Sounds depressing when put in these terms, but considering the start of things, and what one hopes is the consistent direction of travel, still impressive.
Over the month of September 🇺🇦 has liberated approximately 10,608km² of Ukraine.
This means that 🇷🇺 currently occupies ~17.72% of Ukraine. ~1.76% less of the total area of the country than at the end of August.
Someone has helpfully posted a clip from the interview that Conservative Chairman Jake Berry did with Sophy Ridge this morning, so I can quote him directly:
People know that when their bills arrive, they can either cut their consumption or they can get higher salary or higher wages, go out there and get that new job. That's the approach the Government is taking. We are saying "Look, let's create growth so households can afford their bills" as well as the brilliant work we're doing on energy bills.
So, the general message is that people who are on lower incomes should either freeze in Winter or find better paid work. Great. Firstly the UK 'jobs miracle' that Boris Johnson always used to go on about largely consists of minimum wage crap jobs, so how are all these people suddenly meant to find the kind of upper middle class employment that will still pay them just about enough to heat and eat properly? Secondly, a lot of those who are in full-time employment and yet already rationing fuel use and buying budget brands (or even visiting food banks) are the very same key workers that we were all entreated to praise, and engage in performative pot banging in honour of, only a couple of years ago. If all the chronically underpaid care home workers, nurses and so on who struggle with their bills tried to piss off to work in city financial institutions (or, for that matter, in Aldi) then we, as a nation, would be completely sunk.
These are our rulers. Tone deaf, cruel and absolutely thick as mince.
While I think Jake Berry is a tone deaf idiot, I think the misery porn can be overblown. Anyone in middle class employment lives very well.
This evidently depends very much on your personal circumstances, and on exactly how high your earnings are. With the ridiculous state of rents, mortgages, childcare costs and petrol prices, a lot of really quite well paid couples would nonetheless have been in the just about managing category before the latest inflationary shock. We now have significant food price inflation, most pay settlements contracting in real terms, those nasty domestic energy bills, and very substantial increases in accommodation costs coming round the corner to knock an awful lot of people clear over the edge of the financial precipice. It's not going to be pretty.
The FT majored heavily a fortnight ago, on the "deterioration" of median incomes over the past 22 years, when the actual data showed median household incomes rising from $30,000 to $44,000 in real terms over that period.
Two questions immediately spring to mind. Firstly, how much of the reported real terms increase happened in the first eight years and how much in the subsequent period? Secondly, what was the increase in housing costs over the same period? I strongly suspect that figures banded about which purport to show levels of affluence in the likes of Slovenia and Poland about to overtake, or at least approach, those in the UK are rooted in the effects of Britain's system of investments-not-homes property speculation.
An outright owner-occupier can still live very comfortably in this country off a modest income; mortgage or rent payers, not so much.
If you live in say the north of england and are mortgage free a single person could live very comfortably on 25 grand a year
Probably true further south as well.
But to have paid of a mortgage on a forever home, you either need to be in at least your fifties and bought before the Blair house price boom or have had a hefty windfall.
And there are the two nations separated by age again.
This stuff matters, because the UK isn't as prosperous as we'd like, and we can't pay for the things we'd like without tax rates we don't.
And it's tempting to blame Brussels, Immigrants, Greens or Davos for that, but I suspect the issue is decisions we have collectively taken, maybe without realising. I'm pretty sure that pumping so much money into hose prices is one of those.
That much is obvious. You can't lock up so much of the nation's wealth in unproductive piles of bricks without incurring a number of serious consequences - and once it's done, it's very difficult to undo, because such a large percentage of the population now both expects continuous enrichment from rising prices and has so much to lose from a downwards correction.
I just find it so awful Truss has boxed herself in now with public spending cuts to welfare
Good luck to them across the remaining days of the conference
Labour have also boxed themselves in by supporting the income tax cut to 19p. I bet they wished they hadn't now.
Nah. To do otherwise would have been to walk straight into a really obvious Tory trap.
In any case, there is nothing rightwing about putting money back into the pockets of working people.
I’m glad Sir Keir Royale backed 19p.
But it is borrowed as is NI and the argument is you cannot fund tax cuts on borrowing
Don't you see that Starmer played this perfectly? If he had said no cancellation of NI rise and IT rate at 20% you would be accusing him of selling out the workers. I suspect he thinks both tax policies as stupid an idea as you and I do. Has he stated he will borrow to pay for these tax cuts? He just needs to work out what additional taxes pay for this and who gets hit hardest.
Hint. He now knows protecting the super rich is not a vote winner.
Someone has helpfully posted a clip from the interview that Conservative Chairman Jake Berry did with Sophy Ridge this morning, so I can quote him directly:
People know that when their bills arrive, they can either cut their consumption or they can get higher salary or higher wages, go out there and get that new job. That's the approach the Government is taking. We are saying "Look, let's create growth so households can afford their bills" as well as the brilliant work we're doing on energy bills.
So, the general message is that people who are on lower incomes should either freeze in Winter or find better paid work. Great. Firstly the UK 'jobs miracle' that Boris Johnson always used to go on about largely consists of minimum wage crap jobs, so how are all these people suddenly meant to find the kind of upper middle class employment that will still pay them just about enough to heat and eat properly? Secondly, a lot of those who are in full-time employment and yet already rationing fuel use and buying budget brands (or even visiting food banks) are the very same key workers that we were all entreated to praise, and engage in performative pot banging in honour of, only a couple of years ago. If all the chronically underpaid care home workers, nurses and so on who struggle with their bills tried to piss off to work in city financial institutions (or, for that matter, in Aldi) then we, as a nation, would be completely sunk.
These are our rulers. Tone deaf, cruel and absolutely thick as mince.
While I think Jake Berry is a tone deaf idiot, I think the misery porn can be overblown. Anyone in middle class employment lives very well.
This evidently depends very much on your personal circumstances, and on exactly how high your earnings are. With the ridiculous state of rents, mortgages, childcare costs and petrol prices, a lot of really quite well paid couples would nonetheless have been in the just about managing category before the latest inflationary shock. We now have significant food price inflation, most pay settlements contracting in real terms, those nasty domestic energy bills, and very substantial increases in accommodation costs coming round the corner to knock an awful lot of people clear over the edge of the financial precipice. It's not going to be pretty.
The FT majored heavily a fortnight ago, on the "deterioration" of median incomes over the past 22 years, when the actual data showed median household incomes rising from $30,000 to $44,000 in real terms over that period.
Two questions immediately spring to mind. Firstly, how much of the reported real terms increase happened in the first eight years and how much in the subsequent period? Secondly, what was the increase in housing costs over the same period? I strongly suspect that figures banded about which purport to show levels of affluence in the likes of Slovenia and Poland about to overtake, or at least approach, those in the UK are rooted in the effects of Britain's system of investments-not-homes property speculation.
An outright owner-occupier can still live very comfortably in this country off a modest income; mortgage or rent payers, not so much.
If you live in say the north of england and are mortgage free a single person could live very comfortably on 25 grand a year
Probably true further south as well.
But to have paid of a mortgage on a forever home, you either need to be in at least your fifties and bought before the Blair house price boom or have had a hefty windfall.
And there are the two nations separated by age again.
This stuff matters, because the UK isn't as prosperous as we'd like, and we can't pay for the things we'd like without tax rates we don't.
And it's tempting to blame Brussels, Immigrants, Greens or Davos for that, but I suspect the issue is decisions we have collectively taken, maybe without realising. I'm pretty sure that pumping so much money into hose prices is one of those.
Hose prices?
Garden hose, panty hose, weeding hose or ....
(Said the ghost of Ronnie Barker)
(Back down from the roof. Pressure washer works great - need a 5m extension nozzle to reach nearly the top of the solar panels.)
Sounds depressing when put in these terms, but considering the start of things, and what one hopes is the consistent direction of travel, still impressive.
Over the month of September 🇺🇦 has liberated approximately 10,608km² of Ukraine.
This means that 🇷🇺 currently occupies ~17.72% of Ukraine. ~1.76% less of the total area of the country than at the end of August.
Bear in mind that pre-Feb 24th, Russia already occupied a good percentage of Ukraine (Crimea / Luhansk and parts Donetsk). I haven't got the numbers to hand but Ukraine has probably taken a significant amount of the post-24th land grab back.
And if the events around Kherson today pan out as they look as though they are doing, Ukraine will quickly add to that total.
On a positive note, the thread header appears to be spelled correctly.
On a less positive side, I would like Cyclefree to stretch herself next time, and not do a 'things are terrible and awful and shit, and everyone is stupid, and here's 7 bullet points about why and how.' thread header. A lot of people seem to use PB as therapy to cleanse them of their rage and negativity, but usually it's below the line. Maybe actually propose something positive that might make things better in a small way?
Regarding economical growth, the header is wrong - going for growth was exactly what Sunak wasn't going to do; in common with the general Davos consensus, his prospectus was a swerve into austerity that held every prospect of not only bringing a recession, but a depression. We're lucky we've dodged that bullet. Growth itself is a rebellious choice these days, and God speed Truss for making it her choice.
Some proposals from May 2020 on how to pay for the spending we had of necessity incurred by then.
I wonder what your responses were then to those proposals and what constructive proposals you made then or since.
In fact since you seem to think that Truss's proposals are great please explain how they will work.
I am quite worried because I think the position for pension funds, their companies and banks is probably more serious and likely to last longer than a few days. Understandably the authorities are not letting on. This is based on my experience - pretty close tho the heart of the action - back in 2008. And I have little confidence in the government having a clue as to what to do or even appreciating that there is a problem.
I have something to say. It comes from a particular perspective, which may be of interest to some. It is certainly not a complete or the only perspective on what is happening. It is I would venture to suggest a touch more valuable than your Panglossian approach.
I do find the spectacle of politics at the moment immensely funny - in a black humour sort of way. That is until I remember that it is damaging the prospects and hopes of my children. And that makes me angry. It is not therapy I want. But revenge on those who are damaging their future.
I am not convinced that you know what "mutton dressed as lamb" actually means. Or "bullet point."
SKS is also a tribute act without the charisma ideas or political nous and is still 20pts ahead
Better than Corbyns Tony Benn tribune act that put us 20pts behind.
Labour under Starmer is now the party of the centre as it was under Blair, it has left Corbyn hard left ideology behind.
It is the Tories who are now putting ideology first, Truss their most hard right leader, especially on economics, since IDS
You should join. Perfect home for a nominal Tory who doesn't really have any political convictions beyond glory seeking.
I disagree with HYUFD about almost everything but it is laughable to accuse him of lacking convictions, and far from being a nominal Tory he is someone who works tirelessly for his party at the grassroots level. He was also completely right about Truss, whom he confidently predicted would be a disaster.
The Labour Party are "very clearly the favourites" to form the next government, pollster Sir John Curtice has told Tory activists in Birmingham.
New PM Liz Truss was now as unpopular with voters as Boris Johnson was when he was ousted, said Sir John.
And even if Labour's current double digit poll lead reduced before the next election in 2024, Labour were still likely to gain power, he suggested.
His analysis was greeted with dismay and cries of "wow" from activists.
The veteran pollster, who masterminds general election exit polls, said Labour already had a nine point lead in the polls when Ms Truss won last month's Tory leadership election and she had not enjoyed a honeymoon period.
Liz Truss. Why did the Tories choose that as a hill to die on?
As she was the not Rishi candidate.
May as well call her Liz Goldwater the way current polls are heading, with Starmer heading for as crushing a victory as LBJ got against Goldwater's pure libertarianism in 1964
The Labour Party are "very clearly the favourites" to form the next government, pollster Sir John Curtice has told Tory activists in Birmingham.
New PM Liz Truss was now as unpopular with voters as Boris Johnson was when he was ousted, said Sir John.
And even if Labour's current double digit poll lead reduced before the next election in 2024, Labour were still likely to gain power, he suggested.
His analysis was greeted with dismay and cries of "wow" from activists.
The veteran pollster, who masterminds general election exit polls, said Labour already had a nine point lead in the polls when Ms Truss won last month's Tory leadership election and she had not enjoyed a honeymoon period.
Liz Truss. Why did the Tories choose that as a hill to die on?
