The Premier League’s disciplinary case against Manchester City is likely to take between two and four years to be completed, according to one of Britain’s leading sports lawyers.
The Premier League announced on its website that the club have been charged with breaching 115 different regulations over 14 years from 2009/10 to this season.
Nick De Marco KC, who represented Mike Ashley in a lengthy legal case when he was trying to sell Newcastle United and who also defended Derby County and Sheffield Wednesday on financial fair play charges, said the number of charges facing City and the length of time they cover made the case incredibly complex. He believes the process will take between two and four years.
De Marco said: “Having worked on the Derby County and Sheffield Wednesday financial fair play cases, both of which involved two charges over about two years and took about a year and a half from charges to the end, I would not be surprised if these proceedings took considerably longer given there are apparently 115 charges covering a period of 14 years.”
This study argues that a new women's cooperative constellation has been established in Scotland around the issue of the Scottish Government's proposed reforms of the Gender Recognition Act. This constellation includes women politicians, researchers, journalists, writers, and activists from all sides of mainstream political opinion in Scotland. The constellation works together to support its politician members, share information and form a supportive community. The constellation acts together to show support for those in the public eye, such as politicians or members being publicly attacked, to make them aware they have ‘an army of women behind them’. The role social media plays has been an important one for the formation and continuance of the constellation, particularly during the pandemic. It has been game-changing in allowing women to identify each other, communicate, arrange to work together and show public support for others. It has also been important in raising awareness of the issues, both with politicians and the general public because, unlike previously identified constellations, this network has needed to generate broad public awareness and support because they have not been working as Government insiders. However, all interviewees were aware that it was not enough to engage in online activism and that they needed to be ‘in the room’ with politicians in order to make any impact.
I hope women do organize to fight misogyny in society - it's rife - but I'm skeptical of this transgender issue being the Rosa Parks for it. Love to be wrong though.
So what feminist issues do YOU wish to focus on once the GRR is confirmed as being defeated?
The GRR bill subject to amendment could be passed - I have sympathy for both trans people who find the current process too cumbersome and critics of self-ID who see it as too open to abuse.
One of the most important issues facing women as a whole is male violence - which is why the GRR Bill whipped up a perfect storm and why the SNP & Sturgeon were so foolish to ignore criticism.
Misogyny is a massive problem in society imo and male violence against women is an extreme manifestation of it. The cases keep on coming, some terrible ones in the news just these last couple of days, and for every one in the news, loads not. For me it's not best served by coupling with the transgender debate. Seems to me that helps nobody, it detracts from one issue and distorts the other, which is why I look forward to seeing what the feminist agenda looks like on the other side of it, once GR is either accepted as needing liberalizing or agreed that it won't be. That day will come. Feminism is too big and important to stay in this niche cubicle.
The Premier League’s disciplinary case against Manchester City is likely to take between two and four years to be completed, according to one of Britain’s leading sports lawyers.
The Premier League announced on its website that the club have been charged with breaching 115 different regulations over 14 years from 2009/10 to this season.
Nick De Marco KC, who represented Mike Ashley in a lengthy legal case when he was trying to sell Newcastle United and who also defended Derby County and Sheffield Wednesday on financial fair play charges, said the number of charges facing City and the length of time they cover made the case incredibly complex. He believes the process will take between two and four years.
De Marco said: “Having worked on the Derby County and Sheffield Wednesday financial fair play cases, both of which involved two charges over about two years and took about a year and a half from charges to the end, I would not be surprised if these proceedings took considerably longer given there are apparently 115 charges covering a period of 14 years.”
The Beggar King is in a Ford Galaxy on the M11 so pb's 101st Chairborne will be getting excited over that providing a welcome change from the trans shit and HS2 minutiae very soon.
We - and Russia to, for that matter - are a nation that survived WWII only because of US aid, so it's a bit charmless to get sniffy about someone else in a comparable situation.
So the Russian nation would have ceased to exist during WW2 had it not been for US aid? What a loony.
PS Would it be gazetted somewhere if Johnson were to receive his US citizenship back, or is it only renunciations that get publicly noted?
PPS Some Ford Galaxies from the mid-noughties had front seats that could turn round and face the back. Now that's what I call a cool car.
The Germans made it to the Moscow suburbs in WWII. It doesn't take much changes to the timeline to them making it a bit further...
For example, the US and UK provided *all* the hi octane aviation gasoline for the USSR. It was only postwar that they got their cracking plants lined up to make it.
Vast amount of machine tools - in some categories, 100% of the tools and 100% of the tooling was Lendlease supplied. Without that, Soviet production would have crawled to a halt.
And so on in many categories - the % of USSR GDP was small, but LendLease was about supplying materials and equipment they were short of. Or literally didn't have.
The fall of Moscow, or even of both Moscow and Leningrad as it then was, would not in itself have come anywhere near making the Soviet government seek to agree terms with Germany. More than 1000 large factories were shipped eastwards. The USSR would certainly have continued fighting. Sure, they could have been defeated but the fall of Moscow wouldn't have done for them.
Do you regret that the USA and Britain gave such substantial assistance to their Soviet ally during WW2/the GPW? Or is it a very different Germany now but a very similar Russia, so western policy was good then (fight with Russia against Germany) and western policy is also good now (pointing towards fighting with Germany against Russia this time round)?
Stalin was evil, but less evil than Hitler.
"If Hitler invaded Hell, I would make at least a favourable reference of the Devil in the House of Commons."
So here's the thing - I am less sure of this than I used to be. Hitler evil, absolutely. He started the war that saw millions dead and initiated the holocaust.
But how many did Stalin kill? The famine in Ukraine, the gulags, the show trials, all of it. Why does Uncle Joe get a pass to be less evil than Hitler?
The main distinction I would draw would be that Stalin came to power in the USSR on a platform of "Socialism in one country" - a recognition that the attempt to spread communist revolution to the rest of the world had failed, and there was a need for the Bolsheviks to consolidate their power within their borders.
By contrast, the core of Hitler's ideology was the idea of the German need for Lebensraum, and consequently aggressive military expansion.
Bluntly, Stalin was content to kill people within his borders, while Hitler sought to kill people in the lands outside Germany's borders. The latter is more dangerous than the former.
This distinction might be more a consequence of the different levels of capability than ideology, but it's also true that the strong evil guy is more of a threat than the weak evil guy.
Also with Communism, for all the horrors enacted in its name, there was an arguably non-heinous idea at its core. This isn't the case with Hitler and the Nazis. The ideology there, the industrial scale subjugation of other people by a master race, is wholly abhorent in every sense and on every level.
Doesn't that make the Communist authoritarianism worse to some extent? It means that well-meaning people can go along with evil, "For The Greater Good," while the moral choice is a bit clearer under fascism. This might also explain why Communist dictatorships have tended to be more durable than fascist ones.
That said, having reflected, I think one can say that Hitler was a notch more evil than Stalin, because Hitler's intent with the Holocaust was to eradicate the Jewish people, and while there was a programme of Russification within the USSR, and particular ethnic groups like the Crimean Tartars were particularly targeted, the single-minded and ideological pursuit of the destruction of the Jewish people was, I think, on a distinctly more evil level.
Wolf more dangerous when donning the sheepskin? Yes, can be. But tbh, 'Hitler or Stalin more evil?', I don't find it that useful a question, but if forced to take it I neither find it that difficult. Hitler. There's just no shred of a redeeming factor, or anything not wholly evil, in what he believed or did in the name of it.
And there is with Stalin? Really? Do you think Stalin cared for anyone who he had murdered?
O/T: John Cleese says Fawlty Towers couldn't be made today. Good thing too. The way the Spanish character Manuel is written and related to by other characters is disgustingly racist.
A typical laugh with Manuel: he doesn't know English properly, he says "Que" in Spanish when he doesn't understand something, and - haha - here's his tall English employer whopping him around the head. As if Basil doesn't have enough problems!
PS Agreeing with the above does not suggest support for allowing rapists into women's changing rooms just because they've decided to call themselves women.
I don't think the snobbery and middle class angst about loss of status would be recognisable these days. Most comedy dates quite swiftly.
Perhaps he could make a series about the middle class angst about loss of comic chops instead.
Perhaps a series about an aging comic, pursued by nightmares real and figurative about comedy sketches he created half a century ago?
Are the Woke Police (led by a giant ballon) a figment of his guilty imagination? Or are they really pursuing him on penny farthing bicycles across Zambia, armed with razor sharp mangetout?
The Premier League’s disciplinary case against Manchester City is likely to take between two and four years to be completed, according to one of Britain’s leading sports lawyers.
The Premier League announced on its website that the club have been charged with breaching 115 different regulations over 14 years from 2009/10 to this season.
Nick De Marco KC, who represented Mike Ashley in a lengthy legal case when he was trying to sell Newcastle United and who also defended Derby County and Sheffield Wednesday on financial fair play charges, said the number of charges facing City and the length of time they cover made the case incredibly complex. He believes the process will take between two and four years.
De Marco said: “Having worked on the Derby County and Sheffield Wednesday financial fair play cases, both of which involved two charges over about two years and took about a year and a half from charges to the end, I would not be surprised if these proceedings took considerably longer given there are apparently 115 charges covering a period of 14 years.”
Strange that Sturgeon - very able as she is - should stumble over a couple of things much less gifted people would avoid.
With GRR all you have to do to avoid trouble is to shadow what England and Wales is doing (don't ask, no idea), take any credit and blame any problems on Westminster. Standard stuff.
With GE as 'proxy referendum' you cannot win. If you poll 50%+ everyone else says tough, we never recognised this. If you don't poll 50%+ you have lost on your own terms, and your enemies as well as other parties will be quick to point it out.
Since the Brexit 52/48 vote, pressing for a referendum except when support for the change is so strong it's irresistible is a bit out of fashion.
Why is this gifted (though wrong) politician not doing gritty everyday campaigning to get support for independence up to 60-65%, from which position she could actually get what she says she wants? Since Brexit she is not exactly short of material to work with.
That’s the point Salmond was making on WATO yesterday - why pick a fight with Westminster over this, rather than, for example, something Europe related which could be tied in with the economy/cost of living?
Why are we ruling out that she wants to deliver a longstanding commitment that she also believes in?
Comes under an increasing reluctance to assume ANY good faith in the motives of one's opponents.
Which you both clearly demonstrate yourselves.
I mean the reason the move was opposed was not because people might be concerned about say convicted male rapists being allowed into women's prisons but because such people wanted to create a culture war, have a wedge issue, play dirty politics.
there is more of that on the anti (GRR) side than the pro.
Which of the concerns about the GRR Bill raised by its critics (and dismissed by Sturgeon as “not valid”) have proved not to be?
Well the bill hasn't passed so one can't really say. We need to look at what's happened in countries - Ireland being the closest to home - where similar HAS been done. What we certainly do seem to have in Scotland is an issue with risk assessment for prisons. Are you claiming that this specific recent case shows that all the fears raised - no more single sex spaces, women's rights destroyed, floodgates opened for predatory men to gain GRCs for nefarious purposes, end of sex as a biological concept etc etc - are rational and justified? If you are I think that's a stretch.
You claimed that critics were more driving the issue as a “wedge issue” but have no evidence - so now retreat behind “the bill hasn’t passed”. I ask again, where is the evidence that critics were driven by trying to create a wedge, or were their concerns “not valid” to quote Sturgeon?
Claiming it’s a “wedge issue” is another tactic to delegitimise your opponents views - which is why they weren’t listened to, which is why it’s in the mess it’s in. If you really were interested in trans rights you’d have listened.
Good to know that Alistair McConnachie of UK A Force For Good, Joseph Finnie ex BNP and Fox regular Andy Ngo supported the Let Women Speak rally on Sunday to show their concerns rather than use it as a wedge issue.
So mandatory fox hunting and animal cruelty? Mustn't support a cause that the Hugo Boss fashionistas like....
Yeah, you’ve tried that lumbering zinger before. The point attempting to be made was that this was not being used as a wedge issue in a culture war. I’ll add you to the list of credulous folk who think that.
I am rather taken aback by the resistance we are encountering on this one.
"Ok, listen up peeps, how can we use this Transgender thing to peel away votes from the other side?"
Can there seriously be any doubt that the above is playing out far more in Tory brainstorming sessions than in those of LAB/LD/SNP?
If we can't win this argument on here we might as well give up and put the kettle on.
When you and @Theuniondivvie are of the opinion that the only people who are on the other side are the "BNP", "Trump", "InfoWars" and assorted other troglodytes then yes its certainly possible and there certainly is doubt.
Of course it shouldn't be playing out in any such sessions for any party and instead the legitimate concerns of both sides should be listened to, but the two of you in particular are never in any mood for that, hence the desire to mock everyone who disagrees as being a "wedge" or "InfoWars" instead of listening to their very valid concerns.
That's what people like you do, characterise a pointing out of dubious fellow travellers as saying they are 'the only people who are on the other side', which is lying, which makes you a...?
A ... figment of your imagination?
I've literally never done that. Not only do I not like to do that, I've never pointed out dubious fellow travellers as I think it's a bloody stupid thing to do, as there are dubious people on all sides.
Dashed unsporting to quote a chap's own words back at him, but you literally said 'When you and @Theuniondivvie are of the opinion that the only people who are on the other side are the "BNP", "Trump", "InfoWars" and assorted other troglodytes', which is a lie. Now you can either accept that's a lie or do the expressed yourself badly thing. Oh, you can also jog on of course.
Improve your reading comprehension. 🙈
Yes I quite literally said that when you and @Theuniondivvie are of the opinion that ...
I was criticising your opinion, not sharing it. Unless you are overtly sensitive and thought I was lumping you with the BNP, Trump, Infowars and assorted other troglodytes?
What opinion did I express that said that 'the only people who are on the other side are the "BNP", "Trump", "InfoWars" and assorted other troglodytes'?
It's a paraphrase but try your post at 12:11pm.
You could respond to this debate by responding to what other people say, but easier and lazier it seems for you to drag people into the mud by insinuating they're on the side of that lot rather than actually bothering to think through matters or address legitimate concerns.
"The bombing of the Nord Stream gas pipeline was a covert operation ordered by the White House and carried out by the CIA — The Times, citing investigative journalist Seymour Hersh"
I was, of course, nearly laughed off PB as a lunatic conspiracy theorist for daring to suggest this was a possibility last year.
Reading the story I am forced to admit it does sound fairly convincing. This is a wrinkle I didn’t consider at the time: … Biden’s and Nuland’s indiscretion, if that is what it was, might have frustrated some of the planners. But it also created an opportunity. According to the source, some of the senior officials of the CIA determined that blowing up the pipeline “no longer could be considered a covert option because the President just announced that we knew how to do it.”
The plan to blow up Nord Stream 1 and 2 was suddenly downgraded from a covert operation requiring that Congress be informed to one that was deemed as a highly classified intelligence operation with U.S. military support. Under the law, the source explained, “There was no longer a legal requirement to report the operation to Congress. All they had to do now is just do it—but it still had to be secret. The Russians have superlative surveillance of the Baltic Sea.”…
Had it been reported to Congress, it would have leaked within the month.
The breach of the Western 4th Generation jet fighter taboo seems to be in progress.
There are a lot of unhappy power people in DC, Paris & Berlin over this development.…
Hopefully the UK government will make those people even more unhappy by adding a couple dozen Storm Shadow cruise missiles for these Eurofighters to launch at high priority Russian logistical targets inside Ukraine's 1991 borders.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy visited Britain to drum up aid, winning a pledge to train Ukrainian pilots on advanced NATO fighter jets, a big symbolic step up in Western military support https://reut.rs/3YCwaDB
But am I wrong in saying it’s not been a good war for aircraft this one? Theoretically Russia have control of the skies, not least their strong radar screen over Ukraine that scares NATO from getting involved, but can do very little with that control because of the sophisticated anti air craft weaponry these days. It’s not been a good war for tanks or columns of vehicles either it seems to me - drones tend to wipe whole columns out shockingly easily.
I’d hate us to get distracted by some sexy weaponry and overlook what might actually help the most, maybe Boring things like logistics, supply lines and getting things into the right place right time as quickly as possible. Also giving them money.
Probably the main thing I think will most help Ukraine fight this war the longer it goes on into this year would be boots on the ground. Can’t we ramp up our special services involvement in the war, like how we thrashed Gaddafi?
Strange that Sturgeon - very able as she is - should stumble over a couple of things much less gifted people would avoid.
With GRR all you have to do to avoid trouble is to shadow what England and Wales is doing (don't ask, no idea), take any credit and blame any problems on Westminster. Standard stuff.
With GE as 'proxy referendum' you cannot win. If you poll 50%+ everyone else says tough, we never recognised this. If you don't poll 50%+ you have lost on your own terms, and your enemies as well as other parties will be quick to point it out.
Since the Brexit 52/48 vote, pressing for a referendum except when support for the change is so strong it's irresistible is a bit out of fashion.
Why is this gifted (though wrong) politician not doing gritty everyday campaigning to get support for independence up to 60-65%, from which position she could actually get what she says she wants? Since Brexit she is not exactly short of material to work with.
That’s the point Salmond was making on WATO yesterday - why pick a fight with Westminster over this, rather than, for example, something Europe related which could be tied in with the economy/cost of living?
Why are we ruling out that she wants to deliver a longstanding commitment that she also believes in?
Comes under an increasing reluctance to assume ANY good faith in the motives of one's opponents.
Which you both clearly demonstrate yourselves.
I mean the reason the move was opposed was not because people might be concerned about say convicted male rapists being allowed into women's prisons but because such people wanted to create a culture war, have a wedge issue, play dirty politics.
there is more of that on the anti (GRR) side than the pro.
Which of the concerns about the GRR Bill raised by its critics (and dismissed by Sturgeon as “not valid”) have proved not to be?
Well the bill hasn't passed so one can't really say. We need to look at what's happened in countries - Ireland being the closest to home - where similar HAS been done. What we certainly do seem to have in Scotland is an issue with risk assessment for prisons. Are you claiming that this specific recent case shows that all the fears raised - no more single sex spaces, women's rights destroyed, floodgates opened for predatory men to gain GRCs for nefarious purposes, end of sex as a biological concept etc etc - are rational and justified? If you are I think that's a stretch.
You claimed that critics were more driving the issue as a “wedge issue” but have no evidence - so now retreat behind “the bill hasn’t passed”. I ask again, where is the evidence that critics were driven by trying to create a wedge, or were their concerns “not valid” to quote Sturgeon?
Claiming it’s a “wedge issue” is another tactic to delegitimise your opponents views - which is why they weren’t listened to, which is why it’s in the mess it’s in. If you really were interested in trans rights you’d have listened.
Good to know that Alistair McConnachie of UK A Force For Good, Joseph Finnie ex BNP and Fox regular Andy Ngo supported the Let Women Speak rally on Sunday to show their concerns rather than use it as a wedge issue.
So mandatory fox hunting and animal cruelty? Mustn't support a cause that the Hugo Boss fashionistas like....
Yeah, you’ve tried that lumbering zinger before. The point attempting to be made was that this was not being used as a wedge issue in a culture war. I’ll add you to the list of credulous folk who think that.
I am rather taken aback by the resistance we are encountering on this one.
"Ok, listen up peeps, how can we use this Transgender thing to peel away votes from the other side?"
Can there seriously be any doubt that the above is playing out far more in Tory brainstorming sessions than in those of LAB/LD/SNP?
If we can't win this argument on here we might as well give up and put the kettle on.
When you and @Theuniondivvie are of the opinion that the only people who are on the other side are the "BNP", "Trump", "InfoWars" and assorted other troglodytes then yes its certainly possible and there certainly is doubt.
Of course it shouldn't be playing out in any such sessions for any party and instead the legitimate concerns of both sides should be listened to, but the two of you in particular are never in any mood for that, hence the desire to mock everyone who disagrees as being a "wedge" or "InfoWars" instead of listening to their very valid concerns.
That's what people like you do, characterise a pointing out of dubious fellow travellers as saying they are 'the only people who are on the other side', which is lying, which makes you a...?
Whilst people like you refuse to ever admit that there is ever anything awry. Nothing to apologise for.
I have lived with a Scot for 30 years. It would seem "sorry" is not a word north of the border. Instead, there is a third person in our marriage, myself, my wife - and the mysterious damage fairy, who has to take responsibility for all unexplained incidents that might otherwise point to the Good Lady Wife.
My wife never apologises for anything either (and why should she as she is infallible). And yet she isn't Scottish while I am. Go figure!
Does that mean that if I self ID as female, I will no longer need to apologise for anything?
Yes, that's right. And you will always put the toilet lid down.
Surely a true gentleman always does that anyway?
(I was persuaded on this point by by now-wife, who argued that - when we were a household of two - that there was a higher probability the next user would want the toilet seat down than up. I'm a sucker for - even postulative - statistical argument.)
Nah, that only works if she is referring to the middle ring bit. Putting the lid down conveniences no-one.
Best is lid up, ring bit down Second is lid up, ring bit up
Have a word.
The lid is there to prevent aerolisation of faecal bearing droplets on the flush.....really people dont put the lid down?
The Beggar King is in a Ford Galaxy on the M11 so pb's 101st Chairborne will be getting excited over that providing a welcome change from the trans shit and HS2 minutiae very soon.
We - and Russia to, for that matter - are a nation that survived WWII only because of US aid, so it's a bit charmless to get sniffy about someone else in a comparable situation.
So the Russian nation would have ceased to exist during WW2 had it not been for US aid? What a loony.
PS Would it be gazetted somewhere if Johnson were to receive his US citizenship back, or is it only renunciations that get publicly noted?
PPS Some Ford Galaxies from the mid-noughties had front seats that could turn round and face the back. Now that's what I call a cool car.
The Germans made it to the Moscow suburbs in WWII. It doesn't take much changes to the timeline to them making it a bit further...
For example, the US and UK provided *all* the hi octane aviation gasoline for the USSR. It was only postwar that they got their cracking plants lined up to make it.
Vast amount of machine tools - in some categories, 100% of the tools and 100% of the tooling was Lendlease supplied. Without that, Soviet production would have crawled to a halt.
And so on in many categories - the % of USSR GDP was small, but LendLease was about supplying materials and equipment they were short of. Or literally didn't have.
The fall of Moscow, or even of both Moscow and Leningrad as it then was, would not in itself have come anywhere near making the Soviet government seek to agree terms with Germany. More than 1000 large factories were shipped eastwards. The USSR would certainly have continued fighting. Sure, they could have been defeated but the fall of Moscow wouldn't have done for them.
Do you regret that the USA and Britain gave such substantial assistance to their Soviet ally during WW2/the GPW? Or is it a very different Germany now but a very similar Russia, so western policy was good then (fight with Russia against Germany) and western policy is also good now (pointing towards fighting with Germany against Russia this time round)?
Stalin was evil, but less evil than Hitler.
"If Hitler invaded Hell, I would make at least a favourable reference of the Devil in the House of Commons."
So here's the thing - I am less sure of this than I used to be. Hitler evil, absolutely. He started the war that saw millions dead and initiated the holocaust.
But how many did Stalin kill? The famine in Ukraine, the gulags, the show trials, all of it. Why does Uncle Joe get a pass to be less evil than Hitler?
The main distinction I would draw would be that Stalin came to power in the USSR on a platform of "Socialism in one country" - a recognition that the attempt to spread communist revolution to the rest of the world had failed, and there was a need for the Bolsheviks to consolidate their power within their borders.
By contrast, the core of Hitler's ideology was the idea of the German need for Lebensraum, and consequently aggressive military expansion.
Bluntly, Stalin was content to kill people within his borders, while Hitler sought to kill people in the lands outside Germany's borders. The latter is more dangerous than the former.
This distinction might be more a consequence of the different levels of capability than ideology, but it's also true that the strong evil guy is more of a threat than the weak evil guy.
Also with Communism, for all the horrors enacted in its name, there was an arguably non-heinous idea at its core. This isn't the case with Hitler and the Nazis. The ideology there, the industrial scale subjugation of other people by a master race, is wholly abhorent in every sense and on every level.
Doesn't that make the Communist authoritarianism worse to some extent? It means that well-meaning people can go along with evil, "For The Greater Good," while the moral choice is a bit clearer under fascism. This might also explain why Communist dictatorships have tended to be more durable than fascist ones.
That said, having reflected, I think one can say that Hitler was a notch more evil than Stalin, because Hitler's intent with the Holocaust was to eradicate the Jewish people, and while there was a programme of Russification within the USSR, and particular ethnic groups like the Crimean Tartars were particularly targeted, the single-minded and ideological pursuit of the destruction of the Jewish people was, I think, on a distinctly more evil level.
Wolf more dangerous when donning the sheepskin? Yes, can be. But tbh, 'Hitler or Stalin more evil?', I don't find it that useful a question, but if forced to take it I neither find it that difficult. Hitler. There's just no shred of a redeeming factor, or anything not wholly evil, in what he believed or did in the name of it.
And there is with Stalin? Really? Do you think Stalin cared for anyone who he had murdered?
Nor did Ted Bundy. I'm not comparing them like that. I'm looking at the whole thing, the ideology and what they did to further it. The ideology of Communism isn't as wholly and irredeemably evil as that of Nazism. This doesn't mean Stalin wasn't evil. He damn well was. Very.
Jared O'Mara has been found guilty of six counts of fraud over expenses claims made while he was in office in 2019.
The former Sheffield Hallam MP was on trial at Leeds Crown Court for submitting fake invoices to the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority to fund a cocaine habit.
He was convicted on Wednesday of six counts of fraud by false representation. The jury cleared him of two other fraud charges.
Gareth Arnold, a co-defendant, was found guilty of three out of six fraud charges, and a third defendant, John Woodliff, was found not guilty of one offence of fraud.
O'Mara and Arnold will be sentenced at the same court on Thursday.
Surely this must mean that Nick Clegg will be automatically reinstated as an MP. And leader of the Liberal Democrats. And sweep to power after the next election.
The Beggar King is in a Ford Galaxy on the M11 so pb's 101st Chairborne will be getting excited over that providing a welcome change from the trans shit and HS2 minutiae very soon.
We - and Russia to, for that matter - are a nation that survived WWII only because of US aid, so it's a bit charmless to get sniffy about someone else in a comparable situation.
So the Russian nation would have ceased to exist during WW2 had it not been for US aid? What a loony.
PS Would it be gazetted somewhere if Johnson were to receive his US citizenship back, or is it only renunciations that get publicly noted?
PPS Some Ford Galaxies from the mid-noughties had front seats that could turn round and face the back. Now that's what I call a cool car.
The Germans made it to the Moscow suburbs in WWII. It doesn't take much changes to the timeline to them making it a bit further...
For example, the US and UK provided *all* the hi octane aviation gasoline for the USSR. It was only postwar that they got their cracking plants lined up to make it.
Vast amount of machine tools - in some categories, 100% of the tools and 100% of the tooling was Lendlease supplied. Without that, Soviet production would have crawled to a halt.
And so on in many categories - the % of USSR GDP was small, but LendLease was about supplying materials and equipment they were short of. Or literally didn't have.
The fall of Moscow, or even of both Moscow and Leningrad as it then was, would not in itself have come anywhere near making the Soviet government seek to agree terms with Germany. More than 1000 large factories were shipped eastwards. The USSR would certainly have continued fighting. Sure, they could have been defeated but the fall of Moscow wouldn't have done for them.
Do you regret that the USA and Britain gave such substantial assistance to their Soviet ally during WW2/the GPW? Or is it a very different Germany now but a very similar Russia, so western policy was good then (fight with Russia against Germany) and western policy is also good now (pointing towards fighting with Germany against Russia this time round)?
Stalin was evil, but less evil than Hitler.
"If Hitler invaded Hell, I would make at least a favourable reference of the Devil in the House of Commons."
So here's the thing - I am less sure of this than I used to be. Hitler evil, absolutely. He started the war that saw millions dead and initiated the holocaust.
But how many did Stalin kill? The famine in Ukraine, the gulags, the show trials, all of it. Why does Uncle Joe get a pass to be less evil than Hitler?
The main distinction I would draw would be that Stalin came to power in the USSR on a platform of "Socialism in one country" - a recognition that the attempt to spread communist revolution to the rest of the world had failed, and there was a need for the Bolsheviks to consolidate their power within their borders.
By contrast, the core of Hitler's ideology was the idea of the German need for Lebensraum, and consequently aggressive military expansion.
Bluntly, Stalin was content to kill people within his borders, while Hitler sought to kill people in the lands outside Germany's borders. The latter is more dangerous than the former.
This distinction might be more a consequence of the different levels of capability than ideology, but it's also true that the strong evil guy is more of a threat than the weak evil guy.
Also with Communism, for all the horrors enacted in its name, there was an arguably non-heinous idea at its core. This isn't the case with Hitler and the Nazis. The ideology there, the industrial scale subjugation of other people by a master race, is wholly abhorent in every sense and on every level.
Doesn't that make the Communist authoritarianism worse to some extent? It means that well-meaning people can go along with evil, "For The Greater Good," while the moral choice is a bit clearer under fascism. This might also explain why Communist dictatorships have tended to be more durable than fascist ones.
That said, having reflected, I think one can say that Hitler was a notch more evil than Stalin, because Hitler's intent with the Holocaust was to eradicate the Jewish people, and while there was a programme of Russification within the USSR, and particular ethnic groups like the Crimean Tartars were particularly targeted, the single-minded and ideological pursuit of the destruction of the Jewish people was, I think, on a distinctly more evil level.
Wolf more dangerous when donning the sheepskin? Yes, can be. But tbh, 'Hitler or Stalin more evil?', I don't find it that useful a question, but if forced to take it I neither find it that difficult. Hitler. There's just no shred of a redeeming factor, or anything not wholly evil, in what he believed or did in the name of it.
And there is with Stalin? Really? Do you think Stalin cared for anyone who he had murdered?
Nor did Ted Bundy. I'm not comparing them like that. I'm looking at the whole thing, the ideology and what they did to further it. The ideology of Communism isn't as wholly and irredeemably evil as that of Nazism. This doesn't mean Stalin wasn't evil. He damn well was. Very.
Yes it is. There is nothing redeeming in Communism any more than Nazism, they are two cheeks of the same arse.
The Beggar King is in a Ford Galaxy on the M11 so pb's 101st Chairborne will be getting excited over that providing a welcome change from the trans shit and HS2 minutiae very soon.
We - and Russia to, for that matter - are a nation that survived WWII only because of US aid, so it's a bit charmless to get sniffy about someone else in a comparable situation.
So the Russian nation would have ceased to exist during WW2 had it not been for US aid? What a loony.
PS Would it be gazetted somewhere if Johnson were to receive his US citizenship back, or is it only renunciations that get publicly noted?
PPS Some Ford Galaxies from the mid-noughties had front seats that could turn round and face the back. Now that's what I call a cool car.
The Germans made it to the Moscow suburbs in WWII. It doesn't take much changes to the timeline to them making it a bit further...
For example, the US and UK provided *all* the hi octane aviation gasoline for the USSR. It was only postwar that they got their cracking plants lined up to make it.
Vast amount of machine tools - in some categories, 100% of the tools and 100% of the tooling was Lendlease supplied. Without that, Soviet production would have crawled to a halt.
And so on in many categories - the % of USSR GDP was small, but LendLease was about supplying materials and equipment they were short of. Or literally didn't have.
The fall of Moscow, or even of both Moscow and Leningrad as it then was, would not in itself have come anywhere near making the Soviet government seek to agree terms with Germany. More than 1000 large factories were shipped eastwards. The USSR would certainly have continued fighting. Sure, they could have been defeated but the fall of Moscow wouldn't have done for them.
Do you regret that the USA and Britain gave such substantial assistance to their Soviet ally during WW2/the GPW? Or is it a very different Germany now but a very similar Russia, so western policy was good then (fight with Russia against Germany) and western policy is also good now (pointing towards fighting with Germany against Russia this time round)?
Stalin was evil, but less evil than Hitler.
"If Hitler invaded Hell, I would make at least a favourable reference of the Devil in the House of Commons."
So here's the thing - I am less sure of this than I used to be. Hitler evil, absolutely. He started the war that saw millions dead and initiated the holocaust.
But how many did Stalin kill? The famine in Ukraine, the gulags, the show trials, all of it. Why does Uncle Joe get a pass to be less evil than Hitler?
The main distinction I would draw would be that Stalin came to power in the USSR on a platform of "Socialism in one country" - a recognition that the attempt to spread communist revolution to the rest of the world had failed, and there was a need for the Bolsheviks to consolidate their power within their borders.
By contrast, the core of Hitler's ideology was the idea of the German need for Lebensraum, and consequently aggressive military expansion.
Bluntly, Stalin was content to kill people within his borders, while Hitler sought to kill people in the lands outside Germany's borders. The latter is more dangerous than the former.
This distinction might be more a consequence of the different levels of capability than ideology, but it's also true that the strong evil guy is more of a threat than the weak evil guy.
Also with Communism, for all the horrors enacted in its name, there was an arguably non-heinous idea at its core. This isn't the case with Hitler and the Nazis. The ideology there, the industrial scale subjugation of other people by a master race, is wholly abhorent in every sense and on every level.
Doesn't that make the Communist authoritarianism worse to some extent? It means that well-meaning people can go along with evil, "For The Greater Good," while the moral choice is a bit clearer under fascism. This might also explain why Communist dictatorships have tended to be more durable than fascist ones.
That said, having reflected, I think one can say that Hitler was a notch more evil than Stalin, because Hitler's intent with the Holocaust was to eradicate the Jewish people, and while there was a programme of Russification within the USSR, and particular ethnic groups like the Crimean Tartars were particularly targeted, the single-minded and ideological pursuit of the destruction of the Jewish people was, I think, on a distinctly more evil level.
Wolf more dangerous when donning the sheepskin? Yes, can be. But tbh, 'Hitler or Stalin more evil?', I don't find it that useful a question, but if forced to take it I neither find it that difficult. Hitler. There's just no shred of a redeeming factor, or anything not wholly evil, in what he believed or did in the name of it.
And there is with Stalin? Really? Do you think Stalin cared for anyone who he had murdered?
Quite a bit, possibly - didn’t he leave gloating notes in the margins against some of the names on the lists of those disposed of ?
It’s hard to think that a victorious Hitler would not have been far more destructive, though, given his plans for mass exterminations.
Strange that Sturgeon - very able as she is - should stumble over a couple of things much less gifted people would avoid.
With GRR all you have to do to avoid trouble is to shadow what England and Wales is doing (don't ask, no idea), take any credit and blame any problems on Westminster. Standard stuff.
With GE as 'proxy referendum' you cannot win. If you poll 50%+ everyone else says tough, we never recognised this. If you don't poll 50%+ you have lost on your own terms, and your enemies as well as other parties will be quick to point it out.
Since the Brexit 52/48 vote, pressing for a referendum except when support for the change is so strong it's irresistible is a bit out of fashion.
Why is this gifted (though wrong) politician not doing gritty everyday campaigning to get support for independence up to 60-65%, from which position she could actually get what she says she wants? Since Brexit she is not exactly short of material to work with.
That’s the point Salmond was making on WATO yesterday - why pick a fight with Westminster over this, rather than, for example, something Europe related which could be tied in with the economy/cost of living?
Why are we ruling out that she wants to deliver a longstanding commitment that she also believes in?
Comes under an increasing reluctance to assume ANY good faith in the motives of one's opponents.
Which you both clearly demonstrate yourselves.
I mean the reason the move was opposed was not because people might be concerned about say convicted male rapists being allowed into women's prisons but because such people wanted to create a culture war, have a wedge issue, play dirty politics.
there is more of that on the anti (GRR) side than the pro.
Which of the concerns about the GRR Bill raised by its critics (and dismissed by Sturgeon as “not valid”) have proved not to be?
Well the bill hasn't passed so one can't really say. We need to look at what's happened in countries - Ireland being the closest to home - where similar HAS been done. What we certainly do seem to have in Scotland is an issue with risk assessment for prisons. Are you claiming that this specific recent case shows that all the fears raised - no more single sex spaces, women's rights destroyed, floodgates opened for predatory men to gain GRCs for nefarious purposes, end of sex as a biological concept etc etc - are rational and justified? If you are I think that's a stretch.
You claimed that critics were more driving the issue as a “wedge issue” but have no evidence - so now retreat behind “the bill hasn’t passed”. I ask again, where is the evidence that critics were driven by trying to create a wedge, or were their concerns “not valid” to quote Sturgeon?
Claiming it’s a “wedge issue” is another tactic to delegitimise your opponents views - which is why they weren’t listened to, which is why it’s in the mess it’s in. If you really were interested in trans rights you’d have listened.
Good to know that Alistair McConnachie of UK A Force For Good, Joseph Finnie ex BNP and Fox regular Andy Ngo supported the Let Women Speak rally on Sunday to show their concerns rather than use it as a wedge issue.
So mandatory fox hunting and animal cruelty? Mustn't support a cause that the Hugo Boss fashionistas like....
Yeah, you’ve tried that lumbering zinger before. The point attempting to be made was that this was not being used as a wedge issue in a culture war. I’ll add you to the list of credulous folk who think that.
I am rather taken aback by the resistance we are encountering on this one.
"Ok, listen up peeps, how can we use this Transgender thing to peel away votes from the other side?"
Can there seriously be any doubt that the above is playing out far more in Tory brainstorming sessions than in those of LAB/LD/SNP?
If we can't win this argument on here we might as well give up and put the kettle on.
When you and @Theuniondivvie are of the opinion that the only people who are on the other side are the "BNP", "Trump", "InfoWars" and assorted other troglodytes then yes its certainly possible and there certainly is doubt.
Of course it shouldn't be playing out in any such sessions for any party and instead the legitimate concerns of both sides should be listened to, but the two of you in particular are never in any mood for that, hence the desire to mock everyone who disagrees as being a "wedge" or "InfoWars" instead of listening to their very valid concerns.
That's what people like you do, characterise a pointing out of dubious fellow travellers as saying they are 'the only people who are on the other side', which is lying, which makes you a...?
Whilst people like you refuse to ever admit that there is ever anything awry. Nothing to apologise for.
I have lived with a Scot for 30 years. It would seem "sorry" is not a word north of the border. Instead, there is a third person in our marriage, myself, my wife - and the mysterious damage fairy, who has to take responsibility for all unexplained incidents that might otherwise point to the Good Lady Wife.
My wife never apologises for anything either (and why should she as she is infallible). And yet she isn't Scottish while I am. Go figure!
Does that mean that if I self ID as female, I will no longer need to apologise for anything?
Yes, that's right. And you will always put the toilet lid down.
Surely a true gentleman always does that anyway?
(I was persuaded on this point by by now-wife, who argued that - when we were a household of two - that there was a higher probability the next user would want the toilet seat down than up. I'm a sucker for - even postulative - statistical argument.)
Nah, that only works if she is referring to the middle ring bit. Putting the lid down conveniences no-one.
Best is lid up, ring bit down Second is lid up, ring bit up
Have a word.
If you flush with the lid up you spread germs, and in some cases shit, all round the bathroom.
Strange that Sturgeon - very able as she is - should stumble over a couple of things much less gifted people would avoid.
