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It’s not you babe, it’s me – politicalbetting.com
It’s not you babe, it’s me – politicalbetting.com
Today’s Sunday Times has this interesting analogy from Team Sunak about the next general election
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Reality is, as ever, more complicated. The Ukrainians chose to fight & have continued to make that choice in the face of Russian attacks. And having seen what the Russians did in the regions of Ukraine they briefly held, who could blame them? The Russians came into Ukraine with extensive kill lists & planned to eliminate the flower of the Ukranian population so they could grab it’s resources to shore up the parlous Russian state.
The idea that they should meekly submit to Russian aggression so that we in the west can sleep soundly in our beds seems profoundly insulting to me. Who are we to assert that we should make that choice on their behalf?
Anyway, I thought they don't have co-respondents in these enlightened times. You don't even get a weekend in Brighton with a tart and a photographer.
Though I do suspect that attributing the Undecided to the Tories is an error similar to attributing the REFUK voters.
Time to do some more gardening before the light goes, but rather chilly outside.
No one is advising the Ukrainians to meekly submit. We are suggesting that an armistice now might save 100,000 Ukrainian lives and give them a chance to rebuild their shattered country - and rearm
They have fought nobly. They resisted the Russian bear and gave Putin a bloody nose. Much worse than he expected. A truce now would be a ceasefire with honour
Or they can fight on, but with no realistic path to victory - that I can see
This looks like a 'Flat v Nice Win' transaction (or Win Win with appropriate staking) to me unless I'm missing something?
I mean I've picked boogers with more intelligence than you.
You're a fucking appeaser, that clouds your judgment.
Now go watch Threads again you ludicrous soaked up popinjay.
Putin has an election coming up
& regardless, you miss the point: If the Ukrainians want an armistice, then that’s for them to decide. This notion that they are being somehow manipulated by the west into continuing to fight is patronising nonsense.
https://x.com/leovaradkar/status/1728535065242612184
Moscow Doesn’t Believe in Tears, as the film title has it.
“Ukraine has taken back more than half of its territory seized by Russia’s forces since February 2022. In this tough and dynamic battle, Ukraine’s soldiers are fighting bravely every single day, and they continue to inspire the world with their bravery and courage. We will continue to support them to be in the strongest possible position at the negotiating table when the time comes. We continue to stand #UnitedWithUkraine while they defend their freedom
https://x.com/usnato/status/1726615865980813706?s=46&t=bulOICNH15U6kB0MwE6Lfw
I suspect the Bild report is true. Biden and Scholz want the war done. They will firmly nudge Ukraine towards “negotiations”
Apart from anything else, this is embarrassingly bad prose with no rhythm or verbal invention
You seem to want it both ways. I suggest the grown up thing to do is to let the Ukrainians decide what outcomes matter to them. If they decide on a negotiated armistice, then so be it.
Who do we support?
I see no evidence for that.
“Read Carter Malkasian on how Washington and its partners can improve the odds of an armistice in Ukraine—one that brings the kind of stable, durable peace the Korean armistice produced 70 years ago.”
https://x.com/foreignaffairs/status/1727024100457980262?s=46&t=bulOICNH15U6kB0MwE6Lfw
What it boils down to is this, paraphrased from a soldier I spoke to off the record last year, so no names - Russia has both the industrial capacity and the will to fight on. The west made fun of Russia's decrepit 1950s materiel, tanks being pulled out of storage etc, but they've essentially still got a planned economy albeit planned by the klept rather than the politburo - and if they dedicate their industrial base to the war, they can overpower Ukraine. This they are in the process of doing - and the west simply doesn't have the *desire* to switch to a war economy. The more Russia gears itself towards a war economy, the harder it will be for us to keep supplying Ukraine with the necessary countermeasures. Either the west commits, or it doesn't. And because we don't like going without our creature comforts, we won't. The longer the war drags on for, the more Russia will roll out new materiel, mobilise further, etc. A frozen stalemate is probably the *best* outcome at this point. The longer the war continues, the more mobilised the Russian war machine becomes. And there will come a point where the west is not politically willing to throw ever more of its resources at the problem.
We in the west are prepared to supply just enough materiel to ensure a stalemate, but not enough to enable the Ukrainians to win the war. That is arguably a western failing, but it is also the situation which Leon describes.
Russian mentality is inherited from Soviet times. Crucially, the latter emphasised raw numbers than the state the equipment was in - maintenance was extremely low down the list of priorities as the best human / industrial resources were devoted to production.
Much Russian equipment - although simple and therefore easy to repair / replace compared with western equipment - is still likely to be in a shoddy state. After nearly two years, a lot would have been ground down.
