With the benefit of hindsight, did the policies started by Brown and continued by the Coalition, of large scale deficits and extremely easy monetary conditions to offset the consequences of the crash do more harm than good? The GFC on the surface caused far less damage than, say, the Wall Street crash in 1929 but its effects have been far more insidious and long lasting.
The GFC exposed a UK economic model built on shifting sands with a huge over-reliance on financial services at its heart. We need the foundations to create an alternative model - good transport links, universal high-speed internet, affordable childcare and housing, an adequate health service and social care provision etc - but have spent the last 15 years failing to create any of them and have generally made all our long-term problems worse.
The tax base since 2008, which was hugely inflated by the alleged profits of our "financial wizards" has simply not been able to fund such policies. Indeed, it has struggled to fund the much more basic services we endure and failed to cover the cost of social care, to take an example, resulting in substantial deficits.
It is simplistic and wrong to blame the likes of Osborne for this as if it was a choice not to spend non existent money. We were simply a hell of a lot poorer than we thought. The avoidance of the destructive creation of a deep recession in 2008 has had very serious consequences with cash strapped, zombie businesses incapable of investment surviving on cheap money when it might have been better to create new space and resource for new businesses.
We are seeing some of these businesses nurtured by such policies, such as Wilko, collapse now as interest rates return to something like normal.
Hold on team let us not forget that the mere mention of a possible ceasefire while the Ukrainian forces remain outside Moscow is proof if proof be needed of your status as Putin apologist and lapdog and likely Russian troll operating from the heart of the FSS complex.
It is of course for the Ukrainian to determine when or if they want to begin negotiations but it is for us to note that such conflicts often if not always end via negotiation.
And Ukraine shows no sign of wishing to negotiate with a regime that openly wants it to cease to exist. However, several in the US, Germany and elsewhere seem to be ready to hand Ukraine on a plate to its Russian masters by cutting off arms supplies. Even now they are asking it to fight with one hand tied behind its back.
We are talking about global mobsters here. A regime that is amoral and positively evil, and perceives compromise as a sign of weakness. Ukraine has every right to chase them out of their country, and if our governments choke off their weapons supply then they are cowards and accessories.
All good points but don't confuse what you think should happen with what might happen.
So Putin decided it would be a wizard wheeze to stop the grain deal and push up food costs worldwide, with large negative effects for poorer people.
Unfortunately, he did not seem to realise that would make large parts of the Black Sea open waters for Ukrainian action.
Slowly but surely the Russians are losing.
Actually, they have already lost. Every single goal of their invasion has been thwarted. They have not got a secure land crossing to Crimea, they haven’t forced regime change in Kyiv, they have strengthened NATO and lengthened its border with Russia and they have limited control of part of Ukraine.
On the way trashing their economy, isolating themselves diplomatically, killing tens of thousands of young men, stripping their armed forces of equipment and undermining the prestige of the government.
The catch is not that they haven’t lost, but that the Ukrainians haven’t won. At least not yet. They may do but even with Russia’s difficulties progress is slow and painful for them. The question may become can their manpower reserves outlast the Russian economy?
Yes they do. We know that countries that are motivated to continue the fight can bear huge losses. Ukraine has a similar population to the UK in WW1. It sustained massive losses in WW2, higher than Russia in terms of % of population.
In an existential war that motivation is likely to be sustained. Fight or die.
It must be nice for the Ukrainians to have you cheering them on, insisting they can afford to lose 1 million men (like the UK in WW1)
All from your pulpit in…. Leicester
The Ukrainians can see what happens when Russia gains territory. It's not just a change in the top bods running the country. The eastern areas post 2014 became an absolute cesspit, with the 'authorities' doing lots of nasty things. In the areas the Russians took over since last year, hundreds of thousands of kids have been kidnapped and taken into Russia; thousands of Ukrainian civilians have been killed, property stolen wholesale, and Ukrainians treated as third-class citizens.
They know that, and worse, is what lies in wait for any new territory gained by the Russians. It is a war of existence for the Ukrainians.
Personally, I will continue to cheer the Ukrainians on for as long as they want to fight.
Hundreds of thousands of kids have not been kidnapped. The latest estimate I read is about 15k children moved to Russia. Lots of them orphans
Russia is committing hideous crimes but it’s important we don’t go all “Belgian nun”
The dilemma for Ukraine is much more painful than the one you posit. Russia cannot be defeated - unlike Germany in WW1 and WW2 - because nukes. In the end Russia will use a nuke if it has to. Probably it would go nuclear if Crimea was seriously close to being overrun
So then it’s a question for Ukraine of how much territory it is willing to yield - for peace. Just Crimea? Donbass? All that Russia holds now?
Alternatively it can throw wave after wave of young men into the mangler and get almost nowhere - as we see now - and sacrifice 1m men. And possibly/probably end up where it is now, anyway
And then there are no young people left to rebuild what is left of the country
I would love to see Ukraine win. It’s not happening
"Hundreds of thousands of kids have not been kidnapped. The latest estimate I read is about 15k children moved to Russia. Lots of them orphans "
Russia will not use nukes, because that means disaster for them. There is no tactical or strategic benefit in using them over Ukraine. They *may* engineer an 'accident' at ZNPP, but even that is problematic.
“Since Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Russian soldiers have forcibly taken an estimated 16,000 Ukrainian children to Russia. Over 300 children have since returned home, but it is not clear what happened to most of the rest.”
As for nukes, of course Russia will in the end resort to nukes if it feels existentially threatened. The question is where is that existential line? That is much harder to say. I reckon it probably surrounds Crimea
I might suggest you read my link re. the children. You know, the one from the *Russians*. Also note there are *confirmed* kidnappings, and the ones the Ukrainians cannot be sure about because they no longer control the territory.
As for nukes: they won't use them over Ukraine, for that way leads them to all sorts of disasters. I know you love the extreme and the exciting, but it's pretty simple: a nuclear strike on Ukraine would lead to consequences that Russia cannot control, and lose them what little remaining international goodwill they have.
If Putin was going to use nukes, he would have used them in March or April last year when it first became clear he was losing, at about the time of the withdrawal from Kyiv. But he didn't use them, because he isn't actually mad. Evil, certainly, but not mad.
The “700,000 kidnapped children” meme is almost certainly bullshit. You just have to sit down and think about it for a while. It’s a ridiculous number
The equivalent in the UK would be 1.3 million children forcibly taken to France
The rest of your comment continues in the same vein
700,000 is a high number; but you have to ask why the Russians would say that number, especially given the charges being laid against Putin and others over it. But I'd also say that 16,000 is far too low, given what we know and have seen. 16,000 *confirmed* cases does not mean it is *just* 16,000 cases. Also note Belarus (and sadly, the Belarussian Red Cross) has been doing the same.
"The rest of your comment continues in the same vein"
Alternatively it can throw wave after wave of young men into the mangler and get almost nowhere - as we see now - and sacrifice 1m men. And possibly/probably end up where it is now, anyway
And then there are no young people left to rebuild what is left of the country
I would love to see Ukraine win. It’s not happening
Your analysis is based on seeing war as about the numbers of men fighting, but if historians like Phillips P O'Brien are right it is more about equipment and industrial production.
With this latter view we can see that Ukraine is winning. They have decisively gained an upper hand in the artillery war and are destroying Russian artillery at a prodigious rate. Their drone capabilities are also expanding and developing at an impressive rate, with massive implications for Russian supply of Crimea.
Slowly Western (including European) production of war material is increasing. Meanwhile Russia is struggling and failing to replace their equipment losses, in the absence of full Chinese support.
Yes, Russia can continue to supply the battlefield with men, but that isn't going to be enough.
Hold on team let us not forget that the mere mention of a possible ceasefire while the Ukrainian forces remain outside Moscow is proof if proof be needed of your status as Putin apologist and lapdog and likely Russian troll operating from the heart of the FSS complex.
It is of course for the Ukrainian to determine when or if they want to begin negotiations but it is for us to note that such conflicts often if not always end via negotiation.
And Ukraine shows no sign of wishing to negotiate with a regime that openly wants it to cease to exist. However, several in the US, Germany and elsewhere seem to be ready to hand Ukraine on a plate to its Russian masters by cutting off arms supplies. Even now they are asking it to fight with one hand tied behind its back.
We are talking about global mobsters here. A regime that is amoral and positively evil, and perceives compromise as a sign of weakness. Ukraine has every right to chase them out of their country, and if our governments choke off their weapons supply then they are cowards and accessories.
All good points but don't confuse what you think should happen with what might happen.
And don't confuse what you think *might* happen with what *will* happen. Especially if that means we are so overwhelmed with possible scenarios that we do nothing.
So Putin decided it would be a wizard wheeze to stop the grain deal and push up food costs worldwide, with large negative effects for poorer people.
Unfortunately, he did not seem to realise that would make large parts of the Black Sea open waters for Ukrainian action.
Slowly but surely the Russians are losing.
Actually, they have already lost. Every single goal of their invasion has been thwarted. They have not got a secure land crossing to Crimea, they haven’t forced regime change in Kyiv, they have strengthened NATO and lengthened its border with Russia and they have limited control of part of Ukraine.
On the way trashing their economy, isolating themselves diplomatically, killing tens of thousands of young men, stripping their armed forces of equipment and undermining the prestige of the government.
The catch is not that they haven’t lost, but that the Ukrainians haven’t won. At least not yet. They may do but even with Russia’s difficulties progress is slow and painful for them. The question may become can their manpower reserves outlast the Russian economy?
Yes they do. We know that countries that are motivated to continue the fight can bear huge losses. Ukraine has a similar population to the UK in WW1. It sustained massive losses in WW2, higher than Russia in terms of % of population.
In an existential war that motivation is likely to be sustained. Fight or die.
It must be nice for the Ukrainians to have you cheering them on, insisting they can afford to lose 1 million men (like the UK in WW1)
All from your pulpit in…. Leicester
The Ukrainians can see what happens when Russia gains territory. It's not just a change in the top bods running the country. The eastern areas post 2014 became an absolute cesspit, with the 'authorities' doing lots of nasty things. In the areas the Russians took over since last year, hundreds of thousands of kids have been kidnapped and taken into Russia; thousands of Ukrainian civilians have been killed, property stolen wholesale, and Ukrainians treated as third-class citizens.
They know that, and worse, is what lies in wait for any new territory gained by the Russians. It is a war of existence for the Ukrainians.
Personally, I will continue to cheer the Ukrainians on for as long as they want to fight.
Hundreds of thousands of kids have not been kidnapped. The latest estimate I read is about 15k children moved to Russia. Lots of them orphans
Russia is committing hideous crimes but it’s important we don’t go all “Belgian nun”
The dilemma for Ukraine is much more painful than the one you posit. Russia cannot be defeated - unlike Germany in WW1 and WW2 - because nukes. In the end Russia will use a nuke if it has to. Probably it would go nuclear if Crimea was seriously close to being overrun
So then it’s a question for Ukraine of how much territory it is willing to yield - for peace. Just Crimea? Donbass? All that Russia holds now?
No it isn't. As the Russians show no sign of seeking peace; at best, only a pause.
The question is rather what is required for Ukraine to be certain that Russia will give up on conquering them.
Somebody recently and rather tactlessly asked one of our Ukrainians how long the war will last. Her bleak and fatalistic response was, 'As long as Ukraine exists.'
Nothing has changed for nearly a year now despite BOGOF offers on Leopard 2As, etc. Except that 100,000 more people are dead and Ukraine is a failed state that utterly depends on external aid to survive.
Putin will keep fighting because he doesn't have enough to market the outcome as an unqualified win; which has to include, Catherine's city of Odessa.
Zelensky will keep fighting as long as the suitcases of cash from Foggy Bottom keep turning up because he knows Putin doesn't have enough to stop yet.
Romanians are completely different to Ukrainians. The difference is remarkable
You go from a land of slim pale blonde people - extremely lovely women - to fat dark tattoooed people - women “not quite so striking” - in 100km
What explains this? The Romanians are darker than the Italians; the Ukrainians are whiter than the icelandics
It’s the same landscape, same climate, same everything. Except for the people
EU Membership. Romaina has been totally hollowed out by freedom of movement. Its population is down over 20% in the past two decades, as anyone with aspiration has moved West.
Hold on team let us not forget that the mere mention of a possible ceasefire while the Ukrainian forces remain outside Moscow is proof if proof be needed of your status as Putin apologist and lapdog and likely Russian troll operating from the heart of the FSS complex.
It is of course for the Ukrainian to determine when or if they want to begin negotiations but it is for us to note that such conflicts often if not always end via negotiation.
And Ukraine shows no sign of wishing to negotiate with a regime that openly wants it to cease to exist. However, several in the US, Germany and elsewhere seem to be ready to hand Ukraine on a plate to its Russian masters by cutting off arms supplies. Even now they are asking it to fight with one hand tied behind its back.
We are talking about global mobsters here. A regime that is amoral and positively evil, and perceives compromise as a sign of weakness. Ukraine has every right to chase them out of their country, and if our governments choke off their weapons supply then they are cowards and accessories.
All good points but don't confuse what you think should happen with what might happen.
Oh it very well might. And I hope Western populations don’t shrug and allow their governments to leave Ukraine to their hell because we’re all bored by the whole thing. Because in another decade Russia will be at it again.
So Putin decided it would be a wizard wheeze to stop the grain deal and push up food costs worldwide, with large negative effects for poorer people.
Unfortunately, he did not seem to realise that would make large parts of the Black Sea open waters for Ukrainian action.
Slowly but surely the Russians are losing.
Actually, they have already lost. Every single goal of their invasion has been thwarted. They have not got a secure land crossing to Crimea, they haven’t forced regime change in Kyiv, they have strengthened NATO and lengthened its border with Russia and they have limited control of part of Ukraine.
On the way trashing their economy, isolating themselves diplomatically, killing tens of thousands of young men, stripping their armed forces of equipment and undermining the prestige of the government.
The catch is not that they haven’t lost, but that the Ukrainians haven’t won. At least not yet. They may do but even with Russia’s difficulties progress is slow and painful for them. The question may become can their manpower reserves outlast the Russian economy?
Yes they do. We know that countries that are motivated to continue the fight can bear huge losses. Ukraine has a similar population to the UK in WW1. It sustained massive losses in WW2, higher than Russia in terms of % of population.
In an existential war that motivation is likely to be sustained. Fight or die.
It must be nice for the Ukrainians to have you cheering them on, insisting they can afford to lose 1 million men (like the UK in WW1)
All from your pulpit in…. Leicester
The Ukrainians can see what happens when Russia gains territory. It's not just a change in the top bods running the country. The eastern areas post 2014 became an absolute cesspit, with the 'authorities' doing lots of nasty things. In the areas the Russians took over since last year, hundreds of thousands of kids have been kidnapped and taken into Russia; thousands of Ukrainian civilians have been killed, property stolen wholesale, and Ukrainians treated as third-class citizens.
They know that, and worse, is what lies in wait for any new territory gained by the Russians. It is a war of existence for the Ukrainians.
Personally, I will continue to cheer the Ukrainians on for as long as they want to fight.
Hundreds of thousands of kids have not been kidnapped. The latest estimate I read is about 15k children moved to Russia. Lots of them orphans
Russia is committing hideous crimes but it’s important we don’t go all “Belgian nun”
The dilemma for Ukraine is much more painful than the one you posit. Russia cannot be defeated - unlike Germany in WW1 and WW2 - because nukes. In the end Russia will use a nuke if it has to. Probably it would go nuclear if Crimea was seriously close to being overrun
So then it’s a question for Ukraine of how much territory it is willing to yield - for peace. Just Crimea? Donbass? All that Russia holds now?
Alternatively it can throw wave after wave of young men into the mangler and get almost nowhere - as we see now - and sacrifice 1m men. And possibly/probably end up where it is now, anyway
And then there are no young people left to rebuild what is left of the country
I would love to see Ukraine win. It’s not happening
"Hundreds of thousands of kids have not been kidnapped. The latest estimate I read is about 15k children moved to Russia. Lots of them orphans "
Russia will not use nukes, because that means disaster for them. There is no tactical or strategic benefit in using them over Ukraine. They *may* engineer an 'accident' at ZNPP, but even that is problematic.
“Since Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Russian soldiers have forcibly taken an estimated 16,000 Ukrainian children to Russia. Over 300 children have since returned home, but it is not clear what happened to most of the rest.”
As for nukes, of course Russia will in the end resort to nukes if it feels existentially threatened. The question is where is that existential line? That is much harder to say. I reckon it probably surrounds Crimea
I might suggest you read my link re. the children. You know, the one from the *Russians*. Also note there are *confirmed* kidnappings, and the ones the Ukrainians cannot be sure about because they no longer control the territory.
As for nukes: they won't use them over Ukraine, for that way leads them to all sorts of disasters. I know you love the extreme and the exciting, but it's pretty simple: a nuclear strike on Ukraine would lead to consequences that Russia cannot control, and lose them what little remaining international goodwill they have.
If Putin was going to use nukes, he would have used them in March or April last year when it first became clear he was losing, at about the time of the withdrawal from Kyiv. But he didn't use them, because he isn't actually mad. Evil, certainly, but not mad.
The “700,000 kidnapped children” meme is almost certainly bullshit. You just have to sit down and think about it for a while. It’s a ridiculous number
The equivalent in the UK would be 1.3 million children forcibly taken to France
The rest of your comment continues in the same vein
700,000 is a high number; but you have to ask why the Russians would say that number, especially given the charges being laid against Putin and others over it. But I'd also say that 16,000 is far too low, given what we know and have seen. 16,000 *confirmed* cases does not mean it is *just* 16,000 cases. Also note Belarus (and sadly, the Belarussian Red Cross) has been doing the same.
"The rest of your comment continues in the same vein"
Alternatively it can throw wave after wave of young men into the mangler and get almost nowhere - as we see now - and sacrifice 1m men. And possibly/probably end up where it is now, anyway
And then there are no young people left to rebuild what is left of the country
I would love to see Ukraine win. It’s not happening
Your analysis is based on seeing war as about the numbers of men fighting, but if historians like Phillips P O'Brien are right it is more about equipment and industrial production.
With this latter view we can see that Ukraine is winning. They have decisively gained an upper hand in the artillery war and are destroying Russian artillery at a prodigious rate. Their drone capabilities are also expanding and developing at an impressive rate, with massive implications for Russian supply of Crimea.
Slowly Western (including European) production of war material is increasing. Meanwhile Russia is struggling and failing to replace their equipment losses, in the absence of full Chinese support.
Yes, Russia can continue to supply the battlefield with men, but that isn't going to be enough.
I’m old enough to remember when PB kept telling us “Putin is about to run out of missiles”. That was a year ago
Mr. B, the 1993 to 2008 period was right after a recession and right before a financial crisis, whereas the 2008 to 2023 period includes the financial crisis and the pandemic.
It's not exactly surprising the period with no recessions looks better.
True, but only part of the truth. The other big difference is that between 1993 and 2008 more of Mrs Thatcher's free-market reforms were still in place, and the government hadn't yet fallen in love with excessive regulation, green crap and excessive taxation.
Given the governments we've had for the last couple of decades, I'm surprised we've grown at all.
And governments were selling off state assets to finance their spending. The Thatcher period was also a contributor to some of our current pathologies.
'Green crap' is just meaningless rhetoric. Investment in renewables has likely been a net economic benefit.
Alternatively it can throw wave after wave of young men into the mangler and get almost nowhere - as we see now - and sacrifice 1m men. And possibly/probably end up where it is now, anyway
And then there are no young people left to rebuild what is left of the country
I would love to see Ukraine win. It’s not happening
Your analysis is based on seeing war as about the numbers of men fighting, but if historians like Phillips P O'Brien are right it is more about equipment and industrial production.
With this latter view we can see that Ukraine is winning. They have decisively gained an upper hand in the artillery war and are destroying Russian artillery at a prodigious rate. Their drone capabilities are also expanding and developing at an impressive rate, with massive implications for Russian supply of Crimea.
Slowly Western (including European) production of war material is increasing. Meanwhile Russia is struggling and failing to replace their equipment losses, in the absence of full Chinese support.
Yes, Russia can continue to supply the battlefield with men, but that isn't going to be enough.
There are rumours that the cluster munitions have been hitting Russian troop concentrations hard. Difficult to get direct evidence, though.
But I'd alter your point slightly. Whilst Russia is burning through kit it cannot easily replace at a fast rate, that is not the whole story. In WW2, Germany did not lose on the eastern front through a lack of manpower and high technology; it lost through a lack of logistics. It could not supply the men it had with food, clothing, and ammunition. Russia withdrew from Kherson last autumn for the same reason.
I'd watch attrition of logistics as much as tanks and men. And Russia's logistics is being malleted. Is it enough? I don't know.
No movement at all after all the fuss of the last fortnight.
The 90% of motorists who find out in August that they don't need to pay anything at all will just shrug. At the moment a lot think incorrectly that this is going to cost them.
In other news:
24% of New UK car registrations in July are either EV (16%) or PHEV (8%) so already meeting the 2030 criteria. Less than 8% are diesels of any form.
Unlikely people will shrug. Its the same principle as Inheritance tax. People who are never going to.pay inheritance tax resent it on principle. The same will be for Khan's lunacy.
So Putin decided it would be a wizard wheeze to stop the grain deal and push up food costs worldwide, with large negative effects for poorer people.
Unfortunately, he did not seem to realise that would make large parts of the Black Sea open waters for Ukrainian action.
Slowly but surely the Russians are losing.
Actually, they have already lost. Every single goal of their invasion has been thwarted. They have not got a secure land crossing to Crimea, they haven’t forced regime change in Kyiv, they have strengthened NATO and lengthened its border with Russia and they have limited control of part of Ukraine.
On the way trashing their economy, isolating themselves diplomatically, killing tens of thousands of young men, stripping their armed forces of equipment and undermining the prestige of the government.
The catch is not that they haven’t lost, but that the Ukrainians haven’t won. At least not yet. They may do but even with Russia’s difficulties progress is slow and painful for them. The question may become can their manpower reserves outlast the Russian economy?
Yes they do. We know that countries that are motivated to continue the fight can bear huge losses. Ukraine has a similar population to the UK in WW1. It sustained massive losses in WW2, higher than Russia in terms of % of population.
In an existential war that motivation is likely to be sustained. Fight or die.
It must be nice for the Ukrainians to have you cheering them on, insisting they can afford to lose 1 million men (like the UK in WW1)
All from your pulpit in…. Leicester
The Ukrainians can see what happens when Russia gains territory. It's not just a change in the top bods running the country. The eastern areas post 2014 became an absolute cesspit, with the 'authorities' doing lots of nasty things. In the areas the Russians took over since last year, hundreds of thousands of kids have been kidnapped and taken into Russia; thousands of Ukrainian civilians have been killed, property stolen wholesale, and Ukrainians treated as third-class citizens.
They know that, and worse, is what lies in wait for any new territory gained by the Russians. It is a war of existence for the Ukrainians.
Personally, I will continue to cheer the Ukrainians on for as long as they want to fight.