With GRR all you have to do to avoid trouble is to shadow what England and Wales is doing (don't ask, no idea), take any credit and blame any problems on Westminster. Standard stuff.
With GE as 'proxy referendum' you cannot win. If you poll 50%+ everyone else says tough, we never recognised this. If you don't poll 50%+ you have lost on your own terms, and your enemies as well as other parties will be quick to point it out.
Since the Brexit 52/48 vote, pressing for a referendum except when support for the change is so strong it's irresistible is a bit out of fashion.
Why is this gifted (though wrong) politician not doing gritty everyday campaigning to get support for independence up to 60-65%, from which position she could actually get what she says she wants? Since Brexit she is not exactly short of material to work with.
That’s the point Salmond was making on WATO yesterday - why pick a fight with Westminster over this, rather than, for example, something Europe related which could be tied in with the economy/cost of living?
Why are we ruling out that she wants to deliver a longstanding commitment that she also believes in?
Comes under an increasing reluctance to assume ANY good faith in the motives of one's opponents.
Which you both clearly demonstrate yourselves.
I mean the reason the move was opposed was not because people might be concerned about say convicted male rapists being allowed into women's prisons but because such people wanted to create a culture war, have a wedge issue, play dirty politics.
there is more of that on the anti (GRR) side than the pro.
Which of the concerns about the GRR Bill raised by its critics (and dismissed by Sturgeon as “not valid”) have proved not to be?
Well the bill hasn't passed so one can't really say. We need to look at what's happened in countries - Ireland being the closest to home - where similar HAS been done. What we certainly do seem to have in Scotland is an issue with risk assessment for prisons. Are you claiming that this specific recent case shows that all the fears raised - no more single sex spaces, women's rights destroyed, floodgates opened for predatory men to gain GRCs for nefarious purposes, end of sex as a biological concept etc etc - are rational and justified? If you are I think that's a stretch.
You claimed that critics were more driving the issue as a “wedge issue” but have no evidence - so now retreat behind “the bill hasn’t passed”. I ask again, where is the evidence that critics were driven by trying to create a wedge, or were their concerns “not valid” to quote Sturgeon?
Claiming it’s a “wedge issue” is another tactic to delegitimise your opponents views - which is why they weren’t listened to, which is why it’s in the mess it’s in. If you really were interested in trans rights you’d have listened.
Good to know that Alistair McConnachie of UK A Force For Good, Joseph Finnie ex BNP and Fox regular Andy Ngo supported the Let Women Speak rally on Sunday to show their concerns rather than use it as a wedge issue.
So mandatory fox hunting and animal cruelty? Mustn't support a cause that the Hugo Boss fashionistas like....
Yeah, you’ve tried that lumbering zinger before. The point attempting to be made was that this was not being used as a wedge issue in a culture war. I’ll add you to the list of credulous folk who think that.
I am rather taken aback by the resistance we are encountering on this one.
"Ok, listen up peeps, how can we use this Transgender thing to peel away votes from the other side?"
Can there seriously be any doubt that the above is playing out far more in Tory brainstorming sessions than in those of LAB/LD/SNP?
If we can't win this argument on here we might as well give up and put the kettle on.
When you and @Theuniondivvie are of the opinion that the only people who are on the other side are the "BNP", "Trump", "InfoWars" and assorted other troglodytes then yes its certainly possible and there certainly is doubt.
Of course it shouldn't be playing out in any such sessions for any party and instead the legitimate concerns of both sides should be listened to, but the two of you in particular are never in any mood for that, hence the desire to mock everyone who disagrees as being a "wedge" or "InfoWars" instead of listening to their very valid concerns.
That's what people like you do, characterise a pointing out of dubious fellow travellers as saying they are 'the only people who are on the other side', which is lying, which makes you a...?
Whilst people like you refuse to ever admit that there is ever anything awry. Nothing to apologise for.
I have lived with a Scot for 30 years. It would seem "sorry" is not a word north of the border. Instead, there is a third person in our marriage, myself, my wife - and the mysterious damage fairy, who has to take responsibility for all unexplained incidents that might otherwise point to the Good Lady Wife.
My wife never apologises for anything either (and why should she as she is infallible). And yet she isn't Scottish while I am. Go figure!
Does that mean that if I self ID as female, I will no longer need to apologise for anything?
Yes, that's right. And you will always put the toilet lid down.
Surely a true gentleman always does that anyway?
(I was persuaded on this point by by now-wife, who argued that - when we were a household of two - that there was a higher probability the next user would want the toilet seat down than up. I'm a sucker for - even postulative - statistical argument.)
Nah, that only works if she is referring to the middle ring bit. Putting the lid down conveniences no-one.
Best is lid up, ring bit down Second is lid up, ring bit up
Have a word.
If you flush with the lid up you spread germs, and in some cases shit, all round the bathroom.
Your choice...
Yes, so I hear, Flatlander has already educated me on this!
The breach of the Western 4th Generation jet fighter taboo seems to be in progress.
There are a lot of unhappy power people in DC, Paris & Berlin over this development.…
Hopefully the UK government will make those people even more unhappy by adding a couple dozen Storm Shadow cruise missiles for these Eurofighters to launch at high priority Russian logistical targets inside Ukraine's 1991 borders.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy visited Britain to drum up aid, winning a pledge to train Ukrainian pilots on advanced NATO fighter jets, a big symbolic step up in Western military support https://reut.rs/3YCwaDB
But am I wrong in saying it’s not been a good war for aircraft this one? Theoretically Russia have control of the skies, not least their strong radar screen over Ukraine that scares NATO from getting involved, but can do very little with that control because of the sophisticated anti air craft weaponry these days. It’s not been a good war for tanks or columns of vehicles either it seems to me - drones tend to wipe whole columns out shockingly easily.
I’d hate us to get distracted by some sexy weaponry and overlook what might actually help the most, maybe Boring things like logistics, supply lines and getting things into the right place right time as quickly as possible. Also giving them money.
Probably the main thing I think will most help Ukraine fight this war the longer it goes on into this year would be boots on the ground. Can’t we ramp up our special services involvement in the war, like how we thrashed Gaddafi?
A weapon or system doesn't have to be war-winning on its own to be worth sending. An incremental improvement in several areas of capability at once can be more effective than a single war-winning weapon.
I think the improvement in capability that we could provide would be in range again. Fighter jets we could supply would have missiles that would outrange those on Russian fighter jets, and also precision ground attack missiles that would enable Ukraine to hit logistics targets behind Russian lines without putting themselves within range of Russian air defence systems.
The Beggar King is in a Ford Galaxy on the M11 so pb's 101st Chairborne will be getting excited over that providing a welcome change from the trans shit and HS2 minutiae very soon.
We - and Russia to, for that matter - are a nation that survived WWII only because of US aid, so it's a bit charmless to get sniffy about someone else in a comparable situation.
So the Russian nation would have ceased to exist during WW2 had it not been for US aid? What a loony.
PS Would it be gazetted somewhere if Johnson were to receive his US citizenship back, or is it only renunciations that get publicly noted?
PPS Some Ford Galaxies from the mid-noughties had front seats that could turn round and face the back. Now that's what I call a cool car.
The Germans made it to the Moscow suburbs in WWII. It doesn't take much changes to the timeline to them making it a bit further...
For example, the US and UK provided *all* the hi octane aviation gasoline for the USSR. It was only postwar that they got their cracking plants lined up to make it.
Vast amount of machine tools - in some categories, 100% of the tools and 100% of the tooling was Lendlease supplied. Without that, Soviet production would have crawled to a halt.
And so on in many categories - the % of USSR GDP was small, but LendLease was about supplying materials and equipment they were short of. Or literally didn't have.
The fall of Moscow, or even of both Moscow and Leningrad as it then was, would not in itself have come anywhere near making the Soviet government seek to agree terms with Germany. More than 1000 large factories were shipped eastwards. The USSR would certainly have continued fighting. Sure, they could have been defeated but the fall of Moscow wouldn't have done for them.
Do you regret that the USA and Britain gave such substantial assistance to their Soviet ally during WW2/the GPW? Or is it a very different Germany now but a very similar Russia, so western policy was good then (fight with Russia against Germany) and western policy is also good now (pointing towards fighting with Germany against Russia this time round)?
Stalin was evil, but less evil than Hitler.
"If Hitler invaded Hell, I would make at least a favourable reference of the Devil in the House of Commons."
So here's the thing - I am less sure of this than I used to be. Hitler evil, absolutely. He started the war that saw millions dead and initiated the holocaust.
But how many did Stalin kill? The famine in Ukraine, the gulags, the show trials, all of it. Why does Uncle Joe get a pass to be less evil than Hitler?
The main distinction I would draw would be that Stalin came to power in the USSR on a platform of "Socialism in one country" - a recognition that the attempt to spread communist revolution to the rest of the world had failed, and there was a need for the Bolsheviks to consolidate their power within their borders.
By contrast, the core of Hitler's ideology was the idea of the German need for Lebensraum, and consequently aggressive military expansion.
Bluntly, Stalin was content to kill people within his borders, while Hitler sought to kill people in the lands outside Germany's borders. The latter is more dangerous than the former.
This distinction might be more a consequence of the different levels of capability than ideology, but it's also true that the strong evil guy is more of a threat than the weak evil guy.
Also with Communism, for all the horrors enacted in its name, there was an arguably non-heinous idea at its core. This isn't the case with Hitler and the Nazis. The ideology there, the industrial scale subjugation of other people by a master race, is wholly abhorent in every sense and on every level.
Doesn't that make the Communist authoritarianism worse to some extent? It means that well-meaning people can go along with evil, "For The Greater Good," while the moral choice is a bit clearer under fascism. This might also explain why Communist dictatorships have tended to be more durable than fascist ones.
That said, having reflected, I think one can say that Hitler was a notch more evil than Stalin, because Hitler's intent with the Holocaust was to eradicate the Jewish people, and while there was a programme of Russification within the USSR, and particular ethnic groups like the Crimean Tartars were particularly targeted, the single-minded and ideological pursuit of the destruction of the Jewish people was, I think, on a distinctly more evil level.
Wolf more dangerous when donning the sheepskin? Yes, can be. But tbh, 'Hitler or Stalin more evil?', I don't find it that useful a question, but if forced to take it I neither find it that difficult. Hitler. There's just no shred of a redeeming factor, or anything not wholly evil, in what he believed or did in the name of it.
And there is with Stalin? Really? Do you think Stalin cared for anyone who he had murdered?
Stalin seems to have been the 'benefit' of being slightly less unstable, if that is the right term, meaning he didn't entirely self destruct his country or its political system, which enables serious rose coloured glasses about the country being 'strong' under him. Of course, that meaning his rule and the soviet system enduring longer is also a downside.
Strange that Sturgeon - very able as she is - should stumble over a couple of things much less gifted people would avoid.
With GRR all you have to do to avoid trouble is to shadow what England and Wales is doing (don't ask, no idea), take any credit and blame any problems on Westminster. Standard stuff.
With GE as 'proxy referendum' you cannot win. If you poll 50%+ everyone else says tough, we never recognised this. If you don't poll 50%+ you have lost on your own terms, and your enemies as well as other parties will be quick to point it out.
Since the Brexit 52/48 vote, pressing for a referendum except when support for the change is so strong it's irresistible is a bit out of fashion.
Why is this gifted (though wrong) politician not doing gritty everyday campaigning to get support for independence up to 60-65%, from which position she could actually get what she says she wants? Since Brexit she is not exactly short of material to work with.
That’s the point Salmond was making on WATO yesterday - why pick a fight with Westminster over this, rather than, for example, something Europe related which could be tied in with the economy/cost of living?
Why are we ruling out that she wants to deliver a longstanding commitment that she also believes in?
Comes under an increasing reluctance to assume ANY good faith in the motives of one's opponents.
Which you both clearly demonstrate yourselves.
I mean the reason the move was opposed was not because people might be concerned about say convicted male rapists being allowed into women's prisons but because such people wanted to create a culture war, have a wedge issue, play dirty politics.
there is more of that on the anti (GRR) side than the pro.
Which of the concerns about the GRR Bill raised by its critics (and dismissed by Sturgeon as “not valid”) have proved not to be?
Well the bill hasn't passed so one can't really say. We need to look at what's happened in countries - Ireland being the closest to home - where similar HAS been done. What we certainly do seem to have in Scotland is an issue with risk assessment for prisons. Are you claiming that this specific recent case shows that all the fears raised - no more single sex spaces, women's rights destroyed, floodgates opened for predatory men to gain GRCs for nefarious purposes, end of sex as a biological concept etc etc - are rational and justified? If you are I think that's a stretch.
You claimed that critics were more driving the issue as a “wedge issue” but have no evidence - so now retreat behind “the bill hasn’t passed”. I ask again, where is the evidence that critics were driven by trying to create a wedge, or were their concerns “not valid” to quote Sturgeon?
Claiming it’s a “wedge issue” is another tactic to delegitimise your opponents views - which is why they weren’t listened to, which is why it’s in the mess it’s in. If you really were interested in trans rights you’d have listened.
Good to know that Alistair McConnachie of UK A Force For Good, Joseph Finnie ex BNP and Fox regular Andy Ngo supported the Let Women Speak rally on Sunday to show their concerns rather than use it as a wedge issue.
So mandatory fox hunting and animal cruelty? Mustn't support a cause that the Hugo Boss fashionistas like....
Yeah, you’ve tried that lumbering zinger before. The point attempting to be made was that this was not being used as a wedge issue in a culture war. I’ll add you to the list of credulous folk who think that.
I am rather taken aback by the resistance we are encountering on this one.
"Ok, listen up peeps, how can we use this Transgender thing to peel away votes from the other side?"
Can there seriously be any doubt that the above is playing out far more in Tory brainstorming sessions than in those of LAB/LD/SNP?
If we can't win this argument on here we might as well give up and put the kettle on.
When you and @Theuniondivvie are of the opinion that the only people who are on the other side are the "BNP", "Trump", "InfoWars" and assorted other troglodytes then yes its certainly possible and there certainly is doubt.
Of course it shouldn't be playing out in any such sessions for any party and instead the legitimate concerns of both sides should be listened to, but the two of you in particular are never in any mood for that, hence the desire to mock everyone who disagrees as being a "wedge" or "InfoWars" instead of listening to their very valid concerns.
That's what people like you do, characterise a pointing out of dubious fellow travellers as saying they are 'the only people who are on the other side', which is lying, which makes you a...?
Whilst people like you refuse to ever admit that there is ever anything awry. Nothing to apologise for.
I have lived with a Scot for 30 years. It would seem "sorry" is not a word north of the border. Instead, there is a third person in our marriage, myself, my wife - and the mysterious damage fairy, who has to take responsibility for all unexplained incidents that might otherwise point to the Good Lady Wife.
My wife never apologises for anything either (and why should she as she is infallible). And yet she isn't Scottish while I am. Go figure!
Does that mean that if I self ID as female, I will no longer need to apologise for anything?
Yes, that's right. And you will always put the toilet lid down.
Surely a true gentleman always does that anyway?
(I was persuaded on this point by by now-wife, who argued that - when we were a household of two - that there was a higher probability the next user would want the toilet seat down than up. I'm a sucker for - even postulative - statistical argument.)
Nah, that only works if she is referring to the middle ring bit. Putting the lid down conveniences no-one.
Best is lid up, ring bit down Second is lid up, ring bit up
Have a word.
If you flush with the lid up you spread germs, and in some cases shit, all round the bathroom.
Your choice...
I have never in my life seen fecal matter or any other matter spread around the room when I flush.
"The bombing of the Nord Stream gas pipeline was a covert operation ordered by the White House and carried out by the CIA — The Times, citing investigative journalist Seymour Hersh"
I was, of course, nearly laughed off PB as a lunatic conspiracy theorist for daring to suggest this was a possibility last year.
Reading the story I am forced to admit it does sound fairly convincing. This is a wrinkle I didn’t consider at the time: … Biden’s and Nuland’s indiscretion, if that is what it was, might have frustrated some of the planners. But it also created an opportunity. According to the source, some of the senior officials of the CIA determined that blowing up the pipeline “no longer could be considered a covert option because the President just announced that we knew how to do it.”
The plan to blow up Nord Stream 1 and 2 was suddenly downgraded from a covert operation requiring that Congress be informed to one that was deemed as a highly classified intelligence operation with U.S. military support. Under the law, the source explained, “There was no longer a legal requirement to report the operation to Congress. All they had to do now is just do it—but it still had to be secret. The Russians have superlative surveillance of the Baltic Sea.”…
Had it been reported to Congress, it would have leaked within the month.
My reasoning at the time was that it was in America's long term strategic interests to do it, because it would prevent Europe once again becoming dependent on Russian gas even in the event of Putin being deposed, the war ending, and a re-normalisation of relationships slowly taking place. In other words, it's all part of a bigger strategy to knock Russia out of the game as a strategic rival to the US once and for all, even after Putin is long gone.
In my opinion, that is still a more likely and rational explanation than the popular theory that Putin blew up his own pipeline just to prove a point and to scare the West about blowing up more important links, e.g. internet cables, the north sea pipeline from Norway to UK etc. Putin is mad, but I struggle to see how his long term objectives are served by looking even madder - we all know he's barmy. That doesn't mean Russia can't be responsible, but it's not the behaviour of a rational actor (though arguably neither was invading Ukraine).
The Beggar King is in a Ford Galaxy on the M11 so pb's 101st Chairborne will be getting excited over that providing a welcome change from the trans shit and HS2 minutiae very soon.
We - and Russia to, for that matter - are a nation that survived WWII only because of US aid, so it's a bit charmless to get sniffy about someone else in a comparable situation.
So the Russian nation would have ceased to exist during WW2 had it not been for US aid? What a loony.
PS Would it be gazetted somewhere if Johnson were to receive his US citizenship back, or is it only renunciations that get publicly noted?
PPS Some Ford Galaxies from the mid-noughties had front seats that could turn round and face the back. Now that's what I call a cool car.
The Germans made it to the Moscow suburbs in WWII. It doesn't take much changes to the timeline to them making it a bit further...
For example, the US and UK provided *all* the hi octane aviation gasoline for the USSR. It was only postwar that they got their cracking plants lined up to make it.
Vast amount of machine tools - in some categories, 100% of the tools and 100% of the tooling was Lendlease supplied. Without that, Soviet production would have crawled to a halt.
And so on in many categories - the % of USSR GDP was small, but LendLease was about supplying materials and equipment they were short of. Or literally didn't have.
The fall of Moscow, or even of both Moscow and Leningrad as it then was, would not in itself have come anywhere near making the Soviet government seek to agree terms with Germany. More than 1000 large factories were shipped eastwards. The USSR would certainly have continued fighting. Sure, they could have been defeated but the fall of Moscow wouldn't have done for them.
Do you regret that the USA and Britain gave such substantial assistance to their Soviet ally during WW2/the GPW? Or is it a very different Germany now but a very similar Russia, so western policy was good then (fight with Russia against Germany) and western policy is also good now (pointing towards fighting with Germany against Russia this time round)?
Stalin was evil, but less evil than Hitler.
"If Hitler invaded Hell, I would make at least a favourable reference of the Devil in the House of Commons."
So here's the thing - I am less sure of this than I used to be. Hitler evil, absolutely. He started the war that saw millions dead and initiated the holocaust.
But how many did Stalin kill? The famine in Ukraine, the gulags, the show trials, all of it. Why does Uncle Joe get a pass to be less evil than Hitler?
The main distinction I would draw would be that Stalin came to power in the USSR on a platform of "Socialism in one country" - a recognition that the attempt to spread communist revolution to the rest of the world had failed, and there was a need for the Bolsheviks to consolidate their power within their borders.
By contrast, the core of Hitler's ideology was the idea of the German need for Lebensraum, and consequently aggressive military expansion.
Bluntly, Stalin was content to kill people within his borders, while Hitler sought to kill people in the lands outside Germany's borders. The latter is more dangerous than the former.
This distinction might be more a consequence of the different levels of capability than ideology, but it's also true that the strong evil guy is more of a threat than the weak evil guy.
Also with Communism, for all the horrors enacted in its name, there was an arguably non-heinous idea at its core. This isn't the case with Hitler and the Nazis. The ideology there, the industrial scale subjugation of other people by a master race, is wholly abhorent in every sense and on every level.
Doesn't that make the Communist authoritarianism worse to some extent? It means that well-meaning people can go along with evil, "For The Greater Good," while the moral choice is a bit clearer under fascism. This might also explain why Communist dictatorships have tended to be more durable than fascist ones.
That said, having reflected, I think one can say that Hitler was a notch more evil than Stalin, because Hitler's intent with the Holocaust was to eradicate the Jewish people, and while there was a programme of Russification within the USSR, and particular ethnic groups like the Crimean Tartars were particularly targeted, the single-minded and ideological pursuit of the destruction of the Jewish people was, I think, on a distinctly more evil level.
Wolf more dangerous when donning the sheepskin? Yes, can be. But tbh, 'Hitler or Stalin more evil?', I don't find it that useful a question, but if forced to take it I neither find it that difficult. Hitler. There's just no shred of a redeeming factor, or anything not wholly evil, in what he believed or did in the name of it.
And there is with Stalin? Really? Do you think Stalin cared for anyone who he had murdered?
The argument made for Stalin is that though his methods were hideous, he did have a positive goal - the building of a strong economy and a socialist state.
Hitler wasn't even really trying to do that.
It is a naive argument, reliant on taking Stalin's statements at face value while interrogating Hitler's on the assumption he was a liar.
Is it untenable? Well, he did see the Soviet Union make considerable progress in heavy industry - but not, contrary to popular belief, significantly more than elsewhere. This was at a terrible cost in agriculture, light industry and service sectors.
But then - you could make a similar argument for Hitler if you only looked at the figures and didn't bother to check what they mean.
The real issue, of course, is that Hitler was demonstrated to be evil and incompetent. Stalin managed to fool people into thinking he was alright until after he was dead.
This study argues that a new women's cooperative constellation has been established in Scotland around the issue of the Scottish Government's proposed reforms of the Gender Recognition Act. This constellation includes women politicians, researchers, journalists, writers, and activists from all sides of mainstream political opinion in Scotland. The constellation works together to support its politician members, share information and form a supportive community. The constellation acts together to show support for those in the public eye, such as politicians or members being publicly attacked, to make them aware they have ‘an army of women behind them’. The role social media plays has been an important one for the formation and continuance of the constellation, particularly during the pandemic. It has been game-changing in allowing women to identify each other, communicate, arrange to work together and show public support for others. It has also been important in raising awareness of the issues, both with politicians and the general public because, unlike previously identified constellations, this network has needed to generate broad public awareness and support because they have not been working as Government insiders. However, all interviewees were aware that it was not enough to engage in online activism and that they needed to be ‘in the room’ with politicians in order to make any impact.
I hope women do organize to fight misogyny in society - it's rife - but I'm skeptical of this transgender issue being the Rosa Parks for it. Love to be wrong though.
So what feminist issues do YOU wish to focus on once the GRR is confirmed as being defeated?
The report into institutional misogyny (and racism) in the London Fire Service is shocking.
Strange that Sturgeon - very able as she is - should stumble over a couple of things much less gifted people would avoid.
With GRR all you have to do to avoid trouble is to shadow what England and Wales is doing (don't ask, no idea), take any credit and blame any problems on Westminster. Standard stuff.
With GE as 'proxy referendum' you cannot win. If you poll 50%+ everyone else says tough, we never recognised this. If you don't poll 50%+ you have lost on your own terms, and your enemies as well as other parties will be quick to point it out.
Since the Brexit 52/48 vote, pressing for a referendum except when support for the change is so strong it's irresistible is a bit out of fashion.
Why is this gifted (though wrong) politician not doing gritty everyday campaigning to get support for independence up to 60-65%, from which position she could actually get what she says she wants? Since Brexit she is not exactly short of material to work with.
That’s the point Salmond was making on WATO yesterday - why pick a fight with Westminster over this, rather than, for example, something Europe related which could be tied in with the economy/cost of living?
Why are we ruling out that she wants to deliver a longstanding commitment that she also believes in?
Comes under an increasing reluctance to assume ANY good faith in the motives of one's opponents.
Which you both clearly demonstrate yourselves.
I mean the reason the move was opposed was not because people might be concerned about say convicted male rapists being allowed into women's prisons but because such people wanted to create a culture war, have a wedge issue, play dirty politics.
there is more of that on the anti (GRR) side than the pro.
Which of the concerns about the GRR Bill raised by its critics (and dismissed by Sturgeon as “not valid”) have proved not to be?
Well the bill hasn't passed so one can't really say. We need to look at what's happened in countries - Ireland being the closest to home - where similar HAS been done. What we certainly do seem to have in Scotland is an issue with risk assessment for prisons. Are you claiming that this specific recent case shows that all the fears raised - no more single sex spaces, women's rights destroyed, floodgates opened for predatory men to gain GRCs for nefarious purposes, end of sex as a biological concept etc etc - are rational and justified? If you are I think that's a stretch.
You claimed that critics were more driving the issue as a “wedge issue” but have no evidence - so now retreat behind “the bill hasn’t passed”. I ask again, where is the evidence that critics were driven by trying to create a wedge, or were their concerns “not valid” to quote Sturgeon?
Claiming it’s a “wedge issue” is another tactic to delegitimise your opponents views - which is why they weren’t listened to, which is why it’s in the mess it’s in. If you really were interested in trans rights you’d have listened.
Good to know that Alistair McConnachie of UK A Force For Good, Joseph Finnie ex BNP and Fox regular Andy Ngo supported the Let Women Speak rally on Sunday to show their concerns rather than use it as a wedge issue.
So mandatory fox hunting and animal cruelty? Mustn't support a cause that the Hugo Boss fashionistas like....
Yeah, you’ve tried that lumbering zinger before. The point attempting to be made was that this was not being used as a wedge issue in a culture war. I’ll add you to the list of credulous folk who think that.
I am rather taken aback by the resistance we are encountering on this one.
"Ok, listen up peeps, how can we use this Transgender thing to peel away votes from the other side?"
Can there seriously be any doubt that the above is playing out far more in Tory brainstorming sessions than in those of LAB/LD/SNP?
If we can't win this argument on here we might as well give up and put the kettle on.
When you and @Theuniondivvie are of the opinion that the only people who are on the other side are the "BNP", "Trump", "InfoWars" and assorted other troglodytes then yes its certainly possible and there certainly is doubt.
Of course it shouldn't be playing out in any such sessions for any party and instead the legitimate concerns of both sides should be listened to, but the two of you in particular are never in any mood for that, hence the desire to mock everyone who disagrees as being a "wedge" or "InfoWars" instead of listening to their very valid concerns.
That's what people like you do, characterise a pointing out of dubious fellow travellers as saying they are 'the only people who are on the other side', which is lying, which makes you a...?
Whilst people like you refuse to ever admit that there is ever anything awry. Nothing to apologise for.
I have lived with a Scot for 30 years. It would seem "sorry" is not a word north of the border. Instead, there is a third person in our marriage, myself, my wife - and the mysterious damage fairy, who has to take responsibility for all unexplained incidents that might otherwise point to the Good Lady Wife.
My wife never apologises for anything either (and why should she as she is infallible). And yet she isn't Scottish while I am. Go figure!
Does that mean that if I self ID as female, I will no longer need to apologise for anything?
Yes, that's right. And you will always put the toilet lid down.
Surely a true gentleman always does that anyway?
(I was persuaded on this point by by now-wife, who argued that - when we were a household of two - that there was a higher probability the next user would want the toilet seat down than up. I'm a sucker for - even postulative - statistical argument.)
Nah, that only works if she is referring to the middle ring bit. Putting the lid down conveniences no-one.
Best is lid up, ring bit down Second is lid up, ring bit up
Have a word.
If you flush with the lid up you spread germs, and in some cases shit, all round the bathroom.
Your choice...
I have never in my life seen fecal matter or any other matter spread around the room when I flush.
I looked it up. There was a investigation a few years ago apparantly.
Given that I get hit with a stick by Mrs Stocky if I don't check for and remedy pan-skiddies this mean that I now have to do my dirty business, put lid down, wait for the flush, lift lid up, make good as necessary, put lid down again.
The Beggar King is in a Ford Galaxy on the M11 so pb's 101st Chairborne will be getting excited over that providing a welcome change from the trans shit and HS2 minutiae very soon.
We - and Russia to, for that matter - are a nation that survived WWII only because of US aid, so it's a bit charmless to get sniffy about someone else in a comparable situation.
So the Russian nation would have ceased to exist during WW2 had it not been for US aid? What a loony.
PS Would it be gazetted somewhere if Johnson were to receive his US citizenship back, or is it only renunciations that get publicly noted?
PPS Some Ford Galaxies from the mid-noughties had front seats that could turn round and face the back. Now that's what I call a cool car.
The Germans made it to the Moscow suburbs in WWII. It doesn't take much changes to the timeline to them making it a bit further...
For example, the US and UK provided *all* the hi octane aviation gasoline for the USSR. It was only postwar that they got their cracking plants lined up to make it.
Vast amount of machine tools - in some categories, 100% of the tools and 100% of the tooling was Lendlease supplied. Without that, Soviet production would have crawled to a halt.
And so on in many categories - the % of USSR GDP was small, but LendLease was about supplying materials and equipment they were short of. Or literally didn't have.
The fall of Moscow, or even of both Moscow and Leningrad as it then was, would not in itself have come anywhere near making the Soviet government seek to agree terms with Germany. More than 1000 large factories were shipped eastwards. The USSR would certainly have continued fighting. Sure, they could have been defeated but the fall of Moscow wouldn't have done for them.
Do you regret that the USA and Britain gave such substantial assistance to their Soviet ally during WW2/the GPW? Or is it a very different Germany now but a very similar Russia, so western policy was good then (fight with Russia against Germany) and western policy is also good now (pointing towards fighting with Germany against Russia this time round)?
Stalin was evil, but less evil than Hitler.
"If Hitler invaded Hell, I would make at least a favourable reference of the Devil in the House of Commons."
So here's the thing - I am less sure of this than I used to be. Hitler evil, absolutely. He started the war that saw millions dead and initiated the holocaust.
But how many did Stalin kill? The famine in Ukraine, the gulags, the show trials, all of it. Why does Uncle Joe get a pass to be less evil than Hitler?
The main distinction I would draw would be that Stalin came to power in the USSR on a platform of "Socialism in one country" - a recognition that the attempt to spread communist revolution to the rest of the world had failed, and there was a need for the Bolsheviks to consolidate their power within their borders.
By contrast, the core of Hitler's ideology was the idea of the German need for Lebensraum, and consequently aggressive military expansion.
Bluntly, Stalin was content to kill people within his borders, while Hitler sought to kill people in the lands outside Germany's borders. The latter is more dangerous than the former.
This distinction might be more a consequence of the different levels of capability than ideology, but it's also true that the strong evil guy is more of a threat than the weak evil guy.
Also with Communism, for all the horrors enacted in its name, there was an arguably non-heinous idea at its core. This isn't the case with Hitler and the Nazis. The ideology there, the industrial scale subjugation of other people by a master race, is wholly abhorent in every sense and on every level.
Doesn't that make the Communist authoritarianism worse to some extent? It means that well-meaning people can go along with evil, "For The Greater Good," while the moral choice is a bit clearer under fascism. This might also explain why Communist dictatorships have tended to be more durable than fascist ones.
That said, having reflected, I think one can say that Hitler was a notch more evil than Stalin, because Hitler's intent with the Holocaust was to eradicate the Jewish people, and while there was a programme of Russification within the USSR, and particular ethnic groups like the Crimean Tartars were particularly targeted, the single-minded and ideological pursuit of the destruction of the Jewish people was, I think, on a distinctly more evil level.
Wolf more dangerous when donning the sheepskin? Yes, can be. But tbh, 'Hitler or Stalin more evil?', I don't find it that useful a question, but if forced to take it I neither find it that difficult. Hitler. There's just no shred of a redeeming factor, or anything not wholly evil, in what he believed or did in the name of it.
And there is with Stalin? Really? Do you think Stalin cared for anyone who he had murdered?
The argument made for Stalin is that though his methods were hideous, he did have a positive goal - the building of a strong economy and a socialist state.
Hitler wasn't even really trying to do that.
It is a naive argument, reliant on taking Stalin's statements at face value while interrogating Hitler's on the assumption he was a liar.
Is it untenable? Well, he did see the Soviet Union make considerable progress in heavy industry - but not, contrary to popular belief, significantly more than elsewhere. This was at a terrible cost in agriculture, light industry and service sectors.
But then - you could make a similar argument for Hitler if you only looked at the figures and didn't bother to check what they mean.
The real issue, of course, is that Hitler was demonstrated to be evil and incompetent. Stalin managed to fool people into thinking he was alright until after he was dead.
Terrify people into thinking he was alright more like, even with the genuine grief of some.
The Death of Stalin remains one the greatest movies of the last 10 years - the barmy would-be-comic-except they're-mass-murderers feel of it is pulled off brilliantly.
The breach of the Western 4th Generation jet fighter taboo seems to be in progress.
There are a lot of unhappy power people in DC, Paris & Berlin over this development.…
Hopefully the UK government will make those people even more unhappy by adding a couple dozen Storm Shadow cruise missiles for these Eurofighters to launch at high priority Russian logistical targets inside Ukraine's 1991 borders.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy visited Britain to drum up aid, winning a pledge to train Ukrainian pilots on advanced NATO fighter jets, a big symbolic step up in Western military support https://reut.rs/3YCwaDB
But am I wrong in saying it’s not been a good war for aircraft this one? Theoretically Russia have control of the skies, not least their strong radar screen over Ukraine that scares NATO from getting involved, but can do very little with that control because of the sophisticated anti air craft weaponry these days. It’s not been a good war for tanks or columns of vehicles either it seems to me - drones tend to wipe whole columns out shockingly easily.
I’d hate us to get distracted by some sexy weaponry and overlook what might actually help the most, maybe Boring things like logistics, supply lines and getting things into the right place right time as quickly as possible. Also giving them money.
Probably the main thing I think will most help Ukraine fight this war the longer it goes on into this year would be boots on the ground. Can’t we ramp up our special services involvement in the war, like how we thrashed Gaddafi?
A weapon or system doesn't have to be war-winning on its own to be worth sending. An incremental improvement in several areas of capability at once can be more effective than a single war-winning weapon.
I think the improvement in capability that we could provide would be in range again. Fighter jets we could supply would have missiles that would outrange those on Russian fighter jets, and also precision ground attack missiles that would enable Ukraine to hit logistics targets behind Russian lines without putting themselves within range of Russian air defence systems.
“enable Ukraine to hit logistics targets behind Russian lines without putting themselves within range of Russian air defence systems.”
Admittedly fighting war in 2020s isn’t my specialist subject, but that sentence sounds like a good idea to me, hit supply lines! But it seemed as Russia can’t use air, how long would more planes for Ukraine remain in service? They are target for missiles not just in air but on ground too? It sounds like a nice expensive thing to share, but what if it’s not as much use as something else, like ramping up repairing things and giving specialist care for the wounded outside of Ukraine like here in UK? That would be a really nice thing to share?
The Beggar King is in a Ford Galaxy on the M11 so pb's 101st Chairborne will be getting excited over that providing a welcome change from the trans shit and HS2 minutiae very soon.
We - and Russia to, for that matter - are a nation that survived WWII only because of US aid, so it's a bit charmless to get sniffy about someone else in a comparable situation.
So the Russian nation would have ceased to exist during WW2 had it not been for US aid? What a loony.
PS Would it be gazetted somewhere if Johnson were to receive his US citizenship back, or is it only renunciations that get publicly noted?
PPS Some Ford Galaxies from the mid-noughties had front seats that could turn round and face the back. Now that's what I call a cool car.
The Germans made it to the Moscow suburbs in WWII. It doesn't take much changes to the timeline to them making it a bit further...
For example, the US and UK provided *all* the hi octane aviation gasoline for the USSR. It was only postwar that they got their cracking plants lined up to make it.
Vast amount of machine tools - in some categories, 100% of the tools and 100% of the tooling was Lendlease supplied. Without that, Soviet production would have crawled to a halt.
And so on in many categories - the % of USSR GDP was small, but LendLease was about supplying materials and equipment they were short of. Or literally didn't have.
The fall of Moscow, or even of both Moscow and Leningrad as it then was, would not in itself have come anywhere near making the Soviet government seek to agree terms with Germany. More than 1000 large factories were shipped eastwards. The USSR would certainly have continued fighting. Sure, they could have been defeated but the fall of Moscow wouldn't have done for them.
Do you regret that the USA and Britain gave such substantial assistance to their Soviet ally during WW2/the GPW? Or is it a very different Germany now but a very similar Russia, so western policy was good then (fight with Russia against Germany) and western policy is also good now (pointing towards fighting with Germany against Russia this time round)?
Stalin was evil, but less evil than Hitler.
"If Hitler invaded Hell, I would make at least a favourable reference of the Devil in the House of Commons."
So here's the thing - I am less sure of this than I used to be. Hitler evil, absolutely. He started the war that saw millions dead and initiated the holocaust.
But how many did Stalin kill? The famine in Ukraine, the gulags, the show trials, all of it. Why does Uncle Joe get a pass to be less evil than Hitler?
The main distinction I would draw would be that Stalin came to power in the USSR on a platform of "Socialism in one country" - a recognition that the attempt to spread communist revolution to the rest of the world had failed, and there was a need for the Bolsheviks to consolidate their power within their borders.
By contrast, the core of Hitler's ideology was the idea of the German need for Lebensraum, and consequently aggressive military expansion.
Bluntly, Stalin was content to kill people within his borders, while Hitler sought to kill people in the lands outside Germany's borders. The latter is more dangerous than the former.
This distinction might be more a consequence of the different levels of capability than ideology, but it's also true that the strong evil guy is more of a threat than the weak evil guy.
Also with Communism, for all the horrors enacted in its name, there was an arguably non-heinous idea at its core. This isn't the case with Hitler and the Nazis. The ideology there, the industrial scale subjugation of other people by a master race, is wholly abhorent in every sense and on every level.
Doesn't that make the Communist authoritarianism worse to some extent? It means that well-meaning people can go along with evil, "For The Greater Good," while the moral choice is a bit clearer under fascism. This might also explain why Communist dictatorships have tended to be more durable than fascist ones.
That said, having reflected, I think one can say that Hitler was a notch more evil than Stalin, because Hitler's intent with the Holocaust was to eradicate the Jewish people, and while there was a programme of Russification within the USSR, and particular ethnic groups like the Crimean Tartars were particularly targeted, the single-minded and ideological pursuit of the destruction of the Jewish people was, I think, on a distinctly more evil level.
Wolf more dangerous when donning the sheepskin? Yes, can be. But tbh, 'Hitler or Stalin more evil?', I don't find it that useful a question, but if forced to take it I neither find it that difficult. Hitler. There's just no shred of a redeeming factor, or anything not wholly evil, in what he believed or did in the name of it.
And there is with Stalin? Really? Do you think Stalin cared for anyone who he had murdered?
Stalin seems to have been the 'benefit' of being slightly less unstable, if that is the right term, meaning he didn't entirely self destruct his country or its political system, which enables serious rose coloured glasses about the country being 'strong' under him. Of course, that meaning his rule and the soviet system enduring longer is also a downside.
