Again, the Tories haven't been in office for the last four decades.
Stop your lies.
Well they have - just not for the whole of the period.
If you look at spending as a percentage of GDP, there was a steady decline from the early 80s to ... around 1997. It been (with minor fluctuations) more or less steady since then.
Defence procurement appears to have got progressively worse, irrespective of the party in power.
Labour put in place lots of naval cuts and trimmed the size of the army post 1997. Look at how many frigates and destroyers we started with and where we ended up. And how the army shrunk from c.120k to 100k.
But, this is a distraction. The real issue is that since the late 80s, when victory in the Cold War was in sight, neither party has invested properly in our defence and that now needs to be reversed.
Is there any sign Labour intend to do this?
There’s a school of thought that says most of the Navy’s current problems stem from the carriers decision, to save 10k jobs in Gordon Brown’s constituency in advance of the 2010 election.
Are the East Asians now the only people capable of building anything??
It does sometimes feel that way. The entire west is seized with a pathetic lassitude
I think it’s because we are at the end of decades of fat complacency (living off our achievements from 1500-1997) and later that has been tainted with defensiveness. Guilt. Self loathing. Apathetic doubt
We need to be proactive. DO THINGS. We need - especially in Britain - to regain some imperial swagger, start conquering and humiliating minor countries and then FFS STOP APOLOGISING
O/T but the third TV drama serial, companion to Band of Brothers and The Pacific, Masters of the Air, is released today from Apple, with the first episode free. One of the two writers worked on the earlier volumes and one of the directors is retained from the Pacific, and Spielberg and Hanks are executive directors.
Early reviews sound very positive. Any idea if it will eventually reach other platforms? Apple is one of the ones I dont subscribe too...
Eventually, I expect so, and DVD. The first episode you can watch free to see if you want more; I think there's also a seven day free trial offer, so you can binge the whole thing without paying
I love BoB, but have never finished the pacific. Don't quite know why.
Thee action stuff was good in The Pacific, the human interest stuff less so, cringey and/or boring.
James Holland and Al Murray are good on their Pod (We have ways of making you talk). One of their things is to change the narrative of the second world war. For many of us its very much:
Dunkirk - Battle of Britain - D-Day - Arnhem - VE day.
There is a lot of truth in that - a lot of fighting went on in 1945 in Western Europe, but most people know little about it. I suspect the pacific is a bit like that for many Brits, as in:
Pearl Harbour - (Midway, maybe?) - Hiroshima/Nagasaki- VJ day.
Even Fox News reports that the economy is in a sweet spot with good growth but not so much as to reignite inflation.
I remain of the view that these economic performance figures are going to drive Biden's popularity northwards during the coming months. If we end up with a Biden Trump rematch (and I think we will) it will not be as close as it was in 2020.
My view too. Economy plus incumbency plus uncommitted minds focusing properly on Trump. He loses again and it's not that close.
I've long thought that Biden will easily beat Trump. They could have indicted Trump eons ago for the January 6th nonsense. FFS he was telling the notrights beforehand to fight like hell on Twitter. I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but it suits the Democrats down to the ground to have the Court stuff running in election year and keeping January 6th omnipresent
Having Trump as the candidate helps a million other Democrats too down ticket fighting their own battles.
Matchup polls at this time are different from previous years because of Trump's name recognition. That is why he is riding high.
Its likely we can see 150-200 new Labour MPs at the GE, with a large overall majority. Is there any analysis of the likely balance of the party - my fear is a large and strong left-wing cohort - not a majority - but enough to wreak havoc. We know how much damage has occurred on the other side within the Conservatives. I woinder will we see a repeat. I think most voters are broadly centrist - it would be nice if they were governed from a centrist perspective.
O/T but the third TV drama serial, companion to Band of Brothers and The Pacific, Masters of the Air, is released today from Apple, with the first episode free. One of the two writers worked on the earlier volumes and one of the directors is retained from the Pacific, and Spielberg and Hanks are executive directors.
Early reviews sound very positive. Any idea if it will eventually reach other platforms? Apple is one of the ones I dont subscribe too...
Eventually, I expect so, and DVD. The first episode you can watch free to see if you want more; I think there's also a seven day free trial offer, so you can binge the whole thing without paying
I love BoB, but have never finished the pacific. Don't quite know why.
Thee action stuff was good in The Pacific, the human interest stuff less so, cringey and/or boring.
James Holland and Al Murray are good on their Pod (We have ways of making you talk). One of their things is to change the narrative of the second world war. For many of us its very much:
Dunkirk - Battle of Britain - D-Day - Arnhem - VE day.
There is a lot of truth in that - a lot of fighting went on in 1945 in Western Europe, but most people know little about it. I suspect the pacific is a bit like that for many Brits, as in:
Pearl Harbour - (Midway, maybe?) - Hiroshima/Nagasaki- VJ day.
High profile battles always attract public attention.
But, the Royal Naval blockade of Germany probably did more damage to the enemy than any victory, prior to 1944.
Even Fox News reports that the economy is in a sweet spot with good growth but not so much as to reignite inflation.
I remain of the view that these economic performance figures are going to drive Biden's popularity northwards during the coming months. If we end up with a Biden Trump rematch (and I think we will) it will not be as close as it was in 2020.
My view too. Economy plus incumbency plus uncommitted minds focusing properly on Trump. He loses again and it's not that close.
That's plausible, but Trump's lead is widening, not narrowing.
Even Fox News reports that the economy is in a sweet spot with good growth but not so much as to reignite inflation.
I remain of the view that these economic performance figures are going to drive Biden's popularity northwards during the coming months. If we end up with a Biden Trump rematch (and I think we will) it will not be as close as it was in 2020.
My view too. Economy plus incumbency plus uncommitted minds focusing properly on Trump. He loses again and it's not that close.
I've long thought that Biden will easily beat Trump. They could have indicted Trump eons ago for the January 6th nonsense. FFS he was telling the notrights beforehand to fight like hell on Twitter. I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but it suits the Democrats down to the ground to have the Court stuff running in election year and keeping January 6th omnipresent
Having Trump as the candidate helps a million other Democrats too down ticket fighting their own battles.
Matchup polls at this time are different from previous years because of Trump's name recognition. That is why he is riding high.
Biden's approval rating is only 38.7%
That is not the rating that wins re-election.
I've basically got to the point where I ignore British left-wing or centrist posters on Trump.
They don't know what they're talking about and I don't want uninformed noise influencing my betting strategy.
It basically boils down to he shouldn't win because he's awful and therefore he won't.
Back on topic, no wonder the Tories tried to keep the elderly alive during Covid, at the expense of the prosperity and mental health of younger people. Imagine the effect on Tory votes if oldies had been allowed to die to protect the rest of the population, and there were 50% fewer over 65s. Or would under 65s have been more grateful and more inclined to vote Tory?
Absolutely spot on. We should have allowed the elderly to shield whilst young people got on with life. All that’s happened is the entitled older generation have got everything handed to them and instead of being reflective they just shout at everyone and call them thick, woke and stupid. Enough.
Quite a few people on this site give every impression of favouring euthanaising anyone aged over 55. I guess it's irritating to wait for an inheritance.
Again, the Tories haven't been in office for the last four decades.
Stop your lies.
They have been in power for 32 of the last 45 years.
And, for the first 7 years of that there was a massive rise in defence spending. And you forget Labour's cuts too.
This football club supporter partisanship that insults the intelligence of the site and, since there's no sign Labour intend to do anything about it either it's all scarfs, rattles, and chanting in the stands.
Sorry Casino, some of us in the herd aren't as adept as you at masking our partisanship.
Are the East Asians now the only people capable of building anything??
It does sometimes feel that way. The entire west is seized with a pathetic lassitude
I think it’s because we are at the end of decades of fat complacency (living off our achievements from 1500-1997) and later that has been tainted with defensiveness. Guilt. Self loathing. Apathetic doubt
We need to be proactive. DO THINGS. We need - especially in Britain - to regain some imperial swagger, start conquering and humiliating minor countries and then FFS STOP APOLOGISING
Imperial swagger is fuck all to do with the commercial success of S Korea. And we started the abandonment of heavy manufacturing some time prior to 1997.
We need to rediscover basic competence, rather than an inflated view of ourselves.
I agree, but we do do many things well. We have got more than basic competence in many areas. In construction, even the Elizabeth Line, albeit late and over-cost, has been a success. And from memory, the Channel Tunnel Rail Link phase two was on time and budget.
