More seriously, the Russians must know by now that they’re stuffed. Black Sea fleet on it’s way to being completely destroyed as a viable force, the entirety of their Soviet arsenal chewed up into pieces in the fields of Ukraine, along with the flower of both their infantry & cavalry. The only thing keeping them going is a stubborn refusal to admit the inevitable. Still, something might turn up for them I guess - a Trump 2024 victory perhaps? It seems hope is all they have left & hope is not a wining strategy.
On the other hand the great Ukrainian counter-offensive has been a terrifically expensive failure, chewing up tens of thousands of men to gain about 3 villages. Where is the oft-promised breakthrough? The severing of Russia’s land bridge to Crimea?
It’s not happening, is it? We are now in mid September and it all grinds on, pointlessly
Russia cannot win this war (without Trump) but nor, I fear, can Ukraine
They have a breakthrough in southern Ukraine. It’s painstaking work and doesn’t make for good TV so you judge it a failure
They don’t have a breakthrough. From today’s Guardian
“Earlier Maliar had issued a lengthy update on Telegram, claiming that Ukrainian forces have repelled Russian attacks in a number of areas, including in the Kupyansk, Bakhmut, and Marinka directions. Maliar also gave new figures for the amount of territory recaptured by Ukraine. She said 2 sq km had been captured around Bakhmut, and in the past week, and that 51 sq km had been recaptured there since the start of the counteroffensive“
51sq km. That’s about two London boroughs. Maybe 6km by 9km. At a cost of 10,000 men? 20,000? And it’s taken months
Face it, this is not working
They’ve also just sacked 6 defence ministers, which says something in itself
I'm not sure what you expect?
There's no magic way to win a war. You have to destroy the enemy army. Before you have done this they will be able to resist and hold ground.
I think there's decent evidence that Ukraine are inflicting greater losses then they are suffering, and so, if they are inflicting losses on Russia more quickly then Russia can replace those losses, they will eventually reach a point where Russia is unable to defend the current front line. But this will necessarily take time and it will look like not much progress is made while it plays out.
Meanwhile, for example, we can see that Ukraine is able to attack valuable Russians assets almost at will, whole Russia is unable to enforce it's blockade of Ukrainian ports.
Probably the wrong analogy, but in the first world war the British fought an epic battle on the Somme and then a year later another at Passchendaele, both often regarded as at best pyrrhic victories. Yet both were instrumental in the weakening and ultimate defeat of the Imperial German Army. The Somme was described as 'the muddy grave of the German Army' and resulted in the withdrawal to the Hindenburg Line in 1917. After Passchendaele a German general staff publication had "Germany had been brought near to certain destruction (sicheren Untergang) by the Flanders battle of 1917".
Yet after both battles, I suspect @Leon would have been calling them failures.
I cannot see the future, but I think the danger of Russia 'winning' in Ukraine is gone, and its now all about whether Russia can be ejected fully (and at what cost) or if Putin finally gets replaced. Regimes can fall very fast at the end.
It's not a terrible analogy, because it highlights that the enemy army has to be destroyed in order to defeat it, but there are key differences.
The most important is that Ukraine has an advantage with key weapons - drones, HIMARS, Storm Shadow, etc - which means they can destroy the Russian army with considerably less losses than that suffered by the British and French in WWI.
But another key difference is that the combined populations of France and Britain, and the British and French empires, vastly exceeded the population of the kaiser’s Germany. In brutal terms, the western powers could afford to lose more men than Berlin, in the end. And then the Americans joined in, tilting it even further
That is very much not the case here. The Russian population is 3x that of Ukraine
In a brutal war of attrition, this basic maths matters. I also dispute that Ukraine is losing fewer men now, than Russia. Ukraine is on the offensive, that is always more expensive in lives than defence
Ukraine haven't made many direct assaults of the kind that we saw in early June, where we saw damaged Leopard tanks. If they had we would be seeing the photos of it from the Russians. They've deliberately been fighting in a way to minimise casualties. It also sounds like the western kit might not be magic in terms of forcing a breakthrough, but does a great job on saving lives. The Ukrainian tank crews are walking away from most of Western armoured vehicles when they're damaged or destroyed.
So I think it's quite plausible that Ukrainian casualties are lower than Russian.
Also, number of soldiers dead is not likely to be the determinant of Russia reaching a breaking point. Running out of military equipment will come first. This is why Ukraine's success in the artillery war is so important.
Soviet doctrine for their military vehicles was to make as many of them as possible given their large population. As a result their prioritised production over things such as crew protection. This has carried on over into current Russian thinking. The crew of a Russian tank or armoured vehicle is very unlikely to survive. Whereas in the West we realised the need to protect valuable crews an d made smaller numbers of vehicles that prioritised crew safety. As I understand it most crews in knocked out western vehicles have survived.
Ukraine learnt very quickly from one early offensive in June that it couldn't just charge a load of Western tanks/IFVs at Russian defences. They have since been waging a war of attrition against Russia. It is slow but it does seem to be working. Russia has less and less gear even if it still does have lots of manpower. The gear that it has is of car worse quality than what it could use at the start of the war.
Even in manpower it is becoming a struggle for Russia. They are now manning their defence with elite offensive units. Why would they do this unless they had no other choice? Those units will not be used again for offensive operations.
Ukraine is also becoming more and more adapt with its long range weapons. The Black Sea is almost a no-go area now for Russian warships as has been seen over the last week.
It is a long process but I do not see many positives for Russia. It is bloody for Ukraine but things are slowly moving in their direction.
One positive for Russia is that they haven't lost yet, and it's possible that Europe and the US will talk themselves into giving up.
Apparently the favourite in the Slovak election has pledged to stop providing any support for Ukraine. People might scoff at Slovakia's size, but Ukraine has an important joint-venture with them that is delivering new self-propelled artillery, and they've been a firm supporter of Ukraine to this point.
You can't talk yourself into winning a war you are losing, but you can talk yourself into losing a war that you are winning - and I think that's what Leon (and others) are doing.
Believe it or not, I’m trying to be objective. As @Dura_Ace says, you can’t rely on the media to give you a full picture. Too much western media is pompom waving ra-ra Ukraine bullshit - echoed on PB. But the Russian media is even worse from the other side
So you have to weave your way through the minefield of misinformation to reach an informed guess - and it is only a guess - as to what is happening. And my guess is: stalemate
However I do see some hopeful signs for Ukraine. The death of Prigozhin and now, allegedly, Kadyrov - both close allies of Putin, bring assassination ever closer to Vlad himself. He must be paranoid as fuck
Hopefully someone will slot him, asafp
There is an excellent hour long lecture (that is very definitely not Ukrainian flag waving) on Russian arms production that Josias and Nigel both posted.
Tldr: Russia is reactivating a lot of old tanks, and if Ukraine is to win, they need the West to keep up the flow of munitions.
The more I think about it, the more I reckon the war could be won OFF-the-battlefield, esp with the death of Putin
I need him to win the next Russian Pres election first. Have a couple of hundred quid waiting for me at Smarkets with that one.
More seriously, the Russians must know by now that they’re stuffed. Black Sea fleet on it’s way to being completely destroyed as a viable force, the entirety of their Soviet arsenal chewed up into pieces in the fields of Ukraine, along with the flower of both their infantry & cavalry. The only thing keeping them going is a stubborn refusal to admit the inevitable. Still, something might turn up for them I guess - a Trump 2024 victory perhaps? It seems hope is all they have left & hope is not a wining strategy.
On the other hand the great Ukrainian counter-offensive has been a terrifically expensive failure, chewing up tens of thousands of men to gain about 3 villages. Where is the oft-promised breakthrough? The severing of Russia’s land bridge to Crimea?
It’s not happening, is it? We are now in mid September and it all grinds on, pointlessly
Russia cannot win this war (without Trump) but nor, I fear, can Ukraine
They have a breakthrough in southern Ukraine. It’s painstaking work and doesn’t make for good TV so you judge it a failure
They don’t have a breakthrough. From today’s Guardian
“Earlier Maliar had issued a lengthy update on Telegram, claiming that Ukrainian forces have repelled Russian attacks in a number of areas, including in the Kupyansk, Bakhmut, and Marinka directions. Maliar also gave new figures for the amount of territory recaptured by Ukraine. She said 2 sq km had been captured around Bakhmut, and in the past week, and that 51 sq km had been recaptured there since the start of the counteroffensive“
51sq km. That’s about two London boroughs. Maybe 6km by 9km. At a cost of 10,000 men? 20,000? And it’s taken months
Face it, this is not working
They’ve also just sacked 6 defence ministers, which says something in itself
I'm not sure what you expect?
There's no magic way to win a war. You have to destroy the enemy army. Before you have done this they will be able to resist and hold ground.
I think there's decent evidence that Ukraine are inflicting greater losses then they are suffering, and so, if they are inflicting losses on Russia more quickly then Russia can replace those losses, they will eventually reach a point where Russia is unable to defend the current front line. But this will necessarily take time and it will look like not much progress is made while it plays out.
Meanwhile, for example, we can see that Ukraine is able to attack valuable Russians assets almost at will, whole Russia is unable to enforce it's blockade of Ukrainian ports.
Probably the wrong analogy, but in the first world war the British fought an epic battle on the Somme and then a year later another at Passchendaele, both often regarded as at best pyrrhic victories. Yet both were instrumental in the weakening and ultimate defeat of the Imperial German Army. The Somme was described as 'the muddy grave of the German Army' and resulted in the withdrawal to the Hindenburg Line in 1917. After Passchendaele a German general staff publication had "Germany had been brought near to certain destruction (sicheren Untergang) by the Flanders battle of 1917".
Yet after both battles, I suspect @Leon would have been calling them failures.
I cannot see the future, but I think the danger of Russia 'winning' in Ukraine is gone, and its now all about whether Russia can be ejected fully (and at what cost) or if Putin finally gets replaced. Regimes can fall very fast at the end.
It's not a terrible analogy, because it highlights that the enemy army has to be destroyed in order to defeat it, but there are key differences.
The most important is that Ukraine has an advantage with key weapons - drones, HIMARS, Storm Shadow, etc - which means they can destroy the Russian army with considerably less losses than that suffered by the British and French in WWI.
But another key difference is that the combined populations of France and Britain, and the British and French empires, vastly exceeded the population of the kaiser’s Germany. In brutal terms, the western powers could afford to lose more men than Berlin, in the end. And then the Americans joined in, tilting it even further
That is very much not the case here. The Russian population is 3x that of Ukraine
In a brutal war of attrition, this basic maths matters. I also dispute that Ukraine is losing fewer men now, than Russia. Ukraine is on the offensive, that is always more expensive in lives than defence
Ukraine haven't made many direct assaults of the kind that we saw in early June, where we saw damaged Leopard tanks. If they had we would be seeing the photos of it from the Russians. They've deliberately been fighting in a way to minimise casualties. It also sounds like the western kit might not be magic in terms of forcing a breakthrough, but does a great job on saving lives. The Ukrainian tank crews are walking away from most of Western armoured vehicles when they're damaged or destroyed.
So I think it's quite plausible that Ukrainian casualties are lower than Russian.
Also, number of soldiers dead is not likely to be the determinant of Russia reaching a breaking point. Running out of military equipment will come first. This is why Ukraine's success in the artillery war is so important.
Soviet doctrine for their military vehicles was to make as many of them as possible given their large population. As a result their prioritised production over things such as crew protection. This has carried on over into current Russian thinking. The crew of a Russian tank or armoured vehicle is very unlikely to survive. Whereas in the West we realised the need to protect valuable crews an d made smaller numbers of vehicles that prioritised crew safety. As I understand it most crews in knocked out western vehicles have survived.
Ukraine learnt very quickly from one early offensive in June that it couldn't just charge a load of Western tanks/IFVs at Russian defences. They have since been waging a war of attrition against Russia. It is slow but it does seem to be working. Russia has less and less gear even if it still does have lots of manpower. The gear that it has is of car worse quality than what it could use at the start of the war.
Even in manpower it is becoming a struggle for Russia. They are now manning their defence with elite offensive units. Why would they do this unless they had no other choice? Those units will not be used again for offensive operations.
Ukraine is also becoming more and more adapt with its long range weapons. The Black Sea is almost a no-go area now for Russian warships as has been seen over the last week.
It is a long process but I do not see many positives for Russia. It is bloody for Ukraine but things are slowly moving in their direction.
One positive for Russia is that they haven't lost yet, and it's possible that Europe and the US will talk themselves into giving up.
Apparently the favourite in the Slovak election has pledged to stop providing any support for Ukraine. People might scoff at Slovakia's size, but Ukraine has an important joint-venture with them that is delivering new self-propelled artillery, and they've been a firm supporter of Ukraine to this point.
You can't talk yourself into winning a war you are losing, but you can talk yourself into losing a war that you are winning - and I think that's what Leon (and others) are doing.
Believe it or not, I’m trying to be objective. As @Dura_Ace says, you can’t rely on the media to give you a full picture. Too much western media is pompom waving ra-ra Ukraine bullshit - echoed on PB. But the Russian media is even worse from the other side
So you have to weave your way through the minefield of misinformation to reach an informed guess - and it is only a guess - as to what is happening. And my guess is: stalemate
However I do see some hopeful signs for Ukraine. The death of Prigozhin and now, allegedly, Kadyrov - both close allies of Putin, bring assassination ever closer to Vlad himself. He must be paranoid as fuck
Hopefully someone will slot him, asafp
There is an excellent hour long lecture (that is very definitely not Ukrainian flag waving) on Russian arms production that Josias and Nigel both posted.
Tldr: Russia is reactivating a lot of old tanks, and if Ukraine is to win, they need the West to keep up the flow of munitions.
The more I think about it, the more I reckon the war could be won OFF-the-battlefield, esp with the death of Putin
It's not clear when Putin is due to go though. Obviously soon, but I'm sure it's about the positioning of money.
Putin will get a nice send off though, and a great monument. Plus, the St Petersburg tourist, will never wonder where to piss.
Greg Hands whining about Labour giving votes to 16 and 17 year olds . Accusing them of vote rigging ! From the party who brought in new voter ID which was aimed at disenfranchising opposition voters .
If you can join the army , have sex and work why are you too young to vote ?
Strange that there is so much horror about the BBC getting a car for Russell Brand’s 16yo girlfriend really
When Brand was in his 30s, and sending a BBC car to pick her up from school, yes.
Ditto Philip Schofield and and his legal-but-not-moral boyfriend who worked with him.
Greg Hands whining about Labour giving votes to 16 and 17 year olds . Accusing them of vote rigging ! From the party who brought in new voter ID which was aimed at disenfranchising opposition voters .
If you can join the army , have sex and work why are you too young to vote ?
Strange that there is so much horror about the BBC getting a car for Russell Brand’s 16yo girlfriend really
People might think it’s pervy dating a 16 year old but the law is the law . I find it strange that any woman would find Brand attractive .
Bit of an inopportune day for Lucy Powell to be going on about it being legal for 16yo to have sex, when the headlines are about the grooming of a 16yo.
Yes, I can’t stand him, but a lot of women seem(ed) to be desperate to have sex with him.
Of course, the central allegation isn't that Brand was getting a lot of sex from people who wanted to have sex with him. It's that he was getting some sex from people who didn't.
More seriously, the Russians must know by now that they’re stuffed. Black Sea fleet on it’s way to being completely destroyed as a viable force, the entirety of their Soviet arsenal chewed up into pieces in the fields of Ukraine, along with the flower of both their infantry & cavalry. The only thing keeping them going is a stubborn refusal to admit the inevitable. Still, something might turn up for them I guess - a Trump 2024 victory perhaps? It seems hope is all they have left & hope is not a wining strategy.
There was recent speculation about a winning strategy for Russia. Wait for winter then destroy Ukraine's energy infrastructure. OK, it is probably a war crime but will Putin care?
With what armaments? They tried that last winter & Ukraine has better air defences now than it did then.
IIRC Russia was meant to run out of missiles in october 2022. Whatever happened to that prediction?
I didn't read Phil's point as being about number of missiles but nature of missiles. Given Russia tried to destroy Ukraine's energy infrastructure last year, with limited success, and Ukraine has strengthened its air defences, presumably Russia would need to have gained access to more sophisticated weapons over the past 12 months. Maybe they have, but I doubt Kim brought them in his little train.
I actually agree with this. Russia tried exactly this last year - destroying Ukraine’s infra - and it didn’t work. I see no reason why it should work a second time around
But this is my point. I am - despite what half of you believe - not predicting a Russian victory. It seems pretty unlikely. However at the same time I cannot see how Ukraine can drive Russia back to the 2014 borders especially if that means reclaiming Crimea. Not gonna happen
Two caveats.
The Ukrainian attack on Russia proper has potential. If they can seriously degrade Russian military and morale that way, that might change the game. But they need megatons of weapons
Kadyrov’s death is also ‘interesting’. Perhaps Ukes could take out Putin. That would alter everything
As for Russia. How can they win? Perhaps a lightning strike on Kyiv from the north, as they first intended. Not exactly easy, however
Or they go postal and drop a tactical nuke and the war freezes, instantly, and an armistice is signed with the frontiers where they are now
It has been made very clear to Putin that any use of a tactical nuke is game over for him personally. There will be no coming back from that
Greg Hands whining about Labour giving votes to 16 and 17 year olds . Accusing them of vote rigging ! From the party who brought in new voter ID which was aimed at disenfranchising opposition voters .
If you can join the army , have sex and work why are you too young to vote ?
Strange that there is so much horror about the BBC getting a car for Russell Brand’s 16yo girlfriend really
When Brand was in his 30s, and sending a BBC car to pick her up from school, yes.
Ditto Philip Schofield and and his legal-but-not-moral boyfriend who worked with him.
Have we started the full-throated 'This is why the BBC is not fit for purpose!' stuff yet? How many days of decorum do the Mail/Express/Sun allow usually?
Truss' complete disregard for the impact of her mini-budget, alongside the occasional person commenting that she wasn't given long enough to see if she was proven right, feels to me like the future of the Tory party is in the hands of Tufton Street. The consensus before she got in that she would be the change that was needed and the way many in right wing media have insulated her and have tried to help her with this rehabilitation tour is worrying to me.
I think it's clear that she was on her way to clown school when somehow she found herself elected as an MP. Quite how she managed to progress from there is baffling. (I'd not even venture a guess)
Because she knows the right people in the right places and parrots their words back to them. Did someone who went to uni with her not say that she was a LibDem until she started chatting to the political crowd there and then said that the only way to make a career out of politics was to join the Tories, so she did?
Rory Stewart is far from a neutral observer, but he recounts being narked that Truss (same 2010 intake) was getting promoted so quickly when we wasn't. The reason the whips gave him was apparently that Truss was much better at fluently promoting the party line.
How you all feel about the fact that many women want to shag Russell Brand is the same way I feel that so many of you were eager to vote for Boris.
Its one of life's eternal mysteries that a lot of women are attracted to absolute shits and bell ends, while the nice, gentle honest chaps don't get a look in, at least until later in life. Quite why this is I have no idea, although you can see the attraction of Premiership footballers (shed loads of money, the chance to never have to work again, become a c list celeb) and indeed celebrities like Brand (see list above).
The nice, gentle honest chaps do get a look in. It's just that they often aren't restlessly searching for the next notch but enjoying a stable, fulfilling relationship.
I'm less bothered by women throwing themselves at Brand than I am people voting for the FLSOJ, because the former doesn't hurt me in the slightest.
Well it was double bubble for Johnson. Women threw themselves at him AND people voted for him in landslide numbers.
More seriously, the Russians must know by now that they’re stuffed. Black Sea fleet on it’s way to being completely destroyed as a viable force, the entirety of their Soviet arsenal chewed up into pieces in the fields of Ukraine, along with the flower of both their infantry & cavalry. The only thing keeping them going is a stubborn refusal to admit the inevitable. Still, something might turn up for them I guess - a Trump 2024 victory perhaps? It seems hope is all they have left & hope is not a wining strategy.
On the other hand the great Ukrainian counter-offensive has been a terrifically expensive failure, chewing up tens of thousands of men to gain about 3 villages. Where is the oft-promised breakthrough? The severing of Russia’s land bridge to Crimea?
It’s not happening, is it? We are now in mid September and it all grinds on, pointlessly
Russia cannot win this war (without Trump) but nor, I fear, can Ukraine
They have a breakthrough in southern Ukraine. It’s painstaking work and doesn’t make for good TV so you judge it a failure
They don’t have a breakthrough. From today’s Guardian
“Earlier Maliar had issued a lengthy update on Telegram, claiming that Ukrainian forces have repelled Russian attacks in a number of areas, including in the Kupyansk, Bakhmut, and Marinka directions. Maliar also gave new figures for the amount of territory recaptured by Ukraine. She said 2 sq km had been captured around Bakhmut, and in the past week, and that 51 sq km had been recaptured there since the start of the counteroffensive“
51sq km. That’s about two London boroughs. Maybe 6km by 9km. At a cost of 10,000 men? 20,000? And it’s taken months
Face it, this is not working
They’ve also just sacked 6 defence ministers, which says something in itself
I'm not sure what you expect?
There's no magic way to win a war. You have to destroy the enemy army. Before you have done this they will be able to resist and hold ground.
I think there's decent evidence that Ukraine are inflicting greater losses then they are suffering, and so, if they are inflicting losses on Russia more quickly then Russia can replace those losses, they will eventually reach a point where Russia is unable to defend the current front line. But this will necessarily take time and it will look like not much progress is made while it plays out.