But that was largely a function of losing the war, which was also a function of Russia having a steady supply of material from the west. If Russia had not been supported by the west, the war in the east may have had a different result and the USSR would have been just as destroyed as Germany was in the real 1945. By which I mean: the USSR's lack of destruction was not a result of Stalin being less mad or evil than Hitler, just of Stalin being more fortunate with his alliances.
Jared O'Mara has been found guilty of six counts of fraud over expenses claims made while he was in office in 2019.
The former Sheffield Hallam MP was on trial at Leeds Crown Court for submitting fake invoices to the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority to fund a cocaine habit.
He was convicted on Wednesday of six counts of fraud by false representation. The jury cleared him of two other fraud charges.
Gareth Arnold, a co-defendant, was found guilty of three out of six fraud charges, and a third defendant, John Woodliff, was found not guilty of one offence of fraud.
O'Mara and Arnold will be sentenced at the same court on Thursday.
Surely this must mean that Nick Clegg will be automatically reinstated as an MP. And leader of the Liberal Democrats. And sweep to power after the next election.
Probably thanking his lucky stars that he got a simple out from politics to go away and make millions.
The Beggar King is in a Ford Galaxy on the M11 so pb's 101st Chairborne will be getting excited over that providing a welcome change from the trans shit and HS2 minutiae very soon.
We - and Russia to, for that matter - are a nation that survived WWII only because of US aid, so it's a bit charmless to get sniffy about someone else in a comparable situation.
So the Russian nation would have ceased to exist during WW2 had it not been for US aid? What a loony.
PS Would it be gazetted somewhere if Johnson were to receive his US citizenship back, or is it only renunciations that get publicly noted?
PPS Some Ford Galaxies from the mid-noughties had front seats that could turn round and face the back. Now that's what I call a cool car.
The Germans made it to the Moscow suburbs in WWII. It doesn't take much changes to the timeline to them making it a bit further...
For example, the US and UK provided *all* the hi octane aviation gasoline for the USSR. It was only postwar that they got their cracking plants lined up to make it.
Vast amount of machine tools - in some categories, 100% of the tools and 100% of the tooling was Lendlease supplied. Without that, Soviet production would have crawled to a halt.
And so on in many categories - the % of USSR GDP was small, but LendLease was about supplying materials and equipment they were short of. Or literally didn't have.
The fall of Moscow, or even of both Moscow and Leningrad as it then was, would not in itself have come anywhere near making the Soviet government seek to agree terms with Germany. More than 1000 large factories were shipped eastwards. The USSR would certainly have continued fighting. Sure, they could have been defeated but the fall of Moscow wouldn't have done for them.
Do you regret that the USA and Britain gave such substantial assistance to their Soviet ally during WW2/the GPW? Or is it a very different Germany now but a very similar Russia, so western policy was good then (fight with Russia against Germany) and western policy is also good now (pointing towards fighting with Germany against Russia this time round)?
Stalin was evil, but less evil than Hitler.
"If Hitler invaded Hell, I would make at least a favourable reference of the Devil in the House of Commons."
So here's the thing - I am less sure of this than I used to be. Hitler evil, absolutely. He started the war that saw millions dead and initiated the holocaust.
But how many did Stalin kill? The famine in Ukraine, the gulags, the show trials, all of it. Why does Uncle Joe get a pass to be less evil than Hitler?
The main distinction I would draw would be that Stalin came to power in the USSR on a platform of "Socialism in one country" - a recognition that the attempt to spread communist revolution to the rest of the world had failed, and there was a need for the Bolsheviks to consolidate their power within their borders.
By contrast, the core of Hitler's ideology was the idea of the German need for Lebensraum, and consequently aggressive military expansion.
Bluntly, Stalin was content to kill people within his borders, while Hitler sought to kill people in the lands outside Germany's borders. The latter is more dangerous than the former.
This distinction might be more a consequence of the different levels of capability than ideology, but it's also true that the strong evil guy is more of a threat than the weak evil guy.
Also with Communism, for all the horrors enacted in its name, there was an arguably non-heinous idea at its core. This isn't the case with Hitler and the Nazis. The ideology there, the industrial scale subjugation of other people by a master race, is wholly abhorent in every sense and on every level.
Doesn't that make the Communist authoritarianism worse to some extent? It means that well-meaning people can go along with evil, "For The Greater Good," while the moral choice is a bit clearer under fascism. This might also explain why Communist dictatorships have tended to be more durable than fascist ones.
That said, having reflected, I think one can say that Hitler was a notch more evil than Stalin, because Hitler's intent with the Holocaust was to eradicate the Jewish people, and while there was a programme of Russification within the USSR, and particular ethnic groups like the Crimean Tartars were particularly targeted, the single-minded and ideological pursuit of the destruction of the Jewish people was, I think, on a distinctly more evil level.
Wolf more dangerous when donning the sheepskin? Yes, can be. But tbh, 'Hitler or Stalin more evil?', I don't find it that useful a question, but if forced to take it I neither find it that difficult. Hitler. There's just no shred of a redeeming factor, or anything not wholly evil, in what he believed or did in the name of it.
And there is with Stalin? Really? Do you think Stalin cared for anyone who he had murdered?
Stalin seems to have been the 'benefit' of being slightly less unstable, if that is the right term, meaning he didn't entirely self destruct his country or its political system, which enables serious rose coloured glasses about the country being 'strong' under him. Of course, that meaning his rule and the soviet system enduring longer is also a downside.
But that was largely a function of losing the war, which was also a function of Russia having a steady supply of material from the west. If Russia had not been supported by the west, the war in the east may have had a different result and the USSR would have been just as destroyed as Germany was in the real 1945. By which I mean: the USSR's lack of destruction was not a result of Stalin being less mad or evil than Hitler, just of Stalin being more fortunate with his alliances.
True, but even that might suggest a lone degree more competence in being able to maintain that. Which he then used to do plenty more evil, but that's WW2 for you.
The Beggar King is in a Ford Galaxy on the M11 so pb's 101st Chairborne will be getting excited over that providing a welcome change from the trans shit and HS2 minutiae very soon.
We - and Russia to, for that matter - are a nation that survived WWII only because of US aid, so it's a bit charmless to get sniffy about someone else in a comparable situation.
So the Russian nation would have ceased to exist during WW2 had it not been for US aid? What a loony.
PS Would it be gazetted somewhere if Johnson were to receive his US citizenship back, or is it only renunciations that get publicly noted?
PPS Some Ford Galaxies from the mid-noughties had front seats that could turn round and face the back. Now that's what I call a cool car.
The Germans made it to the Moscow suburbs in WWII. It doesn't take much changes to the timeline to them making it a bit further...
For example, the US and UK provided *all* the hi octane aviation gasoline for the USSR. It was only postwar that they got their cracking plants lined up to make it.
Vast amount of machine tools - in some categories, 100% of the tools and 100% of the tooling was Lendlease supplied. Without that, Soviet production would have crawled to a halt.
And so on in many categories - the % of USSR GDP was small, but LendLease was about supplying materials and equipment they were short of. Or literally didn't have.
The fall of Moscow, or even of both Moscow and Leningrad as it then was, would not in itself have come anywhere near making the Soviet government seek to agree terms with Germany. More than 1000 large factories were shipped eastwards. The USSR would certainly have continued fighting. Sure, they could have been defeated but the fall of Moscow wouldn't have done for them.
Do you regret that the USA and Britain gave such substantial assistance to their Soviet ally during WW2/the GPW? Or is it a very different Germany now but a very similar Russia, so western policy was good then (fight with Russia against Germany) and western policy is also good now (pointing towards fighting with Germany against Russia this time round)?
Stalin was evil, but less evil than Hitler.
"If Hitler invaded Hell, I would make at least a favourable reference of the Devil in the House of Commons."
So here's the thing - I am less sure of this than I used to be. Hitler evil, absolutely. He started the war that saw millions dead and initiated the holocaust.
But how many did Stalin kill? The famine in Ukraine, the gulags, the show trials, all of it. Why does Uncle Joe get a pass to be less evil than Hitler?
The main distinction I would draw would be that Stalin came to power in the USSR on a platform of "Socialism in one country" - a recognition that the attempt to spread communist revolution to the rest of the world had failed, and there was a need for the Bolsheviks to consolidate their power within their borders.
By contrast, the core of Hitler's ideology was the idea of the German need for Lebensraum, and consequently aggressive military expansion.
Bluntly, Stalin was content to kill people within his borders, while Hitler sought to kill people in the lands outside Germany's borders. The latter is more dangerous than the former.
This distinction might be more a consequence of the different levels of capability than ideology, but it's also true that the strong evil guy is more of a threat than the weak evil guy.
Also with Communism, for all the horrors enacted in its name, there was an arguably non-heinous idea at its core. This isn't the case with Hitler and the Nazis. The ideology there, the industrial scale subjugation of other people by a master race, is wholly abhorent in every sense and on every level.
Doesn't that make the Communist authoritarianism worse to some extent? It means that well-meaning people can go along with evil, "For The Greater Good," while the moral choice is a bit clearer under fascism. This might also explain why Communist dictatorships have tended to be more durable than fascist ones.
That said, having reflected, I think one can say that Hitler was a notch more evil than Stalin, because Hitler's intent with the Holocaust was to eradicate the Jewish people, and while there was a programme of Russification within the USSR, and particular ethnic groups like the Crimean Tartars were particularly targeted, the single-minded and ideological pursuit of the destruction of the Jewish people was, I think, on a distinctly more evil level.
Wolf more dangerous when donning the sheepskin? Yes, can be. But tbh, 'Hitler or Stalin more evil?', I don't find it that useful a question, but if forced to take it I neither find it that difficult. Hitler. There's just no shred of a redeeming factor, or anything not wholly evil, in what he believed or did in the name of it.
And there is with Stalin? Really? Do you think Stalin cared for anyone who he had murdered?
The argument made for Stalin is that though his methods were hideous, he did have a positive goal - the building of a strong economy and a socialist state.
Hitler wasn't even really trying to do that.
It is a naive argument, reliant on taking Stalin's statements at face value while interrogating Hitler's on the assumption he was a liar.
Is it untenable? Well, he did see the Soviet Union make considerable progress in heavy industry - but not, contrary to popular belief, significantly more than elsewhere. This was at a terrible cost in agriculture, light industry and service sectors.
But then - you could make a similar argument for Hitler if you only looked at the figures and didn't bother to check what they mean.
The real issue, of course, is that Hitler was demonstrated to be evil and incompetent. Stalin managed to fool people into thinking he was alright until after he was dead.
Terrify people into thinking he was alright more like, even with the genuine grief of some.
The Death of Stalin remains one the greatest movies of the last 10 years - the barmy would-be-comic-except they're-mass-murderers feel of it is pulled off brilliantly.
That holds good in the Soviet Empire. Less so among left-wing historians in the West.
Strange that Sturgeon - very able as she is - should stumble over a couple of things much less gifted people would avoid.
With GRR all you have to do to avoid trouble is to shadow what England and Wales is doing (don't ask, no idea), take any credit and blame any problems on Westminster. Standard stuff.
With GE as 'proxy referendum' you cannot win. If you poll 50%+ everyone else says tough, we never recognised this. If you don't poll 50%+ you have lost on your own terms, and your enemies as well as other parties will be quick to point it out.
Since the Brexit 52/48 vote, pressing for a referendum except when support for the change is so strong it's irresistible is a bit out of fashion.
Why is this gifted (though wrong) politician not doing gritty everyday campaigning to get support for independence up to 60-65%, from which position she could actually get what she says she wants? Since Brexit she is not exactly short of material to work with.
That’s the point Salmond was making on WATO yesterday - why pick a fight with Westminster over this, rather than, for example, something Europe related which could be tied in with the economy/cost of living?
Why are we ruling out that she wants to deliver a longstanding commitment that she also believes in?
Comes under an increasing reluctance to assume ANY good faith in the motives of one's opponents.
Which you both clearly demonstrate yourselves.
I mean the reason the move was opposed was not because people might be concerned about say convicted male rapists being allowed into women's prisons but because such people wanted to create a culture war, have a wedge issue, play dirty politics.
there is more of that on the anti (GRR) side than the pro.
Which of the concerns about the GRR Bill raised by its critics (and dismissed by Sturgeon as “not valid”) have proved not to be?
Well the bill hasn't passed so one can't really say. We need to look at what's happened in countries - Ireland being the closest to home - where similar HAS been done. What we certainly do seem to have in Scotland is an issue with risk assessment for prisons. Are you claiming that this specific recent case shows that all the fears raised - no more single sex spaces, women's rights destroyed, floodgates opened for predatory men to gain GRCs for nefarious purposes, end of sex as a biological concept etc etc - are rational and justified? If you are I think that's a stretch.
You claimed that critics were more driving the issue as a “wedge issue” but have no evidence - so now retreat behind “the bill hasn’t passed”. I ask again, where is the evidence that critics were driven by trying to create a wedge, or were their concerns “not valid” to quote Sturgeon?
Claiming it’s a “wedge issue” is another tactic to delegitimise your opponents views - which is why they weren’t listened to, which is why it’s in the mess it’s in. If you really were interested in trans rights you’d have listened.
Good to know that Alistair McConnachie of UK A Force For Good, Joseph Finnie ex BNP and Fox regular Andy Ngo supported the Let Women Speak rally on Sunday to show their concerns rather than use it as a wedge issue.
So mandatory fox hunting and animal cruelty? Mustn't support a cause that the Hugo Boss fashionistas like....
Yeah, you’ve tried that lumbering zinger before. The point attempting to be made was that this was not being used as a wedge issue in a culture war. I’ll add you to the list of credulous folk who think that.
I am rather taken aback by the resistance we are encountering on this one.
"Ok, listen up peeps, how can we use this Transgender thing to peel away votes from the other side?"
Can there seriously be any doubt that the above is playing out far more in Tory brainstorming sessions than in those of LAB/LD/SNP?
If we can't win this argument on here we might as well give up and put the kettle on.
When you and @Theuniondivvie are of the opinion that the only people who are on the other side are the "BNP", "Trump", "InfoWars" and assorted other troglodytes then yes its certainly possible and there certainly is doubt.
Of course it shouldn't be playing out in any such sessions for any party and instead the legitimate concerns of both sides should be listened to, but the two of you in particular are never in any mood for that, hence the desire to mock everyone who disagrees as being a "wedge" or "InfoWars" instead of listening to their very valid concerns.
That's what people like you do, characterise a pointing out of dubious fellow travellers as saying they are 'the only people who are on the other side', which is lying, which makes you a...?
Whilst people like you refuse to ever admit that there is ever anything awry. Nothing to apologise for.
I have lived with a Scot for 30 years. It would seem "sorry" is not a word north of the border. Instead, there is a third person in our marriage, myself, my wife - and the mysterious damage fairy, who has to take responsibility for all unexplained incidents that might otherwise point to the Good Lady Wife.
My wife never apologises for anything either (and why should she as she is infallible). And yet she isn't Scottish while I am. Go figure!
Does that mean that if I self ID as female, I will no longer need to apologise for anything?
Yes, that's right. And you will always put the toilet lid down.
Surely a true gentleman always does that anyway?
(I was persuaded on this point by by now-wife, who argued that - when we were a household of two - that there was a higher probability the next user would want the toilet seat down than up. I'm a sucker for - even postulative - statistical argument.)
Nah, that only works if she is referring to the middle ring bit. Putting the lid down conveniences no-one.
Best is lid up, ring bit down Second is lid up, ring bit up
Have a word.
I had this conversation with my Aussie ex, when she first moved in with me. I said: "You don't seem to mind that I don't put the toilet seat down."
Her reply: "Nah mate. I don't mind. If it's up, I know you've not pi**ed on it..."
Apparently she'd had problems with that with exes...
Presumably Boris's recent visit to Ukraine was part of the set up for Zelemsky's visit to the UK.
At any event, glad he is here. Britain's help for Ukraine is something to be proud about.
Is the Ukrainian leader shorter than Sunak? He certainly looks like it in the picture of them in the Graun, or is this from the PM's official photographer, who seems to have been selected specifically for his skills in this area?
They are both pretty short. Zelensky doesn't seem to care about it, though.
Z is short but stocky - the Oates in Hall & Oates template. Rishi is just very very tiny, which is harder to get yourself positive about as a man, I think. Still, it's far from his most pressing concern. That would be the ERG, I think.
Today was Johnson's day. Hats off to him if he laid the groundwork for Zelenskiy's visit. Johnson is standing loud and proud, he has with Zelenskiy's assistance overshadowed and further weakened the hapless Sunak. He's coming back, and he could contest the next election as the victorious Ukraine's Churchillian wing man.
Benny's back ... and this time for real!
You both scoff, but Churchillisn Johnson isn't my narrative, it is a narrative confected by Johnson effectively and confirmed by Zelenskiy today.
Both the BBC and LBC have focused on the Johnson aspect of the speech and repeated the line that Johnson singlehandedly (my interpretation) wrangled an unwilling EU and US into action.
Hats off to BigDog, he's played this rather cleverly. Let's hope that's where his political comeback story ends.
Scottish police have defied Nicola Sturgeon’s sex self-ID drive by referring to a transgender butcher arrested in connection with the disappearance of an 11-year-old girl as a man. Andrew George Miller, known locally as Amy, was taken into police custody on Monday night after the 11-year-old girl who disappeared on Sunday, was found “safe and well” at a home in Gattonside near Galashiels after being missing for more than a day.
The Beggar King is in a Ford Galaxy on the M11 so pb's 101st Chairborne will be getting excited over that providing a welcome change from the trans shit and HS2 minutiae very soon.
We - and Russia to, for that matter - are a nation that survived WWII only because of US aid, so it's a bit charmless to get sniffy about someone else in a comparable situation.
So the Russian nation would have ceased to exist during WW2 had it not been for US aid? What a loony.
PS Would it be gazetted somewhere if Johnson were to receive his US citizenship back, or is it only renunciations that get publicly noted?
PPS Some Ford Galaxies from the mid-noughties had front seats that could turn round and face the back. Now that's what I call a cool car.
The Germans made it to the Moscow suburbs in WWII. It doesn't take much changes to the timeline to them making it a bit further...
For example, the US and UK provided *all* the hi octane aviation gasoline for the USSR. It was only postwar that they got their cracking plants lined up to make it.
Vast amount of machine tools - in some categories, 100% of the tools and 100% of the tooling was Lendlease supplied. Without that, Soviet production would have crawled to a halt.
And so on in many categories - the % of USSR GDP was small, but LendLease was about supplying materials and equipment they were short of. Or literally didn't have.
The fall of Moscow, or even of both Moscow and Leningrad as it then was, would not in itself have come anywhere near making the Soviet government seek to agree terms with Germany. More than 1000 large factories were shipped eastwards. The USSR would certainly have continued fighting. Sure, they could have been defeated but the fall of Moscow wouldn't have done for them.
Do you regret that the USA and Britain gave such substantial assistance to their Soviet ally during WW2/the GPW? Or is it a very different Germany now but a very similar Russia, so western policy was good then (fight with Russia against Germany) and western policy is also good now (pointing towards fighting with Germany against Russia this time round)?
Stalin was evil, but less evil than Hitler.
"If Hitler invaded Hell, I would make at least a favourable reference of the Devil in the House of Commons."
So here's the thing - I am less sure of this than I used to be. Hitler evil, absolutely. He started the war that saw millions dead and initiated the holocaust.
But how many did Stalin kill? The famine in Ukraine, the gulags, the show trials, all of it. Why does Uncle Joe get a pass to be less evil than Hitler?
The main distinction I would draw would be that Stalin came to power in the USSR on a platform of "Socialism in one country" - a recognition that the attempt to spread communist revolution to the rest of the world had failed, and there was a need for the Bolsheviks to consolidate their power within their borders.
By contrast, the core of Hitler's ideology was the idea of the German need for Lebensraum, and consequently aggressive military expansion.
Bluntly, Stalin was content to kill people within his borders, while Hitler sought to kill people in the lands outside Germany's borders. The latter is more dangerous than the former.
This distinction might be more a consequence of the different levels of capability than ideology, but it's also true that the strong evil guy is more of a threat than the weak evil guy.
Also with Communism, for all the horrors enacted in its name, there was an arguably non-heinous idea at its core. This isn't the case with Hitler and the Nazis. The ideology there, the industrial scale subjugation of other people by a master race, is wholly abhorent in every sense and on every level.
Doesn't that make the Communist authoritarianism worse to some extent? It means that well-meaning people can go along with evil, "For The Greater Good," while the moral choice is a bit clearer under fascism. This might also explain why Communist dictatorships have tended to be more durable than fascist ones.
That said, having reflected, I think one can say that Hitler was a notch more evil than Stalin, because Hitler's intent with the Holocaust was to eradicate the Jewish people, and while there was a programme of Russification within the USSR, and particular ethnic groups like the Crimean Tartars were particularly targeted, the single-minded and ideological pursuit of the destruction of the Jewish people was, I think, on a distinctly more evil level.
Wolf more dangerous when donning the sheepskin? Yes, can be. But tbh, 'Hitler or Stalin more evil?', I don't find it that useful a question, but if forced to take it I neither find it that difficult. Hitler. There's just no shred of a redeeming factor, or anything not wholly evil, in what he believed or did in the name of it.
And there is with Stalin? Really? Do you think Stalin cared for anyone who he had murdered?
The argument made for Stalin is that though his methods were hideous, he did have a positive goal - the building of a strong economy and a socialist state.
Hitler wasn't even really trying to do that.
It is a naive argument, reliant on taking Stalin's statements at face value while interrogating Hitler's on the assumption he was a liar.
Is it untenable? Well, he did see the Soviet Union make considerable progress in heavy industry - but not, contrary to popular belief, significantly more than elsewhere. This was at a terrible cost in agriculture, light industry and service sectors.
But then - you could make a similar argument for Hitler if you only looked at the figures and didn't bother to check what they mean.
The real issue, of course, is that Hitler was demonstrated to be evil and incompetent. Stalin managed to fool people into thinking he was alright until after he was dead.
Terrify people into thinking he was alright more like, even with the genuine grief of some.
The Death of Stalin remains one the greatest movies of the last 10 years - the barmy would-be-comic-except they're-mass-murderers feel of it is pulled off brilliantly.
That holds good in the Soviet Empire. Less so among left-wing historians in the West.
Well, some people just want to be fooled, it doesn't take much effort.
Fun. Other than that refusing to acknowledge defeat weirdly seems to be a winning strategy, at least at primary level, nowadays.
Arizona Republican Kari Lake has said she is "entertaining" a run to represent the Grand Canyon State in the Senate.
In November 2022, Lake lost her bid to become state governor to Democrat Katie Hobbs by 17,000 votes, though she is refusing to accept defeat and alleges the election was rigged against her.
Lake's allegations of electoral malpractice have already been rejected by a Maricopa County judge, though she immediately lodged an appeal which has been expedited by a state appeals court.
Speaking to Charlie Kirk on his Real America's Voice show, Lake suggested she could run for the Senate if she doesn't get a "decent ruling" in her lawsuit for the Arizona gubernatorial election. This sets up what could be a three-way battle for an Arizona Senate seat in 2024, after incumbent Senator Kyrsten Sinema switched from the Democrats to an independent in December 2022
The breach of the Western 4th Generation jet fighter taboo seems to be in progress.
There are a lot of unhappy power people in DC, Paris & Berlin over this development.…
Hopefully the UK government will make those people even more unhappy by adding a couple dozen Storm Shadow cruise missiles for these Eurofighters to launch at high priority Russian logistical targets inside Ukraine's 1991 borders.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy visited Britain to drum up aid, winning a pledge to train Ukrainian pilots on advanced NATO fighter jets, a big symbolic step up in Western military support https://reut.rs/3YCwaDB
But am I wrong in saying it’s not been a good war for aircraft this one? Theoretically Russia have control of the skies, not least their strong radar screen over Ukraine that scares NATO from getting involved, but can do very little with that control because of the sophisticated anti air craft weaponry these days. It’s not been a good war for tanks or columns of vehicles either it seems to me - drones tend to wipe whole columns out shockingly easily.
I’d hate us to get distracted by some sexy weaponry and overlook what might actually help the most, maybe Boring things like logistics, supply lines and getting things into the right place right time as quickly as possible. Also giving them money.
Probably the main thing I think will most help Ukraine fight this war the longer it goes on into this year would be boots on the ground. Can’t we ramp up our special services involvement in the war, like how we thrashed Gaddafi?
A weapon or system doesn't have to be war-winning on its own to be worth sending. An incremental improvement in several areas of capability at once can be more effective than a single war-winning weapon.
I think the improvement in capability that we could provide would be in range again. Fighter jets we could supply would have missiles that would outrange those on Russian fighter jets, and also precision ground attack missiles that would enable Ukraine to hit logistics targets behind Russian lines without putting themselves within range of Russian air defence systems.
“enable Ukraine to hit logistics targets behind Russian lines without putting themselves within range of Russian air defence systems.”
Admittedly fighting war in 2020s isn’t my specialist subject, but that sentence sounds like a good idea to me, hit supply lines! But it seemed as Russia can’t use air, how long would more planes for Ukraine remain in service? They are target for missiles not just in air but on ground too? It sounds like a nice expensive thing to share, but what if it’s not as much use as something else, like ramping up repairing things and giving specialist care for the wounded outside of Ukraine like here in UK? That would be a really nice thing to share?
I believe that a lot of the suppression of the Ukrainian airforce has been by Mig 31 interceptors lobbing very long range AAMs at low flying Ukrainian jets. Low hit rate, but it adds up. The missiles aren’t very manoeuvrable, but if you don’t know when to dodge..
More modern jets could have the EW capability to detect they are being targeted and evade the incoming missiles.
The Beggar King is in a Ford Galaxy on the M11 so pb's 101st Chairborne will be getting excited over that providing a welcome change from the trans shit and HS2 minutiae very soon.
We - and Russia to, for that matter - are a nation that survived WWII only because of US aid, so it's a bit charmless to get sniffy about someone else in a comparable situation.
So the Russian nation would have ceased to exist during WW2 had it not been for US aid? What a loony.
PS Would it be gazetted somewhere if Johnson were to receive his US citizenship back, or is it only renunciations that get publicly noted?
PPS Some Ford Galaxies from the mid-noughties had front seats that could turn round and face the back. Now that's what I call a cool car.
The Germans made it to the Moscow suburbs in WWII. It doesn't take much changes to the timeline to them making it a bit further...
For example, the US and UK provided *all* the hi octane aviation gasoline for the USSR. It was only postwar that they got their cracking plants lined up to make it.
Vast amount of machine tools - in some categories, 100% of the tools and 100% of the tooling was Lendlease supplied. Without that, Soviet production would have crawled to a halt.
And so on in many categories - the % of USSR GDP was small, but LendLease was about supplying materials and equipment they were short of. Or literally didn't have.
The fall of Moscow, or even of both Moscow and Leningrad as it then was, would not in itself have come anywhere near making the Soviet government seek to agree terms with Germany. More than 1000 large factories were shipped eastwards. The USSR would certainly have continued fighting. Sure, they could have been defeated but the fall of Moscow wouldn't have done for them.
Do you regret that the USA and Britain gave such substantial assistance to their Soviet ally during WW2/the GPW? Or is it a very different Germany now but a very similar Russia, so western policy was good then (fight with Russia against Germany) and western policy is also good now (pointing towards fighting with Germany against Russia this time round)?
Stalin was evil, but less evil than Hitler.
"If Hitler invaded Hell, I would make at least a favourable reference of the Devil in the House of Commons."
So here's the thing - I am less sure of this than I used to be. Hitler evil, absolutely. He started the war that saw millions dead and initiated the holocaust.
But how many did Stalin kill? The famine in Ukraine, the gulags, the show trials, all of it. Why does Uncle Joe get a pass to be less evil than Hitler?
The main distinction I would draw would be that Stalin came to power in the USSR on a platform of "Socialism in one country" - a recognition that the attempt to spread communist revolution to the rest of the world had failed, and there was a need for the Bolsheviks to consolidate their power within their borders.
By contrast, the core of Hitler's ideology was the idea of the German need for Lebensraum, and consequently aggressive military expansion.
Bluntly, Stalin was content to kill people within his borders, while Hitler sought to kill people in the lands outside Germany's borders. The latter is more dangerous than the former.
This distinction might be more a consequence of the different levels of capability than ideology, but it's also true that the strong evil guy is more of a threat than the weak evil guy.
Also with Communism, for all the horrors enacted in its name, there was an arguably non-heinous idea at its core. This isn't the case with Hitler and the Nazis. The ideology there, the industrial scale subjugation of other people by a master race, is wholly abhorent in every sense and on every level.
Doesn't that make the Communist authoritarianism worse to some extent? It means that well-meaning people can go along with evil, "For The Greater Good," while the moral choice is a bit clearer under fascism. This might also explain why Communist dictatorships have tended to be more durable than fascist ones.
That said, having reflected, I think one can say that Hitler was a notch more evil than Stalin, because Hitler's intent with the Holocaust was to eradicate the Jewish people, and while there was a programme of Russification within the USSR, and particular ethnic groups like the Crimean Tartars were particularly targeted, the single-minded and ideological pursuit of the destruction of the Jewish people was, I think, on a distinctly more evil level.
Wolf more dangerous when donning the sheepskin? Yes, can be. But tbh, 'Hitler or Stalin more evil?', I don't find it that useful a question, but if forced to take it I neither find it that difficult. Hitler. There's just no shred of a redeeming factor, or anything not wholly evil, in what he believed or did in the name of it.
And there is with Stalin? Really? Do you think Stalin cared for anyone who he had murdered?
Stalin seems to have been the 'benefit' of being slightly less unstable, if that is the right term, meaning he didn't entirely self destruct his country or its political system, which enables serious rose coloured glasses about the country being 'strong' under him. Of course, that meaning his rule and the soviet system enduring longer is also a downside.
But that was largely a function of losing the war, which was also a function of Russia having a steady supply of material from the west. If Russia had not been supported by the west, the war in the east may have had a different result and the USSR would have been just as destroyed as Germany was in the real 1945. By which I mean: the USSR's lack of destruction was not a result of Stalin being less mad or evil than Hitler, just of Stalin being more fortunate with his alliances.
True, but even that might suggest a lone degree more competence in being able to maintain that. Which he then used to do plenty more evil, but that's WW2 for you.
Yes, but 1) I would argue that Stalin was in a more fortunate position in being able to build alliances because the UK was already at war with Germany when Germany declared war on Russia. The alliance happened by default; it didn't necessarily happen because of Stalin's ability, and 2) even if it had happened as a result of Stalin's ability, that wouldn't, necessarily, make him any less evil.
Presumably Boris's recent visit to Ukraine was part of the set up for Zelemsky's visit to the UK.
At any event, glad he is here. Britain's help for Ukraine is something to be proud about.
Is the Ukrainian leader shorter than Sunak? He certainly looks like it in the picture of them in the Graun, or is this from the PM's official photographer, who seems to have been selected specifically for his skills in this area?
They are both pretty short. Zelensky doesn't seem to care about it, though.
Z is short but stocky - the Oates in Hall & Oates template. Rishi is just very very tiny, which is harder to get yourself positive about as a man, I think. Still, it's far from his most pressing concern. That would be the ERG, I think.
Today was Johnson's day. Hats off to him if he laid the groundwork for Zelenskiy's visit. Johnson is standing loud and proud, he has with Zelenskiy's assistance overshadowed and further weakened the hapless Sunak. He's coming back, and he could contest the next election as the victorious Ukraine's Churchillian wing man.
Benny's back ... and this time for real!
You both scoff, but Churchillisn Johnson isn't my narrative, it is a narrative confected by Johnson effectively and confirmed by Zelenskiy today.
Both the BBC and LBC have focused on the Johnson aspect of the speech and repeated the line that Johnson singlehandedly (my interpretation) wrangled an unwilling EU and US into action.
Hats off to BigDog, he's played this rather cleverly. Let's hope that's where his story ends.
I support you. It can’t complete the Churchill narrative without a big comeback to power. And he is serious about seeking that isn’t he.
There’s the scenario Sunak can’t survive election defeat so someone else takes over, Boris can be LOTO, with all sorts of opposition freedom attack dog opportunity to build a lead in the polls , against a government with slim or non existent majority,
The Beggar King is in a Ford Galaxy on the M11 so pb's 101st Chairborne will be getting excited over that providing a welcome change from the trans shit and HS2 minutiae very soon.
We - and Russia to, for that matter - are a nation that survived WWII only because of US aid, so it's a bit charmless to get sniffy about someone else in a comparable situation.
So the Russian nation would have ceased to exist during WW2 had it not been for US aid? What a loony.
PS Would it be gazetted somewhere if Johnson were to receive his US citizenship back, or is it only renunciations that get publicly noted?
PPS Some Ford Galaxies from the mid-noughties had front seats that could turn round and face the back. Now that's what I call a cool car.
The Germans made it to the Moscow suburbs in WWII. It doesn't take much changes to the timeline to them making it a bit further...
For example, the US and UK provided *all* the hi octane aviation gasoline for the USSR. It was only postwar that they got their cracking plants lined up to make it.
Vast amount of machine tools - in some categories, 100% of the tools and 100% of the tooling was Lendlease supplied. Without that, Soviet production would have crawled to a halt.
And so on in many categories - the % of USSR GDP was small, but LendLease was about supplying materials and equipment they were short of. Or literally didn't have.
The fall of Moscow, or even of both Moscow and Leningrad as it then was, would not in itself have come anywhere near making the Soviet government seek to agree terms with Germany. More than 1000 large factories were shipped eastwards. The USSR would certainly have continued fighting. Sure, they could have been defeated but the fall of Moscow wouldn't have done for them.
Do you regret that the USA and Britain gave such substantial assistance to their Soviet ally during WW2/the GPW? Or is it a very different Germany now but a very similar Russia, so western policy was good then (fight with Russia against Germany) and western policy is also good now (pointing towards fighting with Germany against Russia this time round)?
Stalin was evil, but less evil than Hitler.
"If Hitler invaded Hell, I would make at least a favourable reference of the Devil in the House of Commons."
So here's the thing - I am less sure of this than I used to be. Hitler evil, absolutely. He started the war that saw millions dead and initiated the holocaust.
But how many did Stalin kill? The famine in Ukraine, the gulags, the show trials, all of it. Why does Uncle Joe get a pass to be less evil than Hitler?
The main distinction I would draw would be that Stalin came to power in the USSR on a platform of "Socialism in one country" - a recognition that the attempt to spread communist revolution to the rest of the world had failed, and there was a need for the Bolsheviks to consolidate their power within their borders.
By contrast, the core of Hitler's ideology was the idea of the German need for Lebensraum, and consequently aggressive military expansion.
Bluntly, Stalin was content to kill people within his borders, while Hitler sought to kill people in the lands outside Germany's borders. The latter is more dangerous than the former.
This distinction might be more a consequence of the different levels of capability than ideology, but it's also true that the strong evil guy is more of a threat than the weak evil guy.
Also with Communism, for all the horrors enacted in its name, there was an arguably non-heinous idea at its core. This isn't the case with Hitler and the Nazis. The ideology there, the industrial scale subjugation of other people by a master race, is wholly abhorent in every sense and on every level.
Doesn't that make the Communist authoritarianism worse to some extent? It means that well-meaning people can go along with evil, "For The Greater Good," while the moral choice is a bit clearer under fascism. This might also explain why Communist dictatorships have tended to be more durable than fascist ones.
That said, having reflected, I think one can say that Hitler was a notch more evil than Stalin, because Hitler's intent with the Holocaust was to eradicate the Jewish people, and while there was a programme of Russification within the USSR, and particular ethnic groups like the Crimean Tartars were particularly targeted, the single-minded and ideological pursuit of the destruction of the Jewish people was, I think, on a distinctly more evil level.
Wolf more dangerous when donning the sheepskin? Yes, can be. But tbh, 'Hitler or Stalin more evil?', I don't find it that useful a question, but if forced to take it I neither find it that difficult. Hitler. There's just no shred of a redeeming factor, or anything not wholly evil, in what he believed or did in the name of it.
And there is with Stalin? Really? Do you think Stalin cared for anyone who he had murdered?
Stalin seems to have been the 'benefit' of being slightly less unstable, if that is the right term, meaning he didn't entirely self destruct his country or its political system, which enables serious rose coloured glasses about the country being 'strong' under him. Of course, that meaning his rule and the soviet system enduring longer is also a downside.
But that was largely a function of losing the war, which was also a function of Russia having a steady supply of material from the west. If Russia had not been supported by the west, the war in the east may have had a different result and the USSR would have been just as destroyed as Germany was in the real 1945. By which I mean: the USSR's lack of destruction was not a result of Stalin being less mad or evil than Hitler, just of Stalin being more fortunate with his alliances.
True, but even that might suggest a lone degree more competence in being able to maintain that. Which he then used to do plenty more evil, but that's WW2 for you.
Yes, but 1) I would argue that Stalin was in a more fortunate position in being able to build alliances because the UK was already at war with Germany when Germany declared war on Russia. The alliance happened by default; it didn't necessarily happen because of Stalin's ability, and 2) even if it had happened as a result of Stalin's ability, that wouldn't, necessarily, make him any less evil.
Never said it did. Simply agreeing with the point that being longer lasting through luck or other reasons, it enables people to attempt that argument.
Strange that Sturgeon - very able as she is - should stumble over a couple of things much less gifted people would avoid.
With GRR all you have to do to avoid trouble is to shadow what England and Wales is doing (don't ask, no idea), take any credit and blame any problems on Westminster. Standard stuff.
With GE as 'proxy referendum' you cannot win. If you poll 50%+ everyone else says tough, we never recognised this. If you don't poll 50%+ you have lost on your own terms, and your enemies as well as other parties will be quick to point it out.
Since the Brexit 52/48 vote, pressing for a referendum except when support for the change is so strong it's irresistible is a bit out of fashion.
Why is this gifted (though wrong) politician not doing gritty everyday campaigning to get support for independence up to 60-65%, from which position she could actually get what she says she wants? Since Brexit she is not exactly short of material to work with.
That’s the point Salmond was making on WATO yesterday - why pick a fight with Westminster over this, rather than, for example, something Europe related which could be tied in with the economy/cost of living?
Why are we ruling out that she wants to deliver a longstanding commitment that she also believes in?
Comes under an increasing reluctance to assume ANY good faith in the motives of one's opponents.
Which you both clearly demonstrate yourselves.
I mean the reason the move was opposed was not because people might be concerned about say convicted male rapists being allowed into women's prisons but because such people wanted to create a culture war, have a wedge issue, play dirty politics.
there is more of that on the anti (GRR) side than the pro.
Which of the concerns about the GRR Bill raised by its critics (and dismissed by Sturgeon as “not valid”) have proved not to be?
Well the bill hasn't passed so one can't really say. We need to look at what's happened in countries - Ireland being the closest to home - where similar HAS been done. What we certainly do seem to have in Scotland is an issue with risk assessment for prisons. Are you claiming that this specific recent case shows that all the fears raised - no more single sex spaces, women's rights destroyed, floodgates opened for predatory men to gain GRCs for nefarious purposes, end of sex as a biological concept etc etc - are rational and justified? If you are I think that's a stretch.
