Perhaps this has already been posted, but this assessment of the Ukrainian advance near Verbove (actually from two days ago) has the Ukrainians at least in contaxt with the last continuous line of Russian defence in that area: https://twitter.com/emilkastehelmi/status/1698796521637007491
Yes, they’re getting closer to being able to cut off the railway line to Crimea.
It seems from reports that if they get through these lines then the Russians haven't really fortified much South of these lines (were they assuming these would hold?) so they might be able to push on much further South once a breakthrough is made.
No doubt we'll see an uptick in "realists" calling for the war to end "to save Ukrainian lives" in response.
Having read this long article on the air traffic control problem, I still don't understand why it was necessary for the entire system to have been shut down.
Sounds like a payroll software I was aware of 20 years ago that couldn’t cope with having someone having the same name as somebody else on the pay run.
It assumed you had made a duplicate error.
This appears to be much more of an unusual edge case, which is why it's only just happened after so many years.
Edge and corner cases in software are real ****tards, and particularly when you have user inputs. When a edge/corner case throws up a conflict or situation that the software if not designed for, you have two choices: to try to muddle through, or to fail safe.
In the case of the payroll software, the consequences of either muddling through or failing safely are just business ones. In the case of flight plans, it could have much more severe consequences.
I haven't read the report yet though, so I might be talking out of my backside. Again...
It's interesting that the handling of "something went wrong processing this flight plan" is "stop entirely" rather than "reject the flight plan", but I'm not a safety critical software developer and hindsight is always 20:20.
When I met Mrs J, one thing we both immediately agreed on was that neither of us wanted to work on safety-critical software and hardware. If your radio develops a momentary crackle every ten hours of play because an inter-core message has been corrupted, so what? if your radio used one milliamp extra for a fraction of a second because the amplifier did not scale down its power perfectly, who cares?
But if your software or chip could cause a car or plane to crash, that's a whole different realm. And to be fair, such systems tend to be under much more strenuous project management than the stuff we were doing.
Having been a optimist on the war in Ukraine I am increasingly feeling pessimistic now. We don't know how the counter offensive will finally play out, a major breakthrough remains possible but the west appears to be losing interest and the Russian population seems in no mind to do anything about it.
Let me start with the attack on the grain in Reni. It is unclear whether any missiles or drones landed on Nato territory, the Ukrainians claim they did and there seems to be little attempt to geolocate etc to get to the bottom of it. No surprise as we saw something similar with Poland last year. Why does Putin feel emboldened to take such a risk anyway right on a Nato border? We are talking about grain being sent to feed some of the world's poorest people. What is to stop Romanian air defence from shooting down missiles near their border with Ukraine. I'm sure the Ukrainians would not object. But even this is too much of an escalation for Nato. All they would be doing is neutralising Russian missiles but no, this would bring Nato into direct conflict with Russia and that cannot be allowed. It beats me as to why there isn't more anger towards Russia from the global south about this but there you go. The Saudis cut oil production which should help Russia pay the bills for that much longer.
Meanwhile the Ukrainian economy suffers because of the difficulty exporting through the Black Sea as they're being held hostage by the Russian Navy. Never mind that the Russian navy is nothing special and has fewer ships in the region than Turkey alone. That once you get to the Romanian border you are in entirely Nato waters. The narrative is all about whether Putin will extend the grain deal. He is the agent in all this. It's a matter of his beneficence. Why? Because Nato has no backbone. As the old saying goes it's not the size of the dog in the fight but the size of the fight in the dog. Putin might have misjudged many things but he saw the cowardice of Nato all too clearly.
Anthony Blinken is back in Kyiv meeting a dog. Still no sign of ATACMS. Still no attempt to get control of Black Sea shipping. F16s will arrive sometime before Godot. Taurus missiles? More tanks? Perhaps it is time for major western leaders to fess up. What is it they are afraid of?
They are afraid of WWIII starting on account of a regional conflict.
Which bit of that is so hard for you to fathom.
It's a heck of a lot more than a 'regional conflict', isn't it? It has widespread effects on global geopolitics.
It's a regional conflict. The Israel/Palestine conflict had/has widespread effects on global geopolitics but NATO stayed out of that one.
LOL. No. Nowhere near, and that's a rather crass comparison. The Israel/Palestine conflict is not exactly as hot, with hundreds of thousands of deaths in the last eighteen months, thousands of armoured vehicles destroyed, territory of a sovereign independent nation invaded, power and other threats against western and NATO countries, and with the belligerent nation being the direct descendent of the very enemy NATO was set up to counter.
So yeah, aside from all of that, it's a *great* comparison...
Given that it was fought as a proxy war between the Cold War powers it is an extremely good comparison.
As to numbers, sub-Saharan Africa says hi.
You haven't actually addressed my points, have you? Those factors make it a heck of a lot more than just a 'regional conflict'; in fact the concern of it spreading and becoming WWIII that you state is exactly because it is so much more than a 'regional conflict'.
When the "region" is Europe it's a bit different to the Middle East or something. Krakow is just over the border.
I think it boils down to whether you think Ukraine is a nascent European/EU/Western country or not. I think it is, and I also think it is in our interest to support and protect those countries that wish to emulate our way of doing things.
We are currently engaged upon a proxy war in Ukraine whereby NATO countries (which is not the same as NATO) are providing materiel to Ukraine. Meanwhile, the "Global South" is supporting Russia in one way or another if only by abstaining from censure.
Hence who are the powers? Global North vs Global South or NATO vs FSU? Or...
I'm not particularly sure.
Plus it's on our doorstep (vs 1,500 miles Israel => NATO country).
I do know, however, that it is a treacherously difficult line to tread because it appears, and push me and I'll tell you that I have some sympathy with this view, that we (as in the governments) don't want to immolate the planet on account of the Donetsk Oblast. So we are feeling our way.
The original question was "will NATO leaders please tell us what they are afraid of" and I maintain that it is a question of the greatest inanity.
On topic, on Sunday I will also be doing a piece on why I think a Labour majority is unlikely.
Real view or a devils advocate?
Real view based on real numbers.
I look forward to it then. See if you can shake my (opposite) view.
Your worried though aren't you? You are worried that when the electorate collectively looks at Labour they realise that the chances of "things can only get better" under Labour are a ridiculous pipedream. It is about as possible as SKS ever becoming unboring.
Labour always fucks the economy because they splurge money at the public sector that fails to improve it, whilst simultaneously stymying growth in the productive sector through increased taxation and unnecessary regulation. It was forever thus. A lot of the population know this. If there is such a thing as the wisdom of the crowds, Labour will get no overall control and hold office for about 4 years while the Tories regroup and cleanse themselves of the Boris Johnson scurvy.
You are recycling tired old tropes. But, yes, although my betting persona isn't worried, my political one is. Or put another way, my head is confident but my heart isn't. So much painful history.
Perhaps this has already been posted, but this assessment of the Ukrainian advance near Verbove (actually from two days ago) has the Ukrainians at least in contaxt with the last continuous line of Russian defence in that area: https://twitter.com/emilkastehelmi/status/1698796521637007491
I think the greatest degree of credibility should be accorded to posts from PB contributors on the progress of the war in particular when they include in their post a twitter link.
And this from, by his own admission, the smartest poster on PB.
My *guess* is that the other systems *should* catch this and disallow it from being submitted - otherwise we may have seen many more such cases. But at the end of the day, there has to be something low-down in the system, after user input has been entered from whatever source(s), that will detect such conflicts and throw a metaphorical exception.
This will almost certainly have been yet another swiss-cheese failure: many processes, perhaps run by different organisations, allowed the data to get through to being input into the traffic control system. Those processes need fixing - and as people say, having unique location IDs would be a great start. But even then you'd want the bottom level of the software to detect fallacious or corrupt data from being sent to the controllers.
The question is what should happen when that system gets such a corrupt case? It cannot allow it to go through, and the system is very time-critical; you may not be able to wait a few hours for someone outside the organisation to fix the error.
That can be a devil of a problem.
Sure you can define rules to deal with flight plans with waypoints that use the same name or similarly odd cases, and that's probably necessary as a fault condition or to punt it to manual processing. That doesn't change the fundamental problem that waypoints share names, that's asking for trouble, and yet in principle it's easily resolvable by ruling that all waypoint names will be unique. It's a hell of a lot easier to make unique names than to work around it with rules about distance and time to elminate false matches. Only a naive person would think that the latter way was a good fix.
Perhaps this has already been posted, but this assessment of the Ukrainian advance near Verbove (actually from two days ago) has the Ukrainians at least in contaxt with the last continuous line of Russian defence in that area: https://twitter.com/emilkastehelmi/status/1698796521637007491
Yes, they’re getting closer to being able to cut off the railway line to Crimea.
It seems from reports that if they get through these lines then the Russians haven't really fortified much South of these lines (were they assuming these would hold?) so they might be able to push on much further South once a breakthrough is made.
No doubt we'll see an uptick in "realists" calling for the war to end "to save Ukrainian lives" in response.
I don't wish to dampen spirits, but the alternative take is that progress is so slow that even if that breakthrough is happening, the Russians have plenty time to reset their defensive lines. That's the take of Tom Cooper on substack, which someone on PB recommended a while back.
The question is what should happen when that system gets such a corrupt case? It cannot allow it to go through, and the system is very time-critical; you may not be able to wait a few hours for someone outside the organisation to fix the error.
It's not apparently *that* time critical. The report says that flight plans have to be filed four hours in advance, and that this means that if the software falls over there is a 4 hour buffer of already-filed-and-processed flight plans before you have to fall back to totally manual. So you have 4 hours to figure out problems and restore the system before things start to go pearshaped. Unfortunately in this case the fix took about 10 hours.
Having been a optimist on the war in Ukraine I am increasingly feeling pessimistic now. We don't know how the counter offensive will finally play out, a major breakthrough remains possible but the west appears to be losing interest and the Russian population seems in no mind to do anything about it.
Let me start with the attack on the grain in Reni. It is unclear whether any missiles or drones landed on Nato territory, the Ukrainians claim they did and there seems to be little attempt to geolocate etc to get to the bottom of it. No surprise as we saw something similar with Poland last year. Why does Putin feel emboldened to take such a risk anyway right on a Nato border? We are talking about grain being sent to feed some of the world's poorest people. What is to stop Romanian air defence from shooting down missiles near their border with Ukraine. I'm sure the Ukrainians would not object. But even this is too much of an escalation for Nato. All they would be doing is neutralising Russian missiles but no, this would bring Nato into direct conflict with Russia and that cannot be allowed. It beats me as to why there isn't more anger towards Russia from the global south about this but there you go. The Saudis cut oil production which should help Russia pay the bills for that much longer.
Meanwhile the Ukrainian economy suffers because of the difficulty exporting through the Black Sea as they're being held hostage by the Russian Navy. Never mind that the Russian navy is nothing special and has fewer ships in the region than Turkey alone. That once you get to the Romanian border you are in entirely Nato waters. The narrative is all about whether Putin will extend the grain deal. He is the agent in all this. It's a matter of his beneficence. Why? Because Nato has no backbone. As the old saying goes it's not the size of the dog in the fight but the size of the fight in the dog. Putin might have misjudged many things but he saw the cowardice of Nato all too clearly.
Anthony Blinken is back in Kyiv meeting a dog. Still no sign of ATACMS. Still no attempt to get control of Black Sea shipping. F16s will arrive sometime before Godot. Taurus missiles? More tanks? Perhaps it is time for major western leaders to fess up. What is it they are afraid of?
They are afraid of WWIII starting on account of a regional conflict.
Which bit of that is so hard for you to fathom.
It's a heck of a lot more than a 'regional conflict', isn't it? It has widespread effects on global geopolitics.
It's a regional conflict. The Israel/Palestine conflict had/has widespread effects on global geopolitics but NATO stayed out of that one.
LOL. No. Nowhere near, and that's a rather crass comparison. The Israel/Palestine conflict is not exactly as hot, with hundreds of thousands of deaths in the last eighteen months, thousands of armoured vehicles destroyed, territory of a sovereign independent nation invaded, power and other threats against western and NATO countries, and with the belligerent nation being the direct descendent of the very enemy NATO was set up to counter.
So yeah, aside from all of that, it's a *great* comparison...
Given that it was fought as a proxy war between the Cold War powers it is an extremely good comparison.
As to numbers, sub-Saharan Africa says hi.
You haven't actually addressed my points, have you? Those factors make it a heck of a lot more than just a 'regional conflict'; in fact the concern of it spreading and becoming WWIII that you state is exactly because it is so much more than a 'regional conflict'.
When the "region" is Europe it's a bit different to the Middle East or something. Krakow is just over the border.
I think it boils down to whether you think Ukraine is a nascent European/EU/Western country or not. I think it is, and I also think it is in our interest to support and protect those countries that wish to emulate our way of doing things.
We are currently engaged upon a proxy war in Ukraine whereby NATO countries (which is not the same as NATO) are providing materiel to Ukraine. Meanwhile, the "Global South" is supporting Russia in one way or another if only by abstaining from censure.
Hence who are the powers? Global North vs Global South or NATO vs FSU? Or...
I'm not particularly sure.
Plus it's on our doorstep (vs 1,500 miles Israel => NATO country).
I do know, however, that it is a treacherously difficult line to tread because it appears, and push me and I'll tell you that I have some sympathy with this view, that we (as in the governments) don't want to immolate the planet on account of the Donetsk Oblast. So we are feeling our way.
The original question was "will NATO leaders please tell us what they are afraid of" and I maintain that it is a question of the greatest inanity.
I agree the original question was a bit silly, but I also think your response is really silly. It's clearly much greater than a "regional conflict".
"... don't want to immolate the planet on account of the Donetsk Oblast. "
Yes, but they also don't want Russia to invade other neighbouring countries. And it's been clear over the last twenty years that every tie you cave in to Russia, they'll just take more. You may be happy with them to get Donetsk; would you be happy with them getting Georgia? Kazakhstan? How about if they try for the Baltics (and don't screech 'NATO'; Putin already thinks NATO is weak).
Mum left 'pouring with blood' after sacrificing her arms to protect daughter from 'aggressive' bully XL dog
The government has proposed no laws to decriminalise those responsible for a dog who allow it to attack people. Stray dogs are the legal responsibility of local authorities.