Because the party membership has a very high average age and a lot of them are senile?
They want very high interest rates and they are determined to get them?
It is the end point of Brexit. The triumph of faith over reason.
Anyone who looked like they had ability had to go, be removed from the field in case they found a way to frustrate The Project. We have all seen how the Leavers lived in terror of Remain reversing the outcome. Ability had to be disposed of, only the inept could stay in power.
Of course, a secondary outcome is that less and less got done, but that was OK because eventually The Great Chancer was elected and brutally ejected anyone of ability until he was surrounded by utter non-entities and it was all going so well until the bl**dy idiot shot himself in the foot.
And all of a sudden, there was nobody left except, the vacant, the inept and the easily led.
There are unconfirmed reports of a collapse of Russian lines to the North East of Kherson as a Ukrainian offensive pushes down the west bank of the Dneiper river. If so its currently a tenuous position for the Ukrainians as they appear to be most rapidly moving down the right flank of a concentration of Russian troops, ahead of the advancement further west. The bad news for the Russians is that it threatens yet another danger, if not quite of encirclement right now, of a hammer and anvil situation.
On Lyman, no one knows how many Russians got trapped, how many escaped and how many died trying to get out but there is visual evidence suggesting hundreds got killed trying to escape.
The Labour Party are "very clearly the favourites" to form the next government, pollster Sir John Curtice has told Tory activists in Birmingham.
New PM Liz Truss was now as unpopular with voters as Boris Johnson was when he was ousted, said Sir John.
And even if Labour's current double digit poll lead reduced before the next election in 2024, Labour were still likely to gain power, he suggested.
His analysis was greeted with dismay and cries of "wow" from activists.
The veteran pollster, who masterminds general election exit polls, said Labour already had a nine point lead in the polls when Ms Truss won last month's Tory leadership election and she had not enjoyed a honeymoon period.
Liz Truss. Why did the Tories choose that as a hill to die on?
Because the party membership has a very high average age and a lot of them are senile?
They want very high interest rates and they are determined to get them?
It is the end point of Brexit. The triumph of faith over reason.
Anyone who looked like they had ability had to go, be removed from the field in case they found a way to frustrate The Project. We have all seen how the Leavers lived in terror of Remain reversing the outcome. Ability had to be disposed of, only the inept could stay in power.
Of course, a secondary outcome is that less and less got done, but that was OK because eventually The Great Chancer was elected and brutally ejected anyone of ability until he was surrounded by utter non-entities and it was all going so well until the bl**dy idiot shot himself in the foot.
And all of a sudden, there was nobody left except, the vacant, the inept and the easily led.
And now they are the government.
A pretty tenuous link at best and a sign of desperation, from one of the irreconcilables, to try and link this to Brexit. Not least of course because, in case you had forgotten, Liz Truss campaigned strongly for Remain.
If you agree with Truss, great, and if you don't then you're wrong and she doesn't care if you know it.
This is the real problem: she is arrogant and fundamentally dislikeable. The British public have sussed this out very quickly. It's so bad i suspect they won't give her credit even for the things she does get right.
We could be close to the outright defeat of Russia in Ukraine. They are now rapidly retreating in the east and the south
Which means we are potentially close to the point where Putin goes totally postal. Or not
As they say: Brace
He's defeated, his nation is defeated, a hollow shell now. Someone will put a bullet in the back of his head before they commit suicide by launching nukes on his command.
For months there was stalemate, but many of us said then that stalemate was good news for Ukraine as they with NATOs logistics and training were improving while Russia was deteriorating.
For weeks now, since the Queen died essentially, the stalemate has been broken and its all one way traffic. Ukraine is winning the war. And the problem for Russia is they've got nothing they can do to turn it around. A million conscripts with no weaponry to arm them with, no logistics to supply them with, is not going to be much use.
The longer this war goes on, the more land Ukraine will reclaim, until they've recovered all their land including all of Crimea and the other lands that Russia pretends to have annexed.
Liz Truss. Why did the Tories choose that as a hill to die on?
Because the party membership has a very high average age and a lot of them are senile?
They want very high interest rates and they are determined to get them?
Possibly, though if that was a specific want (to jack their savings returns right up) then it would be definite evidence of senility. The one thing most likely to cause a house price crash is a large spike in interest rates.
What was ultimately at the root of it all was probably some kind of Thatcher nostalgia thing, coupled with suspicion of Sunak (both for his part in toppling Johnson and for being too centrist.)
Liz Truss. Why did the Tories choose that as a hill to die on?
Because the party membership has a very high average age and a lot of them are senile?
They want very high interest rates and they are determined to get them?
It is the end point of Brexit. The triumph of faith over reason.
Anyone who looked like they had ability had to go, be removed from the field in case they found a way to frustrate The Project. We have all seen how the Leavers lived in terror of Remain reversing the outcome. Ability had to be disposed of, only the inept could stay in power.
Of course, a secondary outcome is that less and less got done, but that was OK because eventually The Great Chancer was elected and brutally ejected anyone of ability until he was surrounded by utter non-entities and it was all going so well until the bl**dy idiot shot himself in the foot.
And all of a sudden, there was nobody left except, the vacant, the inept and the easily led.
And now they are the government.
Brexit was about the Tories embracing eurosceptisim and limiting low income immigration to improve the lot of the British working class. It led to a massive majority.
This government, led by a Remainer, has embraced subsidies to corporations and tax cuts for the rich. It has led to political collapse.
If you agree with Truss, great, and if you don't then you're wrong and she doesn't care if you know it.
This is the real problem: she is arrogant and fundamentally dislikeable. The British public have sussed this out very quickly. It's so bad i suspect they won't give her credit even for the things she does get right.
So, there's almost certainly no way back for her.
You can get away with being divisive if you have a solid constituency of people who feel you're on their side. This is what Truss is lacking.
There are unconfirmed reports of a collapse of Russian lines to the North East of Kherson as a Ukrainian offensive pushes down the west bank of the Dneiper river. If so its currently a tenuous position for the Ukrainians as they appear to be most rapidly moving down the right flank of a concentration of Russian troops, ahead of the advancement further west. The bad news for the Russians is that it threatens yet another danger, if not quite of encirclement right now, of a hammer and anvil situation.
On Lyman, no one knows how many Russians got trapped, how many escaped and how many died trying to get out but there is visual evidence suggesting hundreds got killed trying to escape.
Ukraine seem to be making gains inland of the initial gains on the riverbank.
Truss will get Kwarteng to announce the U-turn, if it happens. Swiftly followed by his resignation.
Then she can focus on energy bills and supporting Ukraine. She might even wear a new necklace.
If she does not announce it on Wednesday in her speech, she will be in even deeper do-do
If a 40% top rate of tax is good enough for Ireland, why is it unacceptable for the UK?
It's not the rate, it's the timing, the optics and the context
Look, I'd benefit massively (on my return to the UK) from the dropping of the tax rate.
But I think it's madness to be cutting my taxes, while reducing benefits in real terms, during the middle of a cost of living crisis.
If I was going to do something for higher earners, it would be getting rid of the ridiculous stuff around £100k with the removal of the tax free allowance, etc.
Yes, I scratch my head over the top tax rate reduction, and ending the cap on bankers' bonuses. You do that sort of thing when the economy is doing fine.
If I were Chancellor (swapping one 1994 Trinity alumni for another), I would have made a few changes:
(1) I wouldn't have introduced an energy price cap costing 6.5% of GDP. Ultimately, that won't reduce energy demand as much as it should, because it is dulling the price signal. By contrast, I would have looked at direct support payments to families, that would have covered (on average) 70% of the increase in their bills. If they'd wanted to use that money to pay for energy they could; or they might decide instead to use it on insulation, solar panels, or jumpers. In this way, we'd spend less money, preserve the price signal, and cut gas electricity/demand by more, while avoiding too much pain.
(2) I would not have gotten rid of the 45% rate of tax. Indeed, I think I might have increased it to 50%, but I would have raised the rate at which it applied to (say) incomes in excess of £250k.
(3) I would have gotten rid of the removal of the tax free allowance, and all the distortion that causes at c. £100k. (Ditto childcare allowances, etc.)
(4) I would have introduced much lower rates of stamp duty for anyone "trading down". We want to encourage old people in big, empty houses to move to smaller places, not make it extremely expensive.
(5) I would equalise tax treatment of mortgage interest between corporate entities and individuals.
YMMV
With regard to (1) how would you have dealt with the wholesale collapse of SMEs, with most of our shops and hospitality industry going out of business because of the high energy costs?
The household price cap solution cannot be used on business, for there is no cap for business - it actually has to be two different solutions, households and business.
Agreed but Robert's proposals seem to do nothing to address the business issue.
It’s up to RCS to speak about his own Business Support package, but what I said is true, if we were not wasting such colossal sums on the household package, that wasted money is in play to offer struggling businesses even more help.
Obviously no pressure on RCS, but Kwarteng at least managed to cobble something together, but the proof of any energy package will be in the heating, and what we know about reaction to the household package, it was hated by those charities who know the struggling well, it just won’t help those in need enough and the current have a hell of a whack coming their way of this, whilst serious economists wince at how much money it wastes from the moment Labour first publicised the rotten idea.
No. The same household bill freeze package doesn’t have to be means tested, the truth here it just doesn’t have to be that way of doing it at all!
Think outside your box with the metres in it, by turning the single point Energy Price Cap into a variable price cap where the price per unit of energy used rises with usage. A sliding price cap means marginal user costs increase. RCS is right, it’s the people at the lower end who really need the assistance here, If a solution doesn’t have those most in need front and centre, then it’s not the right solution is it? We should be reducing energy bills for lower-income households in the country while higher earners, who consume more energy, bear a more commensurate share of the higher cost. More help to the the most in need, and a much cheaper solution overall.
The governments price freeze is wrong on two important counts, RCS flagged up both in one straightforward post, Liz Truss and Kier Starmer and Ed Davey (to be fair there is more than one idiot backing this) freezing energy bills plan detaches price signal mechanism from the purchase of energy, in effect locking in energy demand at its current level - Zero incentive to bring energy consumption down. And secondly the thru life costs of freezing energy bills is not known, as NigelB said we can’t know the costs of energy a year from now, but we know this scheme costs UK government around £100B for this winter alone, this government wants it right up to the next election so likely an unsustainable £200B+ depending how quickly energy comes down, but variable energy price cap doesn’t lock you into anything like that massive amount of borrowing now and tax and higher bills in future to pay off that scale of borrowing. Not using many words this article absolutely nails it.
You are arguing for means tested help which is understandable, but which those in power and including the opposition have rejected for expediency, but I agree is costing tens of billions more than a means tested approach
So far means tested help has actually been done - remember that those on various forms of benefit are receiving up to £1000 more than the rest of us who are getting £400.
Plus price signals *have* been preserved because the cap is on the unit price, not the total bill. The article linked is someone who wants *more*.
Did Fizzy Lizzy also not announce a new means tests insulation and other energy saving programme for 130k homes? That looks to me like a replacement for the 'means tested except for a couple of simple measures' ECO programme that has just had its funding removed from bills to remove 'Green Taxes'.
The "up to 200bn or more" stuff just cannot be known at this stage, due to variable wholesale prices.
AFAICS the Energy Support programme is the one bright spot in a dismal set of programmes so far, and seems to me to be roughly where most of Europe will eventually end up.
Liz Truss. Why did the Tories choose that as a hill to die on?
Because the party membership has a very high average age and a lot of them are senile?
They want very high interest rates and they are determined to get them?
Possibly, though if that was a specific want (to jack their savings returns right up) then it would be definite evidence of senility. The one thing most likely to cause a house price crash is a large spike in interest rates.
What was ultimately at the root of it all was probably some kind of Thatcher nostalgia thing, coupled with suspicion of Sunak (both for his part in toppling Johnson and for being too centrist.)
You say that like its a bad thing.
Having a better savings ratio, and lower house prices, would be too improvements to rebalancing the UK economy.
We could be close to the outright defeat of Russia in Ukraine. They are now rapidly retreating in the east and the south
Which means we are potentially close to the point where Putin goes totally postal. Or not
As they say: Brace
He's defeated, his nation is defeated, a hollow shell now. Someone will put a bullet in the back of his head before they commit suicide by launching nukes on his command.
