Never mind Britain: Germany looks for US to lead the way on battle tanks to Ukraine https://www.politico.eu/article/britain-germany-us-battle-tanks-ukraine-war/ Britain’s moves toward supplying Ukraine with battle tanks are a headache for Olaf Scholz — but it’s still unlikely that the German chancellor will overcome his reluctance to sending heavy German armor without taking his lead from Washington.
Scholz’s spokesperson said Wednesday that plans by London to deliver British-made Challenger 2 tanks to Ukraine won’t change the position of the German government, which has so far rejected growing calls for Berlin to hand powerful German Leopard 2 tanks to Kyiv.
Warsaw has proposed that the German-made Leopards could be delivered via a broader alliance of European countries. “A company of Leopard tanks for Ukraine will be transferred as part of international coalition building. Such a decision is already [taken] in Poland,” Polish President Andrzej Duda said in a tweet. The big obstacle to these transfers is that Berlin needs to give the green light for re-export of German-made weapons.??
… Speaking on the condition of anonymity, two German officials said that Scholz’s position depended heavily on U.S. President Joe Biden, with whom the chancellor already closely coordinated when issuing a joint statement last week announcing the joint delivery of German and American infantry fighting vehicles to Ukraine.
I'm the US is carefully coordinating exactly what is given to Ukraine at what time. As I said at the beginning, it is in Western interests to arm Ukraine just enough to maintain a stalemate with Russia, no more and no less, and that is precisely what is happening. German tanks will go to Ukraine when and only when the US says so.
I would have thought it was in Western interests to see the current Russian regime (which has funded plenty of extremists on both sides of the political spectrum) fall.
Yes, and the safest way to achieve this is to keep Russia bogged down in a steady war of attrition. Go in too hard, and the risk of nuclear war starts to rise.
As pointed out in the article quoted above, the pattern has been the same throughout, with supplying arms by Germany
- Its impossible - No one has asked for this - We are considering it - We are still considering it - No one has asked for this - Oh, all right then.
Complete with accounts of how, from inside the German Governement, that after supplying something is agreed, it is repeatedly put on hold by Sholtz.
Biden has been trying to keep NATO united by not simply bulldozing Sholtz.
The highlighted quote from the article is "two German officials said that Scholz’s position depended heavily on U.S. President Joe Biden". I don't see how that can be interpreted any other way than Germany is waiting for instructions from the US. It doesn't imply to me that Germany is being awkward in any way.
Is correct. Germany has consistently indicated that it won't deliver MBTs without US involvement. That may be disppointing, but I haven't seen any evidence whatsoever except in the imagination of Malmesbury that Biden wanted to send tanks but didn't in order to not "bulldoze Sholtz" (or Scholz as he is called by anyone with a little bit of knowledge of Germany).
That's probably current. It doesn't though really address the point that Germany is also blocking other European allies sending Leopards to Ukraine.
Has everyone forgotten the report about China preventing the transfer of MiG fighter jets to Ukraine, or is it dismissed as erroneous?
Seems clear to me that the West is testing the waters and waiting for China to react. If China indicates that the provision of Western tanks would be a step too far, and lead them to provide tanks and other equipment for Russia, then the West will not provide tanks.
The focus of Western diplomacy will be on trying to ensure that China acquiesces to this.
Tesco and M&S sales rise a little less than the rate of inflation would be a more sensible headline. It’s OK news for them (Aldi and Lidl did very well).
I wonder how Republicans like this manifestation of the free market ?
America’s abortion access divide is reshaping blue-state border towns https://www.politico.com/news/2023/01/11/abortion-access-blue-state-border-towns-00077367 ...Carbondale is just one of many blue-state towns near red-state borders that some abortion rights supporters didn’t believe could sustain a clinic long-term if Roe were still standing. Now — with Choices and Alamo Women’s Reproductive Services — it has two, and more could follow. And with the influx of patients has come more customers at local restaurants, booked up hotels and other early measures of economic change, particularly in the Midwest and the West...
In other SMO news. Surovikin has been fucked off back to the VKS (the job he was bad at) and Gerasimov (the one with the air of Norris out of Coronation Street) is taking direct command in the Four Oblasts.
Given what went on before his appointment SVS can't have been sacked for incompetence although he did cough up Kharkov and whatever's left of Kherson so maybe. Other interpretations available in the Russian media include the possibility that good news is imminent and Shoigu/Gerasimov want to take the credit.
Tesco and M&S sales rise a little less than the rate of inflation would be a more sensible headline. It’s OK news for them (Aldi and Lidl did very well).
Some of the figures quoted are probably worst case scenarios, but would you for example want to be a bank which had recently made long term loans for building coal fired power stations ?
Given that coal fired power stations are going up everywhere (except the UK), yes, absolutely. Germany has also recently said it's going to build a lot more gas capacity.
It isn't in any way a realistic scenario that there will be a collapse in the value of these assets, given that they are rendered more necessary not less, by the insistence in the UK on heavily subsidising intermittent, unreliable sources of renewable power, that depend on fossil fuels for back up generation.
The only thing that strikes me as 'dirty' in the above article is the attempt to blackmail Governments and financial institutions into damaging companies who are doing legal and frankly vital work to bring us reliable and inexpensive fuel. People working for these sorts of pressure groups should perhaps be a little more wary that Governments might take their doom-mongering seriously and question whether such grotesque self-harm is actually worthwhile at all, either economically or environmentally.
In other SMO news. Surovikin has been fucked off back to the VKS (the job he was bad at) and Gerasimov (the one with the air of Norris out of Coronation Street) is taking direct command in the Four Oblasts.
Given what went on before his appointment SVS can't have been sacked for incompetence although he did cough up Kharkov and whatever's left of Kherson so maybe. Other interpretations available in the Russian media include the possibility that good news is imminent and Shoigu/Gerasimov want to take the credit.
Or Shoigu/Gerasimov are being lined up to blame for the failure of the 'SMO'.
But really much of this is irrelevant. Either Russia is comprehensively defeated, or it isn't. Putin shuffling the cards again isn't going to effect the outcome significantly.
What caused the computer problems that grounded all US domestic flights today?
1. Russian action? 2. US action? 3. Third party action? 4. Terrible coincidence as in a French farce, or similar to the "perfect storm" that a supplier told me today was the reason why it might take a fortnight for him to deliver something to me, not the usual 2-3 days? (The one thing in favour of "perfect storm" talk is that it's not quite so annoying as when someone says "going forward".)
At least 9 times out of 10 I'd expect this to be a snafu. Someone accidentally found a single point of failure that shouldn't exist, or they botched an upgrade, or one of many possible things went wrong.
I don't know if you'd classify that as a terrible coincidence. Depends how many things went wrong at once. It might only have been one.
It appears to have been a database corruption, which for some reason also affected the backup system and couldn’t easily be rolled back. In other words they had no actual redundancy, and it’s a wonder how it’s never crashed before!
Doesn't surprise me in the least. I see they're also now relying on the Republican House to authorise the spending to overhaul their antiquated IT systems. I wonder whether their database is even still supported by the vendor?
Tesco and M&S sales rise a little less than the rate of inflation would be a more sensible headline. It’s OK news for them (Aldi and Lidl did very well).
It does say like for like sales
I don't think that means inflation adjusted. It means if Tesco has opened an ironmongery department since last year you ignore those sales.
ETA or more likely, opened an entire new store. Or closed one.
Worst PM piece to camera I have seen. Hard to get through it. He somehow manages to combine May’s robotic delivery, with Johnson’s smarm, and Truss’s idiocy - all wrapped in patronising superiority.
@IanDunt is right. This is gonna get really old, really quickly. ~AA
His delivery is measured. And spaced. He's been doing this For a while.
I think the calm administrator thing could work if what he was saying matched people's realities. His stance on the NHS was to brag about how much cash was being tipped in, to remind everyone how they clapped for nurses, then said he had "immediately" adopted a new strategy (4 months in).
But, say the people, if all that is true why is the NHS in such a state and the blessed nurses on strike where you refuse to even speak to them?
It isn't the delivery thats the problem. Its the content.
Rishi is a much more natural communicator in person rather than in doing set pieces to camera.
I just watched it. Like the socially awkward CEO asked to give a motivational new year piece to camera to the staff on the office intranet.
He was very poor in the leadership campaign too, so I am not sure why anyone is surprised. Strange shouting tone like he was trying to get a bunch of kids on a coach excited about a field trip litterpicking in Slough. 'OUR WIMMIN!'
Outside the tourist areas everyone wears masks 95% of the time. Mad
On the upside: new delivery services and zoom calls mean you can get any pills you want after a quick video consultation with a medic: they are then biked instantly to your hotel
Isn't it just a statement of food inflation? If prices go up, then sales by value go up. @RochdalePioneers put up some good charts yesterday showing volumes down (except Lidl and Aldi) and down-shifting to budget brands.
Some of the figures quoted are probably worst case scenarios, but would you for example want to be a bank which had recently made long term loans for building coal fired power stations ?
Given that coal fired power stations are going up everywhere (except the UK), yes, absolutely. Germany has also recently said it's going to build a lot more gas capacity.
It isn't in any way a realistic scenario that there will be a collapse in the value of these assets, given that they are rendered more necessary not less, by the insistence in the UK on heavily subsidising intermittent, unreliable sources of renewable power, that depend on fossil fuels for back up generation.
The only thing that strikes me as 'dirty' in the above article is the attempt to blackmail Governments and financial institutions into damaging companies who are doing legal and frankly vital work to bring us reliable and inexpensive fuel. People working for these sorts of pressure groups should perhaps be a little more wary that Governments might take their doom-mongering seriously and question whether such grotesque self-harm is actually worthwhile at all, either economically or environmentally.
That's not really true.
Yes, new (more efficient coal) plants are being built, but lots are getting retired too.
Overall coal capacity is basically flat,
There's a good spreadsheet here that tracks total generating capacity by country.
Worldwide, 11.4GW of coal plants were retired in 1H2022, while 13.8GW started.
Some of the figures quoted are probably worst case scenarios, but would you for example want to be a bank which had recently made long term loans for building coal fired power stations ?
Given that coal fired power stations are going up everywhere (except the UK), yes, absolutely. Germany has also recently said it's going to build a lot more gas capacity.
It isn't in any way a realistic scenario that there will be a collapse in the value of these assets, given that they are rendered more necessary not less, by the insistence in the UK on heavily subsidising intermittent, unreliable sources of renewable power, that depend on fossil fuels for back up generation.
The only thing that strikes me as 'dirty' in the above article is the attempt to blackmail Governments and financial institutions into damaging companies who are doing legal and frankly vital work to bring us reliable and inexpensive fuel. People working for these sorts of pressure groups should perhaps be a little more wary that Governments might take their doom-mongering seriously and question whether such grotesque self-harm is actually worthwhile at all, either economically or environmentally.
That's not really true.
Yes, new (more efficient coal) plants are being built, but lots are getting retired too.
Overall coal capacity is basically flat,
There's a good spreadsheet here that tracks total generating capacity by country.
Worldwide, 11.4GW of coal plants were retired in 1H2022, while 13.8GW started.
The US dominated retirements, closing 7.6GW of plants in 1H22.
This sort of thing is going to be hitting the airwaves for months to come, probably all the way to the next GE.
The Tories are going to be slaughtered in 2024, and the new government is going to have to be more radical in its reform agenda if it wants any chance of retaining its popularity.
Do I want to live in a country where the health outcomes of me and my family are compromised because of the issues the health service faces? No, and someone needs to get a grip on it. It won’t be the Tories. The jury is out on Starmer.
Rishi is a much more natural communicator in person rather than in doing set pieces to camera.
I just watched it. Like the socially awkward CEO asked to give a motivational new year piece to camera to the staff on the office intranet.
He was very poor in the leadership campaign too, so I am not sure why anyone is surprised. Strange shouting tone like he was trying to get a bunch of kids on a coach excited about a field trip litterpicking in Slough. 'OUR WIMMIN!'
God wasn't that AWFUL. And he did it repeatedly, and it was commenred on every time.
🔴 Rishi Sunak will hold face-to-face talks with Nicola Sturgeon in his first visit to Scotland as Prime Minister, which starts on Thursday, in an engagement strategy to counter support for Scottish independence.
Worst PM piece to camera I have seen. Hard to get through it. He somehow manages to combine May’s robotic delivery, with Johnson’s smarm, and Truss’s idiocy - all wrapped in patronising superiority.
@IanDunt is right. This is gonna get really old, really quickly. ~AA
His delivery is measured. And spaced. He's been doing this For a while.
I think the calm administrator thing could work if what he was saying matched people's realities. His stance on the NHS was to brag about how much cash was being tipped in, to remind everyone how they clapped for nurses, then said he had "immediately" adopted a new strategy (4 months in).
But, say the people, if all that is true why is the NHS in such a state and the blessed nurses on strike where you refuse to even speak to them?
It isn't the delivery thats the problem. Its the content.
It's both, really. Good delivery can cover a weak message and a strong enough message can survive weak delivery.
But it's a bit moot anyway, since many (most?) voters don't watch the big news bulletins, let alone PPBs. All that matters is whether the things voters think the government is responsible for, like the economy and public services, are getting noticeably better or worse.
Some of the figures quoted are probably worst case scenarios, but would you for example want to be a bank which had recently made long term loans for building coal fired power stations ?
Given that coal fired power stations are going up everywhere (except the UK), yes, absolutely. Germany has also recently said it's going to build a lot more gas capacity.
It isn't in any way a realistic scenario that there will be a collapse in the value of these assets, given that they are rendered more necessary not less, by the insistence in the UK on heavily subsidising intermittent, unreliable sources of renewable power, that depend on fossil fuels for back up generation.
The only thing that strikes me as 'dirty' in the above article is the attempt to blackmail Governments and financial institutions into damaging companies who are doing legal and frankly vital work to bring us reliable and inexpensive fuel. People working for these sorts of pressure groups should perhaps be a little more wary that Governments might take their doom-mongering seriously and question whether such grotesque self-harm is actually worthwhile at all, either economically or environmentally.
We went over this yesterday with your drool about Sainsburys. Look at the data not the headline. Beeb says Tesco sales +5.3%. When the price of the products they are selling is +16%. When the JS data you couldn't be bothered to look at yesterday showed not only Tesco volume heavily down, but their product (and thus profit) mix also badly skewed.
Its only good news if you are as mentally challenged as Lee Anderson.
Tesco and M&S sales rise a little less than the rate of inflation would be a more sensible headline. It’s OK news for them (Aldi and Lidl did very well).
Isn't it just a statement of food inflation? If prices go up, then sales by value go up. @RochdalePioneers put up some good charts yesterday showing volumes down (except Lidl and Aldi) and down-shifting to budget brands.