What further action can a government take? Personally it wouldn't worry me if dog ownership was as infrequent as giraffe ownership, but about 10 million voters think otherwise.
Mum left 'pouring with blood' after sacrificing her arms to protect daughter from 'aggressive' bully XL dog
The government has proposed no laws to decriminalise those responsible for a dog who allow it to attack people. Stray dogs are the legal responsibility of local authorities.
What further action can a government take? Personally it wouldn't worry me if dog ownership was as infrequent as giraffe ownership, but about 10 million voters think otherwise.
Mum left 'pouring with blood' after sacrificing her arms to protect daughter from 'aggressive' bully XL dog
The government has proposed no laws to decriminalise those responsible for a dog who allow it to attack people. Stray dogs are the legal responsibility of local authorities.
What further action can a government take? Personally it wouldn't worry me if dog ownership was as infrequent as giraffe ownership, but about 10 million voters think otherwise.
Having been a optimist on the war in Ukraine I am increasingly feeling pessimistic now. We don't know how the counter offensive will finally play out, a major breakthrough remains possible but the west appears to be losing interest and the Russian population seems in no mind to do anything about it.
Let me start with the attack on the grain in Reni. It is unclear whether any missiles or drones landed on Nato territory, the Ukrainians claim they did and there seems to be little attempt to geolocate etc to get to the bottom of it. No surprise as we saw something similar with Poland last year. Why does Putin feel emboldened to take such a risk anyway right on a Nato border? We are talking about grain being sent to feed some of the world's poorest people. What is to stop Romanian air defence from shooting down missiles near their border with Ukraine. I'm sure the Ukrainians would not object. But even this is too much of an escalation for Nato. All they would be doing is neutralising Russian missiles but no, this would bring Nato into direct conflict with Russia and that cannot be allowed. It beats me as to why there isn't more anger towards Russia from the global south about this but there you go. The Saudis cut oil production which should help Russia pay the bills for that much longer.
Meanwhile the Ukrainian economy suffers because of the difficulty exporting through the Black Sea as they're being held hostage by the Russian Navy. Never mind that the Russian navy is nothing special and has fewer ships in the region than Turkey alone. That once you get to the Romanian border you are in entirely Nato waters. The narrative is all about whether Putin will extend the grain deal. He is the agent in all this. It's a matter of his beneficence. Why? Because Nato has no backbone. As the old saying goes it's not the size of the dog in the fight but the size of the fight in the dog. Putin might have misjudged many things but he saw the cowardice of Nato all too clearly.
Anthony Blinken is back in Kyiv meeting a dog. Still no sign of ATACMS. Still no attempt to get control of Black Sea shipping. F16s will arrive sometime before Godot. Taurus missiles? More tanks? Perhaps it is time for major western leaders to fess up. What is it they are afraid of?
They are afraid of WWIII starting on account of a regional conflict.
Which bit of that is so hard for you to fathom.
It's a heck of a lot more than a 'regional conflict', isn't it? It has widespread effects on global geopolitics.
It's a regional conflict. The Israel/Palestine conflict had/has widespread effects on global geopolitics but NATO stayed out of that one.
LOL. No. Nowhere near, and that's a rather crass comparison. The Israel/Palestine conflict is not exactly as hot, with hundreds of thousands of deaths in the last eighteen months, thousands of armoured vehicles destroyed, territory of a sovereign independent nation invaded, power and other threats against western and NATO countries, and with the belligerent nation being the direct descendent of the very enemy NATO was set up to counter.
So yeah, aside from all of that, it's a *great* comparison...
Given that it was fought as a proxy war between the Cold War powers it is an extremely good comparison.
As to numbers, sub-Saharan Africa says hi.
You haven't actually addressed my points, have you? Those factors make it a heck of a lot more than just a 'regional conflict'; in fact the concern of it spreading and becoming WWIII that you state is exactly because it is so much more than a 'regional conflict'.
When the "region" is Europe it's a bit different to the Middle East or something. Krakow is just over the border.
I think it boils down to whether you think Ukraine is a nascent European/EU/Western country or not. I think it is, and I also think it is in our interest to support and protect those countries that wish to emulate our way of doing things.
We are currently engaged upon a proxy war in Ukraine whereby NATO countries (which is not the same as NATO) are providing materiel to Ukraine. Meanwhile, the "Global South" is supporting Russia in one way or another if only by abstaining from censure.
Hence who are the powers? Global North vs Global South or NATO vs FSU? Or...
I'm not particularly sure.
Plus it's on our doorstep (vs 1,500 miles Israel => NATO country).
I do know, however, that it is a treacherously difficult line to tread because it appears, and push me and I'll tell you that I have some sympathy with this view, that we (as in the governments) don't want to immolate the planet on account of the Donetsk Oblast. So we are feeling our way.
The original question was "will NATO leaders please tell us what they are afraid of" and I maintain that it is a question of the greatest inanity.
I agree the original question was a bit silly, but I also think your response is really silly. It's clearly much greater than a "regional conflict".
"... don't want to immolate the planet on account of the Donetsk Oblast. "
Yes, but they also don't want Russia to invade other neighbouring countries. And it's been clear over the last twenty years that every tie you cave in to Russia, they'll just take more. You may be happy with them to get Donetsk; would you be happy with them getting Georgia? Kazakhstan? How about if they try for the Baltics (and don't screech 'NATO'; Putin already thinks NATO is weak).
Yeah good point. There is a good phrase/concept in various conflict assessments which is, when you cut through the jargon, "first things first". That is, deal with what is in front of you and while not ignoring potential scenarios and contingent planning, not heading off down a path which may prove to be a waste or even counterproductive.
As for your endless "what ifs" (scenarios, true) then I'm not sure where it gets us because we are dealing with a nuclear power under command of Vladimir Putin. The thing I have railed against on PB aside from hot from the front line twitter links which illustrate nothing whatsoever, is the tendency to impose an historical inevitability on this war. We don't know what will happen and because you think Russia should win or lose doesn't mean that they will. Go back two thousand years and those with "right" on their side I'm sure have lost as often as they have won.
And coming back to those scenarios - suppose we say we aren't happy for Russia to do any of those things what would you do to address this and ensure that they don't indeed do them.
The question is what should happen when that system gets such a corrupt case? It cannot allow it to go through, and the system is very time-critical; you may not be able to wait a few hours for someone outside the organisation to fix the error.
It's not apparently *that* time critical. The report says that flight plans have to be filed four hours in advance, and that this means that if the software falls over there is a 4 hour buffer of already-filed-and-processed flight plans before you have to fall back to totally manual. So you have 4 hours to figure out problems and restore the system before things start to go pearshaped. Unfortunately in this case the fix took about 10 hours.
In that case it seems strange that "deny the offending plane access to airspace" isn't the automatic failsafe.
If it's already in our airspace I appreciate we need to handle it, but if it's not yet then denying clearance to one flight seems like it'd trump shutting down hundreds of them.
Mum left 'pouring with blood' after sacrificing her arms to protect daughter from 'aggressive' bully XL dog
The government has proposed no laws to decriminalise those responsible for a dog who allow it to attack people. Stray dogs are the legal responsibility of local authorities.
What further action can a government take? Personally it wouldn't worry me if dog ownership was as infrequent as giraffe ownership, but about 10 million voters think otherwise.
Ban all dog ownership.
Cats are the best.
I'd channel the NRA and say that we need to boost bully XL ownership, so that if one bully XL goes rogue there's a good chance there's one of the good dogs around to take him/her down.
After missing it originally, thanks to an unplanned trip abroad, have now finally booked tickets to see the Oppenheimer movie on Friday. Annoyed to have missed the IMAX screenings though.
Doing a double-header with Sound of Freedom, rather than Barbie.
I found the IMAX version overwhelming. Much better in a standard screening.
My question (as one who rarely goes to see movies) is WHY was "Oppenheimer" produced in/for IMAX?
Somehow doubt it was to enhance the thrill-a-minute special effects.
(Suspect that O may have been IMAXed for prestige/PR reasons. OR as part of conspiracy between studio, director and pork-pie hat cartel.)
Mum left 'pouring with blood' after sacrificing her arms to protect daughter from 'aggressive' bully XL dog
The government has proposed no laws to decriminalise those responsible for a dog who allow it to attack people. Stray dogs are the legal responsibility of local authorities.
What further action can a government take? Personally it wouldn't worry me if dog ownership was as infrequent as giraffe ownership, but about 10 million voters think otherwise.
Bully XL breed dogs are enormously more likely to attack both other dogs & humans than any other breed in the UK.
According to https://bullywatch.link/2023/08/01/finding-kimbo/ pretty much all the UK dogs are descended from a single US specimen, every immediate descendant of which was put down by the US authorities for attacking someone out of the blue. Not only that, the UK Bully XL population is usually descended from this paragon of virtue multiple times due to rampant inbreeding within the sector. UK breeders advertise having that dog in their pedigree.
In this particular case, it genuinely seems that it’s not the owner (although a certain type of owner does tend to own these dogs) it’s the breed, or rather that all of them are inbred descendents of a psychotic killer that was prone to snapping out of the blue. Even this wouldn’t be the end of the world if we were talking about an ordinary 15kg housepet, but these things are potentially 50kg of solid muscle. No one is stopping them if they decide to go for someone.
The dangerous dogs act may be bad legislation, but this is exactly the kind of situation that it would actually work for as written. If the information above is true then, imo, the secretary of state has a duty to ban Bully XL breed animals.
The question is what should happen when that system gets such a corrupt case? It cannot allow it to go through, and the system is very time-critical; you may not be able to wait a few hours for someone outside the organisation to fix the error.
It's not apparently *that* time critical. The report says that flight plans have to be filed four hours in advance, and that this means that if the software falls over there is a 4 hour buffer of already-filed-and-processed flight plans before you have to fall back to totally manual. So you have 4 hours to figure out problems and restore the system before things start to go pearshaped. Unfortunately in this case the fix took about 10 hours.
In that case it seems strange that "deny the offending plane access to airspace" isn't the automatic failsafe.
If it's already in our airspace I appreciate we need to handle it, but if it's not yet then denying clearance to one flight seems like it'd trump shutting down hundreds of them.
It is.
But this specific flight plan caused a problem that was unforeseen, which led to the widely documented problems.
Having been a optimist on the war in Ukraine I am increasingly feeling pessimistic now. We don't know how the counter offensive will finally play out, a major breakthrough remains possible but the west appears to be losing interest and the Russian population seems in no mind to do anything about it.
Let me start with the attack on the grain in Reni. It is unclear whether any missiles or drones landed on Nato territory, the Ukrainians claim they did and there seems to be little attempt to geolocate etc to get to the bottom of it. No surprise as we saw something similar with Poland last year. Why does Putin feel emboldened to take such a risk anyway right on a Nato border? We are talking about grain being sent to feed some of the world's poorest people. What is to stop Romanian air defence from shooting down missiles near their border with Ukraine. I'm sure the Ukrainians would not object. But even this is too much of an escalation for Nato. All they would be doing is neutralising Russian missiles but no, this would bring Nato into direct conflict with Russia and that cannot be allowed. It beats me as to why there isn't more anger towards Russia from the global south about this but there you go. The Saudis cut oil production which should help Russia pay the bills for that much longer.
Meanwhile the Ukrainian economy suffers because of the difficulty exporting through the Black Sea as they're being held hostage by the Russian Navy. Never mind that the Russian navy is nothing special and has fewer ships in the region than Turkey alone. That once you get to the Romanian border you are in entirely Nato waters. The narrative is all about whether Putin will extend the grain deal. He is the agent in all this. It's a matter of his beneficence. Why? Because Nato has no backbone. As the old saying goes it's not the size of the dog in the fight but the size of the fight in the dog. Putin might have misjudged many things but he saw the cowardice of Nato all too clearly.
Anthony Blinken is back in Kyiv meeting a dog. Still no sign of ATACMS. Still no attempt to get control of Black Sea shipping. F16s will arrive sometime before Godot. Taurus missiles? More tanks? Perhaps it is time for major western leaders to fess up. What is it they are afraid of?
They are afraid of WWIII starting on account of a regional conflict.
Which bit of that is so hard for you to fathom.
It's a heck of a lot more than a 'regional conflict', isn't it? It has widespread effects on global geopolitics.
It's a regional conflict. The Israel/Palestine conflict had/has widespread effects on global geopolitics but NATO stayed out of that one.
LOL. No. Nowhere near, and that's a rather crass comparison. The Israel/Palestine conflict is not exactly as hot, with hundreds of thousands of deaths in the last eighteen months, thousands of armoured vehicles destroyed, territory of a sovereign independent nation invaded, power and other threats against western and NATO countries, and with the belligerent nation being the direct descendent of the very enemy NATO was set up to counter.
So yeah, aside from all of that, it's a *great* comparison...
Given that it was fought as a proxy war between the Cold War powers it is an extremely good comparison.
As to numbers, sub-Saharan Africa says hi.
You haven't actually addressed my points, have you? Those factors make it a heck of a lot more than just a 'regional conflict'; in fact the concern of it spreading and becoming WWIII that you state is exactly because it is so much more than a 'regional conflict'.
When the "region" is Europe it's a bit different to the Middle East or something. Krakow is just over the border.
I think it boils down to whether you think Ukraine is a nascent European/EU/Western country or not. I think it is, and I also think it is in our interest to support and protect those countries that wish to emulate our way of doing things.
We are currently engaged upon a proxy war in Ukraine whereby NATO countries (which is not the same as NATO) are providing materiel to Ukraine. Meanwhile, the "Global South" is supporting Russia in one way or another if only by abstaining from censure.
Hence who are the powers? Global North vs Global South or NATO vs FSU? Or...
I'm not particularly sure.
Plus it's on our doorstep (vs 1,500 miles Israel => NATO country).
I do know, however, that it is a treacherously difficult line to tread because it appears, and push me and I'll tell you that I have some sympathy with this view, that we (as in the governments) don't want to immolate the planet on account of the Donetsk Oblast. So we are feeling our way.
The original question was "will NATO leaders please tell us what they are afraid of" and I maintain that it is a question of the greatest inanity.