For months there was stalemate, but many of us said then that stalemate was good news for Ukraine as they with NATOs logistics and training were improving while Russia was deteriorating.
For weeks now, since the Queen died essentially, the stalemate has been broken and its all one way traffic. Ukraine is winning the war. And the problem for Russia is they've got nothing they can do to turn it around. A million conscripts with no weaponry to arm them with, no logistics to supply them with, is not going to be much use.
The longer this war goes on, the more land Ukraine will reclaim, until they've recovered all their land including all of Crimea and the other lands that Russia pretends to have annexed.
Putin is certainly losing, and I see no way of him reversing this defeat, even with another million conscripts (which he hasn't got). His men lack the arms, mobility and motivation
But it is foolish to deny that this in turn makes the coming weeks a perilous moment for the world. We have never seen this before. A dictator armed with nukes going down to humiliating defeat. What does he do?
Truss will get Kwarteng to announce the U-turn, if it happens. Swiftly followed by his resignation.
Then she can focus on energy bills and supporting Ukraine. She might even wear a new necklace.
If she does not announce it on Wednesday in her speech, she will be in even deeper do-do
If a 40% top rate of tax is good enough for Ireland, why is it unacceptable for the UK?
It's not the rate, it's the timing, the optics and the context
Look, I'd benefit massively (on my return to the UK) from the dropping of the tax rate.
But I think it's madness to be cutting my taxes, while reducing benefits in real terms, during the middle of a cost of living crisis.
If I was going to do something for higher earners, it would be getting rid of the ridiculous stuff around £100k with the removal of the tax free allowance, etc.
Yes, I scratch my head over the top tax rate reduction, and ending the cap on bankers' bonuses. You do that sort of thing when the economy is doing fine.
If I were Chancellor (swapping one 1994 Trinity alumni for another), I would have made a few changes:
(1) I wouldn't have introduced an energy price cap costing 6.5% of GDP. Ultimately, that won't reduce energy demand as much as it should, because it is dulling the price signal. By contrast, I would have looked at direct support payments to families, that would have covered (on average) 70% of the increase in their bills. If they'd wanted to use that money to pay for energy they could; or they might decide instead to use it on insulation, solar panels, or jumpers. In this way, we'd spend less money, preserve the price signal, and cut gas electricity/demand by more, while avoiding too much pain.
(2) I would not have gotten rid of the 45% rate of tax. Indeed, I think I might have increased it to 50%, but I would have raised the rate at which it applied to (say) incomes in excess of £250k.
(3) I would have gotten rid of the removal of the tax free allowance, and all the distortion that causes at c. £100k. (Ditto childcare allowances, etc.)
(4) I would have introduced much lower rates of stamp duty for anyone "trading down". We want to encourage old people in big, empty houses to move to smaller places, not make it extremely expensive.
(5) I would equalise tax treatment of mortgage interest between corporate entities and individuals.
YMMV
With regard to (1) how would you have dealt with the wholesale collapse of SMEs, with most of our shops and hospitality industry going out of business because of the high energy costs?
The household price cap solution cannot be used on business, for there is no cap for business - it actually has to be two different solutions, households and business.
Agreed but Robert's proposals seem to do nothing to address the business issue.
It’s up to RCS to speak about his own Business Support package, but what I said is true, if we were not wasting such colossal sums on the household package, that wasted money is in play to offer struggling businesses even more help.
Obviously no pressure on RCS, but Kwarteng at least managed to cobble something together, but the proof of any energy package will be in the heating, and what we know about reaction to the household package, it was hated by those charities who know the struggling well, it just won’t help those in need enough and the current have a hell of a whack coming their way of this, whilst serious economists wince at how much money it wastes from the moment Labour first publicised the rotten idea.
No. The same household bill freeze package doesn’t have to be means tested, the truth here it just doesn’t have to be that way of doing it at all!
Think outside your box with the metres in it, by turning the single point Energy Price Cap into a variable price cap where the price per unit of energy used rises with usage. A sliding price cap means marginal user costs increase. RCS is right, it’s the people at the lower end who really need the assistance here, If a solution doesn’t have those most in need front and centre, then it’s not the right solution is it? We should be reducing energy bills for lower-income households in the country while higher earners, who consume more energy, bear a more commensurate share of the higher cost. More help to the the most in need, and a much cheaper solution overall.
The governments price freeze is wrong on two important counts, RCS flagged up both in one straightforward post, Liz Truss and Kier Starmer and Ed Davey (to be fair there is more than one idiot backing this) freezing energy bills plan detaches price signal mechanism from the purchase of energy, in effect locking in energy demand at its current level - Zero incentive to bring energy consumption down. And secondly the thru life costs of freezing energy bills is not known, as NigelB said we can’t know the costs of energy a year from now, but we know this scheme costs UK government around £100B for this winter alone, this government wants it right up to the next election so likely an unsustainable £200B+ depending how quickly energy comes down, but variable energy price cap doesn’t lock you into anything like that massive amount of borrowing now and tax and higher bills in future to pay off that scale of borrowing. Not using many words this article absolutely nails it.
You are arguing for means tested help which is understandable, but which those in power and including the opposition have rejected for expediency, but I agree is costing tens of billions more than a means tested approach
I’m not arguing for means tested help. What I suggest doesn’t make it far more targeted by adding costs, but massively slashing them by solving the energy crisis a different way. Do you want me to put it in caps and shout it. The email you are responding to very plainly explains - difference between single point Price Cap and variable price cap, two different beasts, like an Okapi and a Mule. A Betamax solution rather than vhs.
How can I speak your language so you understand? We are talking about the difference between Barbara Windsor and Diana Dors here. One provides plenty of warmth in winter and plenty of shade in summer, and the other not so much. I don’t know if that helps?
but With that in mind, have another read through the link in the post above. Two different approaches, the one insanely expensive and not even targeted, the other beautifully target and could even pay for itself.
We could be close to the outright defeat of Russia in Ukraine. They are now rapidly retreating in the east and the south
Which means we are potentially close to the point where Putin goes totally postal. Or not
As they say: Brace
He's defeated, his nation is defeated, a hollow shell now. Someone will put a bullet in the back of his head before they commit suicide by launching nukes on his command.
For months there was stalemate, but many of us said then that stalemate was good news for Ukraine as they with NATOs logistics and training were improving while Russia was deteriorating.
For weeks now, since the Queen died essentially, the stalemate has been broken and its all one way traffic. Ukraine is winning the war. And the problem for Russia is they've got nothing they can do to turn it around. A million conscripts with no weaponry to arm them with, no logistics to supply them with, is not going to be much use.
The longer this war goes on, the more land Ukraine will reclaim, until they've recovered all their land including all of Crimea and the other lands that Russia pretends to have annexed.
Putin is certainly losing, and I see no way of him reversing this defeat, even with another million conscripts (which he hasn't got). His men lack the arms, mobility and motivation
But it is foolish to deny that this in turn makes the coming weeks a perilous moment for the world. We have never seen this before. A dictator armed with nukes going down to humiliating defeat. What does he do?
"Reports are mounting of a Russian collapse on the Kherson front, where approximately 25,000 Russian troops are trapped on the right bank of the Dnipro River with bridges across the river partially destroyed and unable to support military vehicles"
Truss will get Kwarteng to announce the U-turn, if it happens. Swiftly followed by his resignation.
Then she can focus on energy bills and supporting Ukraine. She might even wear a new necklace.
If she does not announce it on Wednesday in her speech, she will be in even deeper do-do
If a 40% top rate of tax is good enough for Ireland, why is it unacceptable for the UK?
It's not the rate, it's the timing, the optics and the context
Look, I'd benefit massively (on my return to the UK) from the dropping of the tax rate.
But I think it's madness to be cutting my taxes, while reducing benefits in real terms, during the middle of a cost of living crisis.
If I was going to do something for higher earners, it would be getting rid of the ridiculous stuff around £100k with the removal of the tax free allowance, etc.
Yes, I scratch my head over the top tax rate reduction, and ending the cap on bankers' bonuses. You do that sort of thing when the economy is doing fine.
If I were Chancellor (swapping one 1994 Trinity alumni for another), I would have made a few changes:
(1) I wouldn't have introduced an energy price cap costing 6.5% of GDP. Ultimately, that won't reduce energy demand as much as it should, because it is dulling the price signal. By contrast, I would have looked at direct support payments to families, that would have covered (on average) 70% of the increase in their bills. If they'd wanted to use that money to pay for energy they could; or they might decide instead to use it on insulation, solar panels, or jumpers. In this way, we'd spend less money, preserve the price signal, and cut gas electricity/demand by more, while avoiding too much pain.
(2) I would not have gotten rid of the 45% rate of tax. Indeed, I think I might have increased it to 50%, but I would have raised the rate at which it applied to (say) incomes in excess of £250k.
(3) I would have gotten rid of the removal of the tax free allowance, and all the distortion that causes at c. £100k. (Ditto childcare allowances, etc.)
(4) I would have introduced much lower rates of stamp duty for anyone "trading down". We want to encourage old people in big, empty houses to move to smaller places, not make it extremely expensive.
(5) I would equalise tax treatment of mortgage interest between corporate entities and individuals.
YMMV
With regard to (1) how would you have dealt with the wholesale collapse of SMEs, with most of our shops and hospitality industry going out of business because of the high energy costs?
The household price cap solution cannot be used on business, for there is no cap for business - it actually has to be two different solutions, households and business.
Agreed but Robert's proposals seem to do nothing to address the business issue.
It’s up to RCS to speak about his own Business Support package, but what I said is true, if we were not wasting such colossal sums on the household package, that wasted money is in play to offer struggling businesses even more help.
Obviously no pressure on RCS, but Kwarteng at least managed to cobble something together, but the proof of any energy package will be in the heating, and what we know about reaction to the household package, it was hated by those charities who know the struggling well, it just won’t help those in need enough and the current have a hell of a whack coming their way of this, whilst serious economists wince at how much money it wastes from the moment Labour first publicised the rotten idea.
No. The same household bill freeze package doesn’t have to be means tested, the truth here it just doesn’t have to be that way of doing it at all!
Think outside your box with the metres in it, by turning the single point Energy Price Cap into a variable price cap where the price per unit of energy used rises with usage. A sliding price cap means marginal user costs increase. RCS is right, it’s the people at the lower end who really need the assistance here, If a solution doesn’t have those most in need front and centre, then it’s not the right solution is it? We should be reducing energy bills for lower-income households in the country while higher earners, who consume more energy, bear a more commensurate share of the higher cost. More help to the the most in need, and a much cheaper solution overall.
The governments price freeze is wrong on two important counts, RCS flagged up both in one straightforward post, Liz Truss and Kier Starmer and Ed Davey (to be fair there is more than one idiot backing this) freezing energy bills plan detaches price signal mechanism from the purchase of energy, in effect locking in energy demand at its current level - Zero incentive to bring energy consumption down. And secondly the thru life costs of freezing energy bills is not known, as NigelB said we can’t know the costs of energy a year from now, but we know this scheme costs UK government around £100B for this winter alone, this government wants it right up to the next election so likely an unsustainable £200B+ depending how quickly energy comes down, but variable energy price cap doesn’t lock you into anything like that massive amount of borrowing now and tax and higher bills in future to pay off that scale of borrowing. Not using many words this article absolutely nails it.
You are arguing for means tested help which is understandable, but which those in power and including the opposition have rejected for expediency, but I agree is costing tens of billions more than a means tested approach
So far means tested help has actually been done - remember that those on various forms of benefit are receiving up to £1000 more than the rest of us who are getting £400.
Plus price signals *have* been preserved because the cap is on the unit price, not the total bill. The article linked is someone who wants *more*.
Did Fizzy Lizzy also not announce a new means tests insulation and other energy saving programme for 130k homes? That looks to me like a replacement for the 'means tested except for a couple of simple measures' ECO programme that has just had its funding removed from bills to remove 'Green Taxes'.
The "up to 200bn or more" stuff just cannot be known at this stage, due to variable wholesale prices.