Sure he can grind on and on, but then he risks losing the people, and even autocrats hate that
He can just about sell the war, as it stands, as a victory
Russia started by firing off their shiny new missiles. Then went through their stock of anti-ship missiles. And now are reduced to Iranian drones - low speed, and relatively easy targets for air defences.
With tanks and artillery - very little new production, and continued working through the stockpiles of older and older vehicles.
This is because the Russian industrial economy is tiny - people used to joke that Russia was Mexico with missiles. Since NAFTA, Mexico has a bigger *industrial* economy...
Numerous times during his reign, Putin has tried to bring back the autarkic ways of the Soviet Union. But that was always an illusion, concealing the imports that actually held things together. And creating the industrial capabilities needs the kind of expensive investment tat doesn't work well with graft - easier to steal the investment omen and buy from abroad.
By comparison, the military aid that the West has provided is a tiny portion of the GDP of the countries involved (through some small countries have contributed far more). We don't need to switch to a war economy to make a million artillery shells a month. That's the Pentagons paperclip budget.
In reality, in terms of GDP, they are 11th, behind Canada and just in front of Mexico. Russia may be a geographically massive country, but economically it is a middle-ranker. I can see this getting worse with the effects of the war, and problems will occur as more treasure gets diverted to the war effort.
And it did not have to be like this. Russia has had twenty years of good times due to its resources; twenty years that Putin and his crones have utterly wasted.
And that makes it likely that Russia's position was that all those regions will have to come to them under any peace deal. Which means Ukraine would have to cede even more land to them. Something that makes a 'peace' deal more unlikely.
60,000 isn't bad. Not bad at all.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-67537351
Analysis found an eightfold increase in the number of knighthoods or damehoods awarded to sitting MPs since the Conservatives came to power in 2010 - with two thirds handed to serving Tories
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/surge-knighthoods-doled-out-sitting-31530662
Hence Russia somehow never running out of drones and missiles, despite us being told this was imminent 18 months ago
With China as a backup, Russia is fine. China won’t let Putin lose. Ukraine can’t win. Them’s the facts
I don’t like it any more than most PBers but ignoring reality is dumb
But this is not a defeat for the west. It is a bloody score draw. Russia has gained some territory but taken a terrible mauling, united NATO, lost Nordstream, lost many young emigrants, lost 300k dead, and will now see NATO defence spending surge
PM Starmer will have the tough task of explaining to UK voters why defence must take money from the NHS and pensioners
I think if the west was willing to commit more resources to Ukraine, the war would be winnable. That or we'd end up in WWIII / threads timeline.
Russian - effectively Soviet - strategy has always depended on the numbers game - ‘we have x amount, much more than you and we can go on for longer’
The problem is Ukraine called their bluff and that reserve is being run down quickly.
BTW, I think the Biden Administration is now more worried a collapsed / fundamentally weakened Russia would be prone to Chinese occupation / effective control. The most common ‘future war’ strategy in military history / course studies is China invading Russia
And that all that has shown up in the Russian war effort in Ukraine is Iranian drones and North Korean artillery shells. No Chinese weapons.
But looks to have gone. Now 10.5
I note that recently Russia claimed to be increasing its military budget to 4% of GDP. That seems rather low for a country engaged in conflict, particularly a country only 11th in the world GDP table. It may well be the figures are a fiction and the reality much higher but that makes a long war unsustainable, while the lower figure would mean that a revitalised Russian military with modern equipment is just not going to happen.
Trench based warfare with mines and barbed wire can be quite low tech, but it also means a lack of offensive capability.
My mother saw one of those documents, I was sure she was going to keel over in shame.
Around 75% of Russians worked in agriculture in 1897. In 1940, it was 54%. At the same time in the UK, it was about 6%. Today in Russia, it is about 5.8%. The rest of the population will be in other occupations, many of which are also rather important to the economy and/or war effort. Stalin could squeeze the agricultural sector for manpower. It is much harder for Putin to squeeze other areas of the workforce, especially amongst the highly-skilled.
https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/economics/staff/mharrison/public/agriculture1996.pdf
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1005657/share-working-population-agriculture-europe-1930-1980/
To cede an armistice now means rowing back on those territorial claims that were made with great fanfare: It’s entirely possible that Putin has backed himself into a corner where the internal political calculus for him means that continuing the battle in Ukraine no matter the cost is the only way he can hold on to power. In which case no armistice is possible & the Russians are going to keep attacking until they run out of materiel regardless of whether we support Ukraine or not.