I agree the original question was a bit silly, but I also think your response is really silly. It's clearly much greater than a "regional conflict".
"... don't want to immolate the planet on account of the Donetsk Oblast. "
Yes, but they also don't want Russia to invade other neighbouring countries. And it's been clear over the last twenty years that every tie you cave in to Russia, they'll just take more. You may be happy with them to get Donetsk; would you be happy with them getting Georgia? Kazakhstan? How about if they try for the Baltics (and don't screech 'NATO'; Putin already thinks NATO is weak).
Yeah good point. There is a good phrase/concept in various conflict assessments which is, when you cut through the jargon, "first things first". That is, deal with what is in front of you and while not ignoring potential scenarios and contingent planning, not heading off down a path which may prove to be a waste or even counterproductive.
As for your endless "what ifs" (scenarios, true) then I'm not sure where it gets us because we are dealing with a nuclear power under command of Vladimir Putin. The thing I have railed against on PB aside from hot from the front line twitter links which illustrate nothing whatsoever, is the tendency to impose an historical inevitability on this war. We don't know what will happen and because you think Russia should win or lose doesn't mean that they will. Go back two thousand years and those with "right" on their side I'm sure have lost as often as they have won.
And coming back to those scenarios - suppose we say we aren't happy for Russia to do any of those things what would you do to address this and ensure that they don't indeed do them.
You talk about *my* what-if scenarios, whilst continually warning about a nuclear war; a call straight out of a Russian propagandist's playbook. I'm not saying you are a Russian propagandist; just that they use that line, hoping that the fear will stop the west from doing nothing.
So you are what-if'ing as much as I am.
As it happens, I haven't said Ukraine will win. I *have* said that it's hard to see a route for Russia to get a 'win' where they are better off than if they had not started this hideous little conflict. It's not a zero-sum game, and it's perfectly possible for all sides to lose, even in victory. But Russia might be able to sell a hideous loss in men, material and money to their public as a 'win' if they can say they've gained territory. And if they sell a 'win', they'll be back for more soon.
After missing it originally, thanks to an unplanned trip abroad, have now finally booked tickets to see the Oppenheimer movie on Friday. Annoyed to have missed the IMAX screenings though.
Doing a double-header with Sound of Freedom, rather than Barbie.
I found the IMAX version overwhelming. Much better in a standard screening.
My question (as one who rarely goes to see movies) is WHY was "Oppenheimer" produced in/for IMAX?
Somehow doubt it was to enhance the thrill-a-minute special effects.
(Suspect that O may have been IMAXed for prestige/PR reasons. OR as part of conspiracy between studio, director and pork-pie hat cartel.)
It would appear that unless you sit in a cinema with an IMAX projector then you get the 2.35:1 cropped version. Having watched Oppenheimer in that format I was left wondering what significant benefit the extra height would have given.
Interstellar? Yes. Dunkirk? Yes. This? Not sure...
Mum left 'pouring with blood' after sacrificing her arms to protect daughter from 'aggressive' bully XL dog
The government has proposed no laws to decriminalise those responsible for a dog who allow it to attack people. Stray dogs are the legal responsibility of local authorities.
What further action can a government take? Personally it wouldn't worry me if dog ownership was as infrequent as giraffe ownership, but about 10 million voters think otherwise.
Ban all dog ownership.
Cats are the best.
There aren't any bad pet dogs, only bad owners...obviously, though, some dog breeds should never be pets. Treat bad owners the same as I propose illegal escooter/ebike riders should be treated. Execution. The only way to be sure.
The question is what should happen when that system gets such a corrupt case? It cannot allow it to go through, and the system is very time-critical; you may not be able to wait a few hours for someone outside the organisation to fix the error.
It's not apparently *that* time critical. The report says that flight plans have to be filed four hours in advance, and that this means that if the software falls over there is a 4 hour buffer of already-filed-and-processed flight plans before you have to fall back to totally manual. So you have 4 hours to figure out problems and restore the system before things start to go pearshaped. Unfortunately in this case the fix took about 10 hours.
In that case it seems strange that "deny the offending plane access to airspace" isn't the automatic failsafe.
If it's already in our airspace I appreciate we need to handle it, but if it's not yet then denying clearance to one flight seems like it'd trump shutting down hundreds of them.
It’s obvious from the report that it wasn’t until 3rd line support was called in that the root cause was identified. If they had known that a single flight plan was the problem they would have kicked it out & dealt with that aircraft manually the moment there was a problem with it. I would imagine that in most cases, this is exactly what happens already with weird flight plans that somehow get accepted - the system kicks them out & they are dealt with manually.
The problem was that in this case the system just crashed completely, with no cause that was visible to the people running it.
Mum left 'pouring with blood' after sacrificing her arms to protect daughter from 'aggressive' bully XL dog
The government has proposed no laws to decriminalise those responsible for a dog who allow it to attack people. Stray dogs are the legal responsibility of local authorities.
What further action can a government take? Personally it wouldn't worry me if dog ownership was as infrequent as giraffe ownership, but about 10 million voters think otherwise.
Bully XL breed dogs are enormously more likely to attack both other dogs & humans than any other breed in the UK.
According to https://bullywatch.link/2023/08/01/finding-kimbo/ pretty much all the UK dogs are descended from a single US specimen, every immediate descendant of which was put down by the US authorities for attacking someone out of the blue. Not only that, the UK Bully XL population is usually descended from this paragon of virtue multiple times due to rampant inbreeding within the sector. UK breeders advertise having that dog in their pedigree.
In this particular case, it genuinely seems that it’s not the owner (although a certain type of owner does tend to own these dogs) it’s the breed, or rather that all of them are inbred descendents of a psychotic killer that was prone to snapping out of the blue. Even this wouldn’t be the end of the world if we were talking about an ordinary 15kg housepet, but these things are potentially 50kg of solid muscle. No one is stopping them if they decide to go for someone.
The dangerous dogs act may be bad legislation, but this is exactly the kind of situation that it would actually work for as written. If the information above is true then, imo, the secretary of state has a duty to ban Bully XL breed animals.
It's working class children getting mauled though. Just above collapsing primary schools in the list of priorities.
Mum left 'pouring with blood' after sacrificing her arms to protect daughter from 'aggressive' bully XL dog
The government has proposed no laws to decriminalise those responsible for a dog who allow it to attack people. Stray dogs are the legal responsibility of local authorities.
What further action can a government take? Personally it wouldn't worry me if dog ownership was as infrequent as giraffe ownership, but about 10 million voters think otherwise.
Ban all dog ownership.
Cats are the best.
Don't let Chris Packham hear you say that...
As the untalented Packham is a first class cnut I am a little surprised he is not a cat person.
Perhaps this has already been posted, but this assessment of the Ukrainian advance near Verbove (actually from two days ago) has the Ukrainians at least in contaxt with the last continuous line of Russian defence in that area: https://twitter.com/emilkastehelmi/status/1698796521637007491
Yes, they’re getting closer to being able to cut off the railway line to Crimea.
It seems from reports that if they get through these lines then the Russians haven't really fortified much South of these lines (were they assuming these would hold?) so they might be able to push on much further South once a breakthrough is made.
No doubt we'll see an uptick in "realists" calling for the war to end "to save Ukrainian lives" in response.
Anyone who isn't an historical inevitablist acknowledges that wars usually end via negotiation. The critical question is at what stage that moment should happen whereby both sides are "happy".
If you believe it should happen at the point of Russia's complete withdrawal to its 2014 (?) boundaries then that is a legitimate view and we shall have to wait to see whether Russia agrees that at that point it will start negotiating.
I would not want Ukraine to begin negotiations until they want, or perhaps are told that they should begin negotiations.
Mum left 'pouring with blood' after sacrificing her arms to protect daughter from 'aggressive' bully XL dog
The government has proposed no laws to decriminalise those responsible for a dog who allow it to attack people. Stray dogs are the legal responsibility of local authorities.
What further action can a government take? Personally it wouldn't worry me if dog ownership was as infrequent as giraffe ownership, but about 10 million voters think otherwise.
Ban all dog ownership.
Cats are the best.
There aren't any bad pet dogs, only bad owners...obviously, though, some dog breeds should never be pets. Treat bad owners the same as I propose illegal escooter/ebike riders should be treated. Execution. The only way to be sure.
Crucifixion is too good for 'em that's what I say!
Mum left 'pouring with blood' after sacrificing her arms to protect daughter from 'aggressive' bully XL dog
The government has proposed no laws to decriminalise those responsible for a dog who allow it to attack people. Stray dogs are the legal responsibility of local authorities.
What further action can a government take? Personally it wouldn't worry me if dog ownership was as infrequent as giraffe ownership, but about 10 million voters think otherwise.
Ban all dog ownership.
Cats are the best.
Don't let Chris Packham hear you say that...
As the untalented Packham is a first class cnut I am a little surprised he is not a cat person.
Why is he a first class cnut? Untalented? Compared to?
Mum left 'pouring with blood' after sacrificing her arms to protect daughter from 'aggressive' bully XL dog
The government has proposed no laws to decriminalise those responsible for a dog who allow it to attack people. Stray dogs are the legal responsibility of local authorities.
What further action can a government take? Personally it wouldn't worry me if dog ownership was as infrequent as giraffe ownership, but about 10 million voters think otherwise.
Bully XL breed dogs are enormously more likely to attack both other dogs & humans than any other breed in the UK.
According to https://bullywatch.link/2023/08/01/finding-kimbo/ pretty much all the UK dogs are descended from a single US specimen, every immediate descendant of which was put down by the US authorities for attacking someone out of the blue. Not only that, the UK Bully XL population is usually descended from this paragon of virtue multiple times due to rampant inbreeding within the sector. UK breeders advertise having that dog in their pedigree.
In this particular case, it genuinely seems that it’s not the owner (although a certain type of owner does tend to own these dogs) it’s the breed, or rather that all of them are inbred descendents of a psychotic killer that was prone to snapping out of the blue. Even this wouldn’t be the end of the world if we were talking about an ordinary 15kg housepet, but these things are potentially 50kg of solid muscle. No one is stopping them if they decide to go for someone.
The dangerous dogs act may be bad legislation, but this is exactly the kind of situation that it would actually work for as written. If the information above is true then, imo, the secretary of state has a duty to ban Bully XL breed animals.
Thanks. One or two thoughts about this horrible case, where of course all my thoughts are with the young mother victim.
If the DDA is a bad act, then it is unlikely to be good in this case.
Secondly, there is a lot of class aspect in this animal thingy. The group of people who own and like these creatures are, I am sure, psychotic layabouts who don't live in the more agreeable parts of north Oxford.
Those however who support the reintroduction of the wolf into the UK, an act which from time to time will have the same outcome, are not psychotic layabouts, and can probably be found in abundance in north Oxford.
Having been a optimist on the war in Ukraine I am increasingly feeling pessimistic now. We don't know how the counter offensive will finally play out, a major breakthrough remains possible but the west appears to be losing interest and the Russian population seems in no mind to do anything about it.
Let me start with the attack on the grain in Reni. It is unclear whether any missiles or drones landed on Nato territory, the Ukrainians claim they did and there seems to be little attempt to geolocate etc to get to the bottom of it. No surprise as we saw something similar with Poland last year. Why does Putin feel emboldened to take such a risk anyway right on a Nato border? We are talking about grain being sent to feed some of the world's poorest people. What is to stop Romanian air defence from shooting down missiles near their border with Ukraine. I'm sure the Ukrainians would not object. But even this is too much of an escalation for Nato. All they would be doing is neutralising Russian missiles but no, this would bring Nato into direct conflict with Russia and that cannot be allowed. It beats me as to why there isn't more anger towards Russia from the global south about this but there you go. The Saudis cut oil production which should help Russia pay the bills for that much longer.
Meanwhile the Ukrainian economy suffers because of the difficulty exporting through the Black Sea as they're being held hostage by the Russian Navy. Never mind that the Russian navy is nothing special and has fewer ships in the region than Turkey alone. That once you get to the Romanian border you are in entirely Nato waters. The narrative is all about whether Putin will extend the grain deal. He is the agent in all this. It's a matter of his beneficence. Why? Because Nato has no backbone. As the old saying goes it's not the size of the dog in the fight but the size of the fight in the dog. Putin might have misjudged many things but he saw the cowardice of Nato all too clearly.
Anthony Blinken is back in Kyiv meeting a dog. Still no sign of ATACMS. Still no attempt to get control of Black Sea shipping. F16s will arrive sometime before Godot. Taurus missiles? More tanks? Perhaps it is time for major western leaders to fess up. What is it they are afraid of?
They are afraid of WWIII starting on account of a regional conflict.
Which bit of that is so hard for you to fathom.
It's a heck of a lot more than a 'regional conflict', isn't it? It has widespread effects on global geopolitics.
It's a regional conflict. The Israel/Palestine conflict had/has widespread effects on global geopolitics but NATO stayed out of that one.
LOL. No. Nowhere near, and that's a rather crass comparison. The Israel/Palestine conflict is not exactly as hot, with hundreds of thousands of deaths in the last eighteen months, thousands of armoured vehicles destroyed, territory of a sovereign independent nation invaded, power and other threats against western and NATO countries, and with the belligerent nation being the direct descendent of the very enemy NATO was set up to counter.
So yeah, aside from all of that, it's a *great* comparison...
Given that it was fought as a proxy war between the Cold War powers it is an extremely good comparison.
As to numbers, sub-Saharan Africa says hi.
You haven't actually addressed my points, have you? Those factors make it a heck of a lot more than just a 'regional conflict'; in fact the concern of it spreading and becoming WWIII that you state is exactly because it is so much more than a 'regional conflict'.
When the "region" is Europe it's a bit different to the Middle East or something. Krakow is just over the border.
I think it boils down to whether you think Ukraine is a nascent European/EU/Western country or not. I think it is, and I also think it is in our interest to support and protect those countries that wish to emulate our way of doing things.
We are currently engaged upon a proxy war in Ukraine whereby NATO countries (which is not the same as NATO) are providing materiel to Ukraine. Meanwhile, the "Global South" is supporting Russia in one way or another if only by abstaining from censure.