IMV short-termism is a massive problem. Politicians and financiers all want quick results; anything more than five years away is risky. Anything on large timescales needs to be utterly derisked, leading to paralysis by analysis that just increases costs. Instead of "Just fu**ing do it!" we get: "Let's only do it if we can be really, really sure of everything," and then when we do it, it turns out we did not determine the risks anyway.
Three-year long public inquiries only do the lawyers and campaign groups good.
(I've recently been hearing scuttlebutt that even investors are getting more short-term in the UK; just looking to get out of a business as quickly as possible rather than building them up. It was bad before, it's worse now.)
O/T but the third TV drama serial, companion to Band of Brothers and The Pacific, Masters of the Air, is released today from Apple, with the first episode free. One of the two writers worked on the earlier volumes and one of the directors is retained from the Pacific, and Spielberg and Hanks are executive directors.
Early reviews sound very positive. Any idea if it will eventually reach other platforms? Apple is one of the ones I dont subscribe too...
Eventually, I expect so, and DVD. The first episode you can watch free to see if you want more; I think there's also a seven day free trial offer, so you can binge the whole thing without paying
I love BoB, but have never finished the pacific. Don't quite know why.
Thee action stuff was good in The Pacific, the human interest stuff less so, cringey and/or boring.
James Holland and Al Murray are good on their Pod (We have ways of making you talk). One of their things is to change the narrative of the second world war. For many of us its very much:
Dunkirk - Battle of Britain - D-Day - Arnhem - VE day.
There is a lot of truth in that - a lot of fighting went on in 1945 in Western Europe, but most people know little about it. I suspect the pacific is a bit like that for many Brits, as in:
Pearl Harbour - (Midway, maybe?) - Hiroshima/Nagasaki- VJ day.
High profile battles always attract public attention.
But, the Royal Naval blockade of Germany probably did more damage to the enemy than any victory, prior to 1944.
This is very true, and Holland makes a lot of this in his trilogy about WW2 (still waiting for part 3!). I had not been aware of just how resource poor Germany was in the second world war and how bad rationing was from the start of the war. It reveals just how little concept Hitler had of the power of the British empire in terms of shipping and trade and just how vast and powerful the Navy was. I had no idea that Bread was NEVER rationed in the UK, for instance.
Back on topic, no wonder the Tories tried to keep the elderly alive during Covid, at the expense of the prosperity and mental health of younger people. Imagine the effect on Tory votes if oldies had been allowed to die to protect the rest of the population, and there were 50% fewer over 65s. Or would under 65s have been more grateful and more inclined to vote Tory?
Absolutely spot on. We should have allowed the elderly to shield whilst young people got on with life. All that’s happened is the entitled older generation have got everything handed to them and instead of being reflective they just shout at everyone and call them thick, woke and stupid. Enough.
Quite a few people on this site give every impression of favouring euthanaising anyone aged over 55. I guess it's irritating to wait for an inheritance.
Its alright until you reach 54 yourself. Like Roy Batty - they always want a bit more life...
Again, the Tories haven't been in office for the last four decades.
Stop your lies.
Well they have - just not for the whole of the period.
If you look at spending as a percentage of GDP, there was a steady decline from the early 80s to ... around 1997. It been (with minor fluctuations) more or less steady since then.
Defence procurement appears to have got progressively worse, irrespective of the party in power.
Labour put in place lots of naval cuts and trimmed the size of the army post 1997. Look at how many frigates and destroyers we started with and where we ended up. And how the army shrunk from c.120k to 100k.
But, this is a distraction. The real issue is that since the late 80s, when victory in the Cold War was in sight, neither party has invested properly in our defence and that now needs to be reversed.
Is there any sign Labour intend to do this?
There’s a school of thought that says most of the Navy’s current problems stem from the carriers decision, to save 10k jobs in Gordon Brown’s constituency in advance of the 2010 election.
That doesn't stack up. In a parallel universe where sanity reigned and the carriers were not built then something else would have been built at Rosyth anyway. Maybe 3 x Mistral / Juan Carlos I type helicopter carriers. (Which would have been a lot more use and a lot easier to crew.)
O/T but the third TV drama serial, companion to Band of Brothers and The Pacific, Masters of the Air, is released today from Apple, with the first episode free. One of the two writers worked on the earlier volumes and one of the directors is retained from the Pacific, and Spielberg and Hanks are executive directors.
Early reviews sound very positive. Any idea if it will eventually reach other platforms? Apple is one of the ones I dont subscribe too...
Eventually, I expect so, and DVD. The first episode you can watch free to see if you want more; I think there's also a seven day free trial offer, so you can binge the whole thing without paying
I love BoB, but have never finished the pacific. Don't quite know why.
Thee action stuff was good in The Pacific, the human interest stuff less so, cringey and/or boring.
James Holland and Al Murray are good on their Pod (We have ways of making you talk). One of their things is to change the narrative of the second world war. For many of us its very much:
Dunkirk - Battle of Britain - D-Day - Arnhem - VE day.
There is a lot of truth in that - a lot of fighting went on in 1945 in Western Europe, but most people know little about it. I suspect the pacific is a bit like that for many Brits, as in:
Pearl Harbour - (Midway, maybe?) - Hiroshima/Nagasaki- VJ day.
In the 50’s the senior Biology master at the school I attended…… in fact the only one, but he taught A level Botany and Zoology as far as I was concerned …… has been a prisoner of the Japanese In Singapore. On a boring day the trick was to get him to talk about vitamin deficiencies.
Again, the Tories haven't been in office for the last four decades.
Stop your lies.
They have been in power for 32 of the last 45 years.
And, for the first 7 years of that there was a massive rise in defence spending. And you forget Labour's cuts too.
This football club supporter partisanship that insults the intelligence of the site and, since there's no sign Labour intend to do anything about it either it's all scarfs, rattles, and chanting in the stands.
Sorry Casino, some of us in the herd aren't as adept as you at masking our partisanship.
You know what, I think this terrible partisanship all started back in 2010 when Nick Clegg got everyone too cosy. It was bound to end like this.
Even Fox News reports that the economy is in a sweet spot with good growth but not so much as to reignite inflation.
I remain of the view that these economic performance figures are going to drive Biden's popularity northwards during the coming months. If we end up with a Biden Trump rematch (and I think we will) it will not be as close as it was in 2020.
My view too. Economy plus incumbency plus uncommitted minds focusing properly on Trump. He loses again and it's not that close.
I've long thought that Biden will easily beat Trump. They could have indicted Trump eons ago for the January 6th nonsense. FFS he was telling the notrights beforehand to fight like hell on Twitter. I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but it suits the Democrats down to the ground to have the Court stuff running in election year and keeping January 6th omnipresent
Having Trump as the candidate helps a million other Democrats too down ticket fighting their own battles.
Matchup polls at this time are different from previous years because of Trump's name recognition. That is why he is riding high.
Biden's approval rating is only 38.7%
That is not the rating that wins re-election.
Yes and we're talking about the current president against the guy who was president 4 years ago, so most people will have made their minds up. This means that it is probably going to be quite close, I think.
So we’re NOT giving back Diego Garcia, in particular we are NOT handing back the Chagos Islands to Mauritius (alias China)
Good. We have to stop seeing the world as this peaceful place where we can do nice Wokey things just because. The world is a lot more hostile than it was - Russia and China scheme against the entire west
Back on topic, no wonder the Tories tried to keep the elderly alive during Covid, at the expense of the prosperity and mental health of younger people. Imagine the effect on Tory votes if oldies had been allowed to die to protect the rest of the population, and there were 50% fewer over 65s. Or would under 65s have been more grateful and more inclined to vote Tory?
Absolutely spot on. We should have allowed the elderly to shield whilst young people got on with life. All that’s happened is the entitled older generation have got everything handed to them and instead of being reflective they just shout at everyone and call them thick, woke and stupid. Enough.
Quite a few people on this site give every impression of favouring euthanaising anyone aged over 55. I guess it's irritating to wait for an inheritance.
And to an audience which is clearly a lot older than the mean of the population.
If there are 4 things I would assume about PB it is that:
a) The mean of PB is older than the population as a whole b) The mean of PB is richer than the population as a whole c) The mean is more intelligent than the population as a whole d) 100% are interested in politics.
Its likely we can see 150-200 new Labour MPs at the GE, with a large overall majority. Is there any analysis of the likely balance of the party - my fear is a large and strong left-wing cohort - not a majority - but enough to wreak havoc. We know how much damage has occurred on the other side within the Conservatives. I woinder will we see a repeat. I think most voters are broadly centrist - it would be nice if they were governed from a centrist perspective.