Meanwhile, for example, we can see that Ukraine is able to attack valuable Russians assets almost at will, whole Russia is unable to enforce it's blockade of Ukrainian ports.
Probably the wrong analogy, but in the first world war the British fought an epic battle on the Somme and then a year later another at Passchendaele, both often regarded as at best pyrrhic victories. Yet both were instrumental in the weakening and ultimate defeat of the Imperial German Army. The Somme was described as 'the muddy grave of the German Army' and resulted in the withdrawal to the Hindenburg Line in 1917. After Passchendaele a German general staff publication had "Germany had been brought near to certain destruction (sicheren Untergang) by the Flanders battle of 1917".
Yet after both battles, I suspect @Leon would have been calling them failures.
I cannot see the future, but I think the danger of Russia 'winning' in Ukraine is gone, and its now all about whether Russia can be ejected fully (and at what cost) or if Putin finally gets replaced. Regimes can fall very fast at the end.
It's not a terrible analogy, because it highlights that the enemy army has to be destroyed in order to defeat it, but there are key differences.
The most important is that Ukraine has an advantage with key weapons - drones, HIMARS, Storm Shadow, etc - which means they can destroy the Russian army with considerably less losses than that suffered by the British and French in WWI.
But another key difference is that the combined populations of France and Britain, and the British and French empires, vastly exceeded the population of the kaiser’s Germany. In brutal terms, the western powers could afford to lose more men than Berlin, in the end. And then the Americans joined in, tilting it even further
That is very much not the case here. The Russian population is 3x that of Ukraine
In a brutal war of attrition, this basic maths matters. I also dispute that Ukraine is losing fewer men now, than Russia. Ukraine is on the offensive, that is always more expensive in lives than defence
Ukraine haven't made many direct assaults of the kind that we saw in early June, where we saw damaged Leopard tanks. If they had we would be seeing the photos of it from the Russians. They've deliberately been fighting in a way to minimise casualties. It also sounds like the western kit might not be magic in terms of forcing a breakthrough, but does a great job on saving lives. The Ukrainian tank crews are walking away from most of Western armoured vehicles when they're damaged or destroyed.
So I think it's quite plausible that Ukrainian casualties are lower than Russian.
Also, number of soldiers dead is not likely to be the determinant of Russia reaching a breaking point. Running out of military equipment will come first. This is why Ukraine's success in the artillery war is so important.
Soviet doctrine for their military vehicles was to make as many of them as possible given their large population. As a result their prioritised production over things such as crew protection. This has carried on over into current Russian thinking. The crew of a Russian tank or armoured vehicle is very unlikely to survive. Whereas in the West we realised the need to protect valuable crews an d made smaller numbers of vehicles that prioritised crew safety. As I understand it most crews in knocked out western vehicles have survived.
Ukraine learnt very quickly from one early offensive in June that it couldn't just charge a load of Western tanks/IFVs at Russian defences. They have since been waging a war of attrition against Russia. It is slow but it does seem to be working. Russia has less and less gear even if it still does have lots of manpower. The gear that it has is of car worse quality than what it could use at the start of the war.
Even in manpower it is becoming a struggle for Russia. They are now manning their defence with elite offensive units. Why would they do this unless they had no other choice? Those units will not be used again for offensive operations.
Ukraine is also becoming more and more adapt with its long range weapons. The Black Sea is almost a no-go area now for Russian warships as has been seen over the last week.
It is a long process but I do not see many positives for Russia. It is bloody for Ukraine but things are slowly moving in their direction.
One positive for Russia is that they haven't lost yet, and it's possible that Europe and the US will talk themselves into giving up.
Apparently the favourite in the Slovak election has pledged to stop providing any support for Ukraine. People might scoff at Slovakia's size, but Ukraine has an important joint-venture with them that is delivering new self-propelled artillery, and they've been a firm supporter of Ukraine to this point.
You can't talk yourself into winning a war you are losing, but you can talk yourself into losing a war that you are winning - and I think that's what Leon (and others) are doing.
Believe it or not, I’m trying to be objective. As @Dura_Ace says, you can’t rely on the media to give you a full picture. Too much western media is pompom waving ra-ra Ukraine bullshit - echoed on PB. But the Russian media is even worse from the other side
So you have to weave your way through the minefield of misinformation to reach an informed guess - and it is only a guess - as to what is happening. And my guess is: stalemate
However I do see some hopeful signs for Ukraine. The death of Prigozhin and now, allegedly, Kadyrov - both close allies of Putin, bring assassination ever closer to Vlad himself. He must be paranoid as fuck
Hopefully someone will slot him, asafp
I disagree with your attempt at objective analysis for reasons that I've previously given. I'm not relying on the western media, and I look for sources that share bad news for Ukraine, and are cautious about wild claims of Ukrainian success.
I think your guess of a stalemate is a superficial conclusion that ignores the signs of degradation of the Russian military that are occurring. A degradation that makes a stalemate unlikely.
I find it strange that you would be making this point when early September may well go down as a crucial turning point in the war. We can now see that Russia cannot protect its ships at dock in Sevastopol, nor can it enforce a blockade of Ukrainian ports.
These are massive signs of the war moving in Ukraine's favour and that Russia's hold on Crimea is untenable (and also pointless - if they can't use Sevastopol as a base for their Black Sea Fleet then what good is it to them?)
Who knows. One can be optimistic, but I keep being wrong every time I try to predict the next moves. I am much more confident in my moral assessment of the good vs bad in this war and what Western policy to Russia should be than I am about how the war will progress. We should separate the armchair general issue from different strengths of feeling on policy and morality.
The latest received wisdom seems to be that it's a race against time before the fighting season ends. That presupposes that Ukraine is advancing now, and that the weather will make fighting impossible later. If you subscribe to that theory then this series of map's the one to look at.
Expect to see soil moisture stay low until mid October then start to rise, first in Kharkiv / Luhansk (well, after the West and North of course) and later in the South. Once it goes light green it starts to get muddy.
How you all feel about the fact that many women want to shag Russell Brand is the same way I feel that so many of you were eager to vote for Boris.
if shagging Russell Brand was the only way to get a referendum result, that you were told before the vote was final, enacted I suppose I’d be more able to understand it
Well, you got your political night between the sheets, and now we've all got political warts on our political genitals.
Wouldn't be surprised if literal warts on literal genitals was the case with some of BJ's 'conquests'.
Greg Hands whining about Labour giving votes to 16 and 17 year olds . Accusing them of vote rigging ! From the party who brought in new voter ID which was aimed at disenfranchising opposition voters .
If you can join the army , have sex and work why are you too young to vote ?
Strange that there is so much horror about the BBC getting a car for Russell Brand’s 16yo girlfriend really
When Brand was in his 30s, and sending a BBC car to pick her up from school, yes.
Ditto Philip Schofield and and his legal-but-not-moral boyfriend who worked with him.
If the BBC car story is true, there ought to be a record of it in an organisation as bureaucratic as Auntie. How would Brand have justified it unless she were a guest on his programme? Is it not more likely he sent a posh minicab? Anyway, we'll see.
There is a lot in the Brand story that is scandalous but not much illegal and even the rape claims may come down to he said/she said. Enough to see Brand cancelled but not incarcerated, perhaps.
Is Russell Brand of the Left or of the Right? That's what we need to establish.
He's neither IMO. He's an opportunist. who will spout whatever gives him the most influence, viewers and income. A few years back, that was a more leftist tone. Now, it's more to the right.
“Probably the biggest delusion yet to be unpicked is Sir Keir's repeated assertion that there is a better deal with the EU out there. This is simply not true. There was a lot of vindictive commentary from the EU during the entire Brexit process, but the deal that was eventually agreed was a reasonable third-country trade deal.. If your bottom line is that you do not wish to rejoin the single market and the customs union, there really is not a lot more out there.”
Starmer has ruled out SM/CU. There is, in that case, nothing to be done. The EU is not interested in rolling over to give Starmer a special deal. Why would it?
His Labour government is going to collide with the tank traps of reality very quickly
As I said earlier joining the single market is the only way to change the EU, and anything else is cosmetic
And at the moment raising that issue is certain to rouse latent Brexit support from its slumber. Single Market is Freedom Of Movement. Single Market is putting all of those terrible Euroregulations back into British Law.
Personally, I'd be fine with that. I'd even be fine if we fully aligned indefinitely and waited for a monthly email from Brussels telling us what new stuff they've come up with for us. (The freedoms at a personal level seem worth it to me.) But it would send the right, and the press, dolally, and Starmer isn't going to touch the button marked "Pressing This Button Is Incredibly Risky". There are enough people who hate all that to give Rishi a liferaft he doesn't deserve.
It's going to be like I said in 2020.
The next thing we try, 2025ish, will be a TCA that realistically co-operates on trade. Vet agreements, standards marking, that sort of thing. It will help a bit, but no- not much. That looks like Starmer's plan. But he won't be PM forever.
Beyond that, it gets speculative, anything might happen, but I haven't seen anything to change my rough schedule.
Single Market will be 2030ish. We can probably chuck in some Union of Customs as well. The Brit deals aren't coming out with anything special, and we can leave CPTPP with six months notice.
And then, who knows? Maybe the UK will be fine tagging along with whatever Brussels says. A lot of it is boring technical stuff, and there is the possibility of being consulted. A bit. I don't think the UK political classes are going to be happy with that, which is why Rejoin might happen, but only under a new generation of politicians.
All a bit rubbish, because the UK is gently bleeding under the current arrangements. But I wouldn't have started here.
But we’re not gently bleeding. We are growing faster than Germany and about the same speed as France
Britain is not in a great position but neither is much of Europe, or, indeed, the world
98% of our problems have nothing to do with Brexit and many of them are down to chronic, self inflicted stupidity and a dysfunctional government and civil service - eg HS2
Oh for goodness sake even if we were roaring away successful and Europe was going off a cliff edge that doesn't mean Brexit is successful. You have to compare what you have gained to what you have lost, not compare us with another country and go 'look they are having problems too'. About the only thing you did get right there is it isn't all about Brexit. There are lots of other stuff that has an impact making your observation utterly pointless. You can only look at the gains and losses.
So the question is has the improvements in exporting and importing to the rest of the world greater than the loss in importing and exporting to Europe. To my mind the answer to that question is very very clear.
If not do the freedoms/restrictions of being outside of Europe in other areas outweigh the freedoms/restrictions of being in Europe. And the answer to that question in my mind is even clearer.
How many times can we repeat this argument? For me, Brexit is Brexit
Regaining sovereignty and proper democracy is really all that I cared about. That’s been done. So for me it is a success. I understand that you differ
What about Britain out of the EU makes it a "proper democracy"? A party that fails to win a majority of votes can still receive a majority of seats. An individual seat is still won by FPTP. Our Commons is still whipped and cajoled by the leadership, and very few votes fall outside of that. A political consensus that drips from the media and tufton street still holds sway. Indeed, the two major parties of government have very little policy differences between them - one of them offering a shit future administered poorly and the other one offering a shit future administered efficiently.
The biggest single win from Brexit has been preventing politicans doing things which they may or may not want to do and saying "EU rules, nothing we can do other than comply".
I'd vote for Brexit again tomorrow, regardless of economic cost, in order to prevent them getting that nasty little figleaf back (most of the time it was things they wanted to do, but the public wouldn't wear). A democracy where the top elected politicans can plausibly claim they are being made to do things the voters don't want by a higher power is not a proper democracy by any standard.
La Truss has been giving her speech today. She was the top elected politician, tried to do something, and was forced instead to do things that voters don't want by a higher power.
So Britain needs to leave the international money markets. Take Back Control of our lives by going back to simpler times where we simply took the things we wanted and sent a gunboat to shoot anyone who thought that was a bad idea.
The 'international money markets' have decided that Sunak's way is twice as shit as Truss's way.
In what way? I don't want to defend Sunak/Hunt too vehemently, but the pound is a fair bit stronger than it was with Truss/Kwarteng at the helm, and the Bank of England hasn't needed to come in with a multi-billion pound package to stave off an imminent collapse in pension funds. It's not a high bar, but they do appear to have cleared it.
It wasn't a 'multi-billion pound package' it was a suspension of their ludicrous bond flog off, and buying some back - which is what was causing the issue in the first place. Surprisingly enough, that stabilised bond yields, I wonder why. The BOE had a fucking nerve saying they were stepping in to help the Government. They have since continued their sell off, and bond yields have doubled vs. the wake of the mini-budget.
More seriously, the Russians must know by now that they’re stuffed. Black Sea fleet on it’s way to being completely destroyed as a viable force, the entirety of their Soviet arsenal chewed up into pieces in the fields of Ukraine, along with the flower of both their infantry & cavalry. The only thing keeping them going is a stubborn refusal to admit the inevitable. Still, something might turn up for them I guess - a Trump 2024 victory perhaps? It seems hope is all they have left & hope is not a wining strategy.
There was recent speculation about a winning strategy for Russia. Wait for winter then destroy Ukraine's energy infrastructure. OK, it is probably a war crime but will Putin care?
With what armaments? They tried that last winter & Ukraine has better air defences now than it did then.
IIRC Russia was meant to run out of missiles in october 2022. Whatever happened to that prediction?
I didn't read Phil's point as being about number of missiles but nature of missiles. Given Russia tried to destroy Ukraine's energy infrastructure last year, with limited success, and Ukraine has strengthened its air defences, presumably Russia would need to have gained access to more sophisticated weapons over the past 12 months. Maybe they have, but I doubt Kim brought them in his little train.
I actually agree with this. Russia tried exactly this last year - destroying Ukraine’s infra - and it didn’t work. I see no reason why it should work a second time around
But this is my point. I am - despite what half of you believe - not predicting a Russian victory. It seems pretty unlikely. However at the same time I cannot see how Ukraine can drive Russia back to the 2014 borders especially if that means reclaiming Crimea. Not gonna happen
Two caveats.
The Ukrainian attack on Russia proper has potential. If they can seriously degrade Russian military and morale that way, that might change the game. But they need megatons of weapons
Kadyrov’s death is also ‘interesting’. Perhaps Ukes could take out Putin. That would alter everything
As for Russia. How can they win? Perhaps a lightning strike on Kyiv from the north, as they first intended. Not exactly easy, however
Or they go postal and drop a tactical nuke and the war freezes, instantly, and an armistice is signed with the frontiers where they are now
It has been made very clear to Putin that any use of a tactical nuke is game over for him personally. There will be no coming back from that
Greg Hands whining about Labour giving votes to 16 and 17 year olds . Accusing them of vote rigging ! From the party who brought in new voter ID which was aimed at disenfranchising opposition voters .
If you can join the army , have sex and work why are you too young to vote ?
Because that is not an argument. Just as 'If you are not old enough to buy half a pint in a pub you are not old enough to vote' isn't either.
The maturity/age for voting is a separate issue from these things.
Maybe we should decide them all at random. Fags at 7, bookies at 11, sex at 28, army at 9, alcohol at 43. Voting at ages 13-19 and 50+ but only if you have children and grandchildren whose permission is required for your voter registration.
Is Russell Brand of the Left or of the Right? That's what we need to establish.
According to PB righties he was on the left when he was being nasty to to that nice Andrew Sachs and doing dodgy stuff with women. Much of the right are now indulging in defensive paranoia about the current accusations so Russelly Wusselly must have been on a 'journey'.
Greg Hands whining about Labour giving votes to 16 and 17 year olds . Accusing them of vote rigging ! From the party who brought in new voter ID which was aimed at disenfranchising opposition voters .
If you can join the army , have sex and work why are you too young to vote ?
Strange that there is so much horror about the BBC getting a car for Russell Brand’s 16yo girlfriend really
When Brand was in his 30s, and sending a BBC car to pick her up from school, yes.
Ditto Philip Schofield and and his legal-but-not-moral boyfriend who worked with him.
If the BBC car story is true, there ought to be a record of it in an organisation as bureaucratic as Auntie. How would Brand have justified it unless she were a guest on his programme? Is it not more likely he sent a posh minicab? Anyway, we'll see.
There is a lot in the Brand story that is scandalous but not much illegal and even the rape claims may come down to he said/she said. Enough to see Brand cancelled but not incarcerated, perhaps.
Yes, there would have been a record of it, if it were a BBC driver, as opposed to a local minicab firm.
Agree that unless specific individuals make complaints with evidence to the police, he’s cancelled rather than incarcerated. Which really shouldn’t have been controversial, we’ve all known this guy to be a pervert nearly two decades.
People who've moved aren't registered yet is about as shocking as it raining in England.
People who haven't moved are registered is about as shocking as the sun rising in the East.
People need to register that they've moved address, many don't bother immediately, but before every election there's a surge of people registering in time to vote.
I myself moved late last year but only registered to vote days before the deadline for the local elections this year, because that prompted it. Never lost my vote though, despite for a few months being "registered at the wrong address".
It being an old problem does not mean that it is not a problem.
It is definitely undemocratic when the rules to register make it difficult for those who belong to a specific demographic (almost by definition). The the demographic group being disadvantaged here are those people who, as a group, move house frequently. The fact that you managed to "not lose your vote" does not mean that the majority were as proactive as you were.
The rules to register don't make it difficult though, it takes less than 5 minutes, involves no postage and can be done on your phone or computer easily.
That people haven't bothered is a different kettle of fish to it being difficult.
Every single election people are proactive and register. Anyone who doesn't, almost certainly has no intention to vote anyway.
In which case you should have been arguing that the system is not "outdated". When I lived in the UK the system certainly was outdated, needing to apply by post and if you hadn't registered a new address by the end of the year, you weren't allowed to vote "at your new address" for the elections in the year. Bad luck if you moved in January and there was a June election,
If you can now update your voters register details online/with a smartphone, that is a big improvement. Is the register still fixed for the calendar year?
"Every single election people are proactive and register." This is not true in the UK. If you are registered and do not move your details are rolled forward. So it is not "every single election" it is "every single house move".
Firstly yes its not "outdated", its in fact pretty modern. When I did my registration earlier this year I did it on my phone and it took a couple of minutes. All I did was enter online my name, date of birth, new address, old address and NI number IIRC, along with ticking boxes that I understood it was fraud to give false data etc and that was that. That was done a few weeks before the election, not the year before.
Secondly I never said that every single election 'everyone' has to register. I said every single election people [who aren't registered yet] do register. There's a surge of "hundreds of thousands registering to vote in one day" that makes the news every single election.
“Probably the biggest delusion yet to be unpicked is Sir Keir's repeated assertion that there is a better deal with the EU out there. This is simply not true. There was a lot of vindictive commentary from the EU during the entire Brexit process, but the deal that was eventually agreed was a reasonable third-country trade deal.. If your bottom line is that you do not wish to rejoin the single market and the customs union, there really is not a lot more out there.”
Starmer has ruled out SM/CU. There is, in that case, nothing to be done. The EU is not interested in rolling over to give Starmer a special deal. Why would it?
His Labour government is going to collide with the tank traps of reality very quickly
As I said earlier joining the single market is the only way to change the EU, and anything else is cosmetic
And at the moment raising that issue is certain to rouse latent Brexit support from its slumber. Single Market is Freedom Of Movement. Single Market is putting all of those terrible Euroregulations back into British Law.
Personally, I'd be fine with that. I'd even be fine if we fully aligned indefinitely and waited for a monthly email from Brussels telling us what new stuff they've come up with for us. (The freedoms at a personal level seem worth it to me.) But it would send the right, and the press, dolally, and Starmer isn't going to touch the button marked "Pressing This Button Is Incredibly Risky". There are enough people who hate all that to give Rishi a liferaft he doesn't deserve.
It's going to be like I said in 2020.
The next thing we try, 2025ish, will be a TCA that realistically co-operates on trade. Vet agreements, standards marking, that sort of thing. It will help a bit, but no- not much. That looks like Starmer's plan. But he won't be PM forever.
Beyond that, it gets speculative, anything might happen, but I haven't seen anything to change my rough schedule.
Single Market will be 2030ish. We can probably chuck in some Union of Customs as well. The Brit deals aren't coming out with anything special, and we can leave CPTPP with six months notice.
And then, who knows? Maybe the UK will be fine tagging along with whatever Brussels says. A lot of it is boring technical stuff, and there is the possibility of being consulted. A bit. I don't think the UK political classes are going to be happy with that, which is why Rejoin might happen, but only under a new generation of politicians.
All a bit rubbish, because the UK is gently bleeding under the current arrangements. But I wouldn't have started here.
But we’re not gently bleeding. We are growing faster than Germany and about the same speed as France
Britain is not in a great position but neither is much of Europe, or, indeed, the world
98% of our problems have nothing to do with Brexit and many of them are down to chronic, self inflicted stupidity and a dysfunctional government and civil service - eg HS2
Oh for goodness sake even if we were roaring away successful and Europe was going off a cliff edge that doesn't mean Brexit is successful. You have to compare what you have gained to what you have lost, not compare us with another country and go 'look they are having problems too'. About the only thing you did get right there is it isn't all about Brexit. There are lots of other stuff that has an impact making your observation utterly pointless. You can only look at the gains and losses.
So the question is has the improvements in exporting and importing to the rest of the world greater than the loss in importing and exporting to Europe. To my mind the answer to that question is very very clear.
If not do the freedoms/restrictions of being outside of Europe in other areas outweigh the freedoms/restrictions of being in Europe. And the answer to that question in my mind is even clearer.