Hence who are the powers? Global North vs Global South or NATO vs FSU? Or...
I'm not particularly sure.
Plus it's on our doorstep (vs 1,500 miles Israel => NATO country).
I do know, however, that it is a treacherously difficult line to tread because it appears, and push me and I'll tell you that I have some sympathy with this view, that we (as in the governments) don't want to immolate the planet on account of the Donetsk Oblast. So we are feeling our way.
The original question was "will NATO leaders please tell us what they are afraid of" and I maintain that it is a question of the greatest inanity.
I agree the original question was a bit silly, but I also think your response is really silly. It's clearly much greater than a "regional conflict".
"... don't want to immolate the planet on account of the Donetsk Oblast. "
Yes, but they also don't want Russia to invade other neighbouring countries. And it's been clear over the last twenty years that every tie you cave in to Russia, they'll just take more. You may be happy with them to get Donetsk; would you be happy with them getting Georgia? Kazakhstan? How about if they try for the Baltics (and don't screech 'NATO'; Putin already thinks NATO is weak).
Yeah good point. There is a good phrase/concept in various conflict assessments which is, when you cut through the jargon, "first things first". That is, deal with what is in front of you and while not ignoring potential scenarios and contingent planning, not heading off down a path which may prove to be a waste or even counterproductive.
As for your endless "what ifs" (scenarios, true) then I'm not sure where it gets us because we are dealing with a nuclear power under command of Vladimir Putin. The thing I have railed against on PB aside from hot from the front line twitter links which illustrate nothing whatsoever, is the tendency to impose an historical inevitability on this war. We don't know what will happen and because you think Russia should win or lose doesn't mean that they will. Go back two thousand years and those with "right" on their side I'm sure have lost as often as they have won.
And coming back to those scenarios - suppose we say we aren't happy for Russia to do any of those things what would you do to address this and ensure that they don't indeed do them.
You talk about *my* what-if scenarios, whilst continually warning about a nuclear war; a call straight out of a Russian propagandist's playbook. I'm not saying you are a Russian propagandist; just that they use that line, hoping that the fear will stop the west from doing nothing.
So you are what-if'ing as much as I am.
As it happens, I haven't said Ukraine will win. I *have* said that it's hard to see a route for Russia to get a 'win' where they are better off than if they had not started this hideous little conflict. It's not a zero-sum game, and it's perfectly possible for all sides to lose, even in victory. But Russia might be able to sell a hideous loss in men, material and money to their public as a 'win' if they can say they've gained territory. And if they sell a 'win', they'll be back for more soon.
I am continually warning about a nuclear war because the probability of a nuclear war over this is non-trivial. Will it rival the Cuba crisis or that night in 1983 when we came within a hair's breadth of one who knows.
If this acknowledgement is "straight out of a Russian propagandist's playbook" then welcome to the realities of a real time unknown global conflict. Because if you do a Barty and volunteer up your children at an early stage over Ukraine then you bring that moment ever closer.
Anyway, cats should be banned. Why is it right to let an animal you "own" and are responsible for out in the wild to do whatever it wants, kill wildlife and shit in my gravel drive? If you let a comparable sized dog out on its own, neighbourhood watch would go barmy.
Really good chuckle on the last thread hearing from @Dura_Ace that One Foot In The Grave is edgy provocative drama.
Lol.
Bet he's got all of Keeping Up Appearances on VHS too.
Unusually, I'm with Dura Ace on this one.
Straight drama is in no way edgy or provactive. Your defences are already up. You know before it starts it's going to try to make you feel something. And real life is never as one dimensional as drama makes it look. Good sitcoms are amongst the highest of art forms; they are funny, but because they are funny, the not-straightforwardly-funny bits hit home that much more. I'd say the only times I've ever cried at fictional telly has been at sitcoms. And OFITG is a good sitcom. Among the top ten British sitcoms ever written. Also, the first series was bleak. As was the ending.
Posted on the last thread:
Darkness is at the heart of everything David Renwick ever did - see also Jonathon Creek (the later episodes in particular). In OFITG there is an obvious lack of children and grandchildren, and there are hint throughout the show of a trauma from a long time ago. I think its the contrast between Meldrews rants at the stuff that happens to him/them, but at heart its because he cares. See the episode where Margaret contemplates an affair.
Yes, well put. I think if you can watch OFITG and not basically sympathise with Victor, you have missed the point.
Margaret has a sort of inner resilience that means she'll be fine and probably a bit relieved when Victor dies. The whole arc of the show is basically Victor regressing into being the child they never had (or who died in infancy) and Margaret having to parent him. Hence his transient whims and lack of emotional regulation.
Yes, I find that unspoken aspect of OFITG very touching. I don't know if Renwick has children himself or whether there is a bit of autobiography in there, but it is well handled.
Terry and Sheila in the Detectorists are also a charming and often very moving take on the issue. Slightly more reciprocal in that case - both are becoming the child they lost, and both happy to support the other in that.
Taking it to the political level, I can never forgive Andrea Leadsom for raising the matter in the 2016 Tory leadership election. I have no idea of the circumstances for the Mays, and don't want to, but it was an absolutely vile thing to do.
Leadsom should have been more careful but it was really a case of entrapment by the journalist. She was obviously mortified about the way it was reported which is why she pulled out rather than let the issue linger over the vote.
I bloody well hope Leadsom was mortified, although she didn't give that impression at the time and it had more of a flavour of backers pulling out and her being handed the brandy and a revolver.
Penny Mordaunt was Leadsom's proposer in 2016, which I've always found a bit weird. Mind you, that's probably why Mordaunt will never get the top job - loads of things going for her, pretty sensible overall, but prone every so often to think carefully about an important decision before making a mindblowingly bad political judgment.
Clearly your judgement of Leadsom's entire career based on a single interview is worth more than Mordaunt's judgement from working with her over the course of several years.
Leadsom was (presumably is) a competent, unapologetic Brexit supporting politician. That's a combination that certain people can't bear, so they were only too delighted when she put her foot in her mouth. The result was the May premiership.
I never made any claims about Leadsom's competence. It was her character I had a problem with, as revealed by her comment on May.
On Mordaunt's judgment proposing Leadsom, we'll of course never know what a Leadsom Premiership would have been like. It will always be possible that she'd have been one of our greatest PMs, and if only Mordaunt's sagacity in being her chief cheerleader was shared by the vast majority of Tory MPs who didn't. Then again, her campaign for the leadership imploded catastrophically within about two minutes of emerging from the Commons Tea Room with enough chums to make the members' ballot, when she made the mistake of doing an interview and saying something mindblowingly crass. So maybe she'd not have been very good at all, and maybe Mordaunt was well placed to recognise her flaws, and didn't.
Mum left 'pouring with blood' after sacrificing her arms to protect daughter from 'aggressive' bully XL dog
The government has proposed no laws to decriminalise those responsible for a dog who allow it to attack people. Stray dogs are the legal responsibility of local authorities.
What further action can a government take? Personally it wouldn't worry me if dog ownership was as infrequent as giraffe ownership, but about 10 million voters think otherwise.
Bully XL breed dogs are enormously more likely to attack both other dogs & humans than any other breed in the UK.
According to https://bullywatch.link/2023/08/01/finding-kimbo/ pretty much all the UK dogs are descended from a single US specimen, every immediate descendant of which was put down by the US authorities for attacking someone out of the blue. Not only that, the UK Bully XL population is usually descended from this paragon of virtue multiple times due to rampant inbreeding within the sector. UK breeders advertise having that dog in their pedigree.
In this particular case, it genuinely seems that it’s not the owner (although a certain type of owner does tend to own these dogs) it’s the breed, or rather that all of them are inbred descendents of a psychotic killer that was prone to snapping out of the blue. Even this wouldn’t be the end of the world if we were talking about an ordinary 15kg housepet, but these things are potentially 50kg of solid muscle. No one is stopping them if they decide to go for someone.
The dangerous dogs act may be bad legislation, but this is exactly the kind of situation that it would actually work for as written. If the information above is true then, imo, the secretary of state has a duty to ban Bully XL breed animals.
Thanks. One or two thoughts about this horrible case, where of course all my thoughts are with the young mother victim.
If the DDA is a bad act, then it is unlikely to be good in this case.
Secondly, there is a lot of class aspect in this animal thingy. The group of people who own and like these creatures are, I am sure, psychotic layabouts who don't live in the more agreeable parts of north Oxford.
Those however who support the reintroduction of the wolf into the UK, an act which from time to time will have the same outcome, are not psychotic layabouts, and can probably be found in abundance in north Oxford.
The difference between a wolf and an XL bully is the dog just keeps on killing.
On topic, on Sunday I will also be doing a piece on why I think a Labour majority is unlikely.
Real view or a devils advocate?
Real view based on real numbers.
I look forward to it then. See if you can shake my (opposite) view.
Your worried though aren't you? You are worried that when the electorate collectively looks at Labour they realise that the chances of "things can only get better" under Labour are a ridiculous pipedream. It is about as possible as SKS ever becoming unboring.
Labour always fucks the economy because they splurge money at the public sector that fails to improve it, whilst simultaneously stymying growth in the productive sector through increased taxation and unnecessary regulation. It was forever thus. A lot of the population know this. If there is such a thing as the wisdom of the crowds, Labour will get no overall control and hold office for about 4 years while the Tories regroup and cleanse themselves of the Boris Johnson scurvy.
You are recycling tired old tropes. But, yes, although my betting persona isn't worried, my political one is. Or put another way, my head is confident but my heart isn't. So much painful history.
I suppose they are tropes in the strictest definition, so I am glad you recognise as such, viz, a significant or recurrent theme. In Labour's case it is a significant or recurrent theme that they always fuck the economy. No significant organisation would ever put a bunch of lower middle managers in executive positions. That is what the country does, each time they put Labour in government.
After missing it originally, thanks to an unplanned trip abroad, have now finally booked tickets to see the Oppenheimer movie on Friday. Annoyed to have missed the IMAX screenings though.
Doing a double-header with Sound of Freedom, rather than Barbie.
I found the IMAX version overwhelming. Much better in a standard screening.
Honestly I find IMAX in general to be overwhelming, and it takes me out of the experience (might be a function of not getting the right seat at the pictures, but it's never quite worked for me). It's not the obvious boondoggle that 3D is/was, or the various rumbletrons/smell-o-visions that have been doing the rounds since the 50s* but grumpy old geezer that I am, I just like a regular screen without gimmicks.
*this has brought to mind the really excellent but oddly forgotten film John Goodman film, Matinee - set around the Cuban missile crisis but featuring lots of classic B movie cinema tricks. Also has one of the best films-within-a-film that I can recall (MANT! Half man, half ant!).
Voter fraud in America > "Round up the usual suspects" > GOP aka Grifters On Parade
Alabama Political Reporter - David Cole resigns [state] House seat, will plead guilty, serve jail time Cole was arrested for felony voter fraud related to his falsifying of documents to run for office.
Madison Rep. David Cole resigned his seat in the Alabama House on Thursday and, as part of a plea deal, filed court documents indicating his intent to plead guilty to a felony voter fraud charge. Under the proposed plea deal, Cole will serve 60 days in jail and a three-year probation. . . .
Cole must also repay the salary he earned as a state representative and cover any additional court costs or fees imposed by the court.
The plea documents also provide a detailed accounting of Cole’s actions that led to his arrest and the charges he faced. Without the plea deal, Cole could have been facing multiple felony counts for voter fraud.
According to [court] documents . . . Cole was desperate to find a residence within House District 10 after 2020 redistricting shifted the district lines out of Cole’s neighborhood, leaving his family home in District 4. District 4 is represented by Parker Moore, who had no intention of resigning. District 10 had been represented by Mike Ball, who was retiring.
According to the court filing, Cole approached a family friend, who . . . agreed [to rent] Cole . . . a “5×5 area” . . . for $5 per month.
. . .Cole never moved in, and in fact visited the home just twice, never moving beyond the foyer near the entrance.
But Cole did, on Nov. 8, 2021, just a day prior to the filing deadline, complete an online voter registration form stating his new address . . . He used that address to vote absentee in the primary, and then voted in person at a District 10 polling location in a runoff election in June 2022. . . .
Cole provided his consultant, David Driscoll, with an “altered copy” of the original lease . . .
Cole also told “a member of the Republican Party Steering Committee” that he was living in the Sinopoli home . . . [and] that he had sold his home in House District 4 . . .
Cole used the address of an apartment he leased in District 10 to vote in the Nov. 2022 general election. The plea agreement states that, too, was fraudulent because Cole later certified on Dec. 1, 2022, on a property tax document, that his District 4 home was his primary residence.
> AL state attorney general Steve Marshall, who successfully prosecuted this case, is a Republican
> Yours truly is NOT saying ONLY GOPers commit election fraud; rather, that in the early 3rd millennium, they are implicated in majority of cases of actual, documented, prosecuted and convicted US voter fraud.
Really good chuckle on the last thread hearing from @Dura_Ace that One Foot In The Grave is edgy provocative drama.
Lol.
Bet he's got all of Keeping Up Appearances on VHS too.
Unusually, I'm with Dura Ace on this one.
Straight drama is in no way edgy or provactive. Your defences are already up. You know before it starts it's going to try to make you feel something. And real life is never as one dimensional as drama makes it look. Good sitcoms are amongst the highest of art forms; they are funny, but because they are funny, the not-straightforwardly-funny bits hit home that much more. I'd say the only times I've ever cried at fictional telly has been at sitcoms. And OFITG is a good sitcom. Among the top ten British sitcoms ever written. Also, the first series was bleak. As was the ending.
Posted on the last thread:
Darkness is at the heart of everything David Renwick ever did - see also Jonathon Creek (the later episodes in particular). In OFITG there is an obvious lack of children and grandchildren, and there are hint throughout the show of a trauma from a long time ago. I think its the contrast between Meldrews rants at the stuff that happens to him/them, but at heart its because he cares. See the episode where Margaret contemplates an affair.
Yes, well put. I think if you can watch OFITG and not basically sympathise with Victor, you have missed the point.