AFAICS the Energy Support programme is the one bright spot in a dismal set of programmes so far, and seems to me to be roughly where most of Europe will eventually end up.
JRF analysis those most in need still have a gap of about £800 from a energy cap designed to save them
Christians against poverty are asking for these further measures. financial support for low income households which takes into account actual energy bills due to family size and need, including for those not in receipt of means-tested benefits. Increase Local Housing Allowance and uprate benefits ahead Winter 2023 to reflect the inflation rate faced by low income households across the essentials they need. A winter ban on energy companies forcibly switching customers to prepayment meters, including smart prepay, and a moratorium on court action to collect energy debts.
Free market think tanks have said that the government’s plan to freeze energy bills will be ineffective and does not sufficiently target those most in need of support.
It’s all very well free marketeers in the think tanks above, and like RCS and other PBers, bristling at the expensive market fixing ideology Truss is playing with here - like Mickey Mouse as the magicians apprentice - but I would ask the question, looking at the nature of UK capitalism, our energy market and how it is owned and organised, what Truss and Starmer have cooked up between themselves here and sold as a plan to help households with soaring energy costs, is very careful at the same time to be compensating shareholders for the profits they’d “lose” by keeping prices down. Is that how this moment will be remembered in the history books - does British economy work for workers and their families, and the environment - or put profiteering before everything else?
We could be close to the outright defeat of Russia in Ukraine. They are now rapidly retreating in the east and the south
Which means we are potentially close to the point where Putin goes totally postal. Or not
As they say: Brace
He's defeated, his nation is defeated, a hollow shell now. Someone will put a bullet in the back of his head before they commit suicide by launching nukes on his command.
For months there was stalemate, but many of us said then that stalemate was good news for Ukraine as they with NATOs logistics and training were improving while Russia was deteriorating.
For weeks now, since the Queen died essentially, the stalemate has been broken and its all one way traffic. Ukraine is winning the war. And the problem for Russia is they've got nothing they can do to turn it around. A million conscripts with no weaponry to arm them with, no logistics to supply them with, is not going to be much use.
The longer this war goes on, the more land Ukraine will reclaim, until they've recovered all their land including all of Crimea and the other lands that Russia pretends to have annexed.
Putin is certainly losing, and I see no way of him reversing this defeat, even with another million conscripts (which he hasn't got). His men lack the arms, mobility and motivation
But it is foolish to deny that this in turn makes the coming weeks a perilous moment for the world. We have never seen this before. A dictator armed with nukes going down to humiliating defeat. What does he do?
Die.
If his choice is nukes or death I am sure he would try nukes
Then the question is: does his chain of command work, and will all the Russians under him risk total annihilation for this crazed dwarvish autocratic fuckwit?
The Labour Party are "very clearly the favourites" to form the next government, pollster Sir John Curtice has told Tory activists in Birmingham.
New PM Liz Truss was now as unpopular with voters as Boris Johnson was when he was ousted, said Sir John.
And even if Labour's current double digit poll lead reduced before the next election in 2024, Labour were still likely to gain power, he suggested.
His analysis was greeted with dismay and cries of "wow" from activists.
The veteran pollster, who masterminds general election exit polls, said Labour already had a nine point lead in the polls when Ms Truss won last month's Tory leadership election and she had not enjoyed a honeymoon period.
On a positive note, the thread header appears to be spelled correctly.
On a less positive side, I would like Cyclefree to stretch herself next time, and not do a 'things are terrible and awful and shit, and everyone is stupid, and here's 7 bullet points about why and how.' thread header. A lot of people seem to use PB as therapy to cleanse them of their rage and negativity, but usually it's below the line. Maybe actually propose something positive that might make things better in a small way?
Regarding economical growth, the header is wrong - going for growth was exactly what Sunak wasn't going to do; in common with the general Davos consensus, his prospectus was a swerve into austerity that held every prospect of not only bringing a recession, but a depression. We're lucky we've dodged that bullet. Growth itself is a rebellious choice these days, and God speed Truss for making it her choice.
Some proposals from May 2020 on how to pay for the spending we had of necessity incurred by then.
I wonder what your responses were then to those proposals and what constructive proposals you made then or since.
In fact since you seem to think that Truss's proposals are great please explain how they will work.
I am quite worried because I think the position for pension funds, their companies and banks is probably more serious and likely to last longer than a few days. Understandably the authorities are not letting on. This is based on my experience - pretty close tho the heart of the action - back in 2008. And I have little confidence in the government having a clue as to what to do or even appreciating that there is a problem.
I have something to say. It comes from a particular perspective, which may be of interest to some. It is certainly not a complete or the only perspective on what is happening. It is I would venture to suggest a touch more valuable than your Panglossian approach.
I do find the spectacle of politics at the moment immensely funny - in a black humour sort of way. That is until I remember that it is damaging the prospects and hopes of my children. And that makes me angry. It is not therapy I want. But revenge on those who are damaging their future.
This is precisely why the "Crisis? What crisis?" approach almost always is as corrosive as battery acid to a President, Prime Minister AND their political party.
After Wall Street laid it's big egg in 1929, Herbert Hoover tried this gambit - and ushered in the New Deal.
In case of Hoover, part of his problem was that he'd entered the White House with very high expectations - the "Great Engineer" who'd fed starving millions during and after WWI. Expectations that were dashed for even his own strongest supporters by his performance in office.
In case of Prime Minister Truss, no such high expectations going in office, indeed the reverse even among many, if not most Tories. Yet she has contrived, in FAR shorter time than it took Hoover, to make an already critical economic situation for UK significantly, measurably worse, in particular in the eyes (and balance sheets) of the very markets she allegedly wants to enrich and liberate.
We could be close to the outright defeat of Russia in Ukraine. They are now rapidly retreating in the east and the south
Which means we are potentially close to the point where Putin goes totally postal. Or not
As they say: Brace
He's defeated, his nation is defeated, a hollow shell now. Someone will put a bullet in the back of his head before they commit suicide by launching nukes on his command.
For months there was stalemate, but many of us said then that stalemate was good news for Ukraine as they with NATOs logistics and training were improving while Russia was deteriorating.
For weeks now, since the Queen died essentially, the stalemate has been broken and its all one way traffic. Ukraine is winning the war. And the problem for Russia is they've got nothing they can do to turn it around. A million conscripts with no weaponry to arm them with, no logistics to supply them with, is not going to be much use.
The longer this war goes on, the more land Ukraine will reclaim, until they've recovered all their land including all of Crimea and the other lands that Russia pretends to have annexed.
Putin is certainly losing, and I see no way of him reversing this defeat, even with another million conscripts (which he hasn't got). His men lack the arms, mobility and motivation
But it is foolish to deny that this in turn makes the coming weeks a perilous moment for the world. We have never seen this before. A dictator armed with nukes going down to humiliating defeat. What does he do?
Die.
If his choice is nukes or death I am sure he would try nukes
Then the question is: does his chain of command work, and will all the Russians under him risk total annihilation for this crazed dwarvish autocratic fuckwit?
Given what he did to Grozny, perhaps we shouldn't rule out the bizarre possibility that he will end up nuking somewhere inside Russia in an attempt to cling on to power.
We could be close to the outright defeat of Russia in Ukraine. They are now rapidly retreating in the east and the south
Which means we are potentially close to the point where Putin goes totally postal. Or not
As they say: Brace
We are now 48 hours after Ukrainians have attacked legally Russian territory. No nukes yet.
"Legally Russian"
Ok, Vlad.
I think that was the point - he has claimed it, but has been unable to defend it. He already doesn't control plenty of what he claims, so there mere failure to hold some of it has not led to nukes, yes, so figuring out his actual red line is difficult.
That is, the "Smoke-Filled Room" suite, recreation of the infamous hotel room, where during the 1920 Republican National Convention, high-placed GOP bosses and power brokers bargained over the nomination of Warren G. Harding as the Next President of the United States.
I have to say this internal reaction against Truss and her 🤪 economics and 🤑 politics, really makes me think again about parts of the Tory tribe. For many it’s clearly not just about power, money and narrow self interest.
There are unconfirmed reports of a collapse of Russian lines to the North East of Kherson as a Ukrainian offensive pushes down the west bank of the Dneiper river. If so its currently a tenuous position for the Ukrainians as they appear to be most rapidly moving down the right flank of a concentration of Russian troops, ahead of the advancement further west. The bad news for the Russians is that it threatens yet another danger, if not quite of encirclement right now, of a hammer and anvil situation.
On Lyman, no one knows how many Russians got trapped, how many escaped and how many died trying to get out but there is visual evidence suggesting hundreds got killed trying to escape.
Ukraine seem to be making gains inland of the initial gains on the riverbank.
On Lyman, Ukraine claimed 500 Russian casualties two days in a row. Given some reports I thought the figure reported today could have been 1,000.
The strories from Lyman are that it was in infamous turkey shoot territory.
The North east advance is, if reports are true, looking a bit lopsided. That could just be reporting catching up, but its imperative that Ukrainian forces can avoid the Russians turning to face right to isolate that lopsidedness. Thats possible since the latter appears to be in reverse right now, but its not a banker.
Two notes: 1. The Russan Airforce continues to not perform. 2. Russian artillery appears to have lost its edge, possibly because lots of it has been destroyed, possibly because their logistics chain has been really rumbled by depth strikes. Many weeks ago I ventured that this was an interesting comparison between the Russians who were very much direct fire on front line and the Ukrainians who were going for indirect and destruction behind the front.
So far one winner.
The most concerning thing though, if you are on the Russian side, is precisely no sizeable counter offensive anywhere, either directly to counter the recent advance or to divert/exploit a thin Ukrainian line somewhere. Its a really bad sign if they cant get something together.
Though even John Major to be fair to him had more empathy than Truss and got 30% at the 1997 general election (having got 41% at the 1992 general election he won). Under Truss however the Tories are on just 27% with Opinium last night with Truss' pure libertarianism and her and Kwarteng's cut to the top rate of income tax for the highest earners which was not even in her leadership campaign platform and the markets rightly fear will be financed by borrowing while the axe also hangs over cuts in spending and welfare for the poorest
On topic there is a hatchet job incomg on Kwarteng. The rumours that Truss is trying to put some distance in bwetween them, the story on the front of the Sunday Times suggesting he is a patsy for big financiers in the city.
The top rate of tax thing in particular defied good political sense right now, absolutely fucking stupid, yet they did it.
Off topic, lot of rumours about Credit Suisse's viability doing the rounds. Some suggest Deutsche having trouble down the mill as well but Credit Suisse has been really dogged by bad hits & mismanagement e.g. Greensill, Archegos. Rumours of course, but a big investment bank going pop is going to have ripples.
We could be close to the outright defeat of Russia in Ukraine. They are now rapidly retreating in the east and the south
Which means we are potentially close to the point where Putin goes totally postal. Or not
As they say: Brace
He's defeated, his nation is defeated, a hollow shell now. Someone will put a bullet in the back of his head before they commit suicide by launching nukes on his command.
For months there was stalemate, but many of us said then that stalemate was good news for Ukraine as they with NATOs logistics and training were improving while Russia was deteriorating.
For weeks now, since the Queen died essentially, the stalemate has been broken and its all one way traffic. Ukraine is winning the war. And the problem for Russia is they've got nothing they can do to turn it around. A million conscripts with no weaponry to arm them with, no logistics to supply them with, is not going to be much use.
The longer this war goes on, the more land Ukraine will reclaim, until they've recovered all their land including all of Crimea and the other lands that Russia pretends to have annexed.
The Russians still have lots of weaponry. Their problem all along can be summarised as, "all the gear and no idea." Ukraine started the war with essentially the same equipment, in many cases a bit less advanced. S-300 but no S-400 for example. But their training and strategy was so much better.
The conscripts will be even less well trained than the so-called elite units who failed in the Battles of Kyiv, Kharkiv and elsewhere. And more Ukrainian soldiers are receiving NATO training.
My only concern is whether a GOP victory in the midterms will see US support blocked, while the UK is too skint to take up the slack.
Liz Truss. Why did the Tories choose that as a hill to die on?
Because the party membership has a very high average age and a lot of them are senile?