I am hoping that the lessons of Sheffield Hallam have been learned and some serious vetting is being done on all candidates.
O/T but the third TV drama serial, companion to Band of Brothers and The Pacific, Masters of the Air, is released today from Apple, with the first episode free. One of the two writers worked on the earlier volumes and one of the directors is retained from the Pacific, and Spielberg and Hanks are executive directors.
Early reviews sound very positive. Any idea if it will eventually reach other platforms? Apple is one of the ones I dont subscribe too...
Eventually, I expect so, and DVD. The first episode you can watch free to see if you want more; I think there's also a seven day free trial offer, so you can binge the whole thing without paying
I love BoB, but have never finished the pacific. Don't quite know why.
In the Pacific it takes longer to get familiar with the characters, and neither the casting nor the storyline is as tight and clear as the single team going from Normandy to Germany. But it's worth a watch. I've only watched the first of Masters so far but I'd say the standard is up there with the other series. Heavily reliant on CGI, of course, but very well done.
I've flown the route of their first mission, at least as far as the Dutch coast, and having flown above Kent and cross-Channel, of course it makes you think back to the air battles of the war. But it was a terrifying experience and not one I would have been eager to share. The first episode brings that across very clearly. Whether you lived, died, or were wounded, was pretty much random.
O/T but the third TV drama serial, companion to Band of Brothers and The Pacific, Masters of the Air, is released today from Apple, with the first episode free. One of the two writers worked on the earlier volumes and one of the directors is retained from the Pacific, and Spielberg and Hanks are executive directors.
Early reviews sound very positive. Any idea if it will eventually reach other platforms? Apple is one of the ones I dont subscribe too...
Eventually, I expect so, and DVD. The first episode you can watch free to see if you want more; I think there's also a seven day free trial offer, so you can binge the whole thing without paying
I love BoB, but have never finished the pacific. Don't quite know why.
Thee action stuff was good in The Pacific, the human interest stuff less so, cringey and/or boring.
James Holland and Al Murray are good on their Pod (We have ways of making you talk). One of their things is to change the narrative of the second world war. For many of us its very much:
Dunkirk - Battle of Britain - D-Day - Arnhem - VE day.
There is a lot of truth in that - a lot of fighting went on in 1945 in Western Europe, but most people know little about it. I suspect the pacific is a bit like that for many Brits, as in:
Pearl Harbour - (Midway, maybe?) - Hiroshima/Nagasaki- VJ day.
Its likely we can see 150-200 new Labour MPs at the GE, with a large overall majority. Is there any analysis of the likely balance of the party - my fear is a large and strong left-wing cohort - not a majority - but enough to wreak havoc. We know how much damage has occurred on the other side within the Conservatives. I woinder will we see a repeat. I think most voters are broadly centrist - it would be nice if they were governed from a centrist perspective.
I am hoping that the lessons of Sheffield Hallam have been learned and some serious vetting is being done on all candidates.
Agree, but it won't. A few nutters always get through. Some only become so after time or hide it well.
Are the East Asians now the only people capable of building anything??
It does sometimes feel that way. The entire west is seized with a pathetic lassitude
I think it’s because we are at the end of decades of fat complacency (living off our achievements from 1500-1997) and later that has been tainted with defensiveness. Guilt. Self loathing. Apathetic doubt
We need to be proactive. DO THINGS. We need - especially in Britain - to regain some imperial swagger, start conquering and humiliating minor countries and then FFS STOP APOLOGISING
It's wine o'clock, I see.
It's always whine o'clock on PB. Cheers!
You're just full of sour grapes.
Rather that than taking an unduly rosé view of the situation.
Again, the Tories haven't been in office for the last four decades.
Stop your lies.
They have been in power for 32 of the last 45 years.
And, for the first 7 years of that there was a massive rise in defence spending. And you forget Labour's cuts too.
This football club supporter partisanship that insults the intelligence of the site and, since there's no sign Labour intend to do anything about it either it's all scarfs, rattles, and chanting in the stands.
Sorry Casino, some of us in the herd aren't as adept as you at masking our partisanship.
I'm not partisan in the slightest. I was very critical of the Osborne/Cameron cuts in 2010 - in fact, I quit my membership for 5 years over it - and I consistently make money betting over every political cycle - regardless of who's on top. You can't do that without objectivity.
O/T but the third TV drama serial, companion to Band of Brothers and The Pacific, Masters of the Air, is released today from Apple, with the first episode free. One of the two writers worked on the earlier volumes and one of the directors is retained from the Pacific, and Spielberg and Hanks are executive directors.
Early reviews sound very positive. Any idea if it will eventually reach other platforms? Apple is one of the ones I dont subscribe too...
Eventually, I expect so, and DVD. The first episode you can watch free to see if you want more; I think there's also a seven day free trial offer, so you can binge the whole thing without paying
I love BoB, but have never finished the pacific. Don't quite know why.
Thee action stuff was good in The Pacific, the human interest stuff less so, cringey and/or boring.
James Holland and Al Murray are good on their Pod (We have ways of making you talk). One of their things is to change the narrative of the second world war. For many of us its very much:
Dunkirk - Battle of Britain - D-Day - Arnhem - VE day.
There is a lot of truth in that - a lot of fighting went on in 1945 in Western Europe, but most people know little about it. I suspect the pacific is a bit like that for many Brits, as in:
Pearl Harbour - (Midway, maybe?) - Hiroshima/Nagasaki- VJ day.
High profile battles always attract public attention.
But, the Royal Naval blockade of Germany probably did more damage to the enemy than any victory, prior to 1944.
This is very true, and Holland makes a lot of this in his trilogy about WW2 (still waiting for part 3!). I had not been aware of just how resource poor Germany was in the second world war and how bad rationing was from the start of the war. It reveals just how little concept Hitler had of the power of the British empire in terms of shipping and trade and just how vast and powerful the Navy was. I had no idea that Bread was NEVER rationed in the UK, for instance.
Even Fox News reports that the economy is in a sweet spot with good growth but not so much as to reignite inflation.
I remain of the view that these economic performance figures are going to drive Biden's popularity northwards during the coming months. If we end up with a Biden Trump rematch (and I think we will) it will not be as close as it was in 2020.
My view too. Economy plus incumbency plus uncommitted minds focusing properly on Trump. He loses again and it's not that close.
I've long thought that Biden will easily beat Trump. They could have indicted Trump eons ago for the January 6th nonsense. FFS he was telling the notrights beforehand to fight like hell on Twitter. I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but it suits the Democrats down to the ground to have the Court stuff running in election year and keeping January 6th omnipresent
Having Trump as the candidate helps a million other Democrats too down ticket fighting their own battles.
Matchup polls at this time are different from previous years because of Trump's name recognition. That is why he is riding high.
Biden's approval rating is only 38.7%
That is not the rating that wins re-election.
I've basically got to the point where I ignore British left-wing or centrist posters on Trump.
They don't know what they're talking about and I don't want uninformed noise influencing my betting strategy.
It basically boils down to he shouldn't win because he's awful and therefore he won't.
As a centrist I started tipping Trump at 9 for the Republican nomination back in 2021.......
So we’re NOT giving back Diego Garcia, in particular we are NOT handing back the Chagos Islands to Mauritius (alias China)
Good. We have to stop seeing the world as this peaceful place where we can do nice Wokey things just because. The world is a lot more hostile than it was - Russia and China scheme against the entire west
Are the East Asians now the only people capable of building anything??
It does sometimes feel that way. The entire west is seized with a pathetic lassitude
I think it’s because we are at the end of decades of fat complacency (living off our achievements from 1500-1997) and later that has been tainted with defensiveness. Guilt. Self loathing. Apathetic doubt
We need to be proactive. DO THINGS. We need - especially in Britain - to regain some imperial swagger, start conquering and humiliating minor countries and then FFS STOP APOLOGISING
It's wine o'clock, I see.
It's always whine o'clock on PB. Cheers!
You're just full of sour grapes.
Rather that than taking an unduly rosé view of the situation.
O/T but the third TV drama serial, companion to Band of Brothers and The Pacific, Masters of the Air, is released today from Apple, with the first episode free. One of the two writers worked on the earlier volumes and one of the directors is retained from the Pacific, and Spielberg and Hanks are executive directors.
Early reviews sound very positive. Any idea if it will eventually reach other platforms? Apple is one of the ones I dont subscribe too...
Eventually, I expect so, and DVD. The first episode you can watch free to see if you want more; I think there's also a seven day free trial offer, so you can binge the whole thing without paying
I love BoB, but have never finished the pacific. Don't quite know why.