Margaret has a sort of inner resilience that means she'll be fine and probably a bit relieved when Victor dies. The whole arc of the show is basically Victor regressing into being the child they never had (or who died in infancy) and Margaret having to parent him. Hence his transient whims and lack of emotional regulation.
Yes, I find that unspoken aspect of OFITG very touching. I don't know if Renwick has children himself or whether there is a bit of autobiography in there, but it is well handled.
Terry and Sheila in the Detectorists are also a charming and often very moving take on the issue. Slightly more reciprocal in that case - both are becoming the child they lost, and both happy to support the other in that.
Taking it to the political level, I can never forgive Andrea Leadsom for raising the matter in the 2016 Tory leadership election. I have no idea of the circumstances for the Mays, and don't want to, but it was an absolutely vile thing to do.
Leadsom should have been more careful but it was really a case of entrapment by the journalist. She was obviously mortified about the way it was reported which is why she pulled out rather than let the issue linger over the vote.
I bloody well hope Leadsom was mortified, although she didn't give that impression at the time and it had more of a flavour of backers pulling out and her being handed the brandy and a revolver.
Penny Mordaunt was Leadsom's proposer in 2016, which I've always found a bit weird. Mind you, that's probably why Mordaunt will never get the top job - loads of things going for her, pretty sensible overall, but prone every so often to think carefully about an important decision before making a mindblowingly bad political judgment.
Clearly your judgement of Leadsom's entire career based on a single interview is worth more than Mordaunt's judgement from working with her over the course of several years.
Leadsom was (presumably is) a competent, unapologetic Brexit supporting politician. That's a combination that certain people can't bear, so they were only too delighted when she put her foot in her mouth. The result was the May premiership.
I never made any claims about Leadsom's competence. It was her character I had a problem with, as revealed by her comment on May.
She made a comment about herself. It was only twisted into being about May because of the way it was framed.
Mum left 'pouring with blood' after sacrificing her arms to protect daughter from 'aggressive' bully XL dog
The government has proposed no laws to decriminalise those responsible for a dog who allow it to attack people. Stray dogs are the legal responsibility of local authorities.
What further action can a government take? Personally it wouldn't worry me if dog ownership was as infrequent as giraffe ownership, but about 10 million voters think otherwise.
Bully XL breed dogs are enormously more likely to attack both other dogs & humans than any other breed in the UK.
According to https://bullywatch.link/2023/08/01/finding-kimbo/ pretty much all the UK dogs are descended from a single US specimen, every immediate descendant of which was put down by the US authorities for attacking someone out of the blue. Not only that, the UK Bully XL population is usually descended from this paragon of virtue multiple times due to rampant inbreeding within the sector. UK breeders advertise having that dog in their pedigree.
In this particular case, it genuinely seems that it’s not the owner (although a certain type of owner does tend to own these dogs) it’s the breed, or rather that all of them are inbred descendents of a psychotic killer that was prone to snapping out of the blue. Even this wouldn’t be the end of the world if we were talking about an ordinary 15kg housepet, but these things are potentially 50kg of solid muscle. No one is stopping them if they decide to go for someone.
The dangerous dogs act may be bad legislation, but this is exactly the kind of situation that it would actually work for as written. If the information above is true then, imo, the secretary of state has a duty to ban Bully XL breed animals.
Thanks. One or two thoughts about this horrible case, where of course all my thoughts are with the young mother victim.
If the DDA is a bad act, then it is unlikely to be good in this case.
Secondly, there is a lot of class aspect in this animal thingy. The group of people who own and like these creatures are, I am sure, psychotic layabouts who don't live in the more agreeable parts of north Oxford.
Those however who support the reintroduction of the wolf into the UK, an act which from time to time will have the same outcome, are not psychotic layabouts, and can probably be found in abundance in north Oxford.
The difference between a wolf and an XL bully is the dog just keeps on killing.
Mum left 'pouring with blood' after sacrificing her arms to protect daughter from 'aggressive' bully XL dog
The government has proposed no laws to decriminalise those responsible for a dog who allow it to attack people. Stray dogs are the legal responsibility of local authorities.
What further action can a government take? Personally it wouldn't worry me if dog ownership was as infrequent as giraffe ownership, but about 10 million voters think otherwise.
Really good chuckle on the last thread hearing from @Dura_Ace that One Foot In The Grave is edgy provocative drama.
Lol.
Bet he's got all of Keeping Up Appearances on VHS too.
Unusually, I'm with Dura Ace on this one.
Straight drama is in no way edgy or provactive. Your defences are already up. You know before it starts it's going to try to make you feel something. And real life is never as one dimensional as drama makes it look. Good sitcoms are amongst the highest of art forms; they are funny, but because they are funny, the not-straightforwardly-funny bits hit home that much more. I'd say the only times I've ever cried at fictional telly has been at sitcoms. And OFITG is a good sitcom. Among the top ten British sitcoms ever written. Also, the first series was bleak. As was the ending.
Posted on the last thread:
Darkness is at the heart of everything David Renwick ever did - see also Jonathon Creek (the later episodes in particular). In OFITG there is an obvious lack of children and grandchildren, and there are hint throughout the show of a trauma from a long time ago. I think its the contrast between Meldrews rants at the stuff that happens to him/them, but at heart its because he cares. See the episode where Margaret contemplates an affair.
Yes, well put. I think if you can watch OFITG and not basically sympathise with Victor, you have missed the point.
Margaret has a sort of inner resilience that means she'll be fine and probably a bit relieved when Victor dies. The whole arc of the show is basically Victor regressing into being the child they never had (or who died in infancy) and Margaret having to parent him. Hence his transient whims and lack of emotional regulation.
Yes, I find that unspoken aspect of OFITG very touching. I don't know if Renwick has children himself or whether there is a bit of autobiography in there, but it is well handled.
Terry and Sheila in the Detectorists are also a charming and often very moving take on the issue. Slightly more reciprocal in that case - both are becoming the child they lost, and both happy to support the other in that.
Taking it to the political level, I can never forgive Andrea Leadsom for raising the matter in the 2016 Tory leadership election. I have no idea of the circumstances for the Mays, and don't want to, but it was an absolutely vile thing to do.
Leadsom should have been more careful but it was really a case of entrapment by the journalist. She was obviously mortified about the way it was reported which is why she pulled out rather than let the issue linger over the vote.
I bloody well hope Leadsom was mortified, although she didn't give that impression at the time and it had more of a flavour of backers pulling out and her being handed the brandy and a revolver.
Penny Mordaunt was Leadsom's proposer in 2016, which I've always found a bit weird. Mind you, that's probably why Mordaunt will never get the top job - loads of things going for her, pretty sensible overall, but prone every so often to think carefully about an important decision before making a mindblowingly bad political judgment.
Clearly your judgement of Leadsom's entire career based on a single interview is worth more than Mordaunt's judgement from working with her over the course of several years.
Leadsom was (presumably is) a competent, unapologetic Brexit supporting politician. That's a combination that certain people can't bear, so they were only too delighted when she put her foot in her mouth. The result was the May premiership.
I never made any claims about Leadsom's competence. It was her character I had a problem with, as revealed by her comment on May.
She made a comment about herself. It was only twisted into being about May because of the way it was framed.
I think she was quite rightly criticised because it looked very likely that she was trying to contrast herself with the childless Mrs May. Whether it was a mistake or deliberate, it was pretty unpleasant. My view was that it was deliberate as she thought it would endear her to the Tory traditionalists.
And this from, by his own admission, the smartest poster on PB.
What a strange thing to imagine.
You do realise that if someone had said they weren't quite as daft as you, that wouldn't make them "the smartest poster on PB" - not by a very long way!
On topic, on Sunday I will also be doing a piece on why I think a Labour majority is unlikely.
Real view or a devils advocate?
Real view based on real numbers.
I look forward to it then. See if you can shake my (opposite) view.
Your worried though aren't you? You are worried that when the electorate collectively looks at Labour they realise that the chances of "things can only get better" under Labour are a ridiculous pipedream. It is about as possible as SKS ever becoming unboring.
Labour always fucks the economy because they splurge money at the public sector that fails to improve it, whilst simultaneously stymying growth in the productive sector through increased taxation and unnecessary regulation. It was forever thus. A lot of the population know this. If there is such a thing as the wisdom of the crowds, Labour will get no overall control and hold office for about 4 years while the Tories regroup and cleanse themselves of the Boris Johnson scurvy.
You are recycling tired old tropes. But, yes, although my betting persona isn't worried, my political one is. Or put another way, my head is confident but my heart isn't. So much painful history.
I suppose they are tropes in the strictest definition, so I am glad you recognise as such, viz, a significant or recurrent theme. In Labour's case it is a significant or recurrent theme that they always fuck the economy. No significant organisation would ever put a bunch of lower middle managers in executive positions. That is what the country does, each time they put Labour in government.
Conversely, it is a significant or recurrent theme that when the country puts the Tories in government they fuck public services. There's a reason it's not been a Tory unbroken hegemony since 1979...
On topic, on Sunday I will also be doing a piece on why I think a Labour majority is unlikely.
How likely is a Tory majority (currently at 9/1)?
Its price is pretty much guesswork. My guess is about 15/1.
Beyond betting for a moment,a further fascinating question is what number of seats would the Tories need to retain a grip on government.
Assuming Speaker 1 and SF (untaken) 7, a majority (of 2) would be 322.
Assuming only DUP (what a horrific prospect) would play nicely with the Tories and they get 8 (as now) the Tories need 314 seats to have a go. Exactly 51 fewer than in 2019.
There is therefore a substantial area of result which would be absolute havoc politically. Estimating the boundaries and likelihood of this should keep us entertained for some time up to the election.
For example, to introduce a dangerous dog into the arena, what would happen if the Tories got 311 seats?
Or what if the Tories got 316 seats and the DUP said 'go away'?
- if Ukraine doesn’t win, what about the concern that Rishi Sunak, facing a political defeat, will launch Trident? - If Ukraine doesn’t win, what about the concern that Joe Biden will start WWIII? - If Ukraine doesn’t win, what about the concern that Ukraine will re-aquire nuclear weapons and nuke Russia?
On topic, on Sunday I will also be doing a piece on why I think a Labour majority is unlikely.
Real view or a devils advocate?
Real view based on real numbers.
I look forward to it then. See if you can shake my (opposite) view.
Your worried though aren't you? You are worried that when the electorate collectively looks at Labour they realise that the chances of "things can only get better" under Labour are a ridiculous pipedream. It is about as possible as SKS ever becoming unboring.
Labour always fucks the economy because they splurge money at the public sector that fails to improve it, whilst simultaneously stymying growth in the productive sector through increased taxation and unnecessary regulation. It was forever thus. A lot of the population know this. If there is such a thing as the wisdom of the crowds, Labour will get no overall control and hold office for about 4 years while the Tories regroup and cleanse themselves of the Boris Johnson scurvy.
You are recycling tired old tropes. But, yes, although my betting persona isn't worried, my political one is. Or put another way, my head is confident but my heart isn't. So much painful history.
I suppose they are tropes in the strictest definition, so I am glad you recognise as such, viz, a significant or recurrent theme. In Labour's case it is a significant or recurrent theme that they always fuck the economy. No significant organisation would ever put a bunch of lower middle managers in executive positions. That is what the country does, each time they put Labour in government.
Conversely, it is a significant or recurrent theme that when the country puts the Tories in government they fuck public services. There's a reason it's not been a Tory unbroken hegemony since 1979...
I wouldn't disagree too much with that, but the reality is that you have to have a prosperous economy to afford good public services. Perhaps coalition or dictatorship is the answer?
Mum left 'pouring with blood' after sacrificing her arms to protect daughter from 'aggressive' bully XL dog
Drives me insane. They will clearly have to act eventually. The sooner they do it the more lives and limbs will be saved. Children are going to be killed
Australia successfully bans these dogs: it can be done in the UK tomorrow. I hate this craven government
Mum left 'pouring with blood' after sacrificing her arms to protect daughter from 'aggressive' bully XL dog
The government has proposed no laws to decriminalise those responsible for a dog who allow it to attack people. Stray dogs are the legal responsibility of local authorities.
What further action can a government take? Personally it wouldn't worry me if dog ownership was as infrequent as giraffe ownership, but about 10 million voters think otherwise.
Bully XL breed dogs are enormously more likely to attack both other dogs & humans than any other breed in the UK.
According to https://bullywatch.link/2023/08/01/finding-kimbo/ pretty much all the UK dogs are descended from a single US specimen, every immediate descendant of which was put down by the US authorities for attacking someone out of the blue. Not only that, the UK Bully XL population is usually descended from this paragon of virtue multiple times due to rampant inbreeding within the sector. UK breeders advertise having that dog in their pedigree.
In this particular case, it genuinely seems that it’s not the owner (although a certain type of owner does tend to own these dogs) it’s the breed, or rather that all of them are inbred descendents of a psychotic killer that was prone to snapping out of the blue. Even this wouldn’t be the end of the world if we were talking about an ordinary 15kg housepet, but these things are potentially 50kg of solid muscle. No one is stopping them if they decide to go for someone.
The dangerous dogs act may be bad legislation, but this is exactly the kind of situation that it would actually work for as written. If the information above is true then, imo, the secretary of state has a duty to ban Bully XL breed animals.
Thanks. One or two thoughts about this horrible case, where of course all my thoughts are with the young mother victim.
If the DDA is a bad act, then it is unlikely to be good in this case.
Secondly, there is a lot of class aspect in this animal thingy. The group of people who own and like these creatures are, I am sure, psychotic layabouts who don't live in the more agreeable parts of north Oxford.
Those however who support the reintroduction of the wolf into the UK, an act which from time to time will have the same outcome, are not psychotic layabouts, and can probably be found in abundance in north Oxford.
The difference between a wolf and an XL bully is the dog just keeps on killing.
"A Mid Bedfordshire by-election has been called for 19 October after Conservative MP Nadine Dorries said she would vacate her seat.
In August, the former culture secretary resigned from the Commons, more than two months after pledging to go "with immediate effect". Central Bedfordshire Council confirmed the by-election date following Ms Dorries' decision. So far, seven candidates have declared they would stand for the seat."
And this from, by his own admission, the smartest poster on PB.
What a strange thing to imagine.