They want very high interest rates and they are determined to get them?
It is the end point of Brexit. The triumph of faith over reason.
Anyone who looked like they had ability had to go, be removed from the field in case they found a way to frustrate The Project. We have all seen how the Leavers lived in terror of Remain reversing the outcome. Ability had to be disposed of, only the inept could stay in power.
Of course, a secondary outcome is that less and less got done, but that was OK because eventually The Great Chancer was elected and brutally ejected anyone of ability until he was surrounded by utter non-entities and it was all going so well until the bl**dy idiot shot himself in the foot.
And all of a sudden, there was nobody left except, the vacant, the inept and the easily led.
And now they are the government.
Brexit was about the Tories embracing eurosceptisim and limiting low income immigration to improve the lot of the British working class. It led to a massive majority.
This government, led by a Remainer, has embraced subsidies to corporations and tax cuts for the rich. It has led to political collapse.
She was never a Remainer. She was an opportunist who thought Remain was going to win. As soon s Leave won she changed "sides" in the blink of an eye.
Brexit was an article of faith. Whatever you thought it was, you could have it, it would turn up and it would be a success and no one had the foggiest idea of how it was going to be done.
We could be close to the outright defeat of Russia in Ukraine. They are now rapidly retreating in the east and the south
Which means we are potentially close to the point where Putin goes totally postal. Or not
As they say: Brace
He's defeated, his nation is defeated, a hollow shell now. Someone will put a bullet in the back of his head before they commit suicide by launching nukes on his command.
For months there was stalemate, but many of us said then that stalemate was good news for Ukraine as they with NATOs logistics and training were improving while Russia was deteriorating.
For weeks now, since the Queen died essentially, the stalemate has been broken and its all one way traffic. Ukraine is winning the war. And the problem for Russia is they've got nothing they can do to turn it around. A million conscripts with no weaponry to arm them with, no logistics to supply them with, is not going to be much use.
The longer this war goes on, the more land Ukraine will reclaim, until they've recovered all their land including all of Crimea and the other lands that Russia pretends to have annexed.
The Russians still have lots of weaponry. Their problem all along can be summarised as, "all the gear and no idea." Ukraine started the war with essentially the same equipment, in many cases a bit less advanced. S-300 but no S-400 for example. But their training and strategy was so much better.
The conscripts will be even less well trained than the so-called elite units who failed in the Battles of Kyiv, Kharkiv and elsewhere. And more Ukrainian soldiers are receiving NATO training.
My only concern is whether a GOP victory in the midterms will see US support blocked, while the UK is too skint to take up the slack.
Even if we weren't skint we couldn't pick up that slack.
Are the GOP unified on scaling back, or could support still be pushed through?
The Labour Party are "very clearly the favourites" to form the next government, pollster Sir John Curtice has told Tory activists in Birmingham.
New PM Liz Truss was now as unpopular with voters as Boris Johnson was when he was ousted, said Sir John.
And even if Labour's current double digit poll lead reduced before the next election in 2024, Labour were still likely to gain power, he suggested.
His analysis was greeted with dismay and cries of "wow" from activists.
The veteran pollster, who masterminds general election exit polls, said Labour already had a nine point lead in the polls when Ms Truss won last month's Tory leadership election and she had not enjoyed a honeymoon period.
I have to say this internal reaction against Truss and her 🤪 economics and 🤑 politics, really makes me think again about parts of the Tory tribe. For many it’s clearly not just about power, money and narrow self interest.
That's an intriguing post, Jonathan. Tell us more.
Are we talking tribalism here? We're all prone to it. For some absurd reason I care about what happens to Leyton Orient in a way that I do not and cannot care about other teams, no matter how good. If I'm honest, I'll admit to some tribal feelings towards leftish parties and antipathy towards right wing ones, though not with the same passion as with the O's and their opponents.
That's hardly a new insight though. Or did you have something else in mind?
We could be close to the outright defeat of Russia in Ukraine. They are now rapidly retreating in the east and the south
Which means we are potentially close to the point where Putin goes totally postal. Or not
As they say: Brace
He's defeated, his nation is defeated, a hollow shell now. Someone will put a bullet in the back of his head before they commit suicide by launching nukes on his command.
For months there was stalemate, but many of us said then that stalemate was good news for Ukraine as they with NATOs logistics and training were improving while Russia was deteriorating.
For weeks now, since the Queen died essentially, the stalemate has been broken and its all one way traffic. Ukraine is winning the war. And the problem for Russia is they've got nothing they can do to turn it around. A million conscripts with no weaponry to arm them with, no logistics to supply them with, is not going to be much use.
The longer this war goes on, the more land Ukraine will reclaim, until they've recovered all their land including all of Crimea and the other lands that Russia pretends to have annexed.
Putin is certainly losing, and I see no way of him reversing this defeat, even with another million conscripts (which he hasn't got). His men lack the arms, mobility and motivation
But it is foolish to deny that this in turn makes the coming weeks a perilous moment for the world. We have never seen this before. A dictator armed with nukes going down to humiliating defeat. What does he do?
Die.
If his choice is nukes or death I am sure he would try nukes
Then the question is: does his chain of command work, and will all the Russians under him risk total annihilation for this crazed dwarvish autocratic fuckwit?
Given what he did to Grozny, perhaps we shouldn't rule out the bizarre possibility that he will end up nuking somewhere inside Russia in an attempt to cling on to power.
Something along those lines, though probably non-nuclear is likely. The precedent is Iraq at the end of the First Gulf War. The coalition stopped at the border and left the dictator to defeat his internal enemies to head off the attempt to unseat him.
Ukraine will also stop at Russia's recognised borders, and we will leave Putin to fight it out against any internal opposition.
We could be close to the outright defeat of Russia in Ukraine. They are now rapidly retreating in the east and the south
Which means we are potentially close to the point where Putin goes totally postal. Or not
As they say: Brace
He's defeated, his nation is defeated, a hollow shell now. Someone will put a bullet in the back of his head before they commit suicide by launching nukes on his command.
For months there was stalemate, but many of us said then that stalemate was good news for Ukraine as they with NATOs logistics and training were improving while Russia was deteriorating.
For weeks now, since the Queen died essentially, the stalemate has been broken and its all one way traffic. Ukraine is winning the war. And the problem for Russia is they've got nothing they can do to turn it around. A million conscripts with no weaponry to arm them with, no logistics to supply them with, is not going to be much use.
The longer this war goes on, the more land Ukraine will reclaim, until they've recovered all their land including all of Crimea and the other lands that Russia pretends to have annexed.
The Russians still have lots of weaponry. Their problem all along can be summarised as, "all the gear and no idea." Ukraine started the war with essentially the same equipment, in many cases a bit less advanced. S-300 but no S-400 for example. But their training and strategy was so much better.
The conscripts will be even less well trained than the so-called elite units who failed in the Battles of Kyiv, Kharkiv and elsewhere. And more Ukrainian soldiers are receiving NATO training.
My only concern is whether a GOP victory in the midterms will see US support blocked, while the UK is too skint to take up the slack.
By many estimates most of their tanks etc that they started the war with now either have been destroyed, or are now owned by Ukraine. Their planes and ammunition storage keep getting destroyed, which is part of why they keep collapsing, the forces that are surrounded are being left with no gear left to fight with as well as no morale to do so.
And while in wars previously countries had the ability to manufacture to replace what was destroyed, Russia doesn't. They've not got the manufacturing capabilities anymore, or the technological ones either, to be able to replace that which has been lost.
Formerly they were all the gear, no idea, but now the gear is missing too.
We could be close to the outright defeat of Russia in Ukraine. They are now rapidly retreating in the east and the south
Which means we are potentially close to the point where Putin goes totally postal. Or not
As they say: Brace
He's defeated, his nation is defeated, a hollow shell now. Someone will put a bullet in the back of his head before they commit suicide by launching nukes on his command.
For months there was stalemate, but many of us said then that stalemate was good news for Ukraine as they with NATOs logistics and training were improving while Russia was deteriorating.
For weeks now, since the Queen died essentially, the stalemate has been broken and its all one way traffic. Ukraine is winning the war. And the problem for Russia is they've got nothing they can do to turn it around. A million conscripts with no weaponry to arm them with, no logistics to supply them with, is not going to be much use.
The longer this war goes on, the more land Ukraine will reclaim, until they've recovered all their land including all of Crimea and the other lands that Russia pretends to have annexed.
The Russians still have lots of weaponry. Their problem all along can be summarised as, "all the gear and no idea." Ukraine started the war with essentially the same equipment, in many cases a bit less advanced. S-300 but no S-400 for example. But their training and strategy was so much better.
The conscripts will be even less well trained than the so-called elite units who failed in the Battles of Kyiv, Kharkiv and elsewhere. And more Ukrainian soldiers are receiving NATO training.
My only concern is whether a GOP victory in the midterms will see US support blocked, while the UK is too skint to take up the slack.
The large bulk of Republicans in the current Congress have voted through a whole series of funding packages for Ukraine. There's no reason to suppose that they will suddenly change their minds en masse should they win control of either chamber.
The only real threat would be the election of a far right America First candidate in the next Presidential poll, but that would require Russia to survive being either forced to the negotiating table or beaten outright for another two years...
Liz Truss. Why did the Tories choose that as a hill to die on?
Because the party membership has a very high average age and a lot of them are senile?
They want very high interest rates and they are determined to get them?
It is the end point of Brexit. The triumph of faith over reason.
Anyone who looked like they had ability had to go, be removed from the field in case they found a way to frustrate The Project. We have all seen how the Leavers lived in terror of Remain reversing the outcome. Ability had to be disposed of, only the inept could stay in power.
Of course, a secondary outcome is that less and less got done, but that was OK because eventually The Great Chancer was elected and brutally ejected anyone of ability until he was surrounded by utter non-entities and it was all going so well until the bl**dy idiot shot himself in the foot.
And all of a sudden, there was nobody left except, the vacant, the inept and the easily led.
And now they are the government.
Brexit was about the Tories embracing eurosceptisim and limiting low income immigration to improve the lot of the British working class. It led to a massive majority.
This government, led by a Remainer, has embraced subsidies to corporations and tax cuts for the rich. It has led to political collapse.
She was never a Remainer. She was an opportunist who thought Remain was going to win. As soon s Leave won she changed "sides" in the blink of an eye.
Brexit was an article of faith. Whatever you thought it was, you could have it, it would turn up and it would be a success and no one had the foggiest idea of how it was going to be done.
She "changed sides" because, unlike a lot of Remainers, she had some basic respect for democracy. That doesn't make up for her flaws but it does make her better than the elitists like Grieve and Soubry.
As for Brexit, it is simply a mechanism to return control to the British electorate. The British electorate knew that when you get elitist policies such as corporate bailouts and mass immigration from a UK PM, you can turf them out of power (as will now happen), while when you get corporate bailout and mass immigration from the EU bureaucracy you are stuffed. Smart people.
"Reports are mounting of a Russian collapse on the Kherson front, where approximately 25,000 Russian troops are trapped on the right bank of the Dnipro River with bridges across the river partially destroyed and unable to support military vehicles"
A critical moment. An astounding defeat if this plays out
At the same time on the Kharkiv front the Russians are still losing territory.
Kherson is the big one though. If they get a big movement there then they control Crimea's water supply and also bring many targets into range of HIMARs.
Also I noticed that the Turk's have just launched a new corvette they are building for Ukraine. The Ukrainian Defence Secretary says that it is going to be based at Sevastopol!
Had the honor of launching the “Hetman Ivan Mazepa” corvette. Its name was chosen in 2021 by the President @ZelenskyyUa. Built in Turkey, it will serve Ukraine and will be the first ship of its kind in our Navy. Wishing fair wind, success and victories only! https://twitter.com/ZelenskaUA/status/1576622647361667073
Liz Truss. Why did the Tories choose that as a hill to die on?
As she was the not Rishi candidate.
May as well call her Liz Goldwater the way current polls are heading, with Starmer heading for as crushing a victory as LBJ got against Goldwater's pure libertarianism in 1964
She is a cuckoo in the Tory nest. CINO. I hope you stay in the party to help eventually eject her.