Thee action stuff was good in The Pacific, the human interest stuff less so, cringey and/or boring.
James Holland and Al Murray are good on their Pod (We have ways of making you talk). One of their things is to change the narrative of the second world war. For many of us its very much:
Dunkirk - Battle of Britain - D-Day - Arnhem - VE day.
There is a lot of truth in that - a lot of fighting went on in 1945 in Western Europe, but most people know little about it. I suspect the pacific is a bit like that for many Brits, as in:
Pearl Harbour - (Midway, maybe?) - Hiroshima/Nagasaki- VJ day.
High profile battles always attract public attention.
But, the Royal Naval blockade of Germany probably did more damage to the enemy than any victory, prior to 1944.
This is very true, and Holland makes a lot of this in his trilogy about WW2 (still waiting for part 3!). I had not been aware of just how resource poor Germany was in the second world war and how bad rationing was from the start of the war. It reveals just how little concept Hitler had of the power of the British empire in terms of shipping and trade and just how vast and powerful the Navy was. I had no idea that Bread was NEVER rationed in the UK, for instance.
By the Spring of 1941, a lot of Germany's economic planners were growing very pessimistic that Germany could even continue fighting, beyond the end of 1942. They thought that Ukraine could make good the deficiency in food imports, and the Caucasus the deficiency in oil imports. The drive to conquer the Western Soviet Union was driven as much by economic need, as much as ideology.
The problem was, they were also pretty clear-sighted that Germany really could not sustain a campaign more than 1,000 km into the Soviet Union. The Red Army had to be drawn into battles in the West and destroyed. But, by October 1941, the bulk of the Red Army had pulled back sufficiently, that at a logistical level, German victory had become vanishingly unlikely.
The whole Nazi theory of economics was based upon plunder, but plunder does not get you very far in a modern economy.
Back on topic, no wonder the Tories tried to keep the elderly alive during Covid, at the expense of the prosperity and mental health of younger people. Imagine the effect on Tory votes if oldies had been allowed to die to protect the rest of the population, and there were 50% fewer over 65s. Or would under 65s have been more grateful and more inclined to vote Tory?
Absolutely spot on. We should have allowed the elderly to shield whilst young people got on with life. All that’s happened is the entitled older generation have got everything handed to them and instead of being reflective they just shout at everyone and call them thick, woke and stupid. Enough.
Quite a few people on this site give every impression of favouring euthanaising anyone aged over 55. I guess it's irritating to wait for an inheritance.
And to an audience which is clearly a lot older than the mean of the population.
If there are 4 things I would assume about PB it is that:
a) The mean of PB is older than the population as a whole b) The mean of PB is richer than the population as a whole c) The mean is more intelligent than the population as a whole d) 100% are interested in politics.
Its likely we can see 150-200 new Labour MPs at the GE, with a large overall majority. Is there any analysis of the likely balance of the party - my fear is a large and strong left-wing cohort - not a majority - but enough to wreak havoc. We know how much damage has occurred on the other side within the Conservatives. I woinder will we see a repeat. I think most voters are broadly centrist - it would be nice if they were governed from a centrist perspective.
I am hoping that the lessons of Sheffield Hallam have been learned and some serious vetting is being done on all candidates.
I remain totally astonished at the lack of vetting of Parliamentary candidates by all major parties.
It’s one thing to have a couple of mad councillors in an unexpected landslide, but to have a few mad MPs is on another level. Basic failures as well, such as checking Twitter from 2009. It doesn’t cost millions, each party could do it with a handful of people in a couple of months.
Somewhat ironically, the model to follow is Nigel Farage, and the way he dealt with UKIP councillors in recent years.
O/T but the third TV drama serial, companion to Band of Brothers and The Pacific, Masters of the Air, is released today from Apple, with the first episode free. One of the two writers worked on the earlier volumes and one of the directors is retained from the Pacific, and Spielberg and Hanks are executive directors.
Early reviews sound very positive. Any idea if it will eventually reach other platforms? Apple is one of the ones I dont subscribe too...
Eventually, I expect so, and DVD. The first episode you can watch free to see if you want more; I think there's also a seven day free trial offer, so you can binge the whole thing without paying
I love BoB, but have never finished the pacific. Don't quite know why.
Thee action stuff was good in The Pacific, the human interest stuff less so, cringey and/or boring.
James Holland and Al Murray are good on their Pod (We have ways of making you talk). One of their things is to change the narrative of the second world war. For many of us its very much:
Dunkirk - Battle of Britain - D-Day - Arnhem - VE day.
There is a lot of truth in that - a lot of fighting went on in 1945 in Western Europe, but most people know little about it. I suspect the pacific is a bit like that for many Brits, as in:
Pearl Harbour - (Midway, maybe?) - Hiroshima/Nagasaki- VJ day.
I said this before, but a while back I watched a Youtube channel covering the entirety of World War One. I reckon the majority of Brits just think of the big western front battles; perhaps Gallipoli, or even Lawrence of Arabia. In reality the war was much more widespread and complex than that. How many of us in the UK think about the German/Russia side of the war, which was perhaps more significant given the Russian revolution?
I like history; but my knowledge is incredibly patchy on so many areas.
Again, the Tories haven't been in office for the last four decades.
Stop your lies.
Well they have - just not for the whole of the period.
If you look at spending as a percentage of GDP, there was a steady decline from the early 80s to ... around 1997. It been (with minor fluctuations) more or less steady since then.
Defence procurement appears to have got progressively worse, irrespective of the party in power.
Labour put in place lots of naval cuts and trimmed the size of the army post 1997. Look at how many frigates and destroyers we started with and where we ended up. And how the army shrunk from c.120k to 100k.
But, this is a distraction. The real issue is that since the late 80s, when victory in the Cold War was in sight, neither party has invested properly in our defence and that now needs to be reversed.
Is there any sign Labour intend to do this?
There’s a school of thought that says most of the Navy’s current problems stem from the carriers decision, to save 10k jobs in Gordon Brown’s constituency in advance of the 2010 election.
It's amazing how, for some, nothing is ever the fault of the party that has governed the country for the last 14 years.
The 2nd carrier could have been very easily been cancelled by the Con-LD coalition in 2010 as it was still on the drawing board when they came to office, the contracts for both having been signed less than 2 years earlier. The 1st carrier was half built but there was still an option of selling it to the USA at a knock down price to recover a chunk of the sunk costs. Instead, Cameron chose to continue despite all the other cuts in his first spending review, and eventually the 2nd carrier was built too. He let his government be swayed by special pleading from the Navy and held to ransom by exaggerated threats of abortive cancellation costs from BAE systems. It wouldn't have been in BAE Systems' interests to follow through by milking the government only to reap the consequences when bidding for future work long into the future, yet Cameron decided not to call their bluff.
Ms Cyclefree produced a useful list of relevant Ministers over the period of the scandal. I can't trace it now. If you can, perhaps you could repost it here?
I recall that Swinson was in charge about this time, following on from Sir Ed, Norman Lamb, and Jenny Willott. I suspect that Ed is relatively blameless, despite what the press might have you believe, and Norman Lamb is one of the few Ministers to get a favorable word or two from Alan Bates.
Swinson, I think, has problems, as indeed does every subsequent Minister right through to the time the ITV series started and government began to notice that something, somewhere, had gone terribly wrong.
Might not make much difference. The Tories have successfully pointed the finger overwhelmingly at Davey (despite us clarifying here that all three parties and multiple politicians dropped the ball at least and worse than that in cases) and weaponised the horrible situation successfully. Unless they get a lashback from having gone too far down that route (which seems unlikely now), they should come out of it as the political beneficiaries.
That, Andy, is a premature judgement, in my opinion.
I hope you're right. It would be good to conclude I was overly cynical here and everyone involved turns out to carry at least part of the can.
All parties have their hands dipped in blood. But as the latest revelations in the last day show, the government appointed director was involved in the decision to sack Second Sight in 2014 - see the unredacted minutes of Project Sparrow which have now been revealed. So the government's hands are all over the cover up. As was always going to be shown to be the case.
Post Office management would never have done what it did had it not had government backing.
Although a director should not be taking instruction from a shareholder regardless of who appointed them. They have a responsibility to the entire set of stakeholders
ALSO, we should not only refuse to "loan" the Elgin marbles to the ungrateful Greeks, we should send an expeditonary force to Greece to seize MORE antiquities, on the salient and frankly inarguable grounds that we are British, and they are not
We could start with the Antikythera Mechanism, which would look great in its own crystal box under the statue of Clive of India
O/T but the third TV drama serial, companion to Band of Brothers and The Pacific, Masters of the Air, is released today from Apple, with the first episode free. One of the two writers worked on the earlier volumes and one of the directors is retained from the Pacific, and Spielberg and Hanks are executive directors.