You do realise that if someone had said they weren't quite as daft as you, that wouldn't make them "the smartest poster on PB" - not by a very long way!
More twitter links please. We are somewhat in a fog over what is really happening in Ukraine and we rely on people such as you doing the hard yards of analysis before you post anything so please keep at it.
Mum left 'pouring with blood' after sacrificing her arms to protect daughter from 'aggressive' bully XL dog
Drives me insane. They will clearly have to act eventually. The sooner they do it the more lives and limbs will be saved. Children are going to be killed
Australia successfully bans these dogs: it can be done in the UK tomorrow. I hate this craven government
Mum left 'pouring with blood' after sacrificing her arms to protect daughter from 'aggressive' bully XL dog
The government has proposed no laws to decriminalise those responsible for a dog who allow it to attack people. Stray dogs are the legal responsibility of local authorities.
What further action can a government take? Personally it wouldn't worry me if dog ownership was as infrequent as giraffe ownership, but about 10 million voters think otherwise.
Bully XL breed dogs are enormously more likely to attack both other dogs & humans than any other breed in the UK.
According to https://bullywatch.link/2023/08/01/finding-kimbo/ pretty much all the UK dogs are descended from a single US specimen, every immediate descendant of which was put down by the US authorities for attacking someone out of the blue. Not only that, the UK Bully XL population is usually descended from this paragon of virtue multiple times due to rampant inbreeding within the sector. UK breeders advertise having that dog in their pedigree.
In this particular case, it genuinely seems that it’s not the owner (although a certain type of owner does tend to own these dogs) it’s the breed, or rather that all of them are inbred descendents of a psychotic killer that was prone to snapping out of the blue. Even this wouldn’t be the end of the world if we were talking about an ordinary 15kg housepet, but these things are potentially 50kg of solid muscle. No one is stopping them if they decide to go for someone.
The dangerous dogs act may be bad legislation, but this is exactly the kind of situation that it would actually work for as written. If the information above is true then, imo, the secretary of state has a duty to ban Bully XL breed animals.
Thanks. One or two thoughts about this horrible case, where of course all my thoughts are with the young mother victim.
If the DDA is a bad act, then it is unlikely to be good in this case.
Secondly, there is a lot of class aspect in this animal thingy. The group of people who own and like these creatures are, I am sure, psychotic layabouts who don't live in the more agreeable parts of north Oxford.
Those however who support the reintroduction of the wolf into the UK, an act which from time to time will have the same outcome, are not psychotic layabouts, and can probably be found in abundance in north Oxford.
The difference between a wolf and an XL bully is the dog just keeps on killing.
Mum left 'pouring with blood' after sacrificing her arms to protect daughter from 'aggressive' bully XL dog
Drives me insane. They will clearly have to act eventually. The sooner they do it the more lives and limbs will be saved. Children are going to be killed
Australia successfully bans these dogs: it can be done in the UK tomorrow. I hate this craven government
Mum left 'pouring with blood' after sacrificing her arms to protect daughter from 'aggressive' bully XL dog
The government has proposed no laws to decriminalise those responsible for a dog who allow it to attack people. Stray dogs are the legal responsibility of local authorities.
What further action can a government take? Personally it wouldn't worry me if dog ownership was as infrequent as giraffe ownership, but about 10 million voters think otherwise.
Bully XL breed dogs are enormously more likely to attack both other dogs & humans than any other breed in the UK.
According to https://bullywatch.link/2023/08/01/finding-kimbo/ pretty much all the UK dogs are descended from a single US specimen, every immediate descendant of which was put down by the US authorities for attacking someone out of the blue. Not only that, the UK Bully XL population is usually descended from this paragon of virtue multiple times due to rampant inbreeding within the sector. UK breeders advertise having that dog in their pedigree.
In this particular case, it genuinely seems that it’s not the owner (although a certain type of owner does tend to own these dogs) it’s the breed, or rather that all of them are inbred descendents of a psychotic killer that was prone to snapping out of the blue. Even this wouldn’t be the end of the world if we were talking about an ordinary 15kg housepet, but these things are potentially 50kg of solid muscle. No one is stopping them if they decide to go for someone.
The dangerous dogs act may be bad legislation, but this is exactly the kind of situation that it would actually work for as written. If the information above is true then, imo, the secretary of state has a duty to ban Bully XL breed animals.
Thanks. One or two thoughts about this horrible case, where of course all my thoughts are with the young mother victim.
If the DDA is a bad act, then it is unlikely to be good in this case.
Secondly, there is a lot of class aspect in this animal thingy. The group of people who own and like these creatures are, I am sure, psychotic layabouts who don't live in the more agreeable parts of north Oxford.
Those however who support the reintroduction of the wolf into the UK, an act which from time to time will have the same outcome, are not psychotic layabouts, and can probably be found in abundance in north Oxford.
Despite them both being about canines, the issues are totally different. I don't think there's classism at play with this either. They are indisputably high-risk animals that it should be illegal to own or breed. Unlike wolves, they are highly likely to be living in close proximity to children and even adults (as well as other domestic pets) to whom they pose a danger. As to wolves, it's not an issue I've honestly given much thought to. Not really on my list of priorities for consideration. I'm also not buying 'it's the breed not the owner' in this case. If you're buying this dog, you know what you're getting. There are plenty of other breeds with a similar look and profile that aren't anything like as dangerous.
As an aside, it's emblematic of our diseased relationship with animals that we've bred a dog like this.
If people want the right to own and “walk” bully XL dogs then I want the right to walk around with an armed Kalashnikov to defend myself and my kin from them. Simple as
If people want the right to own and “walk” bully XL dogs then I want the right to walk around with an armed Kalashnikov to defend myself and my kin from them. Simple as
Mum left 'pouring with blood' after sacrificing her arms to protect daughter from 'aggressive' bully XL dog
The government has proposed no laws to decriminalise those responsible for a dog who allow it to attack people. Stray dogs are the legal responsibility of local authorities.
What further action can a government take? Personally it wouldn't worry me if dog ownership was as infrequent as giraffe ownership, but about 10 million voters think otherwise.
Bully XL breed dogs are enormously more likely to attack both other dogs & humans than any other breed in the UK.
According to https://bullywatch.link/2023/08/01/finding-kimbo/ pretty much all the UK dogs are descended from a single US specimen, every immediate descendant of which was put down by the US authorities for attacking someone out of the blue. Not only that, the UK Bully XL population is usually descended from this paragon of virtue multiple times due to rampant inbreeding within the sector. UK breeders advertise having that dog in their pedigree.
In this particular case, it genuinely seems that it’s not the owner (although a certain type of owner does tend to own these dogs) it’s the breed, or rather that all of them are inbred descendents of a psychotic killer that was prone to snapping out of the blue. Even this wouldn’t be the end of the world if we were talking about an ordinary 15kg housepet, but these things are potentially 50kg of solid muscle. No one is stopping them if they decide to go for someone.
The dangerous dogs act may be bad legislation, but this is exactly the kind of situation that it would actually work for as written. If the information above is true then, imo, the secretary of state has a duty to ban Bully XL breed animals.
Thanks. One or two thoughts about this horrible case, where of course all my thoughts are with the young mother victim.
If the DDA is a bad act, then it is unlikely to be good in this case.
Secondly, there is a lot of class aspect in this animal thingy. The group of people who own and like these creatures are, I am sure, psychotic layabouts who don't live in the more agreeable parts of north Oxford.
Those however who support the reintroduction of the wolf into the UK, an act which from time to time will have the same outcome, are not psychotic layabouts, and can probably be found in abundance in north Oxford.
Despite them both being about canines, the issues are totally different. I don't think there's classism at play with this either. They are indisputably high-risk animals that it should be illegal to own or breed. Unlike wolves, they are highly likely to be living in close proximity to children and even adults (as well as other domestic pets) to whom they pose a danger. As to wolves, it's not an issue I've honestly given much thought to. Not really on my list of priorities for consideration. I'm also not buying 'it's the breed not the owner' in this case. If you're buying this dog, you know what you're getting. There are plenty of other breeds with a similar look and profile that aren't anything like as dangerous.
As an aside, it's emblematic of our diseased relationship with animals that we've bred a dog like this.
The closest thing to a *posh* version of this are wolf hybrids.
Which are nearly all owned by people living in the remote bits of the Yukon etc.
If the Tarquins start acquiring them to walk down Kings Road, then we will have a problem. But they don’t.
If people want the right to own and “walk” bully XL dogs then I want the right to walk around with an armed Kalashnikov to defend myself and my kin from them. Simple as
No, you just need to walk around with someone who is slower at running than you.
If people want the right to own and “walk” bully XL dogs then I want the right to walk around with an armed Kalashnikov to defend myself and my kin from them. Simple as
"Simple as"
And you a noted wordsmith. Jeez.
I am but a humble knapper of erogenic flints. My language is artisanal
Mum left 'pouring with blood' after sacrificing her arms to protect daughter from 'aggressive' bully XL dog
The government has proposed no laws to decriminalise those responsible for a dog who allow it to attack people. Stray dogs are the legal responsibility of local authorities.
What further action can a government take? Personally it wouldn't worry me if dog ownership was as infrequent as giraffe ownership, but about 10 million voters think otherwise.
Bully XL breed dogs are enormously more likely to attack both other dogs & humans than any other breed in the UK.
According to https://bullywatch.link/2023/08/01/finding-kimbo/ pretty much all the UK dogs are descended from a single US specimen, every immediate descendant of which was put down by the US authorities for attacking someone out of the blue. Not only that, the UK Bully XL population is usually descended from this paragon of virtue multiple times due to rampant inbreeding within the sector. UK breeders advertise having that dog in their pedigree.
In this particular case, it genuinely seems that it’s not the owner (although a certain type of owner does tend to own these dogs) it’s the breed, or rather that all of them are inbred descendents of a psychotic killer that was prone to snapping out of the blue. Even this wouldn’t be the end of the world if we were talking about an ordinary 15kg housepet, but these things are potentially 50kg of solid muscle. No one is stopping them if they decide to go for someone.
The dangerous dogs act may be bad legislation, but this is exactly the kind of situation that it would actually work for as written. If the information above is true then, imo, the secretary of state has a duty to ban Bully XL breed animals.
Thanks. One or two thoughts about this horrible case, where of course all my thoughts are with the young mother victim.
If the DDA is a bad act, then it is unlikely to be good in this case.
Secondly, there is a lot of class aspect in this animal thingy. The group of people who own and like these creatures are, I am sure, psychotic layabouts who don't live in the more agreeable parts of north Oxford.
Those however who support the reintroduction of the wolf into the UK, an act which from time to time will have the same outcome, are not psychotic layabouts, and can probably be found in abundance in north Oxford.
Despite them both being about canines, the issues are totally different. I don't think there's classism at play with this either. They are indisputably high-risk animals that it should be illegal to own or breed. Unlike wolves, they are highly likely to be living in close proximity to children and even adults (as well as other domestic pets) to whom they pose a danger. As to wolves, it's not an issue I've honestly given much thought to. Not really on my list of priorities for consideration. I'm also not buying 'it's the breed not the owner' in this case. If you're buying this dog, you know what you're getting. There are plenty of other breeds with a similar look and profile that aren't anything like as dangerous.
As an aside, it's emblematic of our diseased relationship with animals that we've bred a dog like this.
The closest thing to a *posh* version of this are wolf hybrids.
Which are nearly all owned by people living in the remote bits of the Yukon etc.
If the Tarquins start acquiring them to walk down Kings Road, then we will have a problem. But they don’t.
Not sure about wolf hybrids. I'd consider a wolf electric if the range was better.
I am pro the banning of these dogs and anti the bringing back of wolves. That seems consistent.
I was slightly anti the bringing back of wolves until something I said on here prompted someone to ask whether I was a wolf-introducer, and I couldn't resist the label.
I am pro the banning of these dogs and anti the bringing back of wolves. That seems consistent.
I was slightly anti the bringing back of wolves until something I said on here prompted someone to ask whether I was a wolf-introducer, and I couldn't resist the label.
Not as noble as being in the anti-floating bus stop brigade.
Mum left 'pouring with blood' after sacrificing her arms to protect daughter from 'aggressive' bully XL dog
Drives me insane. They will clearly have to act eventually. The sooner they do it the more lives and limbs will be saved. Children are going to be killed
Australia successfully bans these dogs: it can be done in the UK tomorrow. I hate this craven government
Mum left 'pouring with blood' after sacrificing her arms to protect daughter from 'aggressive' bully XL dog
Drives me insane. They will clearly have to act eventually. The sooner they do it the more lives and limbs will be saved. Children are going to be killed
Australia successfully bans these dogs: it can be done in the UK tomorrow. I hate this craven government
Ban them now.
…..
Great to see you back. We can now return to disagreeing with each other at every available opportunity. Apart from in this case, that is.
Mum left 'pouring with blood' after sacrificing her arms to protect daughter from 'aggressive' bully XL dog
The government has proposed no laws to decriminalise those responsible for a dog who allow it to attack people. Stray dogs are the legal responsibility of local authorities.
What further action can a government take? Personally it wouldn't worry me if dog ownership was as infrequent as giraffe ownership, but about 10 million voters think otherwise.
Ban all dog ownership.
Cats are the best.
There aren't any bad pet dogs, only bad owners...obviously, though, some dog breeds should never be pets. Treat bad owners the same as I propose illegal escooter/ebike riders should be treated. Execution. The only way to be sure.
A friend of mine up bred Rotties.Over a period of 20 years he must have bred and sold probably 2 dozen of the beasts. And they were BIG. And yet they were raised with kindness and treated and trained extremely well and not one of them ever caused a problem. And yet, as a breed they have a bad name because they are such big and powerful dogs and are therefore put to nefarious uses.
That said - from everything I have read so far the Bully XLs sound like they are probably irredeamable.
I am pro the banning of these dogs and anti the bringing back of wolves. That seems consistent.
I was slightly anti the bringing back of wolves until something I said on here prompted someone to ask whether I was a wolf-introducer, and I couldn't resist the label.
Not as noble as being in the anti-floating bus stop brigade.