It says like for like sales, so the amount of peas they sold has gone up from last year, not the inflation adjusted cost of peas.
Isn't it just a statement of food inflation? If prices go up, then sales by value go up. @RochdalePioneers put up some good charts yesterday showing volumes down (except Lidl and Aldi) and down-shifting to budget brands.
It says like for like sales, so the amount of peas they sold has gone up from last year, not the inflation adjusted cost of peas.
Like for like (LFL) growth is a measure of growth in sales, adjusted for new or divested businesses. This is a widely used indicator of retailers' current trading performance.[1] The adjustment is important in businesses that show a significant dynamic of expansion, disposals or closures.[2] To compare sales figures from different periods is only meaningful, as a measure of the effectiveness of the sales function, when using the same basis for measurement.
One method compares the latest year's sales only to those from activities or locations that were in effect the previous year as well. This method would ignore sales that were only possible this year, for reasons such as a merger or acquisition or the launch of a new product or store.
However, there is a significant choice of alternative methods of calculation, which makes it difficult to compare figures quoted by different retailers.[1]
The portion of current sales achieved through activities that are comparable to the activities of the previous year. Investopedia explains Like-For-Like Sales. Using like-for-like sales is a method of valuation that attempts to exclude any effects of expansion, acquisition, or other events that artificially enlarge the company's sales. For example, if you are trying to compare the turnover of company ABC from this year to last year, it makes sense to exclude from the equation any sales resulting from acquisitions this year.
Isn't it just a statement of food inflation? If prices go up, then sales by value go up. @RochdalePioneers put up some good charts yesterday showing volumes down (except Lidl and Aldi) and down-shifting to budget brands.
It says like for like sales, so the amount of peas they sold has gone up from last year, not the inflation adjusted cost of peas.
Incorrect. That is not what like for like sales is. You've already been the correct definition above by @beinndearg
Am curious about what your line of attack is. It sounds like "great results from the supermarkets / so the economy is doing ok / so vote Conservative". If so that rather fails when the people you are saying "great results" for disagree. Selling less products. For less profit. At higher cost per sale. Is not "good news".
Perhaps someone can explain it to you with crayons.
I would have thought it was in Western interests to see the current Russian regime (which has funded plenty of extremists on both sides of the political spectrum) fall.
I think we'd be uncertain about it - not really in our interest to have Russia fall into warring factions, or to end up controlled by even more erratic types. The idea that stirring regime change will produce an agreeable pro-Western regime is probably illusory at this point.
Neither is it in our interests to see Russia continue what it is doing, and taking over Ukraine and (at least) the Baltic states, interfering more in our internal politics, and poisoning people on our shores with radiological and nerve agents.
Yes, we cannot be sure what would replace Putin. But that does not mean that the potential fall of Putin should stop us from doing it. We cannot appease evil for fear of what lurks behind that evil.
It depends on what you mean by "doing it". There's a difference between rejecting appeasement and actively seeking regime change. The West is energetically and successfully helping Ukraine defend itself, with some debate about how far to push that. We would certainly intervene directly if NATO members were attacked. Actively seeking to overthrow Putin as part of our policy would, however, be a different ballgame and quite likely to lead to an even more nationalist successor. It's unlikely that the US (or British) leadership see that as desirable.
I would have thought it was in Western interests to see the current Russian regime (which has funded plenty of extremists on both sides of the political spectrum) fall.
I think we'd be uncertain about it - not really in our interest to have Russia fall into warring factions, or to end up controlled by even more erratic types. The idea that stirring regime change will produce an agreeable pro-Western regime is probably illusory at this point.
Neither is it in our interests to see Russia continue what it is doing, and taking over Ukraine and (at least) the Baltic states, interfering more in our internal politics, and poisoning people on our shores with radiological and nerve agents.
Yes, we cannot be sure what would replace Putin. But that does not mean that the potential fall of Putin should stop us from doing it. We cannot appease evil for fear of what lurks behind that evil.
It depends on what you mean by "doing it". There's a difference between rejecting appeasement and actively seeking regime change. The West is energetically and successfully helping Ukraine defend itself, with some debate about how far to push that. We would certainly intervene directly if NATO members were attacked. Actively seeking to overthrow Putin as part of our policy would, however, be a different ballgame and quite likely to lead to an even more nationalist successor. It's unlikely that the US (or British) leadership see that as desirable.
They can be as nationalist as they like. The question is, do they have the capacity to cause misery and death to the citizens of their neighbours.
Isn't it just a statement of food inflation? If prices go up, then sales by value go up. @RochdalePioneers put up some good charts yesterday showing volumes down (except Lidl and Aldi) and down-shifting to budget brands.
It says like for like sales, so the amount of peas they sold has gone up from last year, not the inflation adjusted cost of peas.
‘Like-for-like’ adjusts for things such as store openings and closures, rather than inflation.
Thanks to our ‘friend’, Mr Putin, food inflation is running well above the headline CPI at the moment, which is what these figures are showing more than anything.
Mr Pioneers is sadly right on this one, there’s a lot of ‘downbranding’ going on, both within supermarkets and between them.
Some of the figures quoted are probably worst case scenarios, but would you for example want to be a bank which had recently made long term loans for building coal fired power stations ?
Given that coal fired power stations are going up everywhere (except the UK), yes, absolutely. Germany has also recently said it's going to build a lot more gas capacity.
It isn't in any way a realistic scenario that there will be a collapse in the value of these assets, given that they are rendered more necessary not less, by the insistence in the UK on heavily subsidising intermittent, unreliable sources of renewable power, that depend on fossil fuels for back up generation.
The only thing that strikes me as 'dirty' in the above article is the attempt to blackmail Governments and financial institutions into damaging companies who are doing legal and frankly vital work to bring us reliable and inexpensive fuel. People working for these sorts of pressure groups should perhaps be a little more wary that Governments might take their doom-mongering seriously and question whether such grotesque self-harm is actually worthwhile at all, either economically or environmentally.
Alternatively, the falling price of renewables will put such dirty and expensive facilities out of business around a third of the way through their planned lifetimes. You've been wrong consistently about renewables. I don't expect that to change.
Isn't it just a statement of food inflation? If prices go up, then sales by value go up. @RochdalePioneers put up some good charts yesterday showing volumes down (except Lidl and Aldi) and down-shifting to budget brands.
It says like for like sales, so the amount of peas they sold has gone up from last year, not the inflation adjusted cost of peas.
Incorrect. That is not what like for like sales is. You've already been the correct definition above by @beinndearg
Am curious about what your line of attack is. It sounds like "great results from the supermarkets / so the economy is doing ok / so vote Conservative". If so that rather fails when the people you are saying "great results" for disagree. Selling less products. For less profit. At higher cost per sale. Is not "good news".
Perhaps someone can explain it to you with crayons.
So, food price inflation is well above 10%, Tesco saw sales growth of just 5.3%, and yet volume growth of 7.4% in value range - so it must have seen a brutal drop in sales volumes of its non-budget ranges.
Well done on their media team for the BBC headline though.
In other SMO news. Surovikin has been fucked off back to the VKS (the job he was bad at) and Gerasimov (the one with the air of Norris out of Coronation Street) is taking direct command in the Four Oblasts.
Given what went on before his appointment SVS can't have been sacked for incompetence although he did cough up Kharkov and whatever's left of Kherson so maybe. Other interpretations available in the Russian media include the possibility that good news is imminent and Shoigu/Gerasimov want to take the credit.
Or Shoigu/Gerasimov are being lined up to blame for the failure of the 'SMO'.
But really much of this is irrelevant. Either Russia is comprehensively defeated, or it isn't. Putin shuffling the cards again isn't going to effect the outcome significantly.
May I point you to the very good Saturday morning podcast "The Briefing Room", hosted by David Aronovitch, whereon he invites experts and very sadly they don't call a comprehensive defeat of Russia.
Participants most recently were:
Nina Kuryata, Ukrainian journalist with Tortoise Media Shashank Joshi, Defence Editor at The Economist Samantha de Bendern, Associate Fellow in the Russia and Eurasia Programme at Chatham House Sir Lawrence Freedman, Emeritus Professor of War Studies at King’s College, London
I'm suprised they haven't called you to take part.
Isn't it just a statement of food inflation? If prices go up, then sales by value go up. @RochdalePioneers put up some good charts yesterday showing volumes down (except Lidl and Aldi) and down-shifting to budget brands.
Supermarkets had a decent-ish Christmas period. What happens next is perhaps a different matter.
This sort of thing is going to be hitting the airwaves for months to come, probably all the way to the next GE.
The Tories are going to be slaughtered in 2024, and the new government is going to have to be more radical in its reform agenda if it wants any chance of retaining its popularity.
Do I want to live in a country where the health outcomes of me and my family are compromised because of the issues the health service faces? No, and someone needs to get a grip on it. It won’t be the Tories. The jury is out on Starmer.
Yes - promises of more money aren't going to work when there are regular headlines like this.
All Starmer has to do to capitalize is say he will fix it, and then have 2-3 sentences after that which sound vaguely plausible. People will conclude they might as well give Labour a go. It also helps that the service was performing better under Blair/Brown.
I would have thought it was in Western interests to see the current Russian regime (which has funded plenty of extremists on both sides of the political spectrum) fall.
I think we'd be uncertain about it - not really in our interest to have Russia fall into warring factions, or to end up controlled by even more erratic types. The idea that stirring regime change will produce an agreeable pro-Western regime is probably illusory at this point.
Neither is it in our interests to see Russia continue what it is doing, and taking over Ukraine and (at least) the Baltic states, interfering more in our internal politics, and poisoning people on our shores with radiological and nerve agents.
Yes, we cannot be sure what would replace Putin. But that does not mean that the potential fall of Putin should stop us from doing it. We cannot appease evil for fear of what lurks behind that evil.
It depends on what you mean by "doing it". There's a difference between rejecting appeasement and actively seeking regime change. The West is energetically and successfully helping Ukraine defend itself, with some debate about how far to push that. We would certainly intervene directly if NATO members were attacked. Actively seeking to overthrow Putin as part of our policy would, however, be a different ballgame and quite likely to lead to an even more nationalist successor. It's unlikely that the US (or British) leadership see that as desirable.
But of a strawman there, Nick.
The aim is to defeat completely the invasion of a sovereign state. What happens to Putin is beyond our control, and other than his perhaps facing an international criminal court sometime in the future, isn't really a factor we should worry about too much.
Isn't it just a statement of food inflation? If prices go up, then sales by value go up. @RochdalePioneers put up some good charts yesterday showing volumes down (except Lidl and Aldi) and down-shifting to budget brands.
That'll be yer akshooal price elasticity of demand, mate, innit.
In other SMO news. Surovikin has been fucked off back to the VKS (the job he was bad at) and Gerasimov (the one with the air of Norris out of Coronation Street) is taking direct command in the Four Oblasts.
Given what went on before his appointment SVS can't have been sacked for incompetence although he did cough up Kharkov and whatever's left of Kherson so maybe. Other interpretations available in the Russian media include the possibility that good news is imminent and Shoigu/Gerasimov want to take the credit.
Or Shoigu/Gerasimov are being lined up to blame for the failure of the 'SMO'.
But really much of this is irrelevant. Either Russia is comprehensively defeated, or it isn't. Putin shuffling the cards again isn't going to effect the outcome significantly.
May I point you to the very good Saturday morning podcast "The Briefing Room", hosted by David Aronovitch, whereon he invites experts and very sadly they don't call a comprehensive defeat of Russia.
Participants most recently were:
Nina Kuryata, Ukrainian journalist with Tortoise Media Shashank Joshi, Defence Editor at The Economist Samantha de Bendern, Associate Fellow in the Russia and Eurasia Programme at Chatham House Sir Lawrence Freedman, Emeritus Professor of War Studies at King’s College, London
I'm suprised they haven't called you to take part.
It's very difficult being the aggressor.
And usually, the initial invasion goes well, but then holding territory when the people don't want you there is the real killer.
Now, sure, sometimes there's a massive difference of wealth, population, technology, etc.
But that's not really the case this time.
I don't think Russia's defeat comes because Ukraine militarily defeats them. I think it comes because over time there become ever more people in Russia who benefit from the war's end than its continuance. And at some point a tipping point is reached.
Isn't it just a statement of food inflation? If prices go up, then sales by value go up. @RochdalePioneers put up some good charts yesterday showing volumes down (except Lidl and Aldi) and down-shifting to budget brands.
It says like for like sales, so the amount of peas they sold has gone up from last year, not the inflation adjusted cost of peas.
Incorrect. That is not what like for like sales is. You've already been the correct definition above by @beinndearg
Am curious about what your line of attack is. It sounds like "great results from the supermarkets / so the economy is doing ok / so vote Conservative". If so that rather fails when the people you are saying "great results" for disagree. Selling less products. For less profit. At higher cost per sale. Is not "good news".
Perhaps someone can explain it to you with crayons.
So, food price inflation is well above 10%, Tesco saw sales growth of just 5.3%, and yet volume growth of 7.4% in value range - so it must have seen a brutal drop in sales volumes of its non-budget ranges.
Well done on their media team for the BBC headline though.
Across the whole sector value tier performance is peaky. A huge "step to the left" with consumers downgrading from premium to standard plus to standard to value. So a big spike in own brand value shite - where nobody makes any money. But also a spike in sales of super premium. Problem is that we're seeing the middle ground hollowed out, and that is where the bulk of sales and profits are.
Even worse is that the big rise in super premium was heavily led by Aldi and Lidl. So if you are Tesco you have the perfect storm. Shoppers staying with you to downtrade their basket and thus buy less of the cheaper no profit margin products. And shop in Aldi to buy the posh stuff instead of you Finest seasonal range. And there is little more expensive / risky for retailers than ordering a load of seasonal only high value products which are basically worthless past Christmas Eve...
Isn't it just a statement of food inflation? If prices go up, then sales by value go up. @RochdalePioneers put up some good charts yesterday showing volumes down (except Lidl and Aldi) and down-shifting to budget brands.
It says like for like sales, so the amount of peas they sold has gone up from last year, not the inflation adjusted cost of peas.
‘Like-for-like’ adjusts for things such as store openings and closures, rather than inflation.
Thanks to our ‘friend’, Mr Putin, food inflation is running well above the headline CPI at the moment, which is what these figures are showing more than anything.
Mr Pioneers is sadly right on this one, there’s a lot of ‘downbranding’ going on, both within supermarkets and between them.
Like for like strips out inflation Tescos would not be reporting a very strong Christmas period if actual sales had gone down
Isn't it just a statement of food inflation? If prices go up, then sales by value go up. @RochdalePioneers put up some good charts yesterday showing volumes down (except Lidl and Aldi) and down-shifting to budget brands.
