance that has to be clear that (1) there is no reward for aggression, and, (2) we are not going to meddle in internal Russian affairs.
Yes the 'aggression brings no gain' outcome is imo the key here. I've never really looked at this as a war. For me it presents more accurately as a crime with a perp and a victim.
What I wouldn't want to see, however, is bellicosity of the "right, we'll teach these Russian bastards" sort. Fact is, if Putin ends up gaining little or nothing having gone all-in on this "operation" that is in practice a terrible defeat.
So let's get there and then see what happens.
Gaining little or nothing isn't enough. They need to pay reparations to Ukraine for their crime too.
For this war to end three things need to happen.
1: Russia needs to be expelled from all of Crimea, the Donbas and other territory it is occupying. 2: Russia needs to agree compensation to Ukraine for the damages it has inflicted. 3: Russia needs to sign a peace treaty recognising all of Ukraine, including Crimea and Donbas, as Ukrainian.
We'll see. I do, however, sense you straying into the sort of bellicosity I specifically said I didn't want to see. But if all of that remains on internet forums rather than in decision rooms I guess it's ok.
Perhaps it is worth thinking why you think that asking a county invading another country to completely stop invading another country and go back to the status quo ante is bellicose?
It isn't and I didn't say it was. I can spot bellicosity. Eg an earlier contribution from that particular poster - "we'll let them keep Moscow" - is the sort of thing I mean.
No, they can't keep Moscow. I'm taking that.
But you know what I mean. The tone. It's understandable, because this was and is an outrage from Putin (and therefore Russia), and so a brutal revenge rears its head, and like I say - ok on the internet but I'd hope decisions in the west (all of this assuming Russia truly is in permanent retreat now) aren't driven by that.
No, I don't know what you mean. How is it bellicose.
Moscow is their territory, in the past when countries lost wars their territory was often divided by the winners of the war - eg see what happened to Berlin post-war.
To be saying that the Russians can keep Moscow is the opposite of bellicose, it is bloody generous under the circumstances.
It's your tone. It's bellicose.
How?
If you have no "how" its just because you're an apologist for evil I'm afraid.
Germany gets trenchant and justified criticism, but France's effort is truly pathetic
I don't know, it's a bit weird. The French have given some self-propelled howitzers that are well-regarded by the Ukrainians, and ATGMs. On the basis of the publicity I would have thought that they'd given a comparable amount of support as Germany.
Maybe it's just that there's no politicians pushing Macron to give more, while in Germany the Greens in the coalition are much keener one providing support, so you have this conflict on providing support out in the open.
Or perhaps that Germany has MBTs which Ukraine wants in order to finish the war more quickly ? Ukraine have been particularly vocal over that.
Now they have a couple of dozen Gepards from Germany, the technical argument for blocking supply of Leopards has gone.
Totally off topic, but younger son, who is trying to return from an exhibition in Amsterdam, has done so by sea because of the massive queues at security at the airport! So it's not just Heathrow! So he's now on his way to Heathrow to fly back home to Bangkok. Wonder what the situation will be when he gets to Heathrow.
I do keep hearing about air travel chaos. I'm meant to be starting serious foreign travel again, after a long break, and it's not encouraging me. Maybe best to just stay put for now.
I’ve gone through LGW without incident several times now….
Think I'm just looking for excuses - got used to staying still and the world revolving around me rather than the other way around.
Don’t.
Someone I know got used to doing absolutely nothing and seeing no one during covid. Like a hermit
Even when covid ended she maintained this new monastic isolation. She went from being sociable and active and keen on travel, to inertia, isolation, staying-at-home
Recently this person was diagnosed with a terminal illness and was given a few short months to live, at most. And she is now UNABLE to travel. Much as she might want to
She now bitterly regrets the ~3 years spent in self imposed confinement and it wasn’t even Covid that got her, in the end
You’re in your 60s. You can still see the world. Do it before you no longer can
Well it's not a Covid thing and, like I say, I have travelled a lot previously.
But, yes, there are some trips I'd like to do and if I don't do them through inertia that wouldn't be great.
This opens the door for a lament. I'm 47. I have recently become rather more acutely aware of the finity of my remaining years. What's brought this about is looking at OS maps. I've walked a lot in Britain, but there's so much more I haven't done than I have, and it seems rather too much to achieve in my remaining years of fitness. I get maybe three, four days to myself, free of parental responsibility each year. Obviously that will grow as the kids get older, but I'll be 59 by the time my youngest is 18. I long for the freedom I could have had in my 20s before kids came along. I should have been so much more focused on what I wanted to do, and done it myself. I should have spent several long weekends a year in the Highlands of Scotland reaching the inaccessible places. I should have walked up every Wainwright. I should have cycled the whole of the North of England, the whole of Ireland. I should never, ever have replied to the question 'do anything this weekend' with 'oh, not much.'
I've never felt the need (or indeed had the budget) to go everywhere in the world. If I die without seeing Rome or Ljubljana or Australia or South America, well, shrug, you can't do everything. If I never dive or bungee jump, well, so be it. But there are things I really did want to do, but they never seemed pressing, and now I'm married with kids I may never get the chance.
If you are young, care not what plans your friends or girlfriends make: if there are things you want to do, do them. You will never have more time and energy than you do now.
That's a very nice post - and I do know what you mean - but tbh I'm not 100% with the governing sentiment.
When I die it won't be all the things I didn't do that prey on my mind. It'll more be certain things I did do that I wish I hadn't.
I would tend to agree with the DoStuff sentiment. Most things can be done with friends - just not all your friends all the time. If you say that you are off to Egypt to scuba dive, a couple of people will be interested in going with you etc....
Generousity is as laughably irrelevant as what's right or just. The only issue is what they can take and hold by force. If the Ukrainians can get to Moscow and hold it without perishing in a nuclear firestrom then fucking good luck to them.
In reality if they put one boot over the border then Biden will pull the plug.
The other day Ukraine were said to have sent a raiding party across the border towards Belgorod to knock out a Russian artillery position. There's a bit of a grey zone when it comes to an active defence.
Russia continues to shell settlements in Sumy Oblast, for example. The US isn't going to be too bothered by limited cross-border actions by the Ukrainians aimed at putting a stop to those attacks.
If Russia loses, all the people on Left and Right in the West that demanded a "compromise" that "accepts Russia's legitimate interests" will shift to accusing the West of having sucked Putin into a deliberate trap to crush Moscow
None of these people will rethink their positions
Prediction: this will also be the position of the Putin regime, or whatever more extreme despotism succeeds it, and that of most of the Russian population along with it. They think they're entitled to conquer and subjugate their neighbours at will, and when the plan goes wrong it's the fault of everyone but themselves. They're irredeemable.
Even if the Putin regime falls and is replaced by a more hard line government, that government is unlikely to last very long.
There is a growing sense of collapse on the Russian side. Rumours of an army mutiny are growing, and the reports that Kadyrov is sending forces "to support" the regime (not clear where but even, possibly, Moscow) suggests we may, just possibly, already be in some kind of end game. It appears that Kherson may fall even as early as this week, and the collapse of Russian forces in the Donbas seems to be accelerating, with UAF units getting close to Luhansk. Putin is said to be in Sochi, but as with the Czar in Pskov, that is no guarantee that he is safer there than in the capital.
Any new regime in Russia will need to deal with significant internal headwinds, and not least the Kadyrovtsi. The renewal of the Azerbaijani assault on Armenia is also yet another sign that the authority of Putin is draining away.
Personally, those who told me that, irrespective of morality or our own fundamental interests, the West should come to terms with Putin, now look more than just "wrong". The Baltic and Poland have been warning about Putin for 20 years. They were right and now the views of the front line states should count for a lot more than the discredited position of "compromise" with the rapist regime. Putin is likely to fall eventually, and that is a good thing, because irrespective of the short term, Russia has to change and it can not change with him still in the Kremlin. "Clinging hold of nurse, for fear of getting something worse" is the perennial mistake of Western statecraft when dealing with Moscow and it fails every time.
For many people in countries that border Russia, the top pressing interest is in 'removing the threat', and this can be achieved through the 'defeat of Russia', even though that means 'embracing the chaos' that follows.
But the end game of what you are describing is the disintegration of Russia in to multiple statelets, run by a collection of warlords and dubious 'businessmen'; who inherit collections of nuclear weapons and other significant military infrastructure; who have no interest in constitutional democracy, and who 'work with' powers like China and Iran, and with a population who 'blame the west' for the second disintegration of the former Russian State and the chaos and poverty that ensues.
I've got no real embarrassment about looking at the situation and concluding that there may just be some merit in 'clinging to nurse'. We need to remember what happened in Iraq with Saddam Hussein or Gaddafi in Libya.
So what is your actual policy proposal ? That we force Ukraine to accept Russian territorial seizures, and just live with the enormous damage they have wreaked ?
All those complaining that those backing Ukraine 'have no endgame' don't seem to have any problem with their own equally uncertain, and far less justified position.
From all I have seen and read, I would go with the long term position of the west towards Russia as the 'least worst/only viable option' - IE Putin gets an 'off ramp' and there is some kind of 'deal' that secures the independence and sovereignty of Ukraine within the EU orbit, as well as the independence of Russia in relation to China, and some restoration of trade with Russia.
This puts me in a total minority and will evoke many Hitler comparisons but it is a product of doing my best to think objectively about the situation, despite initially being in the 'beat back Russia' camp at the start of the campaign.
If you want to just 'embrace chaos' then you should reflect on what happened in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya or indeed in the Soviet union in the early 1990s which ultimately led to the arrival of Putin on the scene. You are taking a massive risk. If it works it will be because you were lucky.
You're not addressing the arguments, just a phrase.
As I've pointed out, Applebaum isn't arguing that we depose Putin, or even seek to encourage such a thing. She saying, and I agree with her, that Putin's survival or otherwise simply isn't in our gift. The consequences of a defeat of his invasion are something Russia will decide.
If you're arguing that the west should treat a defeated Russia with a degree of magnanimity, then I wouldn't disagree. But what are you actually arguing for, rather than against ?
@Nigelb The manner of his 'defeat', if this is to occur (which is not certain) will impact on whether his regime 'survives' or not. So I would disagree with Applebaums characterisation of the situation, in this respect.
I am cautioning against the rhetoric of 'beating back Putin' to the point where the regime collapses. This is taking unnecessary risks of nuclear escalation, and/or a failed state. This is my objection to the 'embrace the chaos' thinking going on.
In the end, it is the west who are determining the outcome of the war in Ukraine because the hard reality is without western aid Ukraine would not be succeeding. They are doing a great job and I support them, but they turned things round by persuading the west to back them significantly.
I don't think we can meddle with succession and agree with Applebaum on that point. There is a succession problem already with Putin's regime, which will apply irrespective of what happens because of Putins age/health. However, observing from a long distance, there is a successor in Dmitry Medvedev who was well regarded by European leaders when he was president from 2008-2012.
It may just be a case of better the devil you know.
I don't think the west can finetune the outcome really. Not to the extent of choosing between granular types of Russian defeats. And even if they could I'm not sure how useful it would be since it's highly uncertain how Putin will react and how others in Russia will react to Putin's reaction.
This. It's a delusion to think that we can meaningfully influence internal Russian politics, except to the extent that we defend our interests and values and reward them for moves towards better international behaviour.
Russians are responsible for Russian choices. Not the West. The West is responsible for our reactions to those choices, and in this instance that has to be clear that (1) there is no reward for aggression, and, (2) we are not going to meddle in internal Russian affairs.
Yes the 'aggression brings no gain' outcome is imo the key here. I've never really looked at this as a war. For me it presents more accurately as a crime with a perp and a victim.
What I wouldn't want to see, however, is bellicosity of the "right, we'll teach these Russian bastards" sort. Fact is, if Putin ends up gaining little or nothing having gone all-in on this "operation" that is in practice a terrible defeat.
So let's get there and then see what happens.
Gaining little or nothing isn't enough. They need to pay reparations to Ukraine for their crime too.
For this war to end three things need to happen.
1: Russia needs to be expelled from all of Crimea, the Donbas and other territory it is occupying. 2: Russia needs to agree compensation to Ukraine for the damages it has inflicted. 3: Russia needs to sign a peace treaty recognising all of Ukraine, including Crimea and Donbas, as Ukrainian.
We'll see. I do, however, sense you straying into the sort of bellicosity I specifically said I didn't want to see. But if all of that remains on internet forums rather than in decision rooms I guess it's ok.
Perhaps it is worth thinking why you think that asking a county invading another country to completely stop invading another country and go back to the status quo ante is bellicose?
It isn't and I didn't say it was. I can spot bellicosity. Eg an earlier contribution from that particular poster - "we'll let them keep Moscow" - is the sort of thing I mean.
No, they can't keep Moscow. I'm taking that.
But you know what I mean. The tone. It's understandable, because this was and is an outrage from Putin (and therefore Russia), and so a brutal revenge rears its head, and like I say - ok on the internet but I'd hope decisions in the west (all of this assuming Russia truly is in permanent retreat now) aren't driven by that.
No, I don't know what you mean. How is it bellicose.
Moscow is their territory, in the past when countries lost wars their territory was often divided by the winners of the war - eg see what happened to Berlin post-war.
To be saying that the Russians can keep Moscow is the opposite of bellicose, it is bloody generous under the circumstances.
Man on the internet says he's being generous to allow the Russians to keep Moscow.
Just listen to yourself.
You have a problem with people on the internet having opinions?
Yes Russia keeping Moscow is extremely generous. You objecting to that makes me think maybe we should have Ukraine annex some Russian territory once all this is over to help secure the peace.
What do you think Russia's price should be for starting and losing a war of aggression?
Would be hilarious if the Ukrainians took the entire Black Sea Coast including Rostov.
Morally wrong and illegal, but hilarious.
Would it be illegal? Given they're the defenders in this was not the aggressor state.
If that's in the peace treaty it could be morally right and legal, but I don't expect it as people are still far too generous to Russia.
I don’t think it would be illegal to invade Russia under these circumstances but it would be illegal to annex part of it, aggressor or no.
Exhibit A - the West Bank.
While we're on about that sort of thing, I (and note that this is random man on internet, not anyone with any sort of responsibility for anything) can't help trying to manufacture a scenario where Kaliningrad is no longer part of Russia. Because it's so annoyingly untidy. Perhaps Ukraine could insist that Kaliningrad is given to Poland as reparation for all the support Poland has had to give to Ukraine?
Yes I know this is daft. But still.
No-one in the area wants Kaliningrad - because the population is fairly ultra-nationalist Russian, and Poland and neighbours aren't interested in either ethnic cleansing or colonial adventures with a hostile local population.
IIRC there were some discussion of this when the Soviet Union fell.
Kaliningrad? You couldn't make a present of it to anybody.
A carriage of the Royal train, modified especially to carry Queen Elizabeth II’s coffin, lies unused after plans for the nation to turn out to show its respects were scrapped over fears for public safety and disruption.
It's a shame that the railway isn't getting used in all this.
Yes. Having a procession through Scotland then skipping Northern England entirely to go straight to London is not a good look. I am pretty sure the Queen would not have approved.
I would certainly have gone out to stand somewhere by the ECML, but I have zero chance of getting to London.
As I understand it, the problems were
1) Slow moving train that attracts people who may never have been near a train line before. 2) 1) mean that you would have to have staff at every place that the public can approach the track. 3) Inevitably, people would start climbing fences etc 4) Accidents are then certain.
And yet both Churchill and King George VI had funeral trains, albeit not over such a long run.
If railways are too hard to police, then just use the car and follow the old A1.
They covered nearly 200 miles in Scotland - it is only twice that distance from Edinburgh to London.
Random bit of trivia. When Bobby Kennedy's body was taken from New York to DC back in 1968, two onlookers were killed and four injured in an accident in New Jersey.
I guess Stalin’s funeral meats wins the prize for funereal death tolls, anything between 100 to 1000s, in the modern age anyway. Horribly appropriate for the grisly, old bastard.
One man was arrested for simply saying "who elected him?" loudly. Another forcibly moved on from a public place for an inoffensive placard. How on Earth do the police have such powers in this country? Free speech is so flimsy in the UK.
The police can arrest anyone - how much they are forced to pay in compensation for abusing that power will be an interesting question over the next few months..
Does Charles pay inheritance tax? Or is that only for the rest of us?
He's committed to pay an effective 75% income tax rate, if you'd rather he was taxed at the normal rates everyone else pays I'm sure he'd be happy to do so.
How are you calculating 75%?
Or are you claiming the Crown Estates as "tax", which it is not.
The Sovereign Grant is, I understand, fixed at 25% of the Crown Estates revenue, which effectively makes it a 75% tax. Not literally, but effectively.
The Crown Estate is not the personal property of the Monarch & its management is under the control of the government.
The Sovereign receives a payment out of the revenue of the Crown Estate as a replacement for the Civil List, which was causing political difficulties: Voting on the Monarch’s income every decade was highlighting to the general public exactly how much the Monarch was receiving from them on a regular basis. Now it never comes up, because it’s fixed as a proportion of the income of the Crown Estate.
So the Monarch (amongst many other things) gets 25% of the lease cost for every off-shore windfarm. Obviously the Monarch has done nothing to deserve that income, but that’s political fudges for you.
It belongs to the monarch but isn't part of their private estate which makes it a fudge anyway. But it certainly doesn't belong to the government, even if the government manages it and takes 75% of its revenues.
This is one of those carefully ambiguous fudges on which the British Constitution rests. The government agrees that the Crown Estate is the property of the Monarch & the Monarch agrees to give the government full control over it. Everybody wins & no one has to answer awkward questions like: why exactly does the Monarch own all this property anyway?
Its not the property of the Monarch, its the property of the Crown. The Monarch has the property by virtue of having the Crown.
It even says so on the Crown Estates own website!
Who owns The Crown Estate? The Crown Estate belongs to the reigning monarch 'in right of The Crown', that is, it is owned by the monarch for the duration of their reign, by virtue of their accession to the throne. But it is not the private property of the monarch - it cannot be sold by the monarch, nor do revenues from it belong to the monarch.
The Government also does not own The Crown Estate. It is managed by an independent organisation - established by statute - headed by a Board (also known as The Crown Estate Commissioners), and the surplus revenue from the estate is paid each year to the Treasury for the benefit of the nation's finances.
If the Monarch leaves the throne, they lose the Crown and all rights therein.
If the revenues don't belong to the monarch, how can the monarch agree to give 75% of them to the government?
Totally off topic, but younger son, who is trying to return from an exhibition in Amsterdam, has done so by sea because of the massive queues at security at the airport! So it's not just Heathrow! So he's now on his way to Heathrow to fly back home to Bangkok. Wonder what the situation will be when he gets to Heathrow.
I do keep hearing about air travel chaos. I'm meant to be starting serious foreign travel again, after a long break, and it's not encouraging me. Maybe best to just stay put for now.
I’ve gone through LGW without incident several times now….
Think I'm just looking for excuses - got used to staying still and the world revolving around me rather than the other way around.
Don’t.
Someone I know got used to doing absolutely nothing and seeing no one during covid. Like a hermit
Even when covid ended she maintained this new monastic isolation. She went from being sociable and active and keen on travel, to inertia, isolation, staying-at-home
Recently this person was diagnosed with a terminal illness and was given a few short months to live, at most. And she is now UNABLE to travel. Much as she might want to
She now bitterly regrets the ~3 years spent in self imposed confinement and it wasn’t even Covid that got her, in the end
You’re in your 60s. You can still see the world. Do it before you no longer can
Well it's not a Covid thing and, like I say, I have travelled a lot previously.
But, yes, there are some trips I'd like to do and if I don't do them through inertia that wouldn't be great.
This opens the door for a lament. I'm 47. I have recently become rather more acutely aware of the finity of my remaining years. What's brought this about is looking at OS maps. I've walked a lot in Britain, but there's so much more I haven't done than I have, and it seems rather too much to achieve in my remaining years of fitness. I get maybe three, four days to myself, free of parental responsibility each year. Obviously that will grow as the kids get older, but I'll be 59 by the time my youngest is 18. I long for the freedom I could have had in my 20s before kids came along. I should have been so much more focused on what I wanted to do, and done it myself. I should have spent several long weekends a year in the Highlands of Scotland reaching the inaccessible places. I should have walked up every Wainwright. I should have cycled the whole of the North of England, the whole of Ireland. I should never, ever have replied to the question 'do anything this weekend' with 'oh, not much.'
I've never felt the need (or indeed had the budget) to go everywhere in the world. If I die without seeing Rome or Ljubljana or Australia or South America, well, shrug, you can't do everything. If I never dive or bungee jump, well, so be it. But there are things I really did want to do, but they never seemed pressing, and now I'm married with kids I may never get the chance.
If you are young, care not what plans your friends or girlfriends make: if there are things you want to do, do them. You will never have more time and energy than you do now.
That's a very nice post - and I do know what you mean - but tbh I'm not 100% with the governing sentiment.
When I die it won't be all the things I didnt do that prey on my mind. It'll more be certain things I did do that I wish I hadn't.
I want to have the mental cojones to lay the verbal smackdown on a johnny come lately detractor at the end Something like this from the TV miniseries of the Bodyline Tour.... Sir Pelham 'Plum' Warner was Tour Manager and former england captain Warner to Jardine 'history will remember you as a man who stooped to conquer' Jardine in reply 'well history has already forgotten you'
Does Charles pay inheritance tax? Or is that only for the rest of us?
He's committed to pay an effective 75% income tax rate, if you'd rather he was taxed at the normal rates everyone else pays I'm sure he'd be happy to do so.
How are you calculating 75%?
Or are you claiming the Crown Estates as "tax", which it is not.
The Sovereign Grant is, I understand, fixed at 25% of the Crown Estates revenue, which effectively makes it a 75% tax. Not literally, but effectively.
The Crown Estate is not the personal property of the Monarch & its management is under the control of the government.
The Sovereign receives a payment out of the revenue of the Crown Estate as a replacement for the Civil List, which was causing political difficulties: Voting on the Monarch’s income every decade was highlighting to the general public exactly how much the Monarch was receiving from them on a regular basis. Now it never comes up, because it’s fixed as a proportion of the income of the Crown Estate.
So the Monarch (amongst many other things) gets 25% of the lease cost for every off-shore windfarm. Obviously the Monarch has done nothing to deserve that income, but that’s political fudges for you.
It belongs to the monarch but isn't part of their private estate which makes it a fudge anyway. But it certainly doesn't belong to the government, even if the government manages it and takes 75% of its revenues.
This is one of those carefully ambiguous fudges on which the British Constitution rests. The government agrees that the Crown Estate is the property of the Monarch & the Monarch agrees to give the government full control over it. Everybody wins & no one has to answer awkward questions like: why exactly does the Monarch own all this property anyway?
Its not the property of the Monarch, its the property of the Crown. The Monarch has the property by virtue of having the Crown.
It even says so on the Crown Estates own website!
Who owns The Crown Estate? The Crown Estate belongs to the reigning monarch 'in right of The Crown', that is, it is owned by the monarch for the duration of their reign, by virtue of their accession to the throne. But it is not the private property of the monarch - it cannot be sold by the monarch, nor do revenues from it belong to the monarch.
The Government also does not own The Crown Estate. It is managed by an independent organisation - established by statute - headed by a Board (also known as The Crown Estate Commissioners), and the surplus revenue from the estate is paid each year to the Treasury for the benefit of the nation's finances.
If the Monarch leaves the throne, they lose the Crown and all rights therein.
If the revenues don't belong to the monarch, how can the monarch agree to give 75% of them to the government?
Because the Monarch has them by right of having the Crown. They belong to the Crown, not to the Monarch personally, if the Monarch loses the Crown they lose everything that belongs to the Crown.
Just as Liz Truss doesn't now own 10 Downing Street.
Generousity is as laughably irrelevant as what's right or just. The only issue is what they can take and hold by force. If the Ukrainians can get to Moscow and hold it without perishing in a nuclear firestrom then fucking good luck to them.
In reality if they put one boot over the border then Biden will pull the plug.
The other day Ukraine were said to have sent a raiding party across the border towards Belgorod to knock out a Russian artillery position. There's a bit of a grey zone when it comes to an active defence.
Russia continues to shell settlements in Sumy Oblast, for example. The US isn't going to be too bothered by limited cross-border actions by the Ukrainians aimed at putting a stop to those attacks.
The customary excuse is 'Whoops, misread our maps' but nobody in the West is going to worry too much until the Ukranian Army reaches the Urals.
A carriage of the Royal train, modified especially to carry Queen Elizabeth II’s coffin, lies unused after plans for the nation to turn out to show its respects were scrapped over fears for public safety and disruption.
It's a shame that the railway isn't getting used in all this.
Yes. Having a procession through Scotland then skipping Northern England entirely to go straight to London is not a good look. I am pretty sure the Queen would not have approved.
I would certainly have gone out to stand somewhere by the ECML, but I have zero chance of getting to London.
As I understand it, the problems were
1) Slow moving train that attracts people who may never have been near a train line before. 2) 1) mean that you would have to have staff at every place that the public can approach the track. 3) Inevitably, people would start climbing fences etc 4) Accidents are then certain.