Hundreds of thousands of kids have not been kidnapped. The latest estimate I read is about 15k children moved to Russia. Lots of them orphans
Russia is committing hideous crimes but it’s important we don’t go all “Belgian nun”
The dilemma for Ukraine is much more painful than the one you posit. Russia cannot be defeated - unlike Germany in WW1 and WW2 - because nukes. In the end Russia will use a nuke if it has to. Probably it would go nuclear if Crimea was seriously close to being overrun
So then it’s a question for Ukraine of how much territory it is willing to yield - for peace. Just Crimea? Donbass? All that Russia holds now?
Alternatively it can throw wave after wave of young men into the mangler and get almost nowhere - as we see now - and sacrifice 1m men. And possibly/probably end up where it is now, anyway
And then there are no young people left to rebuild what is left of the country
I would love to see Ukraine win. It’s not happening
"Hundreds of thousands of kids have not been kidnapped. The latest estimate I read is about 15k children moved to Russia. Lots of them orphans "
Russia will not use nukes, because that means disaster for them. There is no tactical or strategic benefit in using them over Ukraine. They *may* engineer an 'accident' at ZNPP, but even that is problematic.
“Since Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Russian soldiers have forcibly taken an estimated 16,000 Ukrainian children to Russia. Over 300 children have since returned home, but it is not clear what happened to most of the rest.”
As for nukes, of course Russia will in the end resort to nukes if it feels existentially threatened. The question is where is that existential line? That is much harder to say. I reckon it probably surrounds Crimea
I might suggest you read my link re. the children. You know, the one from the *Russians*. Also note there are *confirmed* kidnappings, and the ones the Ukrainians cannot be sure about because they no longer control the territory.
As for nukes: they won't use them over Ukraine, for that way leads them to all sorts of disasters. I know you love the extreme and the exciting, but it's pretty simple: a nuclear strike on Ukraine would lead to consequences that Russia cannot control, and lose them what little remaining international goodwill they have.
If Putin was going to use nukes, he would have used them in March or April last year when it first became clear he was losing, at about the time of the withdrawal from Kyiv. But he didn't use them, because he isn't actually mad. Evil, certainly, but not mad.
The “700,000 kidnapped children” meme is almost certainly bullshit. You just have to sit down and think about it for a while. It’s a ridiculous number
The equivalent in the UK would be 1.3 million children forcibly taken to France
The rest of your comment continues in the same vein
700,000 is a high number; but you have to ask why the Russians would say that number, especially given the charges being laid against Putin and others over it. But I'd also say that 16,000 is far too low, given what we know and have seen. 16,000 *confirmed* cases does not mean it is *just* 16,000 cases. Also note Belarus (and sadly, the Belarussian Red Cross) has been doing the same.
"The rest of your comment continues in the same vein"
Alternatively it can throw wave after wave of young men into the mangler and get almost nowhere - as we see now - and sacrifice 1m men. And possibly/probably end up where it is now, anyway
And then there are no young people left to rebuild what is left of the country
I would love to see Ukraine win. It’s not happening
Your analysis is based on seeing war as about the numbers of men fighting, but if historians like Phillips P O'Brien are right it is more about equipment and industrial production.
With this latter view we can see that Ukraine is winning. They have decisively gained an upper hand in the artillery war and are destroying Russian artillery at a prodigious rate. Their drone capabilities are also expanding and developing at an impressive rate, with massive implications for Russian supply of Crimea.
Slowly Western (including European) production of war material is increasing. Meanwhile Russia is struggling and failing to replace their equipment losses, in the absence of full Chinese support.
Yes, Russia can continue to supply the battlefield with men, but that isn't going to be enough.
I’m old enough to remember when PB kept telling us “Putin is about to run out of missiles”. That was a year ago
Today in Ukraine:
Have you compared that to the numbers they were launching in March and April 2022?
So Putin decided it would be a wizard wheeze to stop the grain deal and push up food costs worldwide, with large negative effects for poorer people.
Unfortunately, he did not seem to realise that would make large parts of the Black Sea open waters for Ukrainian action.
Slowly but surely the Russians are losing.
Actually, they have already lost. Every single goal of their invasion has been thwarted. They have not got a secure land crossing to Crimea, they haven’t forced regime change in Kyiv, they have strengthened NATO and lengthened its border with Russia and they have limited control of part of Ukraine.
On the way trashing their economy, isolating themselves diplomatically, killing tens of thousands of young men, stripping their armed forces of equipment and undermining the prestige of the government.
The catch is not that they haven’t lost, but that the Ukrainians haven’t won. At least not yet. They may do but even with Russia’s difficulties progress is slow and painful for them. The question may become can their manpower reserves outlast the Russian economy?
Yes they do. We know that countries that are motivated to continue the fight can bear huge losses. Ukraine has a similar population to the UK in WW1. It sustained massive losses in WW2, higher than Russia in terms of % of population.
In an existential war that motivation is likely to be sustained. Fight or die.
It must be nice for the Ukrainians to have you cheering them on, insisting they can afford to lose 1 million men (like the UK in WW1)
All from your pulpit in…. Leicester
The Ukrainians can see what happens when Russia gains territory. It's not just a change in the top bods running the country. The eastern areas post 2014 became an absolute cesspit, with the 'authorities' doing lots of nasty things. In the areas the Russians took over since last year, hundreds of thousands of kids have been kidnapped and taken into Russia; thousands of Ukrainian civilians have been killed, property stolen wholesale, and Ukrainians treated as third-class citizens.
They know that, and worse, is what lies in wait for any new territory gained by the Russians. It is a war of existence for the Ukrainians.
Personally, I will continue to cheer the Ukrainians on for as long as they want to fight.
Hundreds of thousands of kids have not been kidnapped. The latest estimate I read is about 15k children moved to Russia. Lots of them orphans
Russia is committing hideous crimes but it’s important we don’t go all “Belgian nun”
The dilemma for Ukraine is much more painful than the one you posit. Russia cannot be defeated - unlike Germany in WW1 and WW2 - because nukes. In the end Russia will use a nuke if it has to. Probably it would go nuclear if Crimea was seriously close to being overrun
So then it’s a question for Ukraine of how much territory it is willing to yield - for peace. Just Crimea? Donbass? All that Russia holds now?
No it isn't. As the Russians show no sign of seeking peace; at best, only a pause.
The question is rather what is required for Ukraine to be certain that Russia will give up on conquering them.
Somebody recently and rather tactlessly asked one of our Ukrainians how long the war will last. Her bleak and fatalistic response was, 'As long as Ukraine exists.'
Nothing has changed for nearly a year now despite BOGOF offers on Leopard 2As, etc. Except that 100,000 more people are dead and Ukraine is a failed state that utterly depends on external aid to survive.
Putin will keep fighting because he doesn't have enough to market the outcome as an unqualified win; which has to include, Catherine's city of Odessa.
Zelensky will keep fighting as long as the suitcases of cash from Foggy Bottom keep turning up because he knows Putin doesn't have enough to stop yet.
A failed state where @Leon’s big worry is about the lime being left out of a gin and tonic.
Interesting how the analysis that country or group X has no agency pops up - they are just puppets of Y. There always a pattern to that….
With the benefit of hindsight, did the policies started by Brown and continued by the Coalition, of large scale deficits and extremely easy monetary conditions to offset the consequences of the crash do more harm than good? The GFC on the surface caused far less damage than, say, the Wall Street crash in 1929 but its effects have been far more insidious and long lasting.
The GFC exposed a UK economic model built on shifting sands with a huge over-reliance on financial services at its heart. We need the foundations to create an alternative model - good transport links, universal high-speed internet, affordable childcare and housing, an adequate health service and social care provision etc - but have spent the last 15 years failing to create any of them and have generally made all our long-term problems worse.
The biggest single issue is the cost of housing. There needs to be housebuilding on a scale last seen after WWII, using a more modern version of the pre-fabs of the 1940s, at least a million a year for the next five years. It needs to be not just possible but achieveable, for a family to live on a single median income in the vast majority of the country, as it was until around the last three decades.
It's not going to happen. We don't have enough people in the trades to build 'em, and Non Standard Construction makes councils, mortgage companies and insurance companies shit their pants!
Alternatively it can throw wave after wave of young men into the mangler and get almost nowhere - as we see now - and sacrifice 1m men. And possibly/probably end up where it is now, anyway
And then there are no young people left to rebuild what is left of the country
I would love to see Ukraine win. It’s not happening
Your analysis is based on seeing war as about the numbers of men fighting, but if historians like Phillips P O'Brien are right it is more about equipment and industrial production.
With this latter view we can see that Ukraine is winning. They have decisively gained an upper hand in the artillery war and are destroying Russian artillery at a prodigious rate. Their drone capabilities are also expanding and developing at an impressive rate, with massive implications for Russian supply of Crimea.
Slowly Western (including European) production of war material is increasing. Meanwhile Russia is struggling and failing to replace their equipment losses, in the absence of full Chinese support.
Yes, Russia can continue to supply the battlefield with men, but that isn't going to be enough.
The biggest single decision of the whole war, was Xi’s decision not to get behind Putin. My enemy’s enemy isn’t necessarily my friend, but the Chinese leader did the world a favour there.
Yes, wars are won primarily on logistics and production. Russia has stockpiles of equipment, but not the production capability. Putting new barrels on 50-year-old tanks will only get you so far, when your enemy has live satellite video and missiles like Storm Shadow.
Romanians are completely different to Ukrainians. The difference is remarkable
You go from a land of slim pale blonde people - extremely lovely women - to fat dark tattoooed people - women “not quite so striking” - in 100km
What explains this? The Romanians are darker than the Italians; the Ukrainians are whiter than the icelandics
It’s the same landscape, same climate, same everything. Except for the people
EU Membership. Romaina has been totally hollowed out by freedom of movement. Its population is down over 20% in the past two decades, as anyone with aspiration has moved West.
I doubt EU membership means all the tall blonde people have left Romania. My guess is that whereas Ukraine was populated largely from the north and west, Romania’s population was built a lot more from the south and east.
I think it would be relatively easy for American liberal to deflate the Trump bubble, but they won't do it, because it would mean admitting they've got some things wrong over the last few years.
Biden should pardon Trump. That leaves Trump with nothing to run on.
“Nothing to run on”
You what? American life expectancy is collapsing. Many of its cities are in steep decline. Addiction and overdose ravage the country. Migration is clearly out of control. Crime is resurgent and race/culture wars are everywhere
Does Trump have any real solutions to any of this? Almost certainly not. But the idea he doesn’t have any material to work with is palpable nonsense
Trump’s 2024 pitch is victimhood and the deep state. He’s talking about nothing else. A generic Republican can convincingly run on all that you talk about.
And so can Trump. He can run on that. And he has a large personal folllowing as well. A motivated base. So what’s your point?
There was[4] a YouTuber called "The Faking Hoaxer" about 15 years ago who used to make very entertaining fake UFO videos. He took his stuff down mid 2010's[3] but the Discovery documentary[1] is still up and he started posting the old stuff a few years back. His new channel is here[2]
Probably it would go nuclear if Crimea was seriously close to being overrun
I definitely think RF would threaten it if Crimea was in peril. Maybe a 'test' detonation over the Black Sea. That would be enough to cause utter chaos in the financial markets and Biden would be on WhatsApp to Z telling him to chill the fuck out.
Romanians are completely different to Ukrainians. The difference is remarkable
You go from a land of slim pale blonde people - extremely lovely women - to fat dark tattoooed people - women “not quite so striking” - in 100km
What explains this? The Romanians are darker than the Italians; the Ukrainians are whiter than the icelandics
It’s the same landscape, same climate, same everything. Except for the people
EU Membership. Romaina has been totally hollowed out by freedom of movement. Its population is down over 20% in the past two decades, as anyone with aspiration has moved West.
No it’s not that. These people are genetically, linguistically and culturally entirely different. It’s one of the most striking genetic divides I’ve ever seen - over such a short distance. You go from ultra pale blonde Cyrillic to dark swarthy tattooed Latin in a few kilometres. And there is no mountain range or mighty river marking the border
So it must date from many centuries ago. The pattern of settlement. The Roman Empire. “Romania”. Or the Roma. Or both
So Putin decided it would be a wizard wheeze to stop the grain deal and push up food costs worldwide, with large negative effects for poorer people.
Unfortunately, he did not seem to realise that would make large parts of the Black Sea open waters for Ukrainian action.
Slowly but surely the Russians are losing.
Actually, they have already lost. Every single goal of their invasion has been thwarted. They have not got a secure land crossing to Crimea, they haven’t forced regime change in Kyiv, they have strengthened NATO and lengthened its border with Russia and they have limited control of part of Ukraine.
On the way trashing their economy, isolating themselves diplomatically, killing tens of thousands of young men, stripping their armed forces of equipment and undermining the prestige of the government.
The catch is not that they haven’t lost, but that the Ukrainians haven’t won. At least not yet. They may do but even with Russia’s difficulties progress is slow and painful for them. The question may become can their manpower reserves outlast the Russian economy?
Yes they do. We know that countries that are motivated to continue the fight can bear huge losses. Ukraine has a similar population to the UK in WW1. It sustained massive losses in WW2, higher than Russia in terms of % of population.
In an existential war that motivation is likely to be sustained. Fight or die.
It must be nice for the Ukrainians to have you cheering them on, insisting they can afford to lose 1 million men (like the UK in WW1)
All from your pulpit in…. Leicester
The Ukrainians can see what happens when Russia gains territory. It's not just a change in the top bods running the country. The eastern areas post 2014 became an absolute cesspit, with the 'authorities' doing lots of nasty things. In the areas the Russians took over since last year, hundreds of thousands of kids have been kidnapped and taken into Russia; thousands of Ukrainian civilians have been killed, property stolen wholesale, and Ukrainians treated as third-class citizens.
They know that, and worse, is what lies in wait for any new territory gained by the Russians. It is a war of existence for the Ukrainians.
Personally, I will continue to cheer the Ukrainians on for as long as they want to fight.
Hundreds of thousands of kids have not been kidnapped. The latest estimate I read is about 15k children moved to Russia. Lots of them orphans
Russia is committing hideous crimes but it’s important we don’t go all “Belgian nun”
The dilemma for Ukraine is much more painful than the one you posit. Russia cannot be defeated - unlike Germany in WW1 and WW2 - because nukes. In the end Russia will use a nuke if it has to. Probably it would go nuclear if Crimea was seriously close to being overrun
So then it’s a question for Ukraine of how much territory it is willing to yield - for peace. Just Crimea? Donbass? All that Russia holds now?
Alternatively it can throw wave after wave of young men into the mangler and get almost nowhere - as we see now - and sacrifice 1m men. And possibly/probably end up where it is now, anyway
And then there are no young people left to rebuild what is left of the country
I would love to see Ukraine win. It’s not happening
"Hundreds of thousands of kids have not been kidnapped. The latest estimate I read is about 15k children moved to Russia. Lots of them orphans "
Russia will not use nukes, because that means disaster for them. There is no tactical or strategic benefit in using them over Ukraine. They *may* engineer an 'accident' at ZNPP, but even that is problematic.
“Since Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Russian soldiers have forcibly taken an estimated 16,000 Ukrainian children to Russia. Over 300 children have since returned home, but it is not clear what happened to most of the rest.”
As for nukes, of course Russia will in the end resort to nukes if it feels existentially threatened. The question is where is that existential line? That is much harder to say. I reckon it probably surrounds Crimea
I might suggest you read my link re. the children. You know, the one from the *Russians*. Also note there are *confirmed* kidnappings, and the ones the Ukrainians cannot be sure about because they no longer control the territory.
As for nukes: they won't use them over Ukraine, for that way leads them to all sorts of disasters. I know you love the extreme and the exciting, but it's pretty simple: a nuclear strike on Ukraine would lead to consequences that Russia cannot control, and lose them what little remaining international goodwill they have.
If Putin was going to use nukes, he would have used them in March or April last year when it first became clear he was losing, at about the time of the withdrawal from Kyiv. But he didn't use them, because he isn't actually mad. Evil, certainly, but not mad.
The “700,000 kidnapped children” meme is almost certainly bullshit. You just have to sit down and think about it for a while. It’s a ridiculous number
The equivalent in the UK would be 1.3 million children forcibly taken to France
The rest of your comment continues in the same vein
700,000 is a high number; but you have to ask why the Russians would say that number, especially given the charges being laid against Putin and others over it. But I'd also say that 16,000 is far too low, given what we know and have seen. 16,000 *confirmed* cases does not mean it is *just* 16,000 cases. Also note Belarus (and sadly, the Belarussian Red Cross) has been doing the same.
"The rest of your comment continues in the same vein"
Alternatively it can throw wave after wave of young men into the mangler and get almost nowhere - as we see now - and sacrifice 1m men. And possibly/probably end up where it is now, anyway
And then there are no young people left to rebuild what is left of the country
I would love to see Ukraine win. It’s not happening
Your analysis is based on seeing war as about the numbers of men fighting, but if historians like Phillips P O'Brien are right it is more about equipment and industrial production.
With this latter view we can see that Ukraine is winning. They have decisively gained an upper hand in the artillery war and are destroying Russian artillery at a prodigious rate. Their drone capabilities are also expanding and developing at an impressive rate, with massive implications for Russian supply of Crimea.
Slowly Western (including European) production of war material is increasing. Meanwhile Russia is struggling and failing to replace their equipment losses, in the absence of full Chinese support.
Yes, Russia can continue to supply the battlefield with men, but that isn't going to be enough.
I’m old enough to remember when PB kept telling us “Putin is about to run out of missiles”. That was a year ago
Today in Ukraine:
Have you compared that to the numbers they were launching in March and April 2022?
If you compare the launch rates with estimated production levels (as estimated by the U.K. MOD) - the Russians are firing them at the rate at which they are making them.
Either the Russians have expended their stockpiles of weapons in production, or they are limiting themselves to the production rate in order to hold a stockpile.
So Putin decided it would be a wizard wheeze to stop the grain deal and push up food costs worldwide, with large negative effects for poorer people.
Unfortunately, he did not seem to realise that would make large parts of the Black Sea open waters for Ukrainian action.
Slowly but surely the Russians are losing.
Actually, they have already lost. Every single goal of their invasion has been thwarted. They have not got a secure land crossing to Crimea, they haven’t forced regime change in Kyiv, they have strengthened NATO and lengthened its border with Russia and they have limited control of part of Ukraine.
On the way trashing their economy, isolating themselves diplomatically, killing tens of thousands of young men, stripping their armed forces of equipment and undermining the prestige of the government.
The catch is not that they haven’t lost, but that the Ukrainians haven’t won. At least not yet. They may do but even with Russia’s difficulties progress is slow and painful for them. The question may become can their manpower reserves outlast the Russian economy?
Yes they do. We know that countries that are motivated to continue the fight can bear huge losses. Ukraine has a similar population to the UK in WW1. It sustained massive losses in WW2, higher than Russia in terms of % of population.
In an existential war that motivation is likely to be sustained. Fight or die.
It must be nice for the Ukrainians to have you cheering them on, insisting they can afford to lose 1 million men (like the UK in WW1)
All from your pulpit in…. Leicester
The Ukrainians can see what happens when Russia gains territory. It's not just a change in the top bods running the country. The eastern areas post 2014 became an absolute cesspit, with the 'authorities' doing lots of nasty things. In the areas the Russians took over since last year, hundreds of thousands of kids have been kidnapped and taken into Russia; thousands of Ukrainian civilians have been killed, property stolen wholesale, and Ukrainians treated as third-class citizens.
They know that, and worse, is what lies in wait for any new territory gained by the Russians. It is a war of existence for the Ukrainians.
Personally, I will continue to cheer the Ukrainians on for as long as they want to fight.
Hundreds of thousands of kids have not been kidnapped. The latest estimate I read is about 15k children moved to Russia. Lots of them orphans
Russia is committing hideous crimes but it’s important we don’t go all “Belgian nun”
The dilemma for Ukraine is much more painful than the one you posit. Russia cannot be defeated - unlike Germany in WW1 and WW2 - because nukes. In the end Russia will use a nuke if it has to. Probably it would go nuclear if Crimea was seriously close to being overrun
So then it’s a question for Ukraine of how much territory it is willing to yield - for peace. Just Crimea? Donbass? All that Russia holds now?
No it isn't. As the Russians show no sign of seeking peace; at best, only a pause.
The question is rather what is required for Ukraine to be certain that Russia will give up on conquering them.
Somebody recently and rather tactlessly asked one of our Ukrainians how long the war will last. Her bleak and fatalistic response was, 'As long as Ukraine exists.'
Nothing has changed for nearly a year now despite BOGOF offers on Leopard 2As, etc. Except that 100,000 more people are dead and Ukraine is a failed state that utterly depends on external aid to survive.
Putin will keep fighting because he doesn't have enough to market the outcome as an unqualified win; which has to include, Catherine's city of Odessa.
Zelensky will keep fighting as long as the suitcases of cash from Foggy Bottom keep turning up because he knows Putin doesn't have enough to stop yet.
The corollary is that should Ukraine stop fighting, it would cease to exist. Russia is not offering peace.
And the latter is arguably closer to meriting the description of failed state than is Ukraine.
With the benefit of hindsight, did the policies started by Brown and continued by the Coalition, of large scale deficits and extremely easy monetary conditions to offset the consequences of the crash do more harm than good? The GFC on the surface caused far less damage than, say, the Wall Street crash in 1929 but its effects have been far more insidious and long lasting.
The GFC exposed a UK economic model built on shifting sands with a huge over-reliance on financial services at its heart. We need the foundations to create an alternative model - good transport links, universal high-speed internet, affordable childcare and housing, an adequate health service and social care provision etc - but have spent the last 15 years failing to create any of them and have generally made all our long-term problems worse.
The biggest single issue is the cost of housing. There needs to be housebuilding on a scale last seen after WWII, using a more modern version of the pre-fabs of the 1940s, at least a million a year for the next five years. It needs to be not just possible but achieveable, for a family to live on a single median income in the vast majority of the country, as it was until around the last three decades.
It's not going to happen. We don't have enough people in the trades to build 'em, and Non Standard Construction makes councils, mortgage companies and insurance companies shit their pants!
Yes it will require government to knock heads together, but that’s what government should be for.
Several companies are trying to get pre-fab houses off the ground, but they need to be mortgageable for at least 30 years. You can build at scale a 3-bed house for £100k, plus the land, and the designs mean that all the services come pre-installed, which uses considerably less skilled trade labour. It needs the post-war mentality though.
Alternatively it can throw wave after wave of young men into the mangler and get almost nowhere - as we see now - and sacrifice 1m men. And possibly/probably end up where it is now, anyway
And then there are no young people left to rebuild what is left of the country
I would love to see Ukraine win. It’s not happening
Your analysis is based on seeing war as about the numbers of men fighting, but if historians like Phillips P O'Brien are right it is more about equipment and industrial production.
With this latter view we can see that Ukraine is winning. They have decisively gained an upper hand in the artillery war and are destroying Russian artillery at a prodigious rate. Their drone capabilities are also expanding and developing at an impressive rate, with massive implications for Russian supply of Crimea.
Slowly Western (including European) production of war material is increasing. Meanwhile Russia is struggling and failing to replace their equipment losses, in the absence of full Chinese support.
Yes, Russia can continue to supply the battlefield with men, but that isn't going to be enough.
The biggest single decision of the whole war, was Xi’s decision not to get behind Putin. My enemy’s enemy isn’t necessarily my friend, but the Chinese leader did the world a favour there.