It says like for like sales, so the amount of peas they sold has gone up from last year, not the inflation adjusted cost of peas.
‘Like-for-like’ adjusts for things such as store openings and closures, rather than inflation.
Thanks to our ‘friend’, Mr Putin, food inflation is running well above the headline CPI at the moment, which is what these figures are showing more than anything.
Mr Pioneers is sadly right on this one, there’s a lot of ‘downbranding’ going on, both within supermarkets and between them.
Like for like strips out inflation Tescos would not be reporting a very strong Christmas period if actual sales had gone down
That's not what like-for-like means.
Like-for-like means simply "assuming we had the same number of stores as last year, what would our growth - in pounds sterling - be?"
I would have thought it was in Western interests to see the current Russian regime (which has funded plenty of extremists on both sides of the political spectrum) fall.
I think we'd be uncertain about it - not really in our interest to have Russia fall into warring factions, or to end up controlled by even more erratic types. The idea that stirring regime change will produce an agreeable pro-Western regime is probably illusory at this point.
Neither is it in our interests to see Russia continue what it is doing, and taking over Ukraine and (at least) the Baltic states, interfering more in our internal politics, and poisoning people on our shores with radiological and nerve agents.
Yes, we cannot be sure what would replace Putin. But that does not mean that the potential fall of Putin should stop us from doing it. We cannot appease evil for fear of what lurks behind that evil.
It depends on what you mean by "doing it". There's a difference between rejecting appeasement and actively seeking regime change. The West is energetically and successfully helping Ukraine defend itself, with some debate about how far to push that. We would certainly intervene directly if NATO members were attacked. Actively seeking to overthrow Putin as part of our policy would, however, be a different ballgame and quite likely to lead to an even more nationalist successor. It's unlikely that the US (or British) leadership see that as desirable.
But of a strawman there, Nick.
The aim is to defeat completely the invasion of a sovereign state. What happens to Putin is beyond our control, and other than his perhaps facing an international criminal court sometime in the future, isn't really a factor we should worry about too much.
That is manifestly not the aim. If "the West" wanted to defeat completely the invasion of a sovereign state then they would have done so.
I heard (same podcast) that the US is now spending something like 6-8% (can't remember exactly) of it's GDP on defence which, looking at recent numbers (around 3%) suggests I misheard or misunderstood. It is high, however, and there is a non-trivial proportion of that spending going to aid Ukraine. But evidently not too much.
I would have thought it was in Western interests to see the current Russian regime (which has funded plenty of extremists on both sides of the political spectrum) fall.
I think we'd be uncertain about it - not really in our interest to have Russia fall into warring factions, or to end up controlled by even more erratic types. The idea that stirring regime change will produce an agreeable pro-Western regime is probably illusory at this point.
Neither is it in our interests to see Russia continue what it is doing, and taking over Ukraine and (at least) the Baltic states, interfering more in our internal politics, and poisoning people on our shores with radiological and nerve agents.
Yes, we cannot be sure what would replace Putin. But that does not mean that the potential fall of Putin should stop us from doing it. We cannot appease evil for fear of what lurks behind that evil.
It depends on what you mean by "doing it". There's a difference between rejecting appeasement and actively seeking regime change. The West is energetically and successfully helping Ukraine defend itself, with some debate about how far to push that. We would certainly intervene directly if NATO members were attacked. Actively seeking to overthrow Putin as part of our policy would, however, be a different ballgame and quite likely to lead to an even more nationalist successor. It's unlikely that the US (or British) leadership see that as desirable.
But of a strawman there, Nick.
The aim is to defeat completely the invasion of a sovereign state. What happens to Putin is beyond our control, and other than his perhaps facing an international criminal court sometime in the future, isn't really a factor we should worry about too much.
That is manifestly not the aim. If "the West" wanted to defeat completely the invasion of a sovereign state then they would have done so.
I heard (same podcast) that the US is now spending something like 6-8% (can't remember exactly) of it's GDP on defence which, looking at recent numbers (around 3%) suggests I misheard or misunderstood. It is high, however, and there is a non-trivial proportion of that spending going to aid Ukraine. But evidently not too much.
It is - of course - worth remembering that the US definition of defence spending includes thinks like the Department of Veterans Affairs.
In other SMO news. Surovikin has been fucked off back to the VKS (the job he was bad at) and Gerasimov (the one with the air of Norris out of Coronation Street) is taking direct command in the Four Oblasts.
Given what went on before his appointment SVS can't have been sacked for incompetence although he did cough up Kharkov and whatever's left of Kherson so maybe. Other interpretations available in the Russian media include the possibility that good news is imminent and Shoigu/Gerasimov want to take the credit.
Or Shoigu/Gerasimov are being lined up to blame for the failure of the 'SMO'.
But really much of this is irrelevant. Either Russia is comprehensively defeated, or it isn't. Putin shuffling the cards again isn't going to effect the outcome significantly.
May I point you to the very good Saturday morning podcast "The Briefing Room", hosted by David Aronovitch, whereon he invites experts and very sadly they don't call a comprehensive defeat of Russia.
Participants most recently were:
Nina Kuryata, Ukrainian journalist with Tortoise Media Shashank Joshi, Defence Editor at The Economist Samantha de Bendern, Associate Fellow in the Russia and Eurasia Programme at Chatham House Sir Lawrence Freedman, Emeritus Professor of War Studies at King’s College, London
I'm suprised they haven't called you to take part.
It's very difficult being the aggressor.
And usually, the initial invasion goes well, but then holding territory when the people don't want you there is the real killer.
Now, sure, sometimes there's a massive difference of wealth, population, technology, etc.
But that's not really the case this time.
I don't think Russia's defeat comes because Ukraine militarily defeats them. I think it comes because over time there become ever more people in Russia who benefit from the war's end than its continuance. And at some point a tipping point is reached.
I hope so and I hope it comes quickly, although I'm not sure which people will be decisive in such a process. One point the show did make was that it was far easier for Russia to re-tool it's factories to produce war materiel and actually the domestic production of cars, etc, has fallen off a cliff. Hence all the cries of "Russia is running out of kit" are not particularly close to the truth. Yet.
Some of the figures quoted are probably worst case scenarios, but would you for example want to be a bank which had recently made long term loans for building coal fired power stations ?
Given that coal fired power stations are going up everywhere (except the UK), yes, absolutely. Germany has also recently said it's going to build a lot more gas capacity.
It isn't in any way a realistic scenario that there will be a collapse in the value of these assets, given that they are rendered more necessary not less, by the insistence in the UK on heavily subsidising intermittent, unreliable sources of renewable power, that depend on fossil fuels for back up generation.
The only thing that strikes me as 'dirty' in the above article is the attempt to blackmail Governments and financial institutions into damaging companies who are doing legal and frankly vital work to bring us reliable and inexpensive fuel. People working for these sorts of pressure groups should perhaps be a little more wary that Governments might take their doom-mongering seriously and question whether such grotesque self-harm is actually worthwhile at all, either economically or environmentally.
That's not really true.
Yes, new (more efficient coal) plants are being built, but lots are getting retired too.
Overall coal capacity is basically flat,
There's a good spreadsheet here that tracks total generating capacity by country.
Worldwide, 11.4GW of coal plants were retired in 1H2022, while 13.8GW started.
The US dominated retirements, closing 7.6GW of plants in 1H22.
The political climate has also changed somewhat in the last year. Compare this article:
I would have thought it was in Western interests to see the current Russian regime (which has funded plenty of extremists on both sides of the political spectrum) fall.
I think we'd be uncertain about it - not really in our interest to have Russia fall into warring factions, or to end up controlled by even more erratic types. The idea that stirring regime change will produce an agreeable pro-Western regime is probably illusory at this point.
Neither is it in our interests to see Russia continue what it is doing, and taking over Ukraine and (at least) the Baltic states, interfering more in our internal politics, and poisoning people on our shores with radiological and nerve agents.
Yes, we cannot be sure what would replace Putin. But that does not mean that the potential fall of Putin should stop us from doing it. We cannot appease evil for fear of what lurks behind that evil.
It depends on what you mean by "doing it". There's a difference between rejecting appeasement and actively seeking regime change. The West is energetically and successfully helping Ukraine defend itself, with some debate about how far to push that. We would certainly intervene directly if NATO members were attacked. Actively seeking to overthrow Putin as part of our policy would, however, be a different ballgame and quite likely to lead to an even more nationalist successor. It's unlikely that the US (or British) leadership see that as desirable.
But of a strawman there, Nick.
The aim is to defeat completely the invasion of a sovereign state. What happens to Putin is beyond our control, and other than his perhaps facing an international criminal court sometime in the future, isn't really a factor we should worry about too much.
That is manifestly not the aim. If "the West" wanted to defeat completely the invasion of a sovereign state then they would have done so.
I heard (same podcast) that the US is now spending something like 6-8% (can't remember exactly) of it's GDP on defence which, looking at recent numbers (around 3%) suggests I misheard or misunderstood. It is high, however, and there is a non-trivial proportion of that spending going to aid Ukraine. But evidently not too much.
It is - of course - worth remembering that the US definition of defence spending includes thinks like the Department of Veterans Affairs.
My 30-minute exposure to "The Briefing Room" has of course rendered me an expert on all things Ukraine-Russia Conflict so please don't be shy if you need any guidance or assistance on the issue.
What caused the computer problems that grounded all US domestic flights today?
1. Russian action? 2. US action? 3. Third party action? 4. Terrible coincidence as in a French farce, or similar to the "perfect storm" that a supplier told me today was the reason why it might take a fortnight for him to deliver something to me, not the usual 2-3 days? (The one thing in favour of "perfect storm" talk is that it's not quite so annoying as when someone says "going forward".)
At least 9 times out of 10 I'd expect this to be a snafu. Someone accidentally found a single point of failure that shouldn't exist, or they botched an upgrade, or one of many possible things went wrong.
I don't know if you'd classify that as a terrible coincidence. Depends how many things went wrong at once. It might only have been one.
It appears to have been a database corruption, which for some reason also affected the backup system and couldn’t easily be rolled back. In other words they had no actual redundancy, and it’s a wonder how it’s never crashed before!
Doesn't surprise me in the least. I see they're also now relying on the Republican House to authorise the spending to overhaul their antiquated IT systems. I wonder whether their database is even still supported by the vendor?
It’s apparently an in-house system, dating back a long time. It takes 90 minutes to reboot the server!
As a database, it’s relatively tiny, with hundreds of new records per day - that are written in acronyms to be short, because they often get transmitted by radio - with tens of thousands of searches based on simple indexes such as airfields, airways, waypoints, and co-ordinates, that usually get plotted on maps by various third-party tools.
I wouldn’t be surprised, to discover that it was running on some ancient computer under someone’s desk at the FAA.
I would have thought it was in Western interests to see the current Russian regime (which has funded plenty of extremists on both sides of the political spectrum) fall.
I think we'd be uncertain about it - not really in our interest to have Russia fall into warring factions, or to end up controlled by even more erratic types. The idea that stirring regime change will produce an agreeable pro-Western regime is probably illusory at this point.
Neither is it in our interests to see Russia continue what it is doing, and taking over Ukraine and (at least) the Baltic states, interfering more in our internal politics, and poisoning people on our shores with radiological and nerve agents.
Yes, we cannot be sure what would replace Putin. But that does not mean that the potential fall of Putin should stop us from doing it. We cannot appease evil for fear of what lurks behind that evil.
It depends on what you mean by "doing it". There's a difference between rejecting appeasement and actively seeking regime change. The West is energetically and successfully helping Ukraine defend itself, with some debate about how far to push that. We would certainly intervene directly if NATO members were attacked. Actively seeking to overthrow Putin as part of our policy would, however, be a different ballgame and quite likely to lead to an even more nationalist successor. It's unlikely that the US (or British) leadership see that as desirable.
But of a strawman there, Nick.
The aim is to defeat completely the invasion of a sovereign state. What happens to Putin is beyond our control, and other than his perhaps facing an international criminal court sometime in the future, isn't really a factor we should worry about too much.
That is manifestly not the aim. If "the West" wanted to defeat completely the invasion of a sovereign state then they would have done so.
I heard (same podcast) that the US is now spending something like 6-8% (can't remember exactly) of it's GDP on defence which, looking at recent numbers (around 3%) suggests I misheard or misunderstood. It is high, however, and there is a non-trivial proportion of that spending going to aid Ukraine. But evidently not too much.
Defeat the invasion whilst keeping the risk of geographical escalation and direct Russia/NATO military conflict to a minimum - is the objective.
In other SMO news. Surovikin has been fucked off back to the VKS (the job he was bad at) and Gerasimov (the one with the air of Norris out of Coronation Street) is taking direct command in the Four Oblasts.
Given what went on before his appointment SVS can't have been sacked for incompetence although he did cough up Kharkov and whatever's left of Kherson so maybe. Other interpretations available in the Russian media include the possibility that good news is imminent and Shoigu/Gerasimov want to take the credit.
Or Shoigu/Gerasimov are being lined up to blame for the failure of the 'SMO'.
But really much of this is irrelevant. Either Russia is comprehensively defeated, or it isn't. Putin shuffling the cards again isn't going to effect the outcome significantly.
May I point you to the very good Saturday morning podcast "The Briefing Room", hosted by David Aronovitch, whereon he invites experts and very sadly they don't call a comprehensive defeat of Russia.
Participants most recently were:
Nina Kuryata, Ukrainian journalist with Tortoise Media Shashank Joshi, Defence Editor at The Economist Samantha de Bendern, Associate Fellow in the Russia and Eurasia Programme at Chatham House Sir Lawrence Freedman, Emeritus Professor of War Studies at King’s College, London
I'm suprised they haven't called you to take part.
It's very difficult being the aggressor.
And usually, the initial invasion goes well, but then holding territory when the people don't want you there is the real killer.
Now, sure, sometimes there's a massive difference of wealth, population, technology, etc.
But that's not really the case this time.
I don't think Russia's defeat comes because Ukraine militarily defeats them. I think it comes because over time there become ever more people in Russia who benefit from the war's end than its continuance. And at some point a tipping point is reached.
I hope so and I hope it comes quickly, although I'm not sure which people will be decisive in such a process. One point the show did make was that it was far easier for Russia to re-tool it's factories to produce war materiel and actually the domestic production of cars, etc, has fallen off a cliff. Hence all the cries of "Russia is running out of kit" are not particularly close to the truth. Yet.
I'm sure that's true.
But Sergei in Novosibirsk's car isn't working any more, and now there are no parts to fix it. It's not like there's an imminent threat of invasion, or anything, it's just that things he wants are no longer available to him, and for what?