And yet both Churchill and King George VI had funeral trains, albeit not over such a long run.
If railways are too hard to police, then just use the car and follow the old A1.
They covered nearly 200 miles in Scotland - it is only twice that distance from Edinburgh to London.
Random bit of trivia. When Bobby Kennedy's body was taken from New York to DC back in 1968, two onlookers were killed and four injured in an accident in New Jersey.
I guess Stalin’s funeral meats wins the prize for funereal death tolls, anything between 100 to 1000s, in the modern age anyway. Horribly appropriate for the grisly, old bastard.
Totally off topic, but younger son, who is trying to return from an exhibition in Amsterdam, has done so by sea because of the massive queues at security at the airport! So it's not just Heathrow! So he's now on his way to Heathrow to fly back home to Bangkok. Wonder what the situation will be when he gets to Heathrow.
I do keep hearing about air travel chaos. I'm meant to be starting serious foreign travel again, after a long break, and it's not encouraging me. Maybe best to just stay put for now.
I’ve gone through LGW without incident several times now….
Think I'm just looking for excuses - got used to staying still and the world revolving around me rather than the other way around.
Don’t.
Someone I know got used to doing absolutely nothing and seeing no one during covid. Like a hermit
Even when covid ended she maintained this new monastic isolation. She went from being sociable and active and keen on travel, to inertia, isolation, staying-at-home
Recently this person was diagnosed with a terminal illness and was given a few short months to live, at most. And she is now UNABLE to travel. Much as she might want to
She now bitterly regrets the ~3 years spent in self imposed confinement and it wasn’t even Covid that got her, in the end
You’re in your 60s. You can still see the world. Do it before you no longer can
Well it's not a Covid thing and, like I say, I have travelled a lot previously.
But, yes, there are some trips I'd like to do and if I don't do them through inertia that wouldn't be great.
This opens the door for a lament. I'm 47. I have recently become rather more acutely aware of the finity of my remaining years. What's brought this about is looking at OS maps. I've walked a lot in Britain, but there's so much more I haven't done than I have, and it seems rather too much to achieve in my remaining years of fitness. I get maybe three, four days to myself, free of parental responsibility each year. Obviously that will grow as the kids get older, but I'll be 59 by the time my youngest is 18. I long for the freedom I could have had in my 20s before kids came along. I should have been so much more focused on what I wanted to do, and done it myself. I should have spent several long weekends a year in the Highlands of Scotland reaching the inaccessible places. I should have walked up every Wainwright. I should have cycled the whole of the North of England, the whole of Ireland. I should never, ever have replied to the question 'do anything this weekend' with 'oh, not much.'
I've never felt the need (or indeed had the budget) to go everywhere in the world. If I die without seeing Rome or Ljubljana or Australia or South America, well, shrug, you can't do everything. If I never dive or bungee jump, well, so be it. But there are things I really did want to do, but they never seemed pressing, and now I'm married with kids I may never get the chance.
If you are young, care not what plans your friends or girlfriends make: if there are things you want to do, do them. You will never have more time and energy than you do now.
It is, always, later than you think
Gotta say you are missing a bit of the wider world
Rome is tremendous, a top ten must-see city (but avoid the summer)
Ljubljana you can skip. Pleasant but unexceptional
Australia is absolutely essential for its insane fauna. Everything else, the Barrier Reef, the Kimberley Coast, the endless Outback, the Queensland rainforests, the glorious Northern Territory, even Uluru, you can sort of find somewhere else, in some form
But NOTHING is like your first glimpse of a real live kangaroo in the wild. Under the gum trees. Staring at you. And then there's the wombats, koalas, wallabies, dingos, quolls, bilbys. pademelons, sugar gliders. platypi and the Ruffous Bettong. It is the nearest you can get to a different planet but equally as full of life
If you possibly can, go to Australia at least once and see a tree kangaroo fall out of a eucalypt
I mean, I have left the UK. I've been to a few of the world's big must see places, like Paris and New York. And if the weekend after next you plonked me in Rome I'm sure I'd have a very lovely time. But it is the experiences in these islands my heart yearns for - I think because I might so easily have done them when I had the time.
I might yet get to Australia. My sister-in-law's partner is Australian; they have a small baby, and are thinking of moving there. They are assuming we will visit regularly. And I'd very much like to see a kangaroo and all the other fellas. But, what, £10,000 and 24 hours travelling to get a family of five to Australia? Realistically we can only do it once, if at all. Whereas the Cuillins? You can get there with a tankful of petrol. I ought to have done that already. Why haven't I? So many years of fitting in with other people's plans when I might have made my own.
I hear you. On the other hand, you have almost certainly been an infinitely better father than me. My kids tell me they've forgiven me for being Not There so much, but I feel a fair amount of guilt, and I am sure I have done them harm. And yet I have seen the world in my selfishness (and my job, to be fair)
Something has to give, doesn't it?
However, your despair is foolish. You say you'll be done parenting at 59 - well 59 is nothing. I'm in my late 50s and just spent 3 months doing non stop travel from America to Armenia and back. And it was brilliant
Vow to yourself that you will do all this when you are 59, and do it
And don't spend £10k taking the entire family to Oz, it's really not worth it. You need to see it alone, or at most in a couple, so you can really get out there to the remote places. Remoteness is the point of Oz. The Atherton Tablelands! Kakadu! Coober Pedy! Arnhemland!
I have been fortunate to have a personal situation whereby I can do a lot of travelling by myself ; I've been up to Scotland a couple of times and also across northern Europe on various self indulgent train rides.
What I realised is something that I knew already from my backpacking in South East Asia two decades ago, even though there are some quite good memories, It all becomes pretty pointless and mundane very quickly.
I only get some kind of meaning and purpose and enjoyment out of life where I am helping other people in some way, this is not really achieved through travelling somewhere by myself.
NOTE - This is just my own 'lived experience'/ opinion, I'm not commenting on other people.
Thanks. I should add, I'm not lamenting my family. If I didn't have children I would lament the lack of them more. My kids are young enough not to be cynical or world-weary and old enough not to need too much looking after. I am in the golden years of life. And a holiday with them is a magical thing. (And this refers to your 'helping other people in some way: it doesn't need to be your kids for it to be meaningful and magical.) I'm not wishing myself back to my 20s - just wishing I'd made better use of the time before they came along. But maybe the not knowing how your future will turn out in your twenties is what gives you the fomo which stops you having all the adventures you might on your own.
Totally off topic, but younger son, who is trying to return from an exhibition in Amsterdam, has done so by sea because of the massive queues at security at the airport! So it's not just Heathrow! So he's now on his way to Heathrow to fly back home to Bangkok. Wonder what the situation will be when he gets to Heathrow.
I do keep hearing about air travel chaos. I'm meant to be starting serious foreign travel again, after a long break, and it's not encouraging me. Maybe best to just stay put for now.
I’ve gone through LGW without incident several times now….
Think I'm just looking for excuses - got used to staying still and the world revolving around me rather than the other way around.
Don’t.
Someone I know got used to doing absolutely nothing and seeing no one during covid. Like a hermit
Even when covid ended she maintained this new monastic isolation. She went from being sociable and active and keen on travel, to inertia, isolation, staying-at-home
Recently this person was diagnosed with a terminal illness and was given a few short months to live, at most. And she is now UNABLE to travel. Much as she might want to
She now bitterly regrets the ~3 years spent in self imposed confinement and it wasn’t even Covid that got her, in the end
You’re in your 60s. You can still see the world. Do it before you no longer can
Well it's not a Covid thing and, like I say, I have travelled a lot previously.
But, yes, there are some trips I'd like to do and if I don't do them through inertia that wouldn't be great.
This opens the door for a lament. I'm 47. I have recently become rather more acutely aware of the finity of my remaining years. What's brought this about is looking at OS maps. I've walked a lot in Britain, but there's so much more I haven't done than I have, and it seems rather too much to achieve in my remaining years of fitness. I get maybe three, four days to myself, free of parental responsibility each year. Obviously that will grow as the kids get older, but I'll be 59 by the time my youngest is 18. I long for the freedom I could have had in my 20s before kids came along. I should have been so much more focused on what I wanted to do, and done it myself. I should have spent several long weekends a year in the Highlands of Scotland reaching the inaccessible places. I should have walked up every Wainwright. I should have cycled the whole of the North of England, the whole of Ireland. I should never, ever have replied to the question 'do anything this weekend' with 'oh, not much.'
I've never felt the need (or indeed had the budget) to go everywhere in the world. If I die without seeing Rome or Ljubljana or Australia or South America, well, shrug, you can't do everything. If I never dive or bungee jump, well, so be it. But there are things I really did want to do, but they never seemed pressing, and now I'm married with kids I may never get the chance.
If you are young, care not what plans your friends or girlfriends make: if there are things you want to do, do them. You will never have more time and energy than you do now.
It is, always, later than you think
Gotta say you are missing a bit of the wider world
Rome is tremendous, a top ten must-see city (but avoid the summer)
Ljubljana you can skip. Pleasant but unexceptional
Australia is absolutely essential for its insane fauna. Everything else, the Barrier Reef, the Kimberley Coast, the endless Outback, the Queensland rainforests, the glorious Northern Territory, even Uluru, you can sort of find somewhere else, in some form
But NOTHING is like your first glimpse of a real live kangaroo in the wild. Under the gum trees. Staring at you. And then there's the wombats, koalas, wallabies, dingos, quolls, bilbys. pademelons, sugar gliders. platypi and the Ruffous Bettong. It is the nearest you can get to a different planet but equally as full of life
If you possibly can, go to Australia at least once and see a tree kangaroo fall out of a eucalypt
I mean, I have left the UK. I've been to a few of the world's big must see places, like Paris and New York. And if the weekend after next you plonked me in Rome I'm sure I'd have a very lovely time. But it is the experiences in these islands my heart yearns for - I think because I might so easily have done them when I had the time.
I might yet get to Australia. My sister-in-law's partner is Australian; they have a small baby, and are thinking of moving there. They are assuming we will visit regularly. And I'd very much like to see a kangaroo and all the other fellas. But, what, £10,000 and 24 hours travelling to get a family of five to Australia? Realistically we can only do it once, if at all. Whereas the Cuillins? You can get there with a tankful of petrol. I ought to have done that already. Why haven't I? So many years of fitting in with other people's plans when I might have made my own.
I hear you. On the other hand, you have almost certainly been an infinitely better father than me. My kids tell me they've forgiven me for being Not There so much, but I feel a fair amount of guilt, and I am sure I have done them harm. And yet I have seen the world in my selfishness (and my job, to be fair)
Something has to give, doesn't it?
However, your despair is foolish. You say you'll be done parenting at 59 - well 59 is nothing. I'm in my late 50s and just spent 3 months doing non stop travel from America to Armenia and back. And it was brilliant
Vow to yourself that you will do all this when you are 59, and do it
And don't spend £10k taking the entire family to Oz, it's really not worth it. You need to see it alone, or at most in a couple, so you can really get out there to the remote places. Remoteness is the point of Oz. The Atherton Tablelands! Kakadu! Coober Pedy! Arnhemland!
I have been fortunate to have a personal situation whereby I can do a lot of travelling by myself ; I've been up to Scotland a couple of times and also across northern Europe on various self indulgent train rides.
What I realised is something that I knew already from my backpacking in South East Asia two decades ago, even though there are some quite good memories, It all becomes pretty pointless and mundane very quickly.
I only get some kind of meaning and purpose and enjoyment out of life where I am helping other people in some way, this is not really achieved through travelling somewhere by myself.
NOTE - This is just my own 'lived experience'/ opinion, I'm not commenting on other people.
Thanks. I should add, I'm not lamenting my family. If I didn't have children I would lament the lack of them more. My kids are young enough not to be cynical or world-weary and old enough not to need too much looking after. I am in the golden years of life. And a holiday with them is a magical thing. (And this refers to your 'helping other people in some way: it doesn't need to be your kids for it to be meaningful and magical.) I'm not wishing myself back to my 20s - just wishing I'd made better use of the time before they came along. But maybe the not knowing how your future will turn out in your twenties is what gives you the fomo which stops you having all the adventures you might on your own.
If Russia loses, all the people on Left and Right in the West that demanded a "compromise" that "accepts Russia's legitimate interests" will shift to accusing the West of having sucked Putin into a deliberate trap to crush Moscow
None of these people will rethink their positions
Prediction: this will also be the position of the Putin regime, or whatever more extreme despotism succeeds it, and that of most of the Russian population along with it. They think they're entitled to conquer and subjugate their neighbours at will, and when the plan goes wrong it's the fault of everyone but themselves. They're irredeemable.
Even if the Putin regime falls and is replaced by a more hard line government, that government is unlikely to last very long.
There is a growing sense of collapse on the Russian side. Rumours of an army mutiny are growing, and the reports that Kadyrov is sending forces "to support" the regime (not clear where but even, possibly, Moscow) suggests we may, just possibly, already be in some kind of end game. It appears that Kherson may fall even as early as this week, and the collapse of Russian forces in the Donbas seems to be accelerating, with UAF units getting close to Luhansk. Putin is said to be in Sochi, but as with the Czar in Pskov, that is no guarantee that he is safer there than in the capital.
Any new regime in Russia will need to deal with significant internal headwinds, and not least the Kadyrovtsi. The renewal of the Azerbaijani assault on Armenia is also yet another sign that the authority of Putin is draining away.
Personally, those who told me that, irrespective of morality or our own fundamental interests, the West should come to terms with Putin, now look more than just "wrong". The Baltic and Poland have been warning about Putin for 20 years. They were right and now the views of the front line states should count for a lot more than the discredited position of "compromise" with the rapist regime. Putin is likely to fall eventually, and that is a good thing, because irrespective of the short term, Russia has to change and it can not change with him still in the Kremlin. "Clinging hold of nurse, for fear of getting something worse" is the perennial mistake of Western statecraft when dealing with Moscow and it fails every time.
For many people in countries that border Russia, the top pressing interest is in 'removing the threat', and this can be achieved through the 'defeat of Russia', even though that means 'embracing the chaos' that follows.
But the end game of what you are describing is the disintegration of Russia in to multiple statelets, run by a collection of warlords and dubious 'businessmen'; who inherit collections of nuclear weapons and other significant military infrastructure; who have no interest in constitutional democracy, and who 'work with' powers like China and Iran, and with a population who 'blame the west' for the second disintegration of the former Russian State and the chaos and poverty that ensues.
I've got no real embarrassment about looking at the situation and concluding that there may just be some merit in 'clinging to nurse'. We need to remember what happened in Iraq with Saddam Hussein or Gaddafi in Libya.
So what is your actual policy proposal ? That we force Ukraine to accept Russian territorial seizures, and just live with the enormous damage they have wreaked ?
All those complaining that those backing Ukraine 'have no endgame' don't seem to have any problem with their own equally uncertain, and far less justified position.
From all I have seen and read, I would go with the long term position of the west towards Russia as the 'least worst/only viable option' - IE Putin gets an 'off ramp' and there is some kind of 'deal' that secures the independence and sovereignty of Ukraine within the EU orbit, as well as the independence of Russia in relation to China, and some restoration of trade with Russia.
This puts me in a total minority and will evoke many Hitler comparisons but it is a product of doing my best to think objectively about the situation, despite initially being in the 'beat back Russia' camp at the start of the campaign.
If you want to just 'embrace chaos' then you should reflect on what happened in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya or indeed in the Soviet union in the early 1990s which ultimately led to the arrival of Putin on the scene. You are taking a massive risk. If it works it will be because you were lucky.
You're not addressing the arguments, just a phrase.
As I've pointed out, Applebaum isn't arguing that we depose Putin, or even seek to encourage such a thing. She saying, and I agree with her, that Putin's survival or otherwise simply isn't in our gift. The consequences of a defeat of his invasion are something Russia will decide.
If you're arguing that the west should treat a defeated Russia with a degree of magnanimity, then I wouldn't disagree. But what are you actually arguing for, rather than against ?
@Nigelb The manner of his 'defeat', if this is to occur (which is not certain) will impact on whether his regime 'survives' or not. So I would disagree with Applebaums characterisation of the situation, in this respect.
I am cautioning against the rhetoric of 'beating back Putin' to the point where the regime collapses. This is taking unnecessary risks of nuclear escalation, and/or a failed state. This is my objection to the 'embrace the chaos' thinking going on.
In the end, it is the west who are determining the outcome of the war in Ukraine because the hard reality is without western aid Ukraine would not be succeeding. They are doing a great job and I support them, but they turned things round by persuading the west to back them significantly.
I don't think we can meddle with succession and agree with Applebaum on that point. There is a succession problem already with Putin's regime, which will apply irrespective of what happens because of Putins age/health. However, observing from a long distance, there is a successor in Dmitry Medvedev who was well regarded by European leaders when he was president from 2008-2012.
It may just be a case of better the devil you know.
I don't think the west can finetune the outcome really. Not to the extent of choosing between granular types of Russian defeats. And even if they could I'm not sure how useful it would be since it's highly uncertain how Putin will react and how others in Russia will react to Putin's reaction.
This. It's a delusion to think that we can meaningfully influence internal Russian politics, except to the extent that we defend our interests and values and reward them for moves towards better international behaviour.
Russians are responsible for Russian choices. Not the West. The West is responsible for our reactions to those choices, and in this instance that has to be clear that (1) there is no reward for aggression, and, (2) we are not going to meddle in internal Russian affairs.
Yes the 'aggression brings no gain' outcome is imo the key here. I've never really looked at this as a war. For me it presents more accurately as a crime with a perp and a victim.
What I wouldn't want to see, however, is bellicosity of the "right, we'll teach these Russian bastards" sort. Fact is, if Putin ends up gaining little or nothing having gone all-in on this "operation" that is in practice a terrible defeat.
So let's get there and then see what happens.
Gaining little or nothing isn't enough. They need to pay reparations to Ukraine for their crime too.
For this war to end three things need to happen.
1: Russia needs to be expelled from all of Crimea, the Donbas and other territory it is occupying. 2: Russia needs to agree compensation to Ukraine for the damages it has inflicted. 3: Russia needs to sign a peace treaty recognising all of Ukraine, including Crimea and Donbas, as Ukrainian.
We'll see. I do, however, sense you straying into the sort of bellicosity I specifically said I didn't want to see. But if all of that remains on internet forums rather than in decision rooms I guess it's ok.
Perhaps it is worth thinking why you think that asking a county invading another country to completely stop invading another country and go back to the status quo ante is bellicose?
It isn't and I didn't say it was. I can spot bellicosity. Eg an earlier contribution from that particular poster - "we'll let them keep Moscow" - is the sort of thing I mean.
No, they can't keep Moscow. I'm taking that.
But you know what I mean. The tone. It's understandable, because this was and is an outrage from Putin (and therefore Russia), and so a brutal revenge rears its head, and like I say - ok on the internet but I'd hope decisions in the west (all of this assuming Russia truly is in permanent retreat now) aren't driven by that.
No, I don't know what you mean. How is it bellicose.
Moscow is their territory, in the past when countries lost wars their territory was often divided by the winners of the war - eg see what happened to Berlin post-war.
To be saying that the Russians can keep Moscow is the opposite of bellicose, it is bloody generous under the circumstances.
Man on the internet says he's being generous to allow the Russians to keep Moscow.
Just listen to yourself.
You have a problem with people on the internet having opinions?
Yes Russia keeping Moscow is extremely generous. You objecting to that makes me think maybe we should have Ukraine annex some Russian territory once all this is over to help secure the peace.
What do you think Russia's price should be for starting and losing a war of aggression?
Would be hilarious if the Ukrainians took the entire Black Sea Coast including Rostov.
Morally wrong and illegal, but hilarious.
Would it be illegal? Given they're the defenders in this was not the aggressor state.
If that's in the peace treaty it could be morally right and legal, but I don't expect it as people are still far too generous to Russia.
I don’t think it would be illegal to invade Russia under these circumstances but it would be illegal to annex part of it, aggressor or no.
Exhibit A - the West Bank.
There were mutterimgs on twitter earlier in the week Putin was mulling a full declaration of war. That would justify invasion of Russia to force an end.
Blimey, you go away for a bit and things really escalate!
Regarding Germany - it's clear that armour is key to Ukraine ending the war.
Disappointing signals from Germany while Ukraine needs Leopards and Marders now — to liberate people and save them from genocide. Not a single rational argument on why these weapons can not be supplied, only abstract fears and excuses. What is Berlin afraid of that Kyiv is not? https://mobile.twitter.com/DmytroKuleba/status/1569637880204775426
Totally off topic, but younger son, who is trying to return from an exhibition in Amsterdam, has done so by sea because of the massive queues at security at the airport! So it's not just Heathrow! So he's now on his way to Heathrow to fly back home to Bangkok. Wonder what the situation will be when he gets to Heathrow.
I do keep hearing about air travel chaos. I'm meant to be starting serious foreign travel again, after a long break, and it's not encouraging me. Maybe best to just stay put for now.
I’ve gone through LGW without incident several times now….
Think I'm just looking for excuses - got used to staying still and the world revolving around me rather than the other way around.
Don’t.
Someone I know got used to doing absolutely nothing and seeing no one during covid. Like a hermit
Even when covid ended she maintained this new monastic isolation. She went from being sociable and active and keen on travel, to inertia, isolation, staying-at-home
Recently this person was diagnosed with a terminal illness and was given a few short months to live, at most. And she is now UNABLE to travel. Much as she might want to
She now bitterly regrets the ~3 years spent in self imposed confinement and it wasn’t even Covid that got her, in the end
You’re in your 60s. You can still see the world. Do it before you no longer can
Well it's not a Covid thing and, like I say, I have travelled a lot previously.
But, yes, there are some trips I'd like to do and if I don't do them through inertia that wouldn't be great.
This opens the door for a lament. I'm 47. I have recently become rather more acutely aware of the finity of my remaining years. What's brought this about is looking at OS maps. I've walked a lot in Britain, but there's so much more I haven't done than I have, and it seems rather too much to achieve in my remaining years of fitness. I get maybe three, four days to myself, free of parental responsibility each year. Obviously that will grow as the kids get older, but I'll be 59 by the time my youngest is 18. I long for the freedom I could have had in my 20s before kids came along. I should have been so much more focused on what I wanted to do, and done it myself. I should have spent several long weekends a year in the Highlands of Scotland reaching the inaccessible places. I should have walked up every Wainwright. I should have cycled the whole of the North of England, the whole of Ireland. I should never, ever have replied to the question 'do anything this weekend' with 'oh, not much.'
I've never felt the need (or indeed had the budget) to go everywhere in the world. If I die without seeing Rome or Ljubljana or Australia or South America, well, shrug, you can't do everything. If I never dive or bungee jump, well, so be it. But there are things I really did want to do, but they never seemed pressing, and now I'm married with kids I may never get the chance.
If you are young, care not what plans your friends or girlfriends make: if there are things you want to do, do them. You will never have more time and energy than you do now.
It is, always, later than you think
Gotta say you are missing a bit of the wider world
Rome is tremendous, a top ten must-see city (but avoid the summer)
Ljubljana you can skip. Pleasant but unexceptional
Australia is absolutely essential for its insane fauna. Everything else, the Barrier Reef, the Kimberley Coast, the endless Outback, the Queensland rainforests, the glorious Northern Territory, even Uluru, you can sort of find somewhere else, in some form
But NOTHING is like your first glimpse of a real live kangaroo in the wild. Under the gum trees. Staring at you. And then there's the wombats, koalas, wallabies, dingos, quolls, bilbys. pademelons, sugar gliders. platypi and the Ruffous Bettong. It is the nearest you can get to a different planet but equally as full of life
If you possibly can, go to Australia at least once and see a tree kangaroo fall out of a eucalypt
I mean, I have left the UK. I've been to a few of the world's big must see places, like Paris and New York. And if the weekend after next you plonked me in Rome I'm sure I'd have a very lovely time. But it is the experiences in these islands my heart yearns for - I think because I might so easily have done them when I had the time.
I might yet get to Australia. My sister-in-law's partner is Australian; they have a small baby, and are thinking of moving there. They are assuming we will visit regularly. And I'd very much like to see a kangaroo and all the other fellas. But, what, £10,000 and 24 hours travelling to get a family of five to Australia? Realistically we can only do it once, if at all. Whereas the Cuillins? You can get there with a tankful of petrol. I ought to have done that already. Why haven't I? So many years of fitting in with other people's plans when I might have made my own.
I hear you. On the other hand, you have almost certainly been an infinitely better father than me. My kids tell me they've forgiven me for being Not There so much, but I feel a fair amount of guilt, and I am sure I have done them harm. And yet I have seen the world in my selfishness (and my job, to be fair)
Something has to give, doesn't it?
However, your despair is foolish. You say you'll be done parenting at 59 - well 59 is nothing. I'm in my late 50s and just spent 3 months doing non stop travel from America to Armenia and back. And it was brilliant
Vow to yourself that you will do all this when you are 59, and do it
And don't spend £10k taking the entire family to Oz, it's really not worth it. You need to see it alone, or at most in a couple, so you can really get out there to the remote places. Remoteness is the point of Oz. The Atherton Tablelands! Kakadu! Coober Pedy! Arnhemland!