How many times can we repeat this argument? For me, Brexit is Brexit
Regaining sovereignty and proper democracy is really all that I cared about. That’s been done. So for me it is a success. I understand that you differ
What about Britain out of the EU makes it a "proper democracy"? A party that fails to win a majority of votes can still receive a majority of seats. An individual seat is still won by FPTP. Our Commons is still whipped and cajoled by the leadership, and very few votes fall outside of that. A political consensus that drips from the media and tufton street still holds sway. Indeed, the two major parties of government have very little policy differences between them - one of them offering a shit future administered poorly and the other one offering a shit future administered efficiently.
The biggest single win from Brexit has been preventing politicans doing things which they may or may not want to do and saying "EU rules, nothing we can do other than comply".
I'd vote for Brexit again tomorrow, regardless of economic cost, in order to prevent them getting that nasty little figleaf back (most of the time it was things they wanted to do, but the public wouldn't wear). A democracy where the top elected politicans can plausibly claim they are being made to do things the voters don't want by a higher power is not a proper democracy by any standard.
La Truss has been giving her speech today. She was the top elected politician, tried to do something, and was forced instead to do things that voters don't want by a higher power.
So Britain needs to leave the international money markets. Take Back Control of our lives by going back to simpler times where we simply took the things we wanted and sent a gunboat to shoot anyone who thought that was a bad idea.
The 'international money markets' have decided that Sunak's way is twice as shit as Truss's way.
In what way? I don't want to defend Sunak/Hunt too vehemently, but the pound is a fair bit stronger than it was with Truss/Kwarteng at the helm, and the Bank of England hasn't needed to come in with a multi-billion pound package to stave off an imminent collapse in pension funds. It's not a high bar, but they do appear to have cleared it.
It wasn't a 'multi-billion pound package' it was a suspension of their ludicrous bond flog off, and buying some back - which is what was causing the issue in the first place. Surprisingly enough, that stabilised bond yields, I wonder why. The BOE had a fucking nerve saying they were stepping in to help the Government. They have since continued their sell off, and bond yields have doubled vs. the wake of the mini-budget.
The BoE (old lady) has somehow managed to belittle itself. A lot perhaps is due to the crap that the governors spit out, but far more is due to quite astonishing undermining of the nation that the BoE has presided over in the last few years. Dig even with a shallow spade and you'll easily reveal the rotten crust that the BoE has encouraged over a massive rotten core.
Truss' complete disregard for the impact of her mini-budget, alongside the occasional person commenting that she wasn't given long enough to see if she was proven right, feels to me like the future of the Tory party is in the hands of Tufton Street. The consensus before she got in that she would be the change that was needed and the way many in right wing media have insulated her and have tried to help her with this rehabilitation tour is worrying to me.
I think it's clear that she was on her way to clown school when somehow she found herself elected as an MP. Quite how she managed to progress from there is baffling. (I'd not even venture a guess)
Because she knows the right people in the right places and parrots their words back to them. Did someone who went to uni with her not say that she was a LibDem until she started chatting to the political crowd there and then said that the only way to make a career out of politics was to join the Tories, so she did?
Rory Stewart is far from a neutral observer, but he recounts being narked that Truss (same 2010 intake) was getting promoted so quickly when we wasn't. The reason the whips gave him was apparently that Truss was much better at fluently promoting the party line.
The fact that the Cons so valued loyalty and patronage over ability explains how she got to the top role. I fully expect no lessons to be learned from this.
Greg Hands whining about Labour giving votes to 16 and 17 year olds . Accusing them of vote rigging ! From the party who brought in new voter ID which was aimed at disenfranchising opposition voters .
If you can join the army , have sex and work why are you too young to vote ?
Strange that there is so much horror about the BBC getting a car for Russell Brand’s 16yo girlfriend really
When Brand was in his 30s, and sending a BBC car to pick her up from school, yes.
Ditto Philip Schofield and and his legal-but-not-moral boyfriend who worked with him.
If the BBC car story is true, there ought to be a record of it in an organisation as bureaucratic as Auntie. How would Brand have justified it unless she were a guest on his programme? Is it not more likely he sent a posh minicab? Anyway, we'll see.
There is a lot in the Brand story that is scandalous but not much illegal and even the rape claims may come down to he said/she said. Enough to see Brand cancelled but not incarcerated, perhaps.
The story in the paper was that it was a taxi. Where has the idea that it was a BBC car come from?
Greg Hands whining about Labour giving votes to 16 and 17 year olds . Accusing them of vote rigging ! From the party who brought in new voter ID which was aimed at disenfranchising opposition voters .
If you can join the army , have sex and work why are you too young to vote ?
Strange that there is so much horror about the BBC getting a car for Russell Brand’s 16yo girlfriend really
People might think it’s pervy dating a 16 year old but the law is the law . I find it strange that any woman would find Brand attractive .
Bit of an inopportune day for Lucy Powell to be going on about it being legal for 16yo to have sex, when the headlines are about the grooming of a 16yo.
Yes, I can’t stand him, but a lot of women seem(ed) to be desperate to have sex with him.
My eldest daughter was very fond of him at one point and her friend even more so. She kept trying to get me to read the Booky Wooky. Sadly, I never got around to it. My loss, no doubt.
A girl I was seeing likes him, and so as not to be a complete fun sponge, I tried reading that nonsense - it was nonsense, I got to about page twenty
A friend of mine used to date Russell Brand’s make up artist - it shows how easily people are dazzled by fame, Brand drew a picture of a Willy on my mates arm with their names next to it, & my normally sensible ish friend thought it was absolutely hilarious, getting quite upset with me when I said I didnt see what was funny about it, and neither would he if one of the blokes in the pub had drawn it
Actually, Brand is capable of writing beautiful prose - in very short bursts
He did a travel piece about snorkelling/scuba - in the Maldives? Guardian? - maybe 10-15 years ago and I remember thinking the first three of four paragraphs were inspired. He’s not an idiot, he’s clever and talented. He is quite possibly an evil predator as well but it is foolish to dismiss him as some imbecile that got lucky
I never liked his comedy, that said. Just not funny
“Probably the biggest delusion yet to be unpicked is Sir Keir's repeated assertion that there is a better deal with the EU out there. This is simply not true. There was a lot of vindictive commentary from the EU during the entire Brexit process, but the deal that was eventually agreed was a reasonable third-country trade deal.. If your bottom line is that you do not wish to rejoin the single market and the customs union, there really is not a lot more out there.”
Starmer has ruled out SM/CU. There is, in that case, nothing to be done. The EU is not interested in rolling over to give Starmer a special deal. Why would it?
His Labour government is going to collide with the tank traps of reality very quickly
As I said earlier joining the single market is the only way to change the EU, and anything else is cosmetic
And at the moment raising that issue is certain to rouse latent Brexit support from its slumber. Single Market is Freedom Of Movement. Single Market is putting all of those terrible Euroregulations back into British Law.
Personally, I'd be fine with that. I'd even be fine if we fully aligned indefinitely and waited for a monthly email from Brussels telling us what new stuff they've come up with for us. (The freedoms at a personal level seem worth it to me.) But it would send the right, and the press, dolally, and Starmer isn't going to touch the button marked "Pressing This Button Is Incredibly Risky". There are enough people who hate all that to give Rishi a liferaft he doesn't deserve.
It's going to be like I said in 2020.
The next thing we try, 2025ish, will be a TCA that realistically co-operates on trade. Vet agreements, standards marking, that sort of thing. It will help a bit, but no- not much. That looks like Starmer's plan. But he won't be PM forever.
Beyond that, it gets speculative, anything might happen, but I haven't seen anything to change my rough schedule.
Single Market will be 2030ish. We can probably chuck in some Union of Customs as well. The Brit deals aren't coming out with anything special, and we can leave CPTPP with six months notice.
And then, who knows? Maybe the UK will be fine tagging along with whatever Brussels says. A lot of it is boring technical stuff, and there is the possibility of being consulted. A bit. I don't think the UK political classes are going to be happy with that, which is why Rejoin might happen, but only under a new generation of politicians.
All a bit rubbish, because the UK is gently bleeding under the current arrangements. But I wouldn't have started here.
But we’re not gently bleeding. We are growing faster than Germany and about the same speed as France
Britain is not in a great position but neither is much of Europe, or, indeed, the world
98% of our problems have nothing to do with Brexit and many of them are down to chronic, self inflicted stupidity and a dysfunctional government and civil service - eg HS2
Oh for goodness sake even if we were roaring away successful and Europe was going off a cliff edge that doesn't mean Brexit is successful. You have to compare what you have gained to what you have lost, not compare us with another country and go 'look they are having problems too'. About the only thing you did get right there is it isn't all about Brexit. There are lots of other stuff that has an impact making your observation utterly pointless. You can only look at the gains and losses.
So the question is has the improvements in exporting and importing to the rest of the world greater than the loss in importing and exporting to Europe. To my mind the answer to that question is very very clear.
If not do the freedoms/restrictions of being outside of Europe in other areas outweigh the freedoms/restrictions of being in Europe. And the answer to that question in my mind is even clearer.
How many times can we repeat this argument? For me, Brexit is Brexit
Regaining sovereignty and proper democracy is really all that I cared about. That’s been done. So for me it is a success. I understand that you differ
What about Britain out of the EU makes it a "proper democracy"? A party that fails to win a majority of votes can still receive a majority of seats. An individual seat is still won by FPTP. Our Commons is still whipped and cajoled by the leadership, and very few votes fall outside of that. A political consensus that drips from the media and tufton street still holds sway. Indeed, the two major parties of government have very little policy differences between them - one of them offering a shit future administered poorly and the other one offering a shit future administered efficiently.
The biggest single win from Brexit has been preventing politicans doing things which they may or may not want to do and saying "EU rules, nothing we can do other than comply".
I'd vote for Brexit again tomorrow, regardless of economic cost, in order to prevent them getting that nasty little figleaf back (most of the time it was things they wanted to do, but the public wouldn't wear). A democracy where the top elected politicans can plausibly claim they are being made to do things the voters don't want by a higher power is not a proper democracy by any standard.
So the reason to leave the EU that helps safeguard democracy, in your view, is that instead of blaming Brussels (falsely) for things, the government now have to take responsibility? How's that working out?
Considering that a huge amount of the blaming Brussels narrative was created as part of the lengthy campaign to get out of the EU, as were many of the stories and positions mischaracterising EU rules and such, you're claiming that we have saved democracy from the very people who threatened it by giving them what they wanted? Grand.
This is the opposite of the truth. What actually happened is that EU laws were written into UK statute covertly by Governments of all colours, with zero labelling, let alone complaints about their origins.
“Probably the biggest delusion yet to be unpicked is Sir Keir's repeated assertion that there is a better deal with the EU out there. This is simply not true. There was a lot of vindictive commentary from the EU during the entire Brexit process, but the deal that was eventually agreed was a reasonable third-country trade deal.. If your bottom line is that you do not wish to rejoin the single market and the customs union, there really is not a lot more out there.”
Starmer has ruled out SM/CU. There is, in that case, nothing to be done. The EU is not interested in rolling over to give Starmer a special deal. Why would it?
His Labour government is going to collide with the tank traps of reality very quickly
As I said earlier joining the single market is the only way to change the EU, and anything else is cosmetic
And at the moment raising that issue is certain to rouse latent Brexit support from its slumber. Single Market is Freedom Of Movement. Single Market is putting all of those terrible Euroregulations back into British Law.
Personally, I'd be fine with that. I'd even be fine if we fully aligned indefinitely and waited for a monthly email from Brussels telling us what new stuff they've come up with for us. (The freedoms at a personal level seem worth it to me.) But it would send the right, and the press, dolally, and Starmer isn't going to touch the button marked "Pressing This Button Is Incredibly Risky". There are enough people who hate all that to give Rishi a liferaft he doesn't deserve.
It's going to be like I said in 2020.
The next thing we try, 2025ish, will be a TCA that realistically co-operates on trade. Vet agreements, standards marking, that sort of thing. It will help a bit, but no- not much. That looks like Starmer's plan. But he won't be PM forever.
Beyond that, it gets speculative, anything might happen, but I haven't seen anything to change my rough schedule.
Single Market will be 2030ish. We can probably chuck in some Union of Customs as well. The Brit deals aren't coming out with anything special, and we can leave CPTPP with six months notice.
And then, who knows? Maybe the UK will be fine tagging along with whatever Brussels says. A lot of it is boring technical stuff, and there is the possibility of being consulted. A bit. I don't think the UK political classes are going to be happy with that, which is why Rejoin might happen, but only under a new generation of politicians.
All a bit rubbish, because the UK is gently bleeding under the current arrangements. But I wouldn't have started here.
But we’re not gently bleeding. We are growing faster than Germany and about the same speed as France
Britain is not in a great position but neither is much of Europe, or, indeed, the world
98% of our problems have nothing to do with Brexit and many of them are down to chronic, self inflicted stupidity and a dysfunctional government and civil service - eg HS2
Oh for goodness sake even if we were roaring away successful and Europe was going off a cliff edge that doesn't mean Brexit is successful. You have to compare what you have gained to what you have lost, not compare us with another country and go 'look they are having problems too'. About the only thing you did get right there is it isn't all about Brexit. There are lots of other stuff that has an impact making your observation utterly pointless. You can only look at the gains and losses.
So the question is has the improvements in exporting and importing to the rest of the world greater than the loss in importing and exporting to Europe. To my mind the answer to that question is very very clear.
If not do the freedoms/restrictions of being outside of Europe in other areas outweigh the freedoms/restrictions of being in Europe. And the answer to that question in my mind is even clearer.
How many times can we repeat this argument? For me, Brexit is Brexit
Regaining sovereignty and proper democracy is really all that I cared about. That’s been done. So for me it is a success. I understand that you differ
What about Britain out of the EU makes it a "proper democracy"? A party that fails to win a majority of votes can still receive a majority of seats. An individual seat is still won by FPTP. Our Commons is still whipped and cajoled by the leadership, and very few votes fall outside of that. A political consensus that drips from the media and tufton street still holds sway. Indeed, the two major parties of government have very little policy differences between them - one of them offering a shit future administered poorly and the other one offering a shit future administered efficiently.
The biggest single win from Brexit has been preventing politicans doing things which they may or may not want to do and saying "EU rules, nothing we can do other than comply".
I'd vote for Brexit again tomorrow, regardless of economic cost, in order to prevent them getting that nasty little figleaf back (most of the time it was things they wanted to do, but the public wouldn't wear). A democracy where the top elected politicans can plausibly claim they are being made to do things the voters don't want by a higher power is not a proper democracy by any standard.
So the reason to leave the EU that helps safeguard democracy, in your view, is that instead of blaming Brussels (falsely) for things, the government now have to take responsibility? How's that working out?
Considering that a huge amount of the blaming Brussels narrative was created as part of the lengthy campaign to get out of the EU, as were many of the stories and positions mischaracterising EU rules and such, you're claiming that we have saved democracy from the very people who threatened it by giving them what they wanted? Grand.
"How's that working out?"
Fantastic.
We're going to have an election probably within a year and it will probably see a change in government as this current one is terrible.
When did that last meaningfully happen in the EU?
The thing with democracy is you may get terrible governments from time to time. You may get governments you despise from time to time. You may get governments doing things you hate from time to time. But you can campaign and vote to get them replaced, and it looks like next time we will get a replacement.
Ousting democracy to get what you want, is not progress.
Greg Hands whining about Labour giving votes to 16 and 17 year olds . Accusing them of vote rigging ! From the party who brought in new voter ID which was aimed at disenfranchising opposition voters .
If you can join the army , have sex and work why are you too young to vote ?
Strange that there is so much horror about the BBC getting a car for Russell Brand’s 16yo girlfriend really
People might think it’s pervy dating a 16 year old but the law is the law . I find it strange that any woman would find Brand attractive .
Bit of an inopportune day for Lucy Powell to be going on about it being legal for 16yo to have sex, when the headlines are about the grooming of a 16yo.
Yes, I can’t stand him, but a lot of women seem(ed) to be desperate to have sex with him.
My eldest daughter was very fond of him at one point and her friend even more so. She kept trying to get me to read the Booky Wooky. Sadly, I never got around to it. My loss, no doubt.
A girl I was seeing likes him, and so as not to be a complete fun sponge, I tried reading that nonsense - it was nonsense, I got to about page twenty
A friend of mine used to date Russell Brand’s make up artist - it shows how easily people are dazzled by fame, Brand drew a picture of a Willy on my mates arm with their names next to it, & my normally sensible ish friend thought it was absolutely hilarious, getting quite upset with me when I said I didnt see what was funny about it, and neither would he if one of the blokes in the pub had drawn it
Actually, Brand is capable of writing beautiful prose - in very short bursts
He did a travel piece about snorkelling/scuba - in the Maldives? Guardian? - maybe 10-15 years ago and I remember thinking the first three of four paragraphs were inspired. He’s not an idiot, he’s clever and talented. He is quite possibly an evil predator as well but it is foolish to dismiss him as some imbecile that got lucky
I never liked his comedy, that said. Just not funny
He was (is?) funny being interviewed. He's witty. It's widely known that he's (was?) a predatory shagger. He survived 'Me too', so I question the hype behind his dirty linen being aired now.
Greg Hands whining about Labour giving votes to 16 and 17 year olds . Accusing them of vote rigging ! From the party who brought in new voter ID which was aimed at disenfranchising opposition voters .
If you can join the army , have sex and work why are you too young to vote ?
Strange that there is so much horror about the BBC getting a car for Russell Brand’s 16yo girlfriend really
People might think it’s pervy dating a 16 year old but the law is the law . I find it strange that any woman would find Brand attractive .
Bit of an inopportune day for Lucy Powell to be going on about it being legal for 16yo to have sex, when the headlines are about the grooming of a 16yo.
Yes, I can’t stand him, but a lot of women seem(ed) to be desperate to have sex with him.
My eldest daughter was very fond of him at one point and her friend even more so. She kept trying to get me to read the Booky Wooky. Sadly, I never got around to it. My loss, no doubt.
A girl I was seeing likes him, and so as not to be a complete fun sponge, I tried reading that nonsense - it was nonsense, I got to about page twenty
A friend of mine used to date Russell Brand’s make up artist - it shows how easily people are dazzled by fame, Brand drew a picture of a Willy on my mates arm with their names next to it, & my normally sensible ish friend thought it was absolutely hilarious, getting quite upset with me when I said I didnt see what was funny about it, and neither would he if one of the blokes in the pub had drawn it
Actually, Brand is capable of writing beautiful prose - in very short bursts
He did a travel piece about snorkelling/scuba - in the Maldives? Guardian? - maybe 10-15 years ago and I remember thinking the first three of four paragraphs were inspired. He’s not an idiot, he’s clever and talented. He is quite possibly an evil predator as well but it is foolish to dismiss him as some imbecile that got lucky
I never liked his comedy, that said. Just not funny
Maybe his travel journalism was great. But his attempts at comedy were horrific, and he made me cringe every time I saw him on tv, which wasn’t often as I’d turn off. The book I read a few pages of was self indulgent crap as I remember, written in that faux cockney child voice he puts on
Greg Hands whining about Labour giving votes to 16 and 17 year olds . Accusing them of vote rigging ! From the party who brought in new voter ID which was aimed at disenfranchising opposition voters .
If you can join the army , have sex and work why are you too young to vote ?
Strange that there is so much horror about the BBC getting a car for Russell Brand’s 16yo girlfriend really
People might think it’s pervy dating a 16 year old but the law is the law . I find it strange that any woman would find Brand attractive .
Bit of an inopportune day for Lucy Powell to be going on about it being legal for 16yo to have sex, when the headlines are about the grooming of a 16yo.
Yes, I can’t stand him, but a lot of women seem(ed) to be desperate to have sex with him.
My eldest daughter was very fond of him at one point and her friend even more so. She kept trying to get me to read the Booky Wooky. Sadly, I never got around to it. My loss, no doubt.
A girl I was seeing likes him, and so as not to be a complete fun sponge, I tried reading that nonsense - it was nonsense, I got to about page twenty
A friend of mine used to date Russell Brand’s make up artist - it shows how easily people are dazzled by fame, Brand drew a picture of a Willy on my mates arm with their names next to it, & my normally sensible ish friend thought it was absolutely hilarious, getting quite upset with me when I said I didnt see what was funny about it, and neither would he if one of the blokes in the pub had drawn it
Actually, Brand is capable of writing beautiful prose - in very short bursts
He did a travel piece about snorkelling/scuba - in the Maldives? Guardian? - maybe 10-15 years ago and I remember thinking the first three of four paragraphs were inspired. He’s not an idiot, he’s clever and talented. He is quite possibly an evil predator as well but it is foolish to dismiss him as some imbecile that got lucky
I never liked his comedy, that said. Just not funny
He is undoubtedly not an idiot and I'm sure could turn out a competent travel piece about something or other more or less on demand. But he also positions himself as a wise man, a philosopher king. And that he most manifestly is not either.
“Probably the biggest delusion yet to be unpicked is Sir Keir's repeated assertion that there is a better deal with the EU out there. This is simply not true. There was a lot of vindictive commentary from the EU during the entire Brexit process, but the deal that was eventually agreed was a reasonable third-country trade deal.. If your bottom line is that you do not wish to rejoin the single market and the customs union, there really is not a lot more out there.”
Starmer has ruled out SM/CU. There is, in that case, nothing to be done. The EU is not interested in rolling over to give Starmer a special deal. Why would it?
His Labour government is going to collide with the tank traps of reality very quickly
As I said earlier joining the single market is the only way to change the EU, and anything else is cosmetic
And at the moment raising that issue is certain to rouse latent Brexit support from its slumber. Single Market is Freedom Of Movement. Single Market is putting all of those terrible Euroregulations back into British Law.