Early reviews sound very positive. Any idea if it will eventually reach other platforms? Apple is one of the ones I dont subscribe too...
Eventually, I expect so, and DVD. The first episode you can watch free to see if you want more; I think there's also a seven day free trial offer, so you can binge the whole thing without paying
I love BoB, but have never finished the pacific. Don't quite know why.
Thee action stuff was good in The Pacific, the human interest stuff less so, cringey and/or boring.
James Holland and Al Murray are good on their Pod (We have ways of making you talk). One of their things is to change the narrative of the second world war. For many of us its very much:
Dunkirk - Battle of Britain - D-Day - Arnhem - VE day.
There is a lot of truth in that - a lot of fighting went on in 1945 in Western Europe, but most people know little about it. I suspect the pacific is a bit like that for many Brits, as in:
Pearl Harbour - (Midway, maybe?) - Hiroshima/Nagasaki- VJ day.
High profile battles always attract public attention.
But, the Royal Naval blockade of Germany probably did more damage to the enemy than any victory, prior to 1944.
This is very true, and Holland makes a lot of this in his trilogy about WW2 (still waiting for part 3!). I had not been aware of just how resource poor Germany was in the second world war and how bad rationing was from the start of the war. It reveals just how little concept Hitler had of the power of the British empire in terms of shipping and trade and just how vast and powerful the Navy was. I had no idea that Bread was NEVER rationed in the UK, for instance.
By the Spring of 1941, a lot of Germany's economic planners were growing very pessimistic that Germany could even continue fighting, beyond the end of 1942. They thought that Ukraine could make good the deficiency in food imports, and the Caucasus the deficiency in oil imports. The drive to conquer the Western Soviet Union was driven as much by economic need, as much as ideology.
The problem was, they were also pretty clear-sighted that Germany really could not sustain a campaign more than 1,000 km into the Soviet Union. The Red Army had to be drawn into battles in the West and destroyed. But, by October 1941, the bulk of the Red Army had pulled back sufficiently, that at a logistical level, German victory had become vanishingly unlikely.
The whole Nazi theory of economics was based upon plunder, but plunder does not get you very far in a modern economy.
The Nazi economy was astonishingly weak under the surface.
They made up for it by excellent junior officers and supreme tactical fighting skill but that wasn't enough.
O/T but the third TV drama serial, companion to Band of Brothers and The Pacific, Masters of the Air, is released today from Apple, with the first episode free. One of the two writers worked on the earlier volumes and one of the directors is retained from the Pacific, and Spielberg and Hanks are executive directors.
Early reviews sound very positive. Any idea if it will eventually reach other platforms? Apple is one of the ones I dont subscribe too...
Eventually, I expect so, and DVD. The first episode you can watch free to see if you want more; I think there's also a seven day free trial offer, so you can binge the whole thing without paying
I love BoB, but have never finished the pacific. Don't quite know why.
Thee action stuff was good in The Pacific, the human interest stuff less so, cringey and/or boring.
James Holland and Al Murray are good on their Pod (We have ways of making you talk). One of their things is to change the narrative of the second world war. For many of us its very much:
Dunkirk - Battle of Britain - D-Day - Arnhem - VE day.
There is a lot of truth in that - a lot of fighting went on in 1945 in Western Europe, but most people know little about it. I suspect the pacific is a bit like that for many Brits, as in:
Pearl Harbour - (Midway, maybe?) - Hiroshima/Nagasaki- VJ day.
High profile battles always attract public attention.
But, the Royal Naval blockade of Germany probably did more damage to the enemy than any victory, prior to 1944.
The naval blockade of Germany was probably the largest factor in ending the First World War. In the second, Germany could be supplied by rail from Eastern Europe.
As for the war in the Far East, remember everyone would have known about our bits like the fall of Singapore and the defence of India and Burma (see It Ain't Half Hot Mum) from the Japanese, even if it was less salient than the war in Europe (hence the "forgotten army"). Likewise the Eastern front where Germany fought Russia in what was often not far removed from First World War slaughter and attrition.
So we’re NOT giving back Diego Garcia, in particular we are NOT handing back the Chagos Islands to Mauritius (alias China)
Good. We have to stop seeing the world as this peaceful place where we can do nice Wokey things just because. The world is a lot more hostile than it was - Russia and China scheme against the entire west
The Diego Garcia discussion is bollocks anyway as its fate is not remotely within the gift of the British government. The US have 2,000+ personnel there and the British about 30 - to do the hoovering and mow the lawns.
Ms Cyclefree produced a useful list of relevant Ministers over the period of the scandal. I can't trace it now. If you can, perhaps you could repost it here?
I recall that Swinson was in charge about this time, following on from Sir Ed, Norman Lamb, and Jenny Willott. I suspect that Ed is relatively blameless, despite what the press might have you believe, and Norman Lamb is one of the few Ministers to get a favorable word or two from Alan Bates.
Swinson, I think, has problems, as indeed does every subsequent Minister right through to the time the ITV series started and government began to notice that something, somewhere, had gone terribly wrong.
Might not make much difference. The Tories have successfully pointed the finger overwhelmingly at Davey (despite us clarifying here that all three parties and multiple politicians dropped the ball at least and worse than that in cases) and weaponised the horrible situation successfully. Unless they get a lashback from having gone too far down that route (which seems unlikely now), they should come out of it as the political beneficiaries.
That, Andy, is a premature judgement, in my opinion.
I hope you're right. It would be good to conclude I was overly cynical here and everyone involved turns out to carry at least part of the can.
All parties have their hands dipped in blood. But as the latest revelations in the last day show, the government appointed director was involved in the decision to sack Second Sight in 2014 - see the unredacted minutes of Project Sparrow which have now been revealed. So the government's hands are all over the cover up. As was always going to be shown to be the case.
Post Office management would never have done what it did had it not had government backing.
Although a director should not be taking instruction from a shareholder regardless of who appointed them. They have a responsibility to the entire set of stakeholders
O/T but the third TV drama serial, companion to Band of Brothers and The Pacific, Masters of the Air, is released today from Apple, with the first episode free. One of the two writers worked on the earlier volumes and one of the directors is retained from the Pacific, and Spielberg and Hanks are executive directors.
Early reviews sound very positive. Any idea if it will eventually reach other platforms? Apple is one of the ones I dont subscribe too...
Eventually, I expect so, and DVD. The first episode you can watch free to see if you want more; I think there's also a seven day free trial offer, so you can binge the whole thing without paying
I love BoB, but have never finished the pacific. Don't quite know why.
Thee action stuff was good in The Pacific, the human interest stuff less so, cringey and/or boring.
James Holland and Al Murray are good on their Pod (We have ways of making you talk). One of their things is to change the narrative of the second world war. For many of us its very much:
Dunkirk - Battle of Britain - D-Day - Arnhem - VE day.
There is a lot of truth in that - a lot of fighting went on in 1945 in Western Europe, but most people know little about it. I suspect the pacific is a bit like that for many Brits, as in:
Pearl Harbour - (Midway, maybe?) - Hiroshima/Nagasaki- VJ day.
High profile battles always attract public attention.
But, the Royal Naval blockade of Germany probably did more damage to the enemy than any victory, prior to 1944.
This is very true, and Holland makes a lot of this in his trilogy about WW2 (still waiting for part 3!). I had not been aware of just how resource poor Germany was in the second world war and how bad rationing was from the start of the war. It reveals just how little concept Hitler had of the power of the British empire in terms of shipping and trade and just how vast and powerful the Navy was. I had no idea that Bread was NEVER rationed in the UK, for instance.
By the Spring of 1941, a lot of Germany's economic planners were growing very pessimistic that Germany could even continue fighting, beyond the end of 1942. They thought that Ukraine could make good the deficiency in food imports, and the Caucasus the deficiency in oil imports. The drive to conquer the Western Soviet Union was driven as much by economic need, as much as ideology.
The problem was, they were also pretty clear-sighted that Germany really could not sustain a campaign more than 1,000 km into the Soviet Union. The Red Army had to be drawn into battles in the West and destroyed. But, by October 1941, the bulk of the Red Army had pulled back sufficiently, that at a logistical level, German victory had become vanishingly unlikely.