I have been fortunate to have a personal situation whereby I can do a lot of travelling by myself ; I've been up to Scotland a couple of times and also across northern Europe on various self indulgent train rides.
What I realised is something that I knew already from my backpacking in South East Asia two decades ago, even though there are some quite good memories, It all becomes pretty pointless and mundane very quickly.
I only get some kind of meaning and purpose and enjoyment out of life where I am helping other people in some way, this is not really achieved through travelling somewhere by myself.
NOTE - This is just my own 'lived experience'/ opinion, I'm not commenting on other people.
Thanks. I should add, I'm not lamenting my family. If I didn't have children I would lament the lack of them more. My kids are young enough not to be cynical or world-weary and old enough not to need too much looking after. I am in the golden years of life. And a holiday with them is a magical thing. (And this refers to your 'helping other people in some way: it doesn't need to be your kids for it to be meaningful and magical.) I'm not wishing myself back to my 20s - just wishing I'd made better use of the time before they came along. But maybe the not knowing how your future will turn out in your twenties is what gives you the fomo which stops you having all the adventures you might on your own.
What advice will you give your kids?
Mine really is one word: Travel
Mine would be: don't let fear stop you doing things.
Totally off topic, but younger son, who is trying to return from an exhibition in Amsterdam, has done so by sea because of the massive queues at security at the airport! So it's not just Heathrow! So he's now on his way to Heathrow to fly back home to Bangkok. Wonder what the situation will be when he gets to Heathrow.
I do keep hearing about air travel chaos. I'm meant to be starting serious foreign travel again, after a long break, and it's not encouraging me. Maybe best to just stay put for now.
I’ve gone through LGW without incident several times now….
Think I'm just looking for excuses - got used to staying still and the world revolving around me rather than the other way around.
Don’t.
Someone I know got used to doing absolutely nothing and seeing no one during covid. Like a hermit
Even when covid ended she maintained this new monastic isolation. She went from being sociable and active and keen on travel, to inertia, isolation, staying-at-home
Recently this person was diagnosed with a terminal illness and was given a few short months to live, at most. And she is now UNABLE to travel. Much as she might want to
She now bitterly regrets the ~3 years spent in self imposed confinement and it wasn’t even Covid that got her, in the end
You’re in your 60s. You can still see the world. Do it before you no longer can
Well it's not a Covid thing and, like I say, I have travelled a lot previously.
But, yes, there are some trips I'd like to do and if I don't do them through inertia that wouldn't be great.
This opens the door for a lament. I'm 47. I have recently become rather more acutely aware of the finity of my remaining years. What's brought this about is looking at OS maps. I've walked a lot in Britain, but there's so much more I haven't done than I have, and it seems rather too much to achieve in my remaining years of fitness. I get maybe three, four days to myself, free of parental responsibility each year. Obviously that will grow as the kids get older, but I'll be 59 by the time my youngest is 18. I long for the freedom I could have had in my 20s before kids came along. I should have been so much more focused on what I wanted to do, and done it myself. I should have spent several long weekends a year in the Highlands of Scotland reaching the inaccessible places. I should have walked up every Wainwright. I should have cycled the whole of the North of England, the whole of Ireland. I should never, ever have replied to the question 'do anything this weekend' with 'oh, not much.'
I've never felt the need (or indeed had the budget) to go everywhere in the world. If I die without seeing Rome or Ljubljana or Australia or South America, well, shrug, you can't do everything. If I never dive or bungee jump, well, so be it. But there are things I really did want to do, but they never seemed pressing, and now I'm married with kids I may never get the chance.
If you are young, care not what plans your friends or girlfriends make: if there are things you want to do, do them. You will never have more time and energy than you do now.
It is, always, later than you think
Gotta say you are missing a bit of the wider world
Rome is tremendous, a top ten must-see city (but avoid the summer)
Ljubljana you can skip. Pleasant but unexceptional
Australia is absolutely essential for its insane fauna. Everything else, the Barrier Reef, the Kimberley Coast, the endless Outback, the Queensland rainforests, the glorious Northern Territory, even Uluru, you can sort of find somewhere else, in some form
But NOTHING is like your first glimpse of a real live kangaroo in the wild. Under the gum trees. Staring at you. And then there's the wombats, koalas, wallabies, dingos, quolls, bilbys. pademelons, sugar gliders. platypi and the Ruffous Bettong. It is the nearest you can get to a different planet but equally as full of life
If you possibly can, go to Australia at least once and see a tree kangaroo fall out of a eucalypt
I mean, I have left the UK. I've been to a few of the world's big must see places, like Paris and New York. And if the weekend after next you plonked me in Rome I'm sure I'd have a very lovely time. But it is the experiences in these islands my heart yearns for - I think because I might so easily have done them when I had the time.
I might yet get to Australia. My sister-in-law's partner is Australian; they have a small baby, and are thinking of moving there. They are assuming we will visit regularly. And I'd very much like to see a kangaroo and all the other fellas. But, what, £10,000 and 24 hours travelling to get a family of five to Australia? Realistically we can only do it once, if at all. Whereas the Cuillins? You can get there with a tankful of petrol. I ought to have done that already. Why haven't I? So many years of fitting in with other people's plans when I might have made my own.
Do you really need three children?
If you economized there by, say, selling one or two, then that Australia trip might be more affordable l.
If Russia loses, all the people on Left and Right in the West that demanded a "compromise" that "accepts Russia's legitimate interests" will shift to accusing the West of having sucked Putin into a deliberate trap to crush Moscow
None of these people will rethink their positions
Prediction: this will also be the position of the Putin regime, or whatever more extreme despotism succeeds it, and that of most of the Russian population along with it. They think they're entitled to conquer and subjugate their neighbours at will, and when the plan goes wrong it's the fault of everyone but themselves. They're irredeemable.
Even if the Putin regime falls and is replaced by a more hard line government, that government is unlikely to last very long.
There is a growing sense of collapse on the Russian side. Rumours of an army mutiny are growing, and the reports that Kadyrov is sending forces "to support" the regime (not clear where but even, possibly, Moscow) suggests we may, just possibly, already be in some kind of end game. It appears that Kherson may fall even as early as this week, and the collapse of Russian forces in the Donbas seems to be accelerating, with UAF units getting close to Luhansk. Putin is said to be in Sochi, but as with the Czar in Pskov, that is no guarantee that he is safer there than in the capital.
Any new regime in Russia will need to deal with significant internal headwinds, and not least the Kadyrovtsi. The renewal of the Azerbaijani assault on Armenia is also yet another sign that the authority of Putin is draining away.
Personally, those who told me that, irrespective of morality or our own fundamental interests, the West should come to terms with Putin, now look more than just "wrong". The Baltic and Poland have been warning about Putin for 20 years. They were right and now the views of the front line states should count for a lot more than the discredited position of "compromise" with the rapist regime. Putin is likely to fall eventually, and that is a good thing, because irrespective of the short term, Russia has to change and it can not change with him still in the Kremlin. "Clinging hold of nurse, for fear of getting something worse" is the perennial mistake of Western statecraft when dealing with Moscow and it fails every time.
For many people in countries that border Russia, the top pressing interest is in 'removing the threat', and this can be achieved through the 'defeat of Russia', even though that means 'embracing the chaos' that follows.
But the end game of what you are describing is the disintegration of Russia in to multiple statelets, run by a collection of warlords and dubious 'businessmen'; who inherit collections of nuclear weapons and other significant military infrastructure; who have no interest in constitutional democracy, and who 'work with' powers like China and Iran, and with a population who 'blame the west' for the second disintegration of the former Russian State and the chaos and poverty that ensues.
I've got no real embarrassment about looking at the situation and concluding that there may just be some merit in 'clinging to nurse'. We need to remember what happened in Iraq with Saddam Hussein or Gaddafi in Libya.
So what is your actual policy proposal ? That we force Ukraine to accept Russian territorial seizures, and just live with the enormous damage they have wreaked ?
All those complaining that those backing Ukraine 'have no endgame' don't seem to have any problem with their own equally uncertain, and far less justified position.
From all I have seen and read, I would go with the long term position of the west towards Russia as the 'least worst/only viable option' - IE Putin gets an 'off ramp' and there is some kind of 'deal' that secures the independence and sovereignty of Ukraine within the EU orbit, as well as the independence of Russia in relation to China, and some restoration of trade with Russia.
This puts me in a total minority and will evoke many Hitler comparisons but it is a product of doing my best to think objectively about the situation, despite initially being in the 'beat back Russia' camp at the start of the campaign.
If you want to just 'embrace chaos' then you should reflect on what happened in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya or indeed in the Soviet union in the early 1990s which ultimately led to the arrival of Putin on the scene. You are taking a massive risk. If it works it will be because you were lucky.
You're not addressing the arguments, just a phrase.
As I've pointed out, Applebaum isn't arguing that we depose Putin, or even seek to encourage such a thing. She saying, and I agree with her, that Putin's survival or otherwise simply isn't in our gift. The consequences of a defeat of his invasion are something Russia will decide.
If you're arguing that the west should treat a defeated Russia with a degree of magnanimity, then I wouldn't disagree. But what are you actually arguing for, rather than against ?
@Nigelb The manner of his 'defeat', if this is to occur (which is not certain) will impact on whether his regime 'survives' or not. So I would disagree with Applebaums characterisation of the situation, in this respect.
I am cautioning against the rhetoric of 'beating back Putin' to the point where the regime collapses. This is taking unnecessary risks of nuclear escalation, and/or a failed state. This is my objection to the 'embrace the chaos' thinking going on.
In the end, it is the west who are determining the outcome of the war in Ukraine because the hard reality is without western aid Ukraine would not be succeeding. They are doing a great job and I support them, but they turned things round by persuading the west to back them significantly.
I don't think we can meddle with succession and agree with Applebaum on that point. There is a succession problem already with Putin's regime, which will apply irrespective of what happens because of Putins age/health. However, observing from a long distance, there is a successor in Dmitry Medvedev who was well regarded by European leaders when he was president from 2008-2012.
It may just be a case of better the devil you know.
I don't think the west can finetune the outcome really. Not to the extent of choosing between granular types of Russian defeats. And even if they could I'm not sure how useful it would be since it's highly uncertain how Putin will react and how others in Russia will react to Putin's reaction.
This. It's a delusion to think that we can meaningfully influence internal Russian politics, except to the extent that we defend our interests and values and reward them for moves towards better international behaviour.
Russians are responsible for Russian choices. Not the West. The West is responsible for our reactions to those choices, and in this instance that has to be clear that (1) there is no reward for aggression, and, (2) we are not going to meddle in internal Russian affairs.
Yes the 'aggression brings no gain' outcome is imo the key here. I've never really looked at this as a war. For me it presents more accurately as a crime with a perp and a victim.
What I wouldn't want to see, however, is bellicosity of the "right, we'll teach these Russian bastards" sort. Fact is, if Putin ends up gaining little or nothing having gone all-in on this "operation" that is in practice a terrible defeat.
So let's get there and then see what happens.
Gaining little or nothing isn't enough. They need to pay reparations to Ukraine for their crime too.
For this war to end three things need to happen.
1: Russia needs to be expelled from all of Crimea, the Donbas and other territory it is occupying. 2: Russia needs to agree compensation to Ukraine for the damages it has inflicted. 3: Russia needs to sign a peace treaty recognising all of Ukraine, including Crimea and Donbas, as Ukrainian.
We'll see. I do, however, sense you straying into the sort of bellicosity I specifically said I didn't want to see. But if all of that remains on internet forums rather than in decision rooms I guess it's ok.
Perhaps it is worth thinking why you think that asking a county invading another country to completely stop invading another country and go back to the status quo ante is bellicose?
It isn't and I didn't say it was. I can spot bellicosity. Eg an earlier contribution from that particular poster - "we'll let them keep Moscow" - is the sort of thing I mean.
No, they can't keep Moscow. I'm taking that.
But you know what I mean. The tone. It's understandable, because this was and is an outrage from Putin (and therefore Russia), and so a brutal revenge rears its head, and like I say - ok on the internet but I'd hope decisions in the west (all of this assuming Russia truly is in permanent retreat now) aren't driven by that.
No, I don't know what you mean. How is it bellicose.
Moscow is their territory, in the past when countries lost wars their territory was often divided by the winners of the war - eg see what happened to Berlin post-war.
To be saying that the Russians can keep Moscow is the opposite of bellicose, it is bloody generous under the circumstances.
Man on the internet says he's being generous to allow the Russians to keep Moscow.
Just listen to yourself.
You have a problem with people on the internet having opinions?
Yes Russia keeping Moscow is extremely generous. You objecting to that makes me think maybe we should have Ukraine annex some Russian territory once all this is over to help secure the peace.
What do you think Russia's price should be for starting and losing a war of aggression?
Would be hilarious if the Ukrainians took the entire Black Sea Coast including Rostov.
Morally wrong and illegal, but hilarious.
Would it be illegal? Given they're the defenders in this was not the aggressor state.
If that's in the peace treaty it could be morally right and legal, but I don't expect it as people are still far too generous to Russia.
I don’t think it would be illegal to invade Russia under these circumstances but it would be illegal to annex part of it, aggressor or no.
Exhibit A - the West Bank.
There were mutterimgs on twitter earlier in the week Putin was mulling a full declaration of war. That would justify invasion of Russia to force an end.
Blimey, you go away for a bit and things really escalate!
I know, right? Twitter already has us in a post apocalyptic dystopis
Totally off topic, but younger son, who is trying to return from an exhibition in Amsterdam, has done so by sea because of the massive queues at security at the airport! So it's not just Heathrow! So he's now on his way to Heathrow to fly back home to Bangkok. Wonder what the situation will be when he gets to Heathrow.
I do keep hearing about air travel chaos. I'm meant to be starting serious foreign travel again, after a long break, and it's not encouraging me. Maybe best to just stay put for now.
I’ve gone through LGW without incident several times now….
Think I'm just looking for excuses - got used to staying still and the world revolving around me rather than the other way around.
Don’t.
Someone I know got used to doing absolutely nothing and seeing no one during covid. Like a hermit
Even when covid ended she maintained this new monastic isolation. She went from being sociable and active and keen on travel, to inertia, isolation, staying-at-home
Recently this person was diagnosed with a terminal illness and was given a few short months to live, at most. And she is now UNABLE to travel. Much as she might want to
She now bitterly regrets the ~3 years spent in self imposed confinement and it wasn’t even Covid that got her, in the end
You’re in your 60s. You can still see the world. Do it before you no longer can
Well it's not a Covid thing and, like I say, I have travelled a lot previously.
But, yes, there are some trips I'd like to do and if I don't do them through inertia that wouldn't be great.
This opens the door for a lament. I'm 47. I have recently become rather more acutely aware of the finity of my remaining years. What's brought this about is looking at OS maps. I've walked a lot in Britain, but there's so much more I haven't done than I have, and it seems rather too much to achieve in my remaining years of fitness. I get maybe three, four days to myself, free of parental responsibility each year. Obviously that will grow as the kids get older, but I'll be 59 by the time my youngest is 18. I long for the freedom I could have had in my 20s before kids came along. I should have been so much more focused on what I wanted to do, and done it myself. I should have spent several long weekends a year in the Highlands of Scotland reaching the inaccessible places. I should have walked up every Wainwright. I should have cycled the whole of the North of England, the whole of Ireland. I should never, ever have replied to the question 'do anything this weekend' with 'oh, not much.'
I've never felt the need (or indeed had the budget) to go everywhere in the world. If I die without seeing Rome or Ljubljana or Australia or South America, well, shrug, you can't do everything. If I never dive or bungee jump, well, so be it. But there are things I really did want to do, but they never seemed pressing, and now I'm married with kids I may never get the chance.
If you are young, care not what plans your friends or girlfriends make: if there are things you want to do, do them. You will never have more time and energy than you do now.
It is, always, later than you think
Gotta say you are missing a bit of the wider world
Rome is tremendous, a top ten must-see city (but avoid the summer)
Ljubljana you can skip. Pleasant but unexceptional
Australia is absolutely essential for its insane fauna. Everything else, the Barrier Reef, the Kimberley Coast, the endless Outback, the Queensland rainforests, the glorious Northern Territory, even Uluru, you can sort of find somewhere else, in some form
But NOTHING is like your first glimpse of a real live kangaroo in the wild. Under the gum trees. Staring at you. And then there's the wombats, koalas, wallabies, dingos, quolls, bilbys. pademelons, sugar gliders. platypi and the Ruffous Bettong. It is the nearest you can get to a different planet but equally as full of life
If you possibly can, go to Australia at least once and see a tree kangaroo fall out of a eucalypt
I mean, I have left the UK. I've been to a few of the world's big must see places, like Paris and New York. And if the weekend after next you plonked me in Rome I'm sure I'd have a very lovely time. But it is the experiences in these islands my heart yearns for - I think because I might so easily have done them when I had the time.
I might yet get to Australia. My sister-in-law's partner is Australian; they have a small baby, and are thinking of moving there. They are assuming we will visit regularly. And I'd very much like to see a kangaroo and all the other fellas. But, what, £10,000 and 24 hours travelling to get a family of five to Australia? Realistically we can only do it once, if at all. Whereas the Cuillins? You can get there with a tankful of petrol. I ought to have done that already. Why haven't I? So many years of fitting in with other people's plans when I might have made my own.
I hear you. On the other hand, you have almost certainly been an infinitely better father than me. My kids tell me they've forgiven me for being Not There so much, but I feel a fair amount of guilt, and I am sure I have done them harm. And yet I have seen the world in my selfishness (and my job, to be fair)
Something has to give, doesn't it?
However, your despair is foolish. You say you'll be done parenting at 59 - well 59 is nothing. I'm in my late 50s and just spent 3 months doing non stop travel from America to Armenia and back. And it was brilliant
Vow to yourself that you will do all this when you are 59, and do it
And don't spend £10k taking the entire family to Oz, it's really not worth it. You need to see it alone, or at most in a couple, so you can really get out there to the remote places. Remoteness is the point of Oz. The Atherton Tablelands! Kakadu! Coober Pedy! Arnhemland!
I have been fortunate to have a personal situation whereby I can do a lot of travelling by myself ; I've been up to Scotland a couple of times and also across northern Europe on various self indulgent train rides.
What I realised is something that I knew already from my backpacking in South East Asia two decades ago, even though there are some quite good memories, It all becomes pretty pointless and mundane very quickly.
I only get some kind of meaning and purpose and enjoyment out of life where I am helping other people in some way, this is not really achieved through travelling somewhere by myself.
NOTE - This is just my own 'lived experience'/ opinion, I'm not commenting on other people.
Thanks. I should add, I'm not lamenting my family. If I didn't have children I would lament the lack of them more. My kids are young enough not to be cynical or world-weary and old enough not to need too much looking after. I am in the golden years of life. And a holiday with them is a magical thing. (And this refers to your 'helping other people in some way: it doesn't need to be your kids for it to be meaningful and magical.) I'm not wishing myself back to my 20s - just wishing I'd made better use of the time before they came along. But maybe the not knowing how your future will turn out in your twenties is what gives you the fomo which stops you having all the adventures you might on your own.
What advice will you give your kids?
Mine really is one word: Travel
Mine would be: don't let fear stop you doing things.
Which is kinda the same thing....
However to afford the travel you have to work. I am SO tempted to go out into sunny, buzzy Seville and drink ice cold manzanilla, but first I have to earn it
Does Charles pay inheritance tax? Or is that only for the rest of us?
He's committed to pay an effective 75% income tax rate, if you'd rather he was taxed at the normal rates everyone else pays I'm sure he'd be happy to do so.
How are you calculating 75%?
Or are you claiming the Crown Estates as "tax", which it is not.
The Sovereign Grant is, I understand, fixed at 25% of the Crown Estates revenue, which effectively makes it a 75% tax. Not literally, but effectively.
The Crown Estate is not the personal property of the Monarch & its management is under the control of the government.
The Sovereign receives a payment out of the revenue of the Crown Estate as a replacement for the Civil List, which was causing political difficulties: Voting on the Monarch’s income every decade was highlighting to the general public exactly how much the Monarch was receiving from them on a regular basis. Now it never comes up, because it’s fixed as a proportion of the income of the Crown Estate.
So the Monarch (amongst many other things) gets 25% of the lease cost for every off-shore windfarm. Obviously the Monarch has done nothing to deserve that income, but that’s political fudges for you.
It belongs to the monarch but isn't part of their private estate which makes it a fudge anyway. But it certainly doesn't belong to the government, even if the government manages it and takes 75% of its revenues.
This is one of those carefully ambiguous fudges on which the British Constitution rests. The government agrees that the Crown Estate is the property of the Monarch & the Monarch agrees to give the government full control over it. Everybody wins & no one has to answer awkward questions like: why exactly does the Monarch own all this property anyway?
Its not the property of the Monarch, its the property of the Crown. The Monarch has the property by virtue of having the Crown.
It even says so on the Crown Estates own website!
Who owns The Crown Estate? The Crown Estate belongs to the reigning monarch 'in right of The Crown', that is, it is owned by the monarch for the duration of their reign, by virtue of their accession to the throne. But it is not the private property of the monarch - it cannot be sold by the monarch, nor do revenues from it belong to the monarch.
The Government also does not own The Crown Estate. It is managed by an independent organisation - established by statute - headed by a Board (also known as The Crown Estate Commissioners), and the surplus revenue from the estate is paid each year to the Treasury for the benefit of the nation's finances.
If the Monarch leaves the throne, they lose the Crown and all rights therein.
If the revenues don't belong to the monarch, how can the monarch agree to give 75% of them to the government?
Because the Monarch has them by right of having the Crown. They belong to the Crown, not to the Monarch personally, if the Monarch loses the Crown they lose everything that belongs to the Crown.
Just as Liz Truss doesn't now own 10 Downing Street.
10 Downing Street is a fixed property. "The Crown" is a fictitious legal person that owns stuff.
Whether the Crown owns freeholds or some other version of ultimate rights, I don't know. Even if it does, we don't know what arrangements with what other parties it may have entered into, whether in "perpetuity" or whatever. We simply do not know, so let's not make any arguments from ignorance.
A reasonable question to ask is "who owns the Crown?" This is a reasonable question precisely because the Crown is a fictitious legal person that owns stuff.
They make this sh*t up as they go along. Then they stand there looking solemn and talking about "how things are done", "tradition", "protocol", etc. As if the absolute last thing in the world that they would ever do is make sh*t up as they go along.
There's no f***ing "rule" over who stands where near a coffin, or what uniform they wear, or what the idiots must do with flags on this or that occasion. Or if there is, they can change the "rule" whenever they want.
At the end of the day it's all about a small number of extremely rich greedy people trousering income and retaining control over enormous capital and fixed assets, operating out of public view. (Cf. Russia .)
Totally off topic, but younger son, who is trying to return from an exhibition in Amsterdam, has done so by sea because of the massive queues at security at the airport! So it's not just Heathrow! So he's now on his way to Heathrow to fly back home to Bangkok. Wonder what the situation will be when he gets to Heathrow.
I do keep hearing about air travel chaos. I'm meant to be starting serious foreign travel again, after a long break, and it's not encouraging me. Maybe best to just stay put for now.
I’ve gone through LGW without incident several times now….
Think I'm just looking for excuses - got used to staying still and the world revolving around me rather than the other way around.
Don’t.
Someone I know got used to doing absolutely nothing and seeing no one during covid. Like a hermit
Even when covid ended she maintained this new monastic isolation. She went from being sociable and active and keen on travel, to inertia, isolation, staying-at-home
Recently this person was diagnosed with a terminal illness and was given a few short months to live, at most. And she is now UNABLE to travel. Much as she might want to
She now bitterly regrets the ~3 years spent in self imposed confinement and it wasn’t even Covid that got her, in the end
You’re in your 60s. You can still see the world. Do it before you no longer can
Well it's not a Covid thing and, like I say, I have travelled a lot previously.
But, yes, there are some trips I'd like to do and if I don't do them through inertia that wouldn't be great.
This opens the door for a lament. I'm 47. I have recently become rather more acutely aware of the finity of my remaining years. What's brought this about is looking at OS maps. I've walked a lot in Britain, but there's so much more I haven't done than I have, and it seems rather too much to achieve in my remaining years of fitness. I get maybe three, four days to myself, free of parental responsibility each year. Obviously that will grow as the kids get older, but I'll be 59 by the time my youngest is 18. I long for the freedom I could have had in my 20s before kids came along. I should have been so much more focused on what I wanted to do, and done it myself. I should have spent several long weekends a year in the Highlands of Scotland reaching the inaccessible places. I should have walked up every Wainwright. I should have cycled the whole of the North of England, the whole of Ireland. I should never, ever have replied to the question 'do anything this weekend' with 'oh, not much.'