You claimed that critics were more driving the issue as a “wedge issue” but have no evidence - so now retreat behind “the bill hasn’t passed”. I ask again, where is the evidence that critics were driven by trying to create a wedge, or were their concerns “not valid” to quote Sturgeon?
Claiming it’s a “wedge issue” is another tactic to delegitimise your opponents views - which is why they weren’t listened to, which is why it’s in the mess it’s in. If you really were interested in trans rights you’d have listened.
Good to know that Alistair McConnachie of UK A Force For Good, Joseph Finnie ex BNP and Fox regular Andy Ngo supported the Let Women Speak rally on Sunday to show their concerns rather than use it as a wedge issue.
So mandatory fox hunting and animal cruelty? Mustn't support a cause that the Hugo Boss fashionistas like....
Yeah, you’ve tried that lumbering zinger before. The point attempting to be made was that this was not being used as a wedge issue in a culture war. I’ll add you to the list of credulous folk who think that.
I am rather taken aback by the resistance we are encountering on this one.
"Ok, listen up peeps, how can we use this Transgender thing to peel away votes from the other side?"
Can there seriously be any doubt that the above is playing out far more in Tory brainstorming sessions than in those of LAB/LD/SNP?
If we can't win this argument on here we might as well give up and put the kettle on.
When you and @Theuniondivvie are of the opinion that the only people who are on the other side are the "BNP", "Trump", "InfoWars" and assorted other troglodytes then yes its certainly possible and there certainly is doubt.
Of course it shouldn't be playing out in any such sessions for any party and instead the legitimate concerns of both sides should be listened to, but the two of you in particular are never in any mood for that, hence the desire to mock everyone who disagrees as being a "wedge" or "InfoWars" instead of listening to their very valid concerns.
That's what people like you do, characterise a pointing out of dubious fellow travellers as saying they are 'the only people who are on the other side', which is lying, which makes you a...?
A ... figment of your imagination?
I've literally never done that. Not only do I not like to do that, I've never pointed out dubious fellow travellers as I think it's a bloody stupid thing to do, as there are dubious people on all sides.
Dashed unsporting to quote a chap's own words back at him, but you literally said 'When you and @Theuniondivvie are of the opinion that the only people who are on the other side are the "BNP", "Trump", "InfoWars" and assorted other troglodytes', which is a lie. Now you can either accept that's a lie or do the expressed yourself badly thing. Oh, you can also jog on of course.
Improve your reading comprehension. 🙈
Yes I quite literally said that when you and @Theuniondivvie are of the opinion that ...
I was criticising your opinion, not sharing it. Unless you are overtly sensitive and thought I was lumping you with the BNP, Trump, Infowars and assorted other troglodytes?
What opinion did I express that said that 'the only people who are on the other side are the "BNP", "Trump", "InfoWars" and assorted other troglodytes'?
It's a paraphrase but try your post at 12:11pm.
You could respond to this debate by responding to what other people say, but easier and lazier it seems for you to drag people into the mud by insinuating they're on the side of that lot rather than actually bothering to think through matters or address legitimate concerns.
A ‘paraphrase’ is it? As I expected, a mealy mouthed little equivocation without the balls (sic) to defend your own deliberate mischaracterisation.
Sunak's problem in Scotland - is it that levelling up comes across as too English? The general consensus about the need to boost economic performance outside the south east of England ought to find favour in Scotland but the flagship programme for this often seems more about providing pork barrel for Tory MPs. Of which there aren't many in Scotland.
It is also that any UK scheme that turns down a Scottish application gets extra 'teeth gritty' in the way it is portrayed. There was a desperate appeal on my LinkedIn feed the other day by The King's Theatre in Edinburgh, urgently asking for millions to plug a hole because 'our application for the UK Government's levelling up fund has been turned down' - the subtext being the scheming sassenachs out to do Scotland down (again). Deserving a cultural venue as The Kings is, it would be an odd version of 'levelling up' that included refurbishing Edinburgh theatres within its scope.
Er, that is uncalled for. Do I detect a smidgin of bias?
(I agree it doesn't make sense - in fact it is a poor substitute for failing to repatriate the relevant powers which should have gone to S, W and NI after Brexit under UK legislation. But you can't blame the theatre for asking. The theatre isn't interested in that.)
It is not uncalled for at all, and I don't know to which bias you refer.
Edinburgh is the capital city of Scotland; it's a seat of Government, has a massive tourism industry, a big financial industry, and is a very wealthy city. I love the King's Theatre and wish it nothing but success in its fundraising, but clearly refurbishing it is not 'levelling up' if the phrase means anything.
I can't speak on the other projects, but I note that most are in places like Kilmarnock, Stirling, Greenock, Fife, Cumbernauld - places with a little more claim to need a levelling up boost.
Regarding the wider point, I suppose you don't notice the nationalist dimension that those sorts of decisions take on in Scotland. Too used to it perhaps. It was the same when Dundee lost out to UK city of culture vs. Hull. The messaging from the council wasn't just 'a failed bid, never mind, good for Hull' - it was bitter recrimination and 'clearly we have been aiming our sights too low with a UK award'. I mean some shithole had to win, and Hull was evidently in this instance considered a needier shithole than Dundee (I love Dundee btw), but im Scotland the decision was portrayed as a national slight.
The breach of the Western 4th Generation jet fighter taboo seems to be in progress.
There are a lot of unhappy power people in DC, Paris & Berlin over this development.…
Hopefully the UK government will make those people even more unhappy by adding a couple dozen Storm Shadow cruise missiles for these Eurofighters to launch at high priority Russian logistical targets inside Ukraine's 1991 borders.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy visited Britain to drum up aid, winning a pledge to train Ukrainian pilots on advanced NATO fighter jets, a big symbolic step up in Western military support https://reut.rs/3YCwaDB
But am I wrong in saying it’s not been a good war for aircraft this one? Theoretically Russia have control of the skies, not least their strong radar screen over Ukraine that scares NATO from getting involved, but can do very little with that control because of the sophisticated anti air craft weaponry these days. It’s not been a good war for tanks or columns of vehicles either it seems to me - drones tend to wipe whole columns out shockingly easily.
I’d hate us to get distracted by some sexy weaponry and overlook what might actually help the most, maybe Boring things like logistics, supply lines and getting things into the right place right time as quickly as possible. Also giving them money.
Probably the main thing I think will most help Ukraine fight this war the longer it goes on into this year would be boots on the ground. Can’t we ramp up our special services involvement in the war, like how we thrashed Gaddafi?
A weapon or system doesn't have to be war-winning on its own to be worth sending. An incremental improvement in several areas of capability at once can be more effective than a single war-winning weapon.
I think the improvement in capability that we could provide would be in range again. Fighter jets we could supply would have missiles that would outrange those on Russian fighter jets, and also precision ground attack missiles that would enable Ukraine to hit logistics targets behind Russian lines without putting themselves within range of Russian air defence systems.
“enable Ukraine to hit logistics targets behind Russian lines without putting themselves within range of Russian air defence systems.”
Admittedly fighting war in 2020s isn’t my specialist subject, but that sentence sounds like a good idea to me, hit supply lines! But it seemed as Russia can’t use air, how long would more planes for Ukraine remain in service? They are target for missiles not just in air but on ground too? It sounds like a nice expensive thing to share, but what if it’s not as much use as something else, like ramping up repairing things and giving specialist care for the wounded outside of Ukraine like here in UK? That would be a really nice thing to share?
I believe that a lot of the suppression of the Ukrainian airforce has been by Mig 31 interceptors lobbing very long range AAMs at low flying Ukrainian jets. Low hit rate, but it adds up. The missiles aren’t very manoeuvrable, but if you don’t know when to dodge..
More modern jets could have the EW capability to detect they are being targeted and evade the incoming missiles.
That’s a good point. Put like that it’s actually very much in the interest of western powers with modern capabilities to learn from seeing them in actual action, so not just a gift Ukrainians would love to have to help them. So why in tweet above are western powers so unwilling to go with that win win?
Hitler vs. Stalin and toilet seat up or down within a few posts of each other.
Never change, pb.com!
- the toilet seat is the more profound and fertile debate imo.
Does anyone else flush whilst still sat on the loo.
Where you are not convinced it’s done, but can’t stand the smell?
That's a big thing on Mumsnet where it's called a "courtesy flush", in particular in relation to using a toilet in someone else's house and trying to minimise the smell generated.
Bit risky if you're using a toilet you're not familiar with and then find that the water pressure for the cistern is very low and it takes ages to refill for another flush.
Strange that Sturgeon - very able as she is - should stumble over a couple of things much less gifted people would avoid.
With GRR all you have to do to avoid trouble is to shadow what England and Wales is doing (don't ask, no idea), take any credit and blame any problems on Westminster. Standard stuff.
With GE as 'proxy referendum' you cannot win. If you poll 50%+ everyone else says tough, we never recognised this. If you don't poll 50%+ you have lost on your own terms, and your enemies as well as other parties will be quick to point it out.
Since the Brexit 52/48 vote, pressing for a referendum except when support for the change is so strong it's irresistible is a bit out of fashion.
Why is this gifted (though wrong) politician not doing gritty everyday campaigning to get support for independence up to 60-65%, from which position she could actually get what she says she wants? Since Brexit she is not exactly short of material to work with.
That’s the point Salmond was making on WATO yesterday - why pick a fight with Westminster over this, rather than, for example, something Europe related which could be tied in with the economy/cost of living?
Why are we ruling out that she wants to deliver a longstanding commitment that she also believes in?
Comes under an increasing reluctance to assume ANY good faith in the motives of one's opponents.
Which you both clearly demonstrate yourselves.
I mean the reason the move was opposed was not because people might be concerned about say convicted male rapists being allowed into women's prisons but because such people wanted to create a culture war, have a wedge issue, play dirty politics.
there is more of that on the anti (GRR) side than the pro.
Which of the concerns about the GRR Bill raised by its critics (and dismissed by Sturgeon as “not valid”) have proved not to be?
Well the bill hasn't passed so one can't really say. We need to look at what's happened in countries - Ireland being the closest to home - where similar HAS been done. What we certainly do seem to have in Scotland is an issue with risk assessment for prisons. Are you claiming that this specific recent case shows that all the fears raised - no more single sex spaces, women's rights destroyed, floodgates opened for predatory men to gain GRCs for nefarious purposes, end of sex as a biological concept etc etc - are rational and justified? If you are I think that's a stretch.
You claimed that critics were more driving the issue as a “wedge issue” but have no evidence - so now retreat behind “the bill hasn’t passed”. I ask again, where is the evidence that critics were driven by trying to create a wedge, or were their concerns “not valid” to quote Sturgeon?
Claiming it’s a “wedge issue” is another tactic to delegitimise your opponents views - which is why they weren’t listened to, which is why it’s in the mess it’s in. If you really were interested in trans rights you’d have listened.
Good to know that Alistair McConnachie of UK A Force For Good, Joseph Finnie ex BNP and Fox regular Andy Ngo supported the Let Women Speak rally on Sunday to show their concerns rather than use it as a wedge issue.
So mandatory fox hunting and animal cruelty? Mustn't support a cause that the Hugo Boss fashionistas like....
Yeah, you’ve tried that lumbering zinger before. The point attempting to be made was that this was not being used as a wedge issue in a culture war. I’ll add you to the list of credulous folk who think that.
I am rather taken aback by the resistance we are encountering on this one.
"Ok, listen up peeps, how can we use this Transgender thing to peel away votes from the other side?"
Can there seriously be any doubt that the above is playing out far more in Tory brainstorming sessions than in those of LAB/LD/SNP?
If we can't win this argument on here we might as well give up and put the kettle on.
When you and @Theuniondivvie are of the opinion that the only people who are on the other side are the "BNP", "Trump", "InfoWars" and assorted other troglodytes then yes its certainly possible and there certainly is doubt.
Of course it shouldn't be playing out in any such sessions for any party and instead the legitimate concerns of both sides should be listened to, but the two of you in particular are never in any mood for that, hence the desire to mock everyone who disagrees as being a "wedge" or "InfoWars" instead of listening to their very valid concerns.
That's what people like you do, characterise a pointing out of dubious fellow travellers as saying they are 'the only people who are on the other side', which is lying, which makes you a...?
Whilst people like you refuse to ever admit that there is ever anything awry. Nothing to apologise for.
I have lived with a Scot for 30 years. It would seem "sorry" is not a word north of the border. Instead, there is a third person in our marriage, myself, my wife - and the mysterious damage fairy, who has to take responsibility for all unexplained incidents that might otherwise point to the Good Lady Wife.
My wife never apologises for anything either (and why should she as she is infallible). And yet she isn't Scottish while I am. Go figure!
Does that mean that if I self ID as female, I will no longer need to apologise for anything?
Yes, that's right. And you will always put the toilet lid down.
Surely a true gentleman always does that anyway?
(I was persuaded on this point by by now-wife, who argued that - when we were a household of two - that there was a higher probability the next user would want the toilet seat down than up. I'm a sucker for - even postulative - statistical argument.)
Nah, that only works if she is referring to the middle ring bit. Putting the lid down conveniences no-one.
Best is lid up, ring bit down Second is lid up, ring bit up
Have a word.
If you flush with the lid up you spread germs, and in some cases shit, all round the bathroom.
Your choice...
I have never in my life seen fecal matter or any other matter spread around the room when I flush.
The Beggar King is in a Ford Galaxy on the M11 so pb's 101st Chairborne will be getting excited over that providing a welcome change from the trans shit and HS2 minutiae very soon.
We - and Russia to, for that matter - are a nation that survived WWII only because of US aid, so it's a bit charmless to get sniffy about someone else in a comparable situation.
So the Russian nation would have ceased to exist during WW2 had it not been for US aid? What a loony.
PS Would it be gazetted somewhere if Johnson were to receive his US citizenship back, or is it only renunciations that get publicly noted?
PPS Some Ford Galaxies from the mid-noughties had front seats that could turn round and face the back. Now that's what I call a cool car.
The Germans made it to the Moscow suburbs in WWII. It doesn't take much changes to the timeline to them making it a bit further...
For example, the US and UK provided *all* the hi octane aviation gasoline for the USSR. It was only postwar that they got their cracking plants lined up to make it.
Vast amount of machine tools - in some categories, 100% of the tools and 100% of the tooling was Lendlease supplied. Without that, Soviet production would have crawled to a halt.
And so on in many categories - the % of USSR GDP was small, but LendLease was about supplying materials and equipment they were short of. Or literally didn't have.
The fall of Moscow, or even of both Moscow and Leningrad as it then was, would not in itself have come anywhere near making the Soviet government seek to agree terms with Germany. More than 1000 large factories were shipped eastwards. The USSR would certainly have continued fighting. Sure, they could have been defeated but the fall of Moscow wouldn't have done for them.
Do you regret that the USA and Britain gave such substantial assistance to their Soviet ally during WW2/the GPW? Or is it a very different Germany now but a very similar Russia, so western policy was good then (fight with Russia against Germany) and western policy is also good now (pointing towards fighting with Germany against Russia this time round)?
Stalin was evil, but less evil than Hitler.
"If Hitler invaded Hell, I would make at least a favourable reference of the Devil in the House of Commons."
So here's the thing - I am less sure of this than I used to be. Hitler evil, absolutely. He started the war that saw millions dead and initiated the holocaust.
But how many did Stalin kill? The famine in Ukraine, the gulags, the show trials, all of it. Why does Uncle Joe get a pass to be less evil than Hitler?
The main distinction I would draw would be that Stalin came to power in the USSR on a platform of "Socialism in one country" - a recognition that the attempt to spread communist revolution to the rest of the world had failed, and there was a need for the Bolsheviks to consolidate their power within their borders.
By contrast, the core of Hitler's ideology was the idea of the German need for Lebensraum, and consequently aggressive military expansion.
Bluntly, Stalin was content to kill people within his borders, while Hitler sought to kill people in the lands outside Germany's borders. The latter is more dangerous than the former.
This distinction might be more a consequence of the different levels of capability than ideology, but it's also true that the strong evil guy is more of a threat than the weak evil guy.
Also with Communism, for all the horrors enacted in its name, there was an arguably non-heinous idea at its core. This isn't the case with Hitler and the Nazis. The ideology there, the industrial scale subjugation of other people by a master race, is wholly abhorent in every sense and on every level.
Doesn't that make the Communist authoritarianism worse to some extent? It means that well-meaning people can go along with evil, "For The Greater Good," while the moral choice is a bit clearer under fascism. This might also explain why Communist dictatorships have tended to be more durable than fascist ones.
That said, having reflected, I think one can say that Hitler was a notch more evil than Stalin, because Hitler's intent with the Holocaust was to eradicate the Jewish people, and while there was a programme of Russification within the USSR, and particular ethnic groups like the Crimean Tartars were particularly targeted, the single-minded and ideological pursuit of the destruction of the Jewish people was, I think, on a distinctly more evil level.
Wolf more dangerous when donning the sheepskin? Yes, can be. But tbh, 'Hitler or Stalin more evil?', I don't find it that useful a question, but if forced to take it I neither find it that difficult. Hitler. There's just no shred of a redeeming factor, or anything not wholly evil, in what he believed or did in the name of it.
And there is with Stalin? Really? Do you think Stalin cared for anyone who he had murdered?
The argument made for Stalin is that though his methods were hideous, he did have a positive goal - the building of a strong economy and a socialist state.
Hitler wasn't even really trying to do that.
It is a naive argument, reliant on taking Stalin's statements at face value while interrogating Hitler's on the assumption he was a liar.
Is it untenable? Well, he did see the Soviet Union make considerable progress in heavy industry - but not, contrary to popular belief, significantly more than elsewhere. This was at a terrible cost in agriculture, light industry and service sectors.
But then - you could make a similar argument for Hitler if you only looked at the figures and didn't bother to check what they mean.
The real issue, of course, is that Hitler was demonstrated to be evil and incompetent. Stalin managed to fool people into thinking he was alright until after he was dead.
Terrify people into thinking he was alright more like, even with the genuine grief of some.
The Death of Stalin remains one the greatest movies of the last 10 years - the barmy would-be-comic-except they're-mass-murderers feel of it is pulled off brilliantly.
That holds good in the Soviet Empire. Less so among left-wing historians in the West.
But death of Stalin was so brilliantly historically accurate was it not? Like the arrest of Beria the leader looking the other way whilst he pressed the button under the desk, etc. it’s an historical documentary really isn’t it? It must be great fun to write true history in such an entertaining way?
The Beggar King is in a Ford Galaxy on the M11 so pb's 101st Chairborne will be getting excited over that providing a welcome change from the trans shit and HS2 minutiae very soon.
We - and Russia to, for that matter - are a nation that survived WWII only because of US aid, so it's a bit charmless to get sniffy about someone else in a comparable situation.
So the Russian nation would have ceased to exist during WW2 had it not been for US aid? What a loony.
PS Would it be gazetted somewhere if Johnson were to receive his US citizenship back, or is it only renunciations that get publicly noted?
PPS Some Ford Galaxies from the mid-noughties had front seats that could turn round and face the back. Now that's what I call a cool car.
The Germans made it to the Moscow suburbs in WWII. It doesn't take much changes to the timeline to them making it a bit further...
For example, the US and UK provided *all* the hi octane aviation gasoline for the USSR. It was only postwar that they got their cracking plants lined up to make it.
Vast amount of machine tools - in some categories, 100% of the tools and 100% of the tooling was Lendlease supplied. Without that, Soviet production would have crawled to a halt.
And so on in many categories - the % of USSR GDP was small, but LendLease was about supplying materials and equipment they were short of. Or literally didn't have.
The fall of Moscow, or even of both Moscow and Leningrad as it then was, would not in itself have come anywhere near making the Soviet government seek to agree terms with Germany. More than 1000 large factories were shipped eastwards. The USSR would certainly have continued fighting. Sure, they could have been defeated but the fall of Moscow wouldn't have done for them.
Do you regret that the USA and Britain gave such substantial assistance to their Soviet ally during WW2/the GPW? Or is it a very different Germany now but a very similar Russia, so western policy was good then (fight with Russia against Germany) and western policy is also good now (pointing towards fighting with Germany against Russia this time round)?
Stalin was evil, but less evil than Hitler.
"If Hitler invaded Hell, I would make at least a favourable reference of the Devil in the House of Commons."
So here's the thing - I am less sure of this than I used to be. Hitler evil, absolutely. He started the war that saw millions dead and initiated the holocaust.
But how many did Stalin kill? The famine in Ukraine, the gulags, the show trials, all of it. Why does Uncle Joe get a pass to be less evil than Hitler?
The main distinction I would draw would be that Stalin came to power in the USSR on a platform of "Socialism in one country" - a recognition that the attempt to spread communist revolution to the rest of the world had failed, and there was a need for the Bolsheviks to consolidate their power within their borders.
By contrast, the core of Hitler's ideology was the idea of the German need for Lebensraum, and consequently aggressive military expansion.
Bluntly, Stalin was content to kill people within his borders, while Hitler sought to kill people in the lands outside Germany's borders. The latter is more dangerous than the former.
This distinction might be more a consequence of the different levels of capability than ideology, but it's also true that the strong evil guy is more of a threat than the weak evil guy.
Also with Communism, for all the horrors enacted in its name, there was an arguably non-heinous idea at its core. This isn't the case with Hitler and the Nazis. The ideology there, the industrial scale subjugation of other people by a master race, is wholly abhorent in every sense and on every level.
Doesn't that make the Communist authoritarianism worse to some extent? It means that well-meaning people can go along with evil, "For The Greater Good," while the moral choice is a bit clearer under fascism. This might also explain why Communist dictatorships have tended to be more durable than fascist ones.
That said, having reflected, I think one can say that Hitler was a notch more evil than Stalin, because Hitler's intent with the Holocaust was to eradicate the Jewish people, and while there was a programme of Russification within the USSR, and particular ethnic groups like the Crimean Tartars were particularly targeted, the single-minded and ideological pursuit of the destruction of the Jewish people was, I think, on a distinctly more evil level.
Wolf more dangerous when donning the sheepskin? Yes, can be. But tbh, 'Hitler or Stalin more evil?', I don't find it that useful a question, but if forced to take it I neither find it that difficult. Hitler. There's just no shred of a redeeming factor, or anything not wholly evil, in what he believed or did in the name of it.
And there is with Stalin? Really? Do you think Stalin cared for anyone who he had murdered?
The argument made for Stalin is that though his methods were hideous, he did have a positive goal - the building of a strong economy and a socialist state.
Hitler wasn't even really trying to do that.
It is a naive argument, reliant on taking Stalin's statements at face value while interrogating Hitler's on the assumption he was a liar.
Is it untenable? Well, he did see the Soviet Union make considerable progress in heavy industry - but not, contrary to popular belief, significantly more than elsewhere. This was at a terrible cost in agriculture, light industry and service sectors.
But then - you could make a similar argument for Hitler if you only looked at the figures and didn't bother to check what they mean.
The real issue, of course, is that Hitler was demonstrated to be evil and incompetent. Stalin managed to fool people into thinking he was alright until after he was dead.
Terrify people into thinking he was alright more like, even with the genuine grief of some.
The Death of Stalin remains one the greatest movies of the last 10 years - the barmy would-be-comic-except they're-mass-murderers feel of it is pulled off brilliantly.
That holds good in the Soviet Empire. Less so among left-wing historians in the West.
But death of Stalin was so brilliantly historically accurate was it not? Like the arrest of Beria the leader looking the other way whilst he pressed the button under the desk, etc. it’s an historical documentary really isn’t it? It must be great fun to write true history in such an entertaining way?
No.
Or at least, that was a dramatised reimagining of the account Khrushchev gave of Beria's arrest, which he put about six months after Stalin's death.
Other accounts suggest he was arrested and/or shot at his house.
Hitler vs. Stalin and toilet seat up or down within a few posts of each other.
Never change, pb.com!
- the toilet seat is the more profound and fertile debate imo.
Does anyone else flush whilst still sat on the loo.
Where you are not convinced it’s done, but can’t stand the smell?
That's a big thing on Mumsnet where it's called a "courtesy flush", in particular in relation to using a toilet in someone else's house and trying to minimise the smell generated.
Bit risky if you're using a toilet you're not familiar with and then find that the water pressure for the cistern is very low and it takes ages to refill for another flush.
All you really suffer is a few cold splashes. I’m pleased it’s regarded as doing the right thing and not weird. Live and learn on PB 🫡
Strange that Sturgeon - very able as she is - should stumble over a couple of things much less gifted people would avoid.
With GRR all you have to do to avoid trouble is to shadow what England and Wales is doing (don't ask, no idea), take any credit and blame any problems on Westminster. Standard stuff.
With GE as 'proxy referendum' you cannot win. If you poll 50%+ everyone else says tough, we never recognised this. If you don't poll 50%+ you have lost on your own terms, and your enemies as well as other parties will be quick to point it out.
Since the Brexit 52/48 vote, pressing for a referendum except when support for the change is so strong it's irresistible is a bit out of fashion.
Why is this gifted (though wrong) politician not doing gritty everyday campaigning to get support for independence up to 60-65%, from which position she could actually get what she says she wants? Since Brexit she is not exactly short of material to work with.
That’s the point Salmond was making on WATO yesterday - why pick a fight with Westminster over this, rather than, for example, something Europe related which could be tied in with the economy/cost of living?
Why are we ruling out that she wants to deliver a longstanding commitment that she also believes in?
Comes under an increasing reluctance to assume ANY good faith in the motives of one's opponents.
Which you both clearly demonstrate yourselves.
I mean the reason the move was opposed was not because people might be concerned about say convicted male rapists being allowed into women's prisons but because such people wanted to create a culture war, have a wedge issue, play dirty politics.
there is more of that on the anti (GRR) side than the pro.
Which of the concerns about the GRR Bill raised by its critics (and dismissed by Sturgeon as “not valid”) have proved not to be?
Well the bill hasn't passed so one can't really say. We need to look at what's happened in countries - Ireland being the closest to home - where similar HAS been done. What we certainly do seem to have in Scotland is an issue with risk assessment for prisons. Are you claiming that this specific recent case shows that all the fears raised - no more single sex spaces, women's rights destroyed, floodgates opened for predatory men to gain GRCs for nefarious purposes, end of sex as a biological concept etc etc - are rational and justified? If you are I think that's a stretch.
You claimed that critics were more driving the issue as a “wedge issue” but have no evidence - so now retreat behind “the bill hasn’t passed”. I ask again, where is the evidence that critics were driven by trying to create a wedge, or were their concerns “not valid” to quote Sturgeon?
Claiming it’s a “wedge issue” is another tactic to delegitimise your opponents views - which is why they weren’t listened to, which is why it’s in the mess it’s in. If you really were interested in trans rights you’d have listened.
Good to know that Alistair McConnachie of UK A Force For Good, Joseph Finnie ex BNP and Fox regular Andy Ngo supported the Let Women Speak rally on Sunday to show their concerns rather than use it as a wedge issue.
So mandatory fox hunting and animal cruelty? Mustn't support a cause that the Hugo Boss fashionistas like....
Yeah, you’ve tried that lumbering zinger before. The point attempting to be made was that this was not being used as a wedge issue in a culture war. I’ll add you to the list of credulous folk who think that.
I am rather taken aback by the resistance we are encountering on this one.
"Ok, listen up peeps, how can we use this Transgender thing to peel away votes from the other side?"
Can there seriously be any doubt that the above is playing out far more in Tory brainstorming sessions than in those of LAB/LD/SNP?
If we can't win this argument on here we might as well give up and put the kettle on.
When you and @Theuniondivvie are of the opinion that the only people who are on the other side are the "BNP", "Trump", "InfoWars" and assorted other troglodytes then yes its certainly possible and there certainly is doubt.
Of course it shouldn't be playing out in any such sessions for any party and instead the legitimate concerns of both sides should be listened to, but the two of you in particular are never in any mood for that, hence the desire to mock everyone who disagrees as being a "wedge" or "InfoWars" instead of listening to their very valid concerns.
That's what people like you do, characterise a pointing out of dubious fellow travellers as saying they are 'the only people who are on the other side', which is lying, which makes you a...?
Whilst people like you refuse to ever admit that there is ever anything awry. Nothing to apologise for.
I have lived with a Scot for 30 years. It would seem "sorry" is not a word north of the border. Instead, there is a third person in our marriage, myself, my wife - and the mysterious damage fairy, who has to take responsibility for all unexplained incidents that might otherwise point to the Good Lady Wife.
My wife never apologises for anything either (and why should she as she is infallible). And yet she isn't Scottish while I am. Go figure!
Does that mean that if I self ID as female, I will no longer need to apologise for anything?
Yes, that's right. And you will always put the toilet lid down.
Surely a true gentleman always does that anyway?
(I was persuaded on this point by by now-wife, who argued that - when we were a household of two - that there was a higher probability the next user would want the toilet seat down than up. I'm a sucker for - even postulative - statistical argument.)
Nah, that only works if she is referring to the middle ring bit. Putting the lid down conveniences no-one.
Best is lid up, ring bit down Second is lid up, ring bit up
Have a word.
If you flush with the lid up you spread germs, and in some cases shit, all round the bathroom.
Your choice...
I have never in my life seen fecal matter or any other matter spread around the room when I flush.
I looked it up. There was a investigation a few years ago apparantly.
Given that I get hit with a stick by Mrs Stocky if I don't check for and remedy pan-skiddies this mean that I now have to do my dirty business, put lid down, wait for the flush, lift lid up, make good as necessary, put lid down again.
FFS.
If your solids are... solid, then I don't think there's likely to be much aerosolisation of fecal matter.
The Beggar King is in a Ford Galaxy on the M11 so pb's 101st Chairborne will be getting excited over that providing a welcome change from the trans shit and HS2 minutiae very soon.
We - and Russia to, for that matter - are a nation that survived WWII only because of US aid, so it's a bit charmless to get sniffy about someone else in a comparable situation.
So the Russian nation would have ceased to exist during WW2 had it not been for US aid? What a loony.
PS Would it be gazetted somewhere if Johnson were to receive his US citizenship back, or is it only renunciations that get publicly noted?
PPS Some Ford Galaxies from the mid-noughties had front seats that could turn round and face the back. Now that's what I call a cool car.
The Germans made it to the Moscow suburbs in WWII. It doesn't take much changes to the timeline to them making it a bit further...
For example, the US and UK provided *all* the hi octane aviation gasoline for the USSR. It was only postwar that they got their cracking plants lined up to make it.
Vast amount of machine tools - in some categories, 100% of the tools and 100% of the tooling was Lendlease supplied. Without that, Soviet production would have crawled to a halt.
And so on in many categories - the % of USSR GDP was small, but LendLease was about supplying materials and equipment they were short of. Or literally didn't have.
The fall of Moscow, or even of both Moscow and Leningrad as it then was, would not in itself have come anywhere near making the Soviet government seek to agree terms with Germany. More than 1000 large factories were shipped eastwards. The USSR would certainly have continued fighting. Sure, they could have been defeated but the fall of Moscow wouldn't have done for them.
Do you regret that the USA and Britain gave such substantial assistance to their Soviet ally during WW2/the GPW? Or is it a very different Germany now but a very similar Russia, so western policy was good then (fight with Russia against Germany) and western policy is also good now (pointing towards fighting with Germany against Russia this time round)?
Stalin was evil, but less evil than Hitler.
"If Hitler invaded Hell, I would make at least a favourable reference of the Devil in the House of Commons."
So here's the thing - I am less sure of this than I used to be. Hitler evil, absolutely. He started the war that saw millions dead and initiated the holocaust.
But how many did Stalin kill? The famine in Ukraine, the gulags, the show trials, all of it. Why does Uncle Joe get a pass to be less evil than Hitler?
The main distinction I would draw would be that Stalin came to power in the USSR on a platform of "Socialism in one country" - a recognition that the attempt to spread communist revolution to the rest of the world had failed, and there was a need for the Bolsheviks to consolidate their power within their borders.
By contrast, the core of Hitler's ideology was the idea of the German need for Lebensraum, and consequently aggressive military expansion.
Bluntly, Stalin was content to kill people within his borders, while Hitler sought to kill people in the lands outside Germany's borders. The latter is more dangerous than the former.
This distinction might be more a consequence of the different levels of capability than ideology, but it's also true that the strong evil guy is more of a threat than the weak evil guy.
Also with Communism, for all the horrors enacted in its name, there was an arguably non-heinous idea at its core. This isn't the case with Hitler and the Nazis. The ideology there, the industrial scale subjugation of other people by a master race, is wholly abhorent in every sense and on every level.
Doesn't that make the Communist authoritarianism worse to some extent? It means that well-meaning people can go along with evil, "For The Greater Good," while the moral choice is a bit clearer under fascism. This might also explain why Communist dictatorships have tended to be more durable than fascist ones.
That said, having reflected, I think one can say that Hitler was a notch more evil than Stalin, because Hitler's intent with the Holocaust was to eradicate the Jewish people, and while there was a programme of Russification within the USSR, and particular ethnic groups like the Crimean Tartars were particularly targeted, the single-minded and ideological pursuit of the destruction of the Jewish people was, I think, on a distinctly more evil level.
Wolf more dangerous when donning the sheepskin? Yes, can be. But tbh, 'Hitler or Stalin more evil?', I don't find it that useful a question, but if forced to take it I neither find it that difficult. Hitler. There's just no shred of a redeeming factor, or anything not wholly evil, in what he believed or did in the name of it.
And there is with Stalin? Really? Do you think Stalin cared for anyone who he had murdered?
The argument made for Stalin is that though his methods were hideous, he did have a positive goal - the building of a strong economy and a socialist state.
Hitler wasn't even really trying to do that.
It is a naive argument, reliant on taking Stalin's statements at face value while interrogating Hitler's on the assumption he was a liar.
Is it untenable? Well, he did see the Soviet Union make considerable progress in heavy industry - but not, contrary to popular belief, significantly more than elsewhere. This was at a terrible cost in agriculture, light industry and service sectors.
But then - you could make a similar argument for Hitler if you only looked at the figures and didn't bother to check what they mean.
The real issue, of course, is that Hitler was demonstrated to be evil and incompetent. Stalin managed to fool people into thinking he was alright until after he was dead.
Terrify people into thinking he was alright more like, even with the genuine grief of some.
The Death of Stalin remains one the greatest movies of the last 10 years - the barmy would-be-comic-except they're-mass-murderers feel of it is pulled off brilliantly.
Even amongst these scheming murderers both Stalin and his evil henchman Beria stand out. It is a brilliant film.
Presumably Boris's recent visit to Ukraine was part of the set up for Zelemsky's visit to the UK.
At any event, glad he is here. Britain's help for Ukraine is something to be proud about.
Is the Ukrainian leader shorter than Sunak? He certainly looks like it in the picture of them in the Graun, or is this from the PM's official photographer, who seems to have been selected specifically for his skills in this area?
They are both pretty short. Zelensky doesn't seem to care about it, though.
Z is short but stocky - the Oates in Hall & Oates template. Rishi is just very very tiny, which is harder to get yourself positive about as a man, I think. Still, it's far from his most pressing concern. That would be the ERG, I think.
Today was Johnson's day. Hats off to him if he laid the groundwork for Zelenskiy's visit. Johnson is standing loud and proud, he has with Zelenskiy's assistance overshadowed and further weakened the hapless Sunak. He's coming back, and he could contest the next election as the victorious Ukraine's Churchillian wing man.
Benny's back ... and this time for real!
You both scoff, but Churchillisn Johnson isn't my narrative, it is a narrative confected by Johnson effectively and confirmed by Zelenskiy today.
Both the BBC and LBC have focused on the Johnson aspect of the speech and repeated the line that Johnson singlehandedly (my interpretation) wrangled an unwilling EU and US into action.
Hats off to BigDog, he's played this rather cleverly. Let's hope that's where his story ends.
I support you. It can’t complete the Churchill narrative without a big comeback to power. And he is serious about seeking that isn’t he.
There’s the scenario Sunak can’t survive election defeat so someone else takes over, Boris can be LOTO, with all sorts of opposition freedom attack dog opportunity to build a lead in the polls , against a government with slim or non existent majority,
A lot depends on the various investigations into Johnson's activities. If the Commons Privileges Committee clear him, then he and his supporters will have a "We was innocent" thing going, even if they were guilty over other things.
The breach of the Western 4th Generation jet fighter taboo seems to be in progress.
There are a lot of unhappy power people in DC, Paris & Berlin over this development.…
Hopefully the UK government will make those people even more unhappy by adding a couple dozen Storm Shadow cruise missiles for these Eurofighters to launch at high priority Russian logistical targets inside Ukraine's 1991 borders.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy visited Britain to drum up aid, winning a pledge to train Ukrainian pilots on advanced NATO fighter jets, a big symbolic step up in Western military support https://reut.rs/3YCwaDB
But am I wrong in saying it’s not been a good war for aircraft this one? Theoretically Russia have control of the skies, not least their strong radar screen over Ukraine that scares NATO from getting involved, but can do very little with that control because of the sophisticated anti air craft weaponry these days. It’s not been a good war for tanks or columns of vehicles either it seems to me - drones tend to wipe whole columns out shockingly easily.
I’d hate us to get distracted by some sexy weaponry and overlook what might actually help the most, maybe Boring things like logistics, supply lines and getting things into the right place right time as quickly as possible. Also giving them money.
Probably the main thing I think will most help Ukraine fight this war the longer it goes on into this year would be boots on the ground. Can’t we ramp up our special services involvement in the war, like how we thrashed Gaddafi?
A weapon or system doesn't have to be war-winning on its own to be worth sending. An incremental improvement in several areas of capability at once can be more effective than a single war-winning weapon.
I think the improvement in capability that we could provide would be in range again. Fighter jets we could supply would have missiles that would outrange those on Russian fighter jets, and also precision ground attack missiles that would enable Ukraine to hit logistics targets behind Russian lines without putting themselves within range of Russian air defence systems.
“enable Ukraine to hit logistics targets behind Russian lines without putting themselves within range of Russian air defence systems.”
Admittedly fighting war in 2020s isn’t my specialist subject, but that sentence sounds like a good idea to me, hit supply lines! But it seemed as Russia can’t use air, how long would more planes for Ukraine remain in service? They are target for missiles not just in air but on ground too? It sounds like a nice expensive thing to share, but what if it’s not as much use as something else, like ramping up repairing things and giving specialist care for the wounded outside of Ukraine like here in UK? That would be a really nice thing to share?
I believe that a lot of the suppression of the Ukrainian airforce has been by Mig 31 interceptors lobbing very long range AAMs at low flying Ukrainian jets. Low hit rate, but it adds up. The missiles aren’t very manoeuvrable, but if you don’t know when to dodge..
More modern jets could have the EW capability to detect they are being targeted and evade the incoming missiles.
That’s a good point. Put like that it’s actually very much in the interest of western powers with modern capabilities to learn from seeing them in actual action, so not just a gift Ukrainians would love to have to help them. So why in tweet above are western powers so unwilling to go with that win win?
It’s not as straightforward as simply sending planes.