Yes, wars are won primarily on logistics and production. Russia has stockpiles of equipment, but not the production capability. Putting new barrels on 50-year-old tanks will only get you so far, when your enemy has live satellite video and missiles like Storm Shadow.
Storm Shadow/SCALP production is highly constrained and currently dedicated to the UAE order hence the UK's interest in Rampage to replace those given away. Once they're gone, they're gone.
No movement at all after all the fuss of the last fortnight.
The 90% of motorists who find out in August that they don't need to pay anything at all will just shrug. At the moment a lot think incorrectly that this is going to cost them.
In other news:
24% of New UK car registrations in July are either EV (16%) or PHEV (8%) so already meeting the 2030 criteria. Less than 8% are diesels of any form.
Unlikely people will shrug. Its the same principle as Inheritance tax. People who are never going to.pay inheritance tax resent it on principle. The same will be for Khan's lunacy.
If ULEZ is lunacy what is your sane proposal for ensuring that air in London meets WHO particulate standards and stops killing people?
So Putin decided it would be a wizard wheeze to stop the grain deal and push up food costs worldwide, with large negative effects for poorer people.
Unfortunately, he did not seem to realise that would make large parts of the Black Sea open waters for Ukrainian action.
Slowly but surely the Russians are losing.
Actually, they have already lost. Every single goal of their invasion has been thwarted. They have not got a secure land crossing to Crimea, they haven’t forced regime change in Kyiv, they have strengthened NATO and lengthened its border with Russia and they have limited control of part of Ukraine.
On the way trashing their economy, isolating themselves diplomatically, killing tens of thousands of young men, stripping their armed forces of equipment and undermining the prestige of the government.
The catch is not that they haven’t lost, but that the Ukrainians haven’t won. At least not yet. They may do but even with Russia’s difficulties progress is slow and painful for them. The question may become can their manpower reserves outlast the Russian economy?
Yes they do. We know that countries that are motivated to continue the fight can bear huge losses. Ukraine has a similar population to the UK in WW1. It sustained massive losses in WW2, higher than Russia in terms of % of population.
In an existential war that motivation is likely to be sustained. Fight or die.
It must be nice for the Ukrainians to have you cheering them on, insisting they can afford to lose 1 million men (like the UK in WW1)
All from your pulpit in…. Leicester
The Ukrainians can see what happens when Russia gains territory. It's not just a change in the top bods running the country. The eastern areas post 2014 became an absolute cesspit, with the 'authorities' doing lots of nasty things. In the areas the Russians took over since last year, hundreds of thousands of kids have been kidnapped and taken into Russia; thousands of Ukrainian civilians have been killed, property stolen wholesale, and Ukrainians treated as third-class citizens.
They know that, and worse, is what lies in wait for any new territory gained by the Russians. It is a war of existence for the Ukrainians.
Personally, I will continue to cheer the Ukrainians on for as long as they want to fight.
Hundreds of thousands of kids have not been kidnapped. The latest estimate I read is about 15k children moved to Russia. Lots of them orphans
Russia is committing hideous crimes but it’s important we don’t go all “Belgian nun”
The dilemma for Ukraine is much more painful than the one you posit. Russia cannot be defeated - unlike Germany in WW1 and WW2 - because nukes. In the end Russia will use a nuke if it has to. Probably it would go nuclear if Crimea was seriously close to being overrun
So then it’s a question for Ukraine of how much territory it is willing to yield - for peace. Just Crimea? Donbass? All that Russia holds now?
Alternatively it can throw wave after wave of young men into the mangler and get almost nowhere - as we see now - and sacrifice 1m men. And possibly/probably end up where it is now, anyway
And then there are no young people left to rebuild what is left of the country
I would love to see Ukraine win. It’s not happening
"Hundreds of thousands of kids have not been kidnapped. The latest estimate I read is about 15k children moved to Russia. Lots of them orphans "
Russia will not use nukes, because that means disaster for them. There is no tactical or strategic benefit in using them over Ukraine. They *may* engineer an 'accident' at ZNPP, but even that is problematic.
“Since Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Russian soldiers have forcibly taken an estimated 16,000 Ukrainian children to Russia. Over 300 children have since returned home, but it is not clear what happened to most of the rest.”
As for nukes, of course Russia will in the end resort to nukes if it feels existentially threatened. The question is where is that existential line? That is much harder to say. I reckon it probably surrounds Crimea
I might suggest you read my link re. the children. You know, the one from the *Russians*. Also note there are *confirmed* kidnappings, and the ones the Ukrainians cannot be sure about because they no longer control the territory.
As for nukes: they won't use them over Ukraine, for that way leads them to all sorts of disasters. I know you love the extreme and the exciting, but it's pretty simple: a nuclear strike on Ukraine would lead to consequences that Russia cannot control, and lose them what little remaining international goodwill they have.
If Putin was going to use nukes, he would have used them in March or April last year when it first became clear he was losing, at about the time of the withdrawal from Kyiv. But he didn't use them, because he isn't actually mad. Evil, certainly, but not mad.
The “700,000 kidnapped children” meme is almost certainly bullshit. You just have to sit down and think about it for a while. It’s a ridiculous number
The equivalent in the UK would be 1.3 million children forcibly taken to France
The rest of your comment continues in the same vein
700,000 is a high number; but you have to ask why the Russians would say that number, especially given the charges being laid against Putin and others over it. But I'd also say that 16,000 is far too low, given what we know and have seen. 16,000 *confirmed* cases does not mean it is *just* 16,000 cases. Also note Belarus (and sadly, the Belarussian Red Cross) has been doing the same.
"The rest of your comment continues in the same vein"
Alternatively it can throw wave after wave of young men into the mangler and get almost nowhere - as we see now - and sacrifice 1m men. And possibly/probably end up where it is now, anyway
And then there are no young people left to rebuild what is left of the country
I would love to see Ukraine win. It’s not happening
Your analysis is based on seeing war as about the numbers of men fighting, but if historians like Phillips P O'Brien are right it is more about equipment and industrial production.
With this latter view we can see that Ukraine is winning. They have decisively gained an upper hand in the artillery war and are destroying Russian artillery at a prodigious rate. Their drone capabilities are also expanding and developing at an impressive rate, with massive implications for Russian supply of Crimea.
Slowly Western (including European) production of war material is increasing. Meanwhile Russia is struggling and failing to replace their equipment losses, in the absence of full Chinese support.
Yes, Russia can continue to supply the battlefield with men, but that isn't going to be enough.
I’m old enough to remember when PB kept telling us “Putin is about to run out of missiles”. That was a year ago
Today in Ukraine:
Have you compared that to the numbers they were launching in March and April 2022?
If you compare the launch rates with estimated production levels (as estimated by the U.K. MOD) - the Russians are firing them at the rate at which they are making them.
Either the Russians have expended their stockpiles of weapons in production, or they are limiting themselves to the production rate in order to hold a stockpile.
Romanians are completely different to Ukrainians. The difference is remarkable
You go from a land of slim pale blonde people - extremely lovely women - to fat dark tattoooed people - women “not quite so striking” - in 100km
What explains this? The Romanians are darker than the Italians; the Ukrainians are whiter than the icelandics
It’s the same landscape, same climate, same everything. Except for the people
EU Membership. Romaina has been totally hollowed out by freedom of movement. Its population is down over 20% in the past two decades, as anyone with aspiration has moved West.
No it’s not that. These people are genetically, linguistically and culturally entirely different. It’s one of the most striking genetic divides I’ve ever seen - over such a short distance. You go from ultra pale blonde Cyrillic to dark swarthy tattooed Latin in a few kilometres. And there is no mountain range or mighty river marking the border
So it must date from many centuries ago. The pattern of settlement. The Roman Empire. “Romania”. Or the Roma. Or both
Probably it would go nuclear if Crimea was seriously close to being overrun
I definitely think RF would threaten it if Crimea was in peril. Maybe a 'test' detonation over the Black Sea. That would be enough to cause utter chaos in the financial markets and Biden would be on WhatsApp to Z telling him to chill the fuck out.
Probably it would go nuclear if Crimea was seriously close to being overrun
I definitely think RF would threaten it if Crimea was in peril. Maybe a 'test' detonation over the Black Sea. That would be enough to cause utter chaos in the financial markets and Biden would be on WhatsApp to Z telling him to chill the fuck out.
Yes. That’s what I think. Crimea is the red line
I’ve just been reading Simon Sebag Montefiore’s The Romanovs and it is highly illustrative of the psychological importance of the South Ukrainian coast - especially Odessa - even more Crimea - to Russia’s self image
Catherine’s lover Potemkin was buried in the town he founded. Kherson. The Russians removed his bones as they retreated
So Putin decided it would be a wizard wheeze to stop the grain deal and push up food costs worldwide, with large negative effects for poorer people.
Unfortunately, he did not seem to realise that would make large parts of the Black Sea open waters for Ukrainian action.
Slowly but surely the Russians are losing.
Actually, they have already lost. Every single goal of their invasion has been thwarted. They have not got a secure land crossing to Crimea, they haven’t forced regime change in Kyiv, they have strengthened NATO and lengthened its border with Russia and they have limited control of part of Ukraine.
On the way trashing their economy, isolating themselves diplomatically, killing tens of thousands of young men, stripping their armed forces of equipment and undermining the prestige of the government.
The catch is not that they haven’t lost, but that the Ukrainians haven’t won. At least not yet. They may do but even with Russia’s difficulties progress is slow and painful for them. The question may become can their manpower reserves outlast the Russian economy?
Yes they do. We know that countries that are motivated to continue the fight can bear huge losses. Ukraine has a similar population to the UK in WW1. It sustained massive losses in WW2, higher than Russia in terms of % of population.
In an existential war that motivation is likely to be sustained. Fight or die.
It must be nice for the Ukrainians to have you cheering them on, insisting they can afford to lose 1 million men (like the UK in WW1)
All from your pulpit in…. Leicester
The Ukrainians can see what happens when Russia gains territory. It's not just a change in the top bods running the country. The eastern areas post 2014 became an absolute cesspit, with the 'authorities' doing lots of nasty things. In the areas the Russians took over since last year, hundreds of thousands of kids have been kidnapped and taken into Russia; thousands of Ukrainian civilians have been killed, property stolen wholesale, and Ukrainians treated as third-class citizens.
They know that, and worse, is what lies in wait for any new territory gained by the Russians. It is a war of existence for the Ukrainians.
Personally, I will continue to cheer the Ukrainians on for as long as they want to fight.
Hundreds of thousands of kids have not been kidnapped. The latest estimate I read is about 15k children moved to Russia. Lots of them orphans
Russia is committing hideous crimes but it’s important we don’t go all “Belgian nun”
The dilemma for Ukraine is much more painful than the one you posit. Russia cannot be defeated - unlike Germany in WW1 and WW2 - because nukes. In the end Russia will use a nuke if it has to. Probably it would go nuclear if Crimea was seriously close to being overrun
So then it’s a question for Ukraine of how much territory it is willing to yield - for peace. Just Crimea? Donbass? All that Russia holds now?
Alternatively it can throw wave after wave of young men into the mangler and get almost nowhere - as we see now - and sacrifice 1m men. And possibly/probably end up where it is now, anyway
And then there are no young people left to rebuild what is left of the country
I would love to see Ukraine win. It’s not happening
"Hundreds of thousands of kids have not been kidnapped. The latest estimate I read is about 15k children moved to Russia. Lots of them orphans "
Russia will not use nukes, because that means disaster for them. There is no tactical or strategic benefit in using them over Ukraine. They *may* engineer an 'accident' at ZNPP, but even that is problematic.
“Since Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Russian soldiers have forcibly taken an estimated 16,000 Ukrainian children to Russia. Over 300 children have since returned home, but it is not clear what happened to most of the rest.”
As for nukes, of course Russia will in the end resort to nukes if it feels existentially threatened. The question is where is that existential line? That is much harder to say. I reckon it probably surrounds Crimea
I might suggest you read my link re. the children. You know, the one from the *Russians*. Also note there are *confirmed* kidnappings, and the ones the Ukrainians cannot be sure about because they no longer control the territory.
As for nukes: they won't use them over Ukraine, for that way leads them to all sorts of disasters. I know you love the extreme and the exciting, but it's pretty simple: a nuclear strike on Ukraine would lead to consequences that Russia cannot control, and lose them what little remaining international goodwill they have.
If Putin was going to use nukes, he would have used them in March or April last year when it first became clear he was losing, at about the time of the withdrawal from Kyiv. But he didn't use them, because he isn't actually mad. Evil, certainly, but not mad.
The “700,000 kidnapped children” meme is almost certainly bullshit. You just have to sit down and think about it for a while. It’s a ridiculous number
The equivalent in the UK would be 1.3 million children forcibly taken to France
The rest of your comment continues in the same vein
700,000 is a high number; but you have to ask why the Russians would say that number, especially given the charges being laid against Putin and others over it. But I'd also say that 16,000 is far too low, given what we know and have seen. 16,000 *confirmed* cases does not mean it is *just* 16,000 cases. Also note Belarus (and sadly, the Belarussian Red Cross) has been doing the same.
"The rest of your comment continues in the same vein"
Alternatively it can throw wave after wave of young men into the mangler and get almost nowhere - as we see now - and sacrifice 1m men. And possibly/probably end up where it is now, anyway
And then there are no young people left to rebuild what is left of the country
I would love to see Ukraine win. It’s not happening
Your analysis is based on seeing war as about the numbers of men fighting, but if historians like Phillips P O'Brien are right it is more about equipment and industrial production.
With this latter view we can see that Ukraine is winning. They have decisively gained an upper hand in the artillery war and are destroying Russian artillery at a prodigious rate. Their drone capabilities are also expanding and developing at an impressive rate, with massive implications for Russian supply of Crimea.
Slowly Western (including European) production of war material is increasing. Meanwhile Russia is struggling and failing to replace their equipment losses, in the absence of full Chinese support.
Yes, Russia can continue to supply the battlefield with men, but that isn't going to be enough.
I’m old enough to remember when PB kept telling us “Putin is about to run out of missiles”. That was a year ago
Today in Ukraine:
Have you compared that to the numbers they were launching in March and April 2022?
If you compare the launch rates with estimated production levels (as estimated by the U.K. MOD) - the Russians are firing them at the rate at which they are making them.
Either the Russians have expended their stockpiles of weapons in production, or they are limiting themselves to the production rate in order to hold a stockpile.
Coincidentally:
" Explosion at the Votkinsk Machine Building Plant in Udmurtia, Russia. Iskander ballistic missile detonated in an armored casing during a test, damaging a building used for missile assembly. The giant plant manufactures a large variety of missiles."
With the benefit of hindsight, did the policies started by Brown and continued by the Coalition, of large scale deficits and extremely easy monetary conditions to offset the consequences of the crash do more harm than good? The GFC on the surface caused far less damage than, say, the Wall Street crash in 1929 but its effects have been far more insidious and long lasting.
The GFC exposed a UK economic model built on shifting sands with a huge over-reliance on financial services at its heart. We need the foundations to create an alternative model - good transport links, universal high-speed internet, affordable childcare and housing, an adequate health service and social care provision etc - but have spent the last 15 years failing to create any of them and have generally made all our long-term problems worse.
The biggest single issue is the cost of housing. There needs to be housebuilding on a scale last seen after WWII, using a more modern version of the pre-fabs of the 1940s, at least a million a year for the next five years. It needs to be not just possible but achieveable, for a family to live on a single median income in the vast majority of the country, as it was until around the last three decades.
It's not going to happen. We don't have enough people in the trades to build 'em, and Non Standard Construction makes councils, mortgage companies and insurance companies shit their pants!
Yes it will require government to knock heads together, but that’s what government should be for.
Several companies are trying to get pre-fab houses off the ground, but they need to be mortgageable for at least 30 years. You can build at scale a 3-bed house for £100k, plus the land, and the designs mean that all the services come pre-installed, which uses considerably less skilled trade labour. It needs the post-war mentality though.
We've been looking into kit houses for some land we have. Not worth the hassle at the minute, even with how cheap they are. Reselling is a nightmare, and the insurance people get the arse. Our local council don't understand them. There's loads around the East Coast and Cornwall, most notably the infamous Woolaway concrete jobbies. Timber construction seems more viable, but the longevity is an issue.
With the benefit of hindsight, did the policies started by Brown and continued by the Coalition, of large scale deficits and extremely easy monetary conditions to offset the consequences of the crash do more harm than good? The GFC on the surface caused far less damage than, say, the Wall Street crash in 1929 but its effects have been far more insidious and long lasting.
The GFC exposed a UK economic model built on shifting sands with a huge over-reliance on financial services at its heart. We need the foundations to create an alternative model - good transport links, universal high-speed internet, affordable childcare and housing, an adequate health service and social care provision etc - but have spent the last 15 years failing to create any of them and have generally made all our long-term problems worse.
The biggest single issue is the cost of housing. There needs to be housebuilding on a scale last seen after WWII, using a more modern version of the pre-fabs of the 1940s, at least a million a year for the next five years. It needs to be not just possible but achieveable, for a family to live on a single median income in the vast majority of the country, as it was until around the last three decades.
It's not going to happen. We don't have enough people in the trades to build 'em, and Non Standard Construction makes councils, mortgage companies and insurance companies shit their pants!
Yes it will require government to knock heads together, but that’s what government should be for.
Several companies are trying to get pre-fab houses off the ground, but they need to be mortgageable for at least 30 years. You can build at scale a 3-bed house for £100k, plus the land, and the designs mean that all the services come pre-installed, which uses considerably less skilled trade labour. It needs the post-war mentality though.
Increasing the build rate for non-prefab houses is perfectly possible.
The big bottleneck is actually starting building. We are now steadily stockpiling planning permissions.
The problem is that large developers, in many areas, have a local monopoly on building. They then try and keep the prices up, by throttling building.
This suits the politicians, NIMBYS and environmental lobby. Anything that keeps the house building rate down is good with them.
So all you need to do to increase the rate of house building is -
1) Upset the house builders 2) Upset the local politicians 3) Upset the NIMBYS 4) Upset the environmentalists
Romanians are completely different to Ukrainians. The difference is remarkable
You go from a land of slim pale blonde people - extremely lovely women - to fat dark tattoooed people - women “not quite so striking” - in 100km
What explains this? The Romanians are darker than the Italians; the Ukrainians are whiter than the icelandics
It’s the same landscape, same climate, same everything. Except for the people
EU Membership. Romaina has been totally hollowed out by freedom of movement. Its population is down over 20% in the past two decades, as anyone with aspiration has moved West.
No it’s not that. These people are genetically, linguistically and culturally entirely different. It’s one of the most striking genetic divides I’ve ever seen - over such a short distance. You go from ultra pale blonde Cyrillic to dark swarthy tattooed Latin in a few kilometres. And there is no mountain range or mighty river marking the border
So it must date from many centuries ago. The pattern of settlement. The Roman Empire. “Romania”. Or the Roma. Or both
Romanian is a Latin language, but was also part of the Ottoman Empire for hundreds of years. That probably affected migratory patterns. If you go to the west of the country, there’s a much greater Hungarian influence. There was also a German minority but that has largely returned to Germany now, leaving behind the Saxon villages.
With the benefit of hindsight, did the policies started by Brown and continued by the Coalition, of large scale deficits and extremely easy monetary conditions to offset the consequences of the crash do more harm than good? The GFC on the surface caused far less damage than, say, the Wall Street crash in 1929 but its effects have been far more insidious and long lasting.
The GFC exposed a UK economic model built on shifting sands with a huge over-reliance on financial services at its heart. We need the foundations to create an alternative model - good transport links, universal high-speed internet, affordable childcare and housing, an adequate health service and social care provision etc - but have spent the last 15 years failing to create any of them and have generally made all our long-term problems worse.
The biggest single issue is the cost of housing. There needs to be housebuilding on a scale last seen after WWII, using a more modern version of the pre-fabs of the 1940s, at least a million a year for the next five years. It needs to be not just possible but achieveable, for a family to live on a single median income in the vast majority of the country, as it was until around the last three decades.
It's not going to happen. We don't have enough people in the trades to build 'em, and Non Standard Construction makes councils, mortgage companies and insurance companies shit their pants!
Yes it will require government to knock heads together, but that’s what government should be for.
Several companies are trying to get pre-fab houses off the ground, but they need to be mortgageable for at least 30 years. You can build at scale a 3-bed house for £100k, plus the land, and the designs mean that all the services come pre-installed, which uses considerably less skilled trade labour. It needs the post-war mentality though.
Increasing the build rate for non-prefab houses is perfectly possible.
The big bottleneck is actually starting building. We are now steadily stockpiling planning permissions.
The problem is that large developers, in many areas, have a local monopoly on building. They then try and keep the prices up, by throttling building.
This suits the politicians, NIMBYS and environmental lobby. Anything that keeps the house building rate down is good with them.
So all you need to do to increase the rate of house building is -
1) Upset the house builders 2) Upset the local politicians 3) Upset the NIMBYS 4) Upset the environmentalists
It's interesting to see the new houses going up near me. Most are part-prefab: the inner skins are wooden and prebuilt, arriving in large panels complete with insulation. They then build a brick skin around them. Rooves are more conventional.
(Incidentally, one of the things I always chuckle at are the 'chimneys' that go up in one piece; you see pallets of them waiting to go on houses.)
The hot war is in Ukraine, but from the Russian point of view, it is only incidentally about Ukraine.
For most of the past two decades, Russia has been seeking to overturn what they see as the Western dominated world order. In that time they have not only used violence: in Moldova, Georgia, Syria and other places, as well as Ukraine itself, but they have also used an arsenal of hybrid or unconventional tactics. The regime sends murder squads to kill opponents, at home, like Anna Politkovskaya, Boris Nemtsov or Pavel Klebnikov or abroad, like Sasha Litvinenko in London or Yanderbayev in Qatar and hundreds of other examples.
Moscow also uses bribery, blackmail and subversion to bring key people under their control. Some political parties, such as AfD and the French National Rally have received public support, including financial support from Russian sources. Some movements, like the French Gilets Jaunes are believed to be entirely sustained by Russian clandestine operations. These operations undertaken by the Russian secret services are believed to be even larger and more active than during the very worse of the Cold War. It would be extremely naive to assume that the UK was not also the focus of such operations, which is why the relationship of Farage and Salmond with the Russia Today black propaganda channel has been highlighted as a source of concern, and why the decisions by Boris Johnson to hire Dominic Cummings, despite his not receiving full security clearance, and appoint Evgeny Lebedev to the House of Lords led to considerable dismay in certain quarters.
In short, by a variety of means, including but not limited to full scale war, the Putin government has been launching a large and orchestrated campaign to undermine Western democracy, and reduce its will to counter Russian aggression.
Putin clearly hopes that the return of Trump would destroy the united will of the West to support Ukraine and in the process lead to the collapse of NATO. The danger now in the Ukrainian war is not that the Ukrainian nation will fold, but that the West, demoralized and leaderless, will allow Russia a free hand first in Ukraine, and then elsewhere in order to destroy the EU and then democracy itself.
This is a World War already.
If we are to avoid the victory of corruption and criminal and brutal barbarism, we must understand that this is an existential struggle, not just for Ukraine, but for the West itself and act accordingly. There is nothing we can give Putin that will satisfy him.