I've never felt the need (or indeed had the budget) to go everywhere in the world. If I die without seeing Rome or Ljubljana or Australia or South America, well, shrug, you can't do everything. If I never dive or bungee jump, well, so be it. But there are things I really did want to do, but they never seemed pressing, and now I'm married with kids I may never get the chance.
If you are young, care not what plans your friends or girlfriends make: if there are things you want to do, do them. You will never have more time and energy than you do now.
It is, always, later than you think
Gotta say you are missing a bit of the wider world
Rome is tremendous, a top ten must-see city (but avoid the summer)
Ljubljana you can skip. Pleasant but unexceptional
Australia is absolutely essential for its insane fauna. Everything else, the Barrier Reef, the Kimberley Coast, the endless Outback, the Queensland rainforests, the glorious Northern Territory, even Uluru, you can sort of find somewhere else, in some form
But NOTHING is like your first glimpse of a real live kangaroo in the wild. Under the gum trees. Staring at you. And then there's the wombats, koalas, wallabies, dingos, quolls, bilbys. pademelons, sugar gliders. platypi and the Ruffous Bettong. It is the nearest you can get to a different planet but equally as full of life
If you possibly can, go to Australia at least once and see a tree kangaroo fall out of a eucalypt
I mean, I have left the UK. I've been to a few of the world's big must see places, like Paris and New York. And if the weekend after next you plonked me in Rome I'm sure I'd have a very lovely time. But it is the experiences in these islands my heart yearns for - I think because I might so easily have done them when I had the time.
I might yet get to Australia. My sister-in-law's partner is Australian; they have a small baby, and are thinking of moving there. They are assuming we will visit regularly. And I'd very much like to see a kangaroo and all the other fellas. But, what, £10,000 and 24 hours travelling to get a family of five to Australia? Realistically we can only do it once, if at all. Whereas the Cuillins? You can get there with a tankful of petrol. I ought to have done that already. Why haven't I? So many years of fitting in with other people's plans when I might have made my own.
Do you really need three children?
If you economized there by, say, selling one or two, then that Australia trip might be more affordable l.
I wanted to economise by having just 2 kids. I was overruled. Men really don't have much say in it.
On topic, I don't believe in a hereditary monarchy but I probably wouldn't choose right now to say so. It feels slightly disrespectful to someone who gave her life to the service of the country.
That doesn't mean I think she was perfect. She made mistakes. But there's a time and place.
However, I want to defend the right of others to express their viewpoint. Arresting them for doing so is disgraceful. But we saw this sort of itch to head into a police state during lockdown and over Sarah Everard.
On topic, I don't believe in a hereditary monarchy
If Russia loses, all the people on Left and Right in the West that demanded a "compromise" that "accepts Russia's legitimate interests" will shift to accusing the West of having sucked Putin into a deliberate trap to crush Moscow
None of these people will rethink their positions
Prediction: this will also be the position of the Putin regime, or whatever more extreme despotism succeeds it, and that of most of the Russian population along with it. They think they're entitled to conquer and subjugate their neighbours at will, and when the plan goes wrong it's the fault of everyone but themselves. They're irredeemable.
Even if the Putin regime falls and is replaced by a more hard line government, that government is unlikely to last very long.
There is a growing sense of collapse on the Russian side. Rumours of an army mutiny are growing, and the reports that Kadyrov is sending forces "to support" the regime (not clear where but even, possibly, Moscow) suggests we may, just possibly, already be in some kind of end game. It appears that Kherson may fall even as early as this week, and the collapse of Russian forces in the Donbas seems to be accelerating, with UAF units getting close to Luhansk. Putin is said to be in Sochi, but as with the Czar in Pskov, that is no guarantee that he is safer there than in the capital.
Any new regime in Russia will need to deal with significant internal headwinds, and not least the Kadyrovtsi. The renewal of the Azerbaijani assault on Armenia is also yet another sign that the authority of Putin is draining away.
Personally, those who told me that, irrespective of morality or our own fundamental interests, the West should come to terms with Putin, now look more than just "wrong". The Baltic and Poland have been warning about Putin for 20 years. They were right and now the views of the front line states should count for a lot more than the discredited position of "compromise" with the rapist regime. Putin is likely to fall eventually, and that is a good thing, because irrespective of the short term, Russia has to change and it can not change with him still in the Kremlin. "Clinging hold of nurse, for fear of getting something worse" is the perennial mistake of Western statecraft when dealing with Moscow and it fails every time.
For many people in countries that border Russia, the top pressing interest is in 'removing the threat', and this can be achieved through the 'defeat of Russia', even though that means 'embracing the chaos' that follows.
But the end game of what you are describing is the disintegration of Russia in to multiple statelets, run by a collection of warlords and dubious 'businessmen'; who inherit collections of nuclear weapons and other significant military infrastructure; who have no interest in constitutional democracy, and who 'work with' powers like China and Iran, and with a population who 'blame the west' for the second disintegration of the former Russian State and the chaos and poverty that ensues.
I've got no real embarrassment about looking at the situation and concluding that there may just be some merit in 'clinging to nurse'. We need to remember what happened in Iraq with Saddam Hussein or Gaddafi in Libya.
So what is your actual policy proposal ? That we force Ukraine to accept Russian territorial seizures, and just live with the enormous damage they have wreaked ?
All those complaining that those backing Ukraine 'have no endgame' don't seem to have any problem with their own equally uncertain, and far less justified position.
From all I have seen and read, I would go with the long term position of the west towards Russia as the 'least worst/only viable option' - IE Putin gets an 'off ramp' and there is some kind of 'deal' that secures the independence and sovereignty of Ukraine within the EU orbit, as well as the independence of Russia in relation to China, and some restoration of trade with Russia.
This puts me in a total minority and will evoke many Hitler comparisons but it is a product of doing my best to think objectively about the situation, despite initially being in the 'beat back Russia' camp at the start of the campaign.
If you want to just 'embrace chaos' then you should reflect on what happened in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya or indeed in the Soviet union in the early 1990s which ultimately led to the arrival of Putin on the scene. You are taking a massive risk. If it works it will be because you were lucky.
You're not addressing the arguments, just a phrase.
As I've pointed out, Applebaum isn't arguing that we depose Putin, or even seek to encourage such a thing. She saying, and I agree with her, that Putin's survival or otherwise simply isn't in our gift. The consequences of a defeat of his invasion are something Russia will decide.
If you're arguing that the west should treat a defeated Russia with a degree of magnanimity, then I wouldn't disagree. But what are you actually arguing for, rather than against ?
@Nigelb The manner of his 'defeat', if this is to occur (which is not certain) will impact on whether his regime 'survives' or not. So I would disagree with Applebaums characterisation of the situation, in this respect.
I am cautioning against the rhetoric of 'beating back Putin' to the point where the regime collapses. This is taking unnecessary risks of nuclear escalation, and/or a failed state. This is my objection to the 'embrace the chaos' thinking going on.
In the end, it is the west who are determining the outcome of the war in Ukraine because the hard reality is without western aid Ukraine would not be succeeding. They are doing a great job and I support them, but they turned things round by persuading the west to back them significantly.
I don't think we can meddle with succession and agree with Applebaum on that point. There is a succession problem already with Putin's regime, which will apply irrespective of what happens because of Putins age/health. However, observing from a long distance, there is a successor in Dmitry Medvedev who was well regarded by European leaders when he was president from 2008-2012.
It may just be a case of better the devil you know.
I don't think the west can finetune the outcome really. Not to the extent of choosing between granular types of Russian defeats. And even if they could I'm not sure how useful it would be since it's highly uncertain how Putin will react and how others in Russia will react to Putin's reaction.
This. It's a delusion to think that we can meaningfully influence internal Russian politics, except to the extent that we defend our interests and values and reward them for moves towards better international behaviour.
Russians are responsible for Russian choices. Not the West. The West is responsible for our reactions to those choices, and in this instance that has to be clear that (1) there is no reward for aggression, and, (2) we are not going to meddle in internal Russian affairs.
Yes the 'aggression brings no gain' outcome is imo the key here. I've never really looked at this as a war. For me it presents more accurately as a crime with a perp and a victim.
What I wouldn't want to see, however, is bellicosity of the "right, we'll teach these Russian bastards" sort. Fact is, if Putin ends up gaining little or nothing having gone all-in on this "operation" that is in practice a terrible defeat.
So let's get there and then see what happens.
Gaining little or nothing isn't enough. They need to pay reparations to Ukraine for their crime too.
For this war to end three things need to happen.
1: Russia needs to be expelled from all of Crimea, the Donbas and other territory it is occupying. 2: Russia needs to agree compensation to Ukraine for the damages it has inflicted. 3: Russia needs to sign a peace treaty recognising all of Ukraine, including Crimea and Donbas, as Ukrainian.
We'll see. I do, however, sense you straying into the sort of bellicosity I specifically said I didn't want to see. But if all of that remains on internet forums rather than in decision rooms I guess it's ok.
Perhaps it is worth thinking why you think that asking a county invading another country to completely stop invading another country and go back to the status quo ante is bellicose?
It isn't and I didn't say it was. I can spot bellicosity. Eg an earlier contribution from that particular poster - "we'll let them keep Moscow" - is the sort of thing I mean.
No, they can't keep Moscow. I'm taking that.
But you know what I mean. The tone. It's understandable, because this was and is an outrage from Putin (and therefore Russia), and so a brutal revenge rears its head, and like I say - ok on the internet but I'd hope decisions in the west (all of this assuming Russia truly is in permanent retreat now) aren't driven by that.
No, I don't know what you mean. How is it bellicose.
Moscow is their territory, in the past when countries lost wars their territory was often divided by the winners of the war - eg see what happened to Berlin post-war.
To be saying that the Russians can keep Moscow is the opposite of bellicose, it is bloody generous under the circumstances.
It's your tone. It's bellicose.
How?
If you have no "how" its just because you're an apologist for evil I'm afraid.
Standing up to evil isn't bellicose.
You can stand up to evil without being bellicose. Look at Gary Cooper in High Noon.
If Russia loses, all the people on Left and Right in the West that demanded a "compromise" that "accepts Russia's legitimate interests" will shift to accusing the West of having sucked Putin into a deliberate trap to crush Moscow
None of these people will rethink their positions
Prediction: this will also be the position of the Putin regime, or whatever more extreme despotism succeeds it, and that of most of the Russian population along with it. They think they're entitled to conquer and subjugate their neighbours at will, and when the plan goes wrong it's the fault of everyone but themselves. They're irredeemable.
Even if the Putin regime falls and is replaced by a more hard line government, that government is unlikely to last very long.
There is a growing sense of collapse on the Russian side. Rumours of an army mutiny are growing, and the reports that Kadyrov is sending forces "to support" the regime (not clear where but even, possibly, Moscow) suggests we may, just possibly, already be in some kind of end game. It appears that Kherson may fall even as early as this week, and the collapse of Russian forces in the Donbas seems to be accelerating, with UAF units getting close to Luhansk. Putin is said to be in Sochi, but as with the Czar in Pskov, that is no guarantee that he is safer there than in the capital.
Any new regime in Russia will need to deal with significant internal headwinds, and not least the Kadyrovtsi. The renewal of the Azerbaijani assault on Armenia is also yet another sign that the authority of Putin is draining away.
Personally, those who told me that, irrespective of morality or our own fundamental interests, the West should come to terms with Putin, now look more than just "wrong". The Baltic and Poland have been warning about Putin for 20 years. They were right and now the views of the front line states should count for a lot more than the discredited position of "compromise" with the rapist regime. Putin is likely to fall eventually, and that is a good thing, because irrespective of the short term, Russia has to change and it can not change with him still in the Kremlin. "Clinging hold of nurse, for fear of getting something worse" is the perennial mistake of Western statecraft when dealing with Moscow and it fails every time.
For many people in countries that border Russia, the top pressing interest is in 'removing the threat', and this can be achieved through the 'defeat of Russia', even though that means 'embracing the chaos' that follows.
But the end game of what you are describing is the disintegration of Russia in to multiple statelets, run by a collection of warlords and dubious 'businessmen'; who inherit collections of nuclear weapons and other significant military infrastructure; who have no interest in constitutional democracy, and who 'work with' powers like China and Iran, and with a population who 'blame the west' for the second disintegration of the former Russian State and the chaos and poverty that ensues.
I've got no real embarrassment about looking at the situation and concluding that there may just be some merit in 'clinging to nurse'. We need to remember what happened in Iraq with Saddam Hussein or Gaddafi in Libya.
So what is your actual policy proposal ? That we force Ukraine to accept Russian territorial seizures, and just live with the enormous damage they have wreaked ?
All those complaining that those backing Ukraine 'have no endgame' don't seem to have any problem with their own equally uncertain, and far less justified position.
From all I have seen and read, I would go with the long term position of the west towards Russia as the 'least worst/only viable option' - IE Putin gets an 'off ramp' and there is some kind of 'deal' that secures the independence and sovereignty of Ukraine within the EU orbit, as well as the independence of Russia in relation to China, and some restoration of trade with Russia.
This puts me in a total minority and will evoke many Hitler comparisons but it is a product of doing my best to think objectively about the situation, despite initially being in the 'beat back Russia' camp at the start of the campaign.
If you want to just 'embrace chaos' then you should reflect on what happened in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya or indeed in the Soviet union in the early 1990s which ultimately led to the arrival of Putin on the scene. You are taking a massive risk. If it works it will be because you were lucky.
You're not addressing the arguments, just a phrase.
As I've pointed out, Applebaum isn't arguing that we depose Putin, or even seek to encourage such a thing. She saying, and I agree with her, that Putin's survival or otherwise simply isn't in our gift. The consequences of a defeat of his invasion are something Russia will decide.
If you're arguing that the west should treat a defeated Russia with a degree of magnanimity, then I wouldn't disagree. But what are you actually arguing for, rather than against ?
@Nigelb The manner of his 'defeat', if this is to occur (which is not certain) will impact on whether his regime 'survives' or not. So I would disagree with Applebaums characterisation of the situation, in this respect.
I am cautioning against the rhetoric of 'beating back Putin' to the point where the regime collapses. This is taking unnecessary risks of nuclear escalation, and/or a failed state. This is my objection to the 'embrace the chaos' thinking going on.
In the end, it is the west who are determining the outcome of the war in Ukraine because the hard reality is without western aid Ukraine would not be succeeding. They are doing a great job and I support them, but they turned things round by persuading the west to back them significantly.
I don't think we can meddle with succession and agree with Applebaum on that point. There is a succession problem already with Putin's regime, which will apply irrespective of what happens because of Putins age/health. However, observing from a long distance, there is a successor in Dmitry Medvedev who was well regarded by European leaders when he was president from 2008-2012.
It may just be a case of better the devil you know.
I don't think the west can finetune the outcome really. Not to the extent of choosing between granular types of Russian defeats. And even if they could I'm not sure how useful it would be since it's highly uncertain how Putin will react and how others in Russia will react to Putin's reaction.
This. It's a delusion to think that we can meaningfully influence internal Russian politics, except to the extent that we defend our interests and values and reward them for moves towards better international behaviour.
Russians are responsible for Russian choices. Not the West. The West is responsible for our reactions to those choices, and in this instance that has to be clear that (1) there is no reward for aggression, and, (2) we are not going to meddle in internal Russian affairs.
Yes the 'aggression brings no gain' outcome is imo the key here. I've never really looked at this as a war. For me it presents more accurately as a crime with a perp and a victim.
What I wouldn't want to see, however, is bellicosity of the "right, we'll teach these Russian bastards" sort. Fact is, if Putin ends up gaining little or nothing having gone all-in on this "operation" that is in practice a terrible defeat.
So let's get there and then see what happens.
Agreed - though starting a war of aggression is a crime.
Yes it is. This isn't a "good v evil" conflict - that is not imo the right way to view it - but it is a matter of right v wrong with the wrong all on one side.
Again, like a crime. A putative killer attacks his victim, the victim fights back. That's not "good v evil" - the victim might be a deeply flawed individual and the killer might have his good points - but it IS a fairly uncomplicated matter of right and wrong.
Evil and wrong can by synonyms and Russia in this conflict is both.
I'm not happy with calling countries evil.
Putin is evil and Russia is in the wrong - I'm ok with that.
If countries don't want to be called evil, then they shouldn't be or do evil.
The USSR was an evil Empire. Nazi Germany and Pol Pot's Cambodia were evil, and modern day China and Russia are evil too.
But, in the absence of a skull badge on the hat, how do you tell whether you're the baddies?
The Royal Lancers look around shiftilly.
Good point. Makes me wonder. Are they keeping loyal or have they seen the way the wind is blowing and will now claim to be King Charles's own?
(I thought for some time about whether to go with Charles's or Charles' and checked their wording and found it was Elizabeths' - so they're already hedging their bets by claiming to belong to multiple Elizabeths - QE1 and QE2's own?)
Does Charles pay inheritance tax? Or is that only for the rest of us?
He's committed to pay an effective 75% income tax rate, if you'd rather he was taxed at the normal rates everyone else pays I'm sure he'd be happy to do so.
How are you calculating 75%?
Or are you claiming the Crown Estates as "tax", which it is not.
The Sovereign Grant is, I understand, fixed at 25% of the Crown Estates revenue, which effectively makes it a 75% tax. Not literally, but effectively.
The Crown Estate is not the personal property of the Monarch & its management is under the control of the government.
The Sovereign receives a payment out of the revenue of the Crown Estate as a replacement for the Civil List, which was causing political difficulties: Voting on the Monarch’s income every decade was highlighting to the general public exactly how much the Monarch was receiving from them on a regular basis. Now it never comes up, because it’s fixed as a proportion of the income of the Crown Estate.
So the Monarch (amongst many other things) gets 25% of the lease cost for every off-shore windfarm. Obviously the Monarch has done nothing to deserve that income, but that’s political fudges for you.
It belongs to the monarch but isn't part of their private estate which makes it a fudge anyway. But it certainly doesn't belong to the government, even if the government manages it and takes 75% of its revenues.
This is one of those carefully ambiguous fudges on which the British Constitution rests. The government agrees that the Crown Estate is the property of the Monarch & the Monarch agrees to give the government full control over it. Everybody wins & no one has to answer awkward questions like: why exactly does the Monarch own all this property anyway?
Its not the property of the Monarch, its the property of the Crown. The Monarch has the property by virtue of having the Crown.
It even says so on the Crown Estates own website!
Who owns The Crown Estate? The Crown Estate belongs to the reigning monarch 'in right of The Crown', that is, it is owned by the monarch for the duration of their reign, by virtue of their accession to the throne. But it is not the private property of the monarch - it cannot be sold by the monarch, nor do revenues from it belong to the monarch.
The Government also does not own The Crown Estate. It is managed by an independent organisation - established by statute - headed by a Board (also known as The Crown Estate Commissioners), and the surplus revenue from the estate is paid each year to the Treasury for the benefit of the nation's finances.
If the Monarch leaves the throne, they lose the Crown and all rights therein.
If the revenues don't belong to the monarch, how can the monarch agree to give 75% of them to the government?
Because the Monarch has them by right of having the Crown. They belong to the Crown, not to the Monarch personally, if the Monarch loses the Crown they lose everything that belongs to the Crown.
Just as Liz Truss doesn't now own 10 Downing Street.
Rather like the current Vicar being the formal Freeholder of the Parish Church in CofE - not sure about Wales, Scotland etc. if you have one of those they can be a sod for Bishops to remove.
Totally off topic, but younger son, who is trying to return from an exhibition in Amsterdam, has done so by sea because of the massive queues at security at the airport! So it's not just Heathrow! So he's now on his way to Heathrow to fly back home to Bangkok. Wonder what the situation will be when he gets to Heathrow.
I do keep hearing about air travel chaos. I'm meant to be starting serious foreign travel again, after a long break, and it's not encouraging me. Maybe best to just stay put for now.
I’ve gone through LGW without incident several times now….
Think I'm just looking for excuses - got used to staying still and the world revolving around me rather than the other way around.
Don’t.
Someone I know got used to doing absolutely nothing and seeing no one during covid. Like a hermit
Even when covid ended she maintained this new monastic isolation. She went from being sociable and active and keen on travel, to inertia, isolation, staying-at-home
Recently this person was diagnosed with a terminal illness and was given a few short months to live, at most. And she is now UNABLE to travel. Much as she might want to
She now bitterly regrets the ~3 years spent in self imposed confinement and it wasn’t even Covid that got her, in the end
You’re in your 60s. You can still see the world. Do it before you no longer can
Well it's not a Covid thing and, like I say, I have travelled a lot previously.
But, yes, there are some trips I'd like to do and if I don't do them through inertia that wouldn't be great.
This opens the door for a lament. I'm 47. I have recently become rather more acutely aware of the finity of my remaining years. What's brought this about is looking at OS maps. I've walked a lot in Britain, but there's so much more I haven't done than I have, and it seems rather too much to achieve in my remaining years of fitness. I get maybe three, four days to myself, free of parental responsibility each year. Obviously that will grow as the kids get older, but I'll be 59 by the time my youngest is 18. I long for the freedom I could have had in my 20s before kids came along. I should have been so much more focused on what I wanted to do, and done it myself. I should have spent several long weekends a year in the Highlands of Scotland reaching the inaccessible places. I should have walked up every Wainwright. I should have cycled the whole of the North of England, the whole of Ireland. I should never, ever have replied to the question 'do anything this weekend' with 'oh, not much.'
I've never felt the need (or indeed had the budget) to go everywhere in the world. If I die without seeing Rome or Ljubljana or Australia or South America, well, shrug, you can't do everything. If I never dive or bungee jump, well, so be it. But there are things I really did want to do, but they never seemed pressing, and now I'm married with kids I may never get the chance.
If you are young, care not what plans your friends or girlfriends make: if there are things you want to do, do them. You will never have more time and energy than you do now.
It is, always, later than you think
Gotta say you are missing a bit of the wider world
Rome is tremendous, a top ten must-see city (but avoid the summer)
Ljubljana you can skip. Pleasant but unexceptional
Australia is absolutely essential for its insane fauna. Everything else, the Barrier Reef, the Kimberley Coast, the endless Outback, the Queensland rainforests, the glorious Northern Territory, even Uluru, you can sort of find somewhere else, in some form
But NOTHING is like your first glimpse of a real live kangaroo in the wild. Under the gum trees. Staring at you. And then there's the wombats, koalas, wallabies, dingos, quolls, bilbys. pademelons, sugar gliders. platypi and the Ruffous Bettong. It is the nearest you can get to a different planet but equally as full of life
If you possibly can, go to Australia at least once and see a tree kangaroo fall out of a eucalypt
I mean, I have left the UK. I've been to a few of the world's big must see places, like Paris and New York. And if the weekend after next you plonked me in Rome I'm sure I'd have a very lovely time. But it is the experiences in these islands my heart yearns for - I think because I might so easily have done them when I had the time.
I might yet get to Australia. My sister-in-law's partner is Australian; they have a small baby, and are thinking of moving there. They are assuming we will visit regularly. And I'd very much like to see a kangaroo and all the other fellas. But, what, £10,000 and 24 hours travelling to get a family of five to Australia? Realistically we can only do it once, if at all. Whereas the Cuillins? You can get there with a tankful of petrol. I ought to have done that already. Why haven't I? So many years of fitting in with other people's plans when I might have made my own.
Do you really need three children?
If you economized there by, say, selling one or two, then that Australia trip might be more affordable l.
I wanted to economise by having just 2 kids. I was overruled. Men really don't have much say in it.
It is unfortunate that you never met my late mother. She did nearly 5000 vasectomies in her career.
Totally off topic, but younger son, who is trying to return from an exhibition in Amsterdam, has done so by sea because of the massive queues at security at the airport! So it's not just Heathrow! So he's now on his way to Heathrow to fly back home to Bangkok. Wonder what the situation will be when he gets to Heathrow.
I do keep hearing about air travel chaos. I'm meant to be starting serious foreign travel again, after a long break, and it's not encouraging me. Maybe best to just stay put for now.
I’ve gone through LGW without incident several times now….
Think I'm just looking for excuses - got used to staying still and the world revolving around me rather than the other way around.
Don’t.
Someone I know got used to doing absolutely nothing and seeing no one during covid. Like a hermit
Even when covid ended she maintained this new monastic isolation. She went from being sociable and active and keen on travel, to inertia, isolation, staying-at-home
Recently this person was diagnosed with a terminal illness and was given a few short months to live, at most. And she is now UNABLE to travel. Much as she might want to
She now bitterly regrets the ~3 years spent in self imposed confinement and it wasn’t even Covid that got her, in the end
You’re in your 60s. You can still see the world. Do it before you no longer can
Well it's not a Covid thing and, like I say, I have travelled a lot previously.
But, yes, there are some trips I'd like to do and if I don't do them through inertia that wouldn't be great.