The whole Nazi theory of economics was based upon plunder, but plunder does not get you very far in a modern economy.
Holland also makes a really good point about the oil of the Caucasus - even if they had captured the oil fields, firstly they would have been put out of use (scorched earth) and second even running Germany had no way to move the oil where it was needed. No oil tankers. Not enough trucks, or railway wagons. It was all nonsense. The point about the range of operations is absolutely bang on. Clearly a lot of fighting and dying had to happen but arguably by Oct 1941 Germany had lost the war.
Again, the Tories haven't been in office for the last four decades.
Stop your lies.
Well they have - just not for the whole of the period.
If you look at spending as a percentage of GDP, there was a steady decline from the early 80s to ... around 1997. It been (with minor fluctuations) more or less steady since then.
Defence procurement appears to have got progressively worse, irrespective of the party in power.
Labour put in place lots of naval cuts and trimmed the size of the army post 1997. Look at how many frigates and destroyers we started with and where we ended up. And how the army shrunk from c.120k to 100k.
But, this is a distraction. The real issue is that since the late 80s, when victory in the Cold War was in sight, neither party has invested properly in our defence and that now needs to be reversed.
Is there any sign Labour intend to do this?
There’s a school of thought that says most of the Navy’s current problems stem from the carriers decision, to save 10k jobs in Gordon Brown’s constituency in advance of the 2010 election.
It's amazing how, for some, nothing is ever the fault of the party that has governed the country for the last 14 years.
The 2nd carrier could have been very easily been cancelled by the Con-LD coalition in 2010 as it was still on the drawing board when they came to office, the contracts for both having been signed less than 2 years earlier. The 1st carrier was half built but there was still an option of selling it to the USA at a knock down price to recover a chunk of the sunk costs. Instead, Cameron chose to continue despite all the other cuts in his first spending review, and eventually the 2nd carrier was built too. He let his government be swayed by special pleading from the Navy and held to ransom by exaggerated threats of abortive cancellation costs from BAE systems. It wouldn't have been in BAE Systems' interests to follow through by milking the government only to reap the consequences when bidding for future work long into the future, yet Cameron decided not to call their bluff.
Don’t worry, there’s plenty of blame for Cameron’s government too, and Blair’s, May’s, Johnson’s, all of whom have baulked at a proper defence review.
Defence is going to Europe’s biggest challenge in the next decade, as the US slowly withdraws from single-handedly propping up NATO - and most European governments are not really thinking about it at the moment, except in terms of what surplus old stock they can ship to Ukraine in the short term.
1% drop under Thatcher 33% drop under Major 10% drop under Blair/Brown 21% cut under Cameron 5% cut under May/Johnson/Truss/Sunak
So the big cuts in numbers were under Major and Cameron. Obviously military commitments varied over this period, particularly in Northern Ireland, Germany, Iraq and Afghanistan.
Back on topic, no wonder the Tories tried to keep the elderly alive during Covid, at the expense of the prosperity and mental health of younger people. Imagine the effect on Tory votes if oldies had been allowed to die to protect the rest of the population, and there were 50% fewer over 65s. Or would under 65s have been more grateful and more inclined to vote Tory?
Absolutely spot on. We should have allowed the elderly to shield whilst young people got on with life. All that’s happened is the entitled older generation have got everything handed to them and instead of being reflective they just shout at everyone and call them thick, woke and stupid. Enough.
Quite a few people on this site give every impression of favouring euthanaising anyone aged over 55. I guess it's irritating to wait for an inheritance.
As a 56 year old, I can't say that I am fully convinced by this policy.
O/T but the third TV drama serial, companion to Band of Brothers and The Pacific, Masters of the Air, is released today from Apple, with the first episode free. One of the two writers worked on the earlier volumes and one of the directors is retained from the Pacific, and Spielberg and Hanks are executive directors.
Early reviews sound very positive. Any idea if it will eventually reach other platforms? Apple is one of the ones I dont subscribe too...
Eventually, I expect so, and DVD. The first episode you can watch free to see if you want more; I think there's also a seven day free trial offer, so you can binge the whole thing without paying
I love BoB, but have never finished the pacific. Don't quite know why.
Thee action stuff was good in The Pacific, the human interest stuff less so, cringey and/or boring.
James Holland and Al Murray are good on their Pod (We have ways of making you talk). One of their things is to change the narrative of the second world war. For many of us its very much:
Dunkirk - Battle of Britain - D-Day - Arnhem - VE day.
There is a lot of truth in that - a lot of fighting went on in 1945 in Western Europe, but most people know little about it. I suspect the pacific is a bit like that for many Brits, as in:
Pearl Harbour - (Midway, maybe?) - Hiroshima/Nagasaki- VJ day.
High profile battles always attract public attention.
But, the Royal Naval blockade of Germany probably did more damage to the enemy than any victory, prior to 1944.
This is very true, and Holland makes a lot of this in his trilogy about WW2 (still waiting for part 3!). I had not been aware of just how resource poor Germany was in the second world war and how bad rationing was from the start of the war. It reveals just how little concept Hitler had of the power of the British empire in terms of shipping and trade and just how vast and powerful the Navy was. I had no idea that Bread was NEVER rationed in the UK, for instance.
Is that right? So much is made of rationing that I just assumed everything was rationed.
O/T but the third TV drama serial, companion to Band of Brothers and The Pacific, Masters of the Air, is released today from Apple, with the first episode free. One of the two writers worked on the earlier volumes and one of the directors is retained from the Pacific, and Spielberg and Hanks are executive directors.
Early reviews sound very positive. Any idea if it will eventually reach other platforms? Apple is one of the ones I dont subscribe too...
Eventually, I expect so, and DVD. The first episode you can watch free to see if you want more; I think there's also a seven day free trial offer, so you can binge the whole thing without paying
I love BoB, but have never finished the pacific. Don't quite know why.
Thee action stuff was good in The Pacific, the human interest stuff less so, cringey and/or boring.
James Holland and Al Murray are good on their Pod (We have ways of making you talk). One of their things is to change the narrative of the second world war. For many of us its very much:
Dunkirk - Battle of Britain - D-Day - Arnhem - VE day.
There is a lot of truth in that - a lot of fighting went on in 1945 in Western Europe, but most people know little about it. I suspect the pacific is a bit like that for many Brits, as in:
Pearl Harbour - (Midway, maybe?) - Hiroshima/Nagasaki- VJ day.
I said this before, but a while back I watched a Youtube channel covering the entirety of World War One. I reckon the majority of Brits just think of the big western front battles; perhaps Gallipoli, or even Lawrence of Arabia. In reality the war was much more widespread and complex than that. How many of us in the UK think about the German/Russia side of the war, which was perhaps more significant given the Russian revolution?
I like history; but my knowledge is incredibly patchy on so many areas.
Totally. One of the things I find very interesting is the different attitudes to Germany in 1914-18 compared to the Nazi flavour. And yet they were not that different. Plenty of atrocities, including in occupied parts of the West. And their territorial demands at Brest Litovsk would not be out of place for a Nazi settlement (had sense prevailed at the end of 1941 and they tried for peace.) People like to characterise WW1 as something that shouldn't have been fought, but this is a false interpretation, brought about by too much sodding poetry of by mostly posho public school officers...
Even Fox News reports that the economy is in a sweet spot with good growth but not so much as to reignite inflation.
I remain of the view that these economic performance figures are going to drive Biden's popularity northwards during the coming months. If we end up with a Biden Trump rematch (and I think we will) it will not be as close as it was in 2020.
My view too. Economy plus incumbency plus uncommitted minds focusing properly on Trump. He loses again and it's not that close.
I've long thought that Biden will easily beat Trump. They could have indicted Trump eons ago for the January 6th nonsense. FFS he was telling the notrights beforehand to fight like hell on Twitter. I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but it suits the Democrats down to the ground to have the Court stuff running in election year and keeping January 6th omnipresent
Having Trump as the candidate helps a million other Democrats too down ticket fighting their own battles.
Matchup polls at this time are different from previous years because of Trump's name recognition. That is why he is riding high.
The opinion polls think different.
Now, with that said, the Democrats outperformed their polling markedly in the midterms, and I expect a little bit of swingback.
But anyone expecting this to be a cakewalk for Biden is engaging in wishcasting.
O/T but the third TV drama serial, companion to Band of Brothers and The Pacific, Masters of the Air, is released today from Apple, with the first episode free. One of the two writers worked on the earlier volumes and one of the directors is retained from the Pacific, and Spielberg and Hanks are executive directors.