Romanians are completely different to Ukrainians. The difference is remarkable
You go from a land of slim pale blonde people - extremely lovely women - to fat dark tattoooed people - women “not quite so striking” - in 100km
What explains this? The Romanians are darker than the Italians; the Ukrainians are whiter than the icelandics
It’s the same landscape, same climate, same everything. Except for the people
EU Membership. Romaina has been totally hollowed out by freedom of movement. Its population is down over 20% in the past two decades, as anyone with aspiration has moved West.
No it’s not that. These people are genetically, linguistically and culturally entirely different. It’s one of the most striking genetic divides I’ve ever seen - over such a short distance. You go from ultra pale blonde Cyrillic to dark swarthy tattooed Latin in a few kilometres. And there is no mountain range or mighty river marking the border
So it must date from many centuries ago. The pattern of settlement. The Roman Empire. “Romania”. Or the Roma. Or both
With the benefit of hindsight, did the policies started by Brown and continued by the Coalition, of large scale deficits and extremely easy monetary conditions to offset the consequences of the crash do more harm than good? The GFC on the surface caused far less damage than, say, the Wall Street crash in 1929 but its effects have been far more insidious and long lasting.
The GFC exposed a UK economic model built on shifting sands with a huge over-reliance on financial services at its heart. We need the foundations to create an alternative model - good transport links, universal high-speed internet, affordable childcare and housing, an adequate health service and social care provision etc - but have spent the last 15 years failing to create any of them and have generally made all our long-term problems worse.
The biggest single issue is the cost of housing. There needs to be housebuilding on a scale last seen after WWII, using a more modern version of the pre-fabs of the 1940s, at least a million a year for the next five years. It needs to be not just possible but achieveable, for a family to live on a single median income in the vast majority of the country, as it was until around the last three decades.
It's not going to happen. We don't have enough people in the trades to build 'em, and Non Standard Construction makes councils, mortgage companies and insurance companies shit their pants!
Yes it will require government to knock heads together, but that’s what government should be for.
Several companies are trying to get pre-fab houses off the ground, but they need to be mortgageable for at least 30 years. You can build at scale a 3-bed house for £100k, plus the land, and the designs mean that all the services come pre-installed, which uses considerably less skilled trade labour. It needs the post-war mentality though.
Increasing the build rate for non-prefab houses is perfectly possible.
The big bottleneck is actually starting building. We are now steadily stockpiling planning permissions.
The problem is that large developers, in many areas, have a local monopoly on building. They then try and keep the prices up, by throttling building.
This suits the politicians, NIMBYS and environmental lobby. Anything that keeps the house building rate down is good with them.
So all you need to do to increase the rate of house building is
No movement at all after all the fuss of the last fortnight.
The 90% of motorists who find out in August that they don't need to pay anything at all will just shrug. At the moment a lot think incorrectly that this is going to cost them.
In other news:
24% of New UK car registrations in July are either EV (16%) or PHEV (8%) so already meeting the 2030 criteria. Less than 8% are diesels of any form.
Unlikely people will shrug. Its the same principle as Inheritance tax. People who are never going to.pay inheritance tax resent it on principle. The same will be for Khan's lunacy.
If ULEZ is lunacy what is your sane proposal for ensuring that air in London meets WHO particulate standards and stops killing people?
There are system in other countries - pay per mile, based on the emissions for that vehicle.
You can also use them to enforce speed limits and get rid of the road humps that penalise small cars, mopeds, cargo bikes etc.
With the benefit of hindsight, did the policies started by Brown and continued by the Coalition, of large scale deficits and extremely easy monetary conditions to offset the consequences of the crash do more harm than good? The GFC on the surface caused far less damage than, say, the Wall Street crash in 1929 but its effects have been far more insidious and long lasting.
The GFC exposed a UK economic model built on shifting sands with a huge over-reliance on financial services at its heart. We need the foundations to create an alternative model - good transport links, universal high-speed internet, affordable childcare and housing, an adequate health service and social care provision etc - but have spent the last 15 years failing to create any of them and have generally made all our long-term problems worse.
The biggest single issue is the cost of housing. There needs to be housebuilding on a scale last seen after WWII, using a more modern version of the pre-fabs of the 1940s, at least a million a year for the next five years. It needs to be not just possible but achieveable, for a family to live on a single median income in the vast majority of the country, as it was until around the last three decades.
We can build housing. We also have an awful lot of crap housing which needs to be CPO'd and refurbished. The UK suffers from crap housing stock and huge prices for them thanks to the right to buy. We became a nation of landlords, letting a stack of spivs set a "market price" for renting out these shitboxes.
If we just build houses in the current framework, we're building a lot of tiny, poorly built hovels which the same spivs are then out selling for £unaffordable. What we need is socialised housing. A new wave of Housing Associations.
King Cole, I believe there's a settlement in the west of China which has a strange frequency of blue eyes and blonde hair, a leftover genetic legacy of Alexander the Great's empire.
With the benefit of hindsight, did the policies started by Brown and continued by the Coalition, of large scale deficits and extremely easy monetary conditions to offset the consequences of the crash do more harm than good? The GFC on the surface caused far less damage than, say, the Wall Street crash in 1929 but its effects have been far more insidious and long lasting.
The GFC exposed a UK economic model built on shifting sands with a huge over-reliance on financial services at its heart. We need the foundations to create an alternative model - good transport links, universal high-speed internet, affordable childcare and housing, an adequate health service and social care provision etc - but have spent the last 15 years failing to create any of them and have generally made all our long-term problems worse.
The biggest single issue is the cost of housing. There needs to be housebuilding on a scale last seen after WWII, using a more modern version of the pre-fabs of the 1940s, at least a million a year for the next five years. It needs to be not just possible but achieveable, for a family to live on a single median income in the vast majority of the country, as it was until around the last three decades.
It's not going to happen. We don't have enough people in the trades to build 'em, and Non Standard Construction makes councils, mortgage companies and insurance companies shit their pants!
Yes it will require government to knock heads together, but that’s what government should be for.
Several companies are trying to get pre-fab houses off the ground, but they need to be mortgageable for at least 30 years. You can build at scale a 3-bed house for £100k, plus the land, and the designs mean that all the services come pre-installed, which uses considerably less skilled trade labour. It needs the post-war mentality though.
Increasing the build rate for non-prefab houses is perfectly possible.
The big bottleneck is actually starting building. We are now steadily stockpiling planning permissions.
The problem is that large developers, in many areas, have a local monopoly on building. They then try and keep the prices up, by throttling building.
This suits the politicians, NIMBYS and environmental lobby. Anything that keeps the house building rate down is good with them.
So all you need to do to increase the rate of house building is -
1) Upset the house builders 2) Upset the local politicians 3) Upset the NIMBYS 4) Upset the environmentalists
The Labour plan for councils to acquire building land deals with number 2. And might well move the dial, as it's also an ingenious way around lack of government cash. It would need to be aggressively implemented to make a difference, though. Does Starmer have the balls ?
With the benefit of hindsight, did the policies started by Brown and continued by the Coalition, of large scale deficits and extremely easy monetary conditions to offset the consequences of the crash do more harm than good? The GFC on the surface caused far less damage than, say, the Wall Street crash in 1929 but its effects have been far more insidious and long lasting.
Coalition was sorting it - then Brexit.....
UK GDP per capita growth 2008Q1-2013Q1: - 4% UK GDP per capita growth 2013Q1-2018Q1: + 9% UK GDP per capita growth 2018Q1-2023Q1: NIL
"With the rise of self-driving vehicles and electric pick-up trucks, it can't be too long before we have country songs where the guy's truck leaves him"
Romanians are completely different to Ukrainians. The difference is remarkable
You go from a land of slim pale blonde people - extremely lovely women - to fat dark tattoooed people - women “not quite so striking” - in 100km
What explains this? The Romanians are darker than the Italians; the Ukrainians are whiter than the icelandics
It’s the same landscape, same climate, same everything. Except for the people
EU Membership. Romaina has been totally hollowed out by freedom of movement. Its population is down over 20% in the past two decades, as anyone with aspiration has moved West.
I doubt EU membership means all the tall blonde people have left Romania. My guess is that whereas Ukraine was populated largely from the north and west, Romania’s population was built a lot more from the south and east.
Ukraine is viking. Romania is latin. Thats why they look different - they are.
The hot war is in Ukraine, but from the Russian point of view, it is only incidentally about Ukraine.
For most of the past two decades, Russia has been seeking to overturn what they see as the Western dominated world order. In that time they have not only used violence: in Moldova, Georgia, Syria and other places, as well as Ukraine itself, but they have also used an arsenal of hybrid or unconventional tactics. The regime sends murder squads to kill opponents, at home, like Anna Politkovskaya, Boris Nemtsov or Pavel Klebnikov or abroad, like Sasha Litvinenko in London or Yanderbayev in Qatar and hundreds of other examples.
Moscow also uses bribery, blackmail and subversion to bring key people under their control. Some political parties, such as AfD and the French National Rally have received public support, including financial support from Russian sources. Some movements, like the French Gilets Jaunes are believed to be entirely sustained by Russian clandestine operations. These operations undertaken by the Russian secret services are believed to be even larger and more active than during the very worse of the Cold War. It would be extremely naive to assume that the UK was not also the focus of such operations, which is why the relationship of Farage and Salmond with the Russia Today black propaganda channel has been highlighted as a source of concern, and why the decisions by Boris Johnson to hire Dominic Cummings, despite his not receiving full security clearance, and appoint Evgeny Lebedev to the House of Lords led to considerable dismay in certain quarters.
In short, by a variety of means, including but not limited to full scale war, the Putin government has been launching a large and orchestrated campaign to undermine Western democracy, and reduce its will to counter Russian aggression.
Putin clearly hopes that the return of Trump would destroy the united will of the West to support Ukraine and in the process lead to the collapse of NATO. The danger now in the Ukrainian war is not that the Ukrainian nation will fold, but that the West, demoralized and leaderless, will allow Russia a free hand first in Ukraine, and then elsewhere in order to destroy the EU and then democracy itself.
This is a World War already.
If we are to avoid the victory of corruption and criminal and brutal barbarism, we must understand that this is an existential struggle, not just for Ukraine, but for the West itself and act accordingly. There is nothing we can give Putin that will satisfy him.
Putin must be defeated and destroyed.
Huzzah!
And how do you suggest that we do this, practically?
With the benefit of hindsight, did the policies started by Brown and continued by the Coalition, of large scale deficits and extremely easy monetary conditions to offset the consequences of the crash do more harm than good? The GFC on the surface caused far less damage than, say, the Wall Street crash in 1929 but its effects have been far more insidious and long lasting.
The GFC exposed a UK economic model built on shifting sands with a huge over-reliance on financial services at its heart. We need the foundations to create an alternative model - good transport links, universal high-speed internet, affordable childcare and housing, an adequate health service and social care provision etc - but have spent the last 15 years failing to create any of them and have generally made all our long-term problems worse.
The biggest single issue is the cost of housing. There needs to be housebuilding on a scale last seen after WWII, using a more modern version of the pre-fabs of the 1940s, at least a million a year for the next five years. It needs to be not just possible but achieveable, for a family to live on a single median income in the vast majority of the country, as it was until around the last three decades.
It's not going to happen. We don't have enough people in the trades to build 'em, and Non Standard Construction makes councils, mortgage companies and insurance companies shit their pants!
Yes it will require government to knock heads together, but that’s what government should be for.
Several companies are trying to get pre-fab houses off the ground, but they need to be mortgageable for at least 30 years. You can build at scale a 3-bed house for £100k, plus the land, and the designs mean that all the services come pre-installed, which uses considerably less skilled trade labour. It needs the post-war mentality though.
Increasing the build rate for non-prefab houses is perfectly possible.
The big bottleneck is actually starting building. We are now steadily stockpiling planning permissions.
The problem is that large developers, in many areas, have a local monopoly on building. They then try and keep the prices up, by throttling building.
This suits the politicians, NIMBYS and environmental lobby. Anything that keeps the house building rate down is good with them.
So all you need to do to increase the rate of house building is -
1) Upset the house builders 2) Upset the local politicians 3) Upset the NIMBYS 4) Upset the environmentalists
It's interesting to see the new houses going up near me. Most are part-prefab: the inner skins are wooden and prebuilt, arriving in large panels complete with insulation. They then build a brick skin around them. Rooves are more conventional.
(Incidentally, one of the things I always chuckle at are the 'chimneys' that go up in one piece; you see pallets of them waiting to go on houses.)
Probably it would go nuclear if Crimea was seriously close to being overrun
I definitely think RF would threaten it if Crimea was in peril. Maybe a 'test' detonation over the Black Sea. That would be enough to cause utter chaos in the financial markets and Biden would be on WhatsApp to Z telling him to chill the fuck out.
Yes. That’s what I think. Crimea is the red line
I’ve just been reading Simon Sebag Montefiore’s The Romanovs and it is highly illustrative of the psychological importance of the South Ukrainian coast - especially Odessa - even more Crimea - to Russia’s self image
Catherine’s lover Potemkin was buried in the town he founded. Kherson. The Russians removed his bones as they retreated
So why did Putin flatten Odessa's cathedral last week?
With the benefit of hindsight, did the policies started by Brown and continued by the Coalition, of large scale deficits and extremely easy monetary conditions to offset the consequences of the crash do more harm than good? The GFC on the surface caused far less damage than, say, the Wall Street crash in 1929 but its effects have been far more insidious and long lasting.
The GFC exposed a UK economic model built on shifting sands with a huge over-reliance on financial services at its heart. We need the foundations to create an alternative model - good transport links, universal high-speed internet, affordable childcare and housing, an adequate health service and social care provision etc - but have spent the last 15 years failing to create any of them and have generally made all our long-term problems worse.
The biggest single issue is the cost of housing. There needs to be housebuilding on a scale last seen after WWII, using a more modern version of the pre-fabs of the 1940s, at least a million a year for the next five years. It needs to be not just possible but achieveable, for a family to live on a single median income in the vast majority of the country, as it was until around the last three decades.
It's not going to happen. We don't have enough people in the trades to build 'em, and Non Standard Construction makes councils, mortgage companies and insurance companies shit their pants!
Yes it will require government to knock heads together, but that’s what government should be for.
Several companies are trying to get pre-fab houses off the ground, but they need to be mortgageable for at least 30 years. You can build at scale a 3-bed house for £100k, plus the land, and the designs mean that all the services come pre-installed, which uses considerably less skilled trade labour. It needs the post-war mentality though.
Increasing the build rate for non-prefab houses is perfectly possible.
The big bottleneck is actually starting building. We are now steadily stockpiling planning permissions.
The problem is that large developers, in many areas, have a local monopoly on building. They then try and keep the prices up, by throttling building.
This suits the politicians, NIMBYS and environmental lobby. Anything that keeps the house building rate down is good with them.
So all you need to do to increase the rate of house building is
With the benefit of hindsight, did the policies started by Brown and continued by the Coalition, of large scale deficits and extremely easy monetary conditions to offset the consequences of the crash do more harm than good? The GFC on the surface caused far less damage than, say, the Wall Street crash in 1929 but its effects have been far more insidious and long lasting.
The GFC exposed a UK economic model built on shifting sands with a huge over-reliance on financial services at its heart. We need the foundations to create an alternative model - good transport links, universal high-speed internet, affordable childcare and housing, an adequate health service and social care provision etc - but have spent the last 15 years failing to create any of them and have generally made all our long-term problems worse.
The biggest single issue is the cost of housing. There needs to be housebuilding on a scale last seen after WWII, using a more modern version of the pre-fabs of the 1940s, at least a million a year for the next five years. It needs to be not just possible but achieveable, for a family to live on a single median income in the vast majority of the country, as it was until around the last three decades.
It's not going to happen. We don't have enough people in the trades to build 'em, and Non Standard Construction makes councils, mortgage companies and insurance companies shit their pants!
Yes it will require government to knock heads together, but that’s what government should be for.
Several companies are trying to get pre-fab houses off the ground, but they need to be mortgageable for at least 30 years. You can build at scale a 3-bed house for £100k, plus the land, and the designs mean that all the services come pre-installed, which uses considerably less skilled trade labour. It needs the post-war mentality though.
Increasing the build rate for non-prefab houses is perfectly possible.
The big bottleneck is actually starting building. We are now steadily stockpiling planning permissions.
The problem is that large developers, in many areas, have a local monopoly on building. They then try and keep the prices up, by throttling building.
This suits the politicians, NIMBYS and environmental lobby. Anything that keeps the house building rate down is good with them.
So all you need to do to increase the rate of house building is -
1) Upset the house builders 2) Upset the local politicians 3) Upset the NIMBYS 4) Upset the environmentalists
It's interesting to see the new houses going up near me. Most are part-prefab: the inner skins are wooden and prebuilt, arriving in large panels complete with insulation. They then build a brick skin around them. Rooves are more conventional.
(Incidentally, one of the things I always chuckle at are the 'chimneys' that go up in one piece; you see pallets of them waiting to go on houses.)
With the benefit of hindsight, did the policies started by Brown and continued by the Coalition, of large scale deficits and extremely easy monetary conditions to offset the consequences of the crash do more harm than good? The GFC on the surface caused far less damage than, say, the Wall Street crash in 1929 but its effects have been far more insidious and long lasting.
The GFC exposed a UK economic model built on shifting sands with a huge over-reliance on financial services at its heart. We need the foundations to create an alternative model - good transport links, universal high-speed internet, affordable childcare and housing, an adequate health service and social care provision etc - but have spent the last 15 years failing to create any of them and have generally made all our long-term problems worse.
The biggest single issue is the cost of housing. There needs to be housebuilding on a scale last seen after WWII, using a more modern version of the pre-fabs of the 1940s, at least a million a year for the next five years. It needs to be not just possible but achieveable, for a family to live on a single median income in the vast majority of the country, as it was until around the last three decades.
It's not going to happen. We don't have enough people in the trades to build 'em, and Non Standard Construction makes councils, mortgage companies and insurance companies shit their pants!
Yes it will require government to knock heads together, but that’s what government should be for.
Several companies are trying to get pre-fab houses off the ground, but they need to be mortgageable for at least 30 years. You can build at scale a 3-bed house for £100k, plus the land, and the designs mean that all the services come pre-installed, which uses considerably less skilled trade labour. It needs the post-war mentality though.
Increasing the build rate for non-prefab houses is perfectly possible.
The big bottleneck is actually starting building. We are now steadily stockpiling planning permissions.
The problem is that large developers, in many areas, have a local monopoly on building. They then try and keep the prices up, by throttling building.
This suits the politicians, NIMBYS and environmental lobby. Anything that keeps the house building rate down is good with them.
So all you need to do to increase the rate of house building is
No movement at all after all the fuss of the last fortnight.
The 90% of motorists who find out in August that they don't need to pay anything at all will just shrug. At the moment a lot think incorrectly that this is going to cost them.
In other news:
24% of New UK car registrations in July are either EV (16%) or PHEV (8%) so already meeting the 2030 criteria. Less than 8% are diesels of any form.
Unlikely people will shrug. Its the same principle as Inheritance tax. People who are never going to.pay inheritance tax resent it on principle. The same will be for Khan's lunacy.
If ULEZ is lunacy what is your sane proposal for ensuring that air in London meets WHO particulate standards and stops killing people?
There are system in other countries - pay per mile, based on the emissions for that vehicle.
You can also use them to enforce speed limits and get rid of the road humps that penalise small cars, mopeds, cargo bikes etc.
Speed bumps only penalise small cars because of the increasing prevalence of SUVs. The new Defender advertises the fact it can hit bumps at high speed in urban areas.
Indeed, that's part of the attraction of an SUV - easier to pavement park, don't have to slow down for bumps, you don't get hurt if you plough into a group of pedestrians.
Possible solutions: 1) More speed cameras 2) Regulate SUVs out of existence (Paris) 3) Tighten roads and junctions rather than using speed bumps.
King Cole, I believe there's a settlement in the west of China which has a strange frequency of blue eyes and blonde hair, a leftover genetic legacy of Alexander the Great's empire.
Are you referring to these guys? People thought for a long time it was a community with European heritage especially as mummies found with blonde hair and pale skin/non- East Asian features but might just be a freak due to their isolation and chance with their Caucasian characteristics.
Romanians are completely different to Ukrainians. The difference is remarkable
You go from a land of slim pale blonde people - extremely lovely women - to fat dark tattoooed people - women “not quite so striking” - in 100km
What explains this? The Romanians are darker than the Italians; the Ukrainians are whiter than the icelandics
It’s the same landscape, same climate, same everything. Except for the people
EU Membership. Romaina has been totally hollowed out by freedom of movement. Its population is down over 20% in the past two decades, as anyone with aspiration has moved West.
No it’s not that. These people are genetically, linguistically and culturally entirely different. It’s one of the most striking genetic divides I’ve ever seen - over such a short distance. You go from ultra pale blonde Cyrillic to dark swarthy tattooed Latin in a few kilometres. And there is no mountain range or mighty river marking the border
So it must date from many centuries ago. The pattern of settlement. The Roman Empire. “Romania”. Or the Roma. Or both
Romanian is a Latin language, but was also part of the Ottoman Empire for hundreds of years. That probably affected migratory patterns. If you go to the west of the country, there’s a much greater Hungarian influence. There was also a German minority but that has largely returned to Germany now, leaving behind the Saxon villages.
As @Sunil_Prasannan says, they actually look much more like the Roma of Albania than any of their Slavic neighbours
No doubt they prefer to think of themselves as the descendants of mighty Rome, however
Friendly polite people. Definitely warner than the Ukrainians. More smiles. More English is spoken
Quite a lot of Union Jacks
This tiny airport (Bacau) serves London and Italy with about three flights a day and that’s it. On the upside it is 5 minutes drive from the centre of town
The hot war is in Ukraine, but from the Russian point of view, it is only incidentally about Ukraine.
For most of the past two decades, Russia has been seeking to overturn what they see as the Western dominated world order. In that time they have not only used violence: in Moldova, Georgia, Syria and other places, as well as Ukraine itself, but they have also used an arsenal of hybrid or unconventional tactics. The regime sends murder squads to kill opponents, at home, like Anna Politkovskaya, Boris Nemtsov or Pavel Klebnikov or abroad, like Sasha Litvinenko in London or Yanderbayev in Qatar and hundreds of other examples.
Moscow also uses bribery, blackmail and subversion to bring key people under their control. Some political parties, such as AfD and the French National Rally have received public support, including financial support from Russian sources. Some movements, like the French Gilets Jaunes are believed to be entirely sustained by Russian clandestine operations. These operations undertaken by the Russian secret services are believed to be even larger and more active than during the very worse of the Cold War. It would be extremely naive to assume that the UK was not also the focus of such operations, which is why the relationship of Farage and Salmond with the Russia Today black propaganda channel has been highlighted as a source of concern, and why the decisions by Boris Johnson to hire Dominic Cummings, despite his not receiving full security clearance, and appoint Evgeny Lebedev to the House of Lords led to considerable dismay in certain quarters.
In short, by a variety of means, including but not limited to full scale war, the Putin government has been launching a large and orchestrated campaign to undermine Western democracy, and reduce its will to counter Russian aggression.
Putin clearly hopes that the return of Trump would destroy the united will of the West to support Ukraine and in the process lead to the collapse of NATO. The danger now in the Ukrainian war is not that the Ukrainian nation will fold, but that the West, demoralized and leaderless, will allow Russia a free hand first in Ukraine, and then elsewhere in order to destroy the EU and then democracy itself.