This opens the door for a lament. I'm 47. I have recently become rather more acutely aware of the finity of my remaining years. What's brought this about is looking at OS maps. I've walked a lot in Britain, but there's so much more I haven't done than I have, and it seems rather too much to achieve in my remaining years of fitness. I get maybe three, four days to myself, free of parental responsibility each year. Obviously that will grow as the kids get older, but I'll be 59 by the time my youngest is 18. I long for the freedom I could have had in my 20s before kids came along. I should have been so much more focused on what I wanted to do, and done it myself. I should have spent several long weekends a year in the Highlands of Scotland reaching the inaccessible places. I should have walked up every Wainwright. I should have cycled the whole of the North of England, the whole of Ireland. I should never, ever have replied to the question 'do anything this weekend' with 'oh, not much.'
I've never felt the need (or indeed had the budget) to go everywhere in the world. If I die without seeing Rome or Ljubljana or Australia or South America, well, shrug, you can't do everything. If I never dive or bungee jump, well, so be it. But there are things I really did want to do, but they never seemed pressing, and now I'm married with kids I may never get the chance.
If you are young, care not what plans your friends or girlfriends make: if there are things you want to do, do them. You will never have more time and energy than you do now.
It is, always, later than you think
Gotta say you are missing a bit of the wider world
Rome is tremendous, a top ten must-see city (but avoid the summer)
Ljubljana you can skip. Pleasant but unexceptional
Australia is absolutely essential for its insane fauna. Everything else, the Barrier Reef, the Kimberley Coast, the endless Outback, the Queensland rainforests, the glorious Northern Territory, even Uluru, you can sort of find somewhere else, in some form
But NOTHING is like your first glimpse of a real live kangaroo in the wild. Under the gum trees. Staring at you. And then there's the wombats, koalas, wallabies, dingos, quolls, bilbys. pademelons, sugar gliders. platypi and the Ruffous Bettong. It is the nearest you can get to a different planet but equally as full of life
If you possibly can, go to Australia at least once and see a tree kangaroo fall out of a eucalypt
I mean, I have left the UK. I've been to a few of the world's big must see places, like Paris and New York. And if the weekend after next you plonked me in Rome I'm sure I'd have a very lovely time. But it is the experiences in these islands my heart yearns for - I think because I might so easily have done them when I had the time.
I might yet get to Australia. My sister-in-law's partner is Australian; they have a small baby, and are thinking of moving there. They are assuming we will visit regularly. And I'd very much like to see a kangaroo and all the other fellas. But, what, £10,000 and 24 hours travelling to get a family of five to Australia? Realistically we can only do it once, if at all. Whereas the Cuillins? You can get there with a tankful of petrol. I ought to have done that already. Why haven't I? So many years of fitting in with other people's plans when I might have made my own.
I hear you. On the other hand, you have almost certainly been an infinitely better father than me. My kids tell me they've forgiven me for being Not There so much, but I feel a fair amount of guilt, and I am sure I have done them harm. And yet I have seen the world in my selfishness (and my job, to be fair)
Something has to give, doesn't it?
However, your despair is foolish. You say you'll be done parenting at 59 - well 59 is nothing. I'm in my late 50s and just spent 3 months doing non stop travel from America to Armenia and back. And it was brilliant
Vow to yourself that you will do all this when you are 59, and do it
And don't spend £10k taking the entire family to Oz, it's really not worth it. You need to see it alone, or at most in a couple, so you can really get out there to the remote places. Remoteness is the point of Oz. The Atherton Tablelands! Kakadu! Coober Pedy! Arnhemland!
I have been fortunate to have a personal situation whereby I can do a lot of travelling by myself ; I've been up to Scotland a couple of times and also across northern Europe on various self indulgent train rides.
What I realised is something that I knew already from my backpacking in South East Asia two decades ago, even though there are some quite good memories, It all becomes pretty pointless and mundane very quickly.
I only get some kind of meaning and purpose and enjoyment out of life where I am helping other people in some way, this is not really achieved through travelling somewhere by myself.
NOTE - This is just my own 'lived experience'/ opinion, I'm not commenting on other people.
Thanks. I should add, I'm not lamenting my family. If I didn't have children I would lament the lack of them more. My kids are young enough not to be cynical or world-weary and old enough not to need too much looking after. I am in the golden years of life. And a holiday with them is a magical thing. (And this refers to your 'helping other people in some way: it doesn't need to be your kids for it to be meaningful and magical.) I'm not wishing myself back to my 20s - just wishing I'd made better use of the time before they came along. But maybe the not knowing how your future will turn out in your twenties is what gives you the fomo which stops you having all the adventures you might on your own.
What advice will you give your kids?
Mine really is one word: Travel
Ooh, god, I don't know - I've blundered into a position where I have, at the macro scale, everything I want in life without really knowing how I got here. I'd love to claim I had some grand strategy to get here but it was really all a series of lucky guesses got me here.
I think I would give them the words of David Hume: "Reason is, and ought only to be, the slave of the passions." It was when I started following that credo that my life turned around. Use reason. But know your heart.
Totally off topic, but younger son, who is trying to return from an exhibition in Amsterdam, has done so by sea because of the massive queues at security at the airport! So it's not just Heathrow! So he's now on his way to Heathrow to fly back home to Bangkok. Wonder what the situation will be when he gets to Heathrow.
I do keep hearing about air travel chaos. I'm meant to be starting serious foreign travel again, after a long break, and it's not encouraging me. Maybe best to just stay put for now.
I’ve gone through LGW without incident several times now….
Think I'm just looking for excuses - got used to staying still and the world revolving around me rather than the other way around.
Don’t.
Someone I know got used to doing absolutely nothing and seeing no one during covid. Like a hermit
Even when covid ended she maintained this new monastic isolation. She went from being sociable and active and keen on travel, to inertia, isolation, staying-at-home
Recently this person was diagnosed with a terminal illness and was given a few short months to live, at most. And she is now UNABLE to travel. Much as she might want to
She now bitterly regrets the ~3 years spent in self imposed confinement and it wasn’t even Covid that got her, in the end
You’re in your 60s. You can still see the world. Do it before you no longer can
Well it's not a Covid thing and, like I say, I have travelled a lot previously.
But, yes, there are some trips I'd like to do and if I don't do them through inertia that wouldn't be great.
This opens the door for a lament. I'm 47. I have recently become rather more acutely aware of the finity of my remaining years. What's brought this about is looking at OS maps. I've walked a lot in Britain, but there's so much more I haven't done than I have, and it seems rather too much to achieve in my remaining years of fitness. I get maybe three, four days to myself, free of parental responsibility each year. Obviously that will grow as the kids get older, but I'll be 59 by the time my youngest is 18. I long for the freedom I could have had in my 20s before kids came along. I should have been so much more focused on what I wanted to do, and done it myself. I should have spent several long weekends a year in the Highlands of Scotland reaching the inaccessible places. I should have walked up every Wainwright. I should have cycled the whole of the North of England, the whole of Ireland. I should never, ever have replied to the question 'do anything this weekend' with 'oh, not much.'
I've never felt the need (or indeed had the budget) to go everywhere in the world. If I die without seeing Rome or Ljubljana or Australia or South America, well, shrug, you can't do everything. If I never dive or bungee jump, well, so be it. But there are things I really did want to do, but they never seemed pressing, and now I'm married with kids I may never get the chance.
If you are young, care not what plans your friends or girlfriends make: if there are things you want to do, do them. You will never have more time and energy than you do now.
It is, always, later than you think
Gotta say you are missing a bit of the wider world
Rome is tremendous, a top ten must-see city (but avoid the summer)
Ljubljana you can skip. Pleasant but unexceptional
Australia is absolutely essential for its insane fauna. Everything else, the Barrier Reef, the Kimberley Coast, the endless Outback, the Queensland rainforests, the glorious Northern Territory, even Uluru, you can sort of find somewhere else, in some form
But NOTHING is like your first glimpse of a real live kangaroo in the wild. Under the gum trees. Staring at you. And then there's the wombats, koalas, wallabies, dingos, quolls, bilbys. pademelons, sugar gliders. platypi and the Ruffous Bettong. It is the nearest you can get to a different planet but equally as full of life
If you possibly can, go to Australia at least once and see a tree kangaroo fall out of a eucalypt
I mean, I have left the UK. I've been to a few of the world's big must see places, like Paris and New York. And if the weekend after next you plonked me in Rome I'm sure I'd have a very lovely time. But it is the experiences in these islands my heart yearns for - I think because I might so easily have done them when I had the time.
I might yet get to Australia. My sister-in-law's partner is Australian; they have a small baby, and are thinking of moving there. They are assuming we will visit regularly. And I'd very much like to see a kangaroo and all the other fellas. But, what, £10,000 and 24 hours travelling to get a family of five to Australia? Realistically we can only do it once, if at all. Whereas the Cuillins? You can get there with a tankful of petrol. I ought to have done that already. Why haven't I? So many years of fitting in with other people's plans when I might have made my own.
Do you really need three children?
If you economized there by, say, selling one or two, then that Australia trip might be more affordable l.
I wanted to economise by having just 2 kids. I was overruled. Men really don't have much say in it.
Totally off topic, but younger son, who is trying to return from an exhibition in Amsterdam, has done so by sea because of the massive queues at security at the airport! So it's not just Heathrow! So he's now on his way to Heathrow to fly back home to Bangkok. Wonder what the situation will be when he gets to Heathrow.
I do keep hearing about air travel chaos. I'm meant to be starting serious foreign travel again, after a long break, and it's not encouraging me. Maybe best to just stay put for now.
I’ve gone through LGW without incident several times now….
Think I'm just looking for excuses - got used to staying still and the world revolving around me rather than the other way around.
Don’t.
Someone I know got used to doing absolutely nothing and seeing no one during covid. Like a hermit
Even when covid ended she maintained this new monastic isolation. She went from being sociable and active and keen on travel, to inertia, isolation, staying-at-home
Recently this person was diagnosed with a terminal illness and was given a few short months to live, at most. And she is now UNABLE to travel. Much as she might want to
She now bitterly regrets the ~3 years spent in self imposed confinement and it wasn’t even Covid that got her, in the end
You’re in your 60s. You can still see the world. Do it before you no longer can
Well it's not a Covid thing and, like I say, I have travelled a lot previously.
But, yes, there are some trips I'd like to do and if I don't do them through inertia that wouldn't be great.
This opens the door for a lament. I'm 47. I have recently become rather more acutely aware of the finity of my remaining years. What's brought this about is looking at OS maps. I've walked a lot in Britain, but there's so much more I haven't done than I have, and it seems rather too much to achieve in my remaining years of fitness. I get maybe three, four days to myself, free of parental responsibility each year. Obviously that will grow as the kids get older, but I'll be 59 by the time my youngest is 18. I long for the freedom I could have had in my 20s before kids came along. I should have been so much more focused on what I wanted to do, and done it myself. I should have spent several long weekends a year in the Highlands of Scotland reaching the inaccessible places. I should have walked up every Wainwright. I should have cycled the whole of the North of England, the whole of Ireland. I should never, ever have replied to the question 'do anything this weekend' with 'oh, not much.'
I've never felt the need (or indeed had the budget) to go everywhere in the world. If I die without seeing Rome or Ljubljana or Australia or South America, well, shrug, you can't do everything. If I never dive or bungee jump, well, so be it. But there are things I really did want to do, but they never seemed pressing, and now I'm married with kids I may never get the chance.
If you are young, care not what plans your friends or girlfriends make: if there are things you want to do, do them. You will never have more time and energy than you do now.
It is, always, later than you think
Gotta say you are missing a bit of the wider world
Rome is tremendous, a top ten must-see city (but avoid the summer)
Ljubljana you can skip. Pleasant but unexceptional
Australia is absolutely essential for its insane fauna. Everything else, the Barrier Reef, the Kimberley Coast, the endless Outback, the Queensland rainforests, the glorious Northern Territory, even Uluru, you can sort of find somewhere else, in some form
But NOTHING is like your first glimpse of a real live kangaroo in the wild. Under the gum trees. Staring at you. And then there's the wombats, koalas, wallabies, dingos, quolls, bilbys. pademelons, sugar gliders. platypi and the Ruffous Bettong. It is the nearest you can get to a different planet but equally as full of life
If you possibly can, go to Australia at least once and see a tree kangaroo fall out of a eucalypt
I mean, I have left the UK. I've been to a few of the world's big must see places, like Paris and New York. And if the weekend after next you plonked me in Rome I'm sure I'd have a very lovely time. But it is the experiences in these islands my heart yearns for - I think because I might so easily have done them when I had the time.
I might yet get to Australia. My sister-in-law's partner is Australian; they have a small baby, and are thinking of moving there. They are assuming we will visit regularly. And I'd very much like to see a kangaroo and all the other fellas. But, what, £10,000 and 24 hours travelling to get a family of five to Australia? Realistically we can only do it once, if at all. Whereas the Cuillins? You can get there with a tankful of petrol. I ought to have done that already. Why haven't I? So many years of fitting in with other people's plans when I might have made my own.
I hear you. On the other hand, you have almost certainly been an infinitely better father than me. My kids tell me they've forgiven me for being Not There so much, but I feel a fair amount of guilt, and I am sure I have done them harm. And yet I have seen the world in my selfishness (and my job, to be fair)
Something has to give, doesn't it?
However, your despair is foolish. You say you'll be done parenting at 59 - well 59 is nothing. I'm in my late 50s and just spent 3 months doing non stop travel from America to Armenia and back. And it was brilliant
Vow to yourself that you will do all this when you are 59, and do it
And don't spend £10k taking the entire family to Oz, it's really not worth it. You need to see it alone, or at most in a couple, so you can really get out there to the remote places. Remoteness is the point of Oz. The Atherton Tablelands! Kakadu! Coober Pedy! Arnhemland!
I have been fortunate to have a personal situation whereby I can do a lot of travelling by myself ; I've been up to Scotland a couple of times and also across northern Europe on various self indulgent train rides.
What I realised is something that I knew already from my backpacking in South East Asia two decades ago, even though there are some quite good memories, It all becomes pretty pointless and mundane very quickly.
I only get some kind of meaning and purpose and enjoyment out of life where I am helping other people in some way, this is not really achieved through travelling somewhere by myself.
NOTE - This is just my own 'lived experience'/ opinion, I'm not commenting on other people.
Thanks. I should add, I'm not lamenting my family. If I didn't have children I would lament the lack of them more. My kids are young enough not to be cynical or world-weary and old enough not to need too much looking after. I am in the golden years of life. And a holiday with them is a magical thing. (And this refers to your 'helping other people in some way: it doesn't need to be your kids for it to be meaningful and magical.) I'm not wishing myself back to my 20s - just wishing I'd made better use of the time before they came along. But maybe the not knowing how your future will turn out in your twenties is what gives you the fomo which stops you having all the adventures you might on your own.
What advice will you give your kids?
Mine really is one word: Travel
Mine would be: don't let fear stop you doing things.
Does Charles pay inheritance tax? Or is that only for the rest of us?
He's committed to pay an effective 75% income tax rate, if you'd rather he was taxed at the normal rates everyone else pays I'm sure he'd be happy to do so.
How are you calculating 75%?
Or are you claiming the Crown Estates as "tax", which it is not.
The Sovereign Grant is, I understand, fixed at 25% of the Crown Estates revenue, which effectively makes it a 75% tax. Not literally, but effectively.
The Crown Estate is not the personal property of the Monarch & its management is under the control of the government.
The Sovereign receives a payment out of the revenue of the Crown Estate as a replacement for the Civil List, which was causing political difficulties: Voting on the Monarch’s income every decade was highlighting to the general public exactly how much the Monarch was receiving from them on a regular basis. Now it never comes up, because it’s fixed as a proportion of the income of the Crown Estate.
So the Monarch (amongst many other things) gets 25% of the lease cost for every off-shore windfarm. Obviously the Monarch has done nothing to deserve that income, but that’s political fudges for you.
It belongs to the monarch but isn't part of their private estate which makes it a fudge anyway. But it certainly doesn't belong to the government, even if the government manages it and takes 75% of its revenues.
This is one of those carefully ambiguous fudges on which the British Constitution rests. The government agrees that the Crown Estate is the property of the Monarch & the Monarch agrees to give the government full control over it. Everybody wins & no one has to answer awkward questions like: why exactly does the Monarch own all this property anyway?
Its not the property of the Monarch, its the property of the Crown. The Monarch has the property by virtue of having the Crown.
It even says so on the Crown Estates own website!
Who owns The Crown Estate? The Crown Estate belongs to the reigning monarch 'in right of The Crown', that is, it is owned by the monarch for the duration of their reign, by virtue of their accession to the throne. But it is not the private property of the monarch - it cannot be sold by the monarch, nor do revenues from it belong to the monarch.
The Government also does not own The Crown Estate. It is managed by an independent organisation - established by statute - headed by a Board (also known as The Crown Estate Commissioners), and the surplus revenue from the estate is paid each year to the Treasury for the benefit of the nation's finances.
If the Monarch leaves the throne, they lose the Crown and all rights therein.
If the revenues don't belong to the monarch, how can the monarch agree to give 75% of them to the government?
Because the Monarch has them by right of having the Crown. They belong to the Crown, not to the Monarch personally, if the Monarch loses the Crown they lose everything that belongs to the Crown.
Just as Liz Truss doesn't now own 10 Downing Street.
So the revenues do belong to the monarch as monarch, and are effectively taxed at 75%.
It's slightly misleading: France has given practically nothing, but has given an export guarantee to French arms companies to export to Ukraine.
Essentially the Ukrainians have an unlimited credit card bill to spend on French defence equipment.
The question is whether they attempt to enforce it after the war.
Of course, with my cynical hat on, this is France all over.
Their hope is that the Ukrainians will end up buying a whole bunch of Thales/Dassault/etc kit, and will therefore end up locked in to long term maintenance contracts.
Regarding Germany - it's clear that armour is key to Ukraine ending the war.
Disappointing signals from Germany while Ukraine needs Leopards and Marders now — to liberate people and save them from genocide. Not a single rational argument on why these weapons can not be supplied, only abstract fears and excuses. What is Berlin afraid of that Kyiv is not? https://mobile.twitter.com/DmytroKuleba/status/1569637880204775426
That's easy - Germany fears that their access to Russian gas will be permanently cut off....
Such polls are meaningless unless you control them for people who have an interest in the topic. What was the result among sports fans?
It reminds me of covid, where a load of people who never went out supported the permanent closure of nightclubs.
The question in the poll is of course a leading one. On reflection lots of people might think that a decision over some fixture or other is neither right nor wrong - that such moral categories just don't apply either to the triviality of the case or the reasons for the decision.
Perhaps it doesn't matter enough to be right or wrong. Like choosing between tins of tomatoes.
Totally off topic, but younger son, who is trying to return from an exhibition in Amsterdam, has done so by sea because of the massive queues at security at the airport! So it's not just Heathrow! So he's now on his way to Heathrow to fly back home to Bangkok. Wonder what the situation will be when he gets to Heathrow.
I do keep hearing about air travel chaos. I'm meant to be starting serious foreign travel again, after a long break, and it's not encouraging me. Maybe best to just stay put for now.
I’ve gone through LGW without incident several times now….
Think I'm just looking for excuses - got used to staying still and the world revolving around me rather than the other way around.
Don’t.
Someone I know got used to doing absolutely nothing and seeing no one during covid. Like a hermit
Even when covid ended she maintained this new monastic isolation. She went from being sociable and active and keen on travel, to inertia, isolation, staying-at-home
Recently this person was diagnosed with a terminal illness and was given a few short months to live, at most. And she is now UNABLE to travel. Much as she might want to
She now bitterly regrets the ~3 years spent in self imposed confinement and it wasn’t even Covid that got her, in the end
You’re in your 60s. You can still see the world. Do it before you no longer can
Well it's not a Covid thing and, like I say, I have travelled a lot previously.
But, yes, there are some trips I'd like to do and if I don't do them through inertia that wouldn't be great.
This opens the door for a lament. I'm 47. I have recently become rather more acutely aware of the finity of my remaining years. What's brought this about is looking at OS maps. I've walked a lot in Britain, but there's so much more I haven't done than I have, and it seems rather too much to achieve in my remaining years of fitness. I get maybe three, four days to myself, free of parental responsibility each year. Obviously that will grow as the kids get older, but I'll be 59 by the time my youngest is 18. I long for the freedom I could have had in my 20s before kids came along. I should have been so much more focused on what I wanted to do, and done it myself. I should have spent several long weekends a year in the Highlands of Scotland reaching the inaccessible places. I should have walked up every Wainwright. I should have cycled the whole of the North of England, the whole of Ireland. I should never, ever have replied to the question 'do anything this weekend' with 'oh, not much.'
I've never felt the need (or indeed had the budget) to go everywhere in the world. If I die without seeing Rome or Ljubljana or Australia or South America, well, shrug, you can't do everything. If I never dive or bungee jump, well, so be it. But there are things I really did want to do, but they never seemed pressing, and now I'm married with kids I may never get the chance.
If you are young, care not what plans your friends or girlfriends make: if there are things you want to do, do them. You will never have more time and energy than you do now.
It is, always, later than you think
Gotta say you are missing a bit of the wider world
Rome is tremendous, a top ten must-see city (but avoid the summer)
Ljubljana you can skip. Pleasant but unexceptional
Australia is absolutely essential for its insane fauna. Everything else, the Barrier Reef, the Kimberley Coast, the endless Outback, the Queensland rainforests, the glorious Northern Territory, even Uluru, you can sort of find somewhere else, in some form
But NOTHING is like your first glimpse of a real live kangaroo in the wild. Under the gum trees. Staring at you. And then there's the wombats, koalas, wallabies, dingos, quolls, bilbys. pademelons, sugar gliders. platypi and the Ruffous Bettong. It is the nearest you can get to a different planet but equally as full of life
If you possibly can, go to Australia at least once and see a tree kangaroo fall out of a eucalypt
I mean, I have left the UK. I've been to a few of the world's big must see places, like Paris and New York. And if the weekend after next you plonked me in Rome I'm sure I'd have a very lovely time. But it is the experiences in these islands my heart yearns for - I think because I might so easily have done them when I had the time.
I might yet get to Australia. My sister-in-law's partner is Australian; they have a small baby, and are thinking of moving there. They are assuming we will visit regularly. And I'd very much like to see a kangaroo and all the other fellas. But, what, £10,000 and 24 hours travelling to get a family of five to Australia? Realistically we can only do it once, if at all. Whereas the Cuillins? You can get there with a tankful of petrol. I ought to have done that already. Why haven't I? So many years of fitting in with other people's plans when I might have made my own.
Do you really need three children?
If you economized there by, say, selling one or two, then that Australia trip might be more affordable l.
(Oh how bloody rich I would be if I had fewer children...) But there are economies of scale to having lots of children. Arguably I am taking a more economically efficient approach.
If Russia loses, all the people on Left and Right in the West that demanded a "compromise" that "accepts Russia's legitimate interests" will shift to accusing the West of having sucked Putin into a deliberate trap to crush Moscow
None of these people will rethink their positions
Prediction: this will also be the position of the Putin regime, or whatever more extreme despotism succeeds it, and that of most of the Russian population along with it. They think they're entitled to conquer and subjugate their neighbours at will, and when the plan goes wrong it's the fault of everyone but themselves. They're irredeemable.
Even if the Putin regime falls and is replaced by a more hard line government, that government is unlikely to last very long.
There is a growing sense of collapse on the Russian side. Rumours of an army mutiny are growing, and the reports that Kadyrov is sending forces "to support" the regime (not clear where but even, possibly, Moscow) suggests we may, just possibly, already be in some kind of end game. It appears that Kherson may fall even as early as this week, and the collapse of Russian forces in the Donbas seems to be accelerating, with UAF units getting close to Luhansk. Putin is said to be in Sochi, but as with the Czar in Pskov, that is no guarantee that he is safer there than in the capital.
Any new regime in Russia will need to deal with significant internal headwinds, and not least the Kadyrovtsi. The renewal of the Azerbaijani assault on Armenia is also yet another sign that the authority of Putin is draining away.
Personally, those who told me that, irrespective of morality or our own fundamental interests, the West should come to terms with Putin, now look more than just "wrong". The Baltic and Poland have been warning about Putin for 20 years. They were right and now the views of the front line states should count for a lot more than the discredited position of "compromise" with the rapist regime. Putin is likely to fall eventually, and that is a good thing, because irrespective of the short term, Russia has to change and it can not change with him still in the Kremlin. "Clinging hold of nurse, for fear of getting something worse" is the perennial mistake of Western statecraft when dealing with Moscow and it fails every time.
For many people in countries that border Russia, the top pressing interest is in 'removing the threat', and this can be achieved through the 'defeat of Russia', even though that means 'embracing the chaos' that follows.
But the end game of what you are describing is the disintegration of Russia in to multiple statelets, run by a collection of warlords and dubious 'businessmen'; who inherit collections of nuclear weapons and other significant military infrastructure; who have no interest in constitutional democracy, and who 'work with' powers like China and Iran, and with a population who 'blame the west' for the second disintegration of the former Russian State and the chaos and poverty that ensues.
I've got no real embarrassment about looking at the situation and concluding that there may just be some merit in 'clinging to nurse'. We need to remember what happened in Iraq with Saddam Hussein or Gaddafi in Libya.