The pilots require at least six months’ training on the aircraft type, and the maintainance engineers, mechanics, logistics teams involved in supporting the aircraft require a similar time to get acquainted with the jet. Each donating country’s planes will be different, in terms of revision and systems, which will require additional training. All of this needs to be supported in the field, with logistics, stores, and hangars full of tools.
The aircraft systems themselves are another problem, they need to be integrated into the rest of the Ukranian military, so that the pilots can work effectively with teams on the ground, without the risk of friendly fire.
To make matters worse, many of these systems are highly classified, and their true capability is known to very few people. So an Israeli radar installed on an American-built plane operated by the Polish, might need a lot of politicians to agree for it to be sent to Ukraine. NATO countries are worried that planes or sensitive parts of planes, might end up in Russian (or Chinese) hands.
The Beggar King is in a Ford Galaxy on the M11 so pb's 101st Chairborne will be getting excited over that providing a welcome change from the trans shit and HS2 minutiae very soon.
We - and Russia to, for that matter - are a nation that survived WWII only because of US aid, so it's a bit charmless to get sniffy about someone else in a comparable situation.
So the Russian nation would have ceased to exist during WW2 had it not been for US aid? What a loony.
PS Would it be gazetted somewhere if Johnson were to receive his US citizenship back, or is it only renunciations that get publicly noted?
PPS Some Ford Galaxies from the mid-noughties had front seats that could turn round and face the back. Now that's what I call a cool car.
The Germans made it to the Moscow suburbs in WWII. It doesn't take much changes to the timeline to them making it a bit further...
For example, the US and UK provided *all* the hi octane aviation gasoline for the USSR. It was only postwar that they got their cracking plants lined up to make it.
Vast amount of machine tools - in some categories, 100% of the tools and 100% of the tooling was Lendlease supplied. Without that, Soviet production would have crawled to a halt.
And so on in many categories - the % of USSR GDP was small, but LendLease was about supplying materials and equipment they were short of. Or literally didn't have.
The fall of Moscow, or even of both Moscow and Leningrad as it then was, would not in itself have come anywhere near making the Soviet government seek to agree terms with Germany. More than 1000 large factories were shipped eastwards. The USSR would certainly have continued fighting. Sure, they could have been defeated but the fall of Moscow wouldn't have done for them.
Do you regret that the USA and Britain gave such substantial assistance to their Soviet ally during WW2/the GPW? Or is it a very different Germany now but a very similar Russia, so western policy was good then (fight with Russia against Germany) and western policy is also good now (pointing towards fighting with Germany against Russia this time round)?
Stalin was evil, but less evil than Hitler.
"If Hitler invaded Hell, I would make at least a favourable reference of the Devil in the House of Commons."
So here's the thing - I am less sure of this than I used to be. Hitler evil, absolutely. He started the war that saw millions dead and initiated the holocaust.
But how many did Stalin kill? The famine in Ukraine, the gulags, the show trials, all of it. Why does Uncle Joe get a pass to be less evil than Hitler?
The main distinction I would draw would be that Stalin came to power in the USSR on a platform of "Socialism in one country" - a recognition that the attempt to spread communist revolution to the rest of the world had failed, and there was a need for the Bolsheviks to consolidate their power within their borders.
By contrast, the core of Hitler's ideology was the idea of the German need for Lebensraum, and consequently aggressive military expansion.
Bluntly, Stalin was content to kill people within his borders, while Hitler sought to kill people in the lands outside Germany's borders. The latter is more dangerous than the former.
This distinction might be more a consequence of the different levels of capability than ideology, but it's also true that the strong evil guy is more of a threat than the weak evil guy.
Also with Communism, for all the horrors enacted in its name, there was an arguably non-heinous idea at its core. This isn't the case with Hitler and the Nazis. The ideology there, the industrial scale subjugation of other people by a master race, is wholly abhorent in every sense and on every level.
Doesn't that make the Communist authoritarianism worse to some extent? It means that well-meaning people can go along with evil, "For The Greater Good," while the moral choice is a bit clearer under fascism. This might also explain why Communist dictatorships have tended to be more durable than fascist ones.
That said, having reflected, I think one can say that Hitler was a notch more evil than Stalin, because Hitler's intent with the Holocaust was to eradicate the Jewish people, and while there was a programme of Russification within the USSR, and particular ethnic groups like the Crimean Tartars were particularly targeted, the single-minded and ideological pursuit of the destruction of the Jewish people was, I think, on a distinctly more evil level.
Wolf more dangerous when donning the sheepskin? Yes, can be. But tbh, 'Hitler or Stalin more evil?', I don't find it that useful a question, but if forced to take it I neither find it that difficult. Hitler. There's just no shred of a redeeming factor, or anything not wholly evil, in what he believed or did in the name of it.
And there is with Stalin? Really? Do you think Stalin cared for anyone who he had murdered?
Nor did Ted Bundy. I'm not comparing them like that. I'm looking at the whole thing, the ideology and what they did to further it. The ideology of Communism isn't as wholly and irredeemably evil as that of Nazism. This doesn't mean Stalin wasn't evil. He damn well was. Very.
I don’t think communism and Nazism are that far apart tbh. Both suppress the individual for the whole state. Both require massive state terror to implement. Both end up murdering. I don’t give a fig if it’s killing foreigners vs killing Russians, and besides, Stalins troops gladly marched into Poland and murdered Poles with abandon. I think too many think that extreme left views are better than extreme right. They are wrong.
The Beggar King is in a Ford Galaxy on the M11 so pb's 101st Chairborne will be getting excited over that providing a welcome change from the trans shit and HS2 minutiae very soon.
We - and Russia to, for that matter - are a nation that survived WWII only because of US aid, so it's a bit charmless to get sniffy about someone else in a comparable situation.
So the Russian nation would have ceased to exist during WW2 had it not been for US aid? What a loony.
PS Would it be gazetted somewhere if Johnson were to receive his US citizenship back, or is it only renunciations that get publicly noted?
PPS Some Ford Galaxies from the mid-noughties had front seats that could turn round and face the back. Now that's what I call a cool car.
The Germans made it to the Moscow suburbs in WWII. It doesn't take much changes to the timeline to them making it a bit further...
For example, the US and UK provided *all* the hi octane aviation gasoline for the USSR. It was only postwar that they got their cracking plants lined up to make it.
Vast amount of machine tools - in some categories, 100% of the tools and 100% of the tooling was Lendlease supplied. Without that, Soviet production would have crawled to a halt.
And so on in many categories - the % of USSR GDP was small, but LendLease was about supplying materials and equipment they were short of. Or literally didn't have.
The fall of Moscow, or even of both Moscow and Leningrad as it then was, would not in itself have come anywhere near making the Soviet government seek to agree terms with Germany. More than 1000 large factories were shipped eastwards. The USSR would certainly have continued fighting. Sure, they could have been defeated but the fall of Moscow wouldn't have done for them.
Do you regret that the USA and Britain gave such substantial assistance to their Soviet ally during WW2/the GPW? Or is it a very different Germany now but a very similar Russia, so western policy was good then (fight with Russia against Germany) and western policy is also good now (pointing towards fighting with Germany against Russia this time round)?
Stalin was evil, but less evil than Hitler.
"If Hitler invaded Hell, I would make at least a favourable reference of the Devil in the House of Commons."
So here's the thing - I am less sure of this than I used to be. Hitler evil, absolutely. He started the war that saw millions dead and initiated the holocaust.
But how many did Stalin kill? The famine in Ukraine, the gulags, the show trials, all of it. Why does Uncle Joe get a pass to be less evil than Hitler?
The main distinction I would draw would be that Stalin came to power in the USSR on a platform of "Socialism in one country" - a recognition that the attempt to spread communist revolution to the rest of the world had failed, and there was a need for the Bolsheviks to consolidate their power within their borders.
By contrast, the core of Hitler's ideology was the idea of the German need for Lebensraum, and consequently aggressive military expansion.
Bluntly, Stalin was content to kill people within his borders, while Hitler sought to kill people in the lands outside Germany's borders. The latter is more dangerous than the former.
This distinction might be more a consequence of the different levels of capability than ideology, but it's also true that the strong evil guy is more of a threat than the weak evil guy.
Also with Communism, for all the horrors enacted in its name, there was an arguably non-heinous idea at its core. This isn't the case with Hitler and the Nazis. The ideology there, the industrial scale subjugation of other people by a master race, is wholly abhorent in every sense and on every level.
Doesn't that make the Communist authoritarianism worse to some extent? It means that well-meaning people can go along with evil, "For The Greater Good," while the moral choice is a bit clearer under fascism. This might also explain why Communist dictatorships have tended to be more durable than fascist ones.
That said, having reflected, I think one can say that Hitler was a notch more evil than Stalin, because Hitler's intent with the Holocaust was to eradicate the Jewish people, and while there was a programme of Russification within the USSR, and particular ethnic groups like the Crimean Tartars were particularly targeted, the single-minded and ideological pursuit of the destruction of the Jewish people was, I think, on a distinctly more evil level.
Wolf more dangerous when donning the sheepskin? Yes, can be. But tbh, 'Hitler or Stalin more evil?', I don't find it that useful a question, but if forced to take it I neither find it that difficult. Hitler. There's just no shred of a redeeming factor, or anything not wholly evil, in what he believed or did in the name of it.
And there is with Stalin? Really? Do you think Stalin cared for anyone who he had murdered?
The argument made for Stalin is that though his methods were hideous, he did have a positive goal - the building of a strong economy and a socialist state.
Hitler wasn't even really trying to do that.
It is a naive argument, reliant on taking Stalin's statements at face value while interrogating Hitler's on the assumption he was a liar.
Is it untenable? Well, he did see the Soviet Union make considerable progress in heavy industry - but not, contrary to popular belief, significantly more than elsewhere. This was at a terrible cost in agriculture, light industry and service sectors.
But then - you could make a similar argument for Hitler if you only looked at the figures and didn't bother to check what they mean.
The real issue, of course, is that Hitler was demonstrated to be evil and incompetent. Stalin managed to fool people into thinking he was alright until after he was dead.
Terrify people into thinking he was alright more like, even with the genuine grief of some.
The Death of Stalin remains one the greatest movies of the last 10 years - the barmy would-be-comic-except they're-mass-murderers feel of it is pulled off brilliantly.
Even amongst these scheming murderers both Stalin and his evil henchman Beria stand out. It is a brilliant film.
I loved it and watched twice but couldn't persuade my wife to get into it. Not sure why. The accents are brilliant. I love the fact Beria is a half-gentrified working class Londoner, and Kruschev is a smart-talking Jewish New Yorker straight out of Woody Allen.
Sunak's problem in Scotland - is it that levelling up comes across as too English? The general consensus about the need to boost economic performance outside the south east of England ought to find favour in Scotland but the flagship programme for this often seems more about providing pork barrel for Tory MPs. Of which there aren't many in Scotland.
It is also that any UK scheme that turns down a Scottish application gets extra 'teeth gritty' in the way it is portrayed. There was a desperate appeal on my LinkedIn feed the other day by The King's Theatre in Edinburgh, urgently asking for millions to plug a hole because 'our application for the UK Government's levelling up fund has been turned down' - the subtext being the scheming sassenachs out to do Scotland down (again). Deserving a cultural venue as The Kings is, it would be an odd version of 'levelling up' that included refurbishing Edinburgh theatres within its scope.
Er, that is uncalled for. Do I detect a smidgin of bias?
(I agree it doesn't make sense - in fact it is a poor substitute for failing to repatriate the relevant powers which should have gone to S, W and NI after Brexit under UK legislation. But you can't blame the theatre for asking. The theatre isn't interested in that.)
It is not uncalled for at all, and I don't know to which bias you refer.
Edinburgh is the capital city of Scotland; it's a seat of Government, has a massive tourism industry, a big financial industry, and is a very wealthy city. I love the King's Theatre and wish it nothing but success in its fundraising, but clearly refurbishing it is not 'levelling up' if the phrase means anything.
I can't speak on the other projects, but I note that most are in places like Kilmarnock, Stirling, Greenock, Fife, Cumbernauld - places with a little more claim to need a levelling up boost.
Regarding the wider point, I suppose you don't notice the nationalist dimension that those sorts of decisions take on in Scotland. Too used to it perhaps. It was the same when Dundee lost out to UK city of culture vs. Hull. The messaging from the council wasn't just 'a failed bid, never mind, good for Hull' - it was bitter recrimination and 'clearly we have been aiming our sights too low with a UK award'. I mean some shithole had to win, and Hull was evidently in this instance considered a needier shithole than Dundee (I love Dundee btw), but im Scotland the decision was portrayed as a national slight.
Dundee has an administration of Nationalist loons. It would be completely naive to expect any other response.
Strange that Sturgeon - very able as she is - should stumble over a couple of things much less gifted people would avoid.
With GRR all you have to do to avoid trouble is to shadow what England and Wales is doing (don't ask, no idea), take any credit and blame any problems on Westminster. Standard stuff.
With GE as 'proxy referendum' you cannot win. If you poll 50%+ everyone else says tough, we never recognised this. If you don't poll 50%+ you have lost on your own terms, and your enemies as well as other parties will be quick to point it out.
Since the Brexit 52/48 vote, pressing for a referendum except when support for the change is so strong it's irresistible is a bit out of fashion.
Why is this gifted (though wrong) politician not doing gritty everyday campaigning to get support for independence up to 60-65%, from which position she could actually get what she says she wants? Since Brexit she is not exactly short of material to work with.
That’s the point Salmond was making on WATO yesterday - why pick a fight with Westminster over this, rather than, for example, something Europe related which could be tied in with the economy/cost of living?
Why are we ruling out that she wants to deliver a longstanding commitment that she also believes in?
Comes under an increasing reluctance to assume ANY good faith in the motives of one's opponents.
Which you both clearly demonstrate yourselves.
I mean the reason the move was opposed was not because people might be concerned about say convicted male rapists being allowed into women's prisons but because such people wanted to create a culture war, have a wedge issue, play dirty politics.
there is more of that on the anti (GRR) side than the pro.
Which of the concerns about the GRR Bill raised by its critics (and dismissed by Sturgeon as “not valid”) have proved not to be?
Well the bill hasn't passed so one can't really say. We need to look at what's happened in countries - Ireland being the closest to home - where similar HAS been done. What we certainly do seem to have in Scotland is an issue with risk assessment for prisons. Are you claiming that this specific recent case shows that all the fears raised - no more single sex spaces, women's rights destroyed, floodgates opened for predatory men to gain GRCs for nefarious purposes, end of sex as a biological concept etc etc - are rational and justified? If you are I think that's a stretch.
You claimed that critics were more driving the issue as a “wedge issue” but have no evidence - so now retreat behind “the bill hasn’t passed”. I ask again, where is the evidence that critics were driven by trying to create a wedge, or were their concerns “not valid” to quote Sturgeon?
Claiming it’s a “wedge issue” is another tactic to delegitimise your opponents views - which is why they weren’t listened to, which is why it’s in the mess it’s in. If you really were interested in trans rights you’d have listened.
Good to know that Alistair McConnachie of UK A Force For Good, Joseph Finnie ex BNP and Fox regular Andy Ngo supported the Let Women Speak rally on Sunday to show their concerns rather than use it as a wedge issue.
So mandatory fox hunting and animal cruelty? Mustn't support a cause that the Hugo Boss fashionistas like....
Yeah, you’ve tried that lumbering zinger before. The point attempting to be made was that this was not being used as a wedge issue in a culture war. I’ll add you to the list of credulous folk who think that.
I am rather taken aback by the resistance we are encountering on this one.
"Ok, listen up peeps, how can we use this Transgender thing to peel away votes from the other side?"
Can there seriously be any doubt that the above is playing out far more in Tory brainstorming sessions than in those of LAB/LD/SNP?
If we can't win this argument on here we might as well give up and put the kettle on.
When you and @Theuniondivvie are of the opinion that the only people who are on the other side are the "BNP", "Trump", "InfoWars" and assorted other troglodytes then yes its certainly possible and there certainly is doubt.
Of course it shouldn't be playing out in any such sessions for any party and instead the legitimate concerns of both sides should be listened to, but the two of you in particular are never in any mood for that, hence the desire to mock everyone who disagrees as being a "wedge" or "InfoWars" instead of listening to their very valid concerns.
That's what people like you do, characterise a pointing out of dubious fellow travellers as saying they are 'the only people who are on the other side', which is lying, which makes you a...?
Whilst people like you refuse to ever admit that there is ever anything awry. Nothing to apologise for.
I have lived with a Scot for 30 years. It would seem "sorry" is not a word north of the border. Instead, there is a third person in our marriage, myself, my wife - and the mysterious damage fairy, who has to take responsibility for all unexplained incidents that might otherwise point to the Good Lady Wife.
My wife never apologises for anything either (and why should she as she is infallible). And yet she isn't Scottish while I am. Go figure!
Does that mean that if I self ID as female, I will no longer need to apologise for anything?
Yes, that's right. And you will always put the toilet lid down.
Surely a true gentleman always does that anyway?
(I was persuaded on this point by by now-wife, who argued that - when we were a household of two - that there was a higher probability the next user would want the toilet seat down than up. I'm a sucker for - even postulative - statistical argument.)
Nah, that only works if she is referring to the middle ring bit. Putting the lid down conveniences no-one.
Best is lid up, ring bit down Second is lid up, ring bit up
Have a word.
If you flush with the lid up you spread germs, and in some cases shit, all round the bathroom.
Your choice...
I have never in my life seen fecal matter or any other matter spread around the room when I flush.
I and some friends stayed in a rickety Highland hotel a few years ago that had chalets built in the grounds with macerating toilets. One of them (not mine) went into reverse after a morning after the boozy night before use, you didn’t need laser cameras to see the shit hitting everywhere including the fan. ‘I’d leave it 5 minutes’ didn’t really cover it.
The Beggar King is in a Ford Galaxy on the M11 so pb's 101st Chairborne will be getting excited over that providing a welcome change from the trans shit and HS2 minutiae very soon.
We - and Russia to, for that matter - are a nation that survived WWII only because of US aid, so it's a bit charmless to get sniffy about someone else in a comparable situation.
So the Russian nation would have ceased to exist during WW2 had it not been for US aid? What a loony.
PS Would it be gazetted somewhere if Johnson were to receive his US citizenship back, or is it only renunciations that get publicly noted?
PPS Some Ford Galaxies from the mid-noughties had front seats that could turn round and face the back. Now that's what I call a cool car.
The Germans made it to the Moscow suburbs in WWII. It doesn't take much changes to the timeline to them making it a bit further...
For example, the US and UK provided *all* the hi octane aviation gasoline for the USSR. It was only postwar that they got their cracking plants lined up to make it.
Vast amount of machine tools - in some categories, 100% of the tools and 100% of the tooling was Lendlease supplied. Without that, Soviet production would have crawled to a halt.
And so on in many categories - the % of USSR GDP was small, but LendLease was about supplying materials and equipment they were short of. Or literally didn't have.
The fall of Moscow, or even of both Moscow and Leningrad as it then was, would not in itself have come anywhere near making the Soviet government seek to agree terms with Germany. More than 1000 large factories were shipped eastwards. The USSR would certainly have continued fighting. Sure, they could have been defeated but the fall of Moscow wouldn't have done for them.
Do you regret that the USA and Britain gave such substantial assistance to their Soviet ally during WW2/the GPW? Or is it a very different Germany now but a very similar Russia, so western policy was good then (fight with Russia against Germany) and western policy is also good now (pointing towards fighting with Germany against Russia this time round)?
Stalin was evil, but less evil than Hitler.
"If Hitler invaded Hell, I would make at least a favourable reference of the Devil in the House of Commons."
So here's the thing - I am less sure of this than I used to be. Hitler evil, absolutely. He started the war that saw millions dead and initiated the holocaust.
But how many did Stalin kill? The famine in Ukraine, the gulags, the show trials, all of it. Why does Uncle Joe get a pass to be less evil than Hitler?
The main distinction I would draw would be that Stalin came to power in the USSR on a platform of "Socialism in one country" - a recognition that the attempt to spread communist revolution to the rest of the world had failed, and there was a need for the Bolsheviks to consolidate their power within their borders.
By contrast, the core of Hitler's ideology was the idea of the German need for Lebensraum, and consequently aggressive military expansion.
Bluntly, Stalin was content to kill people within his borders, while Hitler sought to kill people in the lands outside Germany's borders. The latter is more dangerous than the former.
This distinction might be more a consequence of the different levels of capability than ideology, but it's also true that the strong evil guy is more of a threat than the weak evil guy.
Also with Communism, for all the horrors enacted in its name, there was an arguably non-heinous idea at its core. This isn't the case with Hitler and the Nazis. The ideology there, the industrial scale subjugation of other people by a master race, is wholly abhorent in every sense and on every level.
Doesn't that make the Communist authoritarianism worse to some extent? It means that well-meaning people can go along with evil, "For The Greater Good," while the moral choice is a bit clearer under fascism. This might also explain why Communist dictatorships have tended to be more durable than fascist ones.
That said, having reflected, I think one can say that Hitler was a notch more evil than Stalin, because Hitler's intent with the Holocaust was to eradicate the Jewish people, and while there was a programme of Russification within the USSR, and particular ethnic groups like the Crimean Tartars were particularly targeted, the single-minded and ideological pursuit of the destruction of the Jewish people was, I think, on a distinctly more evil level.
Wolf more dangerous when donning the sheepskin? Yes, can be. But tbh, 'Hitler or Stalin more evil?', I don't find it that useful a question, but if forced to take it I neither find it that difficult. Hitler. There's just no shred of a redeeming factor, or anything not wholly evil, in what he believed or did in the name of it.
And there is with Stalin? Really? Do you think Stalin cared for anyone who he had murdered?
The argument made for Stalin is that though his methods were hideous, he did have a positive goal - the building of a strong economy and a socialist state.
Hitler wasn't even really trying to do that.
It is a naive argument, reliant on taking Stalin's statements at face value while interrogating Hitler's on the assumption he was a liar.
Is it untenable? Well, he did see the Soviet Union make considerable progress in heavy industry - but not, contrary to popular belief, significantly more than elsewhere. This was at a terrible cost in agriculture, light industry and service sectors.
But then - you could make a similar argument for Hitler if you only looked at the figures and didn't bother to check what they mean.
The real issue, of course, is that Hitler was demonstrated to be evil and incompetent. Stalin managed to fool people into thinking he was alright until after he was dead.
Terrify people into thinking he was alright more like, even with the genuine grief of some.
The Death of Stalin remains one the greatest movies of the last 10 years - the barmy would-be-comic-except they're-mass-murderers feel of it is pulled off brilliantly.
Even amongst these scheming murderers both Stalin and his evil henchman Beria stand out. It is a brilliant film.
I loved it and watched twice but couldn't persuade my wife to get into it. Not sure why. The accents are brilliant. I love the fact Beria is a half-gentrified working class Londoner, and Kruschev is a smart-talking Jewish New Yorker straight out of Woody Allen.
Zhukov completely stole the show for me. A wonderfully burlesque performance.
Jared O'Mara has been found guilty of six counts of fraud over expenses claims made while he was in office in 2019.
The former Sheffield Hallam MP was on trial at Leeds Crown Court for submitting fake invoices to the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority to fund a cocaine habit.
He was convicted on Wednesday of six counts of fraud by false representation. The jury cleared him of two other fraud charges.
Gareth Arnold, a co-defendant, was found guilty of three out of six fraud charges, and a third defendant, John Woodliff, was found not guilty of one offence of fraud.
O'Mara and Arnold will be sentenced at the same court on Thursday.
Strange that Sturgeon - very able as she is - should stumble over a couple of things much less gifted people would avoid.
With GRR all you have to do to avoid trouble is to shadow what England and Wales is doing (don't ask, no idea), take any credit and blame any problems on Westminster. Standard stuff.
With GE as 'proxy referendum' you cannot win. If you poll 50%+ everyone else says tough, we never recognised this. If you don't poll 50%+ you have lost on your own terms, and your enemies as well as other parties will be quick to point it out.
Since the Brexit 52/48 vote, pressing for a referendum except when support for the change is so strong it's irresistible is a bit out of fashion.
Why is this gifted (though wrong) politician not doing gritty everyday campaigning to get support for independence up to 60-65%, from which position she could actually get what she says she wants? Since Brexit she is not exactly short of material to work with.
That’s the point Salmond was making on WATO yesterday - why pick a fight with Westminster over this, rather than, for example, something Europe related which could be tied in with the economy/cost of living?
Why are we ruling out that she wants to deliver a longstanding commitment that she also believes in?
Comes under an increasing reluctance to assume ANY good faith in the motives of one's opponents.
Which you both clearly demonstrate yourselves.
I mean the reason the move was opposed was not because people might be concerned about say convicted male rapists being allowed into women's prisons but because such people wanted to create a culture war, have a wedge issue, play dirty politics.
there is more of that on the anti (GRR) side than the pro.
Which of the concerns about the GRR Bill raised by its critics (and dismissed by Sturgeon as “not valid”) have proved not to be?
Well the bill hasn't passed so one can't really say. We need to look at what's happened in countries - Ireland being the closest to home - where similar HAS been done. What we certainly do seem to have in Scotland is an issue with risk assessment for prisons. Are you claiming that this specific recent case shows that all the fears raised - no more single sex spaces, women's rights destroyed, floodgates opened for predatory men to gain GRCs for nefarious purposes, end of sex as a biological concept etc etc - are rational and justified? If you are I think that's a stretch.
You claimed that critics were more driving the issue as a “wedge issue” but have no evidence - so now retreat behind “the bill hasn’t passed”. I ask again, where is the evidence that critics were driven by trying to create a wedge, or were their concerns “not valid” to quote Sturgeon?
Claiming it’s a “wedge issue” is another tactic to delegitimise your opponents views - which is why they weren’t listened to, which is why it’s in the mess it’s in. If you really were interested in trans rights you’d have listened.
Good to know that Alistair McConnachie of UK A Force For Good, Joseph Finnie ex BNP and Fox regular Andy Ngo supported the Let Women Speak rally on Sunday to show their concerns rather than use it as a wedge issue.
So mandatory fox hunting and animal cruelty? Mustn't support a cause that the Hugo Boss fashionistas like....
Yeah, you’ve tried that lumbering zinger before. The point attempting to be made was that this was not being used as a wedge issue in a culture war. I’ll add you to the list of credulous folk who think that.
I am rather taken aback by the resistance we are encountering on this one.
"Ok, listen up peeps, how can we use this Transgender thing to peel away votes from the other side?"
Can there seriously be any doubt that the above is playing out far more in Tory brainstorming sessions than in those of LAB/LD/SNP?
If we can't win this argument on here we might as well give up and put the kettle on.
When you and @Theuniondivvie are of the opinion that the only people who are on the other side are the "BNP", "Trump", "InfoWars" and assorted other troglodytes then yes its certainly possible and there certainly is doubt.
Of course it shouldn't be playing out in any such sessions for any party and instead the legitimate concerns of both sides should be listened to, but the two of you in particular are never in any mood for that, hence the desire to mock everyone who disagrees as being a "wedge" or "InfoWars" instead of listening to their very valid concerns.
That's what people like you do, characterise a pointing out of dubious fellow travellers as saying they are 'the only people who are on the other side', which is lying, which makes you a...?
Whilst people like you refuse to ever admit that there is ever anything awry. Nothing to apologise for.
I have lived with a Scot for 30 years. It would seem "sorry" is not a word north of the border. Instead, there is a third person in our marriage, myself, my wife - and the mysterious damage fairy, who has to take responsibility for all unexplained incidents that might otherwise point to the Good Lady Wife.
My wife never apologises for anything either (and why should she as she is infallible). And yet she isn't Scottish while I am. Go figure!
Does that mean that if I self ID as female, I will no longer need to apologise for anything?
Yes, that's right. And you will always put the toilet lid down.
Strange that Sturgeon - very able as she is - should stumble over a couple of things much less gifted people would avoid.
With GRR all you have to do to avoid trouble is to shadow what England and Wales is doing (don't ask, no idea), take any credit and blame any problems on Westminster. Standard stuff.
With GE as 'proxy referendum' you cannot win. If you poll 50%+ everyone else says tough, we never recognised this. If you don't poll 50%+ you have lost on your own terms, and your enemies as well as other parties will be quick to point it out.
Since the Brexit 52/48 vote, pressing for a referendum except when support for the change is so strong it's irresistible is a bit out of fashion.
Why is this gifted (though wrong) politician not doing gritty everyday campaigning to get support for independence up to 60-65%, from which position she could actually get what she says she wants? Since Brexit she is not exactly short of material to work with.
That’s the point Salmond was making on WATO yesterday - why pick a fight with Westminster over this, rather than, for example, something Europe related which could be tied in with the economy/cost of living?
Why are we ruling out that she wants to deliver a longstanding commitment that she also believes in?
Comes under an increasing reluctance to assume ANY good faith in the motives of one's opponents.
Which you both clearly demonstrate yourselves.
I mean the reason the move was opposed was not because people might be concerned about say convicted male rapists being allowed into women's prisons but because such people wanted to create a culture war, have a wedge issue, play dirty politics.
there is more of that on the anti (GRR) side than the pro.
Which of the concerns about the GRR Bill raised by its critics (and dismissed by Sturgeon as “not valid”) have proved not to be?
Well the bill hasn't passed so one can't really say. We need to look at what's happened in countries - Ireland being the closest to home - where similar HAS been done. What we certainly do seem to have in Scotland is an issue with risk assessment for prisons. Are you claiming that this specific recent case shows that all the fears raised - no more single sex spaces, women's rights destroyed, floodgates opened for predatory men to gain GRCs for nefarious purposes, end of sex as a biological concept etc etc - are rational and justified? If you are I think that's a stretch.
You claimed that critics were more driving the issue as a “wedge issue” but have no evidence - so now retreat behind “the bill hasn’t passed”. I ask again, where is the evidence that critics were driven by trying to create a wedge, or were their concerns “not valid” to quote Sturgeon?
Claiming it’s a “wedge issue” is another tactic to delegitimise your opponents views - which is why they weren’t listened to, which is why it’s in the mess it’s in. If you really were interested in trans rights you’d have listened.
Good to know that Alistair McConnachie of UK A Force For Good, Joseph Finnie ex BNP and Fox regular Andy Ngo supported the Let Women Speak rally on Sunday to show their concerns rather than use it as a wedge issue.
So mandatory fox hunting and animal cruelty? Mustn't support a cause that the Hugo Boss fashionistas like....
Yeah, you’ve tried that lumbering zinger before. The point attempting to be made was that this was not being used as a wedge issue in a culture war. I’ll add you to the list of credulous folk who think that.
I am rather taken aback by the resistance we are encountering on this one.
"Ok, listen up peeps, how can we use this Transgender thing to peel away votes from the other side?"
Can there seriously be any doubt that the above is playing out far more in Tory brainstorming sessions than in those of LAB/LD/SNP?
If we can't win this argument on here we might as well give up and put the kettle on.
When you and @Theuniondivvie are of the opinion that the only people who are on the other side are the "BNP", "Trump", "InfoWars" and assorted other troglodytes then yes its certainly possible and there certainly is doubt.
Of course it shouldn't be playing out in any such sessions for any party and instead the legitimate concerns of both sides should be listened to, but the two of you in particular are never in any mood for that, hence the desire to mock everyone who disagrees as being a "wedge" or "InfoWars" instead of listening to their very valid concerns.
That's what people like you do, characterise a pointing out of dubious fellow travellers as saying they are 'the only people who are on the other side', which is lying, which makes you a...?
Whilst people like you refuse to ever admit that there is ever anything awry. Nothing to apologise for.
I have lived with a Scot for 30 years. It would seem "sorry" is not a word north of the border. Instead, there is a third person in our marriage, myself, my wife - and the mysterious damage fairy, who has to take responsibility for all unexplained incidents that might otherwise point to the Good Lady Wife.
My wife never apologises for anything either (and why should she as she is infallible). And yet she isn't Scottish while I am. Go figure!
Does that mean that if I self ID as female, I will no longer need to apologise for anything?
Yes, that's right. And you will always put the toilet lid down.
Surely a true gentleman always does that anyway?
(I was persuaded on this point by by now-wife, who argued that - when we were a household of two - that there was a higher probability the next user would want the toilet seat down than up. I'm a sucker for - even postulative - statistical argument.)
Nah, that only works if she is referring to the middle ring bit. Putting the lid down conveniences no-one.
Best is lid up, ring bit down Second is lid up, ring bit up
Have a word.
If you flush with the lid up you spread germs, and in some cases shit, all round the bathroom.
Your choice...
I have never in my life seen fecal matter or any other matter spread around the room when I flush.
I looked it up. There was a investigation a few years ago apparantly.
Given that I get hit with a stick by Mrs Stocky if I don't check for and remedy pan-skiddies this mean that I now have to do my dirty business, put lid down, wait for the flush, lift lid up, make good as necessary, put lid down again.
FFS.
By the time you’ve done all that, you’ve lost track of the PB comments you were reading while you were doing your business.
Parakeet update: Just had three of them in the hedge at the back of the garden, feeding from one of the seed feeders.
Rose-ringed parakeets are a common sight in some parts of England including in several parks within a few miles of Richmond Park and in Ramsgate. For some reason, sometimes hundreds of them all spend the night in the same tree.
Back in the 90's, 600 plus would roost at Esher rugby club. Wonderful looking exotica in suburbbia - but they don't half make a din!
We have a colony in my corner of Stockport that have established themselves over the last five years or so. Their cry is unmistakable.
The Beggar King is in a Ford Galaxy on the M11 so pb's 101st Chairborne will be getting excited over that providing a welcome change from the trans shit and HS2 minutiae very soon.
We - and Russia to, for that matter - are a nation that survived WWII only because of US aid, so it's a bit charmless to get sniffy about someone else in a comparable situation.
So the Russian nation would have ceased to exist during WW2 had it not been for US aid? What a loony.
PS Would it be gazetted somewhere if Johnson were to receive his US citizenship back, or is it only renunciations that get publicly noted?
PPS Some Ford Galaxies from the mid-noughties had front seats that could turn round and face the back. Now that's what I call a cool car.
The Germans made it to the Moscow suburbs in WWII. It doesn't take much changes to the timeline to them making it a bit further...
For example, the US and UK provided *all* the hi octane aviation gasoline for the USSR. It was only postwar that they got their cracking plants lined up to make it.
Vast amount of machine tools - in some categories, 100% of the tools and 100% of the tooling was Lendlease supplied. Without that, Soviet production would have crawled to a halt.
And so on in many categories - the % of USSR GDP was small, but LendLease was about supplying materials and equipment they were short of. Or literally didn't have.
The fall of Moscow, or even of both Moscow and Leningrad as it then was, would not in itself have come anywhere near making the Soviet government seek to agree terms with Germany. More than 1000 large factories were shipped eastwards. The USSR would certainly have continued fighting. Sure, they could have been defeated but the fall of Moscow wouldn't have done for them.
Do you regret that the USA and Britain gave such substantial assistance to their Soviet ally during WW2/the GPW? Or is it a very different Germany now but a very similar Russia, so western policy was good then (fight with Russia against Germany) and western policy is also good now (pointing towards fighting with Germany against Russia this time round)?
Stalin was evil, but less evil than Hitler.
"If Hitler invaded Hell, I would make at least a favourable reference of the Devil in the House of Commons."
So here's the thing - I am less sure of this than I used to be. Hitler evil, absolutely. He started the war that saw millions dead and initiated the holocaust.
But how many did Stalin kill? The famine in Ukraine, the gulags, the show trials, all of it. Why does Uncle Joe get a pass to be less evil than Hitler?
The main distinction I would draw would be that Stalin came to power in the USSR on a platform of "Socialism in one country" - a recognition that the attempt to spread communist revolution to the rest of the world had failed, and there was a need for the Bolsheviks to consolidate their power within their borders.
By contrast, the core of Hitler's ideology was the idea of the German need for Lebensraum, and consequently aggressive military expansion.
Bluntly, Stalin was content to kill people within his borders, while Hitler sought to kill people in the lands outside Germany's borders. The latter is more dangerous than the former.
This distinction might be more a consequence of the different levels of capability than ideology, but it's also true that the strong evil guy is more of a threat than the weak evil guy.
Also with Communism, for all the horrors enacted in its name, there was an arguably non-heinous idea at its core. This isn't the case with Hitler and the Nazis. The ideology there, the industrial scale subjugation of other people by a master race, is wholly abhorent in every sense and on every level.
Doesn't that make the Communist authoritarianism worse to some extent? It means that well-meaning people can go along with evil, "For The Greater Good," while the moral choice is a bit clearer under fascism. This might also explain why Communist dictatorships have tended to be more durable than fascist ones.
That said, having reflected, I think one can say that Hitler was a notch more evil than Stalin, because Hitler's intent with the Holocaust was to eradicate the Jewish people, and while there was a programme of Russification within the USSR, and particular ethnic groups like the Crimean Tartars were particularly targeted, the single-minded and ideological pursuit of the destruction of the Jewish people was, I think, on a distinctly more evil level.
Wolf more dangerous when donning the sheepskin? Yes, can be. But tbh, 'Hitler or Stalin more evil?', I don't find it that useful a question, but if forced to take it I neither find it that difficult. Hitler. There's just no shred of a redeeming factor, or anything not wholly evil, in what he believed or did in the name of it.
And there is with Stalin? Really? Do you think Stalin cared for anyone who he had murdered?
The argument made for Stalin is that though his methods were hideous, he did have a positive goal - the building of a strong economy and a socialist state.
Hitler wasn't even really trying to do that.
It is a naive argument, reliant on taking Stalin's statements at face value while interrogating Hitler's on the assumption he was a liar.
Is it untenable? Well, he did see the Soviet Union make considerable progress in heavy industry - but not, contrary to popular belief, significantly more than elsewhere. This was at a terrible cost in agriculture, light industry and service sectors.
But then - you could make a similar argument for Hitler if you only looked at the figures and didn't bother to check what they mean.
The real issue, of course, is that Hitler was demonstrated to be evil and incompetent. Stalin managed to fool people into thinking he was alright until after he was dead.
And people, istm mainly on the left, are still fooling themselves.
The Beggar King is in a Ford Galaxy on the M11 so pb's 101st Chairborne will be getting excited over that providing a welcome change from the trans shit and HS2 minutiae very soon.
We - and Russia to, for that matter - are a nation that survived WWII only because of US aid, so it's a bit charmless to get sniffy about someone else in a comparable situation.
So the Russian nation would have ceased to exist during WW2 had it not been for US aid? What a loony.
PS Would it be gazetted somewhere if Johnson were to receive his US citizenship back, or is it only renunciations that get publicly noted?
PPS Some Ford Galaxies from the mid-noughties had front seats that could turn round and face the back. Now that's what I call a cool car.
The Germans made it to the Moscow suburbs in WWII. It doesn't take much changes to the timeline to them making it a bit further...
For example, the US and UK provided *all* the hi octane aviation gasoline for the USSR. It was only postwar that they got their cracking plants lined up to make it.
Vast amount of machine tools - in some categories, 100% of the tools and 100% of the tooling was Lendlease supplied. Without that, Soviet production would have crawled to a halt.
And so on in many categories - the % of USSR GDP was small, but LendLease was about supplying materials and equipment they were short of. Or literally didn't have.