Personally, I'd be fine with that. I'd even be fine if we fully aligned indefinitely and waited for a monthly email from Brussels telling us what new stuff they've come up with for us. (The freedoms at a personal level seem worth it to me.) But it would send the right, and the press, dolally, and Starmer isn't going to touch the button marked "Pressing This Button Is Incredibly Risky". There are enough people who hate all that to give Rishi a liferaft he doesn't deserve.
It's going to be like I said in 2020.
The next thing we try, 2025ish, will be a TCA that realistically co-operates on trade. Vet agreements, standards marking, that sort of thing. It will help a bit, but no- not much. That looks like Starmer's plan. But he won't be PM forever.
Beyond that, it gets speculative, anything might happen, but I haven't seen anything to change my rough schedule.
Single Market will be 2030ish. We can probably chuck in some Union of Customs as well. The Brit deals aren't coming out with anything special, and we can leave CPTPP with six months notice.
And then, who knows? Maybe the UK will be fine tagging along with whatever Brussels says. A lot of it is boring technical stuff, and there is the possibility of being consulted. A bit. I don't think the UK political classes are going to be happy with that, which is why Rejoin might happen, but only under a new generation of politicians.
All a bit rubbish, because the UK is gently bleeding under the current arrangements. But I wouldn't have started here.
But we’re not gently bleeding. We are growing faster than Germany and about the same speed as France
Britain is not in a great position but neither is much of Europe, or, indeed, the world
98% of our problems have nothing to do with Brexit and many of them are down to chronic, self inflicted stupidity and a dysfunctional government and civil service - eg HS2
Oh for goodness sake even if we were roaring away successful and Europe was going off a cliff edge that doesn't mean Brexit is successful. You have to compare what you have gained to what you have lost, not compare us with another country and go 'look they are having problems too'. About the only thing you did get right there is it isn't all about Brexit. There are lots of other stuff that has an impact making your observation utterly pointless. You can only look at the gains and losses.
So the question is has the improvements in exporting and importing to the rest of the world greater than the loss in importing and exporting to Europe. To my mind the answer to that question is very very clear.
If not do the freedoms/restrictions of being outside of Europe in other areas outweigh the freedoms/restrictions of being in Europe. And the answer to that question in my mind is even clearer.
How many times can we repeat this argument? For me, Brexit is Brexit
Regaining sovereignty and proper democracy is really all that I cared about. That’s been done. So for me it is a success. I understand that you differ
What about Britain out of the EU makes it a "proper democracy"? A party that fails to win a majority of votes can still receive a majority of seats. An individual seat is still won by FPTP. Our Commons is still whipped and cajoled by the leadership, and very few votes fall outside of that. A political consensus that drips from the media and tufton street still holds sway. Indeed, the two major parties of government have very little policy differences between them - one of them offering a shit future administered poorly and the other one offering a shit future administered efficiently.
The biggest single win from Brexit has been preventing politicans doing things which they may or may not want to do and saying "EU rules, nothing we can do other than comply".
I'd vote for Brexit again tomorrow, regardless of economic cost, in order to prevent them getting that nasty little figleaf back (most of the time it was things they wanted to do, but the public wouldn't wear). A democracy where the top elected politicans can plausibly claim they are being made to do things the voters don't want by a higher power is not a proper democracy by any standard.
So the reason to leave the EU that helps safeguard democracy, in your view, is that instead of blaming Brussels (falsely) for things, the government now have to take responsibility? How's that working out?
Considering that a huge amount of the blaming Brussels narrative was created as part of the lengthy campaign to get out of the EU, as were many of the stories and positions mischaracterising EU rules and such, you're claiming that we have saved democracy from the very people who threatened it by giving them what they wanted? Grand.
This is the opposite of the truth. What actually happened is that EU laws were written into UK statute covertly by Governments of all colours, with zero labelling, let alone complaints about their origins.
Bloody undemocratic UK Governments going about writing new laws into UK statute.
“Probably the biggest delusion yet to be unpicked is Sir Keir's repeated assertion that there is a better deal with the EU out there. This is simply not true. There was a lot of vindictive commentary from the EU during the entire Brexit process, but the deal that was eventually agreed was a reasonable third-country trade deal.. If your bottom line is that you do not wish to rejoin the single market and the customs union, there really is not a lot more out there.”
Starmer has ruled out SM/CU. There is, in that case, nothing to be done. The EU is not interested in rolling over to give Starmer a special deal. Why would it?
His Labour government is going to collide with the tank traps of reality very quickly
As I said earlier joining the single market is the only way to change the EU, and anything else is cosmetic
And at the moment raising that issue is certain to rouse latent Brexit support from its slumber. Single Market is Freedom Of Movement. Single Market is putting all of those terrible Euroregulations back into British Law.
Personally, I'd be fine with that. I'd even be fine if we fully aligned indefinitely and waited for a monthly email from Brussels telling us what new stuff they've come up with for us. (The freedoms at a personal level seem worth it to me.) But it would send the right, and the press, dolally, and Starmer isn't going to touch the button marked "Pressing This Button Is Incredibly Risky". There are enough people who hate all that to give Rishi a liferaft he doesn't deserve.
It's going to be like I said in 2020.
The next thing we try, 2025ish, will be a TCA that realistically co-operates on trade. Vet agreements, standards marking, that sort of thing. It will help a bit, but no- not much. That looks like Starmer's plan. But he won't be PM forever.
Beyond that, it gets speculative, anything might happen, but I haven't seen anything to change my rough schedule.
Single Market will be 2030ish. We can probably chuck in some Union of Customs as well. The Brit deals aren't coming out with anything special, and we can leave CPTPP with six months notice.
And then, who knows? Maybe the UK will be fine tagging along with whatever Brussels says. A lot of it is boring technical stuff, and there is the possibility of being consulted. A bit. I don't think the UK political classes are going to be happy with that, which is why Rejoin might happen, but only under a new generation of politicians.
All a bit rubbish, because the UK is gently bleeding under the current arrangements. But I wouldn't have started here.
But we’re not gently bleeding. We are growing faster than Germany and about the same speed as France
Britain is not in a great position but neither is much of Europe, or, indeed, the world
98% of our problems have nothing to do with Brexit and many of them are down to chronic, self inflicted stupidity and a dysfunctional government and civil service - eg HS2
Oh for goodness sake even if we were roaring away successful and Europe was going off a cliff edge that doesn't mean Brexit is successful. You have to compare what you have gained to what you have lost, not compare us with another country and go 'look they are having problems too'. About the only thing you did get right there is it isn't all about Brexit. There are lots of other stuff that has an impact making your observation utterly pointless. You can only look at the gains and losses.
So the question is has the improvements in exporting and importing to the rest of the world greater than the loss in importing and exporting to Europe. To my mind the answer to that question is very very clear.
If not do the freedoms/restrictions of being outside of Europe in other areas outweigh the freedoms/restrictions of being in Europe. And the answer to that question in my mind is even clearer.
How many times can we repeat this argument? For me, Brexit is Brexit
Regaining sovereignty and proper democracy is really all that I cared about. That’s been done. So for me it is a success. I understand that you differ
What about Britain out of the EU makes it a "proper democracy"? A party that fails to win a majority of votes can still receive a majority of seats. An individual seat is still won by FPTP. Our Commons is still whipped and cajoled by the leadership, and very few votes fall outside of that. A political consensus that drips from the media and tufton street still holds sway. Indeed, the two major parties of government have very little policy differences between them - one of them offering a shit future administered poorly and the other one offering a shit future administered efficiently.
The biggest single win from Brexit has been preventing politicans doing things which they may or may not want to do and saying "EU rules, nothing we can do other than comply".
I'd vote for Brexit again tomorrow, regardless of economic cost, in order to prevent them getting that nasty little figleaf back (most of the time it was things they wanted to do, but the public wouldn't wear). A democracy where the top elected politicans can plausibly claim they are being made to do things the voters don't want by a higher power is not a proper democracy by any standard.
So the reason to leave the EU that helps safeguard democracy, in your view, is that instead of blaming Brussels (falsely) for things, the government now have to take responsibility? How's that working out?
Considering that a huge amount of the blaming Brussels narrative was created as part of the lengthy campaign to get out of the EU, as were many of the stories and positions mischaracterising EU rules and such, you're claiming that we have saved democracy from the very people who threatened it by giving them what they wanted? Grand.
"How's that working out?"
Fantastic.
We're going to have an election probably within a year and it will probably see a change in government as this current one is terrible.
When did that last meaningfully happen in the EU?
The thing with democracy is you may get terrible governments from time to time. You may get governments you despise from time to time. You may get governments doing things you hate from time to time. But you can campaign and vote to get them replaced, and it looks like next time we will get a replacement.
Ousting democracy to get what you want, is not progress.
One of the things that haven’t really been noticed in the UK, is the absense of the biannual EU summits, with everything they’re discussing in terms of new EU legislation.
Greg Hands whining about Labour giving votes to 16 and 17 year olds . Accusing them of vote rigging ! From the party who brought in new voter ID which was aimed at disenfranchising opposition voters .
If you can join the army , have sex and work why are you too young to vote ?
Strange that there is so much horror about the BBC getting a car for Russell Brand’s 16yo girlfriend really
People might think it’s pervy dating a 16 year old but the law is the law . I find it strange that any woman would find Brand attractive .
Bit of an inopportune day for Lucy Powell to be going on about it being legal for 16yo to have sex, when the headlines are about the grooming of a 16yo.
Yes, I can’t stand him, but a lot of women seem(ed) to be desperate to have sex with him.
My eldest daughter was very fond of him at one point and her friend even more so. She kept trying to get me to read the Booky Wooky. Sadly, I never got around to it. My loss, no doubt.
A girl I was seeing likes him, and so as not to be a complete fun sponge, I tried reading that nonsense - it was nonsense, I got to about page twenty
A friend of mine used to date Russell Brand’s make up artist - it shows how easily people are dazzled by fame, Brand drew a picture of a Willy on my mates arm with their names next to it, & my normally sensible ish friend thought it was absolutely hilarious, getting quite upset with me when I said I didnt see what was funny about it, and neither would he if one of the blokes in the pub had drawn it
Actually, Brand is capable of writing beautiful prose - in very short bursts
He did a travel piece about snorkelling/scuba - in the Maldives? Guardian? - maybe 10-15 years ago and I remember thinking the first three of four paragraphs were inspired. He’s not an idiot, he’s clever and talented. He is quite possibly an evil predator as well but it is foolish to dismiss him as some imbecile that got lucky
I never liked his comedy, that said. Just not funny
Maybe his travel journalism was great. But his attempts at comedy were horrific, and he made me cringe every time I saw him on tv, which wasn’t often as I’d turn off. The book I read a few pages of was self indulgent crap as I remember, written in that faux cockney child voice he puts on
You purchased.. His book... ! What sort of nut are you Mr Isam!
Greg Hands whining about Labour giving votes to 16 and 17 year olds . Accusing them of vote rigging ! From the party who brought in new voter ID which was aimed at disenfranchising opposition voters .
If you can join the army , have sex and work why are you too young to vote ?
Strange that there is so much horror about the BBC getting a car for Russell Brand’s 16yo girlfriend really
When Brand was in his 30s, and sending a BBC car to pick her up from school, yes.
Ditto Philip Schofield and and his legal-but-not-moral boyfriend who worked with him.
If the BBC car story is true, there ought to be a record of it in an organisation as bureaucratic as Auntie. How would Brand have justified it unless she were a guest on his programme? Is it not more likely he sent a posh minicab? Anyway, we'll see.
There is a lot in the Brand story that is scandalous but not much illegal and even the rape claims may come down to he said/she said. Enough to see Brand cancelled but not incarcerated, perhaps.
The story in the paper was that it was a taxi. Where has the idea that it was a BBC car come from?
Presumably a taxi with the tab picked up by... the BBC. Isn't that's what is meant by "We'll send a car for you?"
Greg Hands whining about Labour giving votes to 16 and 17 year olds . Accusing them of vote rigging ! From the party who brought in new voter ID which was aimed at disenfranchising opposition voters .
If you can join the army , have sex and work why are you too young to vote ?
Strange that there is so much horror about the BBC getting a car for Russell Brand’s 16yo girlfriend really
People might think it’s pervy dating a 16 year old but the law is the law . I find it strange that any woman would find Brand attractive .
Bit of an inopportune day for Lucy Powell to be going on about it being legal for 16yo to have sex, when the headlines are about the grooming of a 16yo.
Yes, I can’t stand him, but a lot of women seem(ed) to be desperate to have sex with him.
My eldest daughter was very fond of him at one point and her friend even more so. She kept trying to get me to read the Booky Wooky. Sadly, I never got around to it. My loss, no doubt.
A girl I was seeing likes him, and so as not to be a complete fun sponge, I tried reading that nonsense - it was nonsense, I got to about page twenty
A friend of mine used to date Russell Brand’s make up artist - it shows how easily people are dazzled by fame, Brand drew a picture of a Willy on my mates arm with their names next to it, & my normally sensible ish friend thought it was absolutely hilarious, getting quite upset with me when I said I didnt see what was funny about it, and neither would he if one of the blokes in the pub had drawn it
Actually, Brand is capable of writing beautiful prose - in very short bursts
He did a travel piece about snorkelling/scuba - in the Maldives? Guardian? - maybe 10-15 years ago and I remember thinking the first three of four paragraphs were inspired. He’s not an idiot, he’s clever and talented. He is quite possibly an evil predator as well but it is foolish to dismiss him as some imbecile that got lucky
I never liked his comedy, that said. Just not funny
He was (is?) funny being interviewed. He's witty. It's widely known that he's (was?) a predatory shagger. He survived 'Me too', so I question the hype behind his dirty linen being aired now.
"He survived 'Me too'"
As if Me Too was a one off event that drew a line in the sand. It was a key moment in insisting that sexual abuse and harassment is not OK but it's far from over.
Only a few days ago it was the NHS, doctors and an ignorant anaesthetist that were under the spotlight.
Did you think they'd survived Me Too so why now too?
“Probably the biggest delusion yet to be unpicked is Sir Keir's repeated assertion that there is a better deal with the EU out there. This is simply not true. There was a lot of vindictive commentary from the EU during the entire Brexit process, but the deal that was eventually agreed was a reasonable third-country trade deal.. If your bottom line is that you do not wish to rejoin the single market and the customs union, there really is not a lot more out there.”
Starmer has ruled out SM/CU. There is, in that case, nothing to be done. The EU is not interested in rolling over to give Starmer a special deal. Why would it?
His Labour government is going to collide with the tank traps of reality very quickly
As I said earlier joining the single market is the only way to change the EU, and anything else is cosmetic
And at the moment raising that issue is certain to rouse latent Brexit support from its slumber. Single Market is Freedom Of Movement. Single Market is putting all of those terrible Euroregulations back into British Law.
Personally, I'd be fine with that. I'd even be fine if we fully aligned indefinitely and waited for a monthly email from Brussels telling us what new stuff they've come up with for us. (The freedoms at a personal level seem worth it to me.) But it would send the right, and the press, dolally, and Starmer isn't going to touch the button marked "Pressing This Button Is Incredibly Risky". There are enough people who hate all that to give Rishi a liferaft he doesn't deserve.
It's going to be like I said in 2020.
The next thing we try, 2025ish, will be a TCA that realistically co-operates on trade. Vet agreements, standards marking, that sort of thing. It will help a bit, but no- not much. That looks like Starmer's plan. But he won't be PM forever.
Beyond that, it gets speculative, anything might happen, but I haven't seen anything to change my rough schedule.
Single Market will be 2030ish. We can probably chuck in some Union of Customs as well. The Brit deals aren't coming out with anything special, and we can leave CPTPP with six months notice.
And then, who knows? Maybe the UK will be fine tagging along with whatever Brussels says. A lot of it is boring technical stuff, and there is the possibility of being consulted. A bit. I don't think the UK political classes are going to be happy with that, which is why Rejoin might happen, but only under a new generation of politicians.
All a bit rubbish, because the UK is gently bleeding under the current arrangements. But I wouldn't have started here.
But we’re not gently bleeding. We are growing faster than Germany and about the same speed as France
Britain is not in a great position but neither is much of Europe, or, indeed, the world
98% of our problems have nothing to do with Brexit and many of them are down to chronic, self inflicted stupidity and a dysfunctional government and civil service - eg HS2
Oh for goodness sake even if we were roaring away successful and Europe was going off a cliff edge that doesn't mean Brexit is successful. You have to compare what you have gained to what you have lost, not compare us with another country and go 'look they are having problems too'. About the only thing you did get right there is it isn't all about Brexit. There are lots of other stuff that has an impact making your observation utterly pointless. You can only look at the gains and losses.
So the question is has the improvements in exporting and importing to the rest of the world greater than the loss in importing and exporting to Europe. To my mind the answer to that question is very very clear.
If not do the freedoms/restrictions of being outside of Europe in other areas outweigh the freedoms/restrictions of being in Europe. And the answer to that question in my mind is even clearer.
How many times can we repeat this argument? For me, Brexit is Brexit
Regaining sovereignty and proper democracy is really all that I cared about. That’s been done. So for me it is a success. I understand that you differ
What about Britain out of the EU makes it a "proper democracy"? A party that fails to win a majority of votes can still receive a majority of seats. An individual seat is still won by FPTP. Our Commons is still whipped and cajoled by the leadership, and very few votes fall outside of that. A political consensus that drips from the media and tufton street still holds sway. Indeed, the two major parties of government have very little policy differences between them - one of them offering a shit future administered poorly and the other one offering a shit future administered efficiently.
The biggest single win from Brexit has been preventing politicans doing things which they may or may not want to do and saying "EU rules, nothing we can do other than comply".
I'd vote for Brexit again tomorrow, regardless of economic cost, in order to prevent them getting that nasty little figleaf back (most of the time it was things they wanted to do, but the public wouldn't wear). A democracy where the top elected politicans can plausibly claim they are being made to do things the voters don't want by a higher power is not a proper democracy by any standard.
So the reason to leave the EU that helps safeguard democracy, in your view, is that instead of blaming Brussels (falsely) for things, the government now have to take responsibility? How's that working out?
Considering that a huge amount of the blaming Brussels narrative was created as part of the lengthy campaign to get out of the EU, as were many of the stories and positions mischaracterising EU rules and such, you're claiming that we have saved democracy from the very people who threatened it by giving them what they wanted? Grand.
"How's that working out?"
Fantastic.
We're going to have an election probably within a year and it will probably see a change in government as this current one is terrible.
When did that last meaningfully happen in the EU?
The thing with democracy is you may get terrible governments from time to time. You may get governments you despise from time to time. You may get governments doing things you hate from time to time. But you can campaign and vote to get them replaced, and it looks like next time we will get a replacement.
Ousting democracy to get what you want, is not progress.
Each member state in the EU has elections on their own timetables, with a change of government and European policy changing with that. As well as that there were regular European Parliament elections, which changed the way the EU would work.
We're also having the third GE since leaving the EU, have had a series of either paralyzed or incompetent governments - whose incompetence and paralysis were directly related to the issue of leaving the EU.
My issue with the argument is that many of the bad faith critics of the EU got what they wanted by us leaving. They were the ones whose rhetoric was leading to blaming Brussels for everything, and that strategy was rewarded. If theProle's issue was sincerely the ability for politicians to shift blame to Brussels for unpopular decisions (or lack of decisions) then the salve for that is a more honest political system, and not what we did: rewarding the most dishonest politicians with their policy preference and then the levers of power in government. And those of us who dislike the Tories have only SKS, another extremely dishonest politician, as a realistic alternative due to the other failures of British democracy that make the emergence of a two party system practically inevitable.
Greg Hands whining about Labour giving votes to 16 and 17 year olds . Accusing them of vote rigging ! From the party who brought in new voter ID which was aimed at disenfranchising opposition voters .
If you can join the army , have sex and work why are you too young to vote ?
Strange that there is so much horror about the BBC getting a car for Russell Brand’s 16yo girlfriend really
When Brand was in his 30s, and sending a BBC car to pick her up from school, yes.
Ditto Philip Schofield and and his legal-but-not-moral boyfriend who worked with him.
If the BBC car story is true, there ought to be a record of it in an organisation as bureaucratic as Auntie. How would Brand have justified it unless she were a guest on his programme? Is it not more likely he sent a posh minicab? Anyway, we'll see.
There is a lot in the Brand story that is scandalous but not much illegal and even the rape claims may come down to he said/she said. Enough to see Brand cancelled but not incarcerated, perhaps.
The story in the paper was that it was a taxi. Where has the idea that it was a BBC car come from?
Presumably a taxi with the tab picked up by... the BBC. Isn't that's what is meant by "We'll send a car for you?"
Yes, they used to do that routinely before Covid, for anyone they needed to interview in the studio. Nowadays they save a lot in fares by getting people to dial in on Teams and Zoom.
“Probably the biggest delusion yet to be unpicked is Sir Keir's repeated assertion that there is a better deal with the EU out there. This is simply not true. There was a lot of vindictive commentary from the EU during the entire Brexit process, but the deal that was eventually agreed was a reasonable third-country trade deal.. If your bottom line is that you do not wish to rejoin the single market and the customs union, there really is not a lot more out there.”
Starmer has ruled out SM/CU. There is, in that case, nothing to be done. The EU is not interested in rolling over to give Starmer a special deal. Why would it?