Early reviews sound very positive. Any idea if it will eventually reach other platforms? Apple is one of the ones I dont subscribe too...
Eventually, I expect so, and DVD. The first episode you can watch free to see if you want more; I think there's also a seven day free trial offer, so you can binge the whole thing without paying
I love BoB, but have never finished the pacific. Don't quite know why.
Thee action stuff was good in The Pacific, the human interest stuff less so, cringey and/or boring.
James Holland and Al Murray are good on their Pod (We have ways of making you talk). One of their things is to change the narrative of the second world war. For many of us its very much:
Dunkirk - Battle of Britain - D-Day - Arnhem - VE day.
There is a lot of truth in that - a lot of fighting went on in 1945 in Western Europe, but most people know little about it. I suspect the pacific is a bit like that for many Brits, as in:
Pearl Harbour - (Midway, maybe?) - Hiroshima/Nagasaki- VJ day.
High profile battles always attract public attention.
But, the Royal Naval blockade of Germany probably did more damage to the enemy than any victory, prior to 1944.
This is very true, and Holland makes a lot of this in his trilogy about WW2 (still waiting for part 3!). I had not been aware of just how resource poor Germany was in the second world war and how bad rationing was from the start of the war. It reveals just how little concept Hitler had of the power of the British empire in terms of shipping and trade and just how vast and powerful the Navy was. I had no idea that Bread was NEVER rationed in the UK, for instance.
By the Spring of 1941, a lot of Germany's economic planners were growing very pessimistic that Germany could even continue fighting, beyond the end of 1942. They thought that Ukraine could make good the deficiency in food imports, and the Caucasus the deficiency in oil imports. The drive to conquer the Western Soviet Union was driven as much by economic need, as much as ideology.
The problem was, they were also pretty clear-sighted that Germany really could not sustain a campaign more than 1,000 km into the Soviet Union. The Red Army had to be drawn into battles in the West and destroyed. But, by October 1941, the bulk of the Red Army had pulled back sufficiently, that at a logistical level, German victory had become vanishingly unlikely.
The whole Nazi theory of economics was based upon plunder, but plunder does not get you very far in a modern economy.
The Nazi economy was astonishingly weak under the surface.
They made up for it by excellent junior officers and supreme tactical fighting skill but that wasn't enough.
Again - this is true to an extent, but the myth of the superb quality of the German soldier is vastly over blown.
Again, the Tories haven't been in office for the last four decades.
Not continuously, but then he didn't say that!
In which case it's utterly meaningless.
Defence spending under Thatcher rose to 1985-1986.
The Thatcher government initially cut defence, which was a factor leading to the Falklands War, after which some ships needed replacing before the cuts resumed.
Are the East Asians now the only people capable of building anything??
It does sometimes feel that way. The entire west is seized with a pathetic lassitude
I think it’s because we are at the end of decades of fat complacency (living off our achievements from 1500-1997) and later that has been tainted with defensiveness. Guilt. Self loathing. Apathetic doubt
We need to be proactive. DO THINGS. We need - especially in Britain - to regain some imperial swagger, start conquering and humiliating minor countries and then FFS STOP APOLOGISING
O/T but the third TV drama serial, companion to Band of Brothers and The Pacific, Masters of the Air, is released today from Apple, with the first episode free. One of the two writers worked on the earlier volumes and one of the directors is retained from the Pacific, and Spielberg and Hanks are executive directors.
Early reviews sound very positive. Any idea if it will eventually reach other platforms? Apple is one of the ones I dont subscribe too...
Eventually, I expect so, and DVD. The first episode you can watch free to see if you want more; I think there's also a seven day free trial offer, so you can binge the whole thing without paying
I love BoB, but have never finished the pacific. Don't quite know why.
Thee action stuff was good in The Pacific, the human interest stuff less so, cringey and/or boring.
James Holland and Al Murray are good on their Pod (We have ways of making you talk). One of their things is to change the narrative of the second world war. For many of us its very much:
Dunkirk - Battle of Britain - D-Day - Arnhem - VE day.
There is a lot of truth in that - a lot of fighting went on in 1945 in Western Europe, but most people know little about it. I suspect the pacific is a bit like that for many Brits, as in:
Pearl Harbour - (Midway, maybe?) - Hiroshima/Nagasaki- VJ day.
If you want to learn about the Pacific War, the Ian Toll trilogy is absolutely fantastic: definitely the best books I read during covid.
1% drop under Thatcher 33% drop under Major 10% drop under Blair/Brown 21% cut under Cameron 5% cut under May/Johnson/Truss/Sunak
So the big cuts in numbers were under Major and Cameron. Obviously military commitments varied over this period, particularly in Northern Ireland, Germany, Iraq and Afghanistan.
Biggest cuts surely as a result of the end of the Cold War? Less need to station armies in Germany.
Also, as we see now, technology means headcount is not always the best measure for effectiveness.
Even Fox News reports that the economy is in a sweet spot with good growth but not so much as to reignite inflation.
I remain of the view that these economic performance figures are going to drive Biden's popularity northwards during the coming months. If we end up with a Biden Trump rematch (and I think we will) it will not be as close as it was in 2020.
My view too. Economy plus incumbency plus uncommitted minds focusing properly on Trump. He loses again and it's not that close.
I've long thought that Biden will easily beat Trump. They could have indicted Trump eons ago for the January 6th nonsense. FFS he was telling the notrights beforehand to fight like hell on Twitter. I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but it suits the Democrats down to the ground to have the Court stuff running in election year and keeping January 6th omnipresent
Having Trump as the candidate helps a million other Democrats too down ticket fighting their own battles.
Matchup polls at this time are different from previous years because of Trump's name recognition. That is why he is riding high.
Biden's approval rating is only 38.7%
That is not the rating that wins re-election.
Fortunately for Biden, Trump's approval rating is little better.
Even Fox News reports that the economy is in a sweet spot with good growth but not so much as to reignite inflation.
I remain of the view that these economic performance figures are going to drive Biden's popularity northwards during the coming months. If we end up with a Biden Trump rematch (and I think we will) it will not be as close as it was in 2020.
My view too. Economy plus incumbency plus uncommitted minds focusing properly on Trump. He loses again and it's not that close.
I've long thought that Biden will easily beat Trump. They could have indicted Trump eons ago for the January 6th nonsense. FFS he was telling the notrights beforehand to fight like hell on Twitter. I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but it suits the Democrats down to the ground to have the Court stuff running in election year and keeping January 6th omnipresent
Having Trump as the candidate helps a million other Democrats too down ticket fighting their own battles.
Matchup polls at this time are different from previous years because of Trump's name recognition. That is why he is riding high.
The opinion polls think different.
Now, with that said, the Democrats outperformed their polling markedly in the midterms, and I expect a little bit of swingback.
But anyone expecting this to be a cakewalk for Biden is engaging in wishcasting.
Certainly correct.
I remain of the view that Biden will beat Trump. Trump has more unknowns than Biden. We don’t quite know how the legal stuff will go. He is perfectly capable of saying things that harm his cause with swing voters, etc.
That doesn’t mean it’s inconceivable that Trump would win. It’s an entirely plausible outcome looking at it now, though I’m still happy to maintain my current prediction.
Edit: this is still assuming he actually doesn’t get barred from running or taking office. I know that many have dismissed that, but I think there’s a not-insignificant chance.
Are the East Asians now the only people capable of building anything??
It does sometimes feel that way. The entire west is seized with a pathetic lassitude
I think it’s because we are at the end of decades of fat complacency (living off our achievements from 1500-1997) and later that has been tainted with defensiveness. Guilt. Self loathing. Apathetic doubt
We need to be proactive. DO THINGS. We need - especially in Britain - to regain some imperial swagger, start conquering and humiliating minor countries and then FFS STOP APOLOGISING
Did you hear about Konstantin Kisin - a first-generation immigrant - getting heckled on Question Time last night, when he said that the UK is a wonderful place, one of the best countries in the world to live?
The young lady heckling being totally oblivious to the fact that she’s allowed to heckle a guest on a TV programme, is something that it’s impossible to do in most of the world.
You sometimes wonder if people ever take a look outside their bubbles.
Paul Johnson @PJTheEconomist · 2h Bluntly, if we want to reduce immigration we need to pay more for social care. If we don't want to pay more for social care we will continue to rely on immigrants.
Even Fox News reports that the economy is in a sweet spot with good growth but not so much as to reignite inflation.
I remain of the view that these economic performance figures are going to drive Biden's popularity northwards during the coming months. If we end up with a Biden Trump rematch (and I think we will) it will not be as close as it was in 2020.