The Telegraph's investigation found that China has helped supply the Russian military with helicopters, drones, optical sights, and essential raw materials. Trade between Moscow and Beijing is on track to reach a record high this year of over $200 billion.”
https://kyivindependent.com/telegraph-china-arms-russias-war-in-ukraine/
More obvious weapons - missiles - will go through proxies
But I’m bored of this now. PB is not susceptible to argument on this
To Masterchef! Goodnight
TBF it was worthy of an orgasm.
But tragically we, and particularly the Americans, seem to be stopping that from happening as we're making the Ukrainians fight with both hands behind their backs.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/11/22/working-from-home-pyjamas-indeed-survey-casual-dress-codes/
https://vote-2012.proboards.com/thread/17834/cowdenbeath-kirkcaldy
However Moscow also has more nuclear weapons under its command than any other nation, including the US and China, which means it cannot be ignored either
My team and colleagues would rinse me if they saw me in it.
On 5USA (Freeview 21) right now, William Shatner is the guest villain on Columbo!
It was also much easier to take cocaine during the call, if that was your thing...
They are a weapon of last resort to be used to stop an aggressor when all else is lost. Or perhaps in the unique case of Israel, when they could be used to stop a country acquiring nukes where it has an avowed aim of wiping you out as a nation.
And so, I see no chance that Putin would agree to a ceasefire, along those lines. He has an election coming up, but he doesn't have to worry very much that Russian losses will cause him to lose it. OTOH, he does have to worry that a ceasefire would cost him his head.
(I don't know enough about the latter to say for certain.)
A photo of a man whose pants are on fire.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/F_ze20cWEAAB7y2?format=jpg&name=medium
( For reference, from Nads' X account)
https://twitter.com/DPJHodges/status/1728820100596469769
(((Dan Hodges))) @DPJHodges
Tommy Robinson’s arrest is not an example of “two-tier policing”. It’s an example of how organisers of today’s march reject the presence of extremists, whilst the organisers of the pro-Palestinian marches are perfectly comfortable with the presence of extremists.
"It is a sign of retail’s unsettled state that the chief demand from striking Seattle-area Macy’s workers isn’t for more money but for less shoplifting.
While the dozens of Macy’s workers who began picketing early Black Friday at Westfield Southcenter in Tukwila and Alderwood mall in Lynnwood definitely want better wages in a new contract, their big ask is that Macy’s do more about the thieves who brazenly pilfer from the stores and sometimes assault staff."
source: https://www.seattletimes.com/business/seattle-area-macys-workers-strike-for-better-protection-from-crime/
Many elected Democrats are vulnerable on crime, and that helps Republicans, including Republicans In Name Only, for example, the Loser.
T shirt and casual bottoms, not pyjama bottoms, is my norm. Hoodie or jumper at this time of year.
I believe this with about 99% certainty, based on his extensive, well documented history of being arrested for being a racist dickhead
I told him - “Clothes are preferred.”
https://twitter.com/metpoliceuk/status/1728776275022516390
He refused to comply with a direction to disperse under Section 35 of the Antisocial Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act.
But perhaps you don't consider that cannibalism. So let me extend the argument a little. Suppose a person, desperate for attention, takes a few of their cells to a company which cultures them into meat enough for a steak. If that person cooks and eats the steak, would that be cannibalism?
Now consider a futher extension: (Some of you will aready be there.) In a French kiss, the two exchange cells. Is that cannibalism?
What if the two take some of their cells, have them cultured, and then exchange steaks? (Some lovers proclaim their devotion by saying to their partners that they could "just eat them up", so the idea isn't totally novel.)
Capitalists -- and there are a few here -- can think of further extensions, easily. Socialists -- and there are a few here -- can think of reasons some of us should sacrifice for the greater good.
(I don't have answers to most of those questions, but believe some of us ought to be thinking about them.)
I imagine some of the 'woke' elements will bother some 'culture war people', but this is night and day from the Chibnall era and I felt like I was actually watching Doctor Who again. I preferred Moffat's vision of Who to RTD's (at least when Moffat could be arsed), but there's no denying he knows how to write Doctor Who and Tennant's Doctor. Great performance by Margoyles as the Meep as well.
I'm actually optimistic about the show again.
'Section 35 of the Anti-Social Behaviour Act provides police officers with discretionary powers to disperse individuals or groups causing, or likely to cause, harassment, alarm, or distress to others. It enables officers to issue a dispersal order, which can cover a specific area for up to 48 hours, allowing them to instruct individuals to leave the area and not return for a designated period. Failure to comply with such an order can result in arrest.'