People will put up with discomfort when they think it's in their interest to do so. But what's in it for Sergei? Sure, he might like - in the abstract - a strong Russia. But he's also (like all of us) a slave to Maslow's hierarchy of needs.
Isn't it just a statement of food inflation? If prices go up, then sales by value go up. @RochdalePioneers put up some good charts yesterday showing volumes down (except Lidl and Aldi) and down-shifting to budget brands.
It says like for like sales, so the amount of peas they sold has gone up from last year, not the inflation adjusted cost of peas.
‘Like-for-like’ adjusts for things such as store openings and closures, rather than inflation.
Thanks to our ‘friend’, Mr Putin, food inflation is running well above the headline CPI at the moment, which is what these figures are showing more than anything.
Mr Pioneers is sadly right on this one, there’s a lot of ‘downbranding’ going on, both within supermarkets and between them.
Like for like strips out inflation Tescos would not be reporting a very strong Christmas period if actual sales had gone down
Are you trying to compete with HYUFD by getting stuff wrong and refusing to accept it when everyone points out the bleeding obvious to you.
Some of the figures quoted are probably worst case scenarios, but would you for example want to be a bank which had recently made long term loans for building coal fired power stations ?
Given that coal fired power stations are going up everywhere (except the UK), yes, absolutely. Germany has also recently said it's going to build a lot more gas capacity.
It isn't in any way a realistic scenario that there will be a collapse in the value of these assets, given that they are rendered more necessary not less, by the insistence in the UK on heavily subsidising intermittent, unreliable sources of renewable power, that depend on fossil fuels for back up generation.
The only thing that strikes me as 'dirty' in the above article is the attempt to blackmail Governments and financial institutions into damaging companies who are doing legal and frankly vital work to bring us reliable and inexpensive fuel. People working for these sorts of pressure groups should perhaps be a little more wary that Governments might take their doom-mongering seriously and question whether such grotesque self-harm is actually worthwhile at all, either economically or environmentally.
That's not really true.
Yes, new (more efficient coal) plants are being built, but lots are getting retired too.
Overall coal capacity is basically flat,
There's a good spreadsheet here that tracks total generating capacity by country.
Worldwide, 11.4GW of coal plants were retired in 1H2022, while 13.8GW started.
The US dominated retirements, closing 7.6GW of plants in 1H22.
The political climate has also changed somewhat in the last year. Compare this article:
Isn't it just a statement of food inflation? If prices go up, then sales by value go up. @RochdalePioneers put up some good charts yesterday showing volumes down (except Lidl and Aldi) and down-shifting to budget brands.
It says like for like sales, so the amount of peas they sold has gone up from last year, not the inflation adjusted cost of peas.
‘Like-for-like’ adjusts for things such as store openings and closures, rather than inflation.
Thanks to our ‘friend’, Mr Putin, food inflation is running well above the headline CPI at the moment, which is what these figures are showing more than anything.
Mr Pioneers is sadly right on this one, there’s a lot of ‘downbranding’ going on, both within supermarkets and between them.
Like for like strips out inflation Tescos would not be reporting a very strong Christmas period if actual sales had gone down
No it doesn’t strip out inflation, it’s an adjustment for store numbers and types. Tesco are reporting “record sales numbers” (in £) and hoping no-one notices their disappearing market share and margins at a time of high inflation.
I would have thought it was in Western interests to see the current Russian regime (which has funded plenty of extremists on both sides of the political spectrum) fall.
I think we'd be uncertain about it - not really in our interest to have Russia fall into warring factions, or to end up controlled by even more erratic types. The idea that stirring regime change will produce an agreeable pro-Western regime is probably illusory at this point.
Neither is it in our interests to see Russia continue what it is doing, and taking over Ukraine and (at least) the Baltic states, interfering more in our internal politics, and poisoning people on our shores with radiological and nerve agents.
Yes, we cannot be sure what would replace Putin. But that does not mean that the potential fall of Putin should stop us from doing it. We cannot appease evil for fear of what lurks behind that evil.
It depends on what you mean by "doing it". There's a difference between rejecting appeasement and actively seeking regime change. The West is energetically and successfully helping Ukraine defend itself, with some debate about how far to push that. We would certainly intervene directly if NATO members were attacked. Actively seeking to overthrow Putin as part of our policy would, however, be a different ballgame and quite likely to lead to an even more nationalist successor. It's unlikely that the US (or British) leadership see that as desirable.
But of a strawman there, Nick.
The aim is to defeat completely the invasion of a sovereign state. What happens to Putin is beyond our control, and other than his perhaps facing an international criminal court sometime in the future, isn't really a factor we should worry about too much.
That is manifestly not the aim. If "the West" wanted to defeat completely the invasion of a sovereign state then they would have done so.
I heard (same podcast) that the US is now spending something like 6-8% (can't remember exactly) of it's GDP on defence which, looking at recent numbers (around 3%) suggests I misheard or misunderstood. It is high, however, and there is a non-trivial proportion of that spending going to aid Ukraine. But evidently not too much.
Defeat the invasion whilst keeping the risk of geographical escalation and direct Russia/NATO military conflict to a minimum - is the objective.
Thanks General. That's quite some access to Theatre-level planning ops.
It's also wrong for most values of "defeat the invasion".
But please keep us informed, although I presume the red phone will be on silent during the snooker.
Isn't it just a statement of food inflation? If prices go up, then sales by value go up. @RochdalePioneers put up some good charts yesterday showing volumes down (except Lidl and Aldi) and down-shifting to budget brands.
It says like for like sales, so the amount of peas they sold has gone up from last year, not the inflation adjusted cost of peas.
‘Like-for-like’ adjusts for things such as store openings and closures, rather than inflation.
Thanks to our ‘friend’, Mr Putin, food inflation is running well above the headline CPI at the moment, which is what these figures are showing more than anything.
Mr Pioneers is sadly right on this one, there’s a lot of ‘downbranding’ going on, both within supermarkets and between them.
Like for like strips out inflation Tescos would not be reporting a very strong Christmas period if actual sales had gone down
No it doesn’t strip out inflation, it’s an adjustment for store numbers and types. Tesco are reporting “record sales numbers” (in £) and hoping no-one notices their disappearing market share and margins.
Correct. As a cursory scan of the actual article confirms:
Tesco chief executive Ken Murphy admitted that the volume of goods sold was marginally lower than the same period last year. But he said the UK consumer "has proved quite resilient".
In other SMO news. Surovikin has been fucked off back to the VKS (the job he was bad at) and Gerasimov (the one with the air of Norris out of Coronation Street) is taking direct command in the Four Oblasts.
Given what went on before his appointment SVS can't have been sacked for incompetence although he did cough up Kharkov and whatever's left of Kherson so maybe. Other interpretations available in the Russian media include the possibility that good news is imminent and Shoigu/Gerasimov want to take the credit.
Or Shoigu/Gerasimov are being lined up to blame for the failure of the 'SMO'.
But really much of this is irrelevant. Either Russia is comprehensively defeated, or it isn't. Putin shuffling the cards again isn't going to effect the outcome significantly.
May I point you to the very good Saturday morning podcast "The Briefing Room", hosted by David Aronovitch, whereon he invites experts and very sadly they don't call a comprehensive defeat of Russia.
Participants most recently were:
Nina Kuryata, Ukrainian journalist with Tortoise Media Shashank Joshi, Defence Editor at The Economist Samantha de Bendern, Associate Fellow in the Russia and Eurasia Programme at Chatham House Sir Lawrence Freedman, Emeritus Professor of War Studies at King’s College, London
I'm suprised they haven't called you to take part.
It's very difficult being the aggressor.
And usually, the initial invasion goes well, but then holding territory when the people don't want you there is the real killer.
Now, sure, sometimes there's a massive difference of wealth, population, technology, etc.
But that's not really the case this time.
I don't think Russia's defeat comes because Ukraine militarily defeats them. I think it comes because over time there become ever more people in Russia who benefit from the war's end than its continuance. And at some point a tipping point is reached.
I hope so and I hope it comes quickly, although I'm not sure which people will be decisive in such a process. One point the show did make was that it was far easier for Russia to re-tool it's factories to produce war materiel and actually the domestic production of cars, etc, has fallen off a cliff. Hence all the cries of "Russia is running out of kit" are not particularly close to the truth. Yet.
I'm sure that's true.
But Sergei in Novosibirsk's car isn't working any more, and now there are no parts to fix it. It's not like there's an imminent threat of invasion, or anything, it's just that things he wants are no longer available to him, and for what?
People will put up with discomfort when they think it's in their interest to do so. But what's in it for Sergei? Sure, he might like - in the abstract - a strong Russia. But he's also (like all of us) a slave to Maslow's hierarchy of needs.
No idea if Sergei can or cannot get an exhaust manifold. Do we know?
The pieces on supermarket sales basically strip out inflation. "Like for like"
No they don't. They have a value sales figure and a volume sales figure. The value sales figure includes inflation, and the volume is independent of price changes.
What caused the computer problems that grounded all US domestic flights today?
1. Russian action? 2. US action? 3. Third party action? 4. Terrible coincidence as in a French farce, or similar to the "perfect storm" that a supplier told me today was the reason why it might take a fortnight for him to deliver something to me, not the usual 2-3 days? (The one thing in favour of "perfect storm" talk is that it's not quite so annoying as when someone says "going forward".)
At least 9 times out of 10 I'd expect this to be a snafu. Someone accidentally found a single point of failure that shouldn't exist, or they botched an upgrade, or one of many possible things went wrong.
I don't know if you'd classify that as a terrible coincidence. Depends how many things went wrong at once. It might only have been one.
It appears to have been a database corruption, which for some reason also affected the backup system and couldn’t easily be rolled back. In other words they had no actual redundancy, and it’s a wonder how it’s never crashed before!
Doesn't surprise me in the least. I see they're also now relying on the Republican House to authorise the spending to overhaul their antiquated IT systems. I wonder whether their database is even still supported by the vendor?
It’s apparently an in-house system, dating back a long time. It takes 90 minutes to reboot the server!
As a database, it’s relatively tiny, with hundreds of new records per day - that are written in acronyms to be short, because they often get transmitted by radio - with tens of thousands of searches based on simple indexes such as airfields, airways, waypoints, and co-ordinates, that usually get plotted on maps by various third-party tools.
I wouldn’t be surprised, to discover that it was running on some ancient computer under someone’s desk at the FAA.
Sounds like the sort of thing I was working on in the mid-nineties for a London organisation. Their entire business was selling data, and they loved the selling bit. They did not care much for the data, though. It was a 'database' written in C, with a front-end that was both written for terminals, and in terminal condition.
It's a point I've made before: companies or organisations that rely on data for their business, but don't see data as their business. Therefore they don't spend money on caring for that data.
In other SMO news. Surovikin has been fucked off back to the VKS (the job he was bad at) and Gerasimov (the one with the air of Norris out of Coronation Street) is taking direct command in the Four Oblasts.
Given what went on before his appointment SVS can't have been sacked for incompetence although he did cough up Kharkov and whatever's left of Kherson so maybe. Other interpretations available in the Russian media include the possibility that good news is imminent and Shoigu/Gerasimov want to take the credit.
Or Shoigu/Gerasimov are being lined up to blame for the failure of the 'SMO'.
But really much of this is irrelevant. Either Russia is comprehensively defeated, or it isn't. Putin shuffling the cards again isn't going to effect the outcome significantly.
May I point you to the very good Saturday morning podcast "The Briefing Room", hosted by David Aronovitch, whereon he invites experts and very sadly they don't call a comprehensive defeat of Russia.
Participants most recently were:
Nina Kuryata, Ukrainian journalist with Tortoise Media Shashank Joshi, Defence Editor at The Economist Samantha de Bendern, Associate Fellow in the Russia and Eurasia Programme at Chatham House Sir Lawrence Freedman, Emeritus Professor of War Studies at King’s College, London
I'm suprised they haven't called you to take part.
It's very difficult being the aggressor.
And usually, the initial invasion goes well, but then holding territory when the people don't want you there is the real killer.
Now, sure, sometimes there's a massive difference of wealth, population, technology, etc.
But that's not really the case this time.
I don't think Russia's defeat comes because Ukraine militarily defeats them. I think it comes because over time there become ever more people in Russia who benefit from the war's end than its continuance. And at some point a tipping point is reached.
I hope so and I hope it comes quickly, although I'm not sure which people will be decisive in such a process. One point the show did make was that it was far easier for Russia to re-tool it's factories to produce war materiel and actually the domestic production of cars, etc, has fallen off a cliff. Hence all the cries of "Russia is running out of kit" are not particularly close to the truth. Yet.
I'm sure that's true.
But Sergei in Novosibirsk's car isn't working any more, and now there are no parts to fix it. It's not like there's an imminent threat of invasion, or anything, it's just that things he wants are no longer available to him, and for what?
People will put up with discomfort when they think it's in their interest to do so. But what's in it for Sergei? Sure, he might like - in the abstract - a strong Russia. But he's also (like all of us) a slave to Maslow's hierarchy of needs.
No idea if Sergei can or cannot get an exhaust manifold. Do we know?
If Russia is changing its factories to produce war material, then there's something they aren't making.
I would have thought it was in Western interests to see the current Russian regime (which has funded plenty of extremists on both sides of the political spectrum) fall.
I think we'd be uncertain about it - not really in our interest to have Russia fall into warring factions, or to end up controlled by even more erratic types. The idea that stirring regime change will produce an agreeable pro-Western regime is probably illusory at this point.
Neither is it in our interests to see Russia continue what it is doing, and taking over Ukraine and (at least) the Baltic states, interfering more in our internal politics, and poisoning people on our shores with radiological and nerve agents.
Yes, we cannot be sure what would replace Putin. But that does not mean that the potential fall of Putin should stop us from doing it. We cannot appease evil for fear of what lurks behind that evil.
It depends on what you mean by "doing it". There's a difference between rejecting appeasement and actively seeking regime change. The West is energetically and successfully helping Ukraine defend itself, with some debate about how far to push that. We would certainly intervene directly if NATO members were attacked. Actively seeking to overthrow Putin as part of our policy would, however, be a different ballgame and quite likely to lead to an even more nationalist successor. It's unlikely that the US (or British) leadership see that as desirable.
But of a strawman there, Nick.
The aim is to defeat completely the invasion of a sovereign state. What happens to Putin is beyond our control, and other than his perhaps facing an international criminal court sometime in the future, isn't really a factor we should worry about too much.
That is manifestly not the aim. If "the West" wanted to defeat completely the invasion of a sovereign state then they would have done so.
I heard (same podcast) that the US is now spending something like 6-8% (can't remember exactly) of it's GDP on defence which, looking at recent numbers (around 3%) suggests I misheard or misunderstood. It is high, however, and there is a non-trivial proportion of that spending going to aid Ukraine. But evidently not too much.