This is a World War already.
If we are to avoid the victory of corruption and criminal and brutal barbarism, we must understand that this is an existential struggle, not just for Ukraine, but for the West itself and act accordingly. There is nothing we can give Putin that will satisfy him.
Putin must be defeated and destroyed.
One thing Russia has (or at least had) is a lot of money. Corrupt people in the west like money, so easy to bring them into the Russian way of thinking by essentially bribing them.
Whilst I credit Boris Johnson for the turnaround, a turnaround was needed. Letting his party coffers swell with lots of Russian cash, sticking a Russian in the HoL against the direction of the security services, his dodgy trips to see papa KGB including slipping his security detail. If Boris was Labour, the establishment would have fingered him as a threat to national security.
With the benefit of hindsight, did the policies started by Brown and continued by the Coalition, of large scale deficits and extremely easy monetary conditions to offset the consequences of the crash do more harm than good? The GFC on the surface caused far less damage than, say, the Wall Street crash in 1929 but its effects have been far more insidious and long lasting.
The GFC exposed a UK economic model built on shifting sands with a huge over-reliance on financial services at its heart. We need the foundations to create an alternative model - good transport links, universal high-speed internet, affordable childcare and housing, an adequate health service and social care provision etc - but have spent the last 15 years failing to create any of them and have generally made all our long-term problems worse.
The biggest single issue is the cost of housing. There needs to be housebuilding on a scale last seen after WWII, using a more modern version of the pre-fabs of the 1940s, at least a million a year for the next five years. It needs to be not just possible but achieveable, for a family to live on a single median income in the vast majority of the country, as it was until around the last three decades.
It's not going to happen. We don't have enough people in the trades to build 'em, and Non Standard Construction makes councils, mortgage companies and insurance companies shit their pants!
Yes it will require government to knock heads together, but that’s what government should be for.
Several companies are trying to get pre-fab houses off the ground, but they need to be mortgageable for at least 30 years. You can build at scale a 3-bed house for £100k, plus the land, and the designs mean that all the services come pre-installed, which uses considerably less skilled trade labour. It needs the post-war mentality though.
Came across this little clip recently - I *think* the hosues are being mader in the former Sunderland flying boat factory right under Dumbarton Rock.
‘Absentee MP’ Nadine Dorries faces move to force her out
Commons standards chair seeks restoration of 1801 rule to compel attendance or by-election https://www.ft.com/content/5e1438cf-4623-4045-af7c-a47b28b3790d ...Criticising Dorries as an “absentee MP”, Bryant said that when MPs returned to parliament in September it would be “perfectly legitimate . . . to table a motion saying the member for Mid Bedfordshire — and, for that matter, anybody else who hasn’t turned up for six months — must attend by such-and-such a date or will be suspended from the House for 10 sitting days or more”
The proposal, which Bryant said he had presented to government and Labour whips, is detailed in his new book, Code of Conduct: Why We Need to Fix Parliament — and How to Do It...
Romanians are completely different to Ukrainians. The difference is remarkable
You go from a land of slim pale blonde people - extremely lovely women - to fat dark tattoooed people - women “not quite so striking” - in 100km
What explains this? The Romanians are darker than the Italians; the Ukrainians are whiter than the icelandics
It’s the same landscape, same climate, same everything. Except for the people
EU Membership. Romaina has been totally hollowed out by freedom of movement. Its population is down over 20% in the past two decades, as anyone with aspiration has moved West.
I doubt EU membership means all the tall blonde people have left Romania. My guess is that whereas Ukraine was populated largely from the north and west, Romania’s population was built a lot more from the south and east.
Ukraine is viking. Romania is latin. Thats why they look different - they are.
Romania is not homogenous, there's 2 million Hungarians in transylvania who speak sketchy or no Romanian fly the Hungarian flag etc
Romanians are completely different to Ukrainians. The difference is remarkable
You go from a land of slim pale blonde people - extremely lovely women - to fat dark tattoooed people - women “not quite so striking” - in 100km
What explains this? The Romanians are darker than the Italians; the Ukrainians are whiter than the icelandics
It’s the same landscape, same climate, same everything. Except for the people
EU Membership. Romaina has been totally hollowed out by freedom of movement. Its population is down over 20% in the past two decades, as anyone with aspiration has moved West.
I doubt EU membership means all the tall blonde people have left Romania. My guess is that whereas Ukraine was populated largely from the north and west, Romania’s population was built a lot more from the south and east.
Ukraine is viking. Romania is latin. Thats why they look different - they are.
But they don’t just look Latin. They look extremely Latin. Like calabrians or Maltese or even westernised Tunisians
With the benefit of hindsight, did the policies started by Brown and continued by the Coalition, of large scale deficits and extremely easy monetary conditions to offset the consequences of the crash do more harm than good? The GFC on the surface caused far less damage than, say, the Wall Street crash in 1929 but its effects have been far more insidious and long lasting.
The GFC exposed a UK economic model built on shifting sands with a huge over-reliance on financial services at its heart. We need the foundations to create an alternative model - good transport links, universal high-speed internet, affordable childcare and housing, an adequate health service and social care provision etc - but have spent the last 15 years failing to create any of them and have generally made all our long-term problems worse.
The biggest single issue is the cost of housing. There needs to be housebuilding on a scale last seen after WWII, using a more modern version of the pre-fabs of the 1940s, at least a million a year for the next five years. It needs to be not just possible but achieveable, for a family to live on a single median income in the vast majority of the country, as it was until around the last three decades.
It's not going to happen. We don't have enough people in the trades to build 'em, and Non Standard Construction makes councils, mortgage companies and insurance companies shit their pants!
Yes it will require government to knock heads together, but that’s what government should be for.
Several companies are trying to get pre-fab houses off the ground, but they need to be mortgageable for at least 30 years. You can build at scale a 3-bed house for £100k, plus the land, and the designs mean that all the services come pre-installed, which uses considerably less skilled trade labour. It needs the post-war mentality though.
We've been looking into kit houses for some land we have. Not worth the hassle at the minute, even with how cheap they are. Reselling is a nightmare, and the insurance people get the arse. Our local council don't understand them. There's loads around the East Coast and Cornwall, most notably the infamous Woolaway concrete jobbies. Timber construction seems more viable, but the longevity is an issue.
A Woolaway building is a non-traditionally built property from a company by the name of "W Woolaway & Sons Ltd" who were based in Devon. There were two types of property built:
The Woolaway house which were constructed between 1946 and 1956. These were two storey semi-detached or terraced properties.
The Woolaway bungalow which were built from 1953 onwards and were all detached properties.
The term may also be used generically. A Woolaway building is a property type that is on the official "Designated Defective" list as per BRE and the Housing Defects Act 1984. Mortgages are difficult/impossible to obtain.
With the benefit of hindsight, did the policies started by Brown and continued by the Coalition, of large scale deficits and extremely easy monetary conditions to offset the consequences of the crash do more harm than good? The GFC on the surface caused far less damage than, say, the Wall Street crash in 1929 but its effects have been far more insidious and long lasting.
The GFC exposed a UK economic model built on shifting sands with a huge over-reliance on financial services at its heart. We need the foundations to create an alternative model - good transport links, universal high-speed internet, affordable childcare and housing, an adequate health service and social care provision etc - but have spent the last 15 years failing to create any of them and have generally made all our long-term problems worse.
The biggest single issue is the cost of housing. There needs to be housebuilding on a scale last seen after WWII, using a more modern version of the pre-fabs of the 1940s, at least a million a year for the next five years. It needs to be not just possible but achieveable, for a family to live on a single median income in the vast majority of the country, as it was until around the last three decades.
It's not going to happen. We don't have enough people in the trades to build 'em, and Non Standard Construction makes councils, mortgage companies and insurance companies shit their pants!
Yes it will require government to knock heads together, but that’s what government should be for.
Several companies are trying to get pre-fab houses off the ground, but they need to be mortgageable for at least 30 years. You can build at scale a 3-bed house for £100k, plus the land, and the designs mean that all the services come pre-installed, which uses considerably less skilled trade labour. It needs the post-war mentality though.
Increasing the build rate for non-prefab houses is perfectly possible.
The big bottleneck is actually starting building. We are now steadily stockpiling planning permissions.
The problem is that large developers, in many areas, have a local monopoly on building. They then try and keep the prices up, by throttling building.
This suits the politicians, NIMBYS and environmental lobby. Anything that keeps the house building rate down is good with them.
So all you need to do to increase the rate of house building is
No movement at all after all the fuss of the last fortnight.
The 90% of motorists who find out in August that they don't need to pay anything at all will just shrug. At the moment a lot think incorrectly that this is going to cost them.
In other news:
24% of New UK car registrations in July are either EV (16%) or PHEV (8%) so already meeting the 2030 criteria. Less than 8% are diesels of any form.
Unlikely people will shrug. Its the same principle as Inheritance tax. People who are never going to.pay inheritance tax resent it on principle. The same will be for Khan's lunacy.
If ULEZ is lunacy what is your sane proposal for ensuring that air in London meets WHO particulate standards and stops killing people?
There are system in other countries - pay per mile, based on the emissions for that vehicle.
You can also use them to enforce speed limits and get rid of the road humps that penalise small cars, mopeds, cargo bikes etc.
Speed bumps only penalise small cars because of the increasing prevalence of SUVs. The new Defender advertises the fact it can hit bumps at high speed in urban areas.
Indeed, that's part of the attraction of an SUV - easier to pavement park, don't have to slow down for bumps, you don't get hurt if you plough into a group of pedestrians.
Possible solutions: 1) More speed cameras 2) Regulate SUVs out of existence (Paris) 3) Tighten roads and junctions rather than using speed bumps.
The popularity of urban SUVs is one of those signs of cars being terrible masters, even if they are quite good servants. Wasn't there a Harold Pinter play about a servant gradually taking over his master's life and role? Something like that.
However, crude as an all-London ULEZ is, and cack-handed as the run-up has been, the anger at that will be as nothing compared to what would happen with gradated pay per mile.
On housing supply - a bit like transport infrastructure, I think there is an induced demand problem. Part of the reason that there is such a low fertility rate is a lack of suitable housing for young couples, so if you build new houses, you'll just end up with the same problems later on.
This might be naive and optimistic, but I think there is scope for government to engineer some capacity out of the current housing stock. In Sweden, for example, older people have a higher rate of living in flats, close to services like doctors and pharmacies, having given up their family home once the kids have left. Can we incentivise downsizing for people with no dependents?
Then you have second homes that are empty half the year - already being addressed with changes to council tax rates. Divorce, too, is an issue. A traditional Conservative solution would be to tax young families less so as to reduce at least some of the pressure on relationships, as the French do.
Romanians are completely different to Ukrainians. The difference is remarkable
You go from a land of slim pale blonde people - extremely lovely women - to fat dark tattoooed people - women “not quite so striking” - in 100km
What explains this? The Romanians are darker than the Italians; the Ukrainians are whiter than the icelandics
It’s the same landscape, same climate, same everything. Except for the people
EU Membership. Romaina has been totally hollowed out by freedom of movement. Its population is down over 20% in the past two decades, as anyone with aspiration has moved West.
I doubt EU membership means all the tall blonde people have left Romania. My guess is that whereas Ukraine was populated largely from the north and west, Romania’s population was built a lot more from the south and east.
Ukraine is viking. Romania is latin. Thats why they look different - they are.
But they don’t just look Latin. They look extremely Latin. Like calabrians or Maltese or even westernised Tunisians
I do love a bit of amateur ethnography
I suppose it’s like the UK where you have distinct looks in each country. The Welsh are all four foot tall with dark hair and darker eyes, the Scots are blue skinned with wild red hair and the English are tall, athletic, flaxen haired with blue eyes, “angels not angles” no less.
Probably it would go nuclear if Crimea was seriously close to being overrun
I definitely think RF would threaten it if Crimea was in peril. Maybe a 'test' detonation over the Black Sea. That would be enough to cause utter chaos in the financial markets and Biden would be on WhatsApp to Z telling him to chill the fuck out.
Yes. That’s what I think. Crimea is the red line
I’ve just been reading Simon Sebag Montefiore’s The Romanovs and it is highly illustrative of the psychological importance of the South Ukrainian coast - especially Odessa - even more Crimea - to Russia’s self image
Catherine’s lover Potemkin was buried in the town he founded. Kherson. The Russians removed his bones as they retreated
So why did Putin flatten Odessa's cathedral last week?
Because he’s a mobster.
And the idea Crimea would be some nuclear red line seems predicated on Putin and his goons having a deep emotional attachment to it as an ancient motherland (which it isn’t and never was, even under the Tsars), rather than simply some turf his crew picked up by a stroke of good luck in 2014.
In February 2022 I was all in on contingency planning to flee the country if things turned nuclear. I had a location analysis spreadsheet. Now I realise the Eastern Europeans and Baltics knew what they were taking about while the rest of us ignored them for decades. Russia’s just a bog standard bully that cowers when people stand up to it. Look at the reaction to Wagner’s mutiny.
Probably it would go nuclear if Crimea was seriously close to being overrun
I definitely think RF would threaten it if Crimea was in peril. Maybe a 'test' detonation over the Black Sea. That would be enough to cause utter chaos in the financial markets and Biden would be on WhatsApp to Z telling him to chill the fuck out.
Yes. That’s what I think. Crimea is the red line
I’ve just been reading Simon Sebag Montefiore’s The Romanovs and it is highly illustrative of the psychological importance of the South Ukrainian coast - especially Odessa - even more Crimea - to Russia’s self image
Catherine’s lover Potemkin was buried in the town he founded. Kherson. The Russians removed his bones as they retreated
So why did Putin flatten Odessa's cathedral last week?
The better question is Why didn’t Putin attack Odesa earlier? He attacked almost everywhere else yet pivotal Odesa was spared for a year
My guess is that as it is such a Russian city - and beautiful - he wanted to capture it intact. Unharmed. The Pearl of the Black Sea
That slowly became impossible and then the tactical advantage of blocking the grain by hitting Odesa’s port overwhelmed his desire not to touch “Pushkin’s town”
The cathedral was probably a missile that went astray. I doubt he ordered it to be hit. What does he gain from bombing a church? Just bad PR
The hot war is in Ukraine, but from the Russian point of view, it is only incidentally about Ukraine.
For most of the past two decades, Russia has been seeking to overturn what they see as the Western dominated world order. In that time they have not only used violence: in Moldova, Georgia, Syria and other places, as well as Ukraine itself, but they have also used an arsenal of hybrid or unconventional tactics. The regime sends murder squads to kill opponents, at home, like Anna Politkovskaya, Boris Nemtsov or Pavel Klebnikov or abroad, like Sasha Litvinenko in London or Yanderbayev in Qatar and hundreds of other examples.
Moscow also uses bribery, blackmail and subversion to bring key people under their control. Some political parties, such as AfD and the French National Rally have received public support, including financial support from Russian sources. Some movements, like the French Gilets Jaunes are believed to be entirely sustained by Russian clandestine operations. These operations undertaken by the Russian secret services are believed to be even larger and more active than during the very worse of the Cold War. It would be extremely naive to assume that the UK was not also the focus of such operations, which is why the relationship of Farage and Salmond with the Russia Today black propaganda channel has been highlighted as a source of concern, and why the decisions by Boris Johnson to hire Dominic Cummings, despite his not receiving full security clearance, and appoint Evgeny Lebedev to the House of Lords led to considerable dismay in certain quarters.
In short, by a variety of means, including but not limited to full scale war, the Putin government has been launching a large and orchestrated campaign to undermine Western democracy, and reduce its will to counter Russian aggression.
Putin clearly hopes that the return of Trump would destroy the united will of the West to support Ukraine and in the process lead to the collapse of NATO. The danger now in the Ukrainian war is not that the Ukrainian nation will fold, but that the West, demoralized and leaderless, will allow Russia a free hand first in Ukraine, and then elsewhere in order to destroy the EU and then democracy itself.
This is a World War already.
If we are to avoid the victory of corruption and criminal and brutal barbarism, we must understand that this is an existential struggle, not just for Ukraine, but for the West itself and act accordingly. There is nothing we can give Putin that will satisfy him.
Putin must be defeated and destroyed.
Huzzah!
And how do you suggest that we do this, practically?
A good start would be to recognize the reality of the situation, and to send all of the weapons and the financial support to Ukraine that we have promised and which the Germans and the US have delayed.
Then to provide the ZSU with as much advanced equipment as they want, including F-16s and any other kit that they ask for, so that they can establish greater air superiority and then also interdict the ports of Sevastopil and Novorossysk as the Russians have interdicted Odesa until now. This would allow the grain flows to reopen, because the Russian Navy could no longer stop them.
To counter the Wagner coup in Niger by supporting an ECOWAS military intervention. Push back in Syria and Iran, and permit Ukrainian special operations to be used against Iranian drone manufacturers.
Diplomatically to continue the dialogue with China, but make it clear that the West will not permit any form of Russian victory.
Lustrate the cases where individuals or groups in the West have long term relations with Russian organisations, and force them to account for themselves.
Can we stop talking about prefabs as a solution? Why do well off people want less well off people to live in a house thats bolted together from a kit?
There are a huge number of sites with approved permission to build houses, but none of the big developers do so. Why? Because a lack of houses being built means they get to override local planning and get permission to build what they want where they want thanks to the Tory Developer's Charter.
Empower councils to build their own houses on the land that the developers refuse to build on. Houses that people want to live in - one less bedroom where the ones built can actually fit furniture in for a start.
With the benefit of hindsight, did the policies started by Brown and continued by the Coalition, of large scale deficits and extremely easy monetary conditions to offset the consequences of the crash do more harm than good? The GFC on the surface caused far less damage than, say, the Wall Street crash in 1929 but its effects have been far more insidious and long lasting.
The GFC exposed a UK economic model built on shifting sands with a huge over-reliance on financial services at its heart. We need the foundations to create an alternative model - good transport links, universal high-speed internet, affordable childcare and housing, an adequate health service and social care provision etc - but have spent the last 15 years failing to create any of them and have generally made all our long-term problems worse.
The tax base since 2008, which was hugely inflated by the alleged profits of our "financial wizards" has simply not been able to fund such policies. Indeed, it has struggled to fund the much more basic services we endure and failed to cover the cost of social care, to take an example, resulting in substantial deficits.
It is simplistic and wrong to blame the likes of Osborne for this as if it was a choice not to spend non existent money. We were simply a hell of a lot poorer than we thought. The avoidance of the destructive creation of a deep recession in 2008 has had very serious consequences with cash strapped, zombie businesses incapable of investment surviving on cheap money when it might have been better to create new space and resource for new businesses.
We are seeing some of these businesses nurtured by such policies, such as Wilko, collapse now as interest rates return to something like normal.
David , just admit it , the Tories could not run a bath. Labour will be no better.
So Putin decided it would be a wizard wheeze to stop the grain deal and push up food costs worldwide, with large negative effects for poorer people.
Unfortunately, he did not seem to realise that would make large parts of the Black Sea open waters for Ukrainian action.
Slowly but surely the Russians are losing.
Actually, they have already lost. Every single goal of their invasion has been thwarted. They have not got a secure land crossing to Crimea, they haven’t forced regime change in Kyiv, they have strengthened NATO and lengthened its border with Russia and they have limited control of part of Ukraine.
On the way trashing their economy, isolating themselves diplomatically, killing tens of thousands of young men, stripping their armed forces of equipment and undermining the prestige of the government.
The catch is not that they haven’t lost, but that the Ukrainians haven’t won. At least not yet. They may do but even with Russia’s difficulties progress is slow and painful for them. The question may become can their manpower reserves outlast the Russian economy?
Yes they do. We know that countries that are motivated to continue the fight can bear huge losses. Ukraine has a similar population to the UK in WW1. It sustained massive losses in WW2, higher than Russia in terms of % of population.
In an existential war that motivation is likely to be sustained. Fight or die.
It must be nice for the Ukrainians to have you cheering them on, insisting they can afford to lose 1 million men (like the UK in WW1)
All from your pulpit in…. Leicester
The Ukrainians can see what happens when Russia gains territory. It's not just a change in the top bods running the country. The eastern areas post 2014 became an absolute cesspit, with the 'authorities' doing lots of nasty things. In the areas the Russians took over since last year, hundreds of thousands of kids have been kidnapped and taken into Russia; thousands of Ukrainian civilians have been killed, property stolen wholesale, and Ukrainians treated as third-class citizens.
They know that, and worse, is what lies in wait for any new territory gained by the Russians. It is a war of existence for the Ukrainians.
Personally, I will continue to cheer the Ukrainians on for as long as they want to fight.
Hundreds of thousands of kids have not been kidnapped. The latest estimate I read is about 15k children moved to Russia. Lots of them orphans
Russia is committing hideous crimes but it’s important we don’t go all “Belgian nun”
The dilemma for Ukraine is much more painful than the one you posit. Russia cannot be defeated - unlike Germany in WW1 and WW2 - because nukes. In the end Russia will use a nuke if it has to. Probably it would go nuclear if Crimea was seriously close to being overrun
So then it’s a question for Ukraine of how much territory it is willing to yield - for peace. Just Crimea? Donbass? All that Russia holds now?
Alternatively it can throw wave after wave of young men into the mangler and get almost nowhere - as we see now - and sacrifice 1m men. And possibly/probably end up where it is now, anyway
And then there are no young people left to rebuild what is left of the country
I would love to see Ukraine win. It’s not happening
"Hundreds of thousands of kids have not been kidnapped. The latest estimate I read is about 15k children moved to Russia. Lots of them orphans "
Russia will not use nukes, because that means disaster for them. There is no tactical or strategic benefit in using them over Ukraine. They *may* engineer an 'accident' at ZNPP, but even that is problematic.
“Since Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Russian soldiers have forcibly taken an estimated 16,000 Ukrainian children to Russia. Over 300 children have since returned home, but it is not clear what happened to most of the rest.”
As for nukes, of course Russia will in the end resort to nukes if it feels existentially threatened. The question is where is that existential line? That is much harder to say. I reckon it probably surrounds Crimea
I might suggest you read my link re. the children. You know, the one from the *Russians*. Also note there are *confirmed* kidnappings, and the ones the Ukrainians cannot be sure about because they no longer control the territory.
As for nukes: they won't use them over Ukraine, for that way leads them to all sorts of disasters. I know you love the extreme and the exciting, but it's pretty simple: a nuclear strike on Ukraine would lead to consequences that Russia cannot control, and lose them what little remaining international goodwill they have.
If Putin was going to use nukes, he would have used them in March or April last year when it first became clear he was losing, at about the time of the withdrawal from Kyiv. But he didn't use them, because he isn't actually mad. Evil, certainly, but not mad.
The “700,000 kidnapped children” meme is almost certainly bullshit. You just have to sit down and think about it for a while. It’s a ridiculous number
The equivalent in the UK would be 1.3 million children forcibly taken to France
The rest of your comment continues in the same vein
700,000 is a high number; but you have to ask why the Russians would say that number, especially given the charges being laid against Putin and others over it. But I'd also say that 16,000 is far too low, given what we know and have seen. 16,000 *confirmed* cases does not mean it is *just* 16,000 cases. Also note Belarus (and sadly, the Belarussian Red Cross) has been doing the same.