His Labour government is going to collide with the tank traps of reality very quickly
As I said earlier joining the single market is the only way to change the EU, and anything else is cosmetic
And at the moment raising that issue is certain to rouse latent Brexit support from its slumber. Single Market is Freedom Of Movement. Single Market is putting all of those terrible Euroregulations back into British Law.
Personally, I'd be fine with that. I'd even be fine if we fully aligned indefinitely and waited for a monthly email from Brussels telling us what new stuff they've come up with for us. (The freedoms at a personal level seem worth it to me.) But it would send the right, and the press, dolally, and Starmer isn't going to touch the button marked "Pressing This Button Is Incredibly Risky". There are enough people who hate all that to give Rishi a liferaft he doesn't deserve.
It's going to be like I said in 2020.
The next thing we try, 2025ish, will be a TCA that realistically co-operates on trade. Vet agreements, standards marking, that sort of thing. It will help a bit, but no- not much. That looks like Starmer's plan. But he won't be PM forever.
Beyond that, it gets speculative, anything might happen, but I haven't seen anything to change my rough schedule.
Single Market will be 2030ish. We can probably chuck in some Union of Customs as well. The Brit deals aren't coming out with anything special, and we can leave CPTPP with six months notice.
And then, who knows? Maybe the UK will be fine tagging along with whatever Brussels says. A lot of it is boring technical stuff, and there is the possibility of being consulted. A bit. I don't think the UK political classes are going to be happy with that, which is why Rejoin might happen, but only under a new generation of politicians.
All a bit rubbish, because the UK is gently bleeding under the current arrangements. But I wouldn't have started here.
But we’re not gently bleeding. We are growing faster than Germany and about the same speed as France
Britain is not in a great position but neither is much of Europe, or, indeed, the world
98% of our problems have nothing to do with Brexit and many of them are down to chronic, self inflicted stupidity and a dysfunctional government and civil service - eg HS2
Oh for goodness sake even if we were roaring away successful and Europe was going off a cliff edge that doesn't mean Brexit is successful. You have to compare what you have gained to what you have lost, not compare us with another country and go 'look they are having problems too'. About the only thing you did get right there is it isn't all about Brexit. There are lots of other stuff that has an impact making your observation utterly pointless. You can only look at the gains and losses.
So the question is has the improvements in exporting and importing to the rest of the world greater than the loss in importing and exporting to Europe. To my mind the answer to that question is very very clear.
If not do the freedoms/restrictions of being outside of Europe in other areas outweigh the freedoms/restrictions of being in Europe. And the answer to that question in my mind is even clearer.
How many times can we repeat this argument? For me, Brexit is Brexit
Regaining sovereignty and proper democracy is really all that I cared about. That’s been done. So for me it is a success. I understand that you differ
What about Britain out of the EU makes it a "proper democracy"? A party that fails to win a majority of votes can still receive a majority of seats. An individual seat is still won by FPTP. Our Commons is still whipped and cajoled by the leadership, and very few votes fall outside of that. A political consensus that drips from the media and tufton street still holds sway. Indeed, the two major parties of government have very little policy differences between them - one of them offering a shit future administered poorly and the other one offering a shit future administered efficiently.
The biggest single win from Brexit has been preventing politicans doing things which they may or may not want to do and saying "EU rules, nothing we can do other than comply".
I'd vote for Brexit again tomorrow, regardless of economic cost, in order to prevent them getting that nasty little figleaf back (most of the time it was things they wanted to do, but the public wouldn't wear). A democracy where the top elected politicans can plausibly claim they are being made to do things the voters don't want by a higher power is not a proper democracy by any standard.
So the reason to leave the EU that helps safeguard democracy, in your view, is that instead of blaming Brussels (falsely) for things, the government now have to take responsibility? How's that working out?
Considering that a huge amount of the blaming Brussels narrative was created as part of the lengthy campaign to get out of the EU, as were many of the stories and positions mischaracterising EU rules and such, you're claiming that we have saved democracy from the very people who threatened it by giving them what they wanted? Grand.
This is the opposite of the truth. What actually happened is that EU laws were written into UK statute covertly by Governments of all colours, with zero labelling, let alone complaints about their origins.
Bloody undemocratic UK Governments going about writing new laws into UK statute.
It wasn't a complaint; it was a simple statement of fact. It's one of the commonest remainer tropes that UK Governments 'blamed the EU' for all ills - they didn't. Cameron and Osborne may have had a few confected arguments with the EU over Juncker and 'I will not pay this bill' (before paying it), but the vast bulk of EU law made its way smoothly and discreetly on to the UK statute book with no debate about its origins, let alone the UK Governments complaining about it. Neither did the UK media pursue this line of enquiry.
God the news wires really are creating a new swathe of Brand fans.
All of a sudden we now have the concept of something being "technically legal", used when referencing his relationship with a 16-yr old when he was 30.
“Probably the biggest delusion yet to be unpicked is Sir Keir's repeated assertion that there is a better deal with the EU out there. This is simply not true. There was a lot of vindictive commentary from the EU during the entire Brexit process, but the deal that was eventually agreed was a reasonable third-country trade deal.. If your bottom line is that you do not wish to rejoin the single market and the customs union, there really is not a lot more out there.”
Starmer has ruled out SM/CU. There is, in that case, nothing to be done. The EU is not interested in rolling over to give Starmer a special deal. Why would it?
His Labour government is going to collide with the tank traps of reality very quickly
As I said earlier joining the single market is the only way to change the EU, and anything else is cosmetic
And at the moment raising that issue is certain to rouse latent Brexit support from its slumber. Single Market is Freedom Of Movement. Single Market is putting all of those terrible Euroregulations back into British Law.
Personally, I'd be fine with that. I'd even be fine if we fully aligned indefinitely and waited for a monthly email from Brussels telling us what new stuff they've come up with for us. (The freedoms at a personal level seem worth it to me.) But it would send the right, and the press, dolally, and Starmer isn't going to touch the button marked "Pressing This Button Is Incredibly Risky". There are enough people who hate all that to give Rishi a liferaft he doesn't deserve.
It's going to be like I said in 2020.
The next thing we try, 2025ish, will be a TCA that realistically co-operates on trade. Vet agreements, standards marking, that sort of thing. It will help a bit, but no- not much. That looks like Starmer's plan. But he won't be PM forever.
Beyond that, it gets speculative, anything might happen, but I haven't seen anything to change my rough schedule.
Single Market will be 2030ish. We can probably chuck in some Union of Customs as well. The Brit deals aren't coming out with anything special, and we can leave CPTPP with six months notice.
And then, who knows? Maybe the UK will be fine tagging along with whatever Brussels says. A lot of it is boring technical stuff, and there is the possibility of being consulted. A bit. I don't think the UK political classes are going to be happy with that, which is why Rejoin might happen, but only under a new generation of politicians.
All a bit rubbish, because the UK is gently bleeding under the current arrangements. But I wouldn't have started here.
But we’re not gently bleeding. We are growing faster than Germany and about the same speed as France
Britain is not in a great position but neither is much of Europe, or, indeed, the world
98% of our problems have nothing to do with Brexit and many of them are down to chronic, self inflicted stupidity and a dysfunctional government and civil service - eg HS2
Oh for goodness sake even if we were roaring away successful and Europe was going off a cliff edge that doesn't mean Brexit is successful. You have to compare what you have gained to what you have lost, not compare us with another country and go 'look they are having problems too'. About the only thing you did get right there is it isn't all about Brexit. There are lots of other stuff that has an impact making your observation utterly pointless. You can only look at the gains and losses.
So the question is has the improvements in exporting and importing to the rest of the world greater than the loss in importing and exporting to Europe. To my mind the answer to that question is very very clear.
If not do the freedoms/restrictions of being outside of Europe in other areas outweigh the freedoms/restrictions of being in Europe. And the answer to that question in my mind is even clearer.
How many times can we repeat this argument? For me, Brexit is Brexit
Regaining sovereignty and proper democracy is really all that I cared about. That’s been done. So for me it is a success. I understand that you differ
What about Britain out of the EU makes it a "proper democracy"? A party that fails to win a majority of votes can still receive a majority of seats. An individual seat is still won by FPTP. Our Commons is still whipped and cajoled by the leadership, and very few votes fall outside of that. A political consensus that drips from the media and tufton street still holds sway. Indeed, the two major parties of government have very little policy differences between them - one of them offering a shit future administered poorly and the other one offering a shit future administered efficiently.
The biggest single win from Brexit has been preventing politicans doing things which they may or may not want to do and saying "EU rules, nothing we can do other than comply".
I'd vote for Brexit again tomorrow, regardless of economic cost, in order to prevent them getting that nasty little figleaf back (most of the time it was things they wanted to do, but the public wouldn't wear). A democracy where the top elected politicans can plausibly claim they are being made to do things the voters don't want by a higher power is not a proper democracy by any standard.
So the reason to leave the EU that helps safeguard democracy, in your view, is that instead of blaming Brussels (falsely) for things, the government now have to take responsibility? How's that working out?
Considering that a huge amount of the blaming Brussels narrative was created as part of the lengthy campaign to get out of the EU, as were many of the stories and positions mischaracterising EU rules and such, you're claiming that we have saved democracy from the very people who threatened it by giving them what they wanted? Grand.
This is the opposite of the truth. What actually happened is that EU laws were written into UK statute covertly by Governments of all colours, with zero labelling, let alone complaints about their origins.
theProle's specific point was that being in the EU allowed Governments to use them as a "fig leaf" for things that UK parliament could do. That is what I am referring to.
Greg Hands whining about Labour giving votes to 16 and 17 year olds . Accusing them of vote rigging ! From the party who brought in new voter ID which was aimed at disenfranchising opposition voters .
If you can join the army , have sex and work why are you too young to vote ?
Strange that there is so much horror about the BBC getting a car for Russell Brand’s 16yo girlfriend really
People might think it’s pervy dating a 16 year old but the law is the law . I find it strange that any woman would find Brand attractive .
Bit of an inopportune day for Lucy Powell to be going on about it being legal for 16yo to have sex, when the headlines are about the grooming of a 16yo.
Yes, I can’t stand him, but a lot of women seem(ed) to be desperate to have sex with him.
My eldest daughter was very fond of him at one point and her friend even more so. She kept trying to get me to read the Booky Wooky. Sadly, I never got around to it. My loss, no doubt.
A girl I was seeing likes him, and so as not to be a complete fun sponge, I tried reading that nonsense - it was nonsense, I got to about page twenty
A friend of mine used to date Russell Brand’s make up artist - it shows how easily people are dazzled by fame, Brand drew a picture of a Willy on my mates arm with their names next to it, & my normally sensible ish friend thought it was absolutely hilarious, getting quite upset with me when I said I didnt see what was funny about it, and neither would he if one of the blokes in the pub had drawn it
Actually, Brand is capable of writing beautiful prose - in very short bursts
He did a travel piece about snorkelling/scuba - in the Maldives? Guardian? - maybe 10-15 years ago and I remember thinking the first three of four paragraphs were inspired. He’s not an idiot, he’s clever and talented. He is quite possibly an evil predator as well but it is foolish to dismiss him as some imbecile that got lucky
I never liked his comedy, that said. Just not funny
Maybe his travel journalism was great. But his attempts at comedy were horrific, and he made me cringe every time I saw him on tv, which wasn’t often as I’d turn off. The book I read a few pages of was self indulgent crap as I remember, written in that faux cockney child voice he puts on
Yes, not funny. I also cringed
Here’s a piece he wrote about a brouhaha at the GQ awards. It uses some of the lines from his travel piece. It is characteristically overwritten yet has some brilliant moments - “spilt cathedrals” - and some sharp insights - “Boris Johnson – a man perpetually in pyjamas regardless of what he's wearing”
God the news wires really are creating a new swathe of Brand fans.
All of a sudden we now have the concept of something being "technically legal", used when referencing his relationship with a 16-yr old when he was 30.
Isn't 'technically legal' the same as 'legal'?
I'm hoping that my drive home from work tonight meets the 'technically legal' pass mark...
Truss' complete disregard for the impact of her mini-budget, alongside the occasional person commenting that she wasn't given long enough to see if she was proven right, feels to me like the future of the Tory party is in the hands of Tufton Street. The consensus before she got in that she would be the change that was needed and the way many in right wing media have insulated her and have tried to help her with this rehabilitation tour is worrying to me.
I think it's clear that she was on her way to clown school when somehow she found herself elected as an MP. Quite how she managed to progress from there is baffling. (I'd not even venture a guess)
Because she knows the right people in the right places and parrots their words back to them. Did someone who went to uni with her not say that she was a LibDem until she started chatting to the political crowd there and then said that the only way to make a career out of politics was to join the Tories, so she did?
Rory Stewart is far from a neutral observer, but he recounts being narked that Truss (same 2010 intake) was getting promoted so quickly when we wasn't. The reason the whips gave him was apparently that Truss was much better at fluently promoting the party line.
I miss Rory. But he was never a blind parrot. He had a tendency to think about things.
“Probably the biggest delusion yet to be unpicked is Sir Keir's repeated assertion that there is a better deal with the EU out there. This is simply not true. There was a lot of vindictive commentary from the EU during the entire Brexit process, but the deal that was eventually agreed was a reasonable third-country trade deal.. If your bottom line is that you do not wish to rejoin the single market and the customs union, there really is not a lot more out there.”
Starmer has ruled out SM/CU. There is, in that case, nothing to be done. The EU is not interested in rolling over to give Starmer a special deal. Why would it?
His Labour government is going to collide with the tank traps of reality very quickly
As I said earlier joining the single market is the only way to change the EU, and anything else is cosmetic
And at the moment raising that issue is certain to rouse latent Brexit support from its slumber. Single Market is Freedom Of Movement. Single Market is putting all of those terrible Euroregulations back into British Law.
Personally, I'd be fine with that. I'd even be fine if we fully aligned indefinitely and waited for a monthly email from Brussels telling us what new stuff they've come up with for us. (The freedoms at a personal level seem worth it to me.) But it would send the right, and the press, dolally, and Starmer isn't going to touch the button marked "Pressing This Button Is Incredibly Risky". There are enough people who hate all that to give Rishi a liferaft he doesn't deserve.
It's going to be like I said in 2020.
The next thing we try, 2025ish, will be a TCA that realistically co-operates on trade. Vet agreements, standards marking, that sort of thing. It will help a bit, but no- not much. That looks like Starmer's plan. But he won't be PM forever.
Beyond that, it gets speculative, anything might happen, but I haven't seen anything to change my rough schedule.
Single Market will be 2030ish. We can probably chuck in some Union of Customs as well. The Brit deals aren't coming out with anything special, and we can leave CPTPP with six months notice.
And then, who knows? Maybe the UK will be fine tagging along with whatever Brussels says. A lot of it is boring technical stuff, and there is the possibility of being consulted. A bit. I don't think the UK political classes are going to be happy with that, which is why Rejoin might happen, but only under a new generation of politicians.
All a bit rubbish, because the UK is gently bleeding under the current arrangements. But I wouldn't have started here.
But we’re not gently bleeding. We are growing faster than Germany and about the same speed as France
Britain is not in a great position but neither is much of Europe, or, indeed, the world
98% of our problems have nothing to do with Brexit and many of them are down to chronic, self inflicted stupidity and a dysfunctional government and civil service - eg HS2
Oh for goodness sake even if we were roaring away successful and Europe was going off a cliff edge that doesn't mean Brexit is successful. You have to compare what you have gained to what you have lost, not compare us with another country and go 'look they are having problems too'. About the only thing you did get right there is it isn't all about Brexit. There are lots of other stuff that has an impact making your observation utterly pointless. You can only look at the gains and losses.
So the question is has the improvements in exporting and importing to the rest of the world greater than the loss in importing and exporting to Europe. To my mind the answer to that question is very very clear.
If not do the freedoms/restrictions of being outside of Europe in other areas outweigh the freedoms/restrictions of being in Europe. And the answer to that question in my mind is even clearer.
How many times can we repeat this argument? For me, Brexit is Brexit
Regaining sovereignty and proper democracy is really all that I cared about. That’s been done. So for me it is a success. I understand that you differ
What about Britain out of the EU makes it a "proper democracy"? A party that fails to win a majority of votes can still receive a majority of seats. An individual seat is still won by FPTP. Our Commons is still whipped and cajoled by the leadership, and very few votes fall outside of that. A political consensus that drips from the media and tufton street still holds sway. Indeed, the two major parties of government have very little policy differences between them - one of them offering a shit future administered poorly and the other one offering a shit future administered efficiently.
The biggest single win from Brexit has been preventing politicans doing things which they may or may not want to do and saying "EU rules, nothing we can do other than comply".
I'd vote for Brexit again tomorrow, regardless of economic cost, in order to prevent them getting that nasty little figleaf back (most of the time it was things they wanted to do, but the public wouldn't wear). A democracy where the top elected politicans can plausibly claim they are being made to do things the voters don't want by a higher power is not a proper democracy by any standard.
So the reason to leave the EU that helps safeguard democracy, in your view, is that instead of blaming Brussels (falsely) for things, the government now have to take responsibility? How's that working out?
Considering that a huge amount of the blaming Brussels narrative was created as part of the lengthy campaign to get out of the EU, as were many of the stories and positions mischaracterising EU rules and such, you're claiming that we have saved democracy from the very people who threatened it by giving them what they wanted? Grand.
"How's that working out?"
Fantastic.
We're going to have an election probably within a year and it will probably see a change in government as this current one is terrible.
When did that last meaningfully happen in the EU?
The thing with democracy is you may get terrible governments from time to time. You may get governments you despise from time to time. You may get governments doing things you hate from time to time. But you can campaign and vote to get them replaced, and it looks like next time we will get a replacement.
Ousting democracy to get what you want, is not progress.
Each member state in the EU has elections on their own timetables, with a change of government and European policy changing with that. As well as that there were regular European Parliament elections, which changed the way the EU would work.
We're also having the third GE since leaving the EU, have had a series of either paralyzed or incompetent governments - whose incompetence and paralysis were directly related to the issue of leaving the EU.
My issue with the argument is that many of the bad faith critics of the EU got what they wanted by us leaving. They were the ones whose rhetoric was leading to blaming Brussels for everything, and that strategy was rewarded. If theProle's issue was sincerely the ability for politicians to shift blame to Brussels for unpopular decisions (or lack of decisions) then the salve for that is a more honest political system, and not what we did: rewarding the most dishonest politicians with their policy preference and then the levers of power in government. And those of us who dislike the Tories have only SKS, another extremely dishonest politician, as a realistic alternative due to the other failures of British democracy that make the emergence of a two party system practically inevitable.
There has not been a UK-GE since leaving the EU. There have been 3 GEs since the referendum.
Greg Hands whining about Labour giving votes to 16 and 17 year olds . Accusing them of vote rigging ! From the party who brought in new voter ID which was aimed at disenfranchising opposition voters .
If you can join the army , have sex and work why are you too young to vote ?
Strange that there is so much horror about the BBC getting a car for Russell Brand’s 16yo girlfriend really
People might think it’s pervy dating a 16 year old but the law is the law . I find it strange that any woman would find Brand attractive .
Bit of an inopportune day for Lucy Powell to be going on about it being legal for 16yo to have sex, when the headlines are about the grooming of a 16yo.
Yes, I can’t stand him, but a lot of women seem(ed) to be desperate to have sex with him.
My eldest daughter was very fond of him at one point and her friend even more so. She kept trying to get me to read the Booky Wooky. Sadly, I never got around to it. My loss, no doubt.
A girl I was seeing likes him, and so as not to be a complete fun sponge, I tried reading that nonsense - it was nonsense, I got to about page twenty
A friend of mine used to date Russell Brand’s make up artist - it shows how easily people are dazzled by fame, Brand drew a picture of a Willy on my mates arm with their names next to it, & my normally sensible ish friend thought it was absolutely hilarious, getting quite upset with me when I said I didnt see what was funny about it, and neither would he if one of the blokes in the pub had drawn it
Actually, Brand is capable of writing beautiful prose - in very short bursts
He did a travel piece about snorkelling/scuba - in the Maldives? Guardian? - maybe 10-15 years ago and I remember thinking the first three of four paragraphs were inspired. He’s not an idiot, he’s clever and talented. He is quite possibly an evil predator as well but it is foolish to dismiss him as some imbecile that got lucky
I never liked his comedy, that said. Just not funny
Maybe his travel journalism was great. But his attempts at comedy were horrific, and he made me cringe every time I saw him on tv, which wasn’t often as I’d turn off. The book I read a few pages of was self indulgent crap as I remember, written in that faux cockney child voice he puts on
You purchased.. His book... ! What sort of nut are you Mr Isam!
God the news wires really are creating a new swathe of Brand fans.
All of a sudden we now have the concept of something being "technically legal", used when referencing his relationship with a 16-yr old when he was 30.
I mean, the claims were not hat he was having relationships with underaged women - the claims are that he sexually assaulted them, abused them, and, in some cases, raped them. That he had multiple relationships with women much younger than him just says, to me, that he was interested in relationships with inexperienced women who may not be as aware of healthy relationships and the confidence in calling out his behaviour. There is an inherent power imbalance when a 30 year old is going out with a 16 year old that, when taken in the context of the other allegations, puts them in a different light.
“Probably the biggest delusion yet to be unpicked is Sir Keir's repeated assertion that there is a better deal with the EU out there. This is simply not true. There was a lot of vindictive commentary from the EU during the entire Brexit process, but the deal that was eventually agreed was a reasonable third-country trade deal.. If your bottom line is that you do not wish to rejoin the single market and the customs union, there really is not a lot more out there.”