So what is your actual policy proposal ? That we force Ukraine to accept Russian territorial seizures, and just live with the enormous damage they have wreaked ?
All those complaining that those backing Ukraine 'have no endgame' don't seem to have any problem with their own equally uncertain, and far less justified position.
From all I have seen and read, I would go with the long term position of the west towards Russia as the 'least worst/only viable option' - IE Putin gets an 'off ramp' and there is some kind of 'deal' that secures the independence and sovereignty of Ukraine within the EU orbit, as well as the independence of Russia in relation to China, and some restoration of trade with Russia.
This puts me in a total minority and will evoke many Hitler comparisons but it is a product of doing my best to think objectively about the situation, despite initially being in the 'beat back Russia' camp at the start of the campaign.
If you want to just 'embrace chaos' then you should reflect on what happened in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya or indeed in the Soviet union in the early 1990s which ultimately led to the arrival of Putin on the scene. You are taking a massive risk. If it works it will be because you were lucky.
You're not addressing the arguments, just a phrase.
As I've pointed out, Applebaum isn't arguing that we depose Putin, or even seek to encourage such a thing. She saying, and I agree with her, that Putin's survival or otherwise simply isn't in our gift. The consequences of a defeat of his invasion are something Russia will decide.
If you're arguing that the west should treat a defeated Russia with a degree of magnanimity, then I wouldn't disagree. But what are you actually arguing for, rather than against ?
@Nigelb The manner of his 'defeat', if this is to occur (which is not certain) will impact on whether his regime 'survives' or not. So I would disagree with Applebaums characterisation of the situation, in this respect.
I am cautioning against the rhetoric of 'beating back Putin' to the point where the regime collapses. This is taking unnecessary risks of nuclear escalation, and/or a failed state. This is my objection to the 'embrace the chaos' thinking going on.
In the end, it is the west who are determining the outcome of the war in Ukraine because the hard reality is without western aid Ukraine would not be succeeding. They are doing a great job and I support them, but they turned things round by persuading the west to back them significantly.
I don't think we can meddle with succession and agree with Applebaum on that point. There is a succession problem already with Putin's regime, which will apply irrespective of what happens because of Putins age/health. However, observing from a long distance, there is a successor in Dmitry Medvedev who was well regarded by European leaders when he was president from 2008-2012.
It may just be a case of better the devil you know.
I don't think the west can finetune the outcome really. Not to the extent of choosing between granular types of Russian defeats. And even if they could I'm not sure how useful it would be since it's highly uncertain how Putin will react and how others in Russia will react to Putin's reaction.
This. It's a delusion to think that we can meaningfully influence internal Russian politics, except to the extent that we defend our interests and values and reward them for moves towards better international behaviour.
Russians are responsible for Russian choices. Not the West. The West is responsible for our reactions to those choices, and in this instance that has to be clear that (1) there is no reward for aggression, and, (2) we are not going to meddle in internal Russian affairs.
Yes the 'aggression brings no gain' outcome is imo the key here. I've never really looked at this as a war. For me it presents more accurately as a crime with a perp and a victim.
What I wouldn't want to see, however, is bellicosity of the "right, we'll teach these Russian bastards" sort. Fact is, if Putin ends up gaining little or nothing having gone all-in on this "operation" that is in practice a terrible defeat.
So let's get there and then see what happens.
Gaining little or nothing isn't enough. They need to pay reparations to Ukraine for their crime too.
For this war to end three things need to happen.
1: Russia needs to be expelled from all of Crimea, the Donbas and other territory it is occupying. 2: Russia needs to agree compensation to Ukraine for the damages it has inflicted. 3: Russia needs to sign a peace treaty recognising all of Ukraine, including Crimea and Donbas, as Ukrainian.
We'll see. I do, however, sense you straying into the sort of bellicosity I specifically said I didn't want to see. But if all of that remains on internet forums rather than in decision rooms I guess it's ok.
Perhaps it is worth thinking why you think that asking a county invading another country to completely stop invading another country and go back to the status quo ante is bellicose?
It isn't and I didn't say it was. I can spot bellicosity. Eg an earlier contribution from that particular poster - "we'll let them keep Moscow" - is the sort of thing I mean.
No, they can't keep Moscow. I'm taking that.
But you know what I mean. The tone. It's understandable, because this was and is an outrage from Putin (and therefore Russia), and so a brutal revenge rears its head, and like I say - ok on the internet but I'd hope decisions in the west (all of this assuming Russia truly is in permanent retreat now) aren't driven by that.
No, I don't know what you mean. How is it bellicose.
Moscow is their territory, in the past when countries lost wars their territory was often divided by the winners of the war - eg see what happened to Berlin post-war.
To be saying that the Russians can keep Moscow is the opposite of bellicose, it is bloody generous under the circumstances.
It's your tone. It's bellicose.
How?
If you have no "how" its just because you're an apologist for evil I'm afraid.
Standing up to evil isn't bellicose.
You can stand up to evil without being bellicose. Look at Gary Cooper in High Noon.
"Do not forsake me oh my darling" ...
Indeed, and look at standing up to Russia's invasion of Ukraine as well. That's not bellicosity either.
Does Charles pay inheritance tax? Or is that only for the rest of us?
He's committed to pay an effective 75% income tax rate, if you'd rather he was taxed at the normal rates everyone else pays I'm sure he'd be happy to do so.
How are you calculating 75%?
Or are you claiming the Crown Estates as "tax", which it is not.
The Sovereign Grant is, I understand, fixed at 25% of the Crown Estates revenue, which effectively makes it a 75% tax. Not literally, but effectively.
The Crown Estate is not the personal property of the Monarch & its management is under the control of the government.
The Sovereign receives a payment out of the revenue of the Crown Estate as a replacement for the Civil List, which was causing political difficulties: Voting on the Monarch’s income every decade was highlighting to the general public exactly how much the Monarch was receiving from them on a regular basis. Now it never comes up, because it’s fixed as a proportion of the income of the Crown Estate.
So the Monarch (amongst many other things) gets 25% of the lease cost for every off-shore windfarm. Obviously the Monarch has done nothing to deserve that income, but that’s political fudges for you.
It belongs to the monarch but isn't part of their private estate which makes it a fudge anyway. But it certainly doesn't belong to the government, even if the government manages it and takes 75% of its revenues.
This is one of those carefully ambiguous fudges on which the British Constitution rests. The government agrees that the Crown Estate is the property of the Monarch & the Monarch agrees to give the government full control over it. Everybody wins & no one has to answer awkward questions like: why exactly does the Monarch own all this property anyway?
Its not the property of the Monarch, its the property of the Crown. The Monarch has the property by virtue of having the Crown.
It even says so on the Crown Estates own website!
Who owns The Crown Estate? The Crown Estate belongs to the reigning monarch 'in right of The Crown', that is, it is owned by the monarch for the duration of their reign, by virtue of their accession to the throne. But it is not the private property of the monarch - it cannot be sold by the monarch, nor do revenues from it belong to the monarch.
The Government also does not own The Crown Estate. It is managed by an independent organisation - established by statute - headed by a Board (also known as The Crown Estate Commissioners), and the surplus revenue from the estate is paid each year to the Treasury for the benefit of the nation's finances.
If the Monarch leaves the throne, they lose the Crown and all rights therein.
If the revenues don't belong to the monarch, how can the monarch agree to give 75% of them to the government?
Because the Monarch has them by right of having the Crown. They belong to the Crown, not to the Monarch personally, if the Monarch loses the Crown they lose everything that belongs to the Crown.
Just as Liz Truss doesn't now own 10 Downing Street.
So the revenues do belong to the monarch as monarch, and are effectively taxed at 75%.
No.
No more than your taxes "belong" to Kwasi Kwarteng.
Totally off topic, but younger son, who is trying to return from an exhibition in Amsterdam, has done so by sea because of the massive queues at security at the airport! So it's not just Heathrow! So he's now on his way to Heathrow to fly back home to Bangkok. Wonder what the situation will be when he gets to Heathrow.
I do keep hearing about air travel chaos. I'm meant to be starting serious foreign travel again, after a long break, and it's not encouraging me. Maybe best to just stay put for now.
I’ve gone through LGW without incident several times now….
Think I'm just looking for excuses - got used to staying still and the world revolving around me rather than the other way around.
Don’t.
Someone I know got used to doing absolutely nothing and seeing no one during covid. Like a hermit
Even when covid ended she maintained this new monastic isolation. She went from being sociable and active and keen on travel, to inertia, isolation, staying-at-home
Recently this person was diagnosed with a terminal illness and was given a few short months to live, at most. And she is now UNABLE to travel. Much as she might want to
She now bitterly regrets the ~3 years spent in self imposed confinement and it wasn’t even Covid that got her, in the end
You’re in your 60s. You can still see the world. Do it before you no longer can
Well it's not a Covid thing and, like I say, I have travelled a lot previously.
But, yes, there are some trips I'd like to do and if I don't do them through inertia that wouldn't be great.
This opens the door for a lament. I'm 47. I have recently become rather more acutely aware of the finity of my remaining years. What's brought this about is looking at OS maps. I've walked a lot in Britain, but there's so much more I haven't done than I have, and it seems rather too much to achieve in my remaining years of fitness. I get maybe three, four days to myself, free of parental responsibility each year. Obviously that will grow as the kids get older, but I'll be 59 by the time my youngest is 18. I long for the freedom I could have had in my 20s before kids came along. I should have been so much more focused on what I wanted to do, and done it myself. I should have spent several long weekends a year in the Highlands of Scotland reaching the inaccessible places. I should have walked up every Wainwright. I should have cycled the whole of the North of England, the whole of Ireland. I should never, ever have replied to the question 'do anything this weekend' with 'oh, not much.'
I've never felt the need (or indeed had the budget) to go everywhere in the world. If I die without seeing Rome or Ljubljana or Australia or South America, well, shrug, you can't do everything. If I never dive or bungee jump, well, so be it. But there are things I really did want to do, but they never seemed pressing, and now I'm married with kids I may never get the chance.
If you are young, care not what plans your friends or girlfriends make: if there are things you want to do, do them. You will never have more time and energy than you do now.
That's a very nice post - and I do know what you mean - but tbh I'm not 100% with the governing sentiment.
When I die it won't be all the things I didn't do that prey on my mind. It'll more be certain things I did do that I wish I hadn't.
I would tend to agree with the DoStuff sentiment. Most things can be done with friends - just not all your friends all the time. If you say that you are off to Egypt to scuba dive, a couple of people will be interested in going with you etc....
Yes, Do Stuff. But don't be all frantic. I have a cousin who unless he's running around doing this & that is thinking he's wasting life. Guy can't settle and focus for more than 5 minutes. This is existential panic.
Totally off topic, but younger son, who is trying to return from an exhibition in Amsterdam, has done so by sea because of the massive queues at security at the airport! So it's not just Heathrow! So he's now on his way to Heathrow to fly back home to Bangkok. Wonder what the situation will be when he gets to Heathrow.
I do keep hearing about air travel chaos. I'm meant to be starting serious foreign travel again, after a long break, and it's not encouraging me. Maybe best to just stay put for now.
I’ve gone through LGW without incident several times now….
Think I'm just looking for excuses - got used to staying still and the world revolving around me rather than the other way around.
Don’t.
Someone I know got used to doing absolutely nothing and seeing no one during covid. Like a hermit
Even when covid ended she maintained this new monastic isolation. She went from being sociable and active and keen on travel, to inertia, isolation, staying-at-home
Recently this person was diagnosed with a terminal illness and was given a few short months to live, at most. And she is now UNABLE to travel. Much as she might want to
She now bitterly regrets the ~3 years spent in self imposed confinement and it wasn’t even Covid that got her, in the end
You’re in your 60s. You can still see the world. Do it before you no longer can
Well it's not a Covid thing and, like I say, I have travelled a lot previously.
But, yes, there are some trips I'd like to do and if I don't do them through inertia that wouldn't be great.
This opens the door for a lament. I'm 47. I have recently become rather more acutely aware of the finity of my remaining years. What's brought this about is looking at OS maps. I've walked a lot in Britain, but there's so much more I haven't done than I have, and it seems rather too much to achieve in my remaining years of fitness. I get maybe three, four days to myself, free of parental responsibility each year. Obviously that will grow as the kids get older, but I'll be 59 by the time my youngest is 18. I long for the freedom I could have had in my 20s before kids came along. I should have been so much more focused on what I wanted to do, and done it myself. I should have spent several long weekends a year in the Highlands of Scotland reaching the inaccessible places. I should have walked up every Wainwright. I should have cycled the whole of the North of England, the whole of Ireland. I should never, ever have replied to the question 'do anything this weekend' with 'oh, not much.'
I've never felt the need (or indeed had the budget) to go everywhere in the world. If I die without seeing Rome or Ljubljana or Australia or South America, well, shrug, you can't do everything. If I never dive or bungee jump, well, so be it. But there are things I really did want to do, but they never seemed pressing, and now I'm married with kids I may never get the chance.
If you are young, care not what plans your friends or girlfriends make: if there are things you want to do, do them. You will never have more time and energy than you do now.
It is, always, later than you think
Gotta say you are missing a bit of the wider world
Rome is tremendous, a top ten must-see city (but avoid the summer)
Ljubljana you can skip. Pleasant but unexceptional
Australia is absolutely essential for its insane fauna. Everything else, the Barrier Reef, the Kimberley Coast, the endless Outback, the Queensland rainforests, the glorious Northern Territory, even Uluru, you can sort of find somewhere else, in some form
But NOTHING is like your first glimpse of a real live kangaroo in the wild. Under the gum trees. Staring at you. And then there's the wombats, koalas, wallabies, dingos, quolls, bilbys. pademelons, sugar gliders. platypi and the Ruffous Bettong. It is the nearest you can get to a different planet but equally as full of life
If you possibly can, go to Australia at least once and see a tree kangaroo fall out of a eucalypt
I mean, I have left the UK. I've been to a few of the world's big must see places, like Paris and New York. And if the weekend after next you plonked me in Rome I'm sure I'd have a very lovely time. But it is the experiences in these islands my heart yearns for - I think because I might so easily have done them when I had the time.
I might yet get to Australia. My sister-in-law's partner is Australian; they have a small baby, and are thinking of moving there. They are assuming we will visit regularly. And I'd very much like to see a kangaroo and all the other fellas. But, what, £10,000 and 24 hours travelling to get a family of five to Australia? Realistically we can only do it once, if at all. Whereas the Cuillins? You can get there with a tankful of petrol. I ought to have done that already. Why haven't I? So many years of fitting in with other people's plans when I might have made my own.
I hear you. On the other hand, you have almost certainly been an infinitely better father than me. My kids tell me they've forgiven me for being Not There so much, but I feel a fair amount of guilt, and I am sure I have done them harm. And yet I have seen the world in my selfishness (and my job, to be fair)
Something has to give, doesn't it?
However, your despair is foolish. You say you'll be done parenting at 59 - well 59 is nothing. I'm in my late 50s and just spent 3 months doing non stop travel from America to Armenia and back. And it was brilliant
Vow to yourself that you will do all this when you are 59, and do it
And don't spend £10k taking the entire family to Oz, it's really not worth it. You need to see it alone, or at most in a couple, so you can really get out there to the remote places. Remoteness is the point of Oz. The Atherton Tablelands! Kakadu! Coober Pedy! Arnhemland!
I have been fortunate to have a personal situation whereby I can do a lot of travelling by myself ; I've been up to Scotland a couple of times and also across northern Europe on various self indulgent train rides.
What I realised is something that I knew already from my backpacking in South East Asia two decades ago, even though there are some quite good memories, It all becomes pretty pointless and mundane very quickly.
I only get some kind of meaning and purpose and enjoyment out of life where I am helping other people in some way, this is not really achieved through travelling somewhere by myself.
NOTE - This is just my own 'lived experience'/ opinion, I'm not commenting on other people.
Thanks. I should add, I'm not lamenting my family. If I didn't have children I would lament the lack of them more. My kids are young enough not to be cynical or world-weary and old enough not to need too much looking after. I am in the golden years of life. And a holiday with them is a magical thing. (And this refers to your 'helping other people in some way: it doesn't need to be your kids for it to be meaningful and magical.) I'm not wishing myself back to my 20s - just wishing I'd made better use of the time before they came along. But maybe the not knowing how your future will turn out in your twenties is what gives you the fomo which stops you having all the adventures you might on your own.
What advice will you give your kids?
Mine really is one word: Travel
Mine would be: don't let fear stop you doing things.
Which is kinda the same thing....
However to afford the travel you have to work. I am SO tempted to go out into sunny, buzzy Seville and drink ice cold manzanilla, but first I have to earn it
To the flints! Later
Kind of, although I've never had any fear of travelling and have done a lot of it - although I have some very notable omissions including Africa, most of South America, mainland China, Russia and Turkey. When I was younger I lacked confidence and missed out on a lot of experiences. To give a trivial example, I was too scared to jump in a swimming pool until I turned 40. I've tried hard to embrace things that frighten me in recent years and I wish I'd done it sooner.
King Charles' bounce should give us pause for thought when looking at best PM ratings. You often have to be in the chair to be viewed as being capable of being in it.
There is a lot in that, and also in the related view that to be judged a great prime minister (or doctor or head teacher) you need to have been in post a long time so historians and journalists alike can cherry-pick the triumphs.
So there is still time for Liz Truss to make a first impression, but it is astonishing that my focus group (consisting of me) has no firm opinion of Truss despite her having been in government for ages; literally so! OGH tipped Liz Truss at 50/1 to be next prime minister — halfway through David Cameron's first term!
Totally off topic, but younger son, who is trying to return from an exhibition in Amsterdam, has done so by sea because of the massive queues at security at the airport! So it's not just Heathrow! So he's now on his way to Heathrow to fly back home to Bangkok. Wonder what the situation will be when he gets to Heathrow.
I do keep hearing about air travel chaos. I'm meant to be starting serious foreign travel again, after a long break, and it's not encouraging me. Maybe best to just stay put for now.
I’ve gone through LGW without incident several times now….
Think I'm just looking for excuses - got used to staying still and the world revolving around me rather than the other way around.
Don’t.
Someone I know got used to doing absolutely nothing and seeing no one during covid. Like a hermit
Even when covid ended she maintained this new monastic isolation. She went from being sociable and active and keen on travel, to inertia, isolation, staying-at-home
Recently this person was diagnosed with a terminal illness and was given a few short months to live, at most. And she is now UNABLE to travel. Much as she might want to
She now bitterly regrets the ~3 years spent in self imposed confinement and it wasn’t even Covid that got her, in the end
You’re in your 60s. You can still see the world. Do it before you no longer can
Well it's not a Covid thing and, like I say, I have travelled a lot previously.
But, yes, there are some trips I'd like to do and if I don't do them through inertia that wouldn't be great.
This opens the door for a lament. I'm 47. I have recently become rather more acutely aware of the finity of my remaining years. What's brought this about is looking at OS maps. I've walked a lot in Britain, but there's so much more I haven't done than I have, and it seems rather too much to achieve in my remaining years of fitness. I get maybe three, four days to myself, free of parental responsibility each year. Obviously that will grow as the kids get older, but I'll be 59 by the time my youngest is 18. I long for the freedom I could have had in my 20s before kids came along. I should have been so much more focused on what I wanted to do, and done it myself. I should have spent several long weekends a year in the Highlands of Scotland reaching the inaccessible places. I should have walked up every Wainwright. I should have cycled the whole of the North of England, the whole of Ireland. I should never, ever have replied to the question 'do anything this weekend' with 'oh, not much.'
I've never felt the need (or indeed had the budget) to go everywhere in the world. If I die without seeing Rome or Ljubljana or Australia or South America, well, shrug, you can't do everything. If I never dive or bungee jump, well, so be it. But there are things I really did want to do, but they never seemed pressing, and now I'm married with kids I may never get the chance.
If you are young, care not what plans your friends or girlfriends make: if there are things you want to do, do them. You will never have more time and energy than you do now.
That's a very nice post - and I do know what you mean - but tbh I'm not 100% with the governing sentiment.
When I die it won't be all the things I didnt do that prey on my mind. It'll more be certain things I did do that I wish I hadn't.
My gravestone will say "I wish I had spent more time on PB.com".
🙂 - well you did manage a good break a while ago.
Back in the mire now though it seems. Well and truly.
Totally off topic, but younger son, who is trying to return from an exhibition in Amsterdam, has done so by sea because of the massive queues at security at the airport! So it's not just Heathrow! So he's now on his way to Heathrow to fly back home to Bangkok. Wonder what the situation will be when he gets to Heathrow.
I do keep hearing about air travel chaos. I'm meant to be starting serious foreign travel again, after a long break, and it's not encouraging me. Maybe best to just stay put for now.
I’ve gone through LGW without incident several times now….
Think I'm just looking for excuses - got used to staying still and the world revolving around me rather than the other way around.
Don’t.
Someone I know got used to doing absolutely nothing and seeing no one during covid. Like a hermit
Even when covid ended she maintained this new monastic isolation. She went from being sociable and active and keen on travel, to inertia, isolation, staying-at-home
Recently this person was diagnosed with a terminal illness and was given a few short months to live, at most. And she is now UNABLE to travel. Much as she might want to
She now bitterly regrets the ~3 years spent in self imposed confinement and it wasn’t even Covid that got her, in the end
You’re in your 60s. You can still see the world. Do it before you no longer can
Well it's not a Covid thing and, like I say, I have travelled a lot previously.
But, yes, there are some trips I'd like to do and if I don't do them through inertia that wouldn't be great.
This opens the door for a lament. I'm 47. I have recently become rather more acutely aware of the finity of my remaining years. What's brought this about is looking at OS maps. I've walked a lot in Britain, but there's so much more I haven't done than I have, and it seems rather too much to achieve in my remaining years of fitness. I get maybe three, four days to myself, free of parental responsibility each year. Obviously that will grow as the kids get older, but I'll be 59 by the time my youngest is 18. I long for the freedom I could have had in my 20s before kids came along. I should have been so much more focused on what I wanted to do, and done it myself. I should have spent several long weekends a year in the Highlands of Scotland reaching the inaccessible places. I should have walked up every Wainwright. I should have cycled the whole of the North of England, the whole of Ireland. I should never, ever have replied to the question 'do anything this weekend' with 'oh, not much.'
I've never felt the need (or indeed had the budget) to go everywhere in the world. If I die without seeing Rome or Ljubljana or Australia or South America, well, shrug, you can't do everything. If I never dive or bungee jump, well, so be it. But there are things I really did want to do, but they never seemed pressing, and now I'm married with kids I may never get the chance.
If you are young, care not what plans your friends or girlfriends make: if there are things you want to do, do them. You will never have more time and energy than you do now.
It is, always, later than you think
Gotta say you are missing a bit of the wider world
Rome is tremendous, a top ten must-see city (but avoid the summer)
Ljubljana you can skip. Pleasant but unexceptional
Australia is absolutely essential for its insane fauna. Everything else, the Barrier Reef, the Kimberley Coast, the endless Outback, the Queensland rainforests, the glorious Northern Territory, even Uluru, you can sort of find somewhere else, in some form
But NOTHING is like your first glimpse of a real live kangaroo in the wild. Under the gum trees. Staring at you. And then there's the wombats, koalas, wallabies, dingos, quolls, bilbys. pademelons, sugar gliders. platypi and the Ruffous Bettong. It is the nearest you can get to a different planet but equally as full of life
If you possibly can, go to Australia at least once and see a tree kangaroo fall out of a eucalypt
I mean, I have left the UK. I've been to a few of the world's big must see places, like Paris and New York. And if the weekend after next you plonked me in Rome I'm sure I'd have a very lovely time. But it is the experiences in these islands my heart yearns for - I think because I might so easily have done them when I had the time.
I might yet get to Australia. My sister-in-law's partner is Australian; they have a small baby, and are thinking of moving there. They are assuming we will visit regularly. And I'd very much like to see a kangaroo and all the other fellas. But, what, £10,000 and 24 hours travelling to get a family of five to Australia? Realistically we can only do it once, if at all. Whereas the Cuillins? You can get there with a tankful of petrol. I ought to have done that already. Why haven't I? So many years of fitting in with other people's plans when I might have made my own.
Do you really need three children?
If you economized there by, say, selling one or two, then that Australia trip might be more affordable l.
I wanted to economise by having just 2 kids. I was overruled. Men really don't have much say in it.
There are some educational YouTube videos that you should watch.
Totally off topic, but younger son, who is trying to return from an exhibition in Amsterdam, has done so by sea because of the massive queues at security at the airport! So it's not just Heathrow! So he's now on his way to Heathrow to fly back home to Bangkok. Wonder what the situation will be when he gets to Heathrow.
I do keep hearing about air travel chaos. I'm meant to be starting serious foreign travel again, after a long break, and it's not encouraging me. Maybe best to just stay put for now.
I’ve gone through LGW without incident several times now….
Think I'm just looking for excuses - got used to staying still and the world revolving around me rather than the other way around.
Don’t.