The West cannot act completely freely and without consequences. As well as defeating Ukraine they also want to preserve the maximum unity of the Western alliance, and to avoid provoking China. Both of these subsidiary aims call for a gradualist approach to providing support to Ukraine, even though that frustrates maximalists like myself.
Isn't it just a statement of food inflation? If prices go up, then sales by value go up. @RochdalePioneers put up some good charts yesterday showing volumes down (except Lidl and Aldi) and down-shifting to budget brands.
It says like for like sales, so the amount of peas they sold has gone up from last year, not the inflation adjusted cost of peas.
‘Like-for-like’ adjusts for things such as store openings and closures, rather than inflation.
Thanks to our ‘friend’, Mr Putin, food inflation is running well above the headline CPI at the moment, which is what these figures are showing more than anything.
Mr Pioneers is sadly right on this one, there’s a lot of ‘downbranding’ going on, both within supermarkets and between them.
Like for like strips out inflation Tescos would not be reporting a very strong Christmas period if actual sales had gone down
Some of the figures quoted are probably worst case scenarios, but would you for example want to be a bank which had recently made long term loans for building coal fired power stations ?
Given that coal fired power stations are going up everywhere (except the UK), yes, absolutely. Germany has also recently said it's going to build a lot more gas capacity.
It isn't in any way a realistic scenario that there will be a collapse in the value of these assets, given that they are rendered more necessary not less, by the insistence in the UK on heavily subsidising intermittent, unreliable sources of renewable power, that depend on fossil fuels for back up generation.
The only thing that strikes me as 'dirty' in the above article is the attempt to blackmail Governments and financial institutions into damaging companies who are doing legal and frankly vital work to bring us reliable and inexpensive fuel. People working for these sorts of pressure groups should perhaps be a little more wary that Governments might take their doom-mongering seriously and question whether such grotesque self-harm is actually worthwhile at all, either economically or environmentally.
That's not really true.
Yes, new (more efficient coal) plants are being built, but lots are getting retired too.
Overall coal capacity is basically flat,
There's a good spreadsheet here that tracks total generating capacity by country.
Worldwide, 11.4GW of coal plants were retired in 1H2022, while 13.8GW started.
The US dominated retirements, closing 7.6GW of plants in 1H22.
The political climate has also changed somewhat in the last year. Compare this article:
QCells was my one energy investment disaster when I was a fund manager
As a matter of interest (and you obvs. don't need to reply), but do you think you made the wrong decision with good data, or was the data you had to make the decision bad? Or was it just one of those things where circumstances went against the investment?
I'm just asking as it's rare to see someone admit to a mistake, and I like seeing why people make mistakes, if not the mistakes themselves.
What caused the computer problems that grounded all US domestic flights today?
1. Russian action? 2. US action? 3. Third party action? 4. Terrible coincidence as in a French farce, or similar to the "perfect storm" that a supplier told me today was the reason why it might take a fortnight for him to deliver something to me, not the usual 2-3 days? (The one thing in favour of "perfect storm" talk is that it's not quite so annoying as when someone says "going forward".)
At least 9 times out of 10 I'd expect this to be a snafu. Someone accidentally found a single point of failure that shouldn't exist, or they botched an upgrade, or one of many possible things went wrong.
I don't know if you'd classify that as a terrible coincidence. Depends how many things went wrong at once. It might only have been one.
It appears to have been a database corruption, which for some reason also affected the backup system and couldn’t easily be rolled back. In other words they had no actual redundancy, and it’s a wonder how it’s never crashed before!
Doesn't surprise me in the least. I see they're also now relying on the Republican House to authorise the spending to overhaul their antiquated IT systems. I wonder whether their database is even still supported by the vendor?
It’s apparently an in-house system, dating back a long time. It takes 90 minutes to reboot the server!
As a database, it’s relatively tiny, with hundreds of new records per day - that are written in acronyms to be short, because they often get transmitted by radio - with tens of thousands of searches based on simple indexes such as airfields, airways, waypoints, and co-ordinates, that usually get plotted on maps by various third-party tools.
I wouldn’t be surprised, to discover that it was running on some ancient computer under someone’s desk at the FAA.
Sounds like the sort of thing I was working on in the mid-nineties for a London organisation. Their entire business was selling data, and they loved the selling bit. They did not care much for the data, though. It was a 'database' written in C, with a front-end that was both written for terminals, and in terminal condition.
It's a point I've made before: companies or organisations that rely on data for their business, but don't see data as their business. Therefore they don't spend money on caring for that data.
Image that, but without the revenue from selling the data, because you’re a government agency legally required to publish it.
The concept of NOTAMs hasn’t changed in several decades, from when every byte cost money to transmit.
Isn't it just a statement of food inflation? If prices go up, then sales by value go up. @RochdalePioneers put up some good charts yesterday showing volumes down (except Lidl and Aldi) and down-shifting to budget brands.
Surely more complicated than that? This is profits, not revenue. I'm sure the companies are not the ones responsible for the increase in inflation, thats the other costs (power, diesel etc).
In other SMO news. Surovikin has been fucked off back to the VKS (the job he was bad at) and Gerasimov (the one with the air of Norris out of Coronation Street) is taking direct command in the Four Oblasts.
Given what went on before his appointment SVS can't have been sacked for incompetence although he did cough up Kharkov and whatever's left of Kherson so maybe. Other interpretations available in the Russian media include the possibility that good news is imminent and Shoigu/Gerasimov want to take the credit.
Or Shoigu/Gerasimov are being lined up to blame for the failure of the 'SMO'.
But really much of this is irrelevant. Either Russia is comprehensively defeated, or it isn't. Putin shuffling the cards again isn't going to effect the outcome significantly.
May I point you to the very good Saturday morning podcast "The Briefing Room", hosted by David Aronovitch, whereon he invites experts and very sadly they don't call a comprehensive defeat of Russia.
Participants most recently were:
Nina Kuryata, Ukrainian journalist with Tortoise Media Shashank Joshi, Defence Editor at The Economist Samantha de Bendern, Associate Fellow in the Russia and Eurasia Programme at Chatham House Sir Lawrence Freedman, Emeritus Professor of War Studies at King’s College, London
I'm suprised they haven't called you to take part.
It's very difficult being the aggressor.
And usually, the initial invasion goes well, but then holding territory when the people don't want you there is the real killer.
Now, sure, sometimes there's a massive difference of wealth, population, technology, etc.
But that's not really the case this time.
I don't think Russia's defeat comes because Ukraine militarily defeats them. I think it comes because over time there become ever more people in Russia who benefit from the war's end than its continuance. And at some point a tipping point is reached.
I hope so and I hope it comes quickly, although I'm not sure which people will be decisive in such a process. One point the show did make was that it was far easier for Russia to re-tool it's factories to produce war materiel and actually the domestic production of cars, etc, has fallen off a cliff. Hence all the cries of "Russia is running out of kit" are not particularly close to the truth. Yet.
I'm sure that's true.
But Sergei in Novosibirsk's car isn't working any more, and now there are no parts to fix it. It's not like there's an imminent threat of invasion, or anything, it's just that things he wants are no longer available to him, and for what?
People will put up with discomfort when they think it's in their interest to do so. But what's in it for Sergei? Sure, he might like - in the abstract - a strong Russia. But he's also (like all of us) a slave to Maslow's hierarchy of needs.
No idea if Sergei can or cannot get an exhaust manifold. Do we know?
If Russia is changing its factories to produce war material, then there's something they aren't making.
And there’s an awful lot of stuff they’re not importing.
Apparently the Chinese are being helpful when it comes to things like car parts, but less so with plane parts - and scared witless of military aid, having seen what a Western sanctions regime can look like in practice.
🔴 Rishi Sunak will hold face-to-face talks with Nicola Sturgeon in his first visit to Scotland as Prime Minister, which starts on Thursday, in an engagement strategy to counter support for Scottish independence.
I would have thought it was in Western interests to see the current Russian regime (which has funded plenty of extremists on both sides of the political spectrum) fall.
I think we'd be uncertain about it - not really in our interest to have Russia fall into warring factions, or to end up controlled by even more erratic types. The idea that stirring regime change will produce an agreeable pro-Western regime is probably illusory at this point.
Neither is it in our interests to see Russia continue what it is doing, and taking over Ukraine and (at least) the Baltic states, interfering more in our internal politics, and poisoning people on our shores with radiological and nerve agents.
Yes, we cannot be sure what would replace Putin. But that does not mean that the potential fall of Putin should stop us from doing it. We cannot appease evil for fear of what lurks behind that evil.
It depends on what you mean by "doing it". There's a difference between rejecting appeasement and actively seeking regime change. The West is energetically and successfully helping Ukraine defend itself, with some debate about how far to push that. We would certainly intervene directly if NATO members were attacked. Actively seeking to overthrow Putin as part of our policy would, however, be a different ballgame and quite likely to lead to an even more nationalist successor. It's unlikely that the US (or British) leadership see that as desirable.
But of a strawman there, Nick.
The aim is to defeat completely the invasion of a sovereign state. What happens to Putin is beyond our control, and other than his perhaps facing an international criminal court sometime in the future, isn't really a factor we should worry about too much.
That is manifestly not the aim. If "the West" wanted to defeat completely the invasion of a sovereign state then they would have done so.
I heard (same podcast) that the US is now spending something like 6-8% (can't remember exactly) of it's GDP on defence which, looking at recent numbers (around 3%) suggests I misheard or misunderstood. It is high, however, and there is a non-trivial proportion of that spending going to aid Ukraine. But evidently not too much.
Defeat the invasion whilst keeping the risk of geographical escalation and direct Russia/NATO military conflict to a minimum - is the objective.
Thanks General. That's quite some access to Theatre-level planning ops.
It's also wrong for most values of "defeat the invasion".
But please keep us informed, although I presume the red phone will be on silent during the snooker.
Hardly needs a seat in the Ops Room to discern the big picture objective.
But ok, you seem put out. Happy to leave the detail to real soldiers.
Some of the figures quoted are probably worst case scenarios, but would you for example want to be a bank which had recently made long term loans for building coal fired power stations ?
Given that coal fired power stations are going up everywhere (except the UK), yes, absolutely. Germany has also recently said it's going to build a lot more gas capacity.
It isn't in any way a realistic scenario that there will be a collapse in the value of these assets, given that they are rendered more necessary not less, by the insistence in the UK on heavily subsidising intermittent, unreliable sources of renewable power, that depend on fossil fuels for back up generation.
The only thing that strikes me as 'dirty' in the above article is the attempt to blackmail Governments and financial institutions into damaging companies who are doing legal and frankly vital work to bring us reliable and inexpensive fuel. People working for these sorts of pressure groups should perhaps be a little more wary that Governments might take their doom-mongering seriously and question whether such grotesque self-harm is actually worthwhile at all, either economically or environmentally.
That's not really true.
Yes, new (more efficient coal) plants are being built, but lots are getting retired too.
Overall coal capacity is basically flat,
There's a good spreadsheet here that tracks total generating capacity by country.
Worldwide, 11.4GW of coal plants were retired in 1H2022, while 13.8GW started.
The US dominated retirements, closing 7.6GW of plants in 1H22.
The political climate has also changed somewhat in the last year. Compare this article:
QCells was my one energy investment disaster when I was a fund manager
As a matter of interest (and you obvs. don't need to reply), but do you think you made the wrong decision with good data, or was the data you had to make the decision bad? Or was it just one of those things where circumstances went against the investment?
I'm just asking as it's rare to see someone admit to a mistake, and I like seeing why people make mistakes, if not the mistakes themselves.
Oh that's easy: I suffered from cognitive dissonance. I was hyper-focused on the long-term, that the cost of solar manufacturing was going to come down over time, and it would become ever more competitive with fossil fuels. And because I liked the long-term story so much, I did not give sufficient weight to the fact that they'd entered into silicon supply contracts at well above market price (so as to ensure supply). This meant that while their competitors were making decent money, they weren't.
I would have thought it was in Western interests to see the current Russian regime (which has funded plenty of extremists on both sides of the political spectrum) fall.
I think we'd be uncertain about it - not really in our interest to have Russia fall into warring factions, or to end up controlled by even more erratic types. The idea that stirring regime change will produce an agreeable pro-Western regime is probably illusory at this point.
Neither is it in our interests to see Russia continue what it is doing, and taking over Ukraine and (at least) the Baltic states, interfering more in our internal politics, and poisoning people on our shores with radiological and nerve agents.
Yes, we cannot be sure what would replace Putin. But that does not mean that the potential fall of Putin should stop us from doing it. We cannot appease evil for fear of what lurks behind that evil.
It depends on what you mean by "doing it". There's a difference between rejecting appeasement and actively seeking regime change. The West is energetically and successfully helping Ukraine defend itself, with some debate about how far to push that. We would certainly intervene directly if NATO members were attacked. Actively seeking to overthrow Putin as part of our policy would, however, be a different ballgame and quite likely to lead to an even more nationalist successor. It's unlikely that the US (or British) leadership see that as desirable.
But of a strawman there, Nick.
The aim is to defeat completely the invasion of a sovereign state. What happens to Putin is beyond our control, and other than his perhaps facing an international criminal court sometime in the future, isn't really a factor we should worry about too much.
That is manifestly not the aim. If "the West" wanted to defeat completely the invasion of a sovereign state then they would have done so.
I heard (same podcast) that the US is now spending something like 6-8% (can't remember exactly) of it's GDP on defence which, looking at recent numbers (around 3%) suggests I misheard or misunderstood. It is high, however, and there is a non-trivial proportion of that spending going to aid Ukraine. But evidently not too much.
Defeat the invasion whilst keeping the risk of geographical escalation and direct Russia/NATO military conflict to a minimum - is the objective.
Thanks General. That's quite some access to Theatre-level planning ops.
It's also wrong for most values of "defeat the invasion".
But please keep us informed, although I presume the red phone will be on silent during the snooker.
Hardly needs a seat in the Ops Room to discern the big picture objective.
But ok, you seem put out. Happy to leave the detail to real soldiers.
OK soz let's take baby steps.
Define "defeat the invasion".
Edit - to start you off, here's one typical definition of "defeat": "win a victory over (someone) in a battle or other contest; overcome or beat."
In other SMO news. Surovikin has been fucked off back to the VKS (the job he was bad at) and Gerasimov (the one with the air of Norris out of Coronation Street) is taking direct command in the Four Oblasts.
Given what went on before his appointment SVS can't have been sacked for incompetence although he did cough up Kharkov and whatever's left of Kherson so maybe. Other interpretations available in the Russian media include the possibility that good news is imminent and Shoigu/Gerasimov want to take the credit.
Or Shoigu/Gerasimov are being lined up to blame for the failure of the 'SMO'.