Starmer has ruled out SM/CU. There is, in that case, nothing to be done. The EU is not interested in rolling over to give Starmer a special deal. Why would it?
His Labour government is going to collide with the tank traps of reality very quickly
As I said earlier joining the single market is the only way to change the EU, and anything else is cosmetic
And at the moment raising that issue is certain to rouse latent Brexit support from its slumber. Single Market is Freedom Of Movement. Single Market is putting all of those terrible Euroregulations back into British Law.
Personally, I'd be fine with that. I'd even be fine if we fully aligned indefinitely and waited for a monthly email from Brussels telling us what new stuff they've come up with for us. (The freedoms at a personal level seem worth it to me.) But it would send the right, and the press, dolally, and Starmer isn't going to touch the button marked "Pressing This Button Is Incredibly Risky". There are enough people who hate all that to give Rishi a liferaft he doesn't deserve.
It's going to be like I said in 2020.
The next thing we try, 2025ish, will be a TCA that realistically co-operates on trade. Vet agreements, standards marking, that sort of thing. It will help a bit, but no- not much. That looks like Starmer's plan. But he won't be PM forever.
Beyond that, it gets speculative, anything might happen, but I haven't seen anything to change my rough schedule.
Single Market will be 2030ish. We can probably chuck in some Union of Customs as well. The Brit deals aren't coming out with anything special, and we can leave CPTPP with six months notice.
And then, who knows? Maybe the UK will be fine tagging along with whatever Brussels says. A lot of it is boring technical stuff, and there is the possibility of being consulted. A bit. I don't think the UK political classes are going to be happy with that, which is why Rejoin might happen, but only under a new generation of politicians.
All a bit rubbish, because the UK is gently bleeding under the current arrangements. But I wouldn't have started here.
But we’re not gently bleeding. We are growing faster than Germany and about the same speed as France
Britain is not in a great position but neither is much of Europe, or, indeed, the world
98% of our problems have nothing to do with Brexit and many of them are down to chronic, self inflicted stupidity and a dysfunctional government and civil service - eg HS2
Oh for goodness sake even if we were roaring away successful and Europe was going off a cliff edge that doesn't mean Brexit is successful. You have to compare what you have gained to what you have lost, not compare us with another country and go 'look they are having problems too'. About the only thing you did get right there is it isn't all about Brexit. There are lots of other stuff that has an impact making your observation utterly pointless. You can only look at the gains and losses.
So the question is has the improvements in exporting and importing to the rest of the world greater than the loss in importing and exporting to Europe. To my mind the answer to that question is very very clear.
If not do the freedoms/restrictions of being outside of Europe in other areas outweigh the freedoms/restrictions of being in Europe. And the answer to that question in my mind is even clearer.
How many times can we repeat this argument? For me, Brexit is Brexit
Regaining sovereignty and proper democracy is really all that I cared about. That’s been done. So for me it is a success. I understand that you differ
What about Britain out of the EU makes it a "proper democracy"? A party that fails to win a majority of votes can still receive a majority of seats. An individual seat is still won by FPTP. Our Commons is still whipped and cajoled by the leadership, and very few votes fall outside of that. A political consensus that drips from the media and tufton street still holds sway. Indeed, the two major parties of government have very little policy differences between them - one of them offering a shit future administered poorly and the other one offering a shit future administered efficiently.
The biggest single win from Brexit has been preventing politicans doing things which they may or may not want to do and saying "EU rules, nothing we can do other than comply".
I'd vote for Brexit again tomorrow, regardless of economic cost, in order to prevent them getting that nasty little figleaf back (most of the time it was things they wanted to do, but the public wouldn't wear). A democracy where the top elected politicans can plausibly claim they are being made to do things the voters don't want by a higher power is not a proper democracy by any standard.
So the reason to leave the EU that helps safeguard democracy, in your view, is that instead of blaming Brussels (falsely) for things, the government now have to take responsibility? How's that working out?
Considering that a huge amount of the blaming Brussels narrative was created as part of the lengthy campaign to get out of the EU, as were many of the stories and positions mischaracterising EU rules and such, you're claiming that we have saved democracy from the very people who threatened it by giving them what they wanted? Grand.
"How's that working out?"
Fantastic.
We're going to have an election probably within a year and it will probably see a change in government as this current one is terrible.
When did that last meaningfully happen in the EU?
The thing with democracy is you may get terrible governments from time to time. You may get governments you despise from time to time. You may get governments doing things you hate from time to time. But you can campaign and vote to get them replaced, and it looks like next time we will get a replacement.
Ousting democracy to get what you want, is not progress.
Each member state in the EU has elections on their own timetables, with a change of government and European policy changing with that. As well as that there were regular European Parliament elections, which changed the way the EU would work.
We're also having the third GE since leaving the EU, have had a series of either paralyzed or incompetent governments - whose incompetence and paralysis were directly related to the issue of leaving the EU.
My issue with the argument is that many of the bad faith critics of the EU got what they wanted by us leaving. They were the ones whose rhetoric was leading to blaming Brussels for everything, and that strategy was rewarded. If theProle's issue was sincerely the ability for politicians to shift blame to Brussels for unpopular decisions (or lack of decisions) then the salve for that is a more honest political system, and not what we did: rewarding the most dishonest politicians with their policy preference and then the levers of power in government. And those of us who dislike the Tories have only SKS, another extremely dishonest politician, as a realistic alternative due to the other failures of British democracy that make the emergence of a two party system practically inevitable.
There has not been a UK-GE since leaving the EU. There have been 3 GEs since the referendum.
Poor wording on my part; but my point still stands that the politics of leaving the EU have not had a great impact on the politics of this country. Which was a response to theProle saying that removing the figleaf of the EU as a barrier to policy from government was their main impetus for their continued support of Brexit.
“Probably the biggest delusion yet to be unpicked is Sir Keir's repeated assertion that there is a better deal with the EU out there. This is simply not true. There was a lot of vindictive commentary from the EU during the entire Brexit process, but the deal that was eventually agreed was a reasonable third-country trade deal.. If your bottom line is that you do not wish to rejoin the single market and the customs union, there really is not a lot more out there.”
Starmer has ruled out SM/CU. There is, in that case, nothing to be done. The EU is not interested in rolling over to give Starmer a special deal. Why would it?
His Labour government is going to collide with the tank traps of reality very quickly
As I said earlier joining the single market is the only way to change the EU, and anything else is cosmetic
And at the moment raising that issue is certain to rouse latent Brexit support from its slumber. Single Market is Freedom Of Movement. Single Market is putting all of those terrible Euroregulations back into British Law.
Personally, I'd be fine with that. I'd even be fine if we fully aligned indefinitely and waited for a monthly email from Brussels telling us what new stuff they've come up with for us. (The freedoms at a personal level seem worth it to me.) But it would send the right, and the press, dolally, and Starmer isn't going to touch the button marked "Pressing This Button Is Incredibly Risky". There are enough people who hate all that to give Rishi a liferaft he doesn't deserve.
It's going to be like I said in 2020.
The next thing we try, 2025ish, will be a TCA that realistically co-operates on trade. Vet agreements, standards marking, that sort of thing. It will help a bit, but no- not much. That looks like Starmer's plan. But he won't be PM forever.
Beyond that, it gets speculative, anything might happen, but I haven't seen anything to change my rough schedule.
Single Market will be 2030ish. We can probably chuck in some Union of Customs as well. The Brit deals aren't coming out with anything special, and we can leave CPTPP with six months notice.
And then, who knows? Maybe the UK will be fine tagging along with whatever Brussels says. A lot of it is boring technical stuff, and there is the possibility of being consulted. A bit. I don't think the UK political classes are going to be happy with that, which is why Rejoin might happen, but only under a new generation of politicians.
All a bit rubbish, because the UK is gently bleeding under the current arrangements. But I wouldn't have started here.
But we’re not gently bleeding. We are growing faster than Germany and about the same speed as France
Britain is not in a great position but neither is much of Europe, or, indeed, the world
98% of our problems have nothing to do with Brexit and many of them are down to chronic, self inflicted stupidity and a dysfunctional government and civil service - eg HS2
Oh for goodness sake even if we were roaring away successful and Europe was going off a cliff edge that doesn't mean Brexit is successful. You have to compare what you have gained to what you have lost, not compare us with another country and go 'look they are having problems too'. About the only thing you did get right there is it isn't all about Brexit. There are lots of other stuff that has an impact making your observation utterly pointless. You can only look at the gains and losses.
So the question is has the improvements in exporting and importing to the rest of the world greater than the loss in importing and exporting to Europe. To my mind the answer to that question is very very clear.
If not do the freedoms/restrictions of being outside of Europe in other areas outweigh the freedoms/restrictions of being in Europe. And the answer to that question in my mind is even clearer.
How many times can we repeat this argument? For me, Brexit is Brexit
Regaining sovereignty and proper democracy is really all that I cared about. That’s been done. So for me it is a success. I understand that you differ
What about Britain out of the EU makes it a "proper democracy"? A party that fails to win a majority of votes can still receive a majority of seats. An individual seat is still won by FPTP. Our Commons is still whipped and cajoled by the leadership, and very few votes fall outside of that. A political consensus that drips from the media and tufton street still holds sway. Indeed, the two major parties of government have very little policy differences between them - one of them offering a shit future administered poorly and the other one offering a shit future administered efficiently.
The biggest single win from Brexit has been preventing politicans doing things which they may or may not want to do and saying "EU rules, nothing we can do other than comply".
I'd vote for Brexit again tomorrow, regardless of economic cost, in order to prevent them getting that nasty little figleaf back (most of the time it was things they wanted to do, but the public wouldn't wear). A democracy where the top elected politicans can plausibly claim they are being made to do things the voters don't want by a higher power is not a proper democracy by any standard.
So the reason to leave the EU that helps safeguard democracy, in your view, is that instead of blaming Brussels (falsely) for things, the government now have to take responsibility? How's that working out?
Considering that a huge amount of the blaming Brussels narrative was created as part of the lengthy campaign to get out of the EU, as were many of the stories and positions mischaracterising EU rules and such, you're claiming that we have saved democracy from the very people who threatened it by giving them what they wanted? Grand.
This is the opposite of the truth. What actually happened is that EU laws were written into UK statute covertly by Governments of all colours, with zero labelling, let alone complaints about their origins.
Bloody undemocratic UK Governments going about writing new laws into UK statute.
It wasn't a complaint; it was a simple statement of fact. It's one of the commonest remainer tropes that UK Governments 'blamed the EU' for all ills - they didn't. Cameron and Osborne may have had a few confected arguments with the EU over Juncker and 'I will not pay this bill' (before paying it), but the vast bulk of EU law made its way smoothly and discreetly on to the UK statute book with no debate about its origins, let alone the UK Governments complaining about it. Neither did the UK media pursue this line of enquiry.
I know I'm unlikely to convince anyone here who isn't already convinced, but. The vast majority of UK domestic law makes its way smoothly and discreetly on to the UK statute book with virtually no debate (in some cases no debate at all), or anyone complaining about it.
That was always the case, and it's because huge swathes of lawmaking are pretty prosaic, housekeeping stuff. I work in the world of tax: 99% of domestic tax law changes are administrative or esoteric and get scarcely a mention in the commons, at least in part because the legislators wouldn't know what questions to ask. That's very much the same as for EU tax law, which of course still affects most of our larger businesses anyway because they trade internationally. Anything controversial tended to be picked up by the politicians and the tabloids anyway.
God the news wires really are creating a new swathe of Brand fans.
All of a sudden we now have the concept of something being "technically legal", used when referencing his relationship with a 16-yr old when he was 30.
Brand is going to have a field day, taking on the hypocrites in the media. As much as his being a latter-day libertine, rake and dandy has meant many were aware of his excesses, he will not be without his own fund of stories about those now professing to clutch their pearls and have a fit of the vapours. Many witnessed at first hand.
As long as he can continue to keep his platform on YouTube, I suspect life could get very uncomfortable for those who have chosen to pile on. One thing he will do very well is mocking them.
Greg Hands whining about Labour giving votes to 16 and 17 year olds . Accusing them of vote rigging ! From the party who brought in new voter ID which was aimed at disenfranchising opposition voters .
If you can join the army , have sex and work why are you too young to vote ?
Strange that there is so much horror about the BBC getting a car for Russell Brand’s 16yo girlfriend really
People might think it’s pervy dating a 16 year old but the law is the law . I find it strange that any woman would find Brand attractive .
Bit of an inopportune day for Lucy Powell to be going on about it being legal for 16yo to have sex, when the headlines are about the grooming of a 16yo.
Yes, I can’t stand him, but a lot of women seem(ed) to be desperate to have sex with him.
My eldest daughter was very fond of him at one point and her friend even more so. She kept trying to get me to read the Booky Wooky. Sadly, I never got around to it. My loss, no doubt.
A girl I was seeing likes him, and so as not to be a complete fun sponge, I tried reading that nonsense - it was nonsense, I got to about page twenty
A friend of mine used to date Russell Brand’s make up artist - it shows how easily people are dazzled by fame, Brand drew a picture of a Willy on my mates arm with their names next to it, & my normally sensible ish friend thought it was absolutely hilarious, getting quite upset with me when I said I didnt see what was funny about it, and neither would he if one of the blokes in the pub had drawn it
Actually, Brand is capable of writing beautiful prose - in very short bursts
He did a travel piece about snorkelling/scuba - in the Maldives? Guardian? - maybe 10-15 years ago and I remember thinking the first three of four paragraphs were inspired. He’s not an idiot, he’s clever and talented. He is quite possibly an evil predator as well but it is foolish to dismiss him as some imbecile that got lucky
I never liked his comedy, that said. Just not funny
Maybe his travel journalism was great. But his attempts at comedy were horrific, and he made me cringe every time I saw him on tv, which wasn’t often as I’d turn off. The book I read a few pages of was self indulgent crap as I remember, written in that faux cockney child voice he puts on
Yes, not funny. I also cringed
Here’s a piece he wrote about a brouhaha at the GQ awards. It uses some of the lines from his travel piece. It is characteristically overwritten yet has some brilliant moments - “spilt cathedrals” - and some sharp insights - “Boris Johnson – a man perpetually in pyjamas regardless of what he's wearing”
If there is a 21st Century working class genius, it is Alex Turner for writing AM - I listened to it ten years too late, and can’t stop; an absolute masterpiece
God the news wires really are creating a new swathe of Brand fans.
All of a sudden we now have the concept of something being "technically legal", used when referencing his relationship with a 16-yr old when he was 30.
Brand is going to have a field day, taking on the hypocrites in the media. As much as his being a latter-day libertine, rake and dandy has meant many were aware of his excesses, he will not be without his own fund of stories about those now professing to clutch their pearls and have a fit of the vapours. Many witnessed at first hand.
As long as he can continue to keep his platform on YouTube, I suspect life could get very uncomfortable for those who have chosen to pile on. One thing he will do very well is mocking them.
He was called a 'vile predator' by Dannii Minogue in 2006.
“Probably the biggest delusion yet to be unpicked is Sir Keir's repeated assertion that there is a better deal with the EU out there. This is simply not true. There was a lot of vindictive commentary from the EU during the entire Brexit process, but the deal that was eventually agreed was a reasonable third-country trade deal.. If your bottom line is that you do not wish to rejoin the single market and the customs union, there really is not a lot more out there.”
Starmer has ruled out SM/CU. There is, in that case, nothing to be done. The EU is not interested in rolling over to give Starmer a special deal. Why would it?
His Labour government is going to collide with the tank traps of reality very quickly
As I said earlier joining the single market is the only way to change the EU, and anything else is cosmetic
And at the moment raising that issue is certain to rouse latent Brexit support from its slumber. Single Market is Freedom Of Movement. Single Market is putting all of those terrible Euroregulations back into British Law.
Personally, I'd be fine with that. I'd even be fine if we fully aligned indefinitely and waited for a monthly email from Brussels telling us what new stuff they've come up with for us. (The freedoms at a personal level seem worth it to me.) But it would send the right, and the press, dolally, and Starmer isn't going to touch the button marked "Pressing This Button Is Incredibly Risky". There are enough people who hate all that to give Rishi a liferaft he doesn't deserve.
It's going to be like I said in 2020.
The next thing we try, 2025ish, will be a TCA that realistically co-operates on trade. Vet agreements, standards marking, that sort of thing. It will help a bit, but no- not much. That looks like Starmer's plan. But he won't be PM forever.
Beyond that, it gets speculative, anything might happen, but I haven't seen anything to change my rough schedule.
Single Market will be 2030ish. We can probably chuck in some Union of Customs as well. The Brit deals aren't coming out with anything special, and we can leave CPTPP with six months notice.
And then, who knows? Maybe the UK will be fine tagging along with whatever Brussels says. A lot of it is boring technical stuff, and there is the possibility of being consulted. A bit. I don't think the UK political classes are going to be happy with that, which is why Rejoin might happen, but only under a new generation of politicians.
All a bit rubbish, because the UK is gently bleeding under the current arrangements. But I wouldn't have started here.
But we’re not gently bleeding. We are growing faster than Germany and about the same speed as France
Britain is not in a great position but neither is much of Europe, or, indeed, the world
98% of our problems have nothing to do with Brexit and many of them are down to chronic, self inflicted stupidity and a dysfunctional government and civil service - eg HS2
Oh for goodness sake even if we were roaring away successful and Europe was going off a cliff edge that doesn't mean Brexit is successful. You have to compare what you have gained to what you have lost, not compare us with another country and go 'look they are having problems too'. About the only thing you did get right there is it isn't all about Brexit. There are lots of other stuff that has an impact making your observation utterly pointless. You can only look at the gains and losses.
So the question is has the improvements in exporting and importing to the rest of the world greater than the loss in importing and exporting to Europe. To my mind the answer to that question is very very clear.
If not do the freedoms/restrictions of being outside of Europe in other areas outweigh the freedoms/restrictions of being in Europe. And the answer to that question in my mind is even clearer.
How many times can we repeat this argument? For me, Brexit is Brexit
Regaining sovereignty and proper democracy is really all that I cared about. That’s been done. So for me it is a success. I understand that you differ
What about Britain out of the EU makes it a "proper democracy"? A party that fails to win a majority of votes can still receive a majority of seats. An individual seat is still won by FPTP. Our Commons is still whipped and cajoled by the leadership, and very few votes fall outside of that. A political consensus that drips from the media and tufton street still holds sway. Indeed, the two major parties of government have very little policy differences between them - one of them offering a shit future administered poorly and the other one offering a shit future administered efficiently.
The biggest single win from Brexit has been preventing politicans doing things which they may or may not want to do and saying "EU rules, nothing we can do other than comply".
I'd vote for Brexit again tomorrow, regardless of economic cost, in order to prevent them getting that nasty little figleaf back (most of the time it was things they wanted to do, but the public wouldn't wear). A democracy where the top elected politicans can plausibly claim they are being made to do things the voters don't want by a higher power is not a proper democracy by any standard.
So the reason to leave the EU that helps safeguard democracy, in your view, is that instead of blaming Brussels (falsely) for things, the government now have to take responsibility? How's that working out?
Considering that a huge amount of the blaming Brussels narrative was created as part of the lengthy campaign to get out of the EU, as were many of the stories and positions mischaracterising EU rules and such, you're claiming that we have saved democracy from the very people who threatened it by giving them what they wanted? Grand.
This is the opposite of the truth. What actually happened is that EU laws were written into UK statute covertly by Governments of all colours, with zero labelling, let alone complaints about their origins.
Bloody undemocratic UK Governments going about writing new laws into UK statute.
It wasn't a complaint; it was a simple statement of fact. It's one of the commonest remainer tropes that UK Governments 'blamed the EU' for all ills - they didn't. Cameron and Osborne may have had a few confected arguments with the EU over Juncker and 'I will not pay this bill' (before paying it), but the vast bulk of EU law made its way smoothly and discreetly on to the UK statute book with no debate about its origins, let alone the UK Governments complaining about it. Neither did the UK media pursue this line of enquiry.
I know I'm unlikely to convince anyone here who isn't already convinced, but. The vast majority of UK domestic law makes its way smoothly and discreetly on to the UK statute book with virtually no debate (in some cases no debate at all), or anyone complaining about it.
That was always the case, and it's because huge swathes of lawmaking are pretty prosaic, housekeeping stuff. I work in the world of tax: 99% of domestic tax law changes are administrative or esoteric and get scarcely a mention in the commons, at least in part because the legislators wouldn't know what questions to ask. That's very much the same as for EU tax law, which of course still affects most of our larger businesses anyway because they trade internationally. Anything controversial tended to be picked up by the politicians and the tabloids anyway.
I don't disagree with that. But in general I would like UK Government reforms to be part of a programme inspired by the Government's electoral mandate.
Greg Hands whining about Labour giving votes to 16 and 17 year olds . Accusing them of vote rigging ! From the party who brought in new voter ID which was aimed at disenfranchising opposition voters .
If you can join the army , have sex and work why are you too young to vote ?
Strange that there is so much horror about the BBC getting a car for Russell Brand’s 16yo girlfriend really
People might think it’s pervy dating a 16 year old but the law is the law . I find it strange that any woman would find Brand attractive .
Bit of an inopportune day for Lucy Powell to be going on about it being legal for 16yo to have sex, when the headlines are about the grooming of a 16yo.
Yes, I can’t stand him, but a lot of women seem(ed) to be desperate to have sex with him.
My eldest daughter was very fond of him at one point and her friend even more so. She kept trying to get me to read the Booky Wooky. Sadly, I never got around to it. My loss, no doubt.