Someone I know got used to doing absolutely nothing and seeing no one during covid. Like a hermit
Even when covid ended she maintained this new monastic isolation. She went from being sociable and active and keen on travel, to inertia, isolation, staying-at-home
Recently this person was diagnosed with a terminal illness and was given a few short months to live, at most. And she is now UNABLE to travel. Much as she might want to
She now bitterly regrets the ~3 years spent in self imposed confinement and it wasn’t even Covid that got her, in the end
You’re in your 60s. You can still see the world. Do it before you no longer can
Well it's not a Covid thing and, like I say, I have travelled a lot previously.
But, yes, there are some trips I'd like to do and if I don't do them through inertia that wouldn't be great.
This opens the door for a lament. I'm 47. I have recently become rather more acutely aware of the finity of my remaining years. What's brought this about is looking at OS maps. I've walked a lot in Britain, but there's so much more I haven't done than I have, and it seems rather too much to achieve in my remaining years of fitness. I get maybe three, four days to myself, free of parental responsibility each year. Obviously that will grow as the kids get older, but I'll be 59 by the time my youngest is 18. I long for the freedom I could have had in my 20s before kids came along. I should have been so much more focused on what I wanted to do, and done it myself. I should have spent several long weekends a year in the Highlands of Scotland reaching the inaccessible places. I should have walked up every Wainwright. I should have cycled the whole of the North of England, the whole of Ireland. I should never, ever have replied to the question 'do anything this weekend' with 'oh, not much.'
I've never felt the need (or indeed had the budget) to go everywhere in the world. If I die without seeing Rome or Ljubljana or Australia or South America, well, shrug, you can't do everything. If I never dive or bungee jump, well, so be it. But there are things I really did want to do, but they never seemed pressing, and now I'm married with kids I may never get the chance.
If you are young, care not what plans your friends or girlfriends make: if there are things you want to do, do them. You will never have more time and energy than you do now.
It is, always, later than you think
Gotta say you are missing a bit of the wider world
Rome is tremendous, a top ten must-see city (but avoid the summer)
Ljubljana you can skip. Pleasant but unexceptional
Australia is absolutely essential for its insane fauna. Everything else, the Barrier Reef, the Kimberley Coast, the endless Outback, the Queensland rainforests, the glorious Northern Territory, even Uluru, you can sort of find somewhere else, in some form
But NOTHING is like your first glimpse of a real live kangaroo in the wild. Under the gum trees. Staring at you. And then there's the wombats, koalas, wallabies, dingos, quolls, bilbys. pademelons, sugar gliders. platypi and the Ruffous Bettong. It is the nearest you can get to a different planet but equally as full of life
If you possibly can, go to Australia at least once and see a tree kangaroo fall out of a eucalypt
I mean, I have left the UK. I've been to a few of the world's big must see places, like Paris and New York. And if the weekend after next you plonked me in Rome I'm sure I'd have a very lovely time. But it is the experiences in these islands my heart yearns for - I think because I might so easily have done them when I had the time.
I might yet get to Australia. My sister-in-law's partner is Australian; they have a small baby, and are thinking of moving there. They are assuming we will visit regularly. And I'd very much like to see a kangaroo and all the other fellas. But, what, £10,000 and 24 hours travelling to get a family of five to Australia? Realistically we can only do it once, if at all. Whereas the Cuillins? You can get there with a tankful of petrol. I ought to have done that already. Why haven't I? So many years of fitting in with other people's plans when I might have made my own.
I hear you. On the other hand, you have almost certainly been an infinitely better father than me. My kids tell me they've forgiven me for being Not There so much, but I feel a fair amount of guilt, and I am sure I have done them harm. And yet I have seen the world in my selfishness (and my job, to be fair)
Something has to give, doesn't it?
However, your despair is foolish. You say you'll be done parenting at 59 - well 59 is nothing. I'm in my late 50s and just spent 3 months doing non stop travel from America to Armenia and back. And it was brilliant
Vow to yourself that you will do all this when you are 59, and do it
And don't spend £10k taking the entire family to Oz, it's really not worth it. You need to see it alone, or at most in a couple, so you can really get out there to the remote places. Remoteness is the point of Oz. The Atherton Tablelands! Kakadu! Coober Pedy! Arnhemland!
I have been fortunate to have a personal situation whereby I can do a lot of travelling by myself ; I've been up to Scotland a couple of times and also across northern Europe on various self indulgent train rides.
What I realised is something that I knew already from my backpacking in South East Asia two decades ago, even though there are some quite good memories, It all becomes pretty pointless and mundane very quickly.
I only get some kind of meaning and purpose and enjoyment out of life where I am helping other people in some way, this is not really achieved through travelling somewhere by myself.
NOTE - This is just my own 'lived experience'/ opinion, I'm not commenting on other people.
Thanks. I should add, I'm not lamenting my family. If I didn't have children I would lament the lack of them more. My kids are young enough not to be cynical or world-weary and old enough not to need too much looking after. I am in the golden years of life. And a holiday with them is a magical thing. (And this refers to your 'helping other people in some way: it doesn't need to be your kids for it to be meaningful and magical.) I'm not wishing myself back to my 20s - just wishing I'd made better use of the time before they came along. But maybe the not knowing how your future will turn out in your twenties is what gives you the fomo which stops you having all the adventures you might on your own.
What advice will you give your kids?
Mine really is one word: Travel
Mine would be: don't let fear stop you doing things.
Mine was "don't work in the City".
But he is.
Working in the City is pretty useful in middle age in terms of paying for stuff. But I wouldn't recommend going into it too early if you want to have an interesting life. And eventually it would be nice to try to transition to doing something more useful. I'm not doing too well on the latter so far.
One man was arrested for simply saying "who elected him?" loudly. Another forcibly moved on from a public place for an inoffensive placard. How on Earth do the police have such powers in this country? Free speech is so flimsy in the UK.
Lots of progressive steps backwards since perhaps the 1990s, with occasionally one step forward before the next 2 steps back. IMO this country has never really recognised the importance of rights of freedom of speech sufficiently, as could be seen in the examples of the Motoons and even some wanting compromise on Salman Rushdie / Satanic Verses.
Remember all the stuff about photographs of children. Here's an example from 2007 of Dave Gorman being instructed to move on, anyway, even after the police had verified that he was doing nothing problematic. http://gormano.blogspot.com/2007/07/twisted.html
IMO there has also been an important issue around a desire to use laws to close down critics and people who disagree. There are plenty of such, including local politicians vs opposition, Mermaids vs people they don't like, and LGB activists vs Street Preachers.
Totally off topic, but younger son, who is trying to return from an exhibition in Amsterdam, has done so by sea because of the massive queues at security at the airport! So it's not just Heathrow! So he's now on his way to Heathrow to fly back home to Bangkok. Wonder what the situation will be when he gets to Heathrow.
I do keep hearing about air travel chaos. I'm meant to be starting serious foreign travel again, after a long break, and it's not encouraging me. Maybe best to just stay put for now.
I’ve gone through LGW without incident several times now….
Think I'm just looking for excuses - got used to staying still and the world revolving around me rather than the other way around.
Don’t.
Someone I know got used to doing absolutely nothing and seeing no one during covid. Like a hermit
Even when covid ended she maintained this new monastic isolation. She went from being sociable and active and keen on travel, to inertia, isolation, staying-at-home
Recently this person was diagnosed with a terminal illness and was given a few short months to live, at most. And she is now UNABLE to travel. Much as she might want to
She now bitterly regrets the ~3 years spent in self imposed confinement and it wasn’t even Covid that got her, in the end
You’re in your 60s. You can still see the world. Do it before you no longer can
Well it's not a Covid thing and, like I say, I have travelled a lot previously.
But, yes, there are some trips I'd like to do and if I don't do them through inertia that wouldn't be great.
This opens the door for a lament. I'm 47. I have recently become rather more acutely aware of the finity of my remaining years. What's brought this about is looking at OS maps. I've walked a lot in Britain, but there's so much more I haven't done than I have, and it seems rather too much to achieve in my remaining years of fitness. I get maybe three, four days to myself, free of parental responsibility each year. Obviously that will grow as the kids get older, but I'll be 59 by the time my youngest is 18. I long for the freedom I could have had in my 20s before kids came along. I should have been so much more focused on what I wanted to do, and done it myself. I should have spent several long weekends a year in the Highlands of Scotland reaching the inaccessible places. I should have walked up every Wainwright. I should have cycled the whole of the North of England, the whole of Ireland. I should never, ever have replied to the question 'do anything this weekend' with 'oh, not much.'
I've never felt the need (or indeed had the budget) to go everywhere in the world. If I die without seeing Rome or Ljubljana or Australia or South America, well, shrug, you can't do everything. If I never dive or bungee jump, well, so be it. But there are things I really did want to do, but they never seemed pressing, and now I'm married with kids I may never get the chance.
If you are young, care not what plans your friends or girlfriends make: if there are things you want to do, do them. You will never have more time and energy than you do now.
It is, always, later than you think
Gotta say you are missing a bit of the wider world
Rome is tremendous, a top ten must-see city (but avoid the summer)
Ljubljana you can skip. Pleasant but unexceptional
Australia is absolutely essential for its insane fauna. Everything else, the Barrier Reef, the Kimberley Coast, the endless Outback, the Queensland rainforests, the glorious Northern Territory, even Uluru, you can sort of find somewhere else, in some form
But NOTHING is like your first glimpse of a real live kangaroo in the wild. Under the gum trees. Staring at you. And then there's the wombats, koalas, wallabies, dingos, quolls, bilbys. pademelons, sugar gliders. platypi and the Ruffous Bettong. It is the nearest you can get to a different planet but equally as full of life
If you possibly can, go to Australia at least once and see a tree kangaroo fall out of a eucalypt
I mean, I have left the UK. I've been to a few of the world's big must see places, like Paris and New York. And if the weekend after next you plonked me in Rome I'm sure I'd have a very lovely time. But it is the experiences in these islands my heart yearns for - I think because I might so easily have done them when I had the time.
I might yet get to Australia. My sister-in-law's partner is Australian; they have a small baby, and are thinking of moving there. They are assuming we will visit regularly. And I'd very much like to see a kangaroo and all the other fellas. But, what, £10,000 and 24 hours travelling to get a family of five to Australia? Realistically we can only do it once, if at all. Whereas the Cuillins? You can get there with a tankful of petrol. I ought to have done that already. Why haven't I? So many years of fitting in with other people's plans when I might have made my own.
Do you really need three children?
If you economized there by, say, selling one or two, then that Australia trip might be more affordable l.
I wanted to economise by having just 2 kids. I was overruled. Men really don't have much say in it.
There are some educational YouTube videos that you should watch.
Totally off topic, but younger son, who is trying to return from an exhibition in Amsterdam, has done so by sea because of the massive queues at security at the airport! So it's not just Heathrow! So he's now on his way to Heathrow to fly back home to Bangkok. Wonder what the situation will be when he gets to Heathrow.
I do keep hearing about air travel chaos. I'm meant to be starting serious foreign travel again, after a long break, and it's not encouraging me. Maybe best to just stay put for now.
I’ve gone through LGW without incident several times now….
Think I'm just looking for excuses - got used to staying still and the world revolving around me rather than the other way around.
Don’t.
Someone I know got used to doing absolutely nothing and seeing no one during covid. Like a hermit
Even when covid ended she maintained this new monastic isolation. She went from being sociable and active and keen on travel, to inertia, isolation, staying-at-home
Recently this person was diagnosed with a terminal illness and was given a few short months to live, at most. And she is now UNABLE to travel. Much as she might want to
She now bitterly regrets the ~3 years spent in self imposed confinement and it wasn’t even Covid that got her, in the end
You’re in your 60s. You can still see the world. Do it before you no longer can
Well it's not a Covid thing and, like I say, I have travelled a lot previously.
But, yes, there are some trips I'd like to do and if I don't do them through inertia that wouldn't be great.
This opens the door for a lament. I'm 47. I have recently become rather more acutely aware of the finity of my remaining years. What's brought this about is looking at OS maps. I've walked a lot in Britain, but there's so much more I haven't done than I have, and it seems rather too much to achieve in my remaining years of fitness. I get maybe three, four days to myself, free of parental responsibility each year. Obviously that will grow as the kids get older, but I'll be 59 by the time my youngest is 18. I long for the freedom I could have had in my 20s before kids came along. I should have been so much more focused on what I wanted to do, and done it myself. I should have spent several long weekends a year in the Highlands of Scotland reaching the inaccessible places. I should have walked up every Wainwright. I should have cycled the whole of the North of England, the whole of Ireland. I should never, ever have replied to the question 'do anything this weekend' with 'oh, not much.'
I've never felt the need (or indeed had the budget) to go everywhere in the world. If I die without seeing Rome or Ljubljana or Australia or South America, well, shrug, you can't do everything. If I never dive or bungee jump, well, so be it. But there are things I really did want to do, but they never seemed pressing, and now I'm married with kids I may never get the chance.
If you are young, care not what plans your friends or girlfriends make: if there are things you want to do, do them. You will never have more time and energy than you do now.
It is, always, later than you think
Gotta say you are missing a bit of the wider world
Rome is tremendous, a top ten must-see city (but avoid the summer)
Ljubljana you can skip. Pleasant but unexceptional
Australia is absolutely essential for its insane fauna. Everything else, the Barrier Reef, the Kimberley Coast, the endless Outback, the Queensland rainforests, the glorious Northern Territory, even Uluru, you can sort of find somewhere else, in some form
But NOTHING is like your first glimpse of a real live kangaroo in the wild. Under the gum trees. Staring at you. And then there's the wombats, koalas, wallabies, dingos, quolls, bilbys. pademelons, sugar gliders. platypi and the Ruffous Bettong. It is the nearest you can get to a different planet but equally as full of life
If you possibly can, go to Australia at least once and see a tree kangaroo fall out of a eucalypt
I mean, I have left the UK. I've been to a few of the world's big must see places, like Paris and New York. And if the weekend after next you plonked me in Rome I'm sure I'd have a very lovely time. But it is the experiences in these islands my heart yearns for - I think because I might so easily have done them when I had the time.
I might yet get to Australia. My sister-in-law's partner is Australian; they have a small baby, and are thinking of moving there. They are assuming we will visit regularly. And I'd very much like to see a kangaroo and all the other fellas. But, what, £10,000 and 24 hours travelling to get a family of five to Australia? Realistically we can only do it once, if at all. Whereas the Cuillins? You can get there with a tankful of petrol. I ought to have done that already. Why haven't I? So many years of fitting in with other people's plans when I might have made my own.
I hear you. On the other hand, you have almost certainly been an infinitely better father than me. My kids tell me they've forgiven me for being Not There so much, but I feel a fair amount of guilt, and I am sure I have done them harm. And yet I have seen the world in my selfishness (and my job, to be fair)
Something has to give, doesn't it?
However, your despair is foolish. You say you'll be done parenting at 59 - well 59 is nothing. I'm in my late 50s and just spent 3 months doing non stop travel from America to Armenia and back. And it was brilliant
Vow to yourself that you will do all this when you are 59, and do it
And don't spend £10k taking the entire family to Oz, it's really not worth it. You need to see it alone, or at most in a couple, so you can really get out there to the remote places. Remoteness is the point of Oz. The Atherton Tablelands! Kakadu! Coober Pedy! Arnhemland!
I have been fortunate to have a personal situation whereby I can do a lot of travelling by myself ; I've been up to Scotland a couple of times and also across northern Europe on various self indulgent train rides.
What I realised is something that I knew already from my backpacking in South East Asia two decades ago, even though there are some quite good memories, It all becomes pretty pointless and mundane very quickly.
I only get some kind of meaning and purpose and enjoyment out of life where I am helping other people in some way, this is not really achieved through travelling somewhere by myself.
NOTE - This is just my own 'lived experience'/ opinion, I'm not commenting on other people.
Thanks. I should add, I'm not lamenting my family. If I didn't have children I would lament the lack of them more. My kids are young enough not to be cynical or world-weary and old enough not to need too much looking after. I am in the golden years of life. And a holiday with them is a magical thing. (And this refers to your 'helping other people in some way: it doesn't need to be your kids for it to be meaningful and magical.) I'm not wishing myself back to my 20s - just wishing I'd made better use of the time before they came along. But maybe the not knowing how your future will turn out in your twenties is what gives you the fomo which stops you having all the adventures you might on your own.
What advice will you give your kids?
Mine really is one word: Travel
Mine would be: don't let fear stop you doing things.
Which is kinda the same thing....
However to afford the travel you have to work. I am SO tempted to go out into sunny, buzzy Seville and drink ice cold manzanilla, but first I have to earn it
To the flints! Later
Kind of, although I've never had any fear of travelling and have done a lot of it - although I have some very notable omissions includinAfrica, most of South America, mainland China, Russia and Turkey. When I was younger I lacked confidence and missed out on a lot of experiences. To give a trivial example, I was too scared to jump in a swimming pool until I turned 40. I've tried hard to embrace things that frighten me in recent years and I wish I'd done it sooner.
I suffer vertigo, but I went on a parachuting course for a week when I was 17.
HYUFD is NO LONGER going to be happy with Narendra Modi
[H]ours before news of Queen Elizabeth II’s death spread, Prime Minister Narendra Modi delivered a fiery speech urging India to shed its colonial ties in a ceremony to rename a boulevard that once honored King George V.
Rajpath, formerly called Kingsway, was a “symbol of slavery” under the British Raj, he said. Instead, under the newly named Kartavya Path that leads to the iconic India Gate, “a new history has been created,” Modi beamed.
His speech last Thursday was the latest in a concerted drive to purge India of its colonial relics. It was also a clear sign that the country, once the largest of Britain’s colonies that endured two centuries of imperial rule, has moved on.
The renovated avenue now boasts a black granite statue of Indian freedom fighter Subhas Chandra Bose, in the place where a mold of King George V, Elizabeth’s grandfather, once stood.
The queen’s death provoked sympathies to a deeply respected figure from some while for a few others, it jogged memories of a bloody history under the British crown. But among most regular Indians, the news was met with an indifferent shrug.
Regarding Germany - it's clear that armour is key to Ukraine ending the war.
Disappointing signals from Germany while Ukraine needs Leopards and Marders now — to liberate people and save them from genocide. Not a single rational argument on why these weapons can not be supplied, only abstract fears and excuses. What is Berlin afraid of that Kyiv is not? https://mobile.twitter.com/DmytroKuleba/status/1569637880204775426
That's easy - Germany fears that their access to Russian gas will be permanently cut off....
That doesn't make a lot of sense.
Ultimately, Russia has no way to sell (meaningful amounts of) gas to countries outside Europe.
Now that might change on a 25 year view, but there's a lot of pipelines that would be to be built to replace that European market.
Totally off topic, but younger son, who is trying to return from an exhibition in Amsterdam, has done so by sea because of the massive queues at security at the airport! So it's not just Heathrow! So he's now on his way to Heathrow to fly back home to Bangkok. Wonder what the situation will be when he gets to Heathrow.
I do keep hearing about air travel chaos. I'm meant to be starting serious foreign travel again, after a long break, and it's not encouraging me. Maybe best to just stay put for now.
I’ve gone through LGW without incident several times now….
Think I'm just looking for excuses - got used to staying still and the world revolving around me rather than the other way around.
Don’t.
Someone I know got used to doing absolutely nothing and seeing no one during covid. Like a hermit
Even when covid ended she maintained this new monastic isolation. She went from being sociable and active and keen on travel, to inertia, isolation, staying-at-home
Recently this person was diagnosed with a terminal illness and was given a few short months to live, at most. And she is now UNABLE to travel. Much as she might want to
She now bitterly regrets the ~3 years spent in self imposed confinement and it wasn’t even Covid that got her, in the end
You’re in your 60s. You can still see the world. Do it before you no longer can
Well it's not a Covid thing and, like I say, I have travelled a lot previously.
But, yes, there are some trips I'd like to do and if I don't do them through inertia that wouldn't be great.
This opens the door for a lament. I'm 47. I have recently become rather more acutely aware of the finity of my remaining years. What's brought this about is looking at OS maps. I've walked a lot in Britain, but there's so much more I haven't done than I have, and it seems rather too much to achieve in my remaining years of fitness. I get maybe three, four days to myself, free of parental responsibility each year. Obviously that will grow as the kids get older, but I'll be 59 by the time my youngest is 18. I long for the freedom I could have had in my 20s before kids came along. I should have been so much more focused on what I wanted to do, and done it myself. I should have spent several long weekends a year in the Highlands of Scotland reaching the inaccessible places. I should have walked up every Wainwright. I should have cycled the whole of the North of England, the whole of Ireland. I should never, ever have replied to the question 'do anything this weekend' with 'oh, not much.'
I've never felt the need (or indeed had the budget) to go everywhere in the world. If I die without seeing Rome or Ljubljana or Australia or South America, well, shrug, you can't do everything. If I never dive or bungee jump, well, so be it. But there are things I really did want to do, but they never seemed pressing, and now I'm married with kids I may never get the chance.
If you are young, care not what plans your friends or girlfriends make: if there are things you want to do, do them. You will never have more time and energy than you do now.
It is, always, later than you think
Gotta say you are missing a bit of the wider world
Rome is tremendous, a top ten must-see city (but avoid the summer)
Ljubljana you can skip. Pleasant but unexceptional
Australia is absolutely essential for its insane fauna. Everything else, the Barrier Reef, the Kimberley Coast, the endless Outback, the Queensland rainforests, the glorious Northern Territory, even Uluru, you can sort of find somewhere else, in some form
But NOTHING is like your first glimpse of a real live kangaroo in the wild. Under the gum trees. Staring at you. And then there's the wombats, koalas, wallabies, dingos, quolls, bilbys. pademelons, sugar gliders. platypi and the Ruffous Bettong. It is the nearest you can get to a different planet but equally as full of life
If you possibly can, go to Australia at least once and see a tree kangaroo fall out of a eucalypt
I mean, I have left the UK. I've been to a few of the world's big must see places, like Paris and New York. And if the weekend after next you plonked me in Rome I'm sure I'd have a very lovely time. But it is the experiences in these islands my heart yearns for - I think because I might so easily have done them when I had the time.
I might yet get to Australia. My sister-in-law's partner is Australian; they have a small baby, and are thinking of moving there. They are assuming we will visit regularly. And I'd very much like to see a kangaroo and all the other fellas. But, what, £10,000 and 24 hours travelling to get a family of five to Australia? Realistically we can only do it once, if at all. Whereas the Cuillins? You can get there with a tankful of petrol. I ought to have done that already. Why haven't I? So many years of fitting in with other people's plans when I might have made my own.
Do you really need three children?
If you economized there by, say, selling one or two, then that Australia trip might be more affordable l.
(Oh how bloody rich I would be if I had fewer children...) But there are economies of scale to having lots of children. Arguably I am taking a more economically efficient approach.
Surely the economically efficient way of ensuring the continuation of your bloodline is to become a sperm donor.
Regarding Germany - it's clear that armour is key to Ukraine ending the war.
Disappointing signals from Germany while Ukraine needs Leopards and Marders now — to liberate people and save them from genocide. Not a single rational argument on why these weapons can not be supplied, only abstract fears and excuses. What is Berlin afraid of that Kyiv is not? https://mobile.twitter.com/DmytroKuleba/status/1569637880204775426
That's easy - Germany fears that their access to Russian gas will be permanently cut off....
That doesn't make a lot of sense.
Ultimately, Russia has no way to sell (meaningful amounts of) gas to countries outside Europe.
Now that might change on a 25 year view, but there's a lot of pipelines that would be to be built to replace that European market.
And Ukraine is not without gas reserves, should it reclaim its southern territory.
Does Charles pay inheritance tax? Or is that only for the rest of us?
He's committed to pay an effective 75% income tax rate, if you'd rather he was taxed at the normal rates everyone else pays I'm sure he'd be happy to do so.
How are you calculating 75%?
Or are you claiming the Crown Estates as "tax", which it is not.
The Sovereign Grant is, I understand, fixed at 25% of the Crown Estates revenue, which effectively makes it a 75% tax. Not literally, but effectively.
The Crown Estate is not the personal property of the Monarch & its management is under the control of the government.
The Sovereign receives a payment out of the revenue of the Crown Estate as a replacement for the Civil List, which was causing political difficulties: Voting on the Monarch’s income every decade was highlighting to the general public exactly how much the Monarch was receiving from them on a regular basis. Now it never comes up, because it’s fixed as a proportion of the income of the Crown Estate.
So the Monarch (amongst many other things) gets 25% of the lease cost for every off-shore windfarm. Obviously the Monarch has done nothing to deserve that income, but that’s political fudges for you.
It belongs to the monarch but isn't part of their private estate which makes it a fudge anyway. But it certainly doesn't belong to the government, even if the government manages it and takes 75% of its revenues.
This is one of those carefully ambiguous fudges on which the British Constitution rests. The government agrees that the Crown Estate is the property of the Monarch & the Monarch agrees to give the government full control over it. Everybody wins & no one has to answer awkward questions like: why exactly does the Monarch own all this property anyway?