Mum left 'pouring with blood' after sacrificing her arms to protect daughter from 'aggressive' bully XL dog
The government has proposed no laws to decriminalise those responsible for a dog who allow it to attack people. Stray dogs are the legal responsibility of local authorities.
What further action can a government take? Personally it wouldn't worry me if dog ownership was as infrequent as giraffe ownership, but about 10 million voters think otherwise.
Ban all dog ownership.
Cats are the best.
There aren't any bad pet dogs, only bad owners...obviously, though, some dog breeds should never be pets. Treat bad owners the same as I propose illegal escooter/ebike riders should be treated. Execution. The only way to be sure.
A friend of mine up bred Rotties.Over a period of 20 years he must have bred and sold probably 2 dozen of the beasts. And they were BIG. And yet they were raised with kindness and treated and trained extremely well and not one of them ever caused a problem. And yet, as a breed they have a bad name because they are such big and powerful dogs and are therefore put to nefarious uses.
That said - from everything I have read so far the Bully XLs sound like they are probably irredeamable.
It's terriers you need to be careful of although ofc they do less damage - to humans. Plenty of terriers brought up with TLC turn on their fellow canines, often (again canine) family members.
Just glancing at Paxton trial by TX state senate, appears that prosecution is off to a decent start.
Or rather, that the defense is not. Still too early to tell, particularly as right-wing wack-jobs have been spending mega-MAGA-bucks in TV ads, etc., etc. attempting to sway public opinion and pressure the jury = Texas state senators.
Mum left 'pouring with blood' after sacrificing her arms to protect daughter from 'aggressive' bully XL dog
Drives me insane. They will clearly have to act eventually. The sooner they do it the more lives and limbs will be saved. Children are going to be killed
Australia successfully bans these dogs: it can be done in the UK tomorrow. I hate this craven government
Ban them now.
…..
My emotional support salt water crocodile hardly ever eats more than one person a day.
My replica Violet Club nuclear weapon hardly ever explodes accidentally, destroying an entire city and sparking an accidental nuclear war.
Those candidate play lists remind me of this JFK story: He wanted to pose as having higher class tastes than he actually did*. So he brought classical musicians in to the White House to play from time to time.
But he didn't know when to applaud, so he sat where he could see an aide hiding in an office, who would signal him to tell him when he should begin clapping.
I doubt very much whether he is the only American politician who has fibbed about his tastes in music.
Partial disclosure: Were I to make a similar play list, it would probably include, among others, the 4th Brandenburg, The Battle Hymn of the Republic, and "Anything Goes".
(*If I recall correctly, he liked Frank Sinatra, and similar musicians.)
Anyway, cats should be banned. Why is it right to let an animal you "own" and are responsible for out in the wild to do whatever it wants, kill wildlife and shit in my gravel drive? If you let a comparable sized dog out on its own, neighbourhood watch would go barmy.
Not to mention firefighter time wasted rescuing the little terrors from trees
(Does that still happen? Did it ever, outside of Fireman Sam and kids' books?)
Mum left 'pouring with blood' after sacrificing her arms to protect daughter from 'aggressive' bully XL dog
The government has proposed no laws to decriminalise those responsible for a dog who allow it to attack people. Stray dogs are the legal responsibility of local authorities.
What further action can a government take? Personally it wouldn't worry me if dog ownership was as infrequent as giraffe ownership, but about 10 million voters think otherwise.
Bully XL breed dogs are enormously more likely to attack both other dogs & humans than any other breed in the UK.
According to https://bullywatch.link/2023/08/01/finding-kimbo/ pretty much all the UK dogs are descended from a single US specimen, every immediate descendant of which was put down by the US authorities for attacking someone out of the blue. Not only that, the UK Bully XL population is usually descended from this paragon of virtue multiple times due to rampant inbreeding within the sector. UK breeders advertise having that dog in their pedigree.
In this particular case, it genuinely seems that it’s not the owner (although a certain type of owner does tend to own these dogs) it’s the breed, or rather that all of them are inbred descendents of a psychotic killer that was prone to snapping out of the blue. Even this wouldn’t be the end of the world if we were talking about an ordinary 15kg housepet, but these things are potentially 50kg of solid muscle. No one is stopping them if they decide to go for someone.
The dangerous dogs act may be bad legislation, but this is exactly the kind of situation that it would actually work for as written. If the information above is true then, imo, the secretary of state has a duty to ban Bully XL breed animals.
Thanks. One or two thoughts about this horrible case, where of course all my thoughts are with the young mother victim.
If the DDA is a bad act, then it is unlikely to be good in this case.
Secondly, there is a lot of class aspect in this animal thingy. The group of people who own and like these creatures are, I am sure, psychotic layabouts who don't live in the more agreeable parts of north Oxford.
Those however who support the reintroduction of the wolf into the UK, an act which from time to time will have the same outcome, are not psychotic layabouts, and can probably be found in abundance in north Oxford.
The difference between a wolf and an XL bully is the dog just keeps on killing.
Mum left 'pouring with blood' after sacrificing her arms to protect daughter from 'aggressive' bully XL dog
The government has proposed no laws to decriminalise those responsible for a dog who allow it to attack people. Stray dogs are the legal responsibility of local authorities.
What further action can a government take? Personally it wouldn't worry me if dog ownership was as infrequent as giraffe ownership, but about 10 million voters think otherwise.
Ban all dog ownership.
Cats are the best.
There aren't any bad pet dogs, only bad owners...obviously, though, some dog breeds should never be pets. Treat bad owners the same as I propose illegal escooter/ebike riders should be treated. Execution. The only way to be sure.
A friend of mine up bred Rotties.Over a period of 20 years he must have bred and sold probably 2 dozen of the beasts. And they were BIG. And yet they were raised with kindness and treated and trained extremely well and not one of them ever caused a problem. And yet, as a breed they have a bad name because they are such big and powerful dogs and are therefore put to nefarious uses.
That said - from everything I have read so far the Bully XLs sound like they are probably irredeamable.
Rottweilers are ultimately herding dogs. Whilst fairly large, a decently brought up Rottweiler isn’t a danger to others. Bully breeds are fighting dogs & have been bred to be aggressive & never to back down. The Bully XL takes these traits, puts them together with 50kg of pure muscle and throws in a tendency to snap out of the blue without any warning for good measure.
Anyway, cats should be banned. Why is it right to let an animal you "own" and are responsible for out in the wild to do whatever it wants, kill wildlife and shit in my gravel drive? If you let a comparable sized dog out on its own, neighbourhood watch would go barmy.
Anyway, cats should be banned. Why is it right to let an animal you "own" and are responsible for out in the wild to do whatever it wants, kill wildlife and shit in my gravel drive? If you let a comparable sized dog out on its own, neighbourhood watch would go barmy.
Or, indeed, a comparable sized human. Might even get the police to turn up for that!
Mum left 'pouring with blood' after sacrificing her arms to protect daughter from 'aggressive' bully XL dog
The government has proposed no laws to decriminalise those responsible for a dog who allow it to attack people. Stray dogs are the legal responsibility of local authorities.
What further action can a government take? Personally it wouldn't worry me if dog ownership was as infrequent as giraffe ownership, but about 10 million voters think otherwise.
Ban all dog ownership.
Cats are the best.
There aren't any bad pet dogs, only bad owners...obviously, though, some dog breeds should never be pets. Treat bad owners the same as I propose illegal escooter/ebike riders should be treated. Execution. The only way to be sure.
A friend of mine up bred Rotties.Over a period of 20 years he must have bred and sold probably 2 dozen of the beasts. And they were BIG. And yet they were raised with kindness and treated and trained extremely well and not one of them ever caused a problem. And yet, as a breed they have a bad name because they are such big and powerful dogs and are therefore put to nefarious uses.
That said - from everything I have read so far the Bully XLs sound like they are probably irredeamable.
My friend had a couple of rottweilers, the only way they were ever going to kill anybody was with their toxic farts.
We used to have great fun watching the first dog trying to romance the dog the other side of the patio door, which was his own reflection.
Mum left 'pouring with blood' after sacrificing her arms to protect daughter from 'aggressive' bully XL dog
The government has proposed no laws to decriminalise those responsible for a dog who allow it to attack people. Stray dogs are the legal responsibility of local authorities.
What further action can a government take? Personally it wouldn't worry me if dog ownership was as infrequent as giraffe ownership, but about 10 million voters think otherwise.
Bully XL breed dogs are enormously more likely to attack both other dogs & humans than any other breed in the UK.
According to https://bullywatch.link/2023/08/01/finding-kimbo/ pretty much all the UK dogs are descended from a single US specimen, every immediate descendant of which was put down by the US authorities for attacking someone out of the blue. Not only that, the UK Bully XL population is usually descended from this paragon of virtue multiple times due to rampant inbreeding within the sector. UK breeders advertise having that dog in their pedigree.
In this particular case, it genuinely seems that it’s not the owner (although a certain type of owner does tend to own these dogs) it’s the breed, or rather that all of them are inbred descendents of a psychotic killer that was prone to snapping out of the blue. Even this wouldn’t be the end of the world if we were talking about an ordinary 15kg housepet, but these things are potentially 50kg of solid muscle. No one is stopping them if they decide to go for someone.
The dangerous dogs act may be bad legislation, but this is exactly the kind of situation that it would actually work for as written. If the information above is true then, imo, the secretary of state has a duty to ban Bully XL breed animals.
This is absolutely right. These dogs have been bred specifically as killers - nothing else. Bred - and inbred - for intense muscularity, aggression, tenacity, and brutal and savage persistence, plus a random streak of homicidal mania
The ONLY justification for keeping them is for military/security purposes. Even then it’s questionable anyone can handle them
They are like a Siberian tiger bred with Jack the Ripper. What the fuck is the government waiting for, one of these dogs to get in a school playground?
If two of them can kill 22 sheep in a session they can easily kill a dozen kids playing “in an annoying way”
Pat McFadden explains that Labour can't commit to refurbishing and rebuilding the schools that need it until they know how much it will cost.
Which begs the question, how much does Labour think is too much to prevent kids being crushed under falling concrete?
There isn't an unlimited amount of money out there. It has to come from somewhere.
After one of the big rail disaster, it was announced that the signalling system would be upgraded immediately.
The problem was that the new, Europe wide standard was just about to be agreed, and make this competent obsolete.
So the wiring would be started, never finished, torn out and replaced by the new system. Which is better in every possible way.
So a vast sum of money was to be spent for no actual improvement is safety.
Some rail enthusiasts pointed out that for a tiny fraction of the money, school visits could be done in all the areas near accessible track, to do warnings about the dangers. Given a number of children are injured and killed each year…
Any fool can spend money. Spending it on something that actually does something useful is harder.
Mum left 'pouring with blood' after sacrificing her arms to protect daughter from 'aggressive' bully XL dog
The government has proposed no laws to decriminalise those responsible for a dog who allow it to attack people. Stray dogs are the legal responsibility of local authorities.
What further action can a government take? Personally it wouldn't worry me if dog ownership was as infrequent as giraffe ownership, but about 10 million voters think otherwise.
Ban all dog ownership.
Cats are the best.
There aren't any bad pet dogs, only bad owners...obviously, though, some dog breeds should never be pets. Treat bad owners the same as I propose illegal escooter/ebike riders should be treated. Execution. The only way to be sure.
A friend of mine up bred Rotties.Over a period of 20 years he must have bred and sold probably 2 dozen of the beasts. And they were BIG. And yet they were raised with kindness and treated and trained extremely well and not one of them ever caused a problem. And yet, as a breed they have a bad name because they are such big and powerful dogs and are therefore put to nefarious uses.
That said - from everything I have read so far the Bully XLs sound like they are probably irredeamable.
Rottweilers are ultimately herding dogs. Whilst fairly large, a decently brought up Rottweiler isn’t a danger to others. Bully breeds are fighting dogs & have been bred to be aggressive & never to back down. The Bully XL takes these traits, puts them together with 50kg of pure muscle and throws in a tendency to snap out of the blue without any warning for good measure.
Irredeemable appears to be roughly correct.
Although in your reply also spelt correctly, unlike my original posting
Anyway, cats should be banned. Why is it right to let an animal you "own" and are responsible for out in the wild to do whatever it wants, kill wildlife and shit in my gravel drive? If you let a comparable sized dog out on its own, neighbourhood watch would go barmy.
Not to mention firefighter time wasted rescuing the little terrors from trees
(Does that still happen? Did it ever, outside of Fireman Sam and kids' books?)
Happened in Newark last year. Made the local paper so presumably fairly rare.
Mum left 'pouring with blood' after sacrificing her arms to protect daughter from 'aggressive' bully XL dog
The government has proposed no laws to decriminalise those responsible for a dog who allow it to attack people. Stray dogs are the legal responsibility of local authorities.
What further action can a government take? Personally it wouldn't worry me if dog ownership was as infrequent as giraffe ownership, but about 10 million voters think otherwise.
Bully XL breed dogs are enormously more likely to attack both other dogs & humans than any other breed in the UK.
According to https://bullywatch.link/2023/08/01/finding-kimbo/ pretty much all the UK dogs are descended from a single US specimen, every immediate descendant of which was put down by the US authorities for attacking someone out of the blue. Not only that, the UK Bully XL population is usually descended from this paragon of virtue multiple times due to rampant inbreeding within the sector. UK breeders advertise having that dog in their pedigree.
In this particular case, it genuinely seems that it’s not the owner (although a certain type of owner does tend to own these dogs) it’s the breed, or rather that all of them are inbred descendents of a psychotic killer that was prone to snapping out of the blue. Even this wouldn’t be the end of the world if we were talking about an ordinary 15kg housepet, but these things are potentially 50kg of solid muscle. No one is stopping them if they decide to go for someone.
The dangerous dogs act may be bad legislation, but this is exactly the kind of situation that it would actually work for as written. If the information above is true then, imo, the secretary of state has a duty to ban Bully XL breed animals.
Thanks. One or two thoughts about this horrible case, where of course all my thoughts are with the young mother victim.
If the DDA is a bad act, then it is unlikely to be good in this case.
Secondly, there is a lot of class aspect in this animal thingy. The group of people who own and like these creatures are, I am sure, psychotic layabouts who don't live in the more agreeable parts of north Oxford.