"The rest of your comment continues in the same vein"
Alternatively it can throw wave after wave of young men into the mangler and get almost nowhere - as we see now - and sacrifice 1m men. And possibly/probably end up where it is now, anyway
And then there are no young people left to rebuild what is left of the country
I would love to see Ukraine win. It’s not happening
Your analysis is based on seeing war as about the numbers of men fighting, but if historians like Phillips P O'Brien are right it is more about equipment and industrial production.
With this latter view we can see that Ukraine is winning. They have decisively gained an upper hand in the artillery war and are destroying Russian artillery at a prodigious rate. Their drone capabilities are also expanding and developing at an impressive rate, with massive implications for Russian supply of Crimea.
Slowly Western (including European) production of war material is increasing. Meanwhile Russia is struggling and failing to replace their equipment losses, in the absence of full Chinese support.
Yes, Russia can continue to supply the battlefield with men, but that isn't going to be enough.
I’m old enough to remember when PB kept telling us “Putin is about to run out of missiles”. That was a year ago
Today in Ukraine:
Remember when you predicted these missiles would force Ukraine to surrender over the winter? Who was right on that one?
The hot war is in Ukraine, but from the Russian point of view, it is only incidentally about Ukraine.
For most of the past two decades, Russia has been seeking to overturn what they see as the Western dominated world order. In that time they have not only used violence: in Moldova, Georgia, Syria and other places, as well as Ukraine itself, but they have also used an arsenal of hybrid or unconventional tactics. The regime sends murder squads to kill opponents, at home, like Anna Politkovskaya, Boris Nemtsov or Pavel Klebnikov or abroad, like Sasha Litvinenko in London or Yanderbayev in Qatar and hundreds of other examples.
Moscow also uses bribery, blackmail and subversion to bring key people under their control. Some political parties, such as AfD and the French National Rally have received public support, including financial support from Russian sources. Some movements, like the French Gilets Jaunes are believed to be entirely sustained by Russian clandestine operations. These operations undertaken by the Russian secret services are believed to be even larger and more active than during the very worse of the Cold War. It would be extremely naive to assume that the UK was not also the focus of such operations, which is why the relationship of Farage and Salmond with the Russia Today black propaganda channel has been highlighted as a source of concern, and why the decisions by Boris Johnson to hire Dominic Cummings, despite his not receiving full security clearance, and appoint Evgeny Lebedev to the House of Lords led to considerable dismay in certain quarters.
In short, by a variety of means, including but not limited to full scale war, the Putin government has been launching a large and orchestrated campaign to undermine Western democracy, and reduce its will to counter Russian aggression.
Putin clearly hopes that the return of Trump would destroy the united will of the West to support Ukraine and in the process lead to the collapse of NATO. The danger now in the Ukrainian war is not that the Ukrainian nation will fold, but that the West, demoralized and leaderless, will allow Russia a free hand first in Ukraine, and then elsewhere in order to destroy the EU and then democracy itself.
This is a World War already.
If we are to avoid the victory of corruption and criminal and brutal barbarism, we must understand that this is an existential struggle, not just for Ukraine, but for the West itself and act accordingly. There is nothing we can give Putin that will satisfy him.
Putin must be defeated and destroyed.
Huzzah!
And how do you suggest that we do this, practically?
Well here’s a fun one.
Still trying to run this one down, finally, but…
Back in the day, there were lots of research nuclear reactors kicking around. Not what most people think of as a nuclear reactor. More a science experiment the size of a 55 gallon drum.
Universities had them - that kind of level.
Due to the way nuclear physics works, they need highly enriched Uranium. Bomb grade, in fact. Due to some quirks in physics, this actually makes them safer - their max power level is self limiting, so they can’t melt down.
In the 1960s, General Atomics used to have one *running* at a trade show. The party piece was Edward Teller yanking the control rod out to demonstrate that a runaway wouldn’t happen.
Anyway, in 1990, someone remembered that Iraq had a couple. Yes, the Iraqis actually had enough fissile material for a bomb.
So, after the war, the Americans, in particular, became very interested in tidying up this area of proliferation. Lots of these old research reactors were decommissioned. Some were replaced with designs using less enriched Uranium.
Ukraine had quite a few of the Soviet version. I haven’t been able to verify they were removed.
Which rather suggests that Ukraine has a pile (ha) of HEU. Not just enough to build an implosion device. But enough for gun type weapons (see Little Boy).
Gun type weapons are extremely wasteful of fissile material. But they are trivial to build. A home workshop with a lathe and mill is all that is required. If you have an old high velocity tank gun lying around - even easier.
What is quite startling to some is how primitive the actual fabrication was in the Manhattan Project. The crucibles for casting the bomb cores were made by an engineer at home, on his kitchen table.
The hot war is in Ukraine, but from the Russian point of view, it is only incidentally about Ukraine.
For most of the past two decades, Russia has been seeking to overturn what they see as the Western dominated world order. In that time they have not only used violence: in Moldova, Georgia, Syria and other places, as well as Ukraine itself, but they have also used an arsenal of hybrid or unconventional tactics. The regime sends murder squads to kill opponents, at home, like Anna Politkovskaya, Boris Nemtsov or Pavel Klebnikov or abroad, like Sasha Litvinenko in London or Yanderbayev in Qatar and hundreds of other examples.
Moscow also uses bribery, blackmail and subversion to bring key people under their control. Some political parties, such as AfD and the French National Rally have received public support, including financial support from Russian sources. Some movements, like the French Gilets Jaunes are believed to be entirely sustained by Russian clandestine operations. These operations undertaken by the Russian secret services are believed to be even larger and more active than during the very worse of the Cold War. It would be extremely naive to assume that the UK was not also the focus of such operations, which is why the relationship of Farage and Salmond with the Russia Today black propaganda channel has been highlighted as a source of concern, and why the decisions by Boris Johnson to hire Dominic Cummings, despite his not receiving full security clearance, and appoint Evgeny Lebedev to the House of Lords led to considerable dismay in certain quarters.
In short, by a variety of means, including but not limited to full scale war, the Putin government has been launching a large and orchestrated campaign to undermine Western democracy, and reduce its will to counter Russian aggression.
Putin clearly hopes that the return of Trump would destroy the united will of the West to support Ukraine and in the process lead to the collapse of NATO. The danger now in the Ukrainian war is not that the Ukrainian nation will fold, but that the West, demoralized and leaderless, will allow Russia a free hand first in Ukraine, and then elsewhere in order to destroy the EU and then democracy itself.
This is a World War already.
If we are to avoid the victory of corruption and criminal and brutal barbarism, we must understand that this is an existential struggle, not just for Ukraine, but for the West itself and act accordingly. There is nothing we can give Putin that will satisfy him.
Putin must be defeated and destroyed.
Huzzah!
And how do you suggest that we do this, practically?
A good start would be to recognize the reality of the situation, and to send all of the weapons and the financial support to Ukraine that we have promised and which the Germans and the US have delayed.
Then to provide the ZSU with as much advanced equipment as they want, including F-16s and any other kit that they ask for, so that they can establish greater air superiority and then also interdict the ports of Sevastopil and Novorossysk as the Russians have interdicted Odesa until now. This would allow the grain flows to reopen, because the Russian Navy could no longer stop them.
To counter the Wagner coup in Niger by supporting an ECOWAS military intervention. Push back in Syria and Iran, and permit Ukrainian special operations to be used against Iranian drone manufacturers.
Diplomatically to continue the dialogue with China, but make it clear that the West will not permit any form of Russian victory.
Lustrate the cases where individuals or groups in the West have long term relations with Russian organisations, and force them to account for themselves.
Do not give up.
Interesting. And Thankyou for answering my question so thoroughly
Some of this makes sense, some of this is just hopeful dreamland. How are we going to “push back in Syria and Iran”?!
You also seem to suggest we give Ukraine an air force that can outmatch Russia’s. That’s never going to happen, no American President would authorise it for multiple reasons, the Europeans can’t afford it and don’t have the capability
With the benefit of hindsight, did the policies started by Brown and continued by the Coalition, of large scale deficits and extremely easy monetary conditions to offset the consequences of the crash do more harm than good? The GFC on the surface caused far less damage than, say, the Wall Street crash in 1929 but its effects have been far more insidious and long lasting.
The GFC exposed a UK economic model built on shifting sands with a huge over-reliance on financial services at its heart. We need the foundations to create an alternative model - good transport links, universal high-speed internet, affordable childcare and housing, an adequate health service and social care provision etc - but have spent the last 15 years failing to create any of them and have generally made all our long-term problems worse.
The tax base since 2008, which was hugely inflated by the alleged profits of our "financial wizards" has simply not been able to fund such policies. Indeed, it has struggled to fund the much more basic services we endure and failed to cover the cost of social care, to take an example, resulting in substantial deficits.
It is simplistic and wrong to blame the likes of Osborne for this as if it was a choice not to spend non existent money. We were simply a hell of a lot poorer than we thought. The avoidance of the destructive creation of a deep recession in 2008 has had very serious consequences with cash strapped, zombie businesses incapable of investment surviving on cheap money when it might have been better to create new space and resource for new businesses.
We are seeing some of these businesses nurtured by such policies, such as Wilko, collapse now as interest rates return to something like normal.
David , just admit it , the Tories could not run a bath. Labour will be no better.
Indeed. The Tories can't run a bath because they are a shower.
The hot war is in Ukraine, but from the Russian point of view, it is only incidentally about Ukraine.
For most of the past two decades, Russia has been seeking to overturn what they see as the Western dominated world order. In that time they have not only used violence: in Moldova, Georgia, Syria and other places, as well as Ukraine itself, but they have also used an arsenal of hybrid or unconventional tactics. The regime sends murder squads to kill opponents, at home, like Anna Politkovskaya, Boris Nemtsov or Pavel Klebnikov or abroad, like Sasha Litvinenko in London or Yanderbayev in Qatar and hundreds of other examples.
Moscow also uses bribery, blackmail and subversion to bring key people under their control. Some political parties, such as AfD and the French National Rally have received public support, including financial support from Russian sources. Some movements, like the French Gilets Jaunes are believed to be entirely sustained by Russian clandestine operations. These operations undertaken by the Russian secret services are believed to be even larger and more active than during the very worse of the Cold War. It would be extremely naive to assume that the UK was not also the focus of such operations, which is why the relationship of Farage and Salmond with the Russia Today black propaganda channel has been highlighted as a source of concern, and why the decisions by Boris Johnson to hire Dominic Cummings, despite his not receiving full security clearance, and appoint Evgeny Lebedev to the House of Lords led to considerable dismay in certain quarters.
In short, by a variety of means, including but not limited to full scale war, the Putin government has been launching a large and orchestrated campaign to undermine Western democracy, and reduce its will to counter Russian aggression.
Putin clearly hopes that the return of Trump would destroy the united will of the West to support Ukraine and in the process lead to the collapse of NATO. The danger now in the Ukrainian war is not that the Ukrainian nation will fold, but that the West, demoralized and leaderless, will allow Russia a free hand first in Ukraine, and then elsewhere in order to destroy the EU and then democracy itself.
This is a World War already.
If we are to avoid the victory of corruption and criminal and brutal barbarism, we must understand that this is an existential struggle, not just for Ukraine, but for the West itself and act accordingly. There is nothing we can give Putin that will satisfy him.
Putin must be defeated and destroyed.
Huzzah!
And how do you suggest that we do this, practically?
A good start would be to recognize the reality of the situation, and to send all of the weapons and the financial support to Ukraine that we have promised and which the Germans and the US have delayed.
Then to provide the ZSU with as much advanced equipment as they want, including F-16s and any other kit that they ask for, so that they can establish greater air superiority and then also interdict the ports of Sevastopil and Novorossysk as the Russians have interdicted Odesa until now. This would allow the grain flows to reopen, because the Russian Navy could no longer stop them.
To counter the Wagner coup in Niger by supporting an ECOWAS military intervention. Push back in Syria and Iran, and permit Ukrainian special operations to be used against Iranian drone manufacturers.
Diplomatically to continue the dialogue with China, but make it clear that the West will not permit any form of Russian victory.
Lustrate the cases where individuals or groups in the West have long term relations with Russian organisations, and force them to account for themselves.
Do not give up.
Cut off the supply of machine tool components, which strangely doesn’t yet seem to have happened.
So Putin decided it would be a wizard wheeze to stop the grain deal and push up food costs worldwide, with large negative effects for poorer people.
Unfortunately, he did not seem to realise that would make large parts of the Black Sea open waters for Ukrainian action.
Slowly but surely the Russians are losing.
Actually, they have already lost. Every single goal of their invasion has been thwarted. They have not got a secure land crossing to Crimea, they haven’t forced regime change in Kyiv, they have strengthened NATO and lengthened its border with Russia and they have limited control of part of Ukraine.
On the way trashing their economy, isolating themselves diplomatically, killing tens of thousands of young men, stripping their armed forces of equipment and undermining the prestige of the government.
The catch is not that they haven’t lost, but that the Ukrainians haven’t won. At least not yet. They may do but even with Russia’s difficulties progress is slow and painful for them. The question may become can their manpower reserves outlast the Russian economy?
I don't think there's a scenario that leaves Russia stronger economically, militarily or reputationally than if they had not launched this invasion. It's been a disaster for them on so many levels. Even if they magically gain all of Ukraine - say, under a Trump presidency - they'll still have suffered massively, and have lost a greivous amount of financial power and reputation.
Long term Russia is badly damaged
But in the short-medium term Russia can *win* this war: by holding on to what it has gained, resisting further Ukrainian attacks, then wait for Ukraine to run out of men, and for the west to tire of supporting Ukraine
Polls in America are already ominous for the Ukes
They are not making much of a job of it at this point , they are not even managing to hold onto what they have. Will not take much for Ukraine to reach the coast and then Russia are stuffed, Crimea lost. Looks far more likely Ukraine will prevail in the end unless USA chicken out and Russia gets to keep what they have at that time.
The hot war is in Ukraine, but from the Russian point of view, it is only incidentally about Ukraine.
For most of the past two decades, Russia has been seeking to overturn what they see as the Western dominated world order. In that time they have not only used violence: in Moldova, Georgia, Syria and other places, as well as Ukraine itself, but they have also used an arsenal of hybrid or unconventional tactics. The regime sends murder squads to kill opponents, at home, like Anna Politkovskaya, Boris Nemtsov or Pavel Klebnikov or abroad, like Sasha Litvinenko in London or Yanderbayev in Qatar and hundreds of other examples.
Moscow also uses bribery, blackmail and subversion to bring key people under their control. Some political parties, such as AfD and the French National Rally have received public support, including financial support from Russian sources. Some movements, like the French Gilets Jaunes are believed to be entirely sustained by Russian clandestine operations. These operations undertaken by the Russian secret services are believed to be even larger and more active than during the very worse of the Cold War. It would be extremely naive to assume that the UK was not also the focus of such operations, which is why the relationship of Farage and Salmond with the Russia Today black propaganda channel has been highlighted as a source of concern, and why the decisions by Boris Johnson to hire Dominic Cummings, despite his not receiving full security clearance, and appoint Evgeny Lebedev to the House of Lords led to considerable dismay in certain quarters.
In short, by a variety of means, including but not limited to full scale war, the Putin government has been launching a large and orchestrated campaign to undermine Western democracy, and reduce its will to counter Russian aggression.
Putin clearly hopes that the return of Trump would destroy the united will of the West to support Ukraine and in the process lead to the collapse of NATO. The danger now in the Ukrainian war is not that the Ukrainian nation will fold, but that the West, demoralized and leaderless, will allow Russia a free hand first in Ukraine, and then elsewhere in order to destroy the EU and then democracy itself.
This is a World War already.
If we are to avoid the victory of corruption and criminal and brutal barbarism, we must understand that this is an existential struggle, not just for Ukraine, but for the West itself and act accordingly. There is nothing we can give Putin that will satisfy him.
Putin must be defeated and destroyed.
Huzzah!
And how do you suggest that we do this, practically?
A good start would be to recognize the reality of the situation, and to send all of the weapons and the financial support to Ukraine that we have promised and which the Germans and the US have delayed.
Then to provide the ZSU with as much advanced equipment as they want, including F-16s and any other kit that they ask for, so that they can establish greater air superiority and then also interdict the ports of Sevastopil and Novorossysk as the Russians have interdicted Odesa until now. This would allow the grain flows to reopen, because the Russian Navy could no longer stop them.
To counter the Wagner coup in Niger by supporting an ECOWAS military intervention. Push back in Syria and Iran, and permit Ukrainian special operations to be used against Iranian drone manufacturers.
Diplomatically to continue the dialogue with China, but make it clear that the West will not permit any form of Russian victory.
Lustrate the cases where individuals or groups in the West have long term relations with Russian organisations, and force them to account for themselves.
Do not give up.
PS I completely agree about Niger. We do need to be pushing back against Russia AND China in Africa. Russia is winning Africa with a few cruel mercenaries. Absurd
But first the French need to bow out and accept that francafrique is over. They are hated and resented by too many Africans
Romanians are completely different to Ukrainians. The difference is remarkable
You go from a land of slim pale blonde people - extremely lovely women - to fat dark tattoooed people - women “not quite so striking” - in 100km
What explains this? The Romanians are darker than the Italians; the Ukrainians are whiter than the icelandics
It’s the same landscape, same climate, same everything. Except for the people
EU Membership. Romaina has been totally hollowed out by freedom of movement. Its population is down over 20% in the past two decades, as anyone with aspiration has moved West.
I doubt EU membership means all the tall blonde people have left Romania. My guess is that whereas Ukraine was populated largely from the north and west, Romania’s population was built a lot more from the south and east.
Ukraine is viking. Romania is latin. Thats why they look different - they are.
Romania is not homogenous, there's 2 million Hungarians in transylvania who speak sketchy or no Romanian fly the Hungarian flag etc
Also the Roma, who arrived from India roughly 1,000 years ago, hence the "swarthy" complexions @Leon is talking about. You see them in London too. Long skirts, lots of tattoos.
Hold on team let us not forget that the mere mention of a possible ceasefire while the Ukrainian forces remain outside Moscow is proof if proof be needed of your status as Putin apologist and lapdog and likely Russian troll operating from the heart of the FSS complex.
It is of course for the Ukrainian to determine when or if they want to begin negotiations but it is for us to note that such conflicts often if not always end via negotiation.
And Ukraine shows no sign of wishing to negotiate with a regime that openly wants it to cease to exist. However, several in the US, Germany and elsewhere seem to be ready to hand Ukraine on a plate to its Russian masters by cutting off arms supplies. Even now they are asking it to fight with one hand tied behind its back.
We are talking about global mobsters here. A regime that is amoral and positively evil, and perceives compromise as a sign of weakness. Ukraine has every right to chase them out of their country, and if our governments choke off their weapons supply then they are cowards and accessories.
Yes and will have to fight Russia at a later stage much closer to home as well.
Probably it would go nuclear if Crimea was seriously close to being overrun
I definitely think RF would threaten it if Crimea was in peril. Maybe a 'test' detonation over the Black Sea. That would be enough to cause utter chaos in the financial markets and Biden would be on WhatsApp to Z telling him to chill the fuck out.
Yes. That’s what I think. Crimea is the red line
I’ve just been reading Simon Sebag Montefiore’s The Romanovs and it is highly illustrative of the psychological importance of the South Ukrainian coast - especially Odessa - even more Crimea - to Russia’s self image
Catherine’s lover Potemkin was buried in the town he founded. Kherson. The Russians removed his bones as they retreated
So why did Putin flatten Odessa's cathedral last week?
Because he’s a mobster.
And the idea Crimea would be some nuclear red line seems predicated on Putin and his goons having a deep emotional attachment to it as an ancient motherland (which it isn’t and never was, even under the Tsars), rather than simply some turf his crew picked up by a stroke of good luck in 2014.
In February 2022 I was all in on contingency planning to flee the country if things turned nuclear. I had a location analysis spreadsheet. Now I realise the Eastern Europeans and Baltics knew what they were taking about while the rest of us ignored them for decades. Russia’s just a bog standard bully that cowers when people stand up to it. Look at the reaction to Wagner’s mutiny.
You are absolutely and cluelessly wrong about Crimea. Read some history
The hot war is in Ukraine, but from the Russian point of view, it is only incidentally about Ukraine.
For most of the past two decades, Russia has been seeking to overturn what they see as the Western dominated world order. In that time they have not only used violence: in Moldova, Georgia, Syria and other places, as well as Ukraine itself, but they have also used an arsenal of hybrid or unconventional tactics. The regime sends murder squads to kill opponents, at home, like Anna Politkovskaya, Boris Nemtsov or Pavel Klebnikov or abroad, like Sasha Litvinenko in London or Yanderbayev in Qatar and hundreds of other examples.
Moscow also uses bribery, blackmail and subversion to bring key people under their control. Some political parties, such as AfD and the French National Rally have received public support, including financial support from Russian sources. Some movements, like the French Gilets Jaunes are believed to be entirely sustained by Russian clandestine operations. These operations undertaken by the Russian secret services are believed to be even larger and more active than during the very worse of the Cold War. It would be extremely naive to assume that the UK was not also the focus of such operations, which is why the relationship of Farage and Salmond with the Russia Today black propaganda channel has been highlighted as a source of concern, and why the decisions by Boris Johnson to hire Dominic Cummings, despite his not receiving full security clearance, and appoint Evgeny Lebedev to the House of Lords led to considerable dismay in certain quarters.
In short, by a variety of means, including but not limited to full scale war, the Putin government has been launching a large and orchestrated campaign to undermine Western democracy, and reduce its will to counter Russian aggression.
Putin clearly hopes that the return of Trump would destroy the united will of the West to support Ukraine and in the process lead to the collapse of NATO. The danger now in the Ukrainian war is not that the Ukrainian nation will fold, but that the West, demoralized and leaderless, will allow Russia a free hand first in Ukraine, and then elsewhere in order to destroy the EU and then democracy itself.
This is a World War already.
If we are to avoid the victory of corruption and criminal and brutal barbarism, we must understand that this is an existential struggle, not just for Ukraine, but for the West itself and act accordingly. There is nothing we can give Putin that will satisfy him.
Putin must be defeated and destroyed.
Huzzah!
And how do you suggest that we do this, practically?
A good start would be to recognize the reality of the situation, and to send all of the weapons and the financial support to Ukraine that we have promised and which the Germans and the US have delayed.
Then to provide the ZSU with as much advanced equipment as they want, including F-16s and any other kit that they ask for, so that they can establish greater air superiority and then also interdict the ports of Sevastopil and Novorossysk as the Russians have interdicted Odesa until now. This would allow the grain flows to reopen, because the Russian Navy could no longer stop them.
To counter the Wagner coup in Niger by supporting an ECOWAS military intervention. Push back in Syria and Iran, and permit Ukrainian special operations to be used against Iranian drone manufacturers.
Diplomatically to continue the dialogue with China, but make it clear that the West will not permit any form of Russian victory.
Lustrate the cases where individuals or groups in the West have long term relations with Russian organisations, and force them to account for themselves.
Do not give up.
Re your third paragraph, ECOWAS military intervention in Niger will be an absolute bloodbath with the likelihood of huge numbers of civilians dead, injured, displaced. The Wagner hold in the Sahel will not be solved militarily unless the US intervenes directly and uses massive military superiority or Russia stops the money going to the corrupt people who run the countries in question.