But really much of this is irrelevant. Either Russia is comprehensively defeated, or it isn't. Putin shuffling the cards again isn't going to effect the outcome significantly.
May I point you to the very good Saturday morning podcast "The Briefing Room", hosted by David Aronovitch, whereon he invites experts and very sadly they don't call a comprehensive defeat of Russia.
Participants most recently were:
Nina Kuryata, Ukrainian journalist with Tortoise Media Shashank Joshi, Defence Editor at The Economist Samantha de Bendern, Associate Fellow in the Russia and Eurasia Programme at Chatham House Sir Lawrence Freedman, Emeritus Professor of War Studies at King’s College, London
I'm suprised they haven't called you to take part.
It's very difficult being the aggressor.
And usually, the initial invasion goes well, but then holding territory when the people don't want you there is the real killer.
Now, sure, sometimes there's a massive difference of wealth, population, technology, etc.
But that's not really the case this time.
I don't think Russia's defeat comes because Ukraine militarily defeats them. I think it comes because over time there become ever more people in Russia who benefit from the war's end than its continuance. And at some point a tipping point is reached.
I hope so and I hope it comes quickly, although I'm not sure which people will be decisive in such a process. One point the show did make was that it was far easier for Russia to re-tool it's factories to produce war materiel and actually the domestic production of cars, etc, has fallen off a cliff. Hence all the cries of "Russia is running out of kit" are not particularly close to the truth. Yet.
I'm sure that's true.
But Sergei in Novosibirsk's car isn't working any more, and now there are no parts to fix it. It's not like there's an imminent threat of invasion, or anything, it's just that things he wants are no longer available to him, and for what?
People will put up with discomfort when they think it's in their interest to do so. But what's in it for Sergei? Sure, he might like - in the abstract - a strong Russia. But he's also (like all of us) a slave to Maslow's hierarchy of needs.
No idea if Sergei can or cannot get an exhaust manifold. Do we know?
I would have thought it was in Western interests to see the current Russian regime (which has funded plenty of extremists on both sides of the political spectrum) fall.
I think we'd be uncertain about it - not really in our interest to have Russia fall into warring factions, or to end up controlled by even more erratic types. The idea that stirring regime change will produce an agreeable pro-Western regime is probably illusory at this point.
Neither is it in our interests to see Russia continue what it is doing, and taking over Ukraine and (at least) the Baltic states, interfering more in our internal politics, and poisoning people on our shores with radiological and nerve agents.
Yes, we cannot be sure what would replace Putin. But that does not mean that the potential fall of Putin should stop us from doing it. We cannot appease evil for fear of what lurks behind that evil.
It depends on what you mean by "doing it". There's a difference between rejecting appeasement and actively seeking regime change. The West is energetically and successfully helping Ukraine defend itself, with some debate about how far to push that. We would certainly intervene directly if NATO members were attacked. Actively seeking to overthrow Putin as part of our policy would, however, be a different ballgame and quite likely to lead to an even more nationalist successor. It's unlikely that the US (or British) leadership see that as desirable.
But of a strawman there, Nick.
The aim is to defeat completely the invasion of a sovereign state. What happens to Putin is beyond our control, and other than his perhaps facing an international criminal court sometime in the future, isn't really a factor we should worry about too much.
I agree with that. I was responding to a post that said it was in our interest to see the current Russian regime fall. Our decisions about Ukraine should relate to defending Ukraine, rather than to trying to manipulate what happens in Russia, which I'd argue we've already done too often in the past (they try to fiddle with our elections too). Too unpredictable.
I don't think any of us particularly disagree, actually, so I'll leave it there for now.
I would have thought it was in Western interests to see the current Russian regime (which has funded plenty of extremists on both sides of the political spectrum) fall.
I think we'd be uncertain about it - not really in our interest to have Russia fall into warring factions, or to end up controlled by even more erratic types. The idea that stirring regime change will produce an agreeable pro-Western regime is probably illusory at this point.
Neither is it in our interests to see Russia continue what it is doing, and taking over Ukraine and (at least) the Baltic states, interfering more in our internal politics, and poisoning people on our shores with radiological and nerve agents.
Yes, we cannot be sure what would replace Putin. But that does not mean that the potential fall of Putin should stop us from doing it. We cannot appease evil for fear of what lurks behind that evil.
It depends on what you mean by "doing it". There's a difference between rejecting appeasement and actively seeking regime change. The West is energetically and successfully helping Ukraine defend itself, with some debate about how far to push that. We would certainly intervene directly if NATO members were attacked. Actively seeking to overthrow Putin as part of our policy would, however, be a different ballgame and quite likely to lead to an even more nationalist successor. It's unlikely that the US (or British) leadership see that as desirable.
But of a strawman there, Nick.
The aim is to defeat completely the invasion of a sovereign state. What happens to Putin is beyond our control, and other than his perhaps facing an international criminal court sometime in the future, isn't really a factor we should worry about too much.
That is manifestly not the aim. If "the West" wanted to defeat completely the invasion of a sovereign state then they would have done so.
I heard (same podcast) that the US is now spending something like 6-8% (can't remember exactly) of it's GDP on defence which, looking at recent numbers (around 3%) suggests I misheard or misunderstood. It is high, however, and there is a non-trivial proportion of that spending going to aid Ukraine. But evidently not too much.
Defeat the invasion whilst keeping the risk of geographical escalation and direct Russia/NATO military conflict to a minimum - is the objective.
Thanks General. That's quite some access to Theatre-level planning ops.
It's also wrong for most values of "defeat the invasion".
But please keep us informed, although I presume the red phone will be on silent during the snooker.
Hardly needs a seat in the Ops Room to discern the big picture objective.
But ok, you seem put out. Happy to leave the detail to real soldiers.
OK soz let's take baby steps.
Define "defeat the invasion".
That means back to the borders before it commenced.
In other SMO news. Surovikin has been fucked off back to the VKS (the job he was bad at) and Gerasimov (the one with the air of Norris out of Coronation Street) is taking direct command in the Four Oblasts.
Given what went on before his appointment SVS can't have been sacked for incompetence although he did cough up Kharkov and whatever's left of Kherson so maybe. Other interpretations available in the Russian media include the possibility that good news is imminent and Shoigu/Gerasimov want to take the credit.
Or Shoigu/Gerasimov are being lined up to blame for the failure of the 'SMO'.
But really much of this is irrelevant. Either Russia is comprehensively defeated, or it isn't. Putin shuffling the cards again isn't going to effect the outcome significantly.
May I point you to the very good Saturday morning podcast "The Briefing Room", hosted by David Aronovitch, whereon he invites experts and very sadly they don't call a comprehensive defeat of Russia.
Participants most recently were:
Nina Kuryata, Ukrainian journalist with Tortoise Media Shashank Joshi, Defence Editor at The Economist Samantha de Bendern, Associate Fellow in the Russia and Eurasia Programme at Chatham House Sir Lawrence Freedman, Emeritus Professor of War Studies at King’s College, London
I'm suprised they haven't called you to take part.
It's very difficult being the aggressor.
And usually, the initial invasion goes well, but then holding territory when the people don't want you there is the real killer.
Now, sure, sometimes there's a massive difference of wealth, population, technology, etc.
But that's not really the case this time.
I don't think Russia's defeat comes because Ukraine militarily defeats them. I think it comes because over time there become ever more people in Russia who benefit from the war's end than its continuance. And at some point a tipping point is reached.
I hope so and I hope it comes quickly, although I'm not sure which people will be decisive in such a process. One point the show did make was that it was far easier for Russia to re-tool it's factories to produce war materiel and actually the domestic production of cars, etc, has fallen off a cliff. Hence all the cries of "Russia is running out of kit" are not particularly close to the truth. Yet.
I'm sure that's true.
But Sergei in Novosibirsk's car isn't working any more, and now there are no parts to fix it. It's not like there's an imminent threat of invasion, or anything, it's just that things he wants are no longer available to him, and for what?
People will put up with discomfort when they think it's in their interest to do so. But what's in it for Sergei? Sure, he might like - in the abstract - a strong Russia. But he's also (like all of us) a slave to Maslow's hierarchy of needs.
No idea if Sergei can or cannot get an exhaust manifold. Do we know?
Median income in shit holes like Novosibirsk is less than $1000/month. If they want a manifold they get one from a scrappy, steal one from a car outside their khrushchevka or pay some gopnik squatting in a gutter to stick weld the cracked manifold they have. What they aren't doing is going to the main dealer and buying a new one.
See Garage 54 on YouTube for how mechanics in Novosibirsk roll. The one where they make a clutch from a ceramic bathroom tile is pretty good.
I would have thought it was in Western interests to see the current Russian regime (which has funded plenty of extremists on both sides of the political spectrum) fall.
I think we'd be uncertain about it - not really in our interest to have Russia fall into warring factions, or to end up controlled by even more erratic types. The idea that stirring regime change will produce an agreeable pro-Western regime is probably illusory at this point.
Neither is it in our interests to see Russia continue what it is doing, and taking over Ukraine and (at least) the Baltic states, interfering more in our internal politics, and poisoning people on our shores with radiological and nerve agents.
Yes, we cannot be sure what would replace Putin. But that does not mean that the potential fall of Putin should stop us from doing it. We cannot appease evil for fear of what lurks behind that evil.
It depends on what you mean by "doing it". There's a difference between rejecting appeasement and actively seeking regime change. The West is energetically and successfully helping Ukraine defend itself, with some debate about how far to push that. We would certainly intervene directly if NATO members were attacked. Actively seeking to overthrow Putin as part of our policy would, however, be a different ballgame and quite likely to lead to an even more nationalist successor. It's unlikely that the US (or British) leadership see that as desirable.
But of a strawman there, Nick.
The aim is to defeat completely the invasion of a sovereign state. What happens to Putin is beyond our control, and other than his perhaps facing an international criminal court sometime in the future, isn't really a factor we should worry about too much.
That is manifestly not the aim. If "the West" wanted to defeat completely the invasion of a sovereign state then they would have done so...
Sure, if they wanted to go to war with Russia. As they don't, policy has been a matter of working out how to avoid that, while supporting Ukraine.
But it's been pretty clear which direction policy has moved in over the last six months or so. Which is why we're having this argument now.
I would have thought it was in Western interests to see the current Russian regime (which has funded plenty of extremists on both sides of the political spectrum) fall.
I think we'd be uncertain about it - not really in our interest to have Russia fall into warring factions, or to end up controlled by even more erratic types. The idea that stirring regime change will produce an agreeable pro-Western regime is probably illusory at this point.
Neither is it in our interests to see Russia continue what it is doing, and taking over Ukraine and (at least) the Baltic states, interfering more in our internal politics, and poisoning people on our shores with radiological and nerve agents.
Yes, we cannot be sure what would replace Putin. But that does not mean that the potential fall of Putin should stop us from doing it. We cannot appease evil for fear of what lurks behind that evil.
It depends on what you mean by "doing it". There's a difference between rejecting appeasement and actively seeking regime change. The West is energetically and successfully helping Ukraine defend itself, with some debate about how far to push that. We would certainly intervene directly if NATO members were attacked. Actively seeking to overthrow Putin as part of our policy would, however, be a different ballgame and quite likely to lead to an even more nationalist successor. It's unlikely that the US (or British) leadership see that as desirable.
But of a strawman there, Nick.
The aim is to defeat completely the invasion of a sovereign state. What happens to Putin is beyond our control, and other than his perhaps facing an international criminal court sometime in the future, isn't really a factor we should worry about too much.
I agree with that. I was responding to a post that said it was in our interest to see the current Russian regime fall. Our decisions about Ukraine should relate to defending Ukraine, rather than to trying to manipulate what happens in Russia, which I'd argue we've already done too often in the past (they try to fiddle with our elections too). Too unpredictable.
I don't think any of us particularly disagree, actually, so I'll leave it there for now.
Fair comment. And I'd agree that it's completely counterproductive to seek any particular change in the Russian leadership.
What caused the computer problems that grounded all US domestic flights today?
1. Russian action? 2. US action? 3. Third party action? 4. Terrible coincidence as in a French farce, or similar to the "perfect storm" that a supplier told me today was the reason why it might take a fortnight for him to deliver something to me, not the usual 2-3 days? (The one thing in favour of "perfect storm" talk is that it's not quite so annoying as when someone says "going forward".)
At least 9 times out of 10 I'd expect this to be a snafu. Someone accidentally found a single point of failure that shouldn't exist, or they botched an upgrade, or one of many possible things went wrong.
I don't know if you'd classify that as a terrible coincidence. Depends how many things went wrong at once. It might only have been one.
It appears to have been a database corruption, which for some reason also affected the backup system and couldn’t easily be rolled back. In other words they had no actual redundancy, and it’s a wonder how it’s never crashed before!
Doesn't surprise me in the least. I see they're also now relying on the Republican House to authorise the spending to overhaul their antiquated IT systems. I wonder whether their database is even still supported by the vendor?
It’s apparently an in-house system, dating back a long time. It takes 90 minutes to reboot the server!
As a database, it’s relatively tiny, with hundreds of new records per day - that are written in acronyms to be short, because they often get transmitted by radio - with tens of thousands of searches based on simple indexes such as airfields, airways, waypoints, and co-ordinates, that usually get plotted on maps by various third-party tools.
I wouldn’t be surprised, to discover that it was running on some ancient computer under someone’s desk at the FAA.
A lot of the data standards for this sort of thing were worked out shortly after the war, and so they're all very parsimonious on data length, which makes them pretty hard to interpret for anyone new to them. I know a lot of the data standards in use in the logistics industry are all based on those developed for the Berlin airlift.
I wonder if it's worth a Freedom of Information request to various government agencies to find out the date of commission of their current computer systems? Could have a fun sweepstake on guessing the year for the oldest system.
I would have thought it was in Western interests to see the current Russian regime (which has funded plenty of extremists on both sides of the political spectrum) fall.
I think we'd be uncertain about it - not really in our interest to have Russia fall into warring factions, or to end up controlled by even more erratic types. The idea that stirring regime change will produce an agreeable pro-Western regime is probably illusory at this point.
Neither is it in our interests to see Russia continue what it is doing, and taking over Ukraine and (at least) the Baltic states, interfering more in our internal politics, and poisoning people on our shores with radiological and nerve agents.
Yes, we cannot be sure what would replace Putin. But that does not mean that the potential fall of Putin should stop us from doing it. We cannot appease evil for fear of what lurks behind that evil.
It depends on what you mean by "doing it". There's a difference between rejecting appeasement and actively seeking regime change. The West is energetically and successfully helping Ukraine defend itself, with some debate about how far to push that. We would certainly intervene directly if NATO members were attacked. Actively seeking to overthrow Putin as part of our policy would, however, be a different ballgame and quite likely to lead to an even more nationalist successor. It's unlikely that the US (or British) leadership see that as desirable.