The fall of Moscow, or even of both Moscow and Leningrad as it then was, would not in itself have come anywhere near making the Soviet government seek to agree terms with Germany. More than 1000 large factories were shipped eastwards. The USSR would certainly have continued fighting. Sure, they could have been defeated but the fall of Moscow wouldn't have done for them.
Do you regret that the USA and Britain gave such substantial assistance to their Soviet ally during WW2/the GPW? Or is it a very different Germany now but a very similar Russia, so western policy was good then (fight with Russia against Germany) and western policy is also good now (pointing towards fighting with Germany against Russia this time round)?
Stalin was evil, but less evil than Hitler.
"If Hitler invaded Hell, I would make at least a favourable reference of the Devil in the House of Commons."
So here's the thing - I am less sure of this than I used to be. Hitler evil, absolutely. He started the war that saw millions dead and initiated the holocaust.
But how many did Stalin kill? The famine in Ukraine, the gulags, the show trials, all of it. Why does Uncle Joe get a pass to be less evil than Hitler?
The main distinction I would draw would be that Stalin came to power in the USSR on a platform of "Socialism in one country" - a recognition that the attempt to spread communist revolution to the rest of the world had failed, and there was a need for the Bolsheviks to consolidate their power within their borders.
By contrast, the core of Hitler's ideology was the idea of the German need for Lebensraum, and consequently aggressive military expansion.
Bluntly, Stalin was content to kill people within his borders, while Hitler sought to kill people in the lands outside Germany's borders. The latter is more dangerous than the former.
This distinction might be more a consequence of the different levels of capability than ideology, but it's also true that the strong evil guy is more of a threat than the weak evil guy.
Also with Communism, for all the horrors enacted in its name, there was an arguably non-heinous idea at its core. This isn't the case with Hitler and the Nazis. The ideology there, the industrial scale subjugation of other people by a master race, is wholly abhorent in every sense and on every level.
Doesn't that make the Communist authoritarianism worse to some extent? It means that well-meaning people can go along with evil, "For The Greater Good," while the moral choice is a bit clearer under fascism. This might also explain why Communist dictatorships have tended to be more durable than fascist ones.
That said, having reflected, I think one can say that Hitler was a notch more evil than Stalin, because Hitler's intent with the Holocaust was to eradicate the Jewish people, and while there was a programme of Russification within the USSR, and particular ethnic groups like the Crimean Tartars were particularly targeted, the single-minded and ideological pursuit of the destruction of the Jewish people was, I think, on a distinctly more evil level.
Wolf more dangerous when donning the sheepskin? Yes, can be. But tbh, 'Hitler or Stalin more evil?', I don't find it that useful a question, but if forced to take it I neither find it that difficult. Hitler. There's just no shred of a redeeming factor, or anything not wholly evil, in what he believed or did in the name of it.
And there is with Stalin? Really? Do you think Stalin cared for anyone who he had murdered?
The argument made for Stalin is that though his methods were hideous, he did have a positive goal - the building of a strong economy and a socialist state.
Hitler wasn't even really trying to do that.
It is a naive argument, reliant on taking Stalin's statements at face value while interrogating Hitler's on the assumption he was a liar.
Is it untenable? Well, he did see the Soviet Union make considerable progress in heavy industry - but not, contrary to popular belief, significantly more than elsewhere. This was at a terrible cost in agriculture, light industry and service sectors.
But then - you could make a similar argument for Hitler if you only looked at the figures and didn't bother to check what they mean.
The real issue, of course, is that Hitler was demonstrated to be evil and incompetent. Stalin managed to fool people into thinking he was alright until after he was dead.
It's a naive argument if advanced as apologism for Stalin - but it's a valid input for performing a comparison of him to Hitler.
The Beggar King is in a Ford Galaxy on the M11 so pb's 101st Chairborne will be getting excited over that providing a welcome change from the trans shit and HS2 minutiae very soon.
We - and Russia to, for that matter - are a nation that survived WWII only because of US aid, so it's a bit charmless to get sniffy about someone else in a comparable situation.
So the Russian nation would have ceased to exist during WW2 had it not been for US aid? What a loony.
PS Would it be gazetted somewhere if Johnson were to receive his US citizenship back, or is it only renunciations that get publicly noted?
PPS Some Ford Galaxies from the mid-noughties had front seats that could turn round and face the back. Now that's what I call a cool car.
The Germans made it to the Moscow suburbs in WWII. It doesn't take much changes to the timeline to them making it a bit further...
For example, the US and UK provided *all* the hi octane aviation gasoline for the USSR. It was only postwar that they got their cracking plants lined up to make it.
Vast amount of machine tools - in some categories, 100% of the tools and 100% of the tooling was Lendlease supplied. Without that, Soviet production would have crawled to a halt.
And so on in many categories - the % of USSR GDP was small, but LendLease was about supplying materials and equipment they were short of. Or literally didn't have.
The fall of Moscow, or even of both Moscow and Leningrad as it then was, would not in itself have come anywhere near making the Soviet government seek to agree terms with Germany. More than 1000 large factories were shipped eastwards. The USSR would certainly have continued fighting. Sure, they could have been defeated but the fall of Moscow wouldn't have done for them.
Do you regret that the USA and Britain gave such substantial assistance to their Soviet ally during WW2/the GPW? Or is it a very different Germany now but a very similar Russia, so western policy was good then (fight with Russia against Germany) and western policy is also good now (pointing towards fighting with Germany against Russia this time round)?
Stalin was evil, but less evil than Hitler.
"If Hitler invaded Hell, I would make at least a favourable reference of the Devil in the House of Commons."
So here's the thing - I am less sure of this than I used to be. Hitler evil, absolutely. He started the war that saw millions dead and initiated the holocaust.
But how many did Stalin kill? The famine in Ukraine, the gulags, the show trials, all of it. Why does Uncle Joe get a pass to be less evil than Hitler?
The main distinction I would draw would be that Stalin came to power in the USSR on a platform of "Socialism in one country" - a recognition that the attempt to spread communist revolution to the rest of the world had failed, and there was a need for the Bolsheviks to consolidate their power within their borders.
By contrast, the core of Hitler's ideology was the idea of the German need for Lebensraum, and consequently aggressive military expansion.
Bluntly, Stalin was content to kill people within his borders, while Hitler sought to kill people in the lands outside Germany's borders. The latter is more dangerous than the former.
This distinction might be more a consequence of the different levels of capability than ideology, but it's also true that the strong evil guy is more of a threat than the weak evil guy.
Also with Communism, for all the horrors enacted in its name, there was an arguably non-heinous idea at its core. This isn't the case with Hitler and the Nazis. The ideology there, the industrial scale subjugation of other people by a master race, is wholly abhorent in every sense and on every level.
Doesn't that make the Communist authoritarianism worse to some extent? It means that well-meaning people can go along with evil, "For The Greater Good," while the moral choice is a bit clearer under fascism. This might also explain why Communist dictatorships have tended to be more durable than fascist ones.
That said, having reflected, I think one can say that Hitler was a notch more evil than Stalin, because Hitler's intent with the Holocaust was to eradicate the Jewish people, and while there was a programme of Russification within the USSR, and particular ethnic groups like the Crimean Tartars were particularly targeted, the single-minded and ideological pursuit of the destruction of the Jewish people was, I think, on a distinctly more evil level.
Wolf more dangerous when donning the sheepskin? Yes, can be. But tbh, 'Hitler or Stalin more evil?', I don't find it that useful a question, but if forced to take it I neither find it that difficult. Hitler. There's just no shred of a redeeming factor, or anything not wholly evil, in what he believed or did in the name of it.
And there is with Stalin? Really? Do you think Stalin cared for anyone who he had murdered?
The argument made for Stalin is that though his methods were hideous, he did have a positive goal - the building of a strong economy and a socialist state.
Hitler wasn't even really trying to do that.
It is a naive argument, reliant on taking Stalin's statements at face value while interrogating Hitler's on the assumption he was a liar.
Is it untenable? Well, he did see the Soviet Union make considerable progress in heavy industry - but not, contrary to popular belief, significantly more than elsewhere. This was at a terrible cost in agriculture, light industry and service sectors.
But then - you could make a similar argument for Hitler if you only looked at the figures and didn't bother to check what they mean.
The real issue, of course, is that Hitler was demonstrated to be evil and incompetent. Stalin managed to fool people into thinking he was alright until after he was dead.
It's a naive argument if advanced as apologism for Stalin - but it's a valid input for performing a comparison of him to Hitler.
Well, not really. Because actually, it assumes Stalin wasn't a liar when he talked of his idealism while accepting Hitler was.
The Beggar King is in a Ford Galaxy on the M11 so pb's 101st Chairborne will be getting excited over that providing a welcome change from the trans shit and HS2 minutiae very soon.
We - and Russia to, for that matter - are a nation that survived WWII only because of US aid, so it's a bit charmless to get sniffy about someone else in a comparable situation.
So the Russian nation would have ceased to exist during WW2 had it not been for US aid? What a loony.
PS Would it be gazetted somewhere if Johnson were to receive his US citizenship back, or is it only renunciations that get publicly noted?
PPS Some Ford Galaxies from the mid-noughties had front seats that could turn round and face the back. Now that's what I call a cool car.
The Germans made it to the Moscow suburbs in WWII. It doesn't take much changes to the timeline to them making it a bit further...
For example, the US and UK provided *all* the hi octane aviation gasoline for the USSR. It was only postwar that they got their cracking plants lined up to make it.
Vast amount of machine tools - in some categories, 100% of the tools and 100% of the tooling was Lendlease supplied. Without that, Soviet production would have crawled to a halt.
And so on in many categories - the % of USSR GDP was small, but LendLease was about supplying materials and equipment they were short of. Or literally didn't have.
The fall of Moscow, or even of both Moscow and Leningrad as it then was, would not in itself have come anywhere near making the Soviet government seek to agree terms with Germany. More than 1000 large factories were shipped eastwards. The USSR would certainly have continued fighting. Sure, they could have been defeated but the fall of Moscow wouldn't have done for them.
Do you regret that the USA and Britain gave such substantial assistance to their Soviet ally during WW2/the GPW? Or is it a very different Germany now but a very similar Russia, so western policy was good then (fight with Russia against Germany) and western policy is also good now (pointing towards fighting with Germany against Russia this time round)?
Stalin was evil, but less evil than Hitler.
"If Hitler invaded Hell, I would make at least a favourable reference of the Devil in the House of Commons."
So here's the thing - I am less sure of this than I used to be. Hitler evil, absolutely. He started the war that saw millions dead and initiated the holocaust.
But how many did Stalin kill? The famine in Ukraine, the gulags, the show trials, all of it. Why does Uncle Joe get a pass to be less evil than Hitler?
The main distinction I would draw would be that Stalin came to power in the USSR on a platform of "Socialism in one country" - a recognition that the attempt to spread communist revolution to the rest of the world had failed, and there was a need for the Bolsheviks to consolidate their power within their borders.
By contrast, the core of Hitler's ideology was the idea of the German need for Lebensraum, and consequently aggressive military expansion.
Bluntly, Stalin was content to kill people within his borders, while Hitler sought to kill people in the lands outside Germany's borders. The latter is more dangerous than the former.
This distinction might be more a consequence of the different levels of capability than ideology, but it's also true that the strong evil guy is more of a threat than the weak evil guy.
Also with Communism, for all the horrors enacted in its name, there was an arguably non-heinous idea at its core. This isn't the case with Hitler and the Nazis. The ideology there, the industrial scale subjugation of other people by a master race, is wholly abhorent in every sense and on every level.
Doesn't that make the Communist authoritarianism worse to some extent? It means that well-meaning people can go along with evil, "For The Greater Good," while the moral choice is a bit clearer under fascism. This might also explain why Communist dictatorships have tended to be more durable than fascist ones.
That said, having reflected, I think one can say that Hitler was a notch more evil than Stalin, because Hitler's intent with the Holocaust was to eradicate the Jewish people, and while there was a programme of Russification within the USSR, and particular ethnic groups like the Crimean Tartars were particularly targeted, the single-minded and ideological pursuit of the destruction of the Jewish people was, I think, on a distinctly more evil level.
Wolf more dangerous when donning the sheepskin? Yes, can be. But tbh, 'Hitler or Stalin more evil?', I don't find it that useful a question, but if forced to take it I neither find it that difficult. Hitler. There's just no shred of a redeeming factor, or anything not wholly evil, in what he believed or did in the name of it.
And there is with Stalin? Really? Do you think Stalin cared for anyone who he had murdered?
Nor did Ted Bundy. I'm not comparing them like that. I'm looking at the whole thing, the ideology and what they did to further it. The ideology of Communism isn't as wholly and irredeemably evil as that of Nazism. This doesn't mean Stalin wasn't evil. He damn well was. Very.
I don’t think communism and Nazism are that far apart tbh. Both suppress the individual for the whole state. Both require massive state terror to implement. Both end up murdering. I don’t give a fig if it’s killing foreigners vs killing Russians, and besides, Stalins troops gladly marched into Poland and murdered Poles with abandon. I think too many think that extreme left views are better than extreme right. They are wrong.
Would the Lawrence murder be essentially the same crime in your view without the racist motive?
The Beggar King is in a Ford Galaxy on the M11 so pb's 101st Chairborne will be getting excited over that providing a welcome change from the trans shit and HS2 minutiae very soon.
We - and Russia to, for that matter - are a nation that survived WWII only because of US aid, so it's a bit charmless to get sniffy about someone else in a comparable situation.
So the Russian nation would have ceased to exist during WW2 had it not been for US aid? What a loony.
PS Would it be gazetted somewhere if Johnson were to receive his US citizenship back, or is it only renunciations that get publicly noted?
PPS Some Ford Galaxies from the mid-noughties had front seats that could turn round and face the back. Now that's what I call a cool car.
The Germans made it to the Moscow suburbs in WWII. It doesn't take much changes to the timeline to them making it a bit further...
For example, the US and UK provided *all* the hi octane aviation gasoline for the USSR. It was only postwar that they got their cracking plants lined up to make it.
Vast amount of machine tools - in some categories, 100% of the tools and 100% of the tooling was Lendlease supplied. Without that, Soviet production would have crawled to a halt.
And so on in many categories - the % of USSR GDP was small, but LendLease was about supplying materials and equipment they were short of. Or literally didn't have.
The fall of Moscow, or even of both Moscow and Leningrad as it then was, would not in itself have come anywhere near making the Soviet government seek to agree terms with Germany. More than 1000 large factories were shipped eastwards. The USSR would certainly have continued fighting. Sure, they could have been defeated but the fall of Moscow wouldn't have done for them.
Do you regret that the USA and Britain gave such substantial assistance to their Soviet ally during WW2/the GPW? Or is it a very different Germany now but a very similar Russia, so western policy was good then (fight with Russia against Germany) and western policy is also good now (pointing towards fighting with Germany against Russia this time round)?
Stalin was evil, but less evil than Hitler.
"If Hitler invaded Hell, I would make at least a favourable reference of the Devil in the House of Commons."
So here's the thing - I am less sure of this than I used to be. Hitler evil, absolutely. He started the war that saw millions dead and initiated the holocaust.
But how many did Stalin kill? The famine in Ukraine, the gulags, the show trials, all of it. Why does Uncle Joe get a pass to be less evil than Hitler?
The main distinction I would draw would be that Stalin came to power in the USSR on a platform of "Socialism in one country" - a recognition that the attempt to spread communist revolution to the rest of the world had failed, and there was a need for the Bolsheviks to consolidate their power within their borders.
By contrast, the core of Hitler's ideology was the idea of the German need for Lebensraum, and consequently aggressive military expansion.
Bluntly, Stalin was content to kill people within his borders, while Hitler sought to kill people in the lands outside Germany's borders. The latter is more dangerous than the former.
This distinction might be more a consequence of the different levels of capability than ideology, but it's also true that the strong evil guy is more of a threat than the weak evil guy.
Also with Communism, for all the horrors enacted in its name, there was an arguably non-heinous idea at its core. This isn't the case with Hitler and the Nazis. The ideology there, the industrial scale subjugation of other people by a master race, is wholly abhorent in every sense and on every level.
Doesn't that make the Communist authoritarianism worse to some extent? It means that well-meaning people can go along with evil, "For The Greater Good," while the moral choice is a bit clearer under fascism. This might also explain why Communist dictatorships have tended to be more durable than fascist ones.
That said, having reflected, I think one can say that Hitler was a notch more evil than Stalin, because Hitler's intent with the Holocaust was to eradicate the Jewish people, and while there was a programme of Russification within the USSR, and particular ethnic groups like the Crimean Tartars were particularly targeted, the single-minded and ideological pursuit of the destruction of the Jewish people was, I think, on a distinctly more evil level.
Wolf more dangerous when donning the sheepskin? Yes, can be. But tbh, 'Hitler or Stalin more evil?', I don't find it that useful a question, but if forced to take it I neither find it that difficult. Hitler. There's just no shred of a redeeming factor, or anything not wholly evil, in what he believed or did in the name of it.
And there is with Stalin? Really? Do you think Stalin cared for anyone who he had murdered?
Nor did Ted Bundy. I'm not comparing them like that. I'm looking at the whole thing, the ideology and what they did to further it. The ideology of Communism isn't as wholly and irredeemably evil as that of Nazism. This doesn't mean Stalin wasn't evil. He damn well was. Very.
I don’t think communism and Nazism are that far apart tbh. Both suppress the individual for the whole state. Both require massive state terror to implement. Both end up murdering. I don’t give a fig if it’s killing foreigners vs killing Russians, and besides, Stalins troops gladly marched into Poland and murdered Poles with abandon. I think too many think that extreme left views are better than extreme right. They are wrong.
Would the Lawrence murder be essentially the same crime in your view without the racist motive?
Yes.
I don’t think the reason for your murder lessens or worsens the fact of your murder.
I don’t Kulaks went happily to the grave for the ‘greater good’.
The Beggar King is in a Ford Galaxy on the M11 so pb's 101st Chairborne will be getting excited over that providing a welcome change from the trans shit and HS2 minutiae very soon.
We - and Russia to, for that matter - are a nation that survived WWII only because of US aid, so it's a bit charmless to get sniffy about someone else in a comparable situation.
So the Russian nation would have ceased to exist during WW2 had it not been for US aid? What a loony.
PS Would it be gazetted somewhere if Johnson were to receive his US citizenship back, or is it only renunciations that get publicly noted?
PPS Some Ford Galaxies from the mid-noughties had front seats that could turn round and face the back. Now that's what I call a cool car.
The Germans made it to the Moscow suburbs in WWII. It doesn't take much changes to the timeline to them making it a bit further...
For example, the US and UK provided *all* the hi octane aviation gasoline for the USSR. It was only postwar that they got their cracking plants lined up to make it.
Vast amount of machine tools - in some categories, 100% of the tools and 100% of the tooling was Lendlease supplied. Without that, Soviet production would have crawled to a halt.
And so on in many categories - the % of USSR GDP was small, but LendLease was about supplying materials and equipment they were short of. Or literally didn't have.
The fall of Moscow, or even of both Moscow and Leningrad as it then was, would not in itself have come anywhere near making the Soviet government seek to agree terms with Germany. More than 1000 large factories were shipped eastwards. The USSR would certainly have continued fighting. Sure, they could have been defeated but the fall of Moscow wouldn't have done for them.
Do you regret that the USA and Britain gave such substantial assistance to their Soviet ally during WW2/the GPW? Or is it a very different Germany now but a very similar Russia, so western policy was good then (fight with Russia against Germany) and western policy is also good now (pointing towards fighting with Germany against Russia this time round)?
Stalin was evil, but less evil than Hitler.
"If Hitler invaded Hell, I would make at least a favourable reference of the Devil in the House of Commons."
So here's the thing - I am less sure of this than I used to be. Hitler evil, absolutely. He started the war that saw millions dead and initiated the holocaust.
But how many did Stalin kill? The famine in Ukraine, the gulags, the show trials, all of it. Why does Uncle Joe get a pass to be less evil than Hitler?
The main distinction I would draw would be that Stalin came to power in the USSR on a platform of "Socialism in one country" - a recognition that the attempt to spread communist revolution to the rest of the world had failed, and there was a need for the Bolsheviks to consolidate their power within their borders.
By contrast, the core of Hitler's ideology was the idea of the German need for Lebensraum, and consequently aggressive military expansion.
Bluntly, Stalin was content to kill people within his borders, while Hitler sought to kill people in the lands outside Germany's borders. The latter is more dangerous than the former.
This distinction might be more a consequence of the different levels of capability than ideology, but it's also true that the strong evil guy is more of a threat than the weak evil guy.
Also with Communism, for all the horrors enacted in its name, there was an arguably non-heinous idea at its core. This isn't the case with Hitler and the Nazis. The ideology there, the industrial scale subjugation of other people by a master race, is wholly abhorent in every sense and on every level.
Doesn't that make the Communist authoritarianism worse to some extent? It means that well-meaning people can go along with evil, "For The Greater Good," while the moral choice is a bit clearer under fascism. This might also explain why Communist dictatorships have tended to be more durable than fascist ones.
That said, having reflected, I think one can say that Hitler was a notch more evil than Stalin, because Hitler's intent with the Holocaust was to eradicate the Jewish people, and while there was a programme of Russification within the USSR, and particular ethnic groups like the Crimean Tartars were particularly targeted, the single-minded and ideological pursuit of the destruction of the Jewish people was, I think, on a distinctly more evil level.
Wolf more dangerous when donning the sheepskin? Yes, can be. But tbh, 'Hitler or Stalin more evil?', I don't find it that useful a question, but if forced to take it I neither find it that difficult. Hitler. There's just no shred of a redeeming factor, or anything not wholly evil, in what he believed or did in the name of it.
And there is with Stalin? Really? Do you think Stalin cared for anyone who he had murdered?
Nor did Ted Bundy. I'm not comparing them like that. I'm looking at the whole thing, the ideology and what they did to further it. The ideology of Communism isn't as wholly and irredeemably evil as that of Nazism. This doesn't mean Stalin wasn't evil. He damn well was. Very.
I don’t think communism and Nazism are that far apart tbh. Both suppress the individual for the whole state. Both require massive state terror to implement. Both end up murdering. I don’t give a fig if it’s killing foreigners vs killing Russians, and besides, Stalins troops gladly marched into Poland and murdered Poles with abandon. I think too many think that extreme left views are better than extreme right. They are wrong.
An at least historical memory of the enthusiastic and rather queasy veneration of Stalin & the USSR engendered by Churchill, Duff Cooper and the popular press may have something to do with it.
Presumably Boris's recent visit to Ukraine was part of the set up for Zelemsky's visit to the UK.
At any event, glad he is here. Britain's help for Ukraine is something to be proud about.
Is the Ukrainian leader shorter than Sunak? He certainly looks like it in the picture of them in the Graun, or is this from the PM's official photographer, who seems to have been selected specifically for his skills in this area?
They are both pretty short. Zelensky doesn't seem to care about it, though.
Z is short but stocky - the Oates in Hall & Oates template. Rishi is just very very tiny, which is harder to get yourself positive about as a man, I think. Still, it's far from his most pressing concern. That would be the ERG, I think.
Today was Johnson's day. Hats off to him if he laid the groundwork for Zelenskiy's visit. Johnson is standing loud and proud, he has with Zelenskiy's assistance overshadowed and further weakened the hapless Sunak. He's coming back, and he could contest the next election as the victorious Ukraine's Churchillian wing man.
Benny's back ... and this time for real!
You both scoff, but Churchillisn Johnson isn't my narrative, it is a narrative confected by Johnson effectively and confirmed by Zelenskiy today.
Both the BBC and LBC have focused on the Johnson aspect of the speech and repeated the line that Johnson singlehandedly (my interpretation) wrangled an unwilling EU and US into action.
Hats off to BigDog, he's played this rather cleverly. Let's hope that's where his story ends.
I support you. It can’t complete the Churchill narrative without a big comeback to power. And he is serious about seeking that isn’t he.
There’s the scenario Sunak can’t survive election defeat so someone else takes over, Boris can be LOTO, with all sorts of opposition freedom attack dog opportunity to build a lead in the polls , against a government with slim or non existent majority,
I certainly believe that is the Johnson plan. It all depends whether the Conservative Party once again acquiesce to his every whim. Quite likely I would have thought.
Presumably Boris's recent visit to Ukraine was part of the set up for Zelemsky's visit to the UK.
At any event, glad he is here. Britain's help for Ukraine is something to be proud about.
Is the Ukrainian leader shorter than Sunak? He certainly looks like it in the picture of them in the Graun, or is this from the PM's official photographer, who seems to have been selected specifically for his skills in this area?
They are both pretty short. Zelensky doesn't seem to care about it, though.
Z is short but stocky - the Oates in Hall & Oates template. Rishi is just very very tiny, which is harder to get yourself positive about as a man, I think. Still, it's far from his most pressing concern. That would be the ERG, I think.
Today was Johnson's day. Hats off to him if he laid the groundwork for Zelenskiy's visit. Johnson is standing loud and proud, he has with Zelenskiy's assistance overshadowed and further weakened the hapless Sunak. He's coming back, and he could contest the next election as the victorious Ukraine's Churchillian wing man.
Benny's back ... and this time for real!
You both scoff, but Churchillisn Johnson isn't my narrative, it is a narrative confected by Johnson effectively and confirmed by Zelenskiy today.
Both the BBC and LBC have focused on the Johnson aspect of the speech and repeated the line that Johnson singlehandedly (my interpretation) wrangled an unwilling EU and US into action.
Hats off to BigDog, he's played this rather cleverly. Let's hope that's where his story ends.
I support you. It can’t complete the Churchill narrative without a big comeback to power. And he is serious about seeking that isn’t he.
There’s the scenario Sunak can’t survive election defeat so someone else takes over, Boris can be LOTO, with all sorts of opposition freedom attack dog opportunity to build a lead in the polls , against a government with slim or non existent majority,
The Beggar King is in a Ford Galaxy on the M11 so pb's 101st Chairborne will be getting excited over that providing a welcome change from the trans shit and HS2 minutiae very soon.
We - and Russia to, for that matter - are a nation that survived WWII only because of US aid, so it's a bit charmless to get sniffy about someone else in a comparable situation.
So the Russian nation would have ceased to exist during WW2 had it not been for US aid? What a loony.
PS Would it be gazetted somewhere if Johnson were to receive his US citizenship back, or is it only renunciations that get publicly noted?
PPS Some Ford Galaxies from the mid-noughties had front seats that could turn round and face the back. Now that's what I call a cool car.
The Germans made it to the Moscow suburbs in WWII. It doesn't take much changes to the timeline to them making it a bit further...
For example, the US and UK provided *all* the hi octane aviation gasoline for the USSR. It was only postwar that they got their cracking plants lined up to make it.
Vast amount of machine tools - in some categories, 100% of the tools and 100% of the tooling was Lendlease supplied. Without that, Soviet production would have crawled to a halt.
And so on in many categories - the % of USSR GDP was small, but LendLease was about supplying materials and equipment they were short of. Or literally didn't have.
The fall of Moscow, or even of both Moscow and Leningrad as it then was, would not in itself have come anywhere near making the Soviet government seek to agree terms with Germany. More than 1000 large factories were shipped eastwards. The USSR would certainly have continued fighting. Sure, they could have been defeated but the fall of Moscow wouldn't have done for them.
Do you regret that the USA and Britain gave such substantial assistance to their Soviet ally during WW2/the GPW? Or is it a very different Germany now but a very similar Russia, so western policy was good then (fight with Russia against Germany) and western policy is also good now (pointing towards fighting with Germany against Russia this time round)?
Stalin was evil, but less evil than Hitler.
"If Hitler invaded Hell, I would make at least a favourable reference of the Devil in the House of Commons."
So here's the thing - I am less sure of this than I used to be. Hitler evil, absolutely. He started the war that saw millions dead and initiated the holocaust.
But how many did Stalin kill? The famine in Ukraine, the gulags, the show trials, all of it. Why does Uncle Joe get a pass to be less evil than Hitler?
The main distinction I would draw would be that Stalin came to power in the USSR on a platform of "Socialism in one country" - a recognition that the attempt to spread communist revolution to the rest of the world had failed, and there was a need for the Bolsheviks to consolidate their power within their borders.
By contrast, the core of Hitler's ideology was the idea of the German need for Lebensraum, and consequently aggressive military expansion.
Bluntly, Stalin was content to kill people within his borders, while Hitler sought to kill people in the lands outside Germany's borders. The latter is more dangerous than the former.
This distinction might be more a consequence of the different levels of capability than ideology, but it's also true that the strong evil guy is more of a threat than the weak evil guy.
Also with Communism, for all the horrors enacted in its name, there was an arguably non-heinous idea at its core. This isn't the case with Hitler and the Nazis. The ideology there, the industrial scale subjugation of other people by a master race, is wholly abhorent in every sense and on every level.
Doesn't that make the Communist authoritarianism worse to some extent? It means that well-meaning people can go along with evil, "For The Greater Good," while the moral choice is a bit clearer under fascism. This might also explain why Communist dictatorships have tended to be more durable than fascist ones.
That said, having reflected, I think one can say that Hitler was a notch more evil than Stalin, because Hitler's intent with the Holocaust was to eradicate the Jewish people, and while there was a programme of Russification within the USSR, and particular ethnic groups like the Crimean Tartars were particularly targeted, the single-minded and ideological pursuit of the destruction of the Jewish people was, I think, on a distinctly more evil level.
Wolf more dangerous when donning the sheepskin? Yes, can be. But tbh, 'Hitler or Stalin more evil?', I don't find it that useful a question, but if forced to take it I neither find it that difficult. Hitler. There's just no shred of a redeeming factor, or anything not wholly evil, in what he believed or did in the name of it.
And there is with Stalin? Really? Do you think Stalin cared for anyone who he had murdered?
Nor did Ted Bundy. I'm not comparing them like that. I'm looking at the whole thing, the ideology and what they did to further it. The ideology of Communism isn't as wholly and irredeemably evil as that of Nazism. This doesn't mean Stalin wasn't evil. He damn well was. Very.
I don’t think communism and Nazism are that far apart tbh. Both suppress the individual for the whole state. Both require massive state terror to implement. Both end up murdering. I don’t give a fig if it’s killing foreigners vs killing Russians, and besides, Stalins troops gladly marched into Poland and murdered Poles with abandon. I think too many think that extreme left views are better than extreme right. They are wrong.
Would the Lawrence murder be essentially the same crime in your view without the racist motive?
Yes.
I don’t think the reason for your murder lessens or worsens the fact of your murder.
I don’t Kulaks went happily to the grave for the ‘greater good’.
It is nonetheless and extremely interesting philosophical question.
In domestic and international law we do make a distinction based on motive. Obviously there is pre-meditated vs spur of moment murder, but genocide is considered a worse crime than random slaughter, and sexualised violence in war is considered a worse crime than simple brutality to civilians.
I think there is a utilitarian rationale for this. Racism and other forms of in-out group violence are more dangerous to the wider fabric of society as history shows they can bring about complete collapse.
I think though that we probably under-rate the destructive impact of Mafia-style gang/cartel violence. It combines in/out group polarisation albeit of a different sort, political and social corruption, and a threat to public order of a nature few other types of violence can achieve. When societies completely collapse they seem to do so either because of bigotry (racism, religious sectarianism, occasionally class warfare) or Mafia capture.
The Beggar King is in a Ford Galaxy on the M11 so pb's 101st Chairborne will be getting excited over that providing a welcome change from the trans shit and HS2 minutiae very soon.
We - and Russia to, for that matter - are a nation that survived WWII only because of US aid, so it's a bit charmless to get sniffy about someone else in a comparable situation.
So the Russian nation would have ceased to exist during WW2 had it not been for US aid? What a loony.
PS Would it be gazetted somewhere if Johnson were to receive his US citizenship back, or is it only renunciations that get publicly noted?
PPS Some Ford Galaxies from the mid-noughties had front seats that could turn round and face the back. Now that's what I call a cool car.
The Germans made it to the Moscow suburbs in WWII. It doesn't take much changes to the timeline to them making it a bit further...
For example, the US and UK provided *all* the hi octane aviation gasoline for the USSR. It was only postwar that they got their cracking plants lined up to make it.
Vast amount of machine tools - in some categories, 100% of the tools and 100% of the tooling was Lendlease supplied. Without that, Soviet production would have crawled to a halt.
And so on in many categories - the % of USSR GDP was small, but LendLease was about supplying materials and equipment they were short of. Or literally didn't have.
The fall of Moscow, or even of both Moscow and Leningrad as it then was, would not in itself have come anywhere near making the Soviet government seek to agree terms with Germany. More than 1000 large factories were shipped eastwards. The USSR would certainly have continued fighting. Sure, they could have been defeated but the fall of Moscow wouldn't have done for them.
Do you regret that the USA and Britain gave such substantial assistance to their Soviet ally during WW2/the GPW? Or is it a very different Germany now but a very similar Russia, so western policy was good then (fight with Russia against Germany) and western policy is also good now (pointing towards fighting with Germany against Russia this time round)?
Stalin was evil, but less evil than Hitler.
"If Hitler invaded Hell, I would make at least a favourable reference of the Devil in the House of Commons."
So here's the thing - I am less sure of this than I used to be. Hitler evil, absolutely. He started the war that saw millions dead and initiated the holocaust.
But how many did Stalin kill? The famine in Ukraine, the gulags, the show trials, all of it. Why does Uncle Joe get a pass to be less evil than Hitler?
The main distinction I would draw would be that Stalin came to power in the USSR on a platform of "Socialism in one country" - a recognition that the attempt to spread communist revolution to the rest of the world had failed, and there was a need for the Bolsheviks to consolidate their power within their borders.
By contrast, the core of Hitler's ideology was the idea of the German need for Lebensraum, and consequently aggressive military expansion.
Bluntly, Stalin was content to kill people within his borders, while Hitler sought to kill people in the lands outside Germany's borders. The latter is more dangerous than the former.
This distinction might be more a consequence of the different levels of capability than ideology, but it's also true that the strong evil guy is more of a threat than the weak evil guy.
Also with Communism, for all the horrors enacted in its name, there was an arguably non-heinous idea at its core. This isn't the case with Hitler and the Nazis. The ideology there, the industrial scale subjugation of other people by a master race, is wholly abhorent in every sense and on every level.
Doesn't that make the Communist authoritarianism worse to some extent? It means that well-meaning people can go along with evil, "For The Greater Good," while the moral choice is a bit clearer under fascism. This might also explain why Communist dictatorships have tended to be more durable than fascist ones.
That said, having reflected, I think one can say that Hitler was a notch more evil than Stalin, because Hitler's intent with the Holocaust was to eradicate the Jewish people, and while there was a programme of Russification within the USSR, and particular ethnic groups like the Crimean Tartars were particularly targeted, the single-minded and ideological pursuit of the destruction of the Jewish people was, I think, on a distinctly more evil level.
Wolf more dangerous when donning the sheepskin? Yes, can be. But tbh, 'Hitler or Stalin more evil?', I don't find it that useful a question, but if forced to take it I neither find it that difficult. Hitler. There's just no shred of a redeeming factor, or anything not wholly evil, in what he believed or did in the name of it.
And there is with Stalin? Really? Do you think Stalin cared for anyone who he had murdered?
The argument made for Stalin is that though his methods were hideous, he did have a positive goal - the building of a strong economy and a socialist state.
Hitler wasn't even really trying to do that.
It is a naive argument, reliant on taking Stalin's statements at face value while interrogating Hitler's on the assumption he was a liar.
Is it untenable? Well, he did see the Soviet Union make considerable progress in heavy industry - but not, contrary to popular belief, significantly more than elsewhere. This was at a terrible cost in agriculture, light industry and service sectors.
But then - you could make a similar argument for Hitler if you only looked at the figures and didn't bother to check what they mean.
The real issue, of course, is that Hitler was demonstrated to be evil and incompetent. Stalin managed to fool people into thinking he was alright until after he was dead.
It's a naive argument if advanced as apologism for Stalin - but it's a valid input for performing a comparison of him to Hitler.
Well, not really. Because actually, it assumes Stalin wasn't a liar when he talked of his idealism while accepting Hitler was.
It doesn't assume that. Stalin could have been a non believer in Communism and that still isn't equivalent to Hitler who DID believe his shtick of master race global dominion and the enslavement of all others.
Presumably Boris's recent visit to Ukraine was part of the set up for Zelemsky's visit to the UK.
At any event, glad he is here. Britain's help for Ukraine is something to be proud about.
Is the Ukrainian leader shorter than Sunak? He certainly looks like it in the picture of them in the Graun, or is this from the PM's official photographer, who seems to have been selected specifically for his skills in this area?
They are both pretty short. Zelensky doesn't seem to care about it, though.
Z is short but stocky - the Oates in Hall & Oates template. Rishi is just very very tiny, which is harder to get yourself positive about as a man, I think. Still, it's far from his most pressing concern. That would be the ERG, I think.
Today was Johnson's day. Hats off to him if he laid the groundwork for Zelenskiy's visit. Johnson is standing loud and proud, he has with Zelenskiy's assistance overshadowed and further weakened the hapless Sunak. He's coming back, and he could contest the next election as the victorious Ukraine's Churchillian wing man.
Benny's back ... and this time for real!
You both scoff, but Churchillisn Johnson isn't my narrative, it is a narrative confected by Johnson effectively and confirmed by Zelenskiy today.
Both the BBC and LBC have focused on the Johnson aspect of the speech and repeated the line that Johnson singlehandedly (my interpretation) wrangled an unwilling EU and US into action.
Hats off to BigDog, he's played this rather cleverly. Let's hope that's where his story ends.
I support you. It can’t complete the Churchill narrative without a big comeback to power. And he is serious about seeking that isn’t he.
There’s the scenario Sunak can’t survive election defeat so someone else takes over, Boris can be LOTO, with all sorts of opposition freedom attack dog opportunity to build a lead in the polls , against a government with slim or non existent majority,
I certainly believe that is the Johnson plan. It all depends whether the Conservative Party once again acquiesce to his every whim. Quite likely I would have thought.
I don't think so, Pete, getting serious now. And I've bet that way. Sunak to lead the Cons to that GE defeat.
The Beggar King is in a Ford Galaxy on the M11 so pb's 101st Chairborne will be getting excited over that providing a welcome change from the trans shit and HS2 minutiae very soon.
We - and Russia to, for that matter - are a nation that survived WWII only because of US aid, so it's a bit charmless to get sniffy about someone else in a comparable situation.
So the Russian nation would have ceased to exist during WW2 had it not been for US aid? What a loony.
PS Would it be gazetted somewhere if Johnson were to receive his US citizenship back, or is it only renunciations that get publicly noted?
PPS Some Ford Galaxies from the mid-noughties had front seats that could turn round and face the back. Now that's what I call a cool car.
The Germans made it to the Moscow suburbs in WWII. It doesn't take much changes to the timeline to them making it a bit further...
For example, the US and UK provided *all* the hi octane aviation gasoline for the USSR. It was only postwar that they got their cracking plants lined up to make it.
Vast amount of machine tools - in some categories, 100% of the tools and 100% of the tooling was Lendlease supplied. Without that, Soviet production would have crawled to a halt.