A girl I was seeing likes him, and so as not to be a complete fun sponge, I tried reading that nonsense - it was nonsense, I got to about page twenty
A friend of mine used to date Russell Brand’s make up artist - it shows how easily people are dazzled by fame, Brand drew a picture of a Willy on my mates arm with their names next to it, & my normally sensible ish friend thought it was absolutely hilarious, getting quite upset with me when I said I didnt see what was funny about it, and neither would he if one of the blokes in the pub had drawn it
Actually, Brand is capable of writing beautiful prose - in very short bursts
He did a travel piece about snorkelling/scuba - in the Maldives? Guardian? - maybe 10-15 years ago and I remember thinking the first three of four paragraphs were inspired. He’s not an idiot, he’s clever and talented. He is quite possibly an evil predator as well but it is foolish to dismiss him as some imbecile that got lucky
I never liked his comedy, that said. Just not funny
Maybe his travel journalism was great. But his attempts at comedy were horrific, and he made me cringe every time I saw him on tv, which wasn’t often as I’d turn off. The book I read a few pages of was self indulgent crap as I remember, written in that faux cockney child voice he puts on
You purchased.. His book... ! What sort of nut are you Mr Isam!
Surely I borrowed it! It was a long time ago
Excuse accepted, but if I see you browsing the celebrity biography section in Waterstones then I may have to report back.
Re Honours List In the minds of the average person, "what does it matter", they have more important fish to fry. If you said abolish the outmoded exercise full stop then that might be relevant
God the news wires really are creating a new swathe of Brand fans.
All of a sudden we now have the concept of something being "technically legal", used when referencing his relationship with a 16-yr old when he was 30.
I mean, the claims were not hat he was having relationships with underaged women - the claims are that he sexually assaulted them, abused them, and, in some cases, raped them. That he had multiple relationships with women much younger than him just says, to me, that he was interested in relationships with inexperienced women who may not be as aware of healthy relationships and the confidence in calling out his behaviour. There is an inherent power imbalance when a 30 year old is going out with a 16 year old that, when taken in the context of the other allegations, puts them in a different light.
Of course but, notwithstanding the abuse and rape claims, so what? Relationships are complicated and "inherent power imbalances" common for one reason or another.
Review what you wrote, take out the abuse/rape element (not that this should be done irl) and you are just describing behaviour you don't approve of. So what.
Greg Hands whining about Labour giving votes to 16 and 17 year olds . Accusing them of vote rigging ! From the party who brought in new voter ID which was aimed at disenfranchising opposition voters .
If you can join the army , have sex and work why are you too young to vote ?
Strange that there is so much horror about the BBC getting a car for Russell Brand’s 16yo girlfriend really
When Brand was in his 30s, and sending a BBC car to pick her up from school, yes.
Ditto Philip Schofield and and his legal-but-not-moral boyfriend who worked with him.
If the BBC car story is true, there ought to be a record of it in an organisation as bureaucratic as Auntie. How would Brand have justified it unless she were a guest on his programme? Is it not more likely he sent a posh minicab? Anyway, we'll see.
There is a lot in the Brand story that is scandalous but not much illegal and even the rape claims may come down to he said/she said. Enough to see Brand cancelled but not incarcerated, perhaps.
It’s not illegal to shag 16 year old girls - by definition. I very much doubt that the BBC has a contractual clause saying ‘BBC cars may not be used to collect partners of presenters’. Indeed on my few TV appearances - Knappers NewsDay etc - I’ve generally been offered a car and been told ‘we can pick up a friend or girlfriend if you want to bring someone’
This bit of the scandal is a non-story. There are much more serious allegations of course - the rape in LA
Greg Hands whining about Labour giving votes to 16 and 17 year olds . Accusing them of vote rigging ! From the party who brought in new voter ID which was aimed at disenfranchising opposition voters .
If you can join the army , have sex and work why are you too young to vote ?
Strange that there is so much horror about the BBC getting a car for Russell Brand’s 16yo girlfriend really
People might think it’s pervy dating a 16 year old but the law is the law . I find it strange that any woman would find Brand attractive .
Bit of an inopportune day for Lucy Powell to be going on about it being legal for 16yo to have sex, when the headlines are about the grooming of a 16yo.
Yes, I can’t stand him, but a lot of women seem(ed) to be desperate to have sex with him.
My eldest daughter was very fond of him at one point and her friend even more so. She kept trying to get me to read the Booky Wooky. Sadly, I never got around to it. My loss, no doubt.
A girl I was seeing likes him, and so as not to be a complete fun sponge, I tried reading that nonsense - it was nonsense, I got to about page twenty
A friend of mine used to date Russell Brand’s make up artist - it shows how easily people are dazzled by fame, Brand drew a picture of a Willy on my mates arm with their names next to it, & my normally sensible ish friend thought it was absolutely hilarious, getting quite upset with me when I said I didnt see what was funny about it, and neither would he if one of the blokes in the pub had drawn it
Actually, Brand is capable of writing beautiful prose - in very short bursts
He did a travel piece about snorkelling/scuba - in the Maldives? Guardian? - maybe 10-15 years ago and I remember thinking the first three of four paragraphs were inspired. He’s not an idiot, he’s clever and talented. He is quite possibly an evil predator as well but it is foolish to dismiss him as some imbecile that got lucky
I never liked his comedy, that said. Just not funny
He was (is?) funny being interviewed. He's witty. It's widely known that he's (was?) a predatory shagger. He survived 'Me too', so I question the hype behind his dirty linen being aired now.
Emily Maitlis on 2017 Russell Brand interview: "I went in ready to loathe him, but I was mesmerised"
I went to the interview prepared to loathe him.
I remember him being late and having his own make up room, and I thought, "what a narcissist". I hate people who do the power play thing by making an interviewer wait for no apparent reason.
And then he walked into the room and he is mesmerising, he is funny, smart, he is linguistic, his language is magnetic and he is charismatic. He charmed me https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WgH1k1MR1zc (2 minutes video)
More seriously, the Russians must know by now that they’re stuffed. Black Sea fleet on it’s way to being completely destroyed as a viable force, the entirety of their Soviet arsenal chewed up into pieces in the fields of Ukraine, along with the flower of both their infantry & cavalry. The only thing keeping them going is a stubborn refusal to admit the inevitable. Still, something might turn up for them I guess - a Trump 2024 victory perhaps? It seems hope is all they have left & hope is not a wining strategy.
On the other hand the great Ukrainian counter-offensive has been a terrifically expensive failure, chewing up tens of thousands of men to gain about 3 villages. Where is the oft-promised breakthrough? The severing of Russia’s land bridge to Crimea?
It’s not happening, is it? We are now in mid September and it all grinds on, pointlessly
Russia cannot win this war (without Trump) but nor, I fear, can Ukraine
They have a breakthrough in southern Ukraine. It’s painstaking work and doesn’t make for good TV so you judge it a failure
They don’t have a breakthrough. From today’s Guardian
“Earlier Maliar had issued a lengthy update on Telegram, claiming that Ukrainian forces have repelled Russian attacks in a number of areas, including in the Kupyansk, Bakhmut, and Marinka directions. Maliar also gave new figures for the amount of territory recaptured by Ukraine. She said 2 sq km had been captured around Bakhmut, and in the past week, and that 51 sq km had been recaptured there since the start of the counteroffensive“
51sq km. That’s about two London boroughs. Maybe 6km by 9km. At a cost of 10,000 men? 20,000? And it’s taken months
Face it, this is not working
They’ve also just sacked 6 defence ministers, which says something in itself
I'm not sure what you expect?
There's no magic way to win a war. You have to destroy the enemy army. Before you have done this they will be able to resist and hold ground.
I think there's decent evidence that Ukraine are inflicting greater losses then they are suffering, and so, if they are inflicting losses on Russia more quickly then Russia can replace those losses, they will eventually reach a point where Russia is unable to defend the current front line. But this will necessarily take time and it will look like not much progress is made while it plays out.
Meanwhile, for example, we can see that Ukraine is able to attack valuable Russians assets almost at will, whole Russia is unable to enforce it's blockade of Ukrainian ports.
Probably the wrong analogy, but in the first world war the British fought an epic battle on the Somme and then a year later another at Passchendaele, both often regarded as at best pyrrhic victories. Yet both were instrumental in the weakening and ultimate defeat of the Imperial German Army. The Somme was described as 'the muddy grave of the German Army' and resulted in the withdrawal to the Hindenburg Line in 1917. After Passchendaele a German general staff publication had "Germany had been brought near to certain destruction (sicheren Untergang) by the Flanders battle of 1917".
Yet after both battles, I suspect @Leon would have been calling them failures.
I cannot see the future, but I think the danger of Russia 'winning' in Ukraine is gone, and its now all about whether Russia can be ejected fully (and at what cost) or if Putin finally gets replaced. Regimes can fall very fast at the end.
It's not a terrible analogy, because it highlights that the enemy army has to be destroyed in order to defeat it, but there are key differences.
The most important is that Ukraine has an advantage with key weapons - drones, HIMARS, Storm Shadow, etc - which means they can destroy the Russian army with considerably less losses than that suffered by the British and French in WWI.
But another key difference is that the combined populations of France and Britain, and the British and French empires, vastly exceeded the population of the kaiser’s Germany. In brutal terms, the western powers could afford to lose more men than Berlin, in the end. And then the Americans joined in, tilting it even further
That is very much not the case here. The Russian population is 3x that of Ukraine
In a brutal war of attrition, this basic maths matters. I also dispute that Ukraine is losing fewer men now, than Russia. Ukraine is on the offensive, that is always more expensive in lives than defence
Ukraine haven't made many direct assaults of the kind that we saw in early June, where we saw damaged Leopard tanks. If they had we would be seeing the photos of it from the Russians. They've deliberately been fighting in a way to minimise casualties. It also sounds like the western kit might not be magic in terms of forcing a breakthrough, but does a great job on saving lives. The Ukrainian tank crews are walking away from most of Western armoured vehicles when they're damaged or destroyed.
So I think it's quite plausible that Ukrainian casualties are lower than Russian.
Also, number of soldiers dead is not likely to be the determinant of Russia reaching a breaking point. Running out of military equipment will come first. This is why Ukraine's success in the artillery war is so important.
Soviet doctrine for their military vehicles was to make as many of them as possible given their large population. As a result their prioritised production over things such as crew protection. This has carried on over into current Russian thinking. The crew of a Russian tank or armoured vehicle is very unlikely to survive. Whereas in the West we realised the need to protect valuable crews an d made smaller numbers of vehicles that prioritised crew safety. As I understand it most crews in knocked out western vehicles have survived.
Ukraine learnt very quickly from one early offensive in June that it couldn't just charge a load of Western tanks/IFVs at Russian defences. They have since been waging a war of attrition against Russia. It is slow but it does seem to be working. Russia has less and less gear even if it still does have lots of manpower. The gear that it has is of car worse quality than what it could use at the start of the war.
Even in manpower it is becoming a struggle for Russia. They are now manning their defence with elite offensive units. Why would they do this unless they had no other choice? Those units will not be used again for offensive operations.
Ukraine is also becoming more and more adapt with its long range weapons. The Black Sea is almost a no-go area now for Russian warships as has been seen over the last week.
It is a long process but I do not see many positives for Russia. It is bloody for Ukraine but things are slowly moving in their direction.
One positive for Russia is that they haven't lost yet, and it's possible that Europe and the US will talk themselves into giving up.
Apparently the favourite in the Slovak election has pledged to stop providing any support for Ukraine. People might scoff at Slovakia's size, but Ukraine has an important joint-venture with them that is delivering new self-propelled artillery, and they've been a firm supporter of Ukraine to this point.
You can't talk yourself into winning a war you are losing, but you can talk yourself into losing a war that you are winning - and I think that's what Leon (and others) are doing.
Believe it or not, I’m trying to be objective. As @Dura_Ace says, you can’t rely on the media to give you a full picture. Too much western media is pompom waving ra-ra Ukraine bullshit - echoed on PB. But the Russian media is even worse from the other side
So you have to weave your way through the minefield of misinformation to reach an informed guess - and it is only a guess - as to what is happening. And my guess is: stalemate
However I do see some hopeful signs for Ukraine. The death of Prigozhin and now, allegedly, Kadyrov - both close allies of Putin, bring assassination ever closer to Vlad himself. He must be paranoid as fuck
Hopefully someone will slot him, asafp
I disagree with your attempt at objective analysis for reasons that I've previously given. I'm not relying on the western media, and I look for sources that share bad news for Ukraine, and are cautious about wild claims of Ukrainian success.
I think your guess of a stalemate is a superficial conclusion that ignores the signs of degradation of the Russian military that are occurring. A degradation that makes a stalemate unlikely.
I find it strange that you would be making this point when early September may well go down as a crucial turning point in the war. We can now see that Russia cannot protect its ships at dock in Sevastopol, nor can it enforce a blockade of Ukrainian ports.
These are massive signs of the war moving in Ukraine's favour and that Russia's hold on Crimea is untenable (and also pointless - if they can't use Sevastopol as a base for their Black Sea Fleet then what good is it to them?)
Who knows. One can be optimistic, but I keep being wrong every time I try to predict the next moves. I am much more confident in my moral assessment of the good vs bad in this war and what Western policy to Russia should be than I am about how the war will progress. We should separate the armchair general issue from different strengths of feeling on policy and morality.
The latest received wisdom seems to be that it's a race against time before the fighting season ends. That presupposes that Ukraine is advancing now, and that the weather will make fighting impossible later. If you subscribe to that theory then this series of map's the one to look at.
Expect to see soil moisture stay low until mid October then start to rise, first in Kharkiv / Luhansk (well, after the West and North of course) and later in the South. Once it goes light green it starts to get muddy.
Wet weather will make some aspects of the fighting more difficult, but it's not going to bring it to a halt.
Shorter days will mean that the cheaper drones that rely on visual cameras won't be able to operate for as long each day, and there will be various other effects, that will slow it down.
How can any old allegation of sexual impropriety be proved? And in many cases its A vs B where A says its was consensual and B says it wasn't.
The best that can be hoped for a defendant is conclusive proof that they were elsewhere on dates given (e.g. a gig in Liverpool on the night of an alleged attack in New York).
Truss' complete disregard for the impact of her mini-budget, alongside the occasional person commenting that she wasn't given long enough to see if she was proven right, feels to me like the future of the Tory party is in the hands of Tufton Street. The consensus before she got in that she would be the change that was needed and the way many in right wing media have insulated her and have tried to help her with this rehabilitation tour is worrying to me.
I think it's clear that she was on her way to clown school when somehow she found herself elected as an MP. Quite how she managed to progress from there is baffling. (I'd not even venture a guess)
Because she knows the right people in the right places and parrots their words back to them. Did someone who went to uni with her not say that she was a LibDem until she started chatting to the political crowd there and then said that the only way to make a career out of politics was to join the Tories, so she did?
Rory Stewart is far from a neutral observer, but he recounts being narked that Truss (same 2010 intake) was getting promoted so quickly when we wasn't. The reason the whips gave him was apparently that Truss was much better at fluently promoting the party line.
I miss Rory. But he was never a blind parrot. He had a tendency to think about things.
On today's The Rest is Politics, Rory and AC interviewed the two Andys (Manchester and West Midlands). Rory confessed to missing being in politics. Perhaps there's hope of a come back.
God the news wires really are creating a new swathe of Brand fans.
All of a sudden we now have the concept of something being "technically legal", used when referencing his relationship with a 16-yr old when he was 30.
It’s also the case that the girl almost certainly got a massive buzz out of dating Russell Brand: handsome, funny TV star who probably took her to lots of fun parties, enabling her to boast to her friends
Now she says she was ‘groomed’. Really? She wasn’t groomed, she was seduced, and it seems was happy to go along with it
So much puritanical, hypocritical tosh. Again this is not to diminish the allegations of rape and abuse. Those are serious and need investigating
Greg Hands whining about Labour giving votes to 16 and 17 year olds . Accusing them of vote rigging ! From the party who brought in new voter ID which was aimed at disenfranchising opposition voters .
If you can join the army , have sex and work why are you too young to vote ?
Strange that there is so much horror about the BBC getting a car for Russell Brand’s 16yo girlfriend really
People might think it’s pervy dating a 16 year old but the law is the law . I find it strange that any woman would find Brand attractive .
Bit of an inopportune day for Lucy Powell to be going on about it being legal for 16yo to have sex, when the headlines are about the grooming of a 16yo.
Yes, I can’t stand him, but a lot of women seem(ed) to be desperate to have sex with him.
My eldest daughter was very fond of him at one point and her friend even more so. She kept trying to get me to read the Booky Wooky. Sadly, I never got around to it. My loss, no doubt.
A girl I was seeing likes him, and so as not to be a complete fun sponge, I tried reading that nonsense - it was nonsense, I got to about page twenty
A friend of mine used to date Russell Brand’s make up artist - it shows how easily people are dazzled by fame, Brand drew a picture of a Willy on my mates arm with their names next to it, & my normally sensible ish friend thought it was absolutely hilarious, getting quite upset with me when I said I didnt see what was funny about it, and neither would he if one of the blokes in the pub had drawn it
Actually, Brand is capable of writing beautiful prose - in very short bursts
He did a travel piece about snorkelling/scuba - in the Maldives? Guardian? - maybe 10-15 years ago and I remember thinking the first three of four paragraphs were inspired. He’s not an idiot, he’s clever and talented. He is quite possibly an evil predator as well but it is foolish to dismiss him as some imbecile that got lucky
I never liked his comedy, that said. Just not funny
He was (is?) funny being interviewed. He's witty. It's widely known that he's (was?) a predatory shagger. He survived 'Me too', so I question the hype behind his dirty linen being aired now.
Emily Maitlis on 2017 Russell Brand interview: "I went in ready to loathe him, but I was mesmerised"
I went to the interview prepared to loathe him.
I remember him being late and having his own make up room, and I thought, "what a narcissist". I hate people who do the power play thing by making an interviewer wait for no apparent reason.
And then he walked into the room and he is mesmerising, he is funny, smart, he is linguistic, his language is magnetic and he is charismatic. He charmed me https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WgH1k1MR1zc (2 minutes video)
Someone being 'linguistic' is a new (and not very welcome) one on me.
God the news wires really are creating a new swathe of Brand fans.
All of a sudden we now have the concept of something being "technically legal", used when referencing his relationship with a 16-yr old when he was 30.
Brand is going to have a field day, taking on the hypocrites in the media. As much as his being a latter-day libertine, rake and dandy has meant many were aware of his excesses, he will not be without his own fund of stories about those now professing to clutch their pearls and have a fit of the vapours. Many witnessed at first hand.
As long as he can continue to keep his platform on YouTube, I suspect life could get very uncomfortable for those who have chosen to pile on. One thing he will do very well is mocking them.
This may be the biggest pile of ferret poop on PB today.
Greg Hands whining about Labour giving votes to 16 and 17 year olds . Accusing them of vote rigging ! From the party who brought in new voter ID which was aimed at disenfranchising opposition voters .
If you can join the army , have sex and work why are you too young to vote ?
Strange that there is so much horror about the BBC getting a car for Russell Brand’s 16yo girlfriend really
People might think it’s pervy dating a 16 year old but the law is the law . I find it strange that any woman would find Brand attractive .
Bit of an inopportune day for Lucy Powell to be going on about it being legal for 16yo to have sex, when the headlines are about the grooming of a 16yo.
Yes, I can’t stand him, but a lot of women seem(ed) to be desperate to have sex with him.
My eldest daughter was very fond of him at one point and her friend even more so. She kept trying to get me to read the Booky Wooky. Sadly, I never got around to it. My loss, no doubt.
A girl I was seeing likes him, and so as not to be a complete fun sponge, I tried reading that nonsense - it was nonsense, I got to about page twenty
A friend of mine used to date Russell Brand’s make up artist - it shows how easily people are dazzled by fame, Brand drew a picture of a Willy on my mates arm with their names next to it, & my normally sensible ish friend thought it was absolutely hilarious, getting quite upset with me when I said I didnt see what was funny about it, and neither would he if one of the blokes in the pub had drawn it
Actually, Brand is capable of writing beautiful prose - in very short bursts
He did a travel piece about snorkelling/scuba - in the Maldives? Guardian? - maybe 10-15 years ago and I remember thinking the first three of four paragraphs were inspired. He’s not an idiot, he’s clever and talented. He is quite possibly an evil predator as well but it is foolish to dismiss him as some imbecile that got lucky
I never liked his comedy, that said. Just not funny
He was (is?) funny being interviewed. He's witty. It's widely known that he's (was?) a predatory shagger. He survived 'Me too', so I question the hype behind his dirty linen being aired now.
Emily Maitlis on 2017 Russell Brand interview: "I went in ready to loathe him, but I was mesmerised"
I went to the interview prepared to loathe him.
I remember him being late and having his own make up room, and I thought, "what a narcissist". I hate people who do the power play thing by making an interviewer wait for no apparent reason.
And then he walked into the room and he is mesmerising, he is funny, smart, he is linguistic, his language is magnetic and he is charismatic. He charmed me https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WgH1k1MR1zc (2 minutes video)
"he is mesmerising"
Thankfully this will contribute to the end of this sort of puff journalism.
Is Russell Brand of the Left or of the Right? That's what we need to establish.