But of a strawman there, Nick.
The aim is to defeat completely the invasion of a sovereign state. What happens to Putin is beyond our control, and other than his perhaps facing an international criminal court sometime in the future, isn't really a factor we should worry about too much.
That is manifestly not the aim. If "the West" wanted to defeat completely the invasion of a sovereign state then they would have done so.
I heard (same podcast) that the US is now spending something like 6-8% (can't remember exactly) of it's GDP on defence which, looking at recent numbers (around 3%) suggests I misheard or misunderstood. It is high, however, and there is a non-trivial proportion of that spending going to aid Ukraine. But evidently not too much.
Defeat the invasion whilst keeping the risk of geographical escalation and direct Russia/NATO military conflict to a minimum - is the objective.
Thanks General. That's quite some access to Theatre-level planning ops.
It's also wrong for most values of "defeat the invasion".
But please keep us informed, although I presume the red phone will be on silent during the snooker.
Hardly needs a seat in the Ops Room to discern the big picture objective.
But ok, you seem put out. Happy to leave the detail to real soldiers.
OK soz let's take baby steps.
Define "defeat the invasion".
That means back to the borders before it commenced.
Ah I see. What if it was realised that that was not possible without as you note the risk of geographical escalation and direct Russia/NATO military conflict.
Would it remain an aim or would the aim switch to something more pragmatic?
Oh and which year are we talking about for "before it commenced"?
Just seen the Sunak broadcast. Can't put my finger on the specifics wrong with it, but my overall impression was of a spoof, as if he'd joined the cast of Brass Eye or Not the Nine O'clock News. The music maybe, or that he just looks so fake. An empty suit.
Just seen the Sunak broadcast. Can't put my finger on the specifics wrong with it, but my overall impression was of a spoof, as if he'd joined the cast of Brass Eye or Not the Nine O'clock News. The music maybe, or that he just looks so fake. An empty suit.
Perhaps this is something where @Roger can contribute, but I found the camera angle from one side, showing Sunak speaking straight ahead to one of the other cameras, particularly weird. What was that all about?
Just seen the Sunak broadcast. Can't put my finger on the specifics wrong with it, but my overall impression was of a spoof, as if he'd joined the cast of Brass Eye or Not the Nine O'clock News. The music maybe, or that he just looks so fake. An empty suit.
For me it was the diction throughout, right from the odd emphasis on the 2nd word "I know..."
I would have thought it was in Western interests to see the current Russian regime (which has funded plenty of extremists on both sides of the political spectrum) fall.
I think we'd be uncertain about it - not really in our interest to have Russia fall into warring factions, or to end up controlled by even more erratic types. The idea that stirring regime change will produce an agreeable pro-Western regime is probably illusory at this point.
Neither is it in our interests to see Russia continue what it is doing, and taking over Ukraine and (at least) the Baltic states, interfering more in our internal politics, and poisoning people on our shores with radiological and nerve agents.
Yes, we cannot be sure what would replace Putin. But that does not mean that the potential fall of Putin should stop us from doing it. We cannot appease evil for fear of what lurks behind that evil.
It depends on what you mean by "doing it". There's a difference between rejecting appeasement and actively seeking regime change. The West is energetically and successfully helping Ukraine defend itself, with some debate about how far to push that. We would certainly intervene directly if NATO members were attacked. Actively seeking to overthrow Putin as part of our policy would, however, be a different ballgame and quite likely to lead to an even more nationalist successor. It's unlikely that the US (or British) leadership see that as desirable.
But of a strawman there, Nick.
The aim is to defeat completely the invasion of a sovereign state. What happens to Putin is beyond our control, and other than his perhaps facing an international criminal court sometime in the future, isn't really a factor we should worry about too much.
That is manifestly not the aim. If "the West" wanted to defeat completely the invasion of a sovereign state then they would have done so.
I heard (same podcast) that the US is now spending something like 6-8% (can't remember exactly) of it's GDP on defence which, looking at recent numbers (around 3%) suggests I misheard or misunderstood. It is high, however, and there is a non-trivial proportion of that spending going to aid Ukraine. But evidently not too much.
Defeat the invasion whilst keeping the risk of geographical escalation and direct Russia/NATO military conflict to a minimum - is the objective.
Thanks General. That's quite some access to Theatre-level planning ops.
It's also wrong for most values of "defeat the invasion".
But please keep us informed, although I presume the red phone will be on silent during the snooker.
Hardly needs a seat in the Ops Room to discern the big picture objective.
But ok, you seem put out. Happy to leave the detail to real soldiers.
OK soz let's take baby steps.
Define "defeat the invasion".
That means back to the borders before it commenced.
Ah I see. What if it was realised that that was not possible without as you note the risk of geographical escalation and direct Russia/NATO military conflict.
Would it remain an aim or would the aim switch to something more pragmatic?
Do you think it a pragmatic approach to seek to buy off a serial invader of other sovereign nations with territorial concessions ?
Just seen the Sunak broadcast. Can't put my finger on the specifics wrong with it, but my overall impression was of a spoof, as if he'd joined the cast of Brass Eye or Not the Nine O'clock News. The music maybe, or that he just looks so fake. An empty suit.
For me it was the diction throughout, right from the odd emphasis on the 2nd word "I know..."
I would have thought it was in Western interests to see the current Russian regime (which has funded plenty of extremists on both sides of the political spectrum) fall.
I think we'd be uncertain about it - not really in our interest to have Russia fall into warring factions, or to end up controlled by even more erratic types. The idea that stirring regime change will produce an agreeable pro-Western regime is probably illusory at this point.
Neither is it in our interests to see Russia continue what it is doing, and taking over Ukraine and (at least) the Baltic states, interfering more in our internal politics, and poisoning people on our shores with radiological and nerve agents.
Yes, we cannot be sure what would replace Putin. But that does not mean that the potential fall of Putin should stop us from doing it. We cannot appease evil for fear of what lurks behind that evil.
It depends on what you mean by "doing it". There's a difference between rejecting appeasement and actively seeking regime change. The West is energetically and successfully helping Ukraine defend itself, with some debate about how far to push that. We would certainly intervene directly if NATO members were attacked. Actively seeking to overthrow Putin as part of our policy would, however, be a different ballgame and quite likely to lead to an even more nationalist successor. It's unlikely that the US (or British) leadership see that as desirable.
But of a strawman there, Nick.
The aim is to defeat completely the invasion of a sovereign state. What happens to Putin is beyond our control, and other than his perhaps facing an international criminal court sometime in the future, isn't really a factor we should worry about too much.
That is manifestly not the aim. If "the West" wanted to defeat completely the invasion of a sovereign state then they would have done so.
I heard (same podcast) that the US is now spending something like 6-8% (can't remember exactly) of it's GDP on defence which, looking at recent numbers (around 3%) suggests I misheard or misunderstood. It is high, however, and there is a non-trivial proportion of that spending going to aid Ukraine. But evidently not too much.
Defeat the invasion whilst keeping the risk of geographical escalation and direct Russia/NATO military conflict to a minimum - is the objective.
Thanks General. That's quite some access to Theatre-level planning ops.
It's also wrong for most values of "defeat the invasion".
But please keep us informed, although I presume the red phone will be on silent during the snooker.
Hardly needs a seat in the Ops Room to discern the big picture objective.
But ok, you seem put out. Happy to leave the detail to real soldiers.
OK soz let's take baby steps.
Define "defeat the invasion".
That means back to the borders before it commenced.
Ah I see. What if it was realised that that was not possible without as you note the risk of geographical escalation and direct Russia/NATO military conflict.
Would it remain an aim or would the aim switch to something more pragmatic?
Do you think it a pragmatic approach to seek to buy off a serial invader of other sovereign nations with territorial concessions ?
Depends what you do in the mean time - see 1938 for positive example.
What caused the computer problems that grounded all US domestic flights today?
1. Russian action? 2. US action? 3. Third party action? 4. Terrible coincidence as in a French farce, or similar to the "perfect storm" that a supplier told me today was the reason why it might take a fortnight for him to deliver something to me, not the usual 2-3 days? (The one thing in favour of "perfect storm" talk is that it's not quite so annoying as when someone says "going forward".)
At least 9 times out of 10 I'd expect this to be a snafu. Someone accidentally found a single point of failure that shouldn't exist, or they botched an upgrade, or one of many possible things went wrong.
I don't know if you'd classify that as a terrible coincidence. Depends how many things went wrong at once. It might only have been one.
It appears to have been a database corruption, which for some reason also affected the backup system and couldn’t easily be rolled back. In other words they had no actual redundancy, and it’s a wonder how it’s never crashed before!
Doesn't surprise me in the least. I see they're also now relying on the Republican House to authorise the spending to overhaul their antiquated IT systems. I wonder whether their database is even still supported by the vendor?
It’s apparently an in-house system, dating back a long time. It takes 90 minutes to reboot the server!
As a database, it’s relatively tiny, with hundreds of new records per day - that are written in acronyms to be short, because they often get transmitted by radio - with tens of thousands of searches based on simple indexes such as airfields, airways, waypoints, and co-ordinates, that usually get plotted on maps by various third-party tools.
I wouldn’t be surprised, to discover that it was running on some ancient computer under someone’s desk at the FAA.
A lot of the data standards for this sort of thing were worked out shortly after the war, and so they're all very parsimonious on data length, which makes them pretty hard to interpret for anyone new to them. I know a lot of the data standards in use in the logistics industry are all based on those developed for the Berlin airlift.
I wonder if it's worth a Freedom of Information request to various government agencies to find out the date of commission of their current computer systems? Could have a fun sweepstake on guessing the year for the oldest system.
Around four years ago I worked with an NHS organisation that was still using FoxPro (not Visual FoxPro) in a data analysis stack (not core patient data management, but used for performance analysis and research) the last release of which was 1994.
ETA: I transferred some of the functionality to MSSQL for storage with most analysis in R, but that was tip of the iceberg of the stuff they had running on it.
I would have thought it was in Western interests to see the current Russian regime (which has funded plenty of extremists on both sides of the political spectrum) fall.
I think we'd be uncertain about it - not really in our interest to have Russia fall into warring factions, or to end up controlled by even more erratic types. The idea that stirring regime change will produce an agreeable pro-Western regime is probably illusory at this point.
Neither is it in our interests to see Russia continue what it is doing, and taking over Ukraine and (at least) the Baltic states, interfering more in our internal politics, and poisoning people on our shores with radiological and nerve agents.
Yes, we cannot be sure what would replace Putin. But that does not mean that the potential fall of Putin should stop us from doing it. We cannot appease evil for fear of what lurks behind that evil.
It depends on what you mean by "doing it". There's a difference between rejecting appeasement and actively seeking regime change. The West is energetically and successfully helping Ukraine defend itself, with some debate about how far to push that. We would certainly intervene directly if NATO members were attacked. Actively seeking to overthrow Putin as part of our policy would, however, be a different ballgame and quite likely to lead to an even more nationalist successor. It's unlikely that the US (or British) leadership see that as desirable.
But of a strawman there, Nick.
The aim is to defeat completely the invasion of a sovereign state. What happens to Putin is beyond our control, and other than his perhaps facing an international criminal court sometime in the future, isn't really a factor we should worry about too much.
That is manifestly not the aim. If "the West" wanted to defeat completely the invasion of a sovereign state then they would have done so.
I heard (same podcast) that the US is now spending something like 6-8% (can't remember exactly) of it's GDP on defence which, looking at recent numbers (around 3%) suggests I misheard or misunderstood. It is high, however, and there is a non-trivial proportion of that spending going to aid Ukraine. But evidently not too much.
Defeat the invasion whilst keeping the risk of geographical escalation and direct Russia/NATO military conflict to a minimum - is the objective.
Thanks General. That's quite some access to Theatre-level planning ops.
It's also wrong for most values of "defeat the invasion".
But please keep us informed, although I presume the red phone will be on silent during the snooker.
Hardly needs a seat in the Ops Room to discern the big picture objective.
But ok, you seem put out. Happy to leave the detail to real soldiers.
OK soz let's take baby steps.
Define "defeat the invasion".
That means back to the borders before it commenced.
Ah I see. What if it was realised that that was not possible without as you note the risk of geographical escalation and direct Russia/NATO military conflict.
Would it remain an aim or would the aim switch to something more pragmatic?
Oh and which year are we talking about for "before it commenced"?
Now we're talking.
So that is the Objective. Defeat the invasion = no Russia territory gain for the SMO = back to the borders before Feb 22 when it started. While keeping the escalation risk to an acceptable minimum.
That's where we are atm.
But if - as you postulate - things change such that it becomes clear this isn't realistic then the objective will change. The risk caveat won't change - that trumps all - so what will change is the other bit. The 'no Russia territory gain' will be dropped.
What caused the computer problems that grounded all US domestic flights today?
1. Russian action? 2. US action? 3. Third party action? 4. Terrible coincidence as in a French farce, or similar to the "perfect storm" that a supplier told me today was the reason why it might take a fortnight for him to deliver something to me, not the usual 2-3 days? (The one thing in favour of "perfect storm" talk is that it's not quite so annoying as when someone says "going forward".)
At least 9 times out of 10 I'd expect this to be a snafu. Someone accidentally found a single point of failure that shouldn't exist, or they botched an upgrade, or one of many possible things went wrong.
I don't know if you'd classify that as a terrible coincidence. Depends how many things went wrong at once. It might only have been one.
It appears to have been a database corruption, which for some reason also affected the backup system and couldn’t easily be rolled back. In other words they had no actual redundancy, and it’s a wonder how it’s never crashed before!
Doesn't surprise me in the least. I see they're also now relying on the Republican House to authorise the spending to overhaul their antiquated IT systems. I wonder whether their database is even still supported by the vendor?
It’s apparently an in-house system, dating back a long time. It takes 90 minutes to reboot the server!
As a database, it’s relatively tiny, with hundreds of new records per day - that are written in acronyms to be short, because they often get transmitted by radio - with tens of thousands of searches based on simple indexes such as airfields, airways, waypoints, and co-ordinates, that usually get plotted on maps by various third-party tools.
I wouldn’t be surprised, to discover that it was running on some ancient computer under someone’s desk at the FAA.
A lot of the data standards for this sort of thing were worked out shortly after the war, and so they're all very parsimonious on data length, which makes them pretty hard to interpret for anyone new to them. I know a lot of the data standards in use in the logistics industry are all based on those developed for the Berlin airlift.
I wonder if it's worth a Freedom of Information request to various government agencies to find out the date of commission of their current computer systems? Could have a fun sweepstake on guessing the year for the oldest system.