And so on in many categories - the % of USSR GDP was small, but LendLease was about supplying materials and equipment they were short of. Or literally didn't have.
The fall of Moscow, or even of both Moscow and Leningrad as it then was, would not in itself have come anywhere near making the Soviet government seek to agree terms with Germany. More than 1000 large factories were shipped eastwards. The USSR would certainly have continued fighting. Sure, they could have been defeated but the fall of Moscow wouldn't have done for them.
Do you regret that the USA and Britain gave such substantial assistance to their Soviet ally during WW2/the GPW? Or is it a very different Germany now but a very similar Russia, so western policy was good then (fight with Russia against Germany) and western policy is also good now (pointing towards fighting with Germany against Russia this time round)?
Stalin was evil, but less evil than Hitler.
"If Hitler invaded Hell, I would make at least a favourable reference of the Devil in the House of Commons."
So here's the thing - I am less sure of this than I used to be. Hitler evil, absolutely. He started the war that saw millions dead and initiated the holocaust.
But how many did Stalin kill? The famine in Ukraine, the gulags, the show trials, all of it. Why does Uncle Joe get a pass to be less evil than Hitler?
The main distinction I would draw would be that Stalin came to power in the USSR on a platform of "Socialism in one country" - a recognition that the attempt to spread communist revolution to the rest of the world had failed, and there was a need for the Bolsheviks to consolidate their power within their borders.
By contrast, the core of Hitler's ideology was the idea of the German need for Lebensraum, and consequently aggressive military expansion.
Bluntly, Stalin was content to kill people within his borders, while Hitler sought to kill people in the lands outside Germany's borders. The latter is more dangerous than the former.
This distinction might be more a consequence of the different levels of capability than ideology, but it's also true that the strong evil guy is more of a threat than the weak evil guy.
Also with Communism, for all the horrors enacted in its name, there was an arguably non-heinous idea at its core. This isn't the case with Hitler and the Nazis. The ideology there, the industrial scale subjugation of other people by a master race, is wholly abhorent in every sense and on every level.
Doesn't that make the Communist authoritarianism worse to some extent? It means that well-meaning people can go along with evil, "For The Greater Good," while the moral choice is a bit clearer under fascism. This might also explain why Communist dictatorships have tended to be more durable than fascist ones.
That said, having reflected, I think one can say that Hitler was a notch more evil than Stalin, because Hitler's intent with the Holocaust was to eradicate the Jewish people, and while there was a programme of Russification within the USSR, and particular ethnic groups like the Crimean Tartars were particularly targeted, the single-minded and ideological pursuit of the destruction of the Jewish people was, I think, on a distinctly more evil level.
Wolf more dangerous when donning the sheepskin? Yes, can be. But tbh, 'Hitler or Stalin more evil?', I don't find it that useful a question, but if forced to take it I neither find it that difficult. Hitler. There's just no shred of a redeeming factor, or anything not wholly evil, in what he believed or did in the name of it.
And there is with Stalin? Really? Do you think Stalin cared for anyone who he had murdered?
Nor did Ted Bundy. I'm not comparing them like that. I'm looking at the whole thing, the ideology and what they did to further it. The ideology of Communism isn't as wholly and irredeemably evil as that of Nazism. This doesn't mean Stalin wasn't evil. He damn well was. Very.
I don’t think communism and Nazism are that far apart tbh. Both suppress the individual for the whole state. Both require massive state terror to implement. Both end up murdering. I don’t give a fig if it’s killing foreigners vs killing Russians, and besides, Stalins troops gladly marched into Poland and murdered Poles with abandon. I think too many think that extreme left views are better than extreme right. They are wrong.
Would the Lawrence murder be essentially the same crime in your view without the racist motive?
Yes.
I don’t think the reason for your murder lessens or worsens the fact of your murder.
I don’t Kulaks went happily to the grave for the ‘greater good’.
Strange that Sturgeon - very able as she is - should stumble over a couple of things much less gifted people would avoid.
With GRR all you have to do to avoid trouble is to shadow what England and Wales is doing (don't ask, no idea), take any credit and blame any problems on Westminster. Standard stuff.
With GE as 'proxy referendum' you cannot win. If you poll 50%+ everyone else says tough, we never recognised this. If you don't poll 50%+ you have lost on your own terms, and your enemies as well as other parties will be quick to point it out.
Since the Brexit 52/48 vote, pressing for a referendum except when support for the change is so strong it's irresistible is a bit out of fashion.
Why is this gifted (though wrong) politician not doing gritty everyday campaigning to get support for independence up to 60-65%, from which position she could actually get what she says she wants? Since Brexit she is not exactly short of material to work with.
That’s the point Salmond was making on WATO yesterday - why pick a fight with Westminster over this, rather than, for example, something Europe related which could be tied in with the economy/cost of living?
Why are we ruling out that she wants to deliver a longstanding commitment that she also believes in?
Comes under an increasing reluctance to assume ANY good faith in the motives of one's opponents.
Which you both clearly demonstrate yourselves.
I mean the reason the move was opposed was not because people might be concerned about say convicted male rapists being allowed into women's prisons but because such people wanted to create a culture war, have a wedge issue, play dirty politics.
Not getting a big benefit of the doubt vibe off you tbh. As I just pointed out in a previous post there was broad support for eg gender self identification until quite recently. If you want to pin down a reason for the public change of mood, knock yersel out.
Personally regardless of how principled I thought my cause was, the fact that Trump, Breitbart, Infowars, the tabloid press, holocaust deniers and sundry fascists were piggybacking on it might give me pause for thought.
only politician's and the charities dependent on Sturgeon for cash supported it. Every view that did not agree was thrown in the bin.
The Beggar King is in a Ford Galaxy on the M11 so pb's 101st Chairborne will be getting excited over that providing a welcome change from the trans shit and HS2 minutiae very soon.
We - and Russia to, for that matter - are a nation that survived WWII only because of US aid, so it's a bit charmless to get sniffy about someone else in a comparable situation.
So the Russian nation would have ceased to exist during WW2 had it not been for US aid? What a loony.
PS Would it be gazetted somewhere if Johnson were to receive his US citizenship back, or is it only renunciations that get publicly noted?
PPS Some Ford Galaxies from the mid-noughties had front seats that could turn round and face the back. Now that's what I call a cool car.
The Germans made it to the Moscow suburbs in WWII. It doesn't take much changes to the timeline to them making it a bit further...
For example, the US and UK provided *all* the hi octane aviation gasoline for the USSR. It was only postwar that they got their cracking plants lined up to make it.
Vast amount of machine tools - in some categories, 100% of the tools and 100% of the tooling was Lendlease supplied. Without that, Soviet production would have crawled to a halt.
And so on in many categories - the % of USSR GDP was small, but LendLease was about supplying materials and equipment they were short of. Or literally didn't have.
The fall of Moscow, or even of both Moscow and Leningrad as it then was, would not in itself have come anywhere near making the Soviet government seek to agree terms with Germany. More than 1000 large factories were shipped eastwards. The USSR would certainly have continued fighting. Sure, they could have been defeated but the fall of Moscow wouldn't have done for them.
Do you regret that the USA and Britain gave such substantial assistance to their Soviet ally during WW2/the GPW? Or is it a very different Germany now but a very similar Russia, so western policy was good then (fight with Russia against Germany) and western policy is also good now (pointing towards fighting with Germany against Russia this time round)?
Stalin was evil, but less evil than Hitler.
"If Hitler invaded Hell, I would make at least a favourable reference of the Devil in the House of Commons."
So here's the thing - I am less sure of this than I used to be. Hitler evil, absolutely. He started the war that saw millions dead and initiated the holocaust.
But how many did Stalin kill? The famine in Ukraine, the gulags, the show trials, all of it. Why does Uncle Joe get a pass to be less evil than Hitler?
The main distinction I would draw would be that Stalin came to power in the USSR on a platform of "Socialism in one country" - a recognition that the attempt to spread communist revolution to the rest of the world had failed, and there was a need for the Bolsheviks to consolidate their power within their borders.
By contrast, the core of Hitler's ideology was the idea of the German need for Lebensraum, and consequently aggressive military expansion.
Bluntly, Stalin was content to kill people within his borders, while Hitler sought to kill people in the lands outside Germany's borders. The latter is more dangerous than the former.
This distinction might be more a consequence of the different levels of capability than ideology, but it's also true that the strong evil guy is more of a threat than the weak evil guy.
Also with Communism, for all the horrors enacted in its name, there was an arguably non-heinous idea at its core. This isn't the case with Hitler and the Nazis. The ideology there, the industrial scale subjugation of other people by a master race, is wholly abhorent in every sense and on every level.
Doesn't that make the Communist authoritarianism worse to some extent? It means that well-meaning people can go along with evil, "For The Greater Good," while the moral choice is a bit clearer under fascism. This might also explain why Communist dictatorships have tended to be more durable than fascist ones.
That said, having reflected, I think one can say that Hitler was a notch more evil than Stalin, because Hitler's intent with the Holocaust was to eradicate the Jewish people, and while there was a programme of Russification within the USSR, and particular ethnic groups like the Crimean Tartars were particularly targeted, the single-minded and ideological pursuit of the destruction of the Jewish people was, I think, on a distinctly more evil level.
Wolf more dangerous when donning the sheepskin? Yes, can be. But tbh, 'Hitler or Stalin more evil?', I don't find it that useful a question, but if forced to take it I neither find it that difficult. Hitler. There's just no shred of a redeeming factor, or anything not wholly evil, in what he believed or did in the name of it.
And there is with Stalin? Really? Do you think Stalin cared for anyone who he had murdered?
The argument made for Stalin is that though his methods were hideous, he did have a positive goal - the building of a strong economy and a socialist state.
Hitler wasn't even really trying to do that.
It is a naive argument, reliant on taking Stalin's statements at face value while interrogating Hitler's on the assumption he was a liar.
Is it untenable? Well, he did see the Soviet Union make considerable progress in heavy industry - but not, contrary to popular belief, significantly more than elsewhere. This was at a terrible cost in agriculture, light industry and service sectors.
But then - you could make a similar argument for Hitler if you only looked at the figures and didn't bother to check what they mean.
The real issue, of course, is that Hitler was demonstrated to be evil and incompetent. Stalin managed to fool people into thinking he was alright until after he was dead.
It's a naive argument if advanced as apologism for Stalin - but it's a valid input for performing a comparison of him to Hitler.
Well, not really. Because actually, it assumes Stalin wasn't a liar when he talked of his idealism while accepting Hitler was.
It doesn't assume that. Stalin could have been a non believer in Communism and that still isn't equivalent to Hitler who DID believe his shtick of master race global dominion and the enslavement of all others.
The wisdom of ChatGPT should be the final word on the matter:
It is not appropriate to compare the evil actions of historical figures in a quantitative manner. Both Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin were responsible for atrocities and human rights abuses that caused immeasurable suffering and loss of life. Hitler's leadership of Nazi Germany led to the Holocaust, the systematic extermination of six million Jews and millions of others considered "undesirable" by the regime. Stalin's regime in the Soviet Union was characterized by widespread purges, forced collectivization, and the establishment of the Gulag system of prison camps, causing the death of millions of people through execution, starvation, and overwork. Both leaders left a legacy of tragedy and it is important to remember the lessons of history to prevent similar atrocities from happening again in the future.
Presumably Boris's recent visit to Ukraine was part of the set up for Zelemsky's visit to the UK.
At any event, glad he is here. Britain's help for Ukraine is something to be proud about.
Is the Ukrainian leader shorter than Sunak? He certainly looks like it in the picture of them in the Graun, or is this from the PM's official photographer, who seems to have been selected specifically for his skills in this area?
They are both pretty short. Zelensky doesn't seem to care about it, though.
Z is short but stocky - the Oates in Hall & Oates template. Rishi is just very very tiny, which is harder to get yourself positive about as a man, I think. Still, it's far from his most pressing concern. That would be the ERG, I think.
Today was Johnson's day. Hats off to him if he laid the groundwork for Zelenskiy's visit. Johnson is standing loud and proud, he has with Zelenskiy's assistance overshadowed and further weakened the hapless Sunak. He's coming back, and he could contest the next election as the victorious Ukraine's Churchillian wing man.
Benny's back ... and this time for real!
You both scoff, but Churchillisn Johnson isn't my narrative, it is a narrative confected by Johnson effectively and confirmed by Zelenskiy today.
Both the BBC and LBC have focused on the Johnson aspect of the speech and repeated the line that Johnson singlehandedly (my interpretation) wrangled an unwilling EU and US into action.
Hats off to BigDog, he's played this rather cleverly. Let's hope that's where his story ends.
I support you. It can’t complete the Churchill narrative without a big comeback to power. And he is serious about seeking that isn’t he.
There’s the scenario Sunak can’t survive election defeat so someone else takes over, Boris can be LOTO, with all sorts of opposition freedom attack dog opportunity to build a lead in the polls , against a government with slim or non existent majority,
The Beggar King is in a Ford Galaxy on the M11 so pb's 101st Chairborne will be getting excited over that providing a welcome change from the trans shit and HS2 minutiae very soon.
We - and Russia to, for that matter - are a nation that survived WWII only because of US aid, so it's a bit charmless to get sniffy about someone else in a comparable situation.
So the Russian nation would have ceased to exist during WW2 had it not been for US aid? What a loony.
PS Would it be gazetted somewhere if Johnson were to receive his US citizenship back, or is it only renunciations that get publicly noted?
PPS Some Ford Galaxies from the mid-noughties had front seats that could turn round and face the back. Now that's what I call a cool car.
The Germans made it to the Moscow suburbs in WWII. It doesn't take much changes to the timeline to them making it a bit further...
For example, the US and UK provided *all* the hi octane aviation gasoline for the USSR. It was only postwar that they got their cracking plants lined up to make it.
Vast amount of machine tools - in some categories, 100% of the tools and 100% of the tooling was Lendlease supplied. Without that, Soviet production would have crawled to a halt.
And so on in many categories - the % of USSR GDP was small, but LendLease was about supplying materials and equipment they were short of. Or literally didn't have.
The fall of Moscow, or even of both Moscow and Leningrad as it then was, would not in itself have come anywhere near making the Soviet government seek to agree terms with Germany. More than 1000 large factories were shipped eastwards. The USSR would certainly have continued fighting. Sure, they could have been defeated but the fall of Moscow wouldn't have done for them.
Do you regret that the USA and Britain gave such substantial assistance to their Soviet ally during WW2/the GPW? Or is it a very different Germany now but a very similar Russia, so western policy was good then (fight with Russia against Germany) and western policy is also good now (pointing towards fighting with Germany against Russia this time round)?
Stalin was evil, but less evil than Hitler.
"If Hitler invaded Hell, I would make at least a favourable reference of the Devil in the House of Commons."
So here's the thing - I am less sure of this than I used to be. Hitler evil, absolutely. He started the war that saw millions dead and initiated the holocaust.
But how many did Stalin kill? The famine in Ukraine, the gulags, the show trials, all of it. Why does Uncle Joe get a pass to be less evil than Hitler?
The main distinction I would draw would be that Stalin came to power in the USSR on a platform of "Socialism in one country" - a recognition that the attempt to spread communist revolution to the rest of the world had failed, and there was a need for the Bolsheviks to consolidate their power within their borders.
By contrast, the core of Hitler's ideology was the idea of the German need for Lebensraum, and consequently aggressive military expansion.
Bluntly, Stalin was content to kill people within his borders, while Hitler sought to kill people in the lands outside Germany's borders. The latter is more dangerous than the former.
This distinction might be more a consequence of the different levels of capability than ideology, but it's also true that the strong evil guy is more of a threat than the weak evil guy.
Also with Communism, for all the horrors enacted in its name, there was an arguably non-heinous idea at its core. This isn't the case with Hitler and the Nazis. The ideology there, the industrial scale subjugation of other people by a master race, is wholly abhorent in every sense and on every level.
Doesn't that make the Communist authoritarianism worse to some extent? It means that well-meaning people can go along with evil, "For The Greater Good," while the moral choice is a bit clearer under fascism. This might also explain why Communist dictatorships have tended to be more durable than fascist ones.
That said, having reflected, I think one can say that Hitler was a notch more evil than Stalin, because Hitler's intent with the Holocaust was to eradicate the Jewish people, and while there was a programme of Russification within the USSR, and particular ethnic groups like the Crimean Tartars were particularly targeted, the single-minded and ideological pursuit of the destruction of the Jewish people was, I think, on a distinctly more evil level.
Wolf more dangerous when donning the sheepskin? Yes, can be. But tbh, 'Hitler or Stalin more evil?', I don't find it that useful a question, but if forced to take it I neither find it that difficult. Hitler. There's just no shred of a redeeming factor, or anything not wholly evil, in what he believed or did in the name of it.
And there is with Stalin? Really? Do you think Stalin cared for anyone who he had murdered?
The argument made for Stalin is that though his methods were hideous, he did have a positive goal - the building of a strong economy and a socialist state.
Hitler wasn't even really trying to do that.
It is a naive argument, reliant on taking Stalin's statements at face value while interrogating Hitler's on the assumption he was a liar.
Is it untenable? Well, he did see the Soviet Union make considerable progress in heavy industry - but not, contrary to popular belief, significantly more than elsewhere. This was at a terrible cost in agriculture, light industry and service sectors.
But then - you could make a similar argument for Hitler if you only looked at the figures and didn't bother to check what they mean.
The real issue, of course, is that Hitler was demonstrated to be evil and incompetent. Stalin managed to fool people into thinking he was alright until after he was dead.
It's a naive argument if advanced as apologism for Stalin - but it's a valid input for performing a comparison of him to Hitler.
Well, not really. Because actually, it assumes Stalin wasn't a liar when he talked of his idealism while accepting Hitler was.
It doesn't assume that. Stalin could have been a non believer in Communism and that still isn't equivalent to Hitler who DID believe his shtick of master race global dominion and the enslavement of all others.
And there is perfectly encapsulated exactly what I am talking about.
The Beggar King is in a Ford Galaxy on the M11 so pb's 101st Chairborne will be getting excited over that providing a welcome change from the trans shit and HS2 minutiae very soon.
We - and Russia to, for that matter - are a nation that survived WWII only because of US aid, so it's a bit charmless to get sniffy about someone else in a comparable situation.
So the Russian nation would have ceased to exist during WW2 had it not been for US aid? What a loony.
PS Would it be gazetted somewhere if Johnson were to receive his US citizenship back, or is it only renunciations that get publicly noted?
PPS Some Ford Galaxies from the mid-noughties had front seats that could turn round and face the back. Now that's what I call a cool car.
The Germans made it to the Moscow suburbs in WWII. It doesn't take much changes to the timeline to them making it a bit further...
For example, the US and UK provided *all* the hi octane aviation gasoline for the USSR. It was only postwar that they got their cracking plants lined up to make it.
Vast amount of machine tools - in some categories, 100% of the tools and 100% of the tooling was Lendlease supplied. Without that, Soviet production would have crawled to a halt.
And so on in many categories - the % of USSR GDP was small, but LendLease was about supplying materials and equipment they were short of. Or literally didn't have.
The fall of Moscow, or even of both Moscow and Leningrad as it then was, would not in itself have come anywhere near making the Soviet government seek to agree terms with Germany. More than 1000 large factories were shipped eastwards. The USSR would certainly have continued fighting. Sure, they could have been defeated but the fall of Moscow wouldn't have done for them.
Do you regret that the USA and Britain gave such substantial assistance to their Soviet ally during WW2/the GPW? Or is it a very different Germany now but a very similar Russia, so western policy was good then (fight with Russia against Germany) and western policy is also good now (pointing towards fighting with Germany against Russia this time round)?
Stalin was evil, but less evil than Hitler.
"If Hitler invaded Hell, I would make at least a favourable reference of the Devil in the House of Commons."
So here's the thing - I am less sure of this than I used to be. Hitler evil, absolutely. He started the war that saw millions dead and initiated the holocaust.
But how many did Stalin kill? The famine in Ukraine, the gulags, the show trials, all of it. Why does Uncle Joe get a pass to be less evil than Hitler?
The main distinction I would draw would be that Stalin came to power in the USSR on a platform of "Socialism in one country" - a recognition that the attempt to spread communist revolution to the rest of the world had failed, and there was a need for the Bolsheviks to consolidate their power within their borders.
By contrast, the core of Hitler's ideology was the idea of the German need for Lebensraum, and consequently aggressive military expansion.
Bluntly, Stalin was content to kill people within his borders, while Hitler sought to kill people in the lands outside Germany's borders. The latter is more dangerous than the former.
This distinction might be more a consequence of the different levels of capability than ideology, but it's also true that the strong evil guy is more of a threat than the weak evil guy.
Also with Communism, for all the horrors enacted in its name, there was an arguably non-heinous idea at its core. This isn't the case with Hitler and the Nazis. The ideology there, the industrial scale subjugation of other people by a master race, is wholly abhorent in every sense and on every level.
Doesn't that make the Communist authoritarianism worse to some extent? It means that well-meaning people can go along with evil, "For The Greater Good," while the moral choice is a bit clearer under fascism. This might also explain why Communist dictatorships have tended to be more durable than fascist ones.
That said, having reflected, I think one can say that Hitler was a notch more evil than Stalin, because Hitler's intent with the Holocaust was to eradicate the Jewish people, and while there was a programme of Russification within the USSR, and particular ethnic groups like the Crimean Tartars were particularly targeted, the single-minded and ideological pursuit of the destruction of the Jewish people was, I think, on a distinctly more evil level.
Wolf more dangerous when donning the sheepskin? Yes, can be. But tbh, 'Hitler or Stalin more evil?', I don't find it that useful a question, but if forced to take it I neither find it that difficult. Hitler. There's just no shred of a redeeming factor, or anything not wholly evil, in what he believed or did in the name of it.
And there is with Stalin? Really? Do you think Stalin cared for anyone who he had murdered?
The argument made for Stalin is that though his methods were hideous, he did have a positive goal - the building of a strong economy and a socialist state.
Hitler wasn't even really trying to do that.
It is a naive argument, reliant on taking Stalin's statements at face value while interrogating Hitler's on the assumption he was a liar.
Is it untenable? Well, he did see the Soviet Union make considerable progress in heavy industry - but not, contrary to popular belief, significantly more than elsewhere. This was at a terrible cost in agriculture, light industry and service sectors.
But then - you could make a similar argument for Hitler if you only looked at the figures and didn't bother to check what they mean.
The real issue, of course, is that Hitler was demonstrated to be evil and incompetent. Stalin managed to fool people into thinking he was alright until after he was dead.
It's a naive argument if advanced as apologism for Stalin - but it's a valid input for performing a comparison of him to Hitler.
Well, not really. Because actually, it assumes Stalin wasn't a liar when he talked of his idealism while accepting Hitler was.
It doesn't assume that. Stalin could have been a non believer in Communism and that still isn't equivalent to Hitler who DID believe his shtick of master race global dominion and the enslavement of all others.
The wisdom of ChatGPT should be the final word on the matter:
It is not appropriate to compare the evil actions of historical figures in a quantitative manner. Both Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin were responsible for atrocities and human rights abuses that caused immeasurable suffering and loss of life. Hitler's leadership of Nazi Germany led to the Holocaust, the systematic extermination of six million Jews and millions of others considered "undesirable" by the regime. Stalin's regime in the Soviet Union was characterized by widespread purges, forced collectivization, and the establishment of the Gulag system of prison camps, causing the death of millions of people through execution, starvation, and overwork. Both leaders left a legacy of tragedy and it is important to remember the lessons of history to prevent similar atrocities from happening again in the future.
Chat GPT recites banalities. He’ll get a 2:2 but not a higher degree.
The Beggar King is in a Ford Galaxy on the M11 so pb's 101st Chairborne will be getting excited over that providing a welcome change from the trans shit and HS2 minutiae very soon.
We - and Russia to, for that matter - are a nation that survived WWII only because of US aid, so it's a bit charmless to get sniffy about someone else in a comparable situation.
So the Russian nation would have ceased to exist during WW2 had it not been for US aid? What a loony.
PS Would it be gazetted somewhere if Johnson were to receive his US citizenship back, or is it only renunciations that get publicly noted?
PPS Some Ford Galaxies from the mid-noughties had front seats that could turn round and face the back. Now that's what I call a cool car.
The Germans made it to the Moscow suburbs in WWII. It doesn't take much changes to the timeline to them making it a bit further...
For example, the US and UK provided *all* the hi octane aviation gasoline for the USSR. It was only postwar that they got their cracking plants lined up to make it.
Vast amount of machine tools - in some categories, 100% of the tools and 100% of the tooling was Lendlease supplied. Without that, Soviet production would have crawled to a halt.
And so on in many categories - the % of USSR GDP was small, but LendLease was about supplying materials and equipment they were short of. Or literally didn't have.
The fall of Moscow, or even of both Moscow and Leningrad as it then was, would not in itself have come anywhere near making the Soviet government seek to agree terms with Germany. More than 1000 large factories were shipped eastwards. The USSR would certainly have continued fighting. Sure, they could have been defeated but the fall of Moscow wouldn't have done for them.
Do you regret that the USA and Britain gave such substantial assistance to their Soviet ally during WW2/the GPW? Or is it a very different Germany now but a very similar Russia, so western policy was good then (fight with Russia against Germany) and western policy is also good now (pointing towards fighting with Germany against Russia this time round)?
Stalin was evil, but less evil than Hitler.
"If Hitler invaded Hell, I would make at least a favourable reference of the Devil in the House of Commons."
So here's the thing - I am less sure of this than I used to be. Hitler evil, absolutely. He started the war that saw millions dead and initiated the holocaust.
But how many did Stalin kill? The famine in Ukraine, the gulags, the show trials, all of it. Why does Uncle Joe get a pass to be less evil than Hitler?
The main distinction I would draw would be that Stalin came to power in the USSR on a platform of "Socialism in one country" - a recognition that the attempt to spread communist revolution to the rest of the world had failed, and there was a need for the Bolsheviks to consolidate their power within their borders.
By contrast, the core of Hitler's ideology was the idea of the German need for Lebensraum, and consequently aggressive military expansion.
Bluntly, Stalin was content to kill people within his borders, while Hitler sought to kill people in the lands outside Germany's borders. The latter is more dangerous than the former.
This distinction might be more a consequence of the different levels of capability than ideology, but it's also true that the strong evil guy is more of a threat than the weak evil guy.
Also with Communism, for all the horrors enacted in its name, there was an arguably non-heinous idea at its core. This isn't the case with Hitler and the Nazis. The ideology there, the industrial scale subjugation of other people by a master race, is wholly abhorent in every sense and on every level.
Doesn't that make the Communist authoritarianism worse to some extent? It means that well-meaning people can go along with evil, "For The Greater Good," while the moral choice is a bit clearer under fascism. This might also explain why Communist dictatorships have tended to be more durable than fascist ones.
That said, having reflected, I think one can say that Hitler was a notch more evil than Stalin, because Hitler's intent with the Holocaust was to eradicate the Jewish people, and while there was a programme of Russification within the USSR, and particular ethnic groups like the Crimean Tartars were particularly targeted, the single-minded and ideological pursuit of the destruction of the Jewish people was, I think, on a distinctly more evil level.
Wolf more dangerous when donning the sheepskin? Yes, can be. But tbh, 'Hitler or Stalin more evil?', I don't find it that useful a question, but if forced to take it I neither find it that difficult. Hitler. There's just no shred of a redeeming factor, or anything not wholly evil, in what he believed or did in the name of it.
And there is with Stalin? Really? Do you think Stalin cared for anyone who he had murdered?
The argument made for Stalin is that though his methods were hideous, he did have a positive goal - the building of a strong economy and a socialist state.
Hitler wasn't even really trying to do that.
It is a naive argument, reliant on taking Stalin's statements at face value while interrogating Hitler's on the assumption he was a liar.
Is it untenable? Well, he did see the Soviet Union make considerable progress in heavy industry - but not, contrary to popular belief, significantly more than elsewhere. This was at a terrible cost in agriculture, light industry and service sectors.
But then - you could make a similar argument for Hitler if you only looked at the figures and didn't bother to check what they mean.
The real issue, of course, is that Hitler was demonstrated to be evil and incompetent. Stalin managed to fool people into thinking he was alright until after he was dead.
It's a naive argument if advanced as apologism for Stalin - but it's a valid input for performing a comparison of him to Hitler.
Well, not really. Because actually, it assumes Stalin wasn't a liar when he talked of his idealism while accepting Hitler was.
It doesn't assume that. Stalin could have been a non believer in Communism and that still isn't equivalent to Hitler who DID believe his shtick of master race global dominion and the enslavement of all others.
The wisdom of ChatGPT should be the final word on the matter:
It is not appropriate to compare the evil actions of historical figures in a quantitative manner. Both Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin were responsible for atrocities and human rights abuses that caused immeasurable suffering and loss of life. Hitler's leadership of Nazi Germany led to the Holocaust, the systematic extermination of six million Jews and millions of others considered "undesirable" by the regime. Stalin's regime in the Soviet Union was characterized by widespread purges, forced collectivization, and the establishment of the Gulag system of prison camps, causing the death of millions of people through execution, starvation, and overwork. Both leaders left a legacy of tragedy and it is important to remember the lessons of history to prevent similar atrocities from happening again in the future.
It is deliciously ironic that ChatGTP says you shouldn't compare the two and does exactly that.
What is worse? An overtly evil ideology, like Nazism? Or an ideology like communism or islamism, that professes to be good, but which is in fact, evil?
Strange that Sturgeon - very able as she is - should stumble over a couple of things much less gifted people would avoid.
With GRR all you have to do to avoid trouble is to shadow what England and Wales is doing (don't ask, no idea), take any credit and blame any problems on Westminster. Standard stuff.
With GE as 'proxy referendum' you cannot win. If you poll 50%+ everyone else says tough, we never recognised this. If you don't poll 50%+ you have lost on your own terms, and your enemies as well as other parties will be quick to point it out.
Since the Brexit 52/48 vote, pressing for a referendum except when support for the change is so strong it's irresistible is a bit out of fashion.
Why is this gifted (though wrong) politician not doing gritty everyday campaigning to get support for independence up to 60-65%, from which position she could actually get what she says she wants? Since Brexit she is not exactly short of material to work with.
That’s the point Salmond was making on WATO yesterday - why pick a fight with Westminster over this, rather than, for example, something Europe related which could be tied in with the economy/cost of living?
Why are we ruling out that she wants to deliver a longstanding commitment that she also believes in?
Comes under an increasing reluctance to assume ANY good faith in the motives of one's opponents.
Which you both clearly demonstrate yourselves.
I mean the reason the move was opposed was not because people might be concerned about say convicted male rapists being allowed into women's prisons but because such people wanted to create a culture war, have a wedge issue, play dirty politics.
there is more of that on the anti (GRR) side than the pro.
Which of the concerns about the GRR Bill raised by its critics (and dismissed by Sturgeon as “not valid”) have proved not to be?
Well the bill hasn't passed so one can't really say. We need to look at what's happened in countries - Ireland being the closest to home - where similar HAS been done. What we certainly do seem to have in Scotland is an issue with risk assessment for prisons. Are you claiming that this specific recent case shows that all the fears raised - no more single sex spaces, women's rights destroyed, floodgates opened for predatory men to gain GRCs for nefarious purposes, end of sex as a biological concept etc etc - are rational and justified? If you are I think that's a stretch.
You claimed that critics were more driving the issue as a “wedge issue” but have no evidence - so now retreat behind “the bill hasn’t passed”. I ask again, where is the evidence that critics were driven by trying to create a wedge, or were their concerns “not valid” to quote Sturgeon?
Claiming it’s a “wedge issue” is another tactic to delegitimise your opponents views - which is why they weren’t listened to, which is why it’s in the mess it’s in. If you really were interested in trans rights you’d have listened.
Good to know that Alistair McConnachie of UK A Force For Good, Joseph Finnie ex BNP and Fox regular Andy Ngo supported the Let Women Speak rally on Sunday to show their concerns rather than use it as a wedge issue.
So mandatory fox hunting and animal cruelty? Mustn't support a cause that the Hugo Boss fashionistas like....
Yeah, you’ve tried that lumbering zinger before. The point attempting to be made was that this was not being used as a wedge issue in a culture war. I’ll add you to the list of credulous folk who think that.
I am rather taken aback by the resistance we are encountering on this one.
"Ok, listen up peeps, how can we use this Transgender thing to peel away votes from the other side?"
Can there seriously be any doubt that the above is playing out far more in Tory brainstorming sessions than in those of LAB/LD/SNP?
If we can't win this argument on here we might as well give up and put the kettle on.
When you and @Theuniondivvie are of the opinion that the only people who are on the other side are the "BNP", "Trump", "InfoWars" and assorted other troglodytes then yes its certainly possible and there certainly is doubt.
Of course it shouldn't be playing out in any such sessions for any party and instead the legitimate concerns of both sides should be listened to, but the two of you in particular are never in any mood for that, hence the desire to mock everyone who disagrees as being a "wedge" or "InfoWars" instead of listening to their very valid concerns.
That's what people like you do, characterise a pointing out of dubious fellow travellers as saying they are 'the only people who are on the other side', which is lying, which makes you a...?
Whilst people like you refuse to ever admit that there is ever anything awry. Nothing to apologise for.
I have lived with a Scot for 30 years. It would seem "sorry" is not a word north of the border. Instead, there is a third person in our marriage, myself, my wife - and the mysterious damage fairy, who has to take responsibility for all unexplained incidents that might otherwise point to the Good Lady Wife.
My wife never apologises for anything either (and why should she as she is infallible). And yet she isn't Scottish while I am. Go figure!
Does that mean that if I self ID as female, I will no longer need to apologise for anything?
Yes, that's right. And you will always put the toilet lid down.
Surely a true gentleman always does that anyway?
(I was persuaded on this point by by now-wife, who argued that - when we were a household of two - that there was a higher probability the next user would want the toilet seat down than up. I'm a sucker for - even postulative - statistical argument.)
Nah, that only works if she is referring to the middle ring bit. Putting the lid down conveniences no-one.
Best is lid up, ring bit down Second is lid up, ring bit up
Have a word.
If you flush with the lid up you spread germs, and in some cases shit, all round the bathroom.
Your choice...
I have never in my life seen fecal matter or any other matter spread around the room when I flush.
I looked it up. There was a investigation a few years ago apparantly.
Given that I get hit with a stick by Mrs Stocky if I don't check for and remedy pan-skiddies this mean that I now have to do my dirty business, put lid down, wait for the flush, lift lid up, make good as necessary, put lid down again.
FFS.
If your solids are... solid, then I don't think there's likely to be much aerosolisation of fecal matter.
Plus, if you've launched a Queen Mary you want to keep the lid up to check she's sailed away, surely?
The Beggar King is in a Ford Galaxy on the M11 so pb's 101st Chairborne will be getting excited over that providing a welcome change from the trans shit and HS2 minutiae very soon.
We - and Russia to, for that matter - are a nation that survived WWII only because of US aid, so it's a bit charmless to get sniffy about someone else in a comparable situation.
So the Russian nation would have ceased to exist during WW2 had it not been for US aid? What a loony.
PS Would it be gazetted somewhere if Johnson were to receive his US citizenship back, or is it only renunciations that get publicly noted?
PPS Some Ford Galaxies from the mid-noughties had front seats that could turn round and face the back. Now that's what I call a cool car.
The Germans made it to the Moscow suburbs in WWII. It doesn't take much changes to the timeline to them making it a bit further...
For example, the US and UK provided *all* the hi octane aviation gasoline for the USSR. It was only postwar that they got their cracking plants lined up to make it.
Vast amount of machine tools - in some categories, 100% of the tools and 100% of the tooling was Lendlease supplied. Without that, Soviet production would have crawled to a halt.
And so on in many categories - the % of USSR GDP was small, but LendLease was about supplying materials and equipment they were short of. Or literally didn't have.
The fall of Moscow, or even of both Moscow and Leningrad as it then was, would not in itself have come anywhere near making the Soviet government seek to agree terms with Germany. More than 1000 large factories were shipped eastwards. The USSR would certainly have continued fighting. Sure, they could have been defeated but the fall of Moscow wouldn't have done for them.
Do you regret that the USA and Britain gave such substantial assistance to their Soviet ally during WW2/the GPW? Or is it a very different Germany now but a very similar Russia, so western policy was good then (fight with Russia against Germany) and western policy is also good now (pointing towards fighting with Germany against Russia this time round)?
Stalin was evil, but less evil than Hitler.
"If Hitler invaded Hell, I would make at least a favourable reference of the Devil in the House of Commons."
So here's the thing - I am less sure of this than I used to be. Hitler evil, absolutely. He started the war that saw millions dead and initiated the holocaust.
But how many did Stalin kill? The famine in Ukraine, the gulags, the show trials, all of it. Why does Uncle Joe get a pass to be less evil than Hitler?
The main distinction I would draw would be that Stalin came to power in the USSR on a platform of "Socialism in one country" - a recognition that the attempt to spread communist revolution to the rest of the world had failed, and there was a need for the Bolsheviks to consolidate their power within their borders.
By contrast, the core of Hitler's ideology was the idea of the German need for Lebensraum, and consequently aggressive military expansion.
Bluntly, Stalin was content to kill people within his borders, while Hitler sought to kill people in the lands outside Germany's borders. The latter is more dangerous than the former.
This distinction might be more a consequence of the different levels of capability than ideology, but it's also true that the strong evil guy is more of a threat than the weak evil guy.
Also with Communism, for all the horrors enacted in its name, there was an arguably non-heinous idea at its core. This isn't the case with Hitler and the Nazis. The ideology there, the industrial scale subjugation of other people by a master race, is wholly abhorent in every sense and on every level.
Doesn't that make the Communist authoritarianism worse to some extent? It means that well-meaning people can go along with evil, "For The Greater Good," while the moral choice is a bit clearer under fascism. This might also explain why Communist dictatorships have tended to be more durable than fascist ones.
That said, having reflected, I think one can say that Hitler was a notch more evil than Stalin, because Hitler's intent with the Holocaust was to eradicate the Jewish people, and while there was a programme of Russification within the USSR, and particular ethnic groups like the Crimean Tartars were particularly targeted, the single-minded and ideological pursuit of the destruction of the Jewish people was, I think, on a distinctly more evil level.
Wolf more dangerous when donning the sheepskin? Yes, can be. But tbh, 'Hitler or Stalin more evil?', I don't find it that useful a question, but if forced to take it I neither find it that difficult. Hitler. There's just no shred of a redeeming factor, or anything not wholly evil, in what he believed or did in the name of it.
And there is with Stalin? Really? Do you think Stalin cared for anyone who he had murdered?
The argument made for Stalin is that though his methods were hideous, he did have a positive goal - the building of a strong economy and a socialist state.
Hitler wasn't even really trying to do that.
It is a naive argument, reliant on taking Stalin's statements at face value while interrogating Hitler's on the assumption he was a liar.
Is it untenable? Well, he did see the Soviet Union make considerable progress in heavy industry - but not, contrary to popular belief, significantly more than elsewhere. This was at a terrible cost in agriculture, light industry and service sectors.