Its not the property of the Monarch, its the property of the Crown. The Monarch has the property by virtue of having the Crown.
It even says so on the Crown Estates own website!
Who owns The Crown Estate? The Crown Estate belongs to the reigning monarch 'in right of The Crown', that is, it is owned by the monarch for the duration of their reign, by virtue of their accession to the throne. But it is not the private property of the monarch - it cannot be sold by the monarch, nor do revenues from it belong to the monarch.
The Government also does not own The Crown Estate. It is managed by an independent organisation - established by statute - headed by a Board (also known as The Crown Estate Commissioners), and the surplus revenue from the estate is paid each year to the Treasury for the benefit of the nation's finances.
If the Monarch leaves the throne, they lose the Crown and all rights therein.
If the revenues don't belong to the monarch, how can the monarch agree to give 75% of them to the government?
Because the Monarch has them by right of having the Crown. They belong to the Crown, not to the Monarch personally, if the Monarch loses the Crown they lose everything that belongs to the Crown.
Just as Liz Truss doesn't now own 10 Downing Street.
So the revenues do belong to the monarch as monarch, and are effectively taxed at 75%.
The Queen's estate will pay full inheritance tax on all assets she held as a private individual but not on those held as a sovereign
If Russia loses, all the people on Left and Right in the West that demanded a "compromise" that "accepts Russia's legitimate interests" will shift to accusing the West of having sucked Putin into a deliberate trap to crush Moscow
None of these people will rethink their positions
Prediction: this will also be the position of the Putin regime, or whatever more extreme despotism succeeds it, and that of most of the Russian population along with it. They think they're entitled to conquer and subjugate their neighbours at will, and when the plan goes wrong it's the fault of everyone but themselves. They're irredeemable.
Even if the Putin regime falls and is replaced by a more hard line government, that government is unlikely to last very long.
There is a growing sense of collapse on the Russian side. Rumours of an army mutiny are growing, and the reports that Kadyrov is sending forces "to support" the regime (not clear where but even, possibly, Moscow) suggests we may, just possibly, already be in some kind of end game. It appears that Kherson may fall even as early as this week, and the collapse of Russian forces in the Donbas seems to be accelerating, with UAF units getting close to Luhansk. Putin is said to be in Sochi, but as with the Czar in Pskov, that is no guarantee that he is safer there than in the capital.
Any new regime in Russia will need to deal with significant internal headwinds, and not least the Kadyrovtsi. The renewal of the Azerbaijani assault on Armenia is also yet another sign that the authority of Putin is draining away.
Personally, those who told me that, irrespective of morality or our own fundamental interests, the West should come to terms with Putin, now look more than just "wrong". The Baltic and Poland have been warning about Putin for 20 years. They were right and now the views of the front line states should count for a lot more than the discredited position of "compromise" with the rapist regime. Putin is likely to fall eventually, and that is a good thing, because irrespective of the short term, Russia has to change and it can not change with him still in the Kremlin. "Clinging hold of nurse, for fear of getting something worse" is the perennial mistake of Western statecraft when dealing with Moscow and it fails every time.
For many people in countries that border Russia, the top pressing interest is in 'removing the threat', and this can be achieved through the 'defeat of Russia', even though that means 'embracing the chaos' that follows.
But the end game of what you are describing is the disintegration of Russia in to multiple statelets, run by a collection of warlords and dubious 'businessmen'; who inherit collections of nuclear weapons and other significant military infrastructure; who have no interest in constitutional democracy, and who 'work with' powers like China and Iran, and with a population who 'blame the west' for the second disintegration of the former Russian State and the chaos and poverty that ensues.
I've got no real embarrassment about looking at the situation and concluding that there may just be some merit in 'clinging to nurse'. We need to remember what happened in Iraq with Saddam Hussein or Gaddafi in Libya.
So what is your actual policy proposal ? That we force Ukraine to accept Russian territorial seizures, and just live with the enormous damage they have wreaked ?
All those complaining that those backing Ukraine 'have no endgame' don't seem to have any problem with their own equally uncertain, and far less justified position.
From all I have seen and read, I would go with the long term position of the west towards Russia as the 'least worst/only viable option' - IE Putin gets an 'off ramp' and there is some kind of 'deal' that secures the independence and sovereignty of Ukraine within the EU orbit, as well as the independence of Russia in relation to China, and some restoration of trade with Russia.
This puts me in a total minority and will evoke many Hitler comparisons but it is a product of doing my best to think objectively about the situation, despite initially being in the 'beat back Russia' camp at the start of the campaign.
If you want to just 'embrace chaos' then you should reflect on what happened in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya or indeed in the Soviet union in the early 1990s which ultimately led to the arrival of Putin on the scene. You are taking a massive risk. If it works it will be because you were lucky.
You're not addressing the arguments, just a phrase.
As I've pointed out, Applebaum isn't arguing that we depose Putin, or even seek to encourage such a thing. She saying, and I agree with her, that Putin's survival or otherwise simply isn't in our gift. The consequences of a defeat of his invasion are something Russia will decide.
If you're arguing that the west should treat a defeated Russia with a degree of magnanimity, then I wouldn't disagree. But what are you actually arguing for, rather than against ?
@Nigelb The manner of his 'defeat', if this is to occur (which is not certain) will impact on whether his regime 'survives' or not. So I would disagree with Applebaums characterisation of the situation, in this respect.
I am cautioning against the rhetoric of 'beating back Putin' to the point where the regime collapses. This is taking unnecessary risks of nuclear escalation, and/or a failed state. This is my objection to the 'embrace the chaos' thinking going on.
In the end, it is the west who are determining the outcome of the war in Ukraine because the hard reality is without western aid Ukraine would not be succeeding. They are doing a great job and I support them, but they turned things round by persuading the west to back them significantly.
I don't think we can meddle with succession and agree with Applebaum on that point. There is a succession problem already with Putin's regime, which will apply irrespective of what happens because of Putins age/health. However, observing from a long distance, there is a successor in Dmitry Medvedev who was well regarded by European leaders when he was president from 2008-2012.
It may just be a case of better the devil you know.
I don't think the west can finetune the outcome really. Not to the extent of choosing between granular types of Russian defeats. And even if they could I'm not sure how useful it would be since it's highly uncertain how Putin will react and how others in Russia will react to Putin's reaction.
This. It's a delusion to think that we can meaningfully influence internal Russian politics, except to the extent that we defend our interests and values and reward them for moves towards better international behaviour.
Russians are responsible for Russian choices. Not the West. The West is responsible for our reactions to those choices, and in this instance that has to be clear that (1) there is no reward for aggression, and, (2) we are not going to meddle in internal Russian affairs.
Yes the 'aggression brings no gain' outcome is imo the key here. I've never really looked at this as a war. For me it presents more accurately as a crime with a perp and a victim.
What I wouldn't want to see, however, is bellicosity of the "right, we'll teach these Russian bastards" sort. Fact is, if Putin ends up gaining little or nothing having gone all-in on this "operation" that is in practice a terrible defeat.
So let's get there and then see what happens.
Gaining little or nothing isn't enough. They need to pay reparations to Ukraine for their crime too.
For this war to end three things need to happen.
1: Russia needs to be expelled from all of Crimea, the Donbas and other territory it is occupying. 2: Russia needs to agree compensation to Ukraine for the damages it has inflicted. 3: Russia needs to sign a peace treaty recognising all of Ukraine, including Crimea and Donbas, as Ukrainian.
We'll see. I do, however, sense you straying into the sort of bellicosity I specifically said I didn't want to see. But if all of that remains on internet forums rather than in decision rooms I guess it's ok.
Perhaps it is worth thinking why you think that asking a county invading another country to completely stop invading another country and go back to the status quo ante is bellicose?
It isn't and I didn't say it was. I can spot bellicosity. Eg an earlier contribution from that particular poster - "we'll let them keep Moscow" - is the sort of thing I mean.
No, they can't keep Moscow. I'm taking that.
But you know what I mean. The tone. It's understandable, because this was and is an outrage from Putin (and therefore Russia), and so a brutal revenge rears its head, and like I say - ok on the internet but I'd hope decisions in the west (all of this assuming Russia truly is in permanent retreat now) aren't driven by that.
No, I don't know what you mean. How is it bellicose.
Moscow is their territory, in the past when countries lost wars their territory was often divided by the winners of the war - eg see what happened to Berlin post-war.
To be saying that the Russians can keep Moscow is the opposite of bellicose, it is bloody generous under the circumstances.
Man on the internet says he's being generous to allow the Russians to keep Moscow.
Just listen to yourself.
You have a problem with people on the internet having opinions?
Yes Russia keeping Moscow is extremely generous. You objecting to that makes me think maybe we should have Ukraine annex some Russian territory once all this is over to help secure the peace.
What do you think Russia's price should be for starting and losing a war of aggression?
Would be hilarious if the Ukrainians took the entire Black Sea Coast including Rostov.
Morally wrong and illegal, but hilarious.
Ukrainian Irredentism....
The North Caucasus was as hard hit by the Holodomor as Ukraine was. It has long been an effective colony for Moscow. The treatment of the Cossacks was brutal.
Regarding Germany - it's clear that armour is key to Ukraine ending the war.
Disappointing signals from Germany while Ukraine needs Leopards and Marders now — to liberate people and save them from genocide. Not a single rational argument on why these weapons can not be supplied, only abstract fears and excuses. What is Berlin afraid of that Kyiv is not? https://mobile.twitter.com/DmytroKuleba/status/1569637880204775426
That's easy - Germany fears that their access to Russian gas will be permanently cut off....
That doesn't make a lot of sense.
Ultimately, Russia has no way to sell (meaningful amounts of) gas to countries outside Europe.
Now that might change on a 25 year view, but there's a lot of pipelines that would be to be built to replace that European market.
Plus, Russian gas already has been cut off, which is why most European governments are prioritising never having to buy it in the future as far as possible.
But to go back to the original question. So far as I know, the only proper tanks that anyone has supplied to Ukraine so far are T72s. Germany has indicated that it won't break ranks and be the only country to supply modern Western main battle tanks. I assume that it somehow suits everyone let Germany take the flak for this, but it is surely a NATO wide policy not to supply these kinds of weapons so far?
Does Charles pay inheritance tax? Or is that only for the rest of us?
He's committed to pay an effective 75% income tax rate, if you'd rather he was taxed at the normal rates everyone else pays I'm sure he'd be happy to do so.
How are you calculating 75%?
Or are you claiming the Crown Estates as "tax", which it is not.
The Sovereign Grant is, I understand, fixed at 25% of the Crown Estates revenue, which effectively makes it a 75% tax. Not literally, but effectively.
The Crown Estate is not the personal property of the Monarch & its management is under the control of the government.
The Sovereign receives a payment out of the revenue of the Crown Estate as a replacement for the Civil List, which was causing political difficulties: Voting on the Monarch’s income every decade was highlighting to the general public exactly how much the Monarch was receiving from them on a regular basis. Now it never comes up, because it’s fixed as a proportion of the income of the Crown Estate.
So the Monarch (amongst many other things) gets 25% of the lease cost for every off-shore windfarm. Obviously the Monarch has done nothing to deserve that income, but that’s political fudges for you.
It belongs to the monarch but isn't part of their private estate which makes it a fudge anyway. But it certainly doesn't belong to the government, even if the government manages it and takes 75% of its revenues.
This is one of those carefully ambiguous fudges on which the British Constitution rests. The government agrees that the Crown Estate is the property of the Monarch & the Monarch agrees to give the government full control over it. Everybody wins & no one has to answer awkward questions like: why exactly does the Monarch own all this property anyway?
Its not the property of the Monarch, its the property of the Crown. The Monarch has the property by virtue of having the Crown.
It even says so on the Crown Estates own website!
Who owns The Crown Estate? The Crown Estate belongs to the reigning monarch 'in right of The Crown', that is, it is owned by the monarch for the duration of their reign, by virtue of their accession to the throne. But it is not the private property of the monarch - it cannot be sold by the monarch, nor do revenues from it belong to the monarch.
The Government also does not own The Crown Estate. It is managed by an independent organisation - established by statute - headed by a Board (also known as The Crown Estate Commissioners), and the surplus revenue from the estate is paid each year to the Treasury for the benefit of the nation's finances.
If the Monarch leaves the throne, they lose the Crown and all rights therein.
If the revenues don't belong to the monarch, how can the monarch agree to give 75% of them to the government?
Because the Monarch has them by right of having the Crown. They belong to the Crown, not to the Monarch personally, if the Monarch loses the Crown they lose everything that belongs to the Crown.
Just as Liz Truss doesn't now own 10 Downing Street.
Think of it as a trust where the Monarch has the right to 25% of the income but doesn’t own the assets. The Trustees can do what they like with the rest of the income but choose to give it to the government.
Does Charles pay inheritance tax? Or is that only for the rest of us?
He's committed to pay an effective 75% income tax rate, if you'd rather he was taxed at the normal rates everyone else pays I'm sure he'd be happy to do so.
How are you calculating 75%?
Or are you claiming the Crown Estates as "tax", which it is not.
The Sovereign Grant is, I understand, fixed at 25% of the Crown Estates revenue, which effectively makes it a 75% tax. Not literally, but effectively.
The Crown Estate is not the personal property of the Monarch & its management is under the control of the government.
The Sovereign receives a payment out of the revenue of the Crown Estate as a replacement for the Civil List, which was causing political difficulties: Voting on the Monarch’s income every decade was highlighting to the general public exactly how much the Monarch was receiving from them on a regular basis. Now it never comes up, because it’s fixed as a proportion of the income of the Crown Estate.
So the Monarch (amongst many other things) gets 25% of the lease cost for every off-shore windfarm. Obviously the Monarch has done nothing to deserve that income, but that’s political fudges for you.
It belongs to the monarch but isn't part of their private estate which makes it a fudge anyway. But it certainly doesn't belong to the government, even if the government manages it and takes 75% of its revenues.
This is one of those carefully ambiguous fudges on which the British Constitution rests. The government agrees that the Crown Estate is the property of the Monarch & the Monarch agrees to give the government full control over it. Everybody wins & no one has to answer awkward questions like: why exactly does the Monarch own all this property anyway?
Its not the property of the Monarch, its the property of the Crown. The Monarch has the property by virtue of having the Crown.
It even says so on the Crown Estates own website!
Who owns The Crown Estate? The Crown Estate belongs to the reigning monarch 'in right of The Crown', that is, it is owned by the monarch for the duration of their reign, by virtue of their accession to the throne. But it is not the private property of the monarch - it cannot be sold by the monarch, nor do revenues from it belong to the monarch.
The Government also does not own The Crown Estate. It is managed by an independent organisation - established by statute - headed by a Board (also known as The Crown Estate Commissioners), and the surplus revenue from the estate is paid each year to the Treasury for the benefit of the nation's finances.
If the Monarch leaves the throne, they lose the Crown and all rights therein.
If the revenues don't belong to the monarch, how can the monarch agree to give 75% of them to the government?
Because the Monarch has them by right of having the Crown. They belong to the Crown, not to the Monarch personally, if the Monarch loses the Crown they lose everything that belongs to the Crown.
Just as Liz Truss doesn't now own 10 Downing Street.
So the revenues do belong to the monarch as monarch, and are effectively taxed at 75%.
The Queen's estate will pay full inheritance tax on all assets she held as a private individual but not on those held as a sovereign
Itr was stated that she will not be paying IHT tout court.
Does Charles pay inheritance tax? Or is that only for the rest of us?
He's committed to pay an effective 75% income tax rate, if you'd rather he was taxed at the normal rates everyone else pays I'm sure he'd be happy to do so.
How are you calculating 75%?
Or are you claiming the Crown Estates as "tax", which it is not.
The Sovereign Grant is, I understand, fixed at 25% of the Crown Estates revenue, which effectively makes it a 75% tax. Not literally, but effectively.
The Crown Estate is not the personal property of the Monarch & its management is under the control of the government.
The Sovereign receives a payment out of the revenue of the Crown Estate as a replacement for the Civil List, which was causing political difficulties: Voting on the Monarch’s income every decade was highlighting to the general public exactly how much the Monarch was receiving from them on a regular basis. Now it never comes up, because it’s fixed as a proportion of the income of the Crown Estate.
So the Monarch (amongst many other things) gets 25% of the lease cost for every off-shore windfarm. Obviously the Monarch has done nothing to deserve that income, but that’s political fudges for you.
It belongs to the monarch but isn't part of their private estate which makes it a fudge anyway. But it certainly doesn't belong to the government, even if the government manages it and takes 75% of its revenues.
This is one of those carefully ambiguous fudges on which the British Constitution rests. The government agrees that the Crown Estate is the property of the Monarch & the Monarch agrees to give the government full control over it. Everybody wins & no one has to answer awkward questions like: why exactly does the Monarch own all this property anyway?
Its not the property of the Monarch, its the property of the Crown. The Monarch has the property by virtue of having the Crown.
It even says so on the Crown Estates own website!
Who owns The Crown Estate? The Crown Estate belongs to the reigning monarch 'in right of The Crown', that is, it is owned by the monarch for the duration of their reign, by virtue of their accession to the throne. But it is not the private property of the monarch - it cannot be sold by the monarch, nor do revenues from it belong to the monarch.
The Government also does not own The Crown Estate. It is managed by an independent organisation - established by statute - headed by a Board (also known as The Crown Estate Commissioners), and the surplus revenue from the estate is paid each year to the Treasury for the benefit of the nation's finances.
If the Monarch leaves the throne, they lose the Crown and all rights therein.
If the revenues don't belong to the monarch, how can the monarch agree to give 75% of them to the government?
Because the Monarch has them by right of having the Crown. They belong to the Crown, not to the Monarch personally, if the Monarch loses the Crown they lose everything that belongs to the Crown.
Just as Liz Truss doesn't now own 10 Downing Street.
So the revenues do belong to the monarch as monarch, and are effectively taxed at 75%.
The Queen's estate will pay full inheritance tax on all assets she held as a private individual but not on those held as a sovereign
Itr was stated that she will not be paying IHT tout court.
Well, no, dead people don't pay tax.
It's her estate we need to consider.
And remember that's in two parts - the Duchy of Lancaster and her private assets.
Comments
Travel in much of Lat Am and Africa and central or south Asia is HARD. So you need to do it when you are younger and more energetic
Europe, north America and east Asia can wait til middle age (tho I guess there is a good argument that its better to absorb the cultural richness of Europe/Asia/USA when you are impressionable)
Fuck it. I revert to my lifelong rule: Never refuse travel or sex. Always take the opportunity to do either, if it is there
The few times I have broken this Golden Rule I have ALWAYS regretted it
Israel has legally expanded beyond its original borders and signed peace treaties now with some of its neighbours recognising that, even if the West Bank/Gaza strip issues aren't resolved yet.
Maybe it's just that there's no politicians pushing Macron to give more, while in Germany the Greens in the coalition are much keener one providing support, so you have this conflict on providing support out in the open.
Yes I know this is daft. But still.
When I die it won't be all the things I didn't do that prey on my mind. It'll more be certain things I did do that I wish I hadn't.
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-62883713
One man was arrested for simply saying "who elected him?" loudly. Another forcibly moved on from a public place for an inoffensive placard. How on Earth do the police have such powers in this country? Free speech is so flimsy in the UK.
1. Get out and meet people wherever you go. That's a huge joy, and you can only really do it if you are alone. Never turn down an invite for a drink/meal/chat. It is amazing what adventures you will have
2. On top of that, have a purpose. It is not necessary, if you follow rule 1, but it does help. So make it your aim to go somewhere REALLY mad, or try and see some IMPOSSIBLY rare animal, or explore your family's history in South Sudan, or try a city/region that no else goes to. Detroit. Somewhere in Liberia. Sakhalin. South Wales
If you travel solo to the obvious touristy places then yes, it will soon get mundane. Also, no one will want to offer you that drink/chat/meal, because the locals see tourists all the time and they are bored of them, or just want to exploit them for cash
IIRC there were some discussion of this when the Soviet Union fell.
If you have no "how" its just because you're an apologist for evil I'm afraid.
Standing up to evil isn't bellicose.
Ukraine have been particularly vocal over that.
Now they have a couple of dozen Gepards from Germany, the technical argument for blocking supply of Leopards has gone.
Russia continues to shell settlements in Sumy Oblast, for example. The US isn't going to be too bothered by limited cross-border actions by the Ukrainians aimed at putting a stop to those attacks.
Something like this from the TV miniseries of the Bodyline Tour.... Sir Pelham 'Plum' Warner was Tour Manager and former england captain
Warner to Jardine 'history will remember you as a man who stooped to conquer'
Jardine in reply 'well history has already forgotten you'
Just as Liz Truss doesn't now own 10 Downing Street.
I should add, I'm not lamenting my family. If I didn't have children I would lament the lack of them more. My kids are young enough not to be cynical or world-weary and old enough not to need too much looking after. I am in the golden years of life. And a holiday with them is a magical thing. (And this refers to your 'helping other people in some way: it doesn't need to be your kids for it to be meaningful and magical.) I'm not wishing myself back to my 20s - just wishing I'd made better use of the time before they came along.
But maybe the not knowing how your future will turn out in your twenties is what gives you the fomo which stops you having all the adventures you might on your own.
Essentially the Ukrainians have an unlimited credit card bill to spend on French defence equipment.
The question is whether they attempt to enforce it after the war.
Mine really is one word: Travel
Disappointing signals from Germany while Ukraine needs Leopards and Marders now — to liberate people and save them from genocide. Not a single rational argument on why these weapons can not be supplied, only abstract fears and excuses. What is Berlin afraid of that Kyiv is not?
https://mobile.twitter.com/DmytroKuleba/status/1569637880204775426
It reminds me of covid, where a load of people who never went out supported the permanent closure of nightclubs.
If you economized there by, say, selling one or two, then that Australia trip might be more affordable l.
However to afford the travel you have to work. I am SO tempted to go out into sunny, buzzy Seville and drink ice cold manzanilla, but first I have to earn it
To the flints! Later
Whether the Crown owns freeholds or some other version of ultimate rights, I don't know. Even if it does, we don't know what arrangements with what other parties it may have entered into, whether in "perpetuity" or whatever. We simply do not know, so let's not make any arguments from ignorance.
A reasonable question to ask is "who owns the Crown?" This is a reasonable question precisely because the Crown is a fictitious legal person that owns stuff.
They make this sh*t up as they go along. Then they stand there looking solemn and talking about "how things are done", "tradition", "protocol", etc. As if the absolute last thing in the world that they would ever do is make sh*t up as they go along.
There's no f***ing "rule" over who stands where near a coffin, or what uniform they wear, or what the idiots must do with flags on this or that occasion. Or if there is, they can change the "rule" whenever they want.
At the end of the day it's all about a small number of extremely rich greedy people trousering income and retaining control over enormous capital and fixed assets, operating out of public view. (Cf. Russia
I think you'll find that it does actually exist.
"Do not forsake me oh my darling" ...
(I thought for some time about whether to go with Charles's or Charles' and checked their wording and found it was Elizabeths' - so they're already hedging their bets by claiming to belong to multiple Elizabeths - QE1 and QE2's own?)
I think I would give them the words of David Hume: "Reason is, and ought only to be, the slave of the passions." It was when I started following that credo that my life turned around. Use reason. But know your heart.
But he is.
Their hope is that the Ukrainians will end up buying a whole bunch of Thales/Dassault/etc kit, and will therefore end up locked in to long term maintenance contracts.
Perhaps it doesn't matter enough to be right or wrong. Like choosing between tins of tomatoes.
But there are economies of scale to having lots of children. Arguably I am taking a more economically efficient approach.
No more than your taxes "belong" to Kwasi Kwarteng.
When are our MPS going to do some f8cking work?
So there is still time for Liz Truss to make a first impression, but it is astonishing that my focus group (consisting of me) has no firm opinion of Truss despite her having been in government for ages; literally so! OGH tipped Liz Truss at 50/1 to be next prime minister — halfway through David Cameron's first term!
Back in the mire now though it seems. Well and truly.
Remember all the stuff about photographs of children. Here's an example from 2007 of Dave Gorman being instructed to move on, anyway, even after the police had verified that he was doing nothing problematic.
http://gormano.blogspot.com/2007/07/twisted.html
IMO there has also been an important issue around a desire to use laws to close down critics and people who disagree. There are plenty of such, including local politicians vs opposition, Mermaids vs people they don't like, and LGB activists vs Street Preachers.
Still suffer vertigo... but it was fun.
Ultimately, Russia has no way to sell (meaningful amounts of) gas to countries outside Europe.
Now that might change on a 25 year view, but there's a lot of pipelines that would be to be built to replace that European market.
But to go back to the original question. So far as I know, the only proper tanks that anyone has supplied to Ukraine so far are T72s. Germany has indicated that it won't break ranks and be the only country to supply modern Western main battle tanks. I assume that it somehow suits everyone let Germany take the flak for this, but it is surely a NATO wide policy not to supply these kinds of weapons so far?
It's her estate we need to consider.
And remember that's in two parts - the Duchy of Lancaster and her private assets.