Yes, if you do a private pilot’s licence course, you have to do exams on interpreting NOTAMs - alongside METARs, which are similarly abbreviated weather reports.
Rather like with airbourne navigation, there are modern tools that can do it all for you - but one still needs to be able to understand the old-fashioned ways, for when the computers are all suddenly unserviceable and you’d rather be on the ground looking at the sky, than vice-versa!
I would have thought it was in Western interests to see the current Russian regime (which has funded plenty of extremists on both sides of the political spectrum) fall.
I think we'd be uncertain about it - not really in our interest to have Russia fall into warring factions, or to end up controlled by even more erratic types. The idea that stirring regime change will produce an agreeable pro-Western regime is probably illusory at this point.
Neither is it in our interests to see Russia continue what it is doing, and taking over Ukraine and (at least) the Baltic states, interfering more in our internal politics, and poisoning people on our shores with radiological and nerve agents.
Yes, we cannot be sure what would replace Putin. But that does not mean that the potential fall of Putin should stop us from doing it. We cannot appease evil for fear of what lurks behind that evil.
It depends on what you mean by "doing it". There's a difference between rejecting appeasement and actively seeking regime change. The West is energetically and successfully helping Ukraine defend itself, with some debate about how far to push that. We would certainly intervene directly if NATO members were attacked. Actively seeking to overthrow Putin as part of our policy would, however, be a different ballgame and quite likely to lead to an even more nationalist successor. It's unlikely that the US (or British) leadership see that as desirable.
But of a strawman there, Nick.
The aim is to defeat completely the invasion of a sovereign state. What happens to Putin is beyond our control, and other than his perhaps facing an international criminal court sometime in the future, isn't really a factor we should worry about too much.
That is manifestly not the aim. If "the West" wanted to defeat completely the invasion of a sovereign state then they would have done so...
Sure, if they wanted to go to war with Russia. As they don't, policy has been a matter of working out how to avoid that, while supporting Ukraine.
But it's been pretty clear which direction policy has moved in over the last six months or so. Which is why we're having this argument now.
Just seen the Sunak broadcast. Can't put my finger on the specifics wrong with it, but my overall impression was of a spoof, as if he'd joined the cast of Brass Eye or Not the Nine O'clock News. The music maybe, or that he just looks so fake. An empty suit.
Perhaps this is something where @Roger can contribute, but I found the camera angle from one side, showing Sunak speaking straight ahead to one of the other cameras, particularly weird. What was that all about?
I'm not a professional but the editing just seemed awful, cutting between scenes at awkward places. The graphics were really cheap looking too, and also undermined the points bring made in places, eg he talked about bringing inflation down while the little inflation chart graphic showed it going up. The stock footage was all crap. Do the Tories have no budget for this? It really did look like a spoof, and that's even before we get to Sunak's delivery, which I would call wooden but wood is more alive.
Comments
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-red-line-biden-and-xis-secret-ukraine-talks-revealed/
Seems clear to me that the West is testing the waters and waiting for China to react. If China indicates that the provision of Western tanks would be a step too far, and lead them to provide tanks and other equipment for Russia, then the West will not provide tanks.
The focus of Western diplomacy will be on trying to ensure that China acquiesces to this.
America’s abortion access divide is reshaping blue-state border towns
https://www.politico.com/news/2023/01/11/abortion-access-blue-state-border-towns-00077367
...Carbondale is just one of many blue-state towns near red-state borders that some abortion rights supporters didn’t believe could sustain a clinic long-term if Roe were still standing. Now — with Choices and Alamo Women’s Reproductive Services — it has two, and more could follow. And with the influx of patients has come more customers at local restaurants, booked up hotels and other early measures of economic change, particularly in the Midwest and the West...
Given what went on before his appointment SVS can't have been sacked for incompetence although he did cough up Kharkov and whatever's left of Kherson so maybe. Other interpretations available in the Russian media include the possibility that good news is imminent and Shoigu/Gerasimov want to take the credit.
It isn't in any way a realistic scenario that there will be a collapse in the value of these assets, given that they are rendered more necessary not less, by the insistence in the UK on heavily subsidising intermittent, unreliable sources of renewable power, that depend on fossil fuels for back up generation.
The only thing that strikes me as 'dirty' in the above article is the attempt to blackmail Governments and financial institutions into damaging companies who are doing legal and frankly vital work to bring us reliable and inexpensive fuel. People working for these sorts of pressure groups should perhaps be a little more wary that Governments might take their doom-mongering seriously and question whether such grotesque self-harm is actually worthwhile at all, either economically or environmentally.
But really much of this is irrelevant. Either Russia is comprehensively defeated, or it isn't.
Putin shuffling the cards again isn't going to effect the outcome significantly.
ETA or more likely, opened an entire new store. Or closed one.
And spaced.
He's been doing this
For a while.
I think the calm administrator thing could work if what he was saying matched people's realities. His stance on the NHS was to brag about how much cash was being tipped in, to remind everyone how they clapped for nurses, then said he had "immediately" adopted a new strategy (4 months in).
But, say the people, if all that is true why is the NHS in such a state and the blessed nurses on strike where you refuse to even speak to them?
It isn't the delivery thats the problem. Its the content.
Outside the tourist areas everyone wears masks 95% of the time. Mad
On the upside: new delivery services and zoom calls mean you can get any pills you want after a quick video consultation with a medic: they are then biked instantly to your hotel
Also, cannabis stores everywhere
Yes, new (more efficient coal) plants are being built, but lots are getting retired too.
Overall coal capacity is basically flat,
There's a good spreadsheet here that tracks total generating capacity by country.
Worldwide, 11.4GW of coal plants were retired in 1H2022, while 13.8GW started.
This sort of thing is going to be hitting the airwaves for months to come, probably all the way to the next GE.
The Tories are going to be slaughtered in 2024, and the new government is going to have to be more radical in its reform agenda if it wants any chance of retaining its popularity.
Do I want to live in a country where the health outcomes of me and my family are compromised because of the issues the health service faces? No, and someone needs to get a grip on it. It won’t be the Tories. The jury is out on Starmer.
Read more from @benrileysmith: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2023/01/11/rishi-sunak-hold-face-to-face-talks-nicola-sturgeon-pro-union/?utm_content=politics&utm_medium=Social&utm_campaign=Echobox&utm_source=Twitter#Echobox=1673474006-2
But it's a bit moot anyway, since many (most?) voters don't watch the big news bulletins, let alone PPBs. All that matters is whether the things voters think the government is responsible for, like the economy and public services, are getting noticeably better or worse.
Its only good news if you are as mentally challenged as Lee Anderson.
Like for like (LFL) growth is a measure of growth in sales, adjusted for new or divested businesses. This is a widely used indicator of retailers' current trading performance.[1] The adjustment is important in businesses that show a significant dynamic of expansion, disposals or closures.[2] To compare sales figures from different periods is only meaningful, as a measure of the effectiveness of the sales function, when using the same basis for measurement.
One method compares the latest year's sales only to those from activities or locations that were in effect the previous year as well. This method would ignore sales that were only possible this year, for reasons such as a merger or acquisition or the launch of a new product or store.
However, there is a significant choice of alternative methods of calculation, which makes it difficult to compare figures quoted by different retailers.[1]
The portion of current sales achieved through activities that are comparable to the activities of the previous year. Investopedia explains Like-For-Like Sales. Using like-for-like sales is a method of valuation that attempts to exclude any effects of expansion, acquisition, or other events that artificially enlarge the company's sales. For example, if you are trying to compare the turnover of company ABC from this year to last year, it makes sense to exclude from the equation any sales resulting from acquisitions this year.
NOT ABOUT INFLATION
Am curious about what your line of attack is. It sounds like "great results from the supermarkets / so the economy is doing ok / so vote Conservative". If so that rather fails when the people you are saying "great results" for disagree. Selling less products. For less profit. At higher cost per sale. Is not "good news".
Perhaps someone can explain it to you with crayons.
OK - last link from me. This is Global Energy Monitor again - https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1W-gobEQugqTR_PP0iczJCrdaR-vYkJ0DzztSsCJXuKw/edit#gid=822738567
In the last 12 years 613GW of planned new coal plants have been shelved in China, and a further 586GW in India.
Thanks to our ‘friend’, Mr Putin, food inflation is running well above the headline CPI at the moment, which is what these figures are showing more than anything.
Mr Pioneers is sadly right on this one, there’s a lot of ‘downbranding’ going on, both within supermarkets and between them.
You've been wrong consistently about renewables. I don't expect that to change.
Brexit has cooled the appetite for Nexit, Italiexit, etc. (FT)
https://twitter.com/StefanFSchubert/status/1613315771001671688/photo/1
Well done on their media team for the BBC headline though.
Participants most recently were:
Nina Kuryata, Ukrainian journalist with Tortoise Media
Shashank Joshi, Defence Editor at The Economist
Samantha de Bendern, Associate Fellow in the Russia and Eurasia Programme at Chatham House
Sir Lawrence Freedman, Emeritus Professor of War Studies at King’s College, London
I'm suprised they haven't called you to take part.
All Starmer has to do to capitalize is say he will fix it, and then have 2-3 sentences after that which sound vaguely plausible. People will conclude they might as well give Labour a go. It also helps that the service was performing better under Blair/Brown.
"Like for like"
The aim is to defeat completely the invasion of a sovereign state. What happens to Putin is beyond our control, and other than his perhaps facing an international criminal court sometime in the future, isn't really a factor we should worry about too much.
And usually, the initial invasion goes well, but then holding territory when the people don't want you there is the real killer.
Now, sure, sometimes there's a massive difference of wealth, population, technology, etc.
But that's not really the case this time.
I don't think Russia's defeat comes because Ukraine militarily defeats them. I think it comes because over time there become ever more people in Russia who benefit from the war's end than its continuance. And at some point a tipping point is reached.
Even worse is that the big rise in super premium was heavily led by Aldi and Lidl. So if you are Tesco you have the perfect storm. Shoppers staying with you to downtrade their basket and thus buy less of the cheaper no profit margin products. And shop in Aldi to buy the posh stuff instead of you Finest seasonal range. And there is little more expensive / risky for retailers than ordering a load of seasonal only high value products which are basically worthless past Christmas Eve...
Tescos would not be reporting a very strong Christmas period if actual sales had gone down
Like-for-like means simply "assuming we had the same number of stores as last year, what would our growth - in pounds sterling - be?"
I heard (same podcast) that the US is now spending something like 6-8% (can't remember exactly) of it's GDP on defence which, looking at recent numbers (around 3%) suggests I misheard or misunderstood. It is high, however, and there is a non-trivial proportion of that spending going to aid Ukraine. But evidently not too much.
Seriously, with Sunak failing and flailing and Boris circling around him the case for the Tories taking a break is getting stronger.
Compare this article:
A Georgia solar factory shows the promise — and peril — of Biden's new industrial policy
https://www.politico.com/news/2022/01/02/georgia-solar-factory-biden-industrial-policy-526287
With this one:
1/11/2023
Marjorie Taylor Greene, who once called global warming "healthy," is in a unique position: cheering a green energy project -- that benefits her district.
https://www.politico.com/minutes/congress/01-11-2023/mtg-solar-backer/
As a database, it’s relatively tiny, with hundreds of new records per day - that are written in acronyms to be short, because they often get transmitted by radio - with tens of thousands of searches based on simple indexes such as airfields, airways, waypoints, and co-ordinates, that usually get plotted on maps by various third-party tools.
I wouldn’t be surprised, to discover that it was running on some ancient computer under someone’s desk at the FAA.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/NOTAM
But Sergei in Novosibirsk's car isn't working any more, and now there are no parts to fix it. It's not like there's an imminent threat of invasion, or anything, it's just that things he wants are no longer available to him, and for what?
People will put up with discomfort when they think it's in their interest to do so. But what's in it for Sergei? Sure, he might like - in the abstract - a strong Russia. But he's also (like all of us) a slave to Maslow's hierarchy of needs.
It's also wrong for most values of "defeat the invasion".
But please keep us informed, although I presume the red phone will be on silent during the snooker.
Tesco chief executive Ken Murphy admitted that the volume of goods sold was marginally lower than the same period last year. But he said the UK consumer "has proved quite resilient".
It's a point I've made before: companies or organisations that rely on data for their business, but don't see data as their business. Therefore they don't spend money on caring for that data.
https://www.reuters.com/world/uk/inflation-drives-britains-record-christmas-grocery-sales-2023-01-04/
British grocery sales rose 9.4% to a record 12.8 billion pounds ($15.3 billion) in the four weeks to Dec. 25, though growth was driven by price inflation rather than increased purchasing, market researcher Kantar said on Wednesday...
I'm just asking as it's rare to see someone admit to a mistake, and I like seeing why people make mistakes, if not the mistakes themselves.
The concept of NOTAMs hasn’t changed in several decades, from when every byte cost money to transmit.
Apparently the Chinese are being helpful when it comes to things like car parts, but less so with plane parts - and scared witless of military aid, having seen what a Western sanctions regime can look like in practice.
But ok, you seem put out. Happy to leave the detail to real soldiers.
Define "defeat the invasion".
Edit - to start you off, here's one typical definition of "defeat": "win a victory over (someone) in a battle or other contest; overcome or beat."
I don't think any of us particularly disagree, actually, so I'll leave it there for now.
See Garage 54 on YouTube for how mechanics in Novosibirsk roll. The one where they make a clutch from a ceramic bathroom tile is pretty good.
As they don't, policy has been a matter of working out how to avoid that, while supporting Ukraine.
But it's been pretty clear which direction policy has moved in over the last six months or so. Which is why we're having this argument now.
And I'd agree that it's completely counterproductive to seek any particular change in the Russian leadership.
I wonder if it's worth a Freedom of Information request to various government agencies to find out the date of commission of their current computer systems? Could have a fun sweepstake on guessing the year for the oldest system.
Would it remain an aim or would the aim switch to something more pragmatic?
Oh and which year are we talking about for "before it commenced"?
ETA: I transferred some of the functionality to MSSQL for storage with most analysis in R, but that was tip of the iceberg of the stuff they had running on it.
So that is the Objective. Defeat the invasion = no Russia territory gain for the SMO = back to the borders before Feb 22 when it started. While keeping the escalation risk to an acceptable minimum.
That's where we are atm.
But if - as you postulate - things change such that it becomes clear this isn't realistic then the objective will change. The risk caveat won't change - that trumps all - so what will change is the other bit. The 'no Russia territory gain' will be dropped.
That's how I see it anyway.
Rather like with airbourne navigation, there are modern tools that can do it all for you - but one still needs to be able to understand the old-fashioned ways, for when the computers are all suddenly unserviceable and you’d rather be on the ground looking at the sky, than vice-versa!