It’s all very ideal to demand intervention but you aren’t a poorly trained and equipped ECOWAS soldier or Niger civilian who will be bearing the brunt.
And then you have the trouble, once you’ve got Wagner out that you need someone to go in to stop the islamists which the French weren’t having great success with hence the replacement with Wagner as they didn’t care how they countered them.
So Putin decided it would be a wizard wheeze to stop the grain deal and push up food costs worldwide, with large negative effects for poorer people.
Unfortunately, he did not seem to realise that would make large parts of the Black Sea open waters for Ukrainian action.
Slowly but surely the Russians are losing.
Actually, they have already lost. Every single goal of their invasion has been thwarted. They have not got a secure land crossing to Crimea, they haven’t forced regime change in Kyiv, they have strengthened NATO and lengthened its border with Russia and they have limited control of part of Ukraine.
On the way trashing their economy, isolating themselves diplomatically, killing tens of thousands of young men, stripping their armed forces of equipment and undermining the prestige of the government.
The catch is not that they haven’t lost, but that the Ukrainians haven’t won. At least not yet. They may do but even with Russia’s difficulties progress is slow and painful for them. The question may become can their manpower reserves outlast the Russian economy?
Yes they do. We know that countries that are motivated to continue the fight can bear huge losses. Ukraine has a similar population to the UK in WW1. It sustained massive losses in WW2, higher than Russia in terms of % of population.
In an existential war that motivation is likely to be sustained. Fight or die.
It must be nice for the Ukrainians to have you cheering them on, insisting they can afford to lose 1 million men (like the UK in WW1)
All from your pulpit in…. Leicester
The Ukrainians can see what happens when Russia gains territory. It's not just a change in the top bods running the country. The eastern areas post 2014 became an absolute cesspit, with the 'authorities' doing lots of nasty things. In the areas the Russians took over since last year, hundreds of thousands of kids have been kidnapped and taken into Russia; thousands of Ukrainian civilians have been killed, property stolen wholesale, and Ukrainians treated as third-class citizens.
They know that, and worse, is what lies in wait for any new territory gained by the Russians. It is a war of existence for the Ukrainians.
Personally, I will continue to cheer the Ukrainians on for as long as they want to fight.
Hundreds of thousands of kids have not been kidnapped. The latest estimate I read is about 15k children moved to Russia. Lots of them orphans
Russia is committing hideous crimes but it’s important we don’t go all “Belgian nun”
The dilemma for Ukraine is much more painful than the one you posit. Russia cannot be defeated - unlike Germany in WW1 and WW2 - because nukes. In the end Russia will use a nuke if it has to. Probably it would go nuclear if Crimea was seriously close to being overrun
So then it’s a question for Ukraine of how much territory it is willing to yield - for peace. Just Crimea? Donbass? All that Russia holds now?
Alternatively it can throw wave after wave of young men into the mangler and get almost nowhere - as we see now - and sacrifice 1m men. And possibly/probably end up where it is now, anyway
And then there are no young people left to rebuild what is left of the country
I would love to see Ukraine win. It’s not happening
"Hundreds of thousands of kids have not been kidnapped. The latest estimate I read is about 15k children moved to Russia. Lots of them orphans "
Russia will not use nukes, because that means disaster for them. There is no tactical or strategic benefit in using them over Ukraine. They *may* engineer an 'accident' at ZNPP, but even that is problematic.
“Since Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Russian soldiers have forcibly taken an estimated 16,000 Ukrainian children to Russia. Over 300 children have since returned home, but it is not clear what happened to most of the rest.”
As for nukes, of course Russia will in the end resort to nukes if it feels existentially threatened. The question is where is that existential line? That is much harder to say. I reckon it probably surrounds Crimea
I might suggest you read my link re. the children. You know, the one from the *Russians*. Also note there are *confirmed* kidnappings, and the ones the Ukrainians cannot be sure about because they no longer control the territory.
As for nukes: they won't use them over Ukraine, for that way leads them to all sorts of disasters. I know you love the extreme and the exciting, but it's pretty simple: a nuclear strike on Ukraine would lead to consequences that Russia cannot control, and lose them what little remaining international goodwill they have.
If Putin was going to use nukes, he would have used them in March or April last year when it first became clear he was losing, at about the time of the withdrawal from Kyiv. But he didn't use them, because he isn't actually mad. Evil, certainly, but not mad.
The “700,000 kidnapped children” meme is almost certainly bullshit. You just have to sit down and think about it for a while. It’s a ridiculous number
The equivalent in the UK would be 1.3 million children forcibly taken to France
The rest of your comment continues in the same vein
700,000 is a high number; but you have to ask why the Russians would say that number, especially given the charges being laid against Putin and others over it. But I'd also say that 16,000 is far too low, given what we know and have seen. 16,000 *confirmed* cases does not mean it is *just* 16,000 cases. Also note Belarus (and sadly, the Belarussian Red Cross) has been doing the same.
"The rest of your comment continues in the same vein"
Alternatively it can throw wave after wave of young men into the mangler and get almost nowhere - as we see now - and sacrifice 1m men. And possibly/probably end up where it is now, anyway
And then there are no young people left to rebuild what is left of the country
I would love to see Ukraine win. It’s not happening
Your analysis is based on seeing war as about the numbers of men fighting, but if historians like Phillips P O'Brien are right it is more about equipment and industrial production.
With this latter view we can see that Ukraine is winning. They have decisively gained an upper hand in the artillery war and are destroying Russian artillery at a prodigious rate. Their drone capabilities are also expanding and developing at an impressive rate, with massive implications for Russian supply of Crimea.
Slowly Western (including European) production of war material is increasing. Meanwhile Russia is struggling and failing to replace their equipment losses, in the absence of full Chinese support.
Yes, Russia can continue to supply the battlefield with men, but that isn't going to be enough.
I’m old enough to remember when PB kept telling us “Putin is about to run out of missiles”. That was a year ago
Today in Ukraine:
Remember when you predicted these missiles would force Ukraine to surrender over the winter? Who was right on that one?
I never predicted that. Find a single comment where I explicitly said that. Spoiler: you won’t
I said Russia’s new tactic of assaulting Ukrainian infra and trying to freeze and starve them into submission MIGHT work. In the end it didn’t because the Ukrainians are tough bastards and they are not minded to yield in any way
The peace conference being held by the Saudis is interesting, and not just because the head-choppers are full on with diplomacy to project themselves as the good guys.
In essence if Saudi can bring together all the countries usually suckling on Russia's money tit and get them on the side of the Ukrainian peace proposal, Russia is left with very few allies.
This war is as much about geopolitics as it is land. So cutting off Russian allies could be a key part of getting the bear to back down.
So Putin decided it would be a wizard wheeze to stop the grain deal and push up food costs worldwide, with large negative effects for poorer people.
Unfortunately, he did not seem to realise that would make large parts of the Black Sea open waters for Ukrainian action.
Slowly but surely the Russians are losing.
Actually, they have already lost. Every single goal of their invasion has been thwarted. They have not got a secure land crossing to Crimea, they haven’t forced regime change in Kyiv, they have strengthened NATO and lengthened its border with Russia and they have limited control of part of Ukraine.
On the way trashing their economy, isolating themselves diplomatically, killing tens of thousands of young men, stripping their armed forces of equipment and undermining the prestige of the government.
The catch is not that they haven’t lost, but that the Ukrainians haven’t won. At least not yet. They may do but even with Russia’s difficulties progress is slow and painful for them. The question may become can their manpower reserves outlast the Russian economy?
Yes they do. We know that countries that are motivated to continue the fight can bear huge losses. Ukraine has a similar population to the UK in WW1. It sustained massive losses in WW2, higher than Russia in terms of % of population.
In an existential war that motivation is likely to be sustained. Fight or die.
It must be nice for the Ukrainians to have you cheering them on, insisting they can afford to lose 1 million men (like the UK in WW1)
All from your pulpit in…. Leicester
The Ukrainians can see what happens when Russia gains territory. It's not just a change in the top bods running the country. The eastern areas post 2014 became an absolute cesspit, with the 'authorities' doing lots of nasty things. In the areas the Russians took over since last year, hundreds of thousands of kids have been kidnapped and taken into Russia; thousands of Ukrainian civilians have been killed, property stolen wholesale, and Ukrainians treated as third-class citizens.
They know that, and worse, is what lies in wait for any new territory gained by the Russians. It is a war of existence for the Ukrainians.
Personally, I will continue to cheer the Ukrainians on for as long as they want to fight.
Hundreds of thousands of kids have not been kidnapped. The latest estimate I read is about 15k children moved to Russia. Lots of them orphans
Russia is committing hideous crimes but it’s important we don’t go all “Belgian nun”
The dilemma for Ukraine is much more painful than the one you posit. Russia cannot be defeated - unlike Germany in WW1 and WW2 - because nukes. In the end Russia will use a nuke if it has to. Probably it would go nuclear if Crimea was seriously close to being overrun
So then it’s a question for Ukraine of how much territory it is willing to yield - for peace. Just Crimea? Donbass? All that Russia holds now?
Alternatively it can throw wave after wave of young men into the mangler and get almost nowhere - as we see now - and sacrifice 1m men. And possibly/probably end up where it is now, anyway
And then there are no young people left to rebuild what is left of the country
I would love to see Ukraine win. It’s not happening
"Hundreds of thousands of kids have not been kidnapped. The latest estimate I read is about 15k children moved to Russia. Lots of them orphans "
Russia will not use nukes, because that means disaster for them. There is no tactical or strategic benefit in using them over Ukraine. They *may* engineer an 'accident' at ZNPP, but even that is problematic.
“Since Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Russian soldiers have forcibly taken an estimated 16,000 Ukrainian children to Russia. Over 300 children have since returned home, but it is not clear what happened to most of the rest.”
As for nukes, of course Russia will in the end resort to nukes if it feels existentially threatened. The question is where is that existential line? That is much harder to say. I reckon it probably surrounds Crimea
I might suggest you read my link re. the children. You know, the one from the *Russians*. Also note there are *confirmed* kidnappings, and the ones the Ukrainians cannot be sure about because they no longer control the territory.
As for nukes: they won't use them over Ukraine, for that way leads them to all sorts of disasters. I know you love the extreme and the exciting, but it's pretty simple: a nuclear strike on Ukraine would lead to consequences that Russia cannot control, and lose them what little remaining international goodwill they have.
If Putin was going to use nukes, he would have used them in March or April last year when it first became clear he was losing, at about the time of the withdrawal from Kyiv. But he didn't use them, because he isn't actually mad. Evil, certainly, but not mad.
The “700,000 kidnapped children” meme is almost certainly bullshit. You just have to sit down and think about it for a while. It’s a ridiculous number
The equivalent in the UK would be 1.3 million children forcibly taken to France
The rest of your comment continues in the same vein
700,000 is a high number; but you have to ask why the Russians would say that number, especially given the charges being laid against Putin and others over it. But I'd also say that 16,000 is far too low, given what we know and have seen. 16,000 *confirmed* cases does not mean it is *just* 16,000 cases. Also note Belarus (and sadly, the Belarussian Red Cross) has been doing the same.
"The rest of your comment continues in the same vein"
Alternatively it can throw wave after wave of young men into the mangler and get almost nowhere - as we see now - and sacrifice 1m men. And possibly/probably end up where it is now, anyway
And then there are no young people left to rebuild what is left of the country
I would love to see Ukraine win. It’s not happening
Your analysis is based on seeing war as about the numbers of men fighting, but if historians like Phillips P O'Brien are right it is more about equipment and industrial production.
With this latter view we can see that Ukraine is winning. They have decisively gained an upper hand in the artillery war and are destroying Russian artillery at a prodigious rate. Their drone capabilities are also expanding and developing at an impressive rate, with massive implications for Russian supply of Crimea.
Slowly Western (including European) production of war material is increasing. Meanwhile Russia is struggling and failing to replace their equipment losses, in the absence of full Chinese support.
Yes, Russia can continue to supply the battlefield with men, but that isn't going to be enough.
I’m old enough to remember when PB kept telling us “Putin is about to run out of missiles”. That was a year ago
Today in Ukraine:
Have you compared that to the numbers they were launching in March and April 2022?
So Putin decided it would be a wizard wheeze to stop the grain deal and push up food costs worldwide, with large negative effects for poorer people.
Unfortunately, he did not seem to realise that would make large parts of the Black Sea open waters for Ukrainian action.
Slowly but surely the Russians are losing.
Actually, they have already lost. Every single goal of their invasion has been thwarted. They have not got a secure land crossing to Crimea, they haven’t forced regime change in Kyiv, they have strengthened NATO and lengthened its border with Russia and they have limited control of part of Ukraine.
On the way trashing their economy, isolating themselves diplomatically, killing tens of thousands of young men, stripping their armed forces of equipment and undermining the prestige of the government.
The catch is not that they haven’t lost, but that the Ukrainians haven’t won. At least not yet. They may do but even with Russia’s difficulties progress is slow and painful for them. The question may become can their manpower reserves outlast the Russian economy?
Yes they do. We know that countries that are motivated to continue the fight can bear huge losses. Ukraine has a similar population to the UK in WW1. It sustained massive losses in WW2, higher than Russia in terms of % of population.
In an existential war that motivation is likely to be sustained. Fight or die.
It must be nice for the Ukrainians to have you cheering them on, insisting they can afford to lose 1 million men (like the UK in WW1)
All from your pulpit in…. Leicester
The Ukrainians can see what happens when Russia gains territory. It's not just a change in the top bods running the country. The eastern areas post 2014 became an absolute cesspit, with the 'authorities' doing lots of nasty things. In the areas the Russians took over since last year, hundreds of thousands of kids have been kidnapped and taken into Russia; thousands of Ukrainian civilians have been killed, property stolen wholesale, and Ukrainians treated as third-class citizens.
They know that, and worse, is what lies in wait for any new territory gained by the Russians. It is a war of existence for the Ukrainians.
Personally, I will continue to cheer the Ukrainians on for as long as they want to fight.
Hundreds of thousands of kids have not been kidnapped. The latest estimate I read is about 15k children moved to Russia. Lots of them orphans
Russia is committing hideous crimes but it’s important we don’t go all “Belgian nun”
The dilemma for Ukraine is much more painful than the one you posit. Russia cannot be defeated - unlike Germany in WW1 and WW2 - because nukes. In the end Russia will use a nuke if it has to. Probably it would go nuclear if Crimea was seriously close to being overrun
So then it’s a question for Ukraine of how much territory it is willing to yield - for peace. Just Crimea? Donbass? All that Russia holds now?
No it isn't. As the Russians show no sign of seeking peace; at best, only a pause.
The question is rather what is required for Ukraine to be certain that Russia will give up on conquering them.
Somebody recently and rather tactlessly asked one of our Ukrainians how long the war will last. Her bleak and fatalistic response was, 'As long as Ukraine exists.'
Nothing has changed for nearly a year now despite BOGOF offers on Leopard 2As, etc. Except that 100,000 more people are dead and Ukraine is a failed state that utterly depends on external aid to survive.
Putin will keep fighting because he doesn't have enough to market the outcome as an unqualified win; which has to include, Catherine's city of Odessa.
Zelensky will keep fighting as long as the suitcases of cash from Foggy Bottom keep turning up because he knows Putin doesn't have enough to stop yet.
A failed state where @Leon’s big worry is about the lime being left out of a gin and tonic.
Interesting how the analysis that country or group X has no agency pops up - they are just puppets of Y. There always a pattern to that….
Probably it would go nuclear if Crimea was seriously close to being overrun
I definitely think RF would threaten it if Crimea was in peril. Maybe a 'test' detonation over the Black Sea. That would be enough to cause utter chaos in the financial markets and Biden would be on WhatsApp to Z telling him to chill the fuck out.
Yes. That’s what I think. Crimea is the red line
I’ve just been reading Simon Sebag Montefiore’s The Romanovs and it is highly illustrative of the psychological importance of the South Ukrainian coast - especially Odessa - even more Crimea - to Russia’s self image
Catherine’s lover Potemkin was buried in the town he founded. Kherson. The Russians removed his bones as they retreated
So why did Putin flatten Odessa's cathedral last week?
Because he’s a mobster.
And the idea Crimea would be some nuclear red line seems predicated on Putin and his goons having a deep emotional attachment to it as an ancient motherland (which it isn’t and never was, even under the Tsars), rather than simply some turf his crew picked up by a stroke of good luck in 2014.
In February 2022 I was all in on contingency planning to flee the country if things turned nuclear. I had a location analysis spreadsheet. Now I realise the Eastern Europeans and Baltics knew what they were taking about while the rest of us ignored them for decades. Russia’s just a bog standard bully that cowers when people stand up to it. Look at the reaction to Wagner’s mutiny.
You are absolutely and cluelessly wrong about Crimea. Read some history
It’s up there with historical British possessions like Ireland or the United States. Or French Algeria. Somewhere they have a long history of owning or coveting, but always in reality a colony.
Probably it would go nuclear if Crimea was seriously close to being overrun
I definitely think RF would threaten it if Crimea was in peril. Maybe a 'test' detonation over the Black Sea. That would be enough to cause utter chaos in the financial markets and Biden would be on WhatsApp to Z telling him to chill the fuck out.
Yes. That’s what I think. Crimea is the red line
I’ve just been reading Simon Sebag Montefiore’s The Romanovs and it is highly illustrative of the psychological importance of the South Ukrainian coast - especially Odessa - even more Crimea - to Russia’s self image
Catherine’s lover Potemkin was buried in the town he founded. Kherson. The Russians removed his bones as they retreated
We will find out in near future as Ukraine are determined to take it back.
Romanians are completely different to Ukrainians. The difference is remarkable
You go from a land of slim pale blonde people - extremely lovely women - to fat dark tattoooed people - women “not quite so striking” - in 100km
What explains this? The Romanians are darker than the Italians; the Ukrainians are whiter than the icelandics
It’s the same landscape, same climate, same everything. Except for the people
EU Membership. Romaina has been totally hollowed out by freedom of movement. Its population is down over 20% in the past two decades, as anyone with aspiration has moved West.
I doubt EU membership means all the tall blonde people have left Romania. My guess is that whereas Ukraine was populated largely from the north and west, Romania’s population was built a lot more from the south and east.
Ukraine is viking. Romania is latin. Thats why they look different - they are.
But they don’t just look Latin. They look extremely Latin. Like calabrians or Maltese or even westernised Tunisians
I do love a bit of amateur ethnography
I suppose it’s like the UK where you have distinct looks in each country. The Welsh are all four foot tall with dark hair and darker eyes, the Scots are blue skinned with wild red hair and the English are tall, athletic, flaxen haired with blue eyes, “angels not angles” no less.
The Welsh have two distinct ethnographic extremes: the 'Iberian' look (swarthy, dark curly hair, brown eyes) and the 'Celtic' look (pale, ruddy-faced, ginger hair and blue eyes). Of course, most of us are somewhere in between, having poached our ancestors from faraway places like (in my case) Shropshire and Cheshire.
With the benefit of hindsight, did the policies started by Brown and continued by the Coalition, of large scale deficits and extremely easy monetary conditions to offset the consequences of the crash do more harm than good? The GFC on the surface caused far less damage than, say, the Wall Street crash in 1929 but its effects have been far more insidious and long lasting.
What is the comparison with the United States which also had deficits and QE, but did not have austerity?
Probably it would go nuclear if Crimea was seriously close to being overrun
I definitely think RF would threaten it if Crimea was in peril. Maybe a 'test' detonation over the Black Sea. That would be enough to cause utter chaos in the financial markets and Biden would be on WhatsApp to Z telling him to chill the fuck out.
Yes. That’s what I think. Crimea is the red line
I’ve just been reading Simon Sebag Montefiore’s The Romanovs and it is highly illustrative of the psychological importance of the South Ukrainian coast - especially Odessa - even more Crimea - to Russia’s self image
Catherine’s lover Potemkin was buried in the town he founded. Kherson. The Russians removed his bones as they retreated
So why did Putin flatten Odessa's cathedral last week?
Because he’s a mobster.
And the idea Crimea would be some nuclear red line seems predicated on Putin and his goons having a deep emotional attachment to it as an ancient motherland (which it isn’t and never was, even under the Tsars), rather than simply some turf his crew picked up by a stroke of good luck in 2014.
In February 2022 I was all in on contingency planning to flee the country if things turned nuclear. I had a location analysis spreadsheet. Now I realise the Eastern Europeans and Baltics knew what they were taking about while the rest of us ignored them for decades. Russia’s just a bog standard bully that cowers when people stand up to it. Look at the reaction to Wagner’s mutiny.
You are absolutely and cluelessly wrong about Crimea. Read some history
It’s up there with historical British possessions like Ireland or the United States. Or French Algeria. Somewhere they have a long history of owning or coveting, but always in reality a colony.
That’s better than your first attempt. Let’s remind ourselves what you said
Crimea is “simply some turf Putin’s crew picked up by a stroke of good luck in 2014”
But you’re still not quite there. Many of these southern Ukrainian/Crimean towns were tiny villages or uninhabited swampland. Russians literally built them from nothing
Eg Kherson, Odesa
Catherine seized Crimea from the ottomans, Potemkin built it up. It’s been Russian since the late 18th century. It was Russian in the USSR until kruschev handed it to the ukes for reasons of internal politics
Catherine called Crimea “Russia’s piece of paradise”
There is a serious emotional attachment to Crimea, in Russia. They won’t give it up now without a massive fight, or they will drop a tactical nuke on some island and scare everyone into a truce as world economies collapse in panic
Former Pakistan prime minister Imran Khan sentenced to three years in jail https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/aug/05/former-pakistan-prime-minister-imran-khan-jailed-for-three-years ...The judge found Khan had “deliberately submitted fake details” of the gifts to the court and had been involved in corruption. After expressing his displeasure that Khan’s lawyers were not in court, he sentenced Khan to three years in prison and ordered him to be banned from politics for five years.
Almost immediately after the judgment was given, police surrounded Khan’s home in Lahore and detained him. According to the state information minister, he was taken to Islamabad.
Khan’s lawyer, Intezar Hussain Panjutha, said they would be appealing against the ruling, calling it a case of “political victimisation”...
There is a serious emotional attachment to Crimea, in Russia. They won’t give it up now without a massive fight, or they will drop a tactical nuke on some island and scare everyone into a truce as world economies collapse in panic
If there is indeed a path to "Russia gets to keep Crimea" somewhere in the future, I am not convinced "drops a tactical nuke" is a step on that path...
Romanians are completely different to Ukrainians. The difference is remarkable
You go from a land of slim pale blonde people - extremely lovely women - to fat dark tattoooed people - women “not quite so striking” - in 100km
What explains this? The Romanians are darker than the Italians; the Ukrainians are whiter than the icelandics
It’s the same landscape, same climate, same everything. Except for the people
EU Membership. Romaina has been totally hollowed out by freedom of movement. Its population is down over 20% in the past two decades, as anyone with aspiration has moved West.
I doubt EU membership means all the tall blonde people have left Romania. My guess is that whereas Ukraine was populated largely from the north and west, Romania’s population was built a lot more from the south and east.
Ukraine is viking. Romania is latin. Thats why they look different - they are.