Those however who support the reintroduction of the wolf into the UK, an act which from time to time will have the same outcome, are not psychotic layabouts, and can probably be found in abundance in north Oxford.
The difference between a wolf and an XL bully is the dog just keeps on killing.
(I'm broadly in favour of reintroducing wolves, even though, in the long term, it will reduce the availability of the glorious Venison Burger)
Wolves have been reintroduced in a number of countries. Wolf attacks on humans are practically non existent in these countries.
It has been suggested that human hunting has deleted all the wolves predisposed to do anything other than given humans a wide berth.
The descendants of wolves who did not give humans a wide berth look like this:
Those belong to Putin. One is called Corbyn and the other Trump
Corbyn has been a bigger critic of Putin than any of the current or past crop of leaders.
This Corbyn? He's one of Vlad's useful idiots.
Jeremy Corbyn has urged western countries to stop arming Ukraine, and claimed he was criticised over antisemitism because of his stance on Palestine, in a TV interview likely to underscore Keir Starmer’s determination not to readmit him to the Labour party.
Comments
No doubt we'll see an uptick in "realists" calling for the war to end "to save Ukrainian lives" in response.
But if your software or chip could cause a car or plane to crash, that's a whole different realm. And to be fair, such systems tend to be under much more strenuous project management than the stuff we were doing.
Hence who are the powers? Global North vs Global South or NATO vs FSU? Or...
I'm not particularly sure.
Plus it's on our doorstep (vs 1,500 miles Israel => NATO country).
I do know, however, that it is a treacherously difficult line to tread because it appears, and push me and I'll tell you that I have some sympathy with this view, that we (as in the governments) don't want to immolate the planet on account of the Donetsk Oblast. So we are feeling our way.
The original question was "will NATO leaders please tell us what they are afraid of" and I maintain that it is a question of the greatest inanity.
And this from, by his own admission, the smartest poster on PB.
"... don't want to immolate the planet on account of the Donetsk Oblast. "
Yes, but they also don't want Russia to invade other neighbouring countries. And it's been clear over the last twenty years that every tie you cave in to Russia, they'll just take more. You may be happy with them to get Donetsk; would you be happy with them getting Georgia? Kazakhstan? How about if they try for the Baltics (and don't screech 'NATO'; Putin already thinks NATO is weak).
What further action can a government take? Personally it wouldn't worry me if dog ownership was as infrequent as giraffe ownership, but about 10 million voters think otherwise.
Cats are the best.
As for your endless "what ifs" (scenarios, true) then I'm not sure where it gets us because we are dealing with a nuclear power under command of Vladimir Putin. The thing I have railed against on PB aside from hot from the front line twitter links which illustrate nothing whatsoever, is the tendency to impose an historical inevitability on this war. We don't know what will happen and because you think Russia should win or lose doesn't mean that they will. Go back two thousand years and those with "right" on their side I'm sure have lost as often as they have won.
And coming back to those scenarios - suppose we say we aren't happy for Russia to do any of those things what would you do to address this and ensure that they don't indeed do them.
If it's already in our airspace I appreciate we need to handle it, but if it's not yet then denying clearance to one flight seems like it'd trump shutting down hundreds of them.
Somehow doubt it was to enhance the thrill-a-minute special effects.
(Suspect that O may have been IMAXed for prestige/PR reasons. OR as part of conspiracy between studio, director and pork-pie hat cartel.)
According to https://bullywatch.link/2023/08/01/finding-kimbo/ pretty much all the UK dogs are descended from a single US specimen, every immediate descendant of which was put down by the US authorities for attacking someone out of the blue. Not only that, the UK Bully XL population is usually descended from this paragon of virtue multiple times due to rampant inbreeding within the sector. UK breeders advertise having that dog in their pedigree.
In this particular case, it genuinely seems that it’s not the owner (although a certain type of owner does tend to own these dogs) it’s the breed, or rather that all of them are inbred descendents of a psychotic killer that was prone to snapping out of the blue. Even this wouldn’t be the end of the world if we were talking about an ordinary 15kg housepet, but these things are potentially 50kg of solid muscle. No one is stopping them if they decide to go for someone.
The dangerous dogs act may be bad legislation, but this is exactly the kind of situation that it would actually work for as written. If the information above is true then, imo, the secretary of state has a duty to ban Bully XL breed animals.
But this specific flight plan caused a problem that was unforeseen, which led to the widely documented problems.
So you are what-if'ing as much as I am.
As it happens, I haven't said Ukraine will win. I *have* said that it's hard to see a route for Russia to get a 'win' where they are better off than if they had not started this hideous little conflict. It's not a zero-sum game, and it's perfectly possible for all sides to lose, even in victory. But Russia might be able to sell a hideous loss in men, material and money to their public as a 'win' if they can say they've gained territory. And if they sell a 'win', they'll be back for more soon.
Interstellar? Yes. Dunkirk? Yes. This? Not sure...
Treat bad owners the same as I propose illegal escooter/ebike riders should be treated. Execution. The only way to be sure.
The problem was that in this case the system just crashed completely, with no cause that was visible to the people running it.
If you believe it should happen at the point of Russia's complete withdrawal to its 2014 (?) boundaries then that is a legitimate view and we shall have to wait to see whether Russia agrees that at that point it will start negotiating.
I would not want Ukraine to begin negotiations until they want, or perhaps are told that they should begin negotiations.
If the DDA is a bad act, then it is unlikely to be good in this case.
Secondly, there is a lot of class aspect in this animal thingy. The group of people who own and like these creatures are, I am sure, psychotic layabouts who don't live in the more agreeable parts of north Oxford.
Those however who support the reintroduction of the wolf into the UK, an act which from time to time will have the same outcome, are not psychotic layabouts, and can probably be found in abundance in north Oxford.
If this acknowledgement is "straight out of a Russian propagandist's playbook" then welcome to the realities of a real time unknown global conflict. Because if you do a Barty and volunteer up your children at an early stage over Ukraine then you bring that moment ever closer.
On Mordaunt's judgment proposing Leadsom, we'll of course never know what a Leadsom Premiership would have been like. It will always be possible that she'd have been one of our greatest PMs, and if only Mordaunt's sagacity in being her chief cheerleader was shared by the vast majority of Tory MPs who didn't. Then again, her campaign for the leadership imploded catastrophically within about two minutes of emerging from the Commons Tea Room with enough chums to make the members' ballot, when she made the mistake of doing an interview and saying something mindblowingly crass. So maybe she'd not have been very good at all, and maybe Mordaunt was well placed to recognise her flaws, and didn't.
https://news.sky.com/story/two-xl-bully-dogs-shot-dead-after-killing-22-pregnant-sheep-as-owner-fined-12953798
(I'm broadly in favour of reintroducing wolves, even though, in the long term, it will reduce the availability of the glorious Venison Burger)
*this has brought to mind the really excellent but oddly forgotten film John Goodman film, Matinee - set around the Cuban missile crisis but featuring lots of classic B movie cinema tricks. Also has one of the best films-within-a-film that I can recall (MANT! Half man, half ant!).
Alabama Political Reporter - David Cole resigns [state] House seat, will plead guilty, serve jail time
Cole was arrested for felony voter fraud related to his falsifying of documents to run for office.
Madison Rep. David Cole resigned his seat in the Alabama House on Thursday and, as part of a plea deal, filed court documents indicating his intent to plead guilty to a felony voter fraud charge. Under the proposed plea deal, Cole will serve 60 days in jail and a three-year probation. . . .
Cole must also repay the salary he earned as a state representative and cover any additional court costs or fees imposed by the court.
The plea documents also provide a detailed accounting of Cole’s actions that led to his arrest and the charges he faced. Without the plea deal, Cole could have been facing multiple felony counts for voter fraud.
According to [court] documents . . . Cole was desperate to find a residence within House District 10 after 2020 redistricting shifted the district lines out of Cole’s neighborhood, leaving his family home in District 4. District 4 is represented by Parker Moore, who had no intention of resigning. District 10 had been represented by Mike Ball, who was retiring.
According to the court filing, Cole approached a family friend, who . . . agreed [to rent] Cole . . . a “5×5 area” . . . for $5 per month.
. . .Cole never moved in, and in fact visited the home just twice, never moving beyond the foyer near the entrance.
But Cole did, on Nov. 8, 2021, just a day prior to the filing deadline, complete an online voter registration form stating his new address . . . He used that address to vote absentee in the primary, and then voted in person at a District 10 polling location in a runoff election in June 2022. . . .
Cole provided his consultant, David Driscoll, with an “altered copy” of the original lease . . .
Cole also told “a member of the Republican Party Steering Committee” that he was living in the Sinopoli home . . . [and] that he had sold his home in House District 4 . . .
Cole used the address of an apartment he leased in District 10 to vote in the Nov. 2022 general election. The plea agreement states that, too, was fraudulent because Cole later certified on Dec. 1, 2022, on a property tax document, that his District 4 home was his primary residence.
https://www.alreporter.com/2023/08/31/david-cole-resigns-house-seat-will-plead-guilty-serve-jail-time/
SSI - two points
> AL state attorney general Steve Marshall, who successfully prosecuted this case, is a Republican
> Yours truly is NOT saying ONLY GOPers commit election fraud; rather, that in the early 3rd millennium, they are implicated in majority of cases of actual, documented, prosecuted and convicted US voter fraud.
About 10% sounds right.
DYOR
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rksCTVFtjM4
It has been suggested that human hunting has deleted all the wolves predisposed to do anything other than given humans a wide berth.
You do realise that if someone had said they weren't quite as daft as you, that wouldn't make them "the smartest poster on PB" - not by a very long way!
Beyond betting for a moment,a further fascinating question is what number of seats would the Tories need to retain a grip on government.
Assuming Speaker 1 and SF (untaken) 7, a majority (of 2) would be 322.
Assuming only DUP (what a horrific prospect) would play nicely with the Tories and they get 8 (as now) the Tories need 314 seats to have a go. Exactly 51 fewer than in 2019.
There is therefore a substantial area of result which would be absolute havoc politically. Estimating the boundaries and likelihood of this should keep us entertained for some time up to the election.
For example, to introduce a dangerous dog into the arena, what would happen if the Tories got 311 seats?
Or what if the Tories got 316 seats and the DUP said 'go away'?
What larks.
- if Ukraine doesn’t win, what about the concern that Rishi Sunak, facing a political defeat, will launch Trident?
- If Ukraine doesn’t win, what about the concern that Joe Biden will start WWIII?
- If Ukraine doesn’t win, what about the concern that Ukraine will re-aquire nuclear weapons and nuke Russia?
Australia successfully bans these dogs: it can be done in the UK tomorrow. I hate this craven government
In August, the former culture secretary resigned from the Commons, more than two months after pledging to go "with immediate effect". Central Bedfordshire Council confirmed the by-election date following Ms Dorries' decision. So far, seven candidates have declared they would stand for the seat."
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-beds-bucks-herts-66717967
Possibly all the Stella taps going off simultaneously.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12486511/Zooming-holiday-city-crumbles-Moment-Birmingham-councils-Labour-chief-handpicked-Keir-Starmer-fields-questions-video-call-New-York-celebrating-50th-birthday-authority-goes-bust.html
As an aside, it's emblematic of our diseased relationship with animals that we've bred a dog like this.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tVpkHqaJxnI
SSI - to be clear, the absurdity is NOT the trial, or Texas, but rather Ken Paxton.
Prisoner Daniel Khalife, who was awaiting trial on terror charges, escapes from Wandsworth prison
https://www.southlanarkshire.gov.uk/info/200237/elections/2174/rutherglen_and_hamilton_west_by-election_-_thursday_5_october_2023
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-66733660
Chipped his way through some RAAC, apparently.
(I'm kidding).
And you a noted wordsmith. Jeez.
Which are nearly all owned by people living in the remote bits of the Yukon etc.
If the Tarquins start acquiring them to walk down Kings Road, then we will have a problem. But they don’t.
https://x.com/bullywatchuk/status/1698593356341739997
That said - from everything I have read so far the Bully XLs sound like they are probably irredeamable.
Which begs the question, how much does Labour think is too much to prevent kids being crushed under falling concrete?
Or rather, that the defense is not. Still too early to tell, particularly as right-wing wack-jobs have been spending mega-MAGA-bucks in TV ads, etc., etc. attempting to sway public opinion and pressure the jury = Texas state senators.
My replica Violet Club nuclear weapon hardly ever explodes accidentally, destroying an entire city and sparking an accidental nuclear war.
But he didn't know when to applaud, so he sat where he could see an aide hiding in an office, who would signal him to tell him when he should begin clapping.
I doubt very much whether he is the only American politician who has fibbed about his tastes in music.
Partial disclosure: Were I to make a similar play list, it would probably include, among others, the 4th Brandenburg, The Battle Hymn of the Republic, and "Anything Goes".
(*If I recall correctly, he liked Frank Sinatra, and similar musicians.)
(Does that still happen? Did it ever, outside of Fireman Sam and kids' books?)
Irredeemable appears to be roughly correct.
We used to have great fun watching the first dog trying to romance the dog the other side of the patio door, which was his own reflection.
The ONLY justification for keeping them is for military/security purposes. Even then it’s questionable anyone can handle them
They are like a Siberian tiger bred with Jack the
Ripper. What the fuck is the government waiting for, one of these dogs to get in a school playground?
If two of them can kill 22 sheep in a session they can easily kill a dozen kids playing “in an annoying way”
The problem was that the new, Europe wide standard was just about to be agreed, and make this competent obsolete.
So the wiring would be started, never finished, torn out and replaced by the new system. Which is better in every possible way.
So a vast sum of money was to be spent for no actual improvement is safety.
Some rail enthusiasts pointed out that for a tiny fraction of the money, school visits could be done in all the areas near accessible track, to do warnings about the dangers. Given a number of children are injured and killed each year…
Any fool can spend money. Spending it on something that actually does something useful is harder.
Jeremy Corbyn has urged western countries to stop arming Ukraine, and claimed he was criticised over antisemitism because of his stance on Palestine, in a TV interview likely to underscore Keir Starmer’s determination not to readmit him to the Labour party.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/aug/02/jeremy-corbyn-urges-west-to-stop-arming-ukraine