He had a theory of capital that arguably be called left wing - he just took it to the illogical conclusion that many right wingers do that there must be a conspiracy of elites controlling things and making things worse on purpose instead of just accepting that class interest doesn't require a conspiracy. He fell into covid trutherism and other conspiratorial stuff during lockdown, that has made a lot of his audience a lot more right wing then he used to claim to be. He seems to be another manifestation of some white men specifically who have legitimate criticisms of capitalism but who still feel culturally alienated by feminism and intersectionality (who could think why?) and therefore start making political content that aims to legitimise red/brown alliances. The "the only war is class war, so stop talking about race and gender and sexuality" types who ignore that to unite the working class requires us to talk about race and gender and sexuality precisely because class and those things intersect so significantly. A similar thing happened to a few US lefty types (Jimmy Dore being the most noticeable),
God the news wires really are creating a new swathe of Brand fans.
All of a sudden we now have the concept of something being "technically legal", used when referencing his relationship with a 16-yr old when he was 30.
Brand is going to have a field day, taking on the hypocrites in the media. As much as his being a latter-day libertine, rake and dandy has meant many were aware of his excesses, he will not be without his own fund of stories about those now professing to clutch their pearls and have a fit of the vapours. Many witnessed at first hand.
As long as he can continue to keep his platform on YouTube, I suspect life could get very uncomfortable for those who have chosen to pile on. One thing he will do very well is mocking them.
He was called a 'vile predator' by Dannii Minogue in 2006.
In the same way the deferred sentence I dealt with this morning was. 3 or more complainers describe a very similar course of conduct and hey, presto, its proved. Today's case involved allegations from the early 2000s as well.
"Reduce benefits, raise retirement age, start fracking, abolish the windfall tax, diverge properly from the EU, delay net zero commitments, abandon replacing gas and oil boilers. This will not be easy but it will be worth doing."
How on earth she thought this would receive any form of acceptance by the public shows her real delusion
⚡️As a result of 🇺🇦Ukraine's successful actions, the enemy's defense line near Bakhmut was breached, - Commander of the Ground Forces of the Armed Forces of Ukraine Sirskyi
In the battles in the direction of Bakhmut, the Defense Forces of Ukraine completely defeated the three most prepared brigades of the 72nd, 83rd and 31st brigades of the Russian army.
Fierce fighting continues in the Bakhmut region. the Russians are conducting numerous counterattacks, unsuccessfully trying to regain their positions.
"Reduce benefits, raise retirement age, start fracking, abolish the windfall tax, diverge properly from the EU, delay net zero commitments, abandon replacing gas and oil boilers. This will not be easy but it will be worth doing."
How on earth she thought this would receive any form of acceptance by the public shows her real delusion
I'm a lifelong Tory and I'd vote Corbyn before Truss.
God the news wires really are creating a new swathe of Brand fans.
All of a sudden we now have the concept of something being "technically legal", used when referencing his relationship with a 16-yr old when he was 30.
Brand is going to have a field day, taking on the hypocrites in the media. As much as his being a latter-day libertine, rake and dandy has meant many were aware of his excesses, he will not be without his own fund of stories about those now professing to clutch their pearls and have a fit of the vapours. Many witnessed at first hand.
As long as he can continue to keep his platform on YouTube, I suspect life could get very uncomfortable for those who have chosen to pile on. One thing he will do very well is mocking them.
This may be the biggest pile of ferret poop on PB today.
Don't you mean a puddle rather than a pile? I used to clean the cages of the school ferrets for a term or two when I were a lad.
"Reduce benefits, raise retirement age, start fracking, abolish the windfall tax, diverge properly from the EU, delay net zero commitments, abandon replacing gas and oil boilers. This will not be easy but it will be worth doing."
How on earth she thought this would receive any form of acceptance by the public shows her real delusion
I'm a lifelong Tory and I'd vote Corbyn before Truss.
Thankfully Sunak is taking more in tax than Corbyn planned to, so you got him anyway.
God the news wires really are creating a new swathe of Brand fans.
All of a sudden we now have the concept of something being "technically legal", used when referencing his relationship with a 16-yr old when he was 30.
I mean, the claims were not hat he was having relationships with underaged women - the claims are that he sexually assaulted them, abused them, and, in some cases, raped them. That he had multiple relationships with women much younger than him just says, to me, that he was interested in relationships with inexperienced women who may not be as aware of healthy relationships and the confidence in calling out his behaviour. There is an inherent power imbalance when a 30 year old is going out with a 16 year old that, when taken in the context of the other allegations, puts them in a different light.
Of course but, notwithstanding the abuse and rape claims, so what? Relationships are complicated and "inherent power imbalances" common for one reason or another.
Review what you wrote, take out the abuse/rape element (not that this should be done irl) and you are just describing behaviour you don't approve of. So what.
I personally have specific age gap hang ups due to me and my little sister having an atypically large age gap; but that doesn't affect how I typically judge other peoples' relationships.
The accusations of abuse are integral to why the 14 year old age gap is a concern - it suggests a recognition on the part of Brand that his behaviour was unacceptable and was targeting women who, whilst were consenting adults, would be less experienced with sexual relationships and therefore less able to counter his abusive tactics. I'm not saying that anyone in a relationship with a 14 year old age gap is a predator; but if someone is credibly accused of multiple sexual assaults then his pattern of relationships with much younger women are contextually different.
"Reduce benefits, raise retirement age, start fracking, abolish the windfall tax, diverge properly from the EU, delay net zero commitments, abandon replacing gas and oil boilers. This will not be easy but it will be worth doing."
How on earth she thought this would receive any form of acceptance by the public shows her real delusion
Because it is the logical conclusion of the neoliberal consensus - it's just something other politicians refuse to say out loud.
"Reduce benefits, raise retirement age, start fracking, abolish the windfall tax, diverge properly from the EU, delay net zero commitments, abandon replacing gas and oil boilers. This will not be easy but it will be worth doing."
How on earth she thought this would receive any form of acceptance by the public shows her real delusion
"Reduce benefits, raise retirement age, start fracking, abolish the windfall tax, diverge properly from the EU, delay net zero commitments, abandon replacing gas and oil boilers. This will not be easy but it will be worth doing."
How on earth she thought this would receive any form of acceptance by the public shows her real delusion
"Reduce benefits, raise retirement age, start fracking, abolish the windfall tax, diverge properly from the EU, delay net zero commitments, abandon replacing gas and oil boilers. This will not be easy but it will be worth doing."
How on earth she thought this would receive any form of acceptance by the public shows her real delusion
What part of that do you actually feel is bad?
The parts that increase the pain aimed at the most impoverished and reward the most well off individuals in this country? The parts that continue the destruction of our environment? The parts that continue the death cult that is neoliberalism?
"Reduce benefits, raise retirement age, start fracking, abolish the windfall tax, diverge properly from the EU, delay net zero commitments, abandon replacing gas and oil boilers. This will not be easy but it will be worth doing."
How on earth she thought this would receive any form of acceptance by the public shows her real delusion
I'm a lifelong Tory and I'd vote Corbyn before Truss.
Thankfully Sunak is taking more in tax than Corbyn planned to, so you got him anyway.
Come along - knife in the back and all that.
This Tory government has been very poor. Expectations were of course high, and delivery tomorrow.
"Reduce benefits, raise retirement age, start fracking, abolish the windfall tax, diverge properly from the EU, delay net zero commitments, abandon replacing gas and oil boilers. This will not be easy but it will be worth doing."
How on earth she thought this would receive any form of acceptance by the public shows her real delusion
With the exception of raising the retirement age, isn't that fairly consistent with the agenda of the Mail/Telegraph? Again with the exception of the retirement thing, it's all got a decent chance of being in the 2029 manifesto.
It's not my version of Conservatism, but mine broke off the party a while back.
"Reduce benefits, raise retirement age, start fracking, abolish the windfall tax, diverge properly from the EU, delay net zero commitments, abandon replacing gas and oil boilers. This will not be easy but it will be worth doing."
How on earth she thought this would receive any form of acceptance by the public shows her real delusion
Greg Hands whining about Labour giving votes to 16 and 17 year olds . Accusing them of vote rigging ! From the party who brought in new voter ID which was aimed at disenfranchising opposition voters .
If you can join the army , have sex and work why are you too young to vote ?
Strange that there is so much horror about the BBC getting a car for Russell Brand’s 16yo girlfriend really
People might think it’s pervy dating a 16 year old but the law is the law . I find it strange that any woman would find Brand attractive .
Bit of an inopportune day for Lucy Powell to be going on about it being legal for 16yo to have sex, when the headlines are about the grooming of a 16yo.
Yes, I can’t stand him, but a lot of women seem(ed) to be desperate to have sex with him.
My eldest daughter was very fond of him at one point and her friend even more so. She kept trying to get me to read the Booky Wooky. Sadly, I never got around to it. My loss, no doubt.
A girl I was seeing likes him, and so as not to be a complete fun sponge, I tried reading that nonsense - it was nonsense, I got to about page twenty
A friend of mine used to date Russell Brand’s make up artist - it shows how easily people are dazzled by fame, Brand drew a picture of a Willy on my mates arm with their names next to it, & my normally sensible ish friend thought it was absolutely hilarious, getting quite upset with me when I said I didnt see what was funny about it, and neither would he if one of the blokes in the pub had drawn it
Actually, Brand is capable of writing beautiful prose - in very short bursts
He did a travel piece about snorkelling/scuba - in the Maldives? Guardian? - maybe 10-15 years ago and I remember thinking the first three of four paragraphs were inspired. He’s not an idiot, he’s clever and talented. He is quite possibly an evil predator as well but it is foolish to dismiss him as some imbecile that got lucky
I never liked his comedy, that said. Just not funny
He is undoubtedly not an idiot and I'm sure could turn out a competent travel piece about something or other more or less on demand. But he also positions himself as a wise man, a philosopher king. And that he most manifestly is not either.
⚡️As a result of 🇺🇦Ukraine's successful actions, the enemy's defense line near Bakhmut was breached, - Commander of the Ground Forces of the Armed Forces of Ukraine Sirskyi
In the battles in the direction of Bakhmut, the Defense Forces of Ukraine completely defeated the three most prepared brigades of the 72nd, 83rd and 31st brigades of the Russian army.
Fierce fighting continues in the Bakhmut region. the Russians are conducting numerous counterattacks, unsuccessfully trying to regain their positions.
When Ukraine started regaining ground around Bakhmut, I asked Phillips O'Brien several times to predict how long he thought it would take for Ukraine to roll back the advances Russia had made in the area since taking Popasna (at the time he was ridiculing how little Russia had gained over many months). He did not make such a prediction, but I'd guess that Ukrainian progress has been slower than he expected.
I think that what you have quoted is an example of unhelpful hyperbole. It creates the expectation of imminent rapid Ukrainian gains. The words "break through" are used, but is it really the case that the Ukrainians will be in Zaitseve tomorrow and have Bakhmut encircled by the end of the week, as would be implied by an actual breakthrough?
How can any old allegation of sexual impropriety be proved? And in many cases its A vs B where A says its was consensual and B says it wasn't.
The best that can be hoped for a defendant is conclusive proof that they were elsewhere on dates given (e.g. a gig in Liverpool on the night of an alleged attack in New York).
The beyond reasonable doubt hurdle would be very difficult to get over , although Rolf Harris was found guilty of a sex offence from the late 60s in 2014 which i found puzzling, how can you prove something from 46 years ago..
"Reduce benefits, raise retirement age, start fracking, abolish the windfall tax, diverge properly from the EU, delay net zero commitments, abandon replacing gas and oil boilers. This will not be easy but it will be worth doing."
How on earth she thought this would receive any form of acceptance by the public shows her real delusion
With the exception of raising the retirement age, isn't that fairly consistent with the agenda of the Mail/Telegraph? Again with the exception of the retirement thing, it's all got a decent chance of being in the 2029 manifesto.
It's not my version of Conservatism, but mine broke off the party a while back.
I am not a supporter of the mail or telegraph's political views
In the same way the deferred sentence I dealt with this morning was. 3 or more complainers describe a very similar course of conduct and hey, presto, its proved. Today's case involved allegations from the early 2000s as well.
Does that not leave the legal system open to abuse where 2 or 3 people could come together and agree a plan to stitch someone up. If they all give the police the same story about an event 20 years ago then case proved, with no evidence other than their statements.
⚡️As a result of 🇺🇦Ukraine's successful actions, the enemy's defense line near Bakhmut was breached, - Commander of the Ground Forces of the Armed Forces of Ukraine Sirskyi
In the battles in the direction of Bakhmut, the Defense Forces of Ukraine completely defeated the three most prepared brigades of the 72nd, 83rd and 31st brigades of the Russian army.
Fierce fighting continues in the Bakhmut region. the Russians are conducting numerous counterattacks, unsuccessfully trying to regain their positions.
When Ukraine started regaining ground around Bakhmut, I asked Phillips O'Brien several times to predict how long he thought it would take for Ukraine to roll back the advances Russia had made in the area since taking Popasna (at the time he was ridiculing how little Russia had gained over many months). He did not make such a prediction, but I'd guess that Ukrainian progress has been slower than he expected.
I think that what you have quoted is an example of unhelpful hyperbole. It creates the expectation of imminent rapid Ukrainian gains. The words "break through" are used, but is it really the case that the Ukrainians will be in Zaitseve tomorrow and have Bakhmut encircled by the end of the week, as would be implied by an actual breakthrough?
Can someone please keep us up to date on the soil moisture readings in Ukraine because according to PB this holds the key to the outcome of the war.
Comments
Putin will get a nice send off though, and a great monument. Plus, the St Petersburg tourist, will never wonder where to piss.
Ditto Philip Schofield and and his legal-but-not-moral boyfriend who worked with him.
The latest received wisdom seems to be that it's a race against time before the fighting season ends. That presupposes that Ukraine is advancing now, and that the weather will make fighting impossible later. If you subscribe to that theory then this series of map's the one to look at.
http://www.wxmaps.org/pix/soil4
Expect to see soil moisture stay low until mid October then start to rise, first in Kharkiv / Luhansk (well, after the West and North of course) and later in the South. Once it goes light green it starts to get muddy.
If you’re of the right, he’s of the left.
Surveillance video: Boebert escorted from 'Beetlejuice' show in Denver
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FSwq_AIg-tE
NY Post -
https://nypost.com/2023/09/15/colorado-rep-lauren-boebert-called-pregnant-woman-miserable-before-being-tossed-from-beetlejuice-report/
There is a lot in the Brand story that is scandalous but not much illegal and even the rape claims may come down to he said/she said. Enough to see Brand cancelled but not incarcerated, perhaps.
Worth reading if only for education on the opposing view: https://thecritic.co.uk/why-truss-was-right/
The maturity/age for voting is a separate issue from these things.
Maybe we should decide them all at random. Fags at 7, bookies at 11, sex at 28, army at 9, alcohol at 43. Voting at ages 13-19 and 50+ but only if you have children and grandchildren whose permission is required for your voter registration.
Chimney sweeping at 3:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IlPUzXb0_4U
https://phillipspobrien.substack.com/
The weekend reports are free.
Agree that unless specific individuals make complaints with evidence to the police, he’s cancelled rather than incarcerated. Which really shouldn’t have been controversial, we’ve all known this guy to be a pervert nearly two decades.
Secondly I never said that every single election 'everyone' has to register. I said every single election people [who aren't registered yet] do register. There's a surge of "hundreds of thousands registering to vote in one day" that makes the news every single election.
He did a travel piece about snorkelling/scuba - in the Maldives? Guardian? - maybe 10-15 years ago and I remember thinking the first three of four paragraphs were inspired. He’s not an idiot, he’s clever and talented. He is quite possibly an evil predator as well but it is foolish to dismiss him as some imbecile that got lucky
I never liked his comedy, that said. Just not funny
Fantastic.
We're going to have an election probably within a year and it will probably see a change in government as this current one is terrible.
When did that last meaningfully happen in the EU?
The thing with democracy is you may get terrible governments from time to time. You may get governments you despise from time to time. You may get governments doing things you hate from time to time. But you can campaign and vote to get them replaced, and it looks like next time we will get a replacement.
Ousting democracy to get what you want, is not progress.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/09/18/russell-brand-rape-allegations-latest/
Still, who wouldn't want George Galloway, Tucker Carlson and Andrew Tate on their side
As if Me Too was a one off event that drew a line in the sand. It was a key moment in insisting that sexual abuse and harassment is not OK but it's far from over.
Only a few days ago it was the NHS, doctors and an ignorant anaesthetist that were under the spotlight.
Did you think they'd survived Me Too so why now too?
We're also having the third GE since leaving the EU, have had a series of either paralyzed or incompetent governments - whose incompetence and paralysis were directly related to the issue of leaving the EU.
My issue with the argument is that many of the bad faith critics of the EU got what they wanted by us leaving. They were the ones whose rhetoric was leading to blaming Brussels for everything, and that strategy was rewarded. If theProle's issue was sincerely the ability for politicians to shift blame to Brussels for unpopular decisions (or lack of decisions) then the salve for that is a more honest political system, and not what we did: rewarding the most dishonest politicians with their policy preference and then the levers of power in government. And those of us who dislike the Tories have only SKS, another extremely dishonest politician, as a realistic alternative due to the other failures of British democracy that make the emergence of a two party system practically inevitable.
All of a sudden we now have the concept of something being "technically legal", used when referencing his relationship with a 16-yr old when he was 30.
Here’s a piece he wrote about a brouhaha at the GQ awards. It uses some of the lines from his travel piece. It is characteristically overwritten yet has some brilliant moments - “spilt cathedrals” - and some sharp insights - “Boris Johnson – a man perpetually in pyjamas regardless of what he's wearing”
https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2013/sep/13/russell-brand-gq-awards-hugo-boss?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other
He’s interesting, complex, damaged, maybe wicked, certainly amoral
I'm hoping that my drive home from work tonight meets the 'technically legal' pass mark...
That was always the case, and it's because huge swathes of lawmaking are pretty prosaic, housekeeping stuff. I work in the world of tax: 99% of domestic tax law changes are administrative or esoteric and get scarcely a mention in the commons, at least in part because the legislators wouldn't know what questions to ask. That's very much the same as for EU tax law, which of course still affects most of our larger businesses anyway because they trade internationally. Anything controversial tended to be picked up by the politicians and the tabloids anyway.
As long as he can continue to keep his platform on YouTube, I suspect life could get very uncomfortable for those who have chosen to pile on. One thing he will do very well is mocking them.
https://www.mirror.co.uk/3am/celebrity-news/hes-a-vile-predator-629597
In the minds of the average person, "what does it matter", they have more important fish to fry. If you said abolish the outmoded exercise full stop then that might be relevant
Review what you wrote, take out the abuse/rape element (not that this should be done irl) and you are just describing behaviour you don't approve of. So what.
This bit of the scandal is a non-story. There are much more serious allegations of course - the rape in LA
I went to the interview prepared to loathe him.
I remember him being late and having his own make up room, and I thought, "what a narcissist". I hate people who do the power play thing by making an interviewer wait for no apparent reason.
And then he walked into the room and he is mesmerising, he is funny, smart, he is linguistic, his language is magnetic and he is charismatic. He charmed me
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WgH1k1MR1zc (2 minutes video)
Shorter days will mean that the cheaper drones that rely on visual cameras won't be able to operate for as long each day, and there will be various other effects, that will slow it down.
The best that can be hoped for a defendant is conclusive proof that they were elsewhere on dates given (e.g. a gig in Liverpool on the night of an alleged attack in New York).
AND best reckon that she's ALWAYS toting a gun.
Now she says she was ‘groomed’. Really? She wasn’t groomed, she was seduced, and it seems was happy to go along with it
So much puritanical, hypocritical tosh. Again this is not to diminish the allegations of rape and abuse. Those are serious and need investigating
Thankfully this will contribute to the end of this sort of puff journalism.
"Reduce benefits, raise retirement age, start fracking, abolish the windfall tax, diverge properly from the EU, delay net zero commitments, abandon replacing gas and oil boilers. This will not be easy but it will be worth doing."
How on earth she thought this would receive any form of acceptance by the public shows her real delusion
⚡️As a result of 🇺🇦Ukraine's successful actions, the enemy's defense line near Bakhmut was breached, - Commander of the Ground Forces of the Armed Forces of Ukraine Sirskyi
In the battles in the direction of Bakhmut, the Defense Forces of Ukraine completely defeated the three most prepared brigades of the 72nd, 83rd and 31st brigades of the Russian army.
Fierce fighting continues in the Bakhmut region. the Russians are conducting numerous counterattacks, unsuccessfully trying to regain their positions.
The liberation of Klishchiivka and Andriivka allowed the Armed Forces of Ukraine to break through the enemy's defensive line stretching from Bakhmut to Horlivka.
https://x.com/front_ukrainian/status/1703769463244362231?s=20
#pedanticbetting
The accusations of abuse are integral to why the 14 year old age gap is a concern - it suggests a recognition on the part of Brand that his behaviour was unacceptable and was targeting women who, whilst were consenting adults, would be less experienced with sexual relationships and therefore less able to counter his abusive tactics. I'm not saying that anyone in a relationship with a 14 year old age gap is a predator; but if someone is credibly accused of multiple sexual assaults then his pattern of relationships with much younger women are contextually different.
https://www.elizabethtruss.com/news/speech-institute-government
This Tory government has been very poor. Expectations were of course high, and delivery tomorrow.
I don't think that the above is an excuse though.
It's not my version of Conservatism, but mine broke off the party a while back.
I think that what you have quoted is an example of unhelpful hyperbole. It creates the expectation of imminent rapid Ukrainian gains. The words "break through" are used, but is it really the case that the Ukrainians will be in Zaitseve tomorrow and have Bakhmut encircled by the end of the week, as would be implied by an actual breakthrough?