But they don’t just look Latin. They look extremely Latin. Like calabrians or Maltese or even westernised Tunisians
I do love a bit of amateur ethnography
Roma originated from India roughly 1,000 years ago. They even have their own languages closely related to Hindi and Gujarati.
Romanians are completely different to Ukrainians. The difference is remarkable
You go from a land of slim pale blonde people - extremely lovely women - to fat dark tattoooed people - women “not quite so striking” - in 100km
What explains this? The Romanians are darker than the Italians; the Ukrainians are whiter than the icelandics
It’s the same landscape, same climate, same everything. Except for the people
EU Membership. Romaina has been totally hollowed out by freedom of movement. Its population is down over 20% in the past two decades, as anyone with aspiration has moved West.
I doubt EU membership means all the tall blonde people have left Romania. My guess is that whereas Ukraine was populated largely from the north and west, Romania’s population was built a lot more from the south and east.
Ukraine is viking. Romania is latin. Thats why they look different - they are.
But they don’t just look Latin. They look extremely Latin. Like calabrians or Maltese or even westernised Tunisians
I do love a bit of amateur ethnography
I suppose it’s like the UK where you have distinct looks in each country. The Welsh are all four foot tall with dark hair and darker eyes, the Scots are blue skinned with wild red hair and the English are tall, athletic, flaxen haired with blue eyes, “angels not angles” no less.
The Welsh have two distinct ethnographic extremes: the 'Iberian' look (swarthy, dark curly hair, brown eyes) and the 'Celtic' look (pale, ruddy-faced, ginger hair and blue eyes). Of course, most of us are somewhere in between, having poached our ancestors from faraway places like (in my case) Shropshire and Cheshire.
Poaching your own ancestors sounds more an Irish sort of thing.
No movement at all after all the fuss of the last fortnight.
The 90% of motorists who find out in August that they don't need to pay anything at all will just shrug. At the moment a lot think incorrectly that this is going to cost them.
In other news:
24% of New UK car registrations in July are either EV (16%) or PHEV (8%) so already meeting the 2030 criteria. Less than 8% are diesels of any form.
Unlikely people will shrug. Its the same principle as Inheritance tax. People who are never going to.pay inheritance tax resent it on principle. The same will be for Khan's lunacy.
I can understand aspiring to be rich enough to pay inheritance tax, but who aspires to buy a pre 2016 diesel car?
The forecast says 35mm of rain in a day for london. That’s an inch. London is gonna flood
And my plane will be landing in that shite
More like and inch and a half, aka an armful. If the boffins could engineer a month like this every summer global warming would soon become a happy memory, along with cricket, pub gardens and days at the beach. It was clearly argued upthread that the magic bullet for climate change is more and more cloud.
Probably it would go nuclear if Crimea was seriously close to being overrun
I definitely think RF would threaten it if Crimea was in peril. Maybe a 'test' detonation over the Black Sea. That would be enough to cause utter chaos in the financial markets and Biden would be on WhatsApp to Z telling him to chill the fuck out.
Yes. That’s what I think. Crimea is the red line
I’ve just been reading Simon Sebag Montefiore’s The Romanovs and it is highly illustrative of the psychological importance of the South Ukrainian coast - especially Odessa - even more Crimea - to Russia’s self image
Catherine’s lover Potemkin was buried in the town he founded. Kherson. The Russians removed his bones as they retreated
So why did Putin flatten Odessa's cathedral last week?
Because he’s a mobster.
And the idea Crimea would be some nuclear red line seems predicated on Putin and his goons having a deep emotional attachment to it as an ancient motherland (which it isn’t and never was, even under the Tsars), rather than simply some turf his crew picked up by a stroke of good luck in 2014.
In February 2022 I was all in on contingency planning to flee the country if things turned nuclear. I had a location analysis spreadsheet. Now I realise the Eastern Europeans and Baltics knew what they were taking about while the rest of us ignored them for decades. Russia’s just a bog standard bully that cowers when people stand up to it. Look at the reaction to Wagner’s mutiny.
You are absolutely and cluelessly wrong about Crimea. Read some history
It’s up there with historical British possessions like Ireland or the United States. Or French Algeria. Somewhere they have a long history of owning or coveting, but always in reality a colony.
That’s better than your first attempt. Let’s remind ourselves what you said
Crimea is “simply some turf Putin’s crew picked up by a stroke of good luck in 2014”
But you’re still not quite there. Many of these southern Ukrainian/Crimean towns were tiny villages or uninhabited swampland. Russians literally built them from nothing
Eg Kherson, Odesa
Catherine seized Crimea from the ottomans, Potemkin built it up. It’s been Russian since the late 18th century. It was Russian in the USSR until kruschev handed it to the ukes for reasons of internal politics
Catherine called Crimea “Russia’s piece of paradise”
There is a serious emotional attachment to Crimea, in Russia. They won’t give it up now without a massive fight, or they will drop a tactical nuke on some island and scare everyone into a truce as world economies collapse in panic
Except that it is a national myth. Potemkin did not build villages in the wilderness, he built fake villages with fake peasants. The people in South Ukraine were and are Ukrainian. The primary population of Crimea, until 1942 were Crimean Tatars. Stalin murdered them on an industrial scale. Crimea was allocated to the UkrSSR in 1954, because it was largely depopulated. It wasn´t some absurd Russian gesture of good will.
So the regime may manufacture some propaganda, but the Russian claim is as stupid as a British claim on, say, Tuscany or the Dordogne would be.
The next claim would be the Baltic, Poland, Germany- They will not stop with Crimea, nor Vohlynia, nor Saxony... They must be stopped here and now.
Comments
It is simplistic and wrong to blame the likes of Osborne for this as if it was a choice not to spend non existent money. We were simply a hell of a lot poorer than we thought. The avoidance of the destructive creation of a deep recession in 2008 has had very serious consequences with cash strapped, zombie businesses incapable of investment surviving on cheap money when it might have been better to create new space and resource for new businesses.
We are seeing some of these businesses nurtured by such policies, such as Wilko, collapse now as interest rates return to something like normal.
"The rest of your comment continues in the same vein"
You mean, in that it is correct?
You go from a land of slim pale blonde people - extremely lovely women - to fat dark tattoooed people - women “not quite so striking” - in 100km
What explains this? The Romanians are darker than the Italians; the Ukrainians are whiter than the icelandics
It’s the same landscape, same climate, same everything. Except for the people
With this latter view we can see that Ukraine is winning. They have decisively gained an upper hand in the artillery war and are destroying Russian artillery at a prodigious rate. Their drone capabilities are also expanding and developing at an impressive rate, with massive implications for Russian supply of Crimea.
Slowly Western (including European) production of war material is increasing. Meanwhile Russia is struggling and failing to replace their equipment losses, in the absence of full Chinese support.
Yes, Russia can continue to supply the battlefield with men, but that isn't going to be enough.
Nothing has changed for nearly a year now despite BOGOF offers on Leopard 2As, etc. Except that 100,000 more people are dead and Ukraine is a failed state that utterly depends on external aid to survive.
Putin will keep fighting because he doesn't have enough to market the outcome as an unqualified win; which has to include, Catherine's city of Odessa.
Zelensky will keep fighting as long as the suitcases of cash from Foggy Bottom keep turning up because he knows Putin doesn't have enough to stop yet.
Today in Ukraine:
The Thatcher period was also a contributor to some of our current pathologies.
'Green crap' is just meaningless rhetoric. Investment in renewables has likely been a net economic benefit.
But I'd alter your point slightly. Whilst Russia is burning through kit it cannot easily replace at a fast rate, that is not the whole story. In WW2, Germany did not lose on the eastern front through a lack of manpower and high technology; it lost through a lack of logistics. It could not supply the men it had with food, clothing, and ammunition. Russia withdrew from Kherson last autumn for the same reason.
I'd watch attrition of logistics as much as tanks and men. And Russia's logistics is being malleted. Is it enough? I don't know.
Interesting how the analysis that country or group X has no agency pops up - they are just puppets of Y. There always a pattern to that….
Yes, wars are won primarily on logistics and production. Russia has stockpiles of equipment, but not the production capability. Putting new barrels on 50-year-old tanks will only get you so far, when your enemy has live satellite video and missiles like Storm Shadow.
There was[4] a YouTuber called "The Faking Hoaxer" about 15 years ago who used to make very entertaining fake UFO videos. He took his stuff down mid 2010's[3] but the Discovery documentary[1] is still up and he started posting the old stuff a few years back. His new channel is here[2]
[0] https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/The_Faking_Hoaxer
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2G7ZG-jiZOo
[2] https://www.youtube.com/@TheFakingHoaxer2021
[3] http://www.accessdenied-rms.net/forums/showthread.php?tid=14146
[4] https://www.youtube.com/user/TheFakingHoaxer
No it’s not that. These people are genetically, linguistically and culturally entirely different. It’s one of the most striking genetic divides I’ve ever seen - over such a short distance. You go from ultra pale blonde Cyrillic to dark swarthy tattooed Latin in a few kilometres. And there is no mountain range or mighty river marking the border
So it must date from many centuries ago. The
pattern of settlement. The Roman Empire. “Romania”. Or the Roma. Or both
Either the Russians have expended their stockpiles of weapons in production, or they are limiting themselves to the production rate in order to hold a stockpile.
And the latter is arguably closer to meriting the description of failed state than is Ukraine.
Several companies are trying to get pre-fab houses off the ground, but they need to be mortgageable for at least 30 years. You can build at scale a 3-bed house for £100k, plus the land, and the designs mean that all the services come pre-installed, which uses considerably less skilled trade labour. It needs the post-war mentality though.
I’ve just been reading Simon Sebag Montefiore’s The Romanovs and it is highly illustrative of the psychological importance of the South Ukrainian coast - especially Odessa - even more Crimea - to Russia’s self image
Catherine’s lover Potemkin was buried in the town
he founded. Kherson. The Russians removed his bones as they retreated
" Explosion at the Votkinsk Machine Building Plant in Udmurtia, Russia. Iskander ballistic missile detonated in an armored casing during a test, damaging a building used for missile assembly. The giant plant manufactures a large variety of missiles."
https://twitter.com/igorsushko/status/1687717600892207105
The big bottleneck is actually starting building. We are now steadily stockpiling planning permissions.
The problem is that large developers, in many areas, have a local monopoly on building. They then try and keep the prices up, by throttling building.
This suits the politicians, NIMBYS and environmental lobby. Anything that keeps the house building rate down is good with them.
So all you need to do to increase the rate of house building is -
1) Upset the house builders
2) Upset the local politicians
3) Upset the NIMBYS
4) Upset the environmentalists
Where's the Leeds tram system New Labour built?
(Incidentally, one of the things I always chuckle at are the 'chimneys' that go up in one piece; you see pallets of them waiting to go on houses.)
For most of the past two decades, Russia has been seeking to overturn what they see as the Western dominated world order. In that time they have not only used violence: in Moldova, Georgia, Syria and other places, as well as Ukraine itself, but they have also used an arsenal of hybrid or unconventional tactics. The regime sends murder squads to kill opponents, at home, like Anna Politkovskaya, Boris Nemtsov or Pavel Klebnikov or abroad, like Sasha Litvinenko in London or Yanderbayev in Qatar and hundreds of other examples.
Moscow also uses bribery, blackmail and subversion to bring key people under their control. Some political parties, such as AfD and the French National Rally have received public support, including financial support from Russian sources. Some movements, like the French Gilets Jaunes are believed to be entirely sustained by Russian clandestine operations. These operations undertaken by the Russian secret services are believed to be even larger and more active than during the very worse of the Cold War. It would be extremely naive to assume that the UK was not also the focus of such operations, which is why the relationship of Farage and Salmond with the Russia Today black propaganda channel has been highlighted as a source of concern, and why the decisions by Boris Johnson to hire Dominic Cummings, despite his not receiving full security clearance, and appoint Evgeny Lebedev to the House of Lords led to considerable dismay in certain quarters.
In short, by a variety of means, including but not limited to full scale war, the Putin government has been launching a large and orchestrated campaign to undermine Western democracy, and reduce its will to counter Russian aggression.
Putin clearly hopes that the return of Trump would destroy the united will of the West to support Ukraine and in the process lead to the collapse of NATO. The danger now in the Ukrainian war is not that the Ukrainian nation will fold, but that the West, demoralized and leaderless, will allow Russia a free hand first in Ukraine, and then elsewhere in order to destroy the EU and then democracy itself.
This is a World War already.
If we are to avoid the victory of corruption and criminal and brutal barbarism, we must understand that this is an existential struggle, not just for Ukraine, but for the West itself and act accordingly. There is nothing we can give Putin that will satisfy him.
Putin must be defeated and destroyed.
The big bottleneck is actually starting building. We are now steadily stockpiling planning permissions.
The problem is that large developers, in many areas, have a local monopoly on building. They then try and keep the prices up, by throttling building.
This suits the politicians, NIMBYS and environmental lobby. Anything that keeps the house building rate down is good with them.
So all you need to do to increase the rate of house building is
1) Upset the house builders
2 There are system in other countries - pay per mile, based on the emissions for that vehicle.
You can also use them to enforce speed limits and get rid of the road humps that penalise small cars, mopeds, cargo bikes etc.
If we just build houses in the current framework, we're building a lot of tiny, poorly built hovels which the same spivs are then out selling for £unaffordable. What we need is socialised housing. A new wave of Housing Associations.
And might well move the dial, as it's also an ingenious way around lack of government cash.
It would need to be aggressively implemented to make a difference, though. Does Starmer have the balls ?
UK GDP per capita growth 2008Q1-2013Q1: - 4%
UK GDP per capita growth 2013Q1-2018Q1: + 9%
UK GDP per capita growth 2018Q1-2023Q1: NIL
"With the rise of self-driving vehicles and electric pick-up trucks, it can't be too long before we have country songs where the guy's truck leaves him"
And how do you suggest that we do this, practically?
https://www.sips.org/what-are-sips
The big bottleneck is actually starting building. We are now steadily stockpiling planning permissions.
The problem is that large developers, in many areas, have a local monopoly on building. They then try and keep the prices up, by throttling building.
This suits the politicians, NIMBYS and environmental lobby. Anything that keeps the house building rate down is good with them.
So all you need to do to increase the rate of house building is
1) Upset the house builders
2 Probably. Internal stud walls are sometimes framed off site - delivered like roof framing
Indeed, that's part of the attraction of an SUV - easier to pavement park, don't have to slow down for bumps, you don't get hurt if you plough into a group of pedestrians.
Possible solutions: 1) More speed cameras 2) Regulate SUVs out of existence (Paris) 3) Tighten roads and junctions rather than using speed bumps.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarim_mummies
No doubt they prefer to think of themselves as the descendants of mighty Rome, however
Friendly polite people. Definitely warner than the
Ukrainians. More smiles. More English is spoken
Quite a lot of Union Jacks
This tiny airport (Bacau) serves London and Italy with about three flights a day and that’s it. On the upside it is 5 minutes drive from the centre of town
Whilst I credit Boris Johnson for the turnaround, a turnaround was needed. Letting his party coffers swell with lots of Russian cash, sticking a Russian in the HoL against the direction of the security services, his dodgy trips to see papa KGB including slipping his security detail. If Boris was Labour, the establishment would have fingered him as a threat to national security.
https://movingimage.nls.uk/film/0505
Commons standards chair seeks restoration of 1801 rule to compel attendance or by-election
https://www.ft.com/content/5e1438cf-4623-4045-af7c-a47b28b3790d
...Criticising Dorries as an “absentee MP”, Bryant said that when MPs returned to parliament in September it would be “perfectly legitimate . . . to table a motion saying the member for Mid Bedfordshire — and, for that matter, anybody else who hasn’t turned up for six months — must attend by such-and-such a date or will be suspended from the House for 10 sitting days or more”
The proposal, which Bryant said he had presented to government and Labour whips, is detailed in his new book, Code of Conduct: Why We Need to Fix Parliament — and How to Do It...
I do love a bit of amateur ethnography
- The Woolaway house which were constructed between 1946 and 1956. These were two storey semi-detached or terraced properties.
- The Woolaway bungalow which were built from 1953 onwards and were all detached properties.
The term may also be used generically. A Woolaway building is a property type that is on the official "Designated Defective" list as per BRE and the Housing Defects Act 1984. Mortgages are difficult/impossible to obtain.https://www.structherm.co.uk/non-traditional-profile-woolaway-refurbishment
However, crude as an all-London ULEZ is, and cack-handed as the run-up has been, the anger at that will be as nothing compared to what would happen with gradated pay per mile.
This might be naive and optimistic, but I think there is scope for government to engineer some capacity out of the current housing stock. In Sweden, for example, older people have a higher rate of living in flats, close to services like doctors and pharmacies, having given up their family home once the kids have left. Can we incentivise downsizing for people with no dependents?
Then you have second homes that are empty half the year - already being addressed with changes to council tax rates. Divorce, too, is an issue. A traditional Conservative solution would be to tax young families less so as to reduce at least some of the pressure on relationships, as the French do.
And the idea Crimea would be some nuclear red line seems predicated on Putin and his goons having a deep emotional attachment to it as an ancient motherland (which it isn’t and never was, even under the Tsars), rather than simply some turf his crew picked up by a stroke of good luck in 2014.
In February 2022 I was all in on contingency planning to flee the country if things turned nuclear. I had a location analysis spreadsheet. Now I realise the Eastern Europeans and Baltics knew what they were taking about while the rest of us ignored them for decades. Russia’s just a bog standard bully that cowers when people stand up to it. Look at the reaction to Wagner’s mutiny.
My guess is that as it is such a Russian city - and beautiful - he wanted to capture it intact. Unharmed. The Pearl of the Black Sea
That slowly became impossible and then the tactical advantage of blocking the grain by hitting Odesa’s port overwhelmed his desire not to touch “Pushkin’s town”
The cathedral was probably a missile that went astray. I doubt he ordered it to be hit. What does he gain from bombing a church? Just bad PR
Then to provide the ZSU with as much advanced equipment as they want, including F-16s and any other kit that they ask for, so that they can establish greater air superiority and then also interdict the ports of Sevastopil and Novorossysk as the Russians have interdicted Odesa until now. This would allow the grain flows to reopen, because the Russian Navy could no longer stop them.
To counter the Wagner coup in Niger by supporting an ECOWAS military intervention. Push back in Syria and Iran, and permit Ukrainian special operations to be used against Iranian drone manufacturers.
Diplomatically to continue the dialogue with China, but make it clear that the West will not permit any form of Russian victory.
Lustrate the cases where individuals or groups in the West have long term relations with Russian organisations, and force them to account for themselves.
Do not give up.
There are a huge number of sites with approved permission to build houses, but none of the big developers do so. Why? Because a lack of houses being built means they get to override local planning and get permission to build what they want where they want thanks to the Tory Developer's Charter.
Empower councils to build their own houses on the land that the developers refuse to build on. Houses that people want to live in - one less bedroom where the ones built can actually fit furniture in for a start.
Still trying to run this one down, finally, but…
Back in the day, there were lots of research nuclear reactors kicking around. Not what most people think of as a nuclear reactor. More a science experiment the size of a 55 gallon drum.
Universities had them - that kind of level.
Due to the way nuclear physics works, they need highly enriched Uranium. Bomb grade, in fact. Due to some quirks in physics, this actually makes them safer - their max power level is self limiting, so they can’t melt down.
In the 1960s, General Atomics used to have one *running* at a trade show. The party piece was Edward Teller yanking the control rod out to demonstrate that a runaway wouldn’t happen.
Anyway, in 1990, someone remembered that Iraq had a couple. Yes, the Iraqis actually had enough fissile material for a bomb.
So, after the war, the Americans, in particular, became very interested in tidying up this area of proliferation. Lots of these old research reactors were decommissioned. Some were replaced with designs using less enriched Uranium.
Ukraine had quite a few of the Soviet version. I haven’t been able to verify they were removed.
Which rather suggests that Ukraine has a pile (ha) of HEU. Not just enough to build an implosion device. But enough for gun type weapons (see Little Boy).
Gun type weapons are extremely wasteful of fissile material. But they are trivial to build. A home workshop with a lathe and mill is all that is required. If you have an old high velocity tank gun lying around - even easier.
What is quite startling to some is how primitive the actual fabrication was in the Manhattan Project. The crucibles for casting the bomb cores were made by an engineer at home, on his kitchen table.
Some of this makes sense, some of this is just hopeful dreamland. How are we going to “push back in Syria and Iran”?!
You also seem to suggest we give Ukraine an air force that can outmatch Russia’s. That’s never going to happen, no American President would authorise it for multiple reasons, the Europeans can’t afford it and don’t have the capability
But first the French need to bow out and accept that francafrique is over. They are hated and resented by too many Africans
It’s all very ideal to demand intervention but you aren’t a poorly trained and equipped ECOWAS soldier or Niger civilian who will be bearing the brunt.
And then you have the trouble, once you’ve got Wagner out that you need someone to go in to stop the islamists which the French weren’t having great success with hence the replacement with Wagner as they didn’t care how they countered them.
I said Russia’s new tactic of assaulting Ukrainian infra and trying to freeze and starve them into submission MIGHT work. In the end it didn’t because the Ukrainians are tough bastards and they are not minded to yield in any way
I’ve certainly learned that these last two weeks
In essence if Saudi can bring together all the countries usually suckling on Russia's money tit and get them on the side of the Ukrainian peace proposal, Russia is left with very few allies.
This war is as much about geopolitics as it is land. So cutting off Russian allies could be a key part of getting the bear to back down.
😶
like Ireland or the United States. Or French Algeria. Somewhere they have a long history of owning or coveting, but always in reality a colony.
https://twitter.com/stavridisj/status/1687434324281327616
(USN, rtd.)
Crimea is “simply some turf Putin’s crew picked up by a stroke of good luck in 2014”
But you’re still not quite there. Many of these southern Ukrainian/Crimean towns were tiny villages or uninhabited swampland. Russians literally built them from nothing
Eg Kherson, Odesa
Catherine seized Crimea from the ottomans, Potemkin built it up. It’s been Russian since the late 18th century. It was Russian in the USSR until kruschev handed it to the ukes for reasons of internal politics
Catherine called Crimea “Russia’s piece of paradise”
There is a serious emotional attachment to Crimea, in Russia. They won’t give it up now without a massive fight, or they will drop a tactical nuke on some island and scare everyone into a truce as world economies collapse in panic
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/aug/05/former-pakistan-prime-minister-imran-khan-jailed-for-three-years
...The judge found Khan had “deliberately submitted fake details” of the gifts to the court and had been involved in corruption. After expressing his displeasure that Khan’s lawyers were not in court, he sentenced Khan to three years in prison and ordered him to be banned from politics for five years.
Almost immediately after the judgment was given, police surrounded Khan’s home in Lahore and detained him. According to the state information minister, he was taken to Islamabad.
Khan’s lawyer, Intezar Hussain Panjutha, said they would be appealing against the ruling, calling it a case of “political victimisation”...
And my plane will be landing in that shite
So the regime may manufacture some propaganda, but the Russian claim is as stupid as a British claim on, say, Tuscany or the Dordogne would be.
The next claim would be the Baltic, Poland, Germany- They will not stop with Crimea, nor Vohlynia, nor Saxony... They must be stopped here and now.
Huge amounts of smudged make-up are anticipated.