But then - you could make a similar argument for Hitler if you only looked at the figures and didn't bother to check what they mean.
The real issue, of course, is that Hitler was demonstrated to be evil and incompetent. Stalin managed to fool people into thinking he was alright until after he was dead.
It's a naive argument if advanced as apologism for Stalin - but it's a valid input for performing a comparison of him to Hitler.
Well, not really. Because actually, it assumes Stalin wasn't a liar when he talked of his idealism while accepting Hitler was.
It doesn't assume that. Stalin could have been a non believer in Communism and that still isn't equivalent to Hitler who DID believe his shtick of master race global dominion and the enslavement of all others.
The wisdom of ChatGPT should be the final word on the matter:
It is not appropriate to compare the evil actions of historical figures in a quantitative manner. Both Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin were responsible for atrocities and human rights abuses that caused immeasurable suffering and loss of life. Hitler's leadership of Nazi Germany led to the Holocaust, the systematic extermination of six million Jews and millions of others considered "undesirable" by the regime. Stalin's regime in the Soviet Union was characterized by widespread purges, forced collectivization, and the establishment of the Gulag system of prison camps, causing the death of millions of people through execution, starvation, and overwork. Both leaders left a legacy of tragedy and it is important to remember the lessons of history to prevent similar atrocities from happening again in the future.
Decent effort from Chatbot there. Half right - it IS inappropriate to do a 'who was most evil?' comparison. Half wrong - if forced to do it, you can, and it's H.
The Beggar King is in a Ford Galaxy on the M11 so pb's 101st Chairborne will be getting excited over that providing a welcome change from the trans shit and HS2 minutiae very soon.
We - and Russia to, for that matter - are a nation that survived WWII only because of US aid, so it's a bit charmless to get sniffy about someone else in a comparable situation.
So the Russian nation would have ceased to exist during WW2 had it not been for US aid? What a loony.
PS Would it be gazetted somewhere if Johnson were to receive his US citizenship back, or is it only renunciations that get publicly noted?
PPS Some Ford Galaxies from the mid-noughties had front seats that could turn round and face the back. Now that's what I call a cool car.
The Germans made it to the Moscow suburbs in WWII. It doesn't take much changes to the timeline to them making it a bit further...
For example, the US and UK provided *all* the hi octane aviation gasoline for the USSR. It was only postwar that they got their cracking plants lined up to make it.
Vast amount of machine tools - in some categories, 100% of the tools and 100% of the tooling was Lendlease supplied. Without that, Soviet production would have crawled to a halt.
And so on in many categories - the % of USSR GDP was small, but LendLease was about supplying materials and equipment they were short of. Or literally didn't have.
The fall of Moscow, or even of both Moscow and Leningrad as it then was, would not in itself have come anywhere near making the Soviet government seek to agree terms with Germany. More than 1000 large factories were shipped eastwards. The USSR would certainly have continued fighting. Sure, they could have been defeated but the fall of Moscow wouldn't have done for them.
Do you regret that the USA and Britain gave such substantial assistance to their Soviet ally during WW2/the GPW? Or is it a very different Germany now but a very similar Russia, so western policy was good then (fight with Russia against Germany) and western policy is also good now (pointing towards fighting with Germany against Russia this time round)?
Stalin was evil, but less evil than Hitler.
"If Hitler invaded Hell, I would make at least a favourable reference of the Devil in the House of Commons."
So here's the thing - I am less sure of this than I used to be. Hitler evil, absolutely. He started the war that saw millions dead and initiated the holocaust.
But how many did Stalin kill? The famine in Ukraine, the gulags, the show trials, all of it. Why does Uncle Joe get a pass to be less evil than Hitler?
The main distinction I would draw would be that Stalin came to power in the USSR on a platform of "Socialism in one country" - a recognition that the attempt to spread communist revolution to the rest of the world had failed, and there was a need for the Bolsheviks to consolidate their power within their borders.
By contrast, the core of Hitler's ideology was the idea of the German need for Lebensraum, and consequently aggressive military expansion.
Bluntly, Stalin was content to kill people within his borders, while Hitler sought to kill people in the lands outside Germany's borders. The latter is more dangerous than the former.
This distinction might be more a consequence of the different levels of capability than ideology, but it's also true that the strong evil guy is more of a threat than the weak evil guy.
Also with Communism, for all the horrors enacted in its name, there was an arguably non-heinous idea at its core. This isn't the case with Hitler and the Nazis. The ideology there, the industrial scale subjugation of other people by a master race, is wholly abhorent in every sense and on every level.
Doesn't that make the Communist authoritarianism worse to some extent? It means that well-meaning people can go along with evil, "For The Greater Good," while the moral choice is a bit clearer under fascism. This might also explain why Communist dictatorships have tended to be more durable than fascist ones.
That said, having reflected, I think one can say that Hitler was a notch more evil than Stalin, because Hitler's intent with the Holocaust was to eradicate the Jewish people, and while there was a programme of Russification within the USSR, and particular ethnic groups like the Crimean Tartars were particularly targeted, the single-minded and ideological pursuit of the destruction of the Jewish people was, I think, on a distinctly more evil level.
Wolf more dangerous when donning the sheepskin? Yes, can be. But tbh, 'Hitler or Stalin more evil?', I don't find it that useful a question, but if forced to take it I neither find it that difficult. Hitler. There's just no shred of a redeeming factor, or anything not wholly evil, in what he believed or did in the name of it.
And there is with Stalin? Really? Do you think Stalin cared for anyone who he had murdered?
Nor did Ted Bundy. I'm not comparing them like that. I'm looking at the whole thing, the ideology and what they did to further it. The ideology of Communism isn't as wholly and irredeemably evil as that of Nazism. This doesn't mean Stalin wasn't evil. He damn well was. Very.
I don’t think communism and Nazism are that far apart tbh. Both suppress the individual for the whole state. Both require massive state terror to implement. Both end up murdering. I don’t give a fig if it’s killing foreigners vs killing Russians, and besides, Stalins troops gladly marched into Poland and murdered Poles with abandon. I think too many think that extreme left views are better than extreme right. They are wrong.
Would the Lawrence murder be essentially the same crime in your view without the racist motive?
Yes.
I don’t think the reason for your murder lessens or worsens the fact of your murder.
I don’t Kulaks went happily to the grave for the ‘greater good’.
Thought so. There's our difference.
How would you convince me to your way of thinking?
Strange that Sturgeon - very able as she is - should stumble over a couple of things much less gifted people would avoid.
With GRR all you have to do to avoid trouble is to shadow what England and Wales is doing (don't ask, no idea), take any credit and blame any problems on Westminster. Standard stuff.
With GE as 'proxy referendum' you cannot win. If you poll 50%+ everyone else says tough, we never recognised this. If you don't poll 50%+ you have lost on your own terms, and your enemies as well as other parties will be quick to point it out.
Since the Brexit 52/48 vote, pressing for a referendum except when support for the change is so strong it's irresistible is a bit out of fashion.
Why is this gifted (though wrong) politician not doing gritty everyday campaigning to get support for independence up to 60-65%, from which position she could actually get what she says she wants? Since Brexit she is not exactly short of material to work with.
That’s the point Salmond was making on WATO yesterday - why pick a fight with Westminster over this, rather than, for example, something Europe related which could be tied in with the economy/cost of living?
Why are we ruling out that she wants to deliver a longstanding commitment that she also believes in?
Comes under an increasing reluctance to assume ANY good faith in the motives of one's opponents.
Which you both clearly demonstrate yourselves.
I mean the reason the move was opposed was not because people might be concerned about say convicted male rapists being allowed into women's prisons but because such people wanted to create a culture war, have a wedge issue, play dirty politics.
there is more of that on the anti (GRR) side than the pro.
Which of the concerns about the GRR Bill raised by its critics (and dismissed by Sturgeon as “not valid”) have proved not to be?
Well the bill hasn't passed so one can't really say. We need to look at what's happened in countries - Ireland being the closest to home - where similar HAS been done. What we certainly do seem to have in Scotland is an issue with risk assessment for prisons. Are you claiming that this specific recent case shows that all the fears raised - no more single sex spaces, women's rights destroyed, floodgates opened for predatory men to gain GRCs for nefarious purposes, end of sex as a biological concept etc etc - are rational and justified? If you are I think that's a stretch.
You claimed that critics were more driving the issue as a “wedge issue” but have no evidence - so now retreat behind “the bill hasn’t passed”. I ask again, where is the evidence that critics were driven by trying to create a wedge, or were their concerns “not valid” to quote Sturgeon?
Claiming it’s a “wedge issue” is another tactic to delegitimise your opponents views - which is why they weren’t listened to, which is why it’s in the mess it’s in. If you really were interested in trans rights you’d have listened.
Good to know that Alistair McConnachie of UK A Force For Good, Joseph Finnie ex BNP and Fox regular Andy Ngo supported the Let Women Speak rally on Sunday to show their concerns rather than use it as a wedge issue.
So mandatory fox hunting and animal cruelty? Mustn't support a cause that the Hugo Boss fashionistas like....
Yeah, you’ve tried that lumbering zinger before. The point attempting to be made was that this was not being used as a wedge issue in a culture war. I’ll add you to the list of credulous folk who think that.
I am rather taken aback by the resistance we are encountering on this one.
"Ok, listen up peeps, how can we use this Transgender thing to peel away votes from the other side?"
Can there seriously be any doubt that the above is playing out far more in Tory brainstorming sessions than in those of LAB/LD/SNP?
If we can't win this argument on here we might as well give up and put the kettle on.
When you and @Theuniondivvie are of the opinion that the only people who are on the other side are the "BNP", "Trump", "InfoWars" and assorted other troglodytes then yes its certainly possible and there certainly is doubt.
Of course it shouldn't be playing out in any such sessions for any party and instead the legitimate concerns of both sides should be listened to, but the two of you in particular are never in any mood for that, hence the desire to mock everyone who disagrees as being a "wedge" or "InfoWars" instead of listening to their very valid concerns.
That's what people like you do, characterise a pointing out of dubious fellow travellers as saying they are 'the only people who are on the other side', which is lying, which makes you a...?
Whilst people like you refuse to ever admit that there is ever anything awry. Nothing to apologise for.
I have lived with a Scot for 30 years. It would seem "sorry" is not a word north of the border. Instead, there is a third person in our marriage, myself, my wife - and the mysterious damage fairy, who has to take responsibility for all unexplained incidents that might otherwise point to the Good Lady Wife.
My wife never apologises for anything either (and why should she as she is infallible). And yet she isn't Scottish while I am. Go figure!
Does that mean that if I self ID as female, I will no longer need to apologise for anything?
Yes, that's right. And you will always put the toilet lid down.
Surely a true gentleman always does that anyway?
(I was persuaded on this point by by now-wife, who argued that - when we were a household of two - that there was a higher probability the next user would want the toilet seat down than up. I'm a sucker for - even postulative - statistical argument.)
Nah, that only works if she is referring to the middle ring bit. Putting the lid down conveniences no-one.
Best is lid up, ring bit down Second is lid up, ring bit up
Have a word.
If you flush with the lid up you spread germs, and in some cases shit, all round the bathroom.
Your choice...
I have never in my life seen fecal matter or any other matter spread around the room when I flush.
I looked it up. There was a investigation a few years ago apparantly.
Given that I get hit with a stick by Mrs Stocky if I don't check for and remedy pan-skiddies this mean that I now have to do my dirty business, put lid down, wait for the flush, lift lid up, make good as necessary, put lid down again.
FFS.
If your solids are... solid, then I don't think there's likely to be much aerosolisation of fecal matter.
Plus, if you've launched a Queen Mary you want to keep the lid up to check she's sailed away, surely?
Yes that's absolutely crucial. And beware the delayed comeback. Don't rush off.
The Beggar King is in a Ford Galaxy on the M11 so pb's 101st Chairborne will be getting excited over that providing a welcome change from the trans shit and HS2 minutiae very soon.
We - and Russia to, for that matter - are a nation that survived WWII only because of US aid, so it's a bit charmless to get sniffy about someone else in a comparable situation.
So the Russian nation would have ceased to exist during WW2 had it not been for US aid? What a loony.
PS Would it be gazetted somewhere if Johnson were to receive his US citizenship back, or is it only renunciations that get publicly noted?
PPS Some Ford Galaxies from the mid-noughties had front seats that could turn round and face the back. Now that's what I call a cool car.
The Germans made it to the Moscow suburbs in WWII. It doesn't take much changes to the timeline to them making it a bit further...
For example, the US and UK provided *all* the hi octane aviation gasoline for the USSR. It was only postwar that they got their cracking plants lined up to make it.
Vast amount of machine tools - in some categories, 100% of the tools and 100% of the tooling was Lendlease supplied. Without that, Soviet production would have crawled to a halt.
And so on in many categories - the % of USSR GDP was small, but LendLease was about supplying materials and equipment they were short of. Or literally didn't have.
The fall of Moscow, or even of both Moscow and Leningrad as it then was, would not in itself have come anywhere near making the Soviet government seek to agree terms with Germany. More than 1000 large factories were shipped eastwards. The USSR would certainly have continued fighting. Sure, they could have been defeated but the fall of Moscow wouldn't have done for them.
Do you regret that the USA and Britain gave such substantial assistance to their Soviet ally during WW2/the GPW? Or is it a very different Germany now but a very similar Russia, so western policy was good then (fight with Russia against Germany) and western policy is also good now (pointing towards fighting with Germany against Russia this time round)?
Stalin was evil, but less evil than Hitler.
"If Hitler invaded Hell, I would make at least a favourable reference of the Devil in the House of Commons."
So here's the thing - I am less sure of this than I used to be. Hitler evil, absolutely. He started the war that saw millions dead and initiated the holocaust.
But how many did Stalin kill? The famine in Ukraine, the gulags, the show trials, all of it. Why does Uncle Joe get a pass to be less evil than Hitler?
The main distinction I would draw would be that Stalin came to power in the USSR on a platform of "Socialism in one country" - a recognition that the attempt to spread communist revolution to the rest of the world had failed, and there was a need for the Bolsheviks to consolidate their power within their borders.
By contrast, the core of Hitler's ideology was the idea of the German need for Lebensraum, and consequently aggressive military expansion.
Bluntly, Stalin was content to kill people within his borders, while Hitler sought to kill people in the lands outside Germany's borders. The latter is more dangerous than the former.
This distinction might be more a consequence of the different levels of capability than ideology, but it's also true that the strong evil guy is more of a threat than the weak evil guy.
Also with Communism, for all the horrors enacted in its name, there was an arguably non-heinous idea at its core. This isn't the case with Hitler and the Nazis. The ideology there, the industrial scale subjugation of other people by a master race, is wholly abhorent in every sense and on every level.
Doesn't that make the Communist authoritarianism worse to some extent? It means that well-meaning people can go along with evil, "For The Greater Good," while the moral choice is a bit clearer under fascism. This might also explain why Communist dictatorships have tended to be more durable than fascist ones.
That said, having reflected, I think one can say that Hitler was a notch more evil than Stalin, because Hitler's intent with the Holocaust was to eradicate the Jewish people, and while there was a programme of Russification within the USSR, and particular ethnic groups like the Crimean Tartars were particularly targeted, the single-minded and ideological pursuit of the destruction of the Jewish people was, I think, on a distinctly more evil level.
Wolf more dangerous when donning the sheepskin? Yes, can be. But tbh, 'Hitler or Stalin more evil?', I don't find it that useful a question, but if forced to take it I neither find it that difficult. Hitler. There's just no shred of a redeeming factor, or anything not wholly evil, in what he believed or did in the name of it.
And there is with Stalin? Really? Do you think Stalin cared for anyone who he had murdered?
The argument made for Stalin is that though his methods were hideous, he did have a positive goal - the building of a strong economy and a socialist state.
Hitler wasn't even really trying to do that.
It is a naive argument, reliant on taking Stalin's statements at face value while interrogating Hitler's on the assumption he was a liar.
Is it untenable? Well, he did see the Soviet Union make considerable progress in heavy industry - but not, contrary to popular belief, significantly more than elsewhere. This was at a terrible cost in agriculture, light industry and service sectors.
But then - you could make a similar argument for Hitler if you only looked at the figures and didn't bother to check what they mean.
The real issue, of course, is that Hitler was demonstrated to be evil and incompetent. Stalin managed to fool people into thinking he was alright until after he was dead.
It's a naive argument if advanced as apologism for Stalin - but it's a valid input for performing a comparison of him to Hitler.
Well, not really. Because actually, it assumes Stalin wasn't a liar when he talked of his idealism while accepting Hitler was.
It doesn't assume that. Stalin could have been a non believer in Communism and that still isn't equivalent to Hitler who DID believe his shtick of master race global dominion and the enslavement of all others.
And there is perfectly encapsulated exactly what I am talking about.
I agree with the essence of the article that a FT2 is likely to be a disaster. But this got me thinking: ...reboots of almost everything, barring perhaps the first return of Frasier, are almost always inferior to the originals.
I am not sure about Frasier (which I liked) - was that ever really rebooted - seems like a continuum to me.
But, Blackadder, now that was truly reworked, reshaped, reorientated, and rebooted in series two onwards - to tremendous effect.
The Beggar King is in a Ford Galaxy on the M11 so pb's 101st Chairborne will be getting excited over that providing a welcome change from the trans shit and HS2 minutiae very soon.
We - and Russia to, for that matter - are a nation that survived WWII only because of US aid, so it's a bit charmless to get sniffy about someone else in a comparable situation.
So the Russian nation would have ceased to exist during WW2 had it not been for US aid? What a loony.
PS Would it be gazetted somewhere if Johnson were to receive his US citizenship back, or is it only renunciations that get publicly noted?
PPS Some Ford Galaxies from the mid-noughties had front seats that could turn round and face the back. Now that's what I call a cool car.
The Germans made it to the Moscow suburbs in WWII. It doesn't take much changes to the timeline to them making it a bit further...
For example, the US and UK provided *all* the hi octane aviation gasoline for the USSR. It was only postwar that they got their cracking plants lined up to make it.
Vast amount of machine tools - in some categories, 100% of the tools and 100% of the tooling was Lendlease supplied. Without that, Soviet production would have crawled to a halt.
And so on in many categories - the % of USSR GDP was small, but LendLease was about supplying materials and equipment they were short of. Or literally didn't have.
The fall of Moscow, or even of both Moscow and Leningrad as it then was, would not in itself have come anywhere near making the Soviet government seek to agree terms with Germany. More than 1000 large factories were shipped eastwards. The USSR would certainly have continued fighting. Sure, they could have been defeated but the fall of Moscow wouldn't have done for them.
Do you regret that the USA and Britain gave such substantial assistance to their Soviet ally during WW2/the GPW? Or is it a very different Germany now but a very similar Russia, so western policy was good then (fight with Russia against Germany) and western policy is also good now (pointing towards fighting with Germany against Russia this time round)?
Stalin was evil, but less evil than Hitler.
"If Hitler invaded Hell, I would make at least a favourable reference of the Devil in the House of Commons."
So here's the thing - I am less sure of this than I used to be. Hitler evil, absolutely. He started the war that saw millions dead and initiated the holocaust.
But how many did Stalin kill? The famine in Ukraine, the gulags, the show trials, all of it. Why does Uncle Joe get a pass to be less evil than Hitler?
The main distinction I would draw would be that Stalin came to power in the USSR on a platform of "Socialism in one country" - a recognition that the attempt to spread communist revolution to the rest of the world had failed, and there was a need for the Bolsheviks to consolidate their power within their borders.
By contrast, the core of Hitler's ideology was the idea of the German need for Lebensraum, and consequently aggressive military expansion.
Bluntly, Stalin was content to kill people within his borders, while Hitler sought to kill people in the lands outside Germany's borders. The latter is more dangerous than the former.
This distinction might be more a consequence of the different levels of capability than ideology, but it's also true that the strong evil guy is more of a threat than the weak evil guy.
Also with Communism, for all the horrors enacted in its name, there was an arguably non-heinous idea at its core. This isn't the case with Hitler and the Nazis. The ideology there, the industrial scale subjugation of other people by a master race, is wholly abhorent in every sense and on every level.
Doesn't that make the Communist authoritarianism worse to some extent? It means that well-meaning people can go along with evil, "For The Greater Good," while the moral choice is a bit clearer under fascism. This might also explain why Communist dictatorships have tended to be more durable than fascist ones.
That said, having reflected, I think one can say that Hitler was a notch more evil than Stalin, because Hitler's intent with the Holocaust was to eradicate the Jewish people, and while there was a programme of Russification within the USSR, and particular ethnic groups like the Crimean Tartars were particularly targeted, the single-minded and ideological pursuit of the destruction of the Jewish people was, I think, on a distinctly more evil level.
Wolf more dangerous when donning the sheepskin? Yes, can be. But tbh, 'Hitler or Stalin more evil?', I don't find it that useful a question, but if forced to take it I neither find it that difficult. Hitler. There's just no shred of a redeeming factor, or anything not wholly evil, in what he believed or did in the name of it.
And there is with Stalin? Really? Do you think Stalin cared for anyone who he had murdered?
The argument made for Stalin is that though his methods were hideous, he did have a positive goal - the building of a strong economy and a socialist state.
Hitler wasn't even really trying to do that.
It is a naive argument, reliant on taking Stalin's statements at face value while interrogating Hitler's on the assumption he was a liar.
Is it untenable? Well, he did see the Soviet Union make considerable progress in heavy industry - but not, contrary to popular belief, significantly more than elsewhere. This was at a terrible cost in agriculture, light industry and service sectors.
But then - you could make a similar argument for Hitler if you only looked at the figures and didn't bother to check what they mean.
The real issue, of course, is that Hitler was demonstrated to be evil and incompetent. Stalin managed to fool people into thinking he was alright until after he was dead.
It's a naive argument if advanced as apologism for Stalin - but it's a valid input for performing a comparison of him to Hitler.
Well, not really. Because actually, it assumes Stalin wasn't a liar when he talked of his idealism while accepting Hitler was.
It doesn't assume that. Stalin could have been a non believer in Communism and that still isn't equivalent to Hitler who DID believe his shtick of master race global dominion and the enslavement of all others.
And there is perfectly encapsulated exactly what I am talking about.
No, it encapsulates what I'm talking about.
The issue being you completely miss the point. Because actually, Stalin did believe all those things too. He just phrased it differently and went about it more discreetly.
But people accept his statements, while judging Hitler more on his actions.
The Beggar King is in a Ford Galaxy on the M11 so pb's 101st Chairborne will be getting excited over that providing a welcome change from the trans shit and HS2 minutiae very soon.
We - and Russia to, for that matter - are a nation that survived WWII only because of US aid, so it's a bit charmless to get sniffy about someone else in a comparable situation.
So the Russian nation would have ceased to exist during WW2 had it not been for US aid? What a loony.
PS Would it be gazetted somewhere if Johnson were to receive his US citizenship back, or is it only renunciations that get publicly noted?
PPS Some Ford Galaxies from the mid-noughties had front seats that could turn round and face the back. Now that's what I call a cool car.
The Germans made it to the Moscow suburbs in WWII. It doesn't take much changes to the timeline to them making it a bit further...
For example, the US and UK provided *all* the hi octane aviation gasoline for the USSR. It was only postwar that they got their cracking plants lined up to make it.
Vast amount of machine tools - in some categories, 100% of the tools and 100% of the tooling was Lendlease supplied. Without that, Soviet production would have crawled to a halt.
And so on in many categories - the % of USSR GDP was small, but LendLease was about supplying materials and equipment they were short of. Or literally didn't have.
The fall of Moscow, or even of both Moscow and Leningrad as it then was, would not in itself have come anywhere near making the Soviet government seek to agree terms with Germany. More than 1000 large factories were shipped eastwards. The USSR would certainly have continued fighting. Sure, they could have been defeated but the fall of Moscow wouldn't have done for them.
Do you regret that the USA and Britain gave such substantial assistance to their Soviet ally during WW2/the GPW? Or is it a very different Germany now but a very similar Russia, so western policy was good then (fight with Russia against Germany) and western policy is also good now (pointing towards fighting with Germany against Russia this time round)?
Stalin was evil, but less evil than Hitler.
"If Hitler invaded Hell, I would make at least a favourable reference of the Devil in the House of Commons."
So here's the thing - I am less sure of this than I used to be. Hitler evil, absolutely. He started the war that saw millions dead and initiated the holocaust.
But how many did Stalin kill? The famine in Ukraine, the gulags, the show trials, all of it. Why does Uncle Joe get a pass to be less evil than Hitler?
The main distinction I would draw would be that Stalin came to power in the USSR on a platform of "Socialism in one country" - a recognition that the attempt to spread communist revolution to the rest of the world had failed, and there was a need for the Bolsheviks to consolidate their power within their borders.
By contrast, the core of Hitler's ideology was the idea of the German need for Lebensraum, and consequently aggressive military expansion.
Bluntly, Stalin was content to kill people within his borders, while Hitler sought to kill people in the lands outside Germany's borders. The latter is more dangerous than the former.
This distinction might be more a consequence of the different levels of capability than ideology, but it's also true that the strong evil guy is more of a threat than the weak evil guy.
Also with Communism, for all the horrors enacted in its name, there was an arguably non-heinous idea at its core. This isn't the case with Hitler and the Nazis. The ideology there, the industrial scale subjugation of other people by a master race, is wholly abhorent in every sense and on every level.
Doesn't that make the Communist authoritarianism worse to some extent? It means that well-meaning people can go along with evil, "For The Greater Good," while the moral choice is a bit clearer under fascism. This might also explain why Communist dictatorships have tended to be more durable than fascist ones.
That said, having reflected, I think one can say that Hitler was a notch more evil than Stalin, because Hitler's intent with the Holocaust was to eradicate the Jewish people, and while there was a programme of Russification within the USSR, and particular ethnic groups like the Crimean Tartars were particularly targeted, the single-minded and ideological pursuit of the destruction of the Jewish people was, I think, on a distinctly more evil level.
Wolf more dangerous when donning the sheepskin? Yes, can be. But tbh, 'Hitler or Stalin more evil?', I don't find it that useful a question, but if forced to take it I neither find it that difficult. Hitler. There's just no shred of a redeeming factor, or anything not wholly evil, in what he believed or did in the name of it.
And there is with Stalin? Really? Do you think Stalin cared for anyone who he had murdered?
The argument made for Stalin is that though his methods were hideous, he did have a positive goal - the building of a strong economy and a socialist state.
Hitler wasn't even really trying to do that.
It is a naive argument, reliant on taking Stalin's statements at face value while interrogating Hitler's on the assumption he was a liar.
Is it untenable? Well, he did see the Soviet Union make considerable progress in heavy industry - but not, contrary to popular belief, significantly more than elsewhere. This was at a terrible cost in agriculture, light industry and service sectors.
But then - you could make a similar argument for Hitler if you only looked at the figures and didn't bother to check what they mean.
The real issue, of course, is that Hitler was demonstrated to be evil and incompetent. Stalin managed to fool people into thinking he was alright until after he was dead.
It's a naive argument if advanced as apologism for Stalin - but it's a valid input for performing a comparison of him to Hitler.
Well, not really. Because actually, it assumes Stalin wasn't a liar when he talked of his idealism while accepting Hitler was.
It doesn't assume that. Stalin could have been a non believer in Communism and that still isn't equivalent to Hitler who DID believe his shtick of master race global dominion and the enslavement of all others.
The wisdom of ChatGPT should be the final word on the matter:
It is not appropriate to compare the evil actions of historical figures in a quantitative manner. Both Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin were responsible for atrocities and human rights abuses that caused immeasurable suffering and loss of life. Hitler's leadership of Nazi Germany led to the Holocaust, the systematic extermination of six million Jews and millions of others considered "undesirable" by the regime. Stalin's regime in the Soviet Union was characterized by widespread purges, forced collectivization, and the establishment of the Gulag system of prison camps, causing the death of millions of people through execution, starvation, and overwork. Both leaders left a legacy of tragedy and it is important to remember the lessons of history to prevent similar atrocities from happening again in the future.
It is deliciously ironic that ChatGTP says you shouldn't compare the two and does exactly that.
I have a theory that behind ChatGPT is one SeanT bashing away at multiple keyboards with a team of woke moderators correcting his output in realtime.
In fact, I have discovered a truly marvellous proof of this, which this thread is too narrow to contain.
Comments
You can't throw clubs out of the Premier League for being run by crooks who break the rules. It would be a bloody silly league - with no one in it.
Are the Woke Police (led by a giant ballon) a figment of his guilty imagination? Or are they really pursuing him on penny farthing bicycles across Zambia, armed with razor sharp mangetout?
You could respond to this debate by responding to what other people say, but easier and lazier it seems for you to drag people into the mud by insinuating they're on the side of that lot rather than actually bothering to think through matters or address legitimate concerns.
If Germany had won the war it would be the other way round.
This is a wrinkle I didn’t consider at the time:
… Biden’s and Nuland’s indiscretion, if that is what it was, might have frustrated some of the planners. But it also created an opportunity. According to the source, some of the senior officials of the CIA determined that blowing up the pipeline “no longer could be considered a covert option because the President just announced that we knew how to do it.”
The plan to blow up Nord Stream 1 and 2 was suddenly downgraded from a covert operation requiring that Congress be informed to one that was deemed as a highly classified intelligence operation with U.S. military support. Under the law, the source explained, “There was no longer a legal requirement to report the operation to Congress. All they had to do now is just do it—but it still had to be secret. The Russians have superlative surveillance of the Baltic Sea.”…
Had it been reported to Congress, it would have leaked within the month.
I’d hate us to get distracted by some sexy weaponry and overlook what might actually help the most, maybe Boring things like logistics, supply lines and getting things into the right place right time as quickly as possible. Also giving them money.
Probably the main thing I think will most help Ukraine fight this war the longer it goes on into this year would be boots on the ground. Can’t we ramp up our special services involvement in the war, like how we thrashed Gaddafi?
Never change, pb.com!
It’s hard to think that a victorious Hitler would not have been far more destructive, though, given his plans for mass exterminations.
Your choice...
I think the improvement in capability that we could provide would be in range again. Fighter jets we could supply would have missiles that would outrange those on Russian fighter jets, and also precision ground attack missiles that would enable Ukraine to hit logistics targets behind Russian lines without putting themselves within range of Russian air defence systems.
Bastard.
In my opinion, that is still a more likely and rational explanation than the popular theory that Putin blew up his own pipeline just to prove a point and to scare the West about blowing up more important links, e.g. internet cables, the north sea pipeline from Norway to UK etc. Putin is mad, but I struggle to see how his long term objectives are served by looking even madder - we all know he's barmy. That doesn't mean Russia can't be responsible, but it's not the behaviour of a rational actor (though arguably neither was invading Ukraine).
Hitler wasn't even really trying to do that.
It is a naive argument, reliant on taking Stalin's statements at face value while interrogating Hitler's on the assumption he was a liar.
Is it untenable? Well, he did see the Soviet Union make considerable progress in heavy industry - but not, contrary to popular belief, significantly more than elsewhere. This was at a terrible cost in agriculture, light industry and service sectors.
But then - you could make a similar argument for Hitler if you only looked at the figures and didn't bother to check what they mean.
The real issue, of course, is that Hitler was demonstrated to be evil and incompetent. Stalin managed to fool people into thinking he was alright until after he was dead.
Given that I get hit with a stick by Mrs Stocky if I don't check for and remedy pan-skiddies this mean that I now have to do my dirty business, put lid down, wait for the flush, lift lid up, make good as necessary, put lid down again.
FFS.
The Death of Stalin remains one the greatest movies of the last 10 years - the barmy would-be-comic-except they're-mass-murderers feel of it is pulled off brilliantly.
Admittedly fighting war in 2020s isn’t my specialist subject, but that sentence sounds like a good idea to me, hit supply lines!
But it seemed as Russia can’t use air, how long would more planes for Ukraine remain in service? They are target for missiles not just in air but on ground too? It sounds like a nice expensive thing to share, but what if it’s not as much use as something else, like ramping up repairing things and giving specialist care for the wounded outside of Ukraine like here in UK? That would be a really nice thing to share?
By which I mean: the USSR's lack of destruction was not a result of Stalin being less mad or evil than Hitler, just of Stalin being more fortunate with his alliances.
Her reply: "Nah mate. I don't mind. If it's up, I know you've not pi**ed on it..."
Apparently she'd had problems with that with exes...
Both the BBC and LBC have focused on the Johnson aspect of the speech and repeated
the line that Johnson singlehandedly (my interpretation) wrangled an unwilling EU and
US into action.
Hats off to BigDog, he's played this rather cleverly. Let's hope that's where his political comeback story ends.
Where you are not convinced it’s done, but can’t stand the smell?
Andrew George Miller, known locally as Amy, was taken into police custody on Monday night after the 11-year-old girl who disappeared on Sunday, was found “safe and well” at a home in Gattonside near Galashiels after being missing for more than a day.
https://archive.is/2023.02.07-211342/https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/02/07/scottish-police-defy-nicola-sturgeon-trans-self-id-law/
Arizona Republican Kari Lake has said she is "entertaining" a run to represent the Grand Canyon State in the Senate.
In November 2022, Lake lost her bid to become state governor to Democrat Katie Hobbs by 17,000 votes, though she is refusing to accept defeat and alleges the election was rigged against her.
Lake's allegations of electoral malpractice have already been rejected by a Maricopa County judge, though she immediately lodged an appeal which has been expedited by a state appeals court.
Speaking to Charlie Kirk on his Real America's Voice show, Lake suggested she could run for the Senate if she doesn't get a "decent ruling" in her lawsuit for the Arizona gubernatorial election. This sets up what could be a three-way battle for an Arizona Senate seat in 2024, after incumbent Senator Kyrsten Sinema switched from the Democrats to an independent in December 2022
https://www.newsweek.com/kari-lake-entertaining-major-run-senate-arizona-election-case-1779430
More modern jets could have the EW capability to detect they are being targeted and evade the incoming missiles.
There’s the scenario Sunak can’t survive election defeat so someone else takes over, Boris can be LOTO, with all sorts of opposition freedom attack dog opportunity to build a lead in the polls , against a government with slim or non existent majority,
Edinburgh is the capital city of Scotland; it's a seat of Government, has a massive tourism industry, a big financial industry, and is a very wealthy city. I love the King's Theatre and wish it nothing but success in its fundraising, but clearly refurbishing it is not 'levelling up' if the phrase means anything.
I can't speak on the other projects, but I note that most are in places like Kilmarnock, Stirling, Greenock, Fife, Cumbernauld - places with a little more claim to need a levelling up boost.
Regarding the wider point, I suppose you don't notice the nationalist dimension that those sorts of decisions take on in Scotland. Too used to it perhaps. It was the same when Dundee lost out to UK city of culture vs. Hull. The messaging from the council wasn't just 'a failed bid, never mind, good for Hull' - it was bitter recrimination and 'clearly we have been aiming our sights too low with a UK award'. I mean some shithole had to win, and Hull was evidently in this instance considered a needier shithole than Dundee (I love Dundee btw), but im Scotland the decision was portrayed as a national slight.
So why in tweet above are western powers so unwilling to go with that win win?
Bit risky if you're using a toilet you're not familiar with and then find that the water pressure for the cistern is very low and it takes ages to refill for another flush.
Or at least, that was a dramatised reimagining of the account Khrushchev gave of Beria's arrest, which he put about six months after Stalin's death.
Other accounts suggest he was arrested and/or shot at his house.
The pilots require at least six months’ training on the aircraft type, and the maintainance engineers, mechanics, logistics teams involved in supporting the aircraft require a similar time to get acquainted with the jet. Each donating country’s planes will be different, in terms of revision and systems, which will require additional training. All of this needs to be supported in the field, with logistics, stores, and hangars full of tools.
The aircraft systems themselves are another problem, they need to be integrated into the rest of the Ukranian military, so that the pilots can work effectively with teams on the ground, without the risk of friendly fire.
To make matters worse, many of these systems are highly classified, and their true capability is known to very few people. So an Israeli radar installed on an American-built plane operated by the Polish, might need a lot of politicians to agree for it to be sent to Ukraine. NATO countries are worried that planes or sensitive parts of planes, might end up in Russian (or Chinese) hands.
I think too many think that extreme left views are better than extreme right. They are wrong.
The accents are brilliant. I love the fact Beria is a half-gentrified working class Londoner, and Kruschev is a smart-talking Jewish New Yorker straight out of Woody Allen.
A life sentence would be too short.
Not that he will of course.
I don’t think the reason for your murder lessens or worsens the fact of your murder.
I don’t Kulaks went happily to the grave for the ‘greater good’.
They were optional extras but definitely worth getting.
In domestic and international law we do make a distinction based on motive. Obviously there is pre-meditated vs spur of moment murder, but genocide is considered a worse crime than random slaughter, and sexualised violence in war is considered a worse crime than simple brutality to civilians.
I think there is a utilitarian rationale for this. Racism and other forms of in-out group violence are more dangerous to the wider fabric of society as history shows they can bring about complete collapse.
I think though that we probably under-rate the destructive impact of Mafia-style gang/cartel violence. It combines in/out group polarisation albeit of a different sort, political and social corruption, and a threat to public order of a nature few other types of violence can achieve. When societies completely collapse they seem to do so either because of bigotry (racism, religious sectarianism, occasionally class warfare) or Mafia capture.
It is not appropriate to compare the evil actions of historical figures in a quantitative manner. Both Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin were responsible for atrocities and human rights abuses that caused immeasurable suffering and loss of life. Hitler's leadership of Nazi Germany led to the Holocaust, the systematic extermination of six million Jews and millions of others considered "undesirable" by the regime. Stalin's regime in the Soviet Union was characterized by widespread purges, forced collectivization, and the establishment of the Gulag system of prison camps, causing the death of millions of people through execution, starvation, and overwork. Both leaders left a legacy of tragedy and it is important to remember the lessons of history to prevent similar atrocities from happening again in the future.
Chat GPT recites banalities. He’ll get a 2:2 but not a higher degree.
What is worse? An overtly evil ideology, like Nazism? Or an ideology like communism or islamism, that professes to be good, but which is in fact, evil?
What a heathen.
https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2023/feb/08/why-the-fawlty-towers-remake-is-a-truly-nauseating-idea-john-cleese
I agree with the essence of the article that a FT2 is likely to be a disaster. But this got me thinking: ...reboots of almost everything, barring perhaps the first return of Frasier, are almost always inferior to the originals.
I am not sure about Frasier (which I liked) - was that ever really rebooted - seems like a continuum to me.
But, Blackadder, now that was truly reworked, reshaped, reorientated, and rebooted in series two onwards - to tremendous effect.
Can't think of any others though.
But people accept his statements, while judging Hitler more on his actions.
In fact, I have discovered a truly marvellous proof of this, which this thread is too narrow to contain.
King Charles reveals ‘holey sock’ in visit to Brick Lane mosque
The King and Queen Consort met London’s Bangladeshi community - and at a mosque the frugal King revealed a hole in his sock
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/royal-family/2023/02/08/king-charles-reveals-holey-sock-visit-brick-lane-mosque/?utm_content=telegraph&utm_medium=Social&utm_campaign=Echobox&utm_source=Twitter#Echobox=1675883628-1