We could be close to the outright defeat of Russia in Ukraine. They are now rapidly retreating in the east and the south
Which means we are potentially close to the point where Putin goes totally postal. Or not
As they say: Brace
He's defeated, his nation is defeated, a hollow shell now. Someone will put a bullet in the back of his head before they commit suicide by launching nukes on his command.
For months there was stalemate, but many of us said then that stalemate was good news for Ukraine as they with NATOs logistics and training were improving while Russia was deteriorating.
For weeks now, since the Queen died essentially, the stalemate has been broken and its all one way traffic. Ukraine is winning the war. And the problem for Russia is they've got nothing they can do to turn it around. A million conscripts with no weaponry to arm them with, no logistics to supply them with, is not going to be much use.
The longer this war goes on, the more land Ukraine will reclaim, until they've recovered all their land including all of Crimea and the other lands that Russia pretends to have annexed.
The Russians still have lots of weaponry. Their problem all along can be summarised as, "all the gear and no idea." Ukraine started the war with essentially the same equipment, in many cases a bit less advanced. S-300 but no S-400 for example. But their training and strategy was so much better.
The conscripts will be even less well trained than the so-called elite units who failed in the Battles of Kyiv, Kharkiv and elsewhere. And more Ukrainian soldiers are receiving NATO training.
My only concern is whether a GOP victory in the midterms will see US support blocked, while the UK is too skint to take up the slack.
Based on rollcall votes in US House & Senate, my cautiously optimistic forecast is NO, that Congress will NOT backtrack next year on UKR aid & support, regardless of party control.
"Reports are mounting of a Russian collapse on the Kherson front, where approximately 25,000 Russian troops are trapped on the right bank of the Dnipro River with bridges across the river partially destroyed and unable to support military vehicles"
A critical moment. An astounding defeat if this plays out
Collapses happen fast but time for patience on this one. This is just one collapsed front in Kherson and exploitation requires the Ukrainians to push on, itself not easy due to resupply and having follow on forces, though straightforward in its intent. Its a big force Russia has down there and there are some good units further down the road. Admittedly some fucking awful units as well. A feature of the Kharkiv front where the Ukrainians have gone great guns recent weeks is how much fighting has been done the LPR & DPR separatists and Russian reservists (in effect their TA)
The big point about Kherson, however, is sound. The Russians dont have a straight escape route because their arses are getting damp touching the river and the bridges are very much degraded, making re-supply a real problem.
There are unconfirmed reports of a collapse of Russian lines to the North East of Kherson as a Ukrainian offensive pushes down the west bank of the Dneiper river. If so its currently a tenuous position for the Ukrainians as they appear to be most rapidly moving down the right flank of a concentration of Russian troops, ahead of the advancement further west. The bad news for the Russians is that it threatens yet another danger, if not quite of encirclement right now, of a hammer and anvil situation.
On Lyman, no one knows how many Russians got trapped, how many escaped and how many died trying to get out but there is visual evidence suggesting hundreds got killed trying to escape.
Ukraine seem to be making gains inland of the initial gains on the riverbank.
On Lyman, Ukraine claimed 500 Russian casualties two days in a row. Given some reports I thought the figure reported today could have been 1,000.
The strories from Lyman are that it was in infamous turkey shoot territory.
The North east advance is, if reports are true, looking a bit lopsided. That could just be reporting catching up, but its imperative that Ukrainian forces can avoid the Russians turning to face right to isolate that lopsidedness. Thats possible since the latter appears to be in reverse right now, but its not a banker.
Two notes: 1. The Russan Airforce continues to not perform. 2. Russian artillery appears to have lost its edge, possibly because lots of it has been destroyed, possibly because their logistics chain has been really rumbled by depth strikes. Many weeks ago I ventured that this was an interesting comparison between the Russians who were very much direct fire on front line and the Ukrainians who were going for indirect and destruction behind the front.
So far one winner.
The most concerning thing though, if you are on the Russian side, is precisely no sizeable counter offensive anywhere, either directly to counter the recent advance or to divert/exploit a thin Ukrainian line somewhere. Its a really bad sign if they cant get something together.
There have been (FWIW) quote a number of anecdotes of Russian soldiers complaining recently about a serious lack of fire support.
The Labour Party are "very clearly the favourites" to form the next government, pollster Sir John Curtice has told Tory activists in Birmingham.
New PM Liz Truss was now as unpopular with voters as Boris Johnson was when he was ousted, said Sir John.
And even if Labour's current double digit poll lead reduced before the next election in 2024, Labour were still likely to gain power, he suggested.
His analysis was greeted with dismay and cries of "wow" from activists.
The veteran pollster, who masterminds general election exit polls, said Labour already had a nine point lead in the polls when Ms Truss won last month's Tory leadership election and she had not enjoyed a honeymoon period.
That's what happens when a party expels or drives away all sympathetic but dissident voices. That's been creeping up on the Conservatives for a while, but has gone into overdrive under Johnson and Truss.
It's also what happens when you have closed media bubbles. Perhaps 1955ish to 2010ish was a now-finished golden age. One where most people got their news from the BBC and ITV, who strove to cover things in reasonable depth and with an aspiration towards accuracy and balance.
There are unconfirmed reports of a collapse of Russian lines to the North East of Kherson as a Ukrainian offensive pushes down the west bank of the Dneiper river. If so its currently a tenuous position for the Ukrainians as they appear to be most rapidly moving down the right flank of a concentration of Russian troops, ahead of the advancement further west. The bad news for the Russians is that it threatens yet another danger, if not quite of encirclement right now, of a hammer and anvil situation.
On Lyman, no one knows how many Russians got trapped, how many escaped and how many died trying to get out but there is visual evidence suggesting hundreds got killed trying to escape.
Ukraine seem to be making gains inland of the initial gains on the riverbank.
On Lyman, Ukraine claimed 500 Russian casualties two days in a row. Given some reports I thought the figure reported today could have been 1,000.
The strories from Lyman are that it was in infamous turkey shoot territory.
The North east advance is, if reports are true, looking a bit lopsided. That could just be reporting catching up, but its imperative that Ukrainian forces can avoid the Russians turning to face right to isolate that lopsidedness. Thats possible since the latter appears to be in reverse right now, but its not a banker.
Two notes: 1. The Russan Airforce continues to not perform. 2. Russian artillery appears to have lost its edge, possibly because lots of it has been destroyed, possibly because their logistics chain has been really rumbled by depth strikes. Many weeks ago I ventured that this was an interesting comparison between the Russians who were very much direct fire on front line and the Ukrainians who were going for indirect and destruction behind the front.
So far one winner.
The most concerning thing though, if you are on the Russian side, is precisely no sizeable counter offensive anywhere, either directly to counter the recent advance or to divert/exploit a thin Ukrainian line somewhere. Its a really bad sign if they cant get something together.
The Russians have continued to waste men and resources on fruitless attacks towards Bakhmut, rather than divert those forces to attempt a counteroffensive against recent Ukrainian advances. (Edit: This indicates a strategic failure at the top.)
That said there is evidence in recent weeks of some Ukrainian advances defeated at some cost, towards Davydiv Brid and Pisky, so there are still Russian soldiers able and willing to fight and inflict losses on Ukraine.
I have to say this internal reaction against Truss and her 🤪 economics and 🤑 politics, really makes me think again about parts of the Tory tribe. For many it’s clearly not just about power, money and narrow self interest.
That's an intriguing post, Jonathan. Tell us more.
Are we talking tribalism here? We're all prone to it. For some absurd reason I care about what happens to Leyton Orient in a way that I do not and cannot care about other teams, no matter how good. If I'm honest, I'll admit to some tribal feelings towards leftish parties and antipathy towards right wing ones, though not with the same passion as with the O's and their opponents.
That's hardly a new insight though. Or did you have something else in mind?
Clearly tribalism is at play, but there is more to it. There are principles at play here. Tory supporters are calling out Truss as fundamentally wrong. Not wrong because she is costing millions of votes, but wrong morally and bad for the country. They say that it’s basically unjust to load up the rich with cash, whilst the poor are under serious pressure. This is not something we hear a lot from Tories and after austerity is unexpected. Nevertheless they are prepared to go strike or ditch the party altogether over this. It deserves respect.
Liz Truss. Why did the Tories choose that as a hill to die on?
Because the party membership has a very high average age and a lot of them are senile?
They want very high interest rates and they are determined to get them?
It is the end point of Brexit. The triumph of faith over reason.
Anyone who looked like they had ability had to go, be removed from the field in case they found a way to frustrate The Project. We have all seen how the Leavers lived in terror of Remain reversing the outcome. Ability had to be disposed of, only the inept could stay in power.
Of course, a secondary outcome is that less and less got done, but that was OK because eventually The Great Chancer was elected and brutally ejected anyone of ability until he was surrounded by utter non-entities and it was all going so well until the bl**dy idiot shot himself in the foot.
And all of a sudden, there was nobody left except, the vacant, the inept and the easily led.
And now they are the government.
Brexit was about the Tories embracing eurosceptisim and limiting low income immigration to improve the lot of the British working class. It led to a massive majority.
This government, led by a Remainer, has embraced subsidies to corporations and tax cuts for the rich. It has led to political collapse.
She was never a Remainer. She was an opportunist who thought Remain was going to win. As soon s Leave won she changed "sides" in the blink of an eye.
Brexit was an article of faith. Whatever you thought it was, you could have it, it would turn up and it would be a success and no one had the foggiest idea of how it was going to be done.
She "changed sides" because, unlike a lot of Remainers, she had some basic respect for democracy. That doesn't make up for her flaws but it does make her better than the elitists like Grieve and Soubry.
As for Brexit, it is simply a mechanism to return control to the British electorate. The British electorate knew that when you get elitist policies such as corporate bailouts and mass immigration from a UK PM, you can turf them out of power (as will now happen), while when you get corporate bailout and mass immigration from the EU bureaucracy you are stuffed. Smart people.
The case for Remain/Rejoin is that the Continent is in general, more left wing economically, and more liberal socially, than any government that this country is likely to elect.
In all honesty, I'd have to say that recent election results on the Continent call both assumptions into question. The term "far right" is overused, but I think that the governments of several EU nations are to the right of our own, and I suspect we're only one election away from RN winning a majority in France.
They’ve gone quite mad. I thought Badenoch would do this kind of thing, I didn’t think Truss was this batshit crazy. Every day’s a school day.
It’s fascinating to watch, even as the imminent shafting I, my loved ones and friends are all going suffer comes ever closer.
I fucking despise these bastards for everything they’ve done since 2016. I cannot wait to see the back of them. They call themselves patriots yet deliberately turn the country to shit.
I had to shift my mum’s sofas from her front room to her south facing back room today, because it’s warmer in the winter. She’s not poor by any stretch of the imagination but she’s worried she won’t be able to afford her heating. I have to remortgage in August. God knows how much that’s going to go up. We’re a rich country, yet we’re reduced to warm banks. On top of food banks. Ambulances queuing outside hospitals for hours and hours. Crumbling roads. Shit filled rivers.
These aren’t faults. They’re by design. This is what this government wants. They don’t give a flying fuck about the vast majority of people in this country.
Liz Truss. Why did the Tories choose that as a hill to die on?
Because the party membership has a very high average age and a lot of them are senile?
They want very high interest rates and they are determined to get them?
It is the end point of Brexit. The triumph of faith over reason.
Anyone who looked like they had ability had to go, be removed from the field in case they found a way to frustrate The Project. We have all seen how the Leavers lived in terror of Remain reversing the outcome. Ability had to be disposed of, only the inept could stay in power.
Of course, a secondary outcome is that less and less got done, but that was OK because eventually The Great Chancer was elected and brutally ejected anyone of ability until he was surrounded by utter non-entities and it was all going so well until the bl**dy idiot shot himself in the foot.
And all of a sudden, there was nobody left except, the vacant, the inept and the easily led.
And now they are the government.
A pretty tenuous link at best and a sign of desperation, from one of the irreconcilables, to try and link this to Brexit. Not least of course because, in case you had forgotten, Liz Truss campaigned strongly for Remain.
I am not desperate in the slightest. I argued my view and lost and I received a lot of flack for it, but it is done and I have moved on and view the consequences with a curious mix of disappointment and amusement.
And as I pointed out in another reply, Truss was never really a Remainer. She was an opportunist who was on the other side pretty quickly when she thought that would be better for her rise to power (and she was correct).
The in-depth analysis is one of the things that sets this place apart. The tldr; idiots can go elsewhere.
There is a time and place for indepth analysis. When she's on form @Cyclefree does it really well (and, as I am well aware, for free)
Not this time tho. This is an awful lots of words to say Truss is, so far, a 2nd rate Thatch. We can all see that
It's not just that she's a 2nd rate Thatch. It's that the party seems to think that only a copy of a previous leader will do. See Boris doing his Churchill tribute act.
Why can't they be themselves - a leader for the country now? Learn lessons from others: yes. But understand today's world and problems and come up with ideas for today.
Nostalgia: it's the British disease and it infects our politics.
(And also thank you for the compliment and the advice. Genuinely.)
There are unconfirmed reports of a collapse of Russian lines to the North East of Kherson as a Ukrainian offensive pushes down the west bank of the Dneiper river. If so its currently a tenuous position for the Ukrainians as they appear to be most rapidly moving down the right flank of a concentration of Russian troops, ahead of the advancement further west. The bad news for the Russians is that it threatens yet another danger, if not quite of encirclement right now, of a hammer and anvil situation.
On Lyman, no one knows how many Russians got trapped, how many escaped and how many died trying to get out but there is visual evidence suggesting hundreds got killed trying to escape.
Ukraine seem to be making gains inland of the initial gains on the riverbank.
On Lyman, Ukraine claimed 500 Russian casualties two days in a row. Given some reports I thought the figure reported today could have been 1,000.
The strories from Lyman are that it was in infamous turkey shoot territory.
The North east advance is, if reports are true, looking a bit lopsided. That could just be reporting catching up, but its imperative that Ukrainian forces can avoid the Russians turning to face right to isolate that lopsidedness. Thats possible since the latter appears to be in reverse right now, but its not a banker.
Two notes: 1. The Russan Airforce continues to not perform. 2. Russian artillery appears to have lost its edge, possibly because lots of it has been destroyed, possibly because their logistics chain has been really rumbled by depth strikes. Many weeks ago I ventured that this was an interesting comparison between the Russians who were very much direct fire on front line and the Ukrainians who were going for indirect and destruction behind the front.
So far one winner.
The most concerning thing though, if you are on the Russian side, is precisely no sizeable counter offensive anywhere, either directly to counter the recent advance or to divert/exploit a thin Ukrainian line somewhere. Its a really bad sign if they cant get something together.
The Russians have continued to waste men and resources on fruitless attacks towards Bakhmut, rather than divert those forces to attempt a counteroffensive against recent Ukrainian advances.
That said there is evidence in recent weeks of some Ukrainian advances defeated at some cost, towards Davydiv Brid and Pisky, so there are still Russian soldiers able and willing to fight and inflict losses on Ukraine.
The photos and videos of dead Russians, especially around Lyman, are strikingly grisly. I did a brief, unpleasant Telegram dive last night
Looks like they were slaughtered en masse as they tried to flee
Presumably Russians are sharing these vids at home. Not nice
They’ve gone quite mad. I thought Badenoch would do this kind of thing, I didn’t think Truss was this batshit crazy. Every day’s a school day.
It’s fascinating to watch, even as the imminent shafting I, my loved ones and friends are all going suffer comes ever closer.
I fucking despise these bastards for everything they’ve done since 2016. I cannot wait to see the back of them. They call themselves patriots yet deliberately turn the country to shit.
I had to shift my mum’s sofas from her front room to her south facing back room today, because it’s warmer in the winter. She’s not poor by any stretch of the imagination but she’s worried she won’t be able to afford her heating. I have to remortgage in August. God knows how much that’s going to go up. We’re a rich country, yet we’re reduced to warm banks. On top of food banks. Ambulances queuing outside hospitals for hours and hours. Crumbling roads. Shit filled rivers.
These aren’t faults. They’re by design. This is what this government wants. They don’t give a flying fuck about the vast majority of people in this country.
Even Badenoch would not have gone this far. Badenoch is more socially conservative than Truss but not as ideological an economic libertarian. She would have cut NI and corporation tax but probably not the 45p top rate yet
"Reports are mounting of a Russian collapse on the Kherson front, where approximately 25,000 Russian troops are trapped on the right bank of the Dnipro River with bridges across the river partially destroyed and unable to support military vehicles"
A critical moment. An astounding defeat if this plays out
Collapses happen fast but time for patience on this one. This is just one collapsed front in Kherson and exploitation requires the Ukrainians to push on, itself not easy due to resupply and having follow on forces, though straightforward in its intent. Its a big force Russia has down there and there are some good units further down the road. Admittedly some fucking awful units as well. A feature of the Kharkiv front where the Ukrainians have gone great guns recent weeks is how much fighting has been done the LPR & DPR separatists and Russian reservists (in effect their TA)
The big point about Kherson, however, is sound. The Russians dont have a straight escape route because their arses are getting damp touching the river and the bridges are very much degraded, making re-supply a real problem.
What has surprised me is the intensity of the fighting over nearly 3 weeks now when the bridges across the Dneiper were all supposedly down or out of commission. The Russians really should have been running out of amunition, food etc by now but the fighting remains intense with even the Ukranians accepting that they are incurring heavy casualties there. This reflects the terrain (open, minimal cover) and the quality of the Russian units deployed but why are they not out of ammo yet?
If Putin is close to defeat, is now the time to offer him something if we think he might go postal planet killer?
Not sure what. I guess that’s the trouble.
No, because the odds on him going nuclear are still fairly long. 1. People within his own coterie will seek to stop him and 2. I believe the US when they have said they will do a very large retaliation, which will, in effect end Russias ability to win this. And if they lose, Putin is likely done anyway.
In short even if he did, if the West sticks to that stance, Putin is finished
Liz Truss. Why did the Tories choose that as a hill to die on?
Because the party membership has a very high average age and a lot of them are senile?
They want very high interest rates and they are determined to get them?
Possibly, though if that was a specific want (to jack their savings returns right up) then it would be definite evidence of senility. The one thing most likely to cause a house price crash is a large spike in interest rates.
What was ultimately at the root of it all was probably some kind of Thatcher nostalgia thing, coupled with suspicion of Sunak (both for his part in toppling Johnson and for being too centrist.)
You say that like its a bad thing.
Having a better savings ratio, and lower house prices, would be too improvements to rebalancing the UK economy.
From the point of view of elderly minted southern English homeowners (the core both of the Tory membership and wider vote, who expect their pile of bricks to be worth an ever-growing fortune, and intend on mining it for jollies through equity release and/or passing on fat tax-free inheritances to their offspring,) tumbling house prices are not what they desire or expect.
The two most useful things that could happen to promote economic renewal in this country would be a house price crash, and a mass building programme of new dwellings to prevent strangulated demand from triggering a reflation. But is that what the old troughers want? Hell no!
The in-depth analysis is one of the things that sets this place apart. The tldr; idiots can go elsewhere.
There is a time and place for indepth analysis. When she's on form @Cyclefree does it really well (and, as I am well aware, for free)
Not this time tho. This is an awful lots of words to say Truss is, so far, a 2nd rate Thatch. We can all see that
It's not just that she's a 2nd rate Thatch. It's that the party seems to think that only a copy of a previous leader will do. See Boris doing his Churchill tribute act.
Why can't they be themselves - a leader for the country now? Learn lessons from others: yes. But understand today's world and problems and come up with ideas for today.
Nostalgia: it's the British disease and it infects our politics.
(And also thank you for the compliment and the advice. Genuinely.)
See, that's an interesting and worthwhile thesis you have there. Yet I didn't get that from the header as my eyes glazed over at all the paragraphs and "bullet points" especially when there is much to distract, of a turbulent Sunday evening
Sometimes the more you say, the less you relay
You could have made this valid argument with 400 words, not 2000
They’ve gone quite mad. I thought Badenoch would do this kind of thing, I didn’t think Truss was this batshit crazy. Every day’s a school day.
It’s fascinating to watch, even as the imminent shafting I, my loved ones and friends are all going suffer comes ever closer.
I fucking despise these bastards for everything they’ve done since 2016. I cannot wait to see the back of them. They call themselves patriots yet deliberately turn the country to shit.
I had to shift my mum’s sofas from her front room to her south facing back room today, because it’s warmer in the winter. She’s not poor by any stretch of the imagination but she’s worried she won’t be able to afford her heating. I have to remortgage in August. God knows how much that’s going to go up. We’re a rich country, yet we’re reduced to warm banks. On top of food banks. Ambulances queuing outside hospitals for hours and hours. Crumbling roads. Shit filled rivers.
These aren’t faults. They’re by design. This is what this government wants. They don’t give a flying fuck about the vast majority of people in this country.
Comments
Hint. He now knows protecting the super rich is not a vote winner.
Garden hose, panty hose, weeding hose or ....
(Said the ghost of Ronnie Barker)
(Back down from the roof. Pressure washer works great - need a 5m extension nozzle to reach nearly the top of the solar panels.)
And if the events around Kherson today pan out as they look as though they are doing, Ukraine will quickly add to that total.
https://twitter.com/Tendar/status/1576602192990961664
The Labour Party are "very clearly the favourites" to form the next government, pollster Sir John Curtice has told Tory activists in Birmingham.
New PM Liz Truss was now as unpopular with voters as Boris Johnson was when he was ousted, said Sir John.
And even if Labour's current double digit poll lead reduced before the next election in 2024, Labour were still likely to gain power, he suggested.
His analysis was greeted with dismay and cries of "wow" from activists.
The veteran pollster, who masterminds general election exit polls, said Labour already had a nine point lead in the polls when Ms Truss won last month's Tory leadership election and she had not enjoyed a honeymoon period.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-63110539
May as well call her Liz Goldwater the way current polls are heading, with Starmer heading for as crushing a victory as LBJ got against Goldwater's pure libertarianism in 1964
Anyone who looked like they had ability had to go, be removed from the field in case they found a way to frustrate The Project. We have all seen how the Leavers lived in terror of Remain reversing the outcome. Ability had to be disposed of, only the inept could stay in power.
Of course, a secondary outcome is that less and less got done, but that was OK because eventually The Great Chancer was elected and brutally ejected anyone of ability until he was surrounded by utter non-entities and it was all going so well until the bl**dy idiot shot himself in the foot.
And all of a sudden, there was nobody left except, the vacant, the inept and the easily led.
And now they are the government.
There are unconfirmed reports of a collapse of Russian lines to the North East of Kherson as a Ukrainian offensive pushes down the west bank of the Dneiper river. If so its currently a tenuous position for the Ukrainians as they appear to be most rapidly moving down the right flank of a concentration of Russian troops, ahead of the advancement further west. The bad news for the Russians is that it threatens yet another danger, if not quite of encirclement right now, of a hammer and anvil situation.
On Lyman, no one knows how many Russians got trapped, how many escaped and how many died trying to get out but there is visual evidence suggesting hundreds got killed trying to escape.
Which means we are potentially close to the point where Putin goes totally postal. Or not
As they say: Brace
Fucking muppets.
The in-depth analysis is one of the things that sets this place apart. The tldr; idiots can go elsewhere.
If there is one criticism I’d make, it’s that the headers have gone the way of the comments in their lack of betting.
I think we should have a rule. Every header and at least one in every ten comments by every poster should reference a betting market.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2007/sep/03/conservatives.uk
1846 - Sir Robert Peel divides Conservative Party over his support for Free Trade
1903 - Joseph Chamberlain divides Conservative & Liberal Unionist alliance over his support for Tariff Reform.
1979 - Margaret Thatcher divides Conservative and Unionist Party over her support for Supply Side Economics.
2022 - Liz Truss divides CUP over her Neo-Supply Side Economics.
This is the real problem: she is arrogant and fundamentally dislikeable. The British public have sussed this out very quickly. It's so bad i suspect they won't give her credit even for the things she does get right.
So, there's almost certainly no way back for her.
Why Putin would be a fool to go nuclear in Ukraine
It would be a personally risky option for the Russian dictator
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2022/10/02/why-putin-would-fool-go-nuclear-ukraine/
For months there was stalemate, but many of us said then that stalemate was good news for Ukraine as they with NATOs logistics and training were improving while Russia was deteriorating.
For weeks now, since the Queen died essentially, the stalemate has been broken and its all one way traffic. Ukraine is winning the war. And the problem for Russia is they've got nothing they can do to turn it around. A million conscripts with no weaponry to arm them with, no logistics to supply them with, is not going to be much use.
The longer this war goes on, the more land Ukraine will reclaim, until they've recovered all their land including all of Crimea and the other lands that Russia pretends to have annexed.
Not this time tho. This is an awful lots of words to say Truss is, so far, a 2nd rate Thatch. We can all see that
What was ultimately at the root of it all was probably some kind of Thatcher nostalgia thing, coupled with suspicion of Sunak (both for his part in toppling Johnson and for being too centrist.)
This government, led by a Remainer, has embraced subsidies to corporations and tax cuts for the rich. It has led to political collapse.
They haven't attacked any territory yhst is legally Russia.
Only in the distorted view of Putin and his acolytes
Ok, Vlad.
https://mobile.twitter.com/WarMonitor3/status/1576636571658649605
Khreshchenivka🇺🇦
https://maps.app.goo.gl/1m54VQWaH9r4xHhE8
On Lyman, Ukraine claimed 500 Russian casualties two days in a row. Given some reports I thought the figure reported today could have been 1,000.
Plus price signals *have* been preserved because the cap is on the unit price, not the total bill. The article linked is someone who wants *more*.
Did Fizzy Lizzy also not announce a new means tests insulation and other energy saving programme for 130k homes? That looks to me like a replacement for the 'means tested except for a couple of simple measures' ECO programme that has just had its funding removed from bills to remove 'Green Taxes'.
The "up to 200bn or more" stuff just cannot be known at this stage, due to variable wholesale prices.
AFAICS the Energy Support programme is the one bright spot in a dismal set of programmes so far, and seems to me to be roughly where most of Europe will eventually end up.
Having a better savings ratio, and lower house prices, would be too improvements to rebalancing the UK economy.
But it is foolish to deny that this in turn makes the coming weeks a perilous moment for the world. We have never seen this before. A dictator armed with nukes going down to humiliating defeat. What does he do?
How can I speak your language so you understand? We are talking about the difference between Barbara Windsor and Diana Dors here. One provides plenty of warmth in winter and plenty of shade in summer, and the other not so much. I don’t know if that helps?
but With that in mind, have another read through the link in the post above. Two different approaches, the one insanely expensive and not even targeted, the other beautifully target and could even pay for itself.
"Reports are mounting of a Russian collapse on the Kherson front, where approximately 25,000 Russian troops are trapped on the right bank of the Dnipro River with bridges across the river partially destroyed and unable to support military vehicles"
https://twitter.com/Biz_Ukraine_Mag/status/1576643785609531393?s=20&t=zrZRyfCzUwS_Hy45BaDvHA
A critical moment. An astounding defeat if this plays out
https://www.birminghammail.co.uk/news/cost-of-living/millions-face-800-winter-energy-25064972
Christians against poverty are asking for these further measures.
financial support for low income households which takes into account actual energy bills due to family size and need, including for those not in receipt of means-tested benefits.
Increase Local Housing Allowance and uprate benefits ahead Winter 2023 to reflect the inflation rate faced by low income households across the essentials they need.
A winter ban on energy companies forcibly switching customers to prepayment meters, including smart prepay, and a moratorium on court action to collect energy debts.
Free market think tanks have said that the government’s plan to freeze energy bills will be ineffective and does not sufficiently target those most in need of support.
https://www.cityam.com/free-market-think-tanks-criticise-trusss-energy-price-freeze/
It’s all very well free marketeers in the think tanks above, and like RCS and other PBers, bristling at the expensive market fixing ideology Truss is playing with here - like Mickey Mouse as the magicians apprentice - but I would ask the question, looking at the nature of UK capitalism, our energy market and how it is owned and organised, what Truss and Starmer have cooked up between themselves here and sold as a plan to help households with soaring energy costs, is very careful at the same time to be compensating shareholders for the profits they’d “lose” by keeping prices down. Is that how this moment will be remembered in the history books - does British economy work for workers and their families, and the environment - or put profiteering before everything else?
Then the question is: does his chain of command work, and will all the Russians under him risk total annihilation for this crazed dwarvish autocratic fuckwit?
What planet have they been on for the last few days ?
After Wall Street laid it's big egg in 1929, Herbert Hoover tried this gambit - and ushered in the New Deal.
In case of Hoover, part of his problem was that he'd entered the White House with very high expectations - the "Great Engineer" who'd fed starving millions during and after WWI. Expectations that were dashed for even his own strongest supporters by his performance in office.
In case of Prime Minister Truss, no such high expectations going in office, indeed the reverse even among many, if not most Tories. Yet she has contrived, in FAR shorter time than it took Hoover, to make an already critical economic situation for UK significantly, measurably worse, in particular in the eyes (and balance sheets) of the very markets she allegedly wants to enrich and liberate.
https://www.theblackstonehotel.com/stay/suites/smoke-filled-suite
That is, the "Smoke-Filled Room" suite, recreation of the infamous hotel room, where during the 1920 Republican National Convention, high-placed GOP bosses and power brokers bargained over the nomination of Warren G. Harding as the Next President of the United States.
The North east advance is, if reports are true, looking a bit lopsided. That could just be reporting catching up, but its imperative that Ukrainian forces can avoid the Russians turning to face right to isolate that lopsidedness. Thats possible since the latter appears to be in reverse right now, but its not a banker.
Two notes: 1. The Russan Airforce continues to not perform. 2. Russian artillery appears to have lost its edge, possibly because lots of it has been destroyed, possibly because their logistics chain has been really rumbled by depth strikes. Many weeks ago I ventured that this was an interesting comparison between the Russians who were very much direct fire on front line and the Ukrainians who were going for indirect and destruction behind the front.
So far one winner.
The most concerning thing though, if you are on the Russian side, is precisely no sizeable counter offensive anywhere, either directly to counter the recent advance or to divert/exploit a thin Ukrainian line somewhere. Its a really bad sign if they cant get something together.
For more details on Archegos and Credit Suisse- see here: https://barry-walsh.co.uk/same-old-same-old/ and https://barry-walsh.co.uk/for-want-of-a-nail/.
The conscripts will be even less well trained than the so-called elite units who failed in the Battles of Kyiv, Kharkiv and elsewhere. And more Ukrainian soldiers are receiving NATO training.
My only concern is whether a GOP victory in the midterms will see US support blocked, while the UK is too skint to take up the slack.
Brexit was an article of faith. Whatever you thought it was, you could have it, it would turn up and it would be a success and no one had the foggiest idea of how it was going to be done.
Nothing much happened in either case.
What was the question again?
Polls close 9pm UK, electronic counting, results should be known within 2-3 hours.
https://g1.globo.com/politica/eleicoes/2022/apuracao/presidente.ghtml
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BlZHUAcYSpo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zeqPb4JFMOw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0MPub88Hs2U
Key questions - will Lula win outright in today's 1st round, and will Bolsonaro accept the result if he loses?
Thanks,
DC
Not sure what. I guess that’s the trouble.
Are the GOP unified on scaling back, or could support still be pushed through?
Personally I think Wiki needs updated: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kola_Superdeep_Borehole
Are we talking tribalism here? We're all prone to it. For some absurd reason I care about what happens to Leyton Orient in a way that I do not and cannot care about other teams, no matter how good. If I'm honest, I'll admit to some tribal feelings towards leftish parties and antipathy towards right wing ones, though not with the same passion as with the O's and their opponents.
That's hardly a new insight though. Or did you have something else in mind?
Ukraine will also stop at Russia's recognised borders, and we will leave Putin to fight it out against any internal opposition.
And while in wars previously countries had the ability to manufacture to replace what was destroyed, Russia doesn't. They've not got the manufacturing capabilities anymore, or the technological ones either, to be able to replace that which has been lost.
Formerly they were all the gear, no idea, but now the gear is missing too.
The only real threat would be the election of a far right America First candidate in the next Presidential poll, but that would require Russia to survive being either forced to the negotiating table or beaten outright for another two years...
As for Brexit, it is simply a mechanism to return control to the British electorate. The British electorate knew that when you get elitist policies such as corporate bailouts and mass immigration from a UK PM, you can turf them out of power (as will now happen), while when you get corporate bailout and mass immigration from the EU bureaucracy you are stuffed. Smart people.
Kherson is the big one though. If they get a big movement there then they control Crimea's water supply and also bring many targets into range of HIMARs.
Also I noticed that the Turk's have just launched a new corvette they are building for Ukraine. The Ukrainian Defence Secretary says that it is going to be based at Sevastopol!
Had the honor of launching the “Hetman Ivan Mazepa” corvette. Its name was chosen in 2021 by the President @ZelenskyyUa. Built in Turkey, it will serve Ukraine and will be the first ship of its kind in our Navy. Wishing fair wind, success and victories only!
https://twitter.com/ZelenskaUA/status/1576622647361667073
The big point about Kherson, however, is sound. The Russians dont have a straight escape route because their arses are getting damp touching the river and the bridges are very much degraded, making re-supply a real problem.
It will stick in the craw, but there it is. The British Empire made the same calculation with Napoleon and we were right to do so
It's also what happens when you have closed media bubbles. Perhaps 1955ish to 2010ish was a now-finished golden age. One where most people got their news from the BBC and ITV, who strove to cover things in reasonable depth and with an aspiration towards accuracy and balance.
That said there is evidence in recent weeks of some Ukrainian advances defeated at some cost, towards Davydiv Brid and Pisky, so there are still Russian soldiers able and willing to fight and inflict losses on Ukraine.
In all honesty, I'd have to say that recent election results on the Continent call both assumptions into question. The term "far right" is overused, but I think that the governments of several EU nations are to the right of our own, and I suspect we're only one election away from RN winning a majority in France.
I hear Syria's nice.
They’ve gone quite mad. I thought Badenoch would do this kind of thing, I didn’t think Truss was this batshit crazy. Every day’s a school day.
It’s fascinating to watch, even as the imminent shafting I, my loved ones and friends are all going suffer comes ever closer.
I fucking despise these bastards for everything they’ve done since 2016. I cannot wait to see the back of them. They call themselves patriots yet deliberately turn the country to shit.
I had to shift my mum’s sofas from her front room to her south facing back room today, because it’s warmer in the winter. She’s not poor by any stretch of the imagination but she’s worried she won’t be able to afford her heating. I have to remortgage in August. God knows how much that’s going to go up. We’re a rich country, yet we’re reduced to warm banks.
On top of food banks. Ambulances queuing outside hospitals for hours and hours. Crumbling roads. Shit filled rivers.
These aren’t faults. They’re by design. This is what this government wants. They don’t give a flying fuck about the vast majority of people in this country.
And as I pointed out in another reply, Truss was never really a Remainer. She was an opportunist who was on the other side pretty quickly when she thought that would be better for her rise to power (and she was correct).
Why can't they be themselves - a leader for the country now? Learn lessons from others: yes. But understand today's world and problems and come up with ideas for today.
Nostalgia: it's the British disease and it infects our politics.
(And also thank you for the compliment and the advice. Genuinely.)
Looks like they were slaughtered en masse as they tried to flee
Presumably Russians are sharing these vids at home. Not nice
In short even if he did, if the West sticks to that stance, Putin is finished
Mark Hamill made ambassador in support of Ukraine Army of Drones project
https://edition.cnn.com/2022/09/29/entertainment/mark-hamill-ambassador/index.html
I'll let you draw your own very obvious Star Wars/Ukraine parallels.
The two most useful things that could happen to promote economic renewal in this country would be a house price crash, and a mass building programme of new dwellings to prevent strangulated demand from triggering a reflation. But is that what the old troughers want? Hell no!
Sometimes the more you say, the less you relay
You could have made this valid argument with 400 words, not 2000