My view too. Economy plus incumbency plus uncommitted minds focusing properly on Trump. He loses again and it's not that close.
I've long thought that Biden will easily beat Trump. They could have indicted Trump eons ago for the January 6th nonsense. FFS he was telling the notrights beforehand to fight like hell on Twitter. I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but it suits the Democrats down to the ground to have the Court stuff running in election year and keeping January 6th omnipresent
Having Trump as the candidate helps a million other Democrats too down ticket fighting their own battles.
Matchup polls at this time are different from previous years because of Trump's name recognition. That is why he is riding high.
The opinion polls think different.
Now, with that said, the Democrats outperformed their polling markedly in the midterms, and I expect a little bit of swingback.
But anyone expecting this to be a cakewalk for Biden is engaging in wishcasting.
It should be fascinating, although potentially horrific too. Will Kennedy have an influence, if so who will it hurt the most? Impact of all the court cases? Will the "sane" Republicans finally make a last stand? Turnout differentials from abortion and migration in states with different demographics.
Paul Johnson @PJTheEconomist · 2h Bluntly, if we want to reduce immigration we need to pay more for social care. If we don't want to pay more for social care we will continue to rely on immigrants.
Nah.
We need to pay significantly more for social care regardless.
If we don't want immigration we have to pay loads more for social care.
O/T but the third TV drama serial, companion to Band of Brothers and The Pacific, Masters of the Air, is released today from Apple, with the first episode free. One of the two writers worked on the earlier volumes and one of the directors is retained from the Pacific, and Spielberg and Hanks are executive directors.
Early reviews sound very positive. Any idea if it will eventually reach other platforms? Apple is one of the ones I dont subscribe too...
Eventually, I expect so, and DVD. The first episode you can watch free to see if you want more; I think there's also a seven day free trial offer, so you can binge the whole thing without paying
I love BoB, but have never finished the pacific. Don't quite know why.
Thee action stuff was good in The Pacific, the human interest stuff less so, cringey and/or boring.
James Holland and Al Murray are good on their Pod (We have ways of making you talk). One of their things is to change the narrative of the second world war. For many of us its very much:
Dunkirk - Battle of Britain - D-Day - Arnhem - VE day.
There is a lot of truth in that - a lot of fighting went on in 1945 in Western Europe, but most people know little about it. I suspect the pacific is a bit like that for many Brits, as in:
Pearl Harbour - (Midway, maybe?) - Hiroshima/Nagasaki- VJ day.
High profile battles always attract public attention.
But, the Royal Naval blockade of Germany probably did more damage to the enemy than any victory, prior to 1944.
This is very true, and Holland makes a lot of this in his trilogy about WW2 (still waiting for part 3!). I had not been aware of just how resource poor Germany was in the second world war and how bad rationing was from the start of the war. It reveals just how little concept Hitler had of the power of the British empire in terms of shipping and trade and just how vast and powerful the Navy was. I had no idea that Bread was NEVER rationed in the UK, for instance.
By the Spring of 1941, a lot of Germany's economic planners were growing very pessimistic that Germany could even continue fighting, beyond the end of 1942. They thought that Ukraine could make good the deficiency in food imports, and the Caucasus the deficiency in oil imports. The drive to conquer the Western Soviet Union was driven as much by economic need, as much as ideology.
The problem was, they were also pretty clear-sighted that Germany really could not sustain a campaign more than 1,000 km into the Soviet Union. The Red Army had to be drawn into battles in the West and destroyed. But, by October 1941, the bulk of the Red Army had pulled back sufficiently, that at a logistical level, German victory had become vanishingly unlikely.
The whole Nazi theory of economics was based upon plunder, but plunder does not get you very far in a modern economy.
Holland also makes a really good point about the oil of the Caucasus - even if they had captured the oil fields, firstly they would have been put out of use (scorched earth) and second even running Germany had no way to move the oil where it was needed. No oil tankers. Not enough trucks, or railway wagons. It was all nonsense. The point about the range of operations is absolutely bang on. Clearly a lot of fighting and dying had to happen but arguably by Oct 1941 Germany had lost the war.
Didn’t feel that to a child listening to the bombers overhead at night. In his bed in an air-raid shelter.
Even Fox News reports that the economy is in a sweet spot with good growth but not so much as to reignite inflation.
I remain of the view that these economic performance figures are going to drive Biden's popularity northwards during the coming months. If we end up with a Biden Trump rematch (and I think we will) it will not be as close as it was in 2020.
My view too. Economy plus incumbency plus uncommitted minds focusing properly on Trump. He loses again and it's not that close.
I've long thought that Biden will easily beat Trump. They could have indicted Trump eons ago for the January 6th nonsense. FFS he was telling the notrights beforehand to fight like hell on Twitter. I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but it suits the Democrats down to the ground to have the Court stuff running in election year and keeping January 6th omnipresent
Having Trump as the candidate helps a million other Democrats too down ticket fighting their own battles.
Matchup polls at this time are different from previous years because of Trump's name recognition. That is why he is riding high.
Biden's approval rating is only 38.7%
That is not the rating that wins re-election.
Fortunately for Biden, Trump's approval rating is little better.
Companies Ms Cyclefree produced a useful list of relevant Ministers over the period of the scandal. I can't trace it now. If you can, perhaps you could repost it here?
I recall that Swinson was in charge about this time, following on from Sir Ed, Norman Lamb, and Jenny Willott. I suspect that Ed is relatively blameless, despite what the press might have you believe, and Norman Lamb is one of the few Ministers to get a favorable word or two from Alan Bates.
Swinson, I think, has problems, as indeed does every subsequent Minister right through to the time the ITV series started and government began to notice that something, somewhere, had gone terribly wrong.
Might not make much difference. The Tories have successfully pointed the finger overwhelmingly at Davey (despite us clarifying here that all three parties and multiple politicians dropped the ball at least and worse than that in cases) and weaponised the horrible situation successfully. Unless they get a lashback from having gone too far down that route (which seems unlikely now), they should come out of it as the political beneficiaries.
That, Andy, is a premature judgement, in my opinion.
I hope you're right. It would be good to conclude I was overly cynical here and everyone involved turns out to carry at least part of the can.
All parties have their hands dipped in blood. But as the latest revelations in the last day show, the government appointed director was involved in the decision to sack Second Sight in 2014 - see the unredacted minutes of Project Sparrow which have now been revealed. So the government's hands are all over the cover up. As was always going to be shown to be the case.
Post Office management would never have done what it did had it not had government backing.
Although a director should not be taking instruction from a shareholder regardless of who appointed them. They have a responsibility to the entire set of stakeholders
This is a genuine request for information:
Did directors of a closed, unquoted, private company have responsibilities to all stakeholders when Horizon was created?
When I was a director of Post Office Counters Limited - an unquoted private company limited by shares (all owned by HMG) created under the 1985 Companies Act - in the early 1990s, it was made perfectly clear to us that our ONLY responsibility (apart from obeying the law) was to do what our sole shareholder (HMG) told us. Nothing in our Articles of Association created any other responsibility - and the Board of which I was a member didn't once meet in the whole of my tenure, because the Articles didn't require a meeting.
In the early 1990s, there were far more complex responsibilities legally imposed on quoted companies, and I'm perfectly happy to take the word of a lawyer familiar with modern commercial law if subsequent Companies Acts have revised the responsibilities of directors in private limited companies. But did the initial mismanagement of the company now called Post Office Ltd actually occur before the Companies Acts of 2006 or 2013 came into force?
Are the East Asians now the only people capable of building anything??
It does sometimes feel that way. The entire west is seized with a pathetic lassitude
I think it’s because we are at the end of decades of fat complacency (living off our achievements from 1500-1997) and later that has been tainted with defensiveness. Guilt. Self loathing. Apathetic doubt
We need to be proactive. DO THINGS. We need - especially in Britain - to regain some imperial swagger, start conquering and humiliating minor countries and then FFS STOP APOLOGISING
Did you hear about Konstantin Kisin - a first-generation immigrant - getting heckled on Question Time last night, when he said that the UK is a wonderful place, one of the best countries in the world to live?
The young lady heckling being totally oblivious to the fact that she’s allowed to heckle a guest on a TV programme, is something that it’s impossible to do in most of the world.
Mediazona reports that this is the first known case in Russia of a fine being imposed for a comment made to a media outlet that the authorities have declared an “undesirable organization.”..
O/T but the third TV drama serial, companion to Band of Brothers and The Pacific, Masters of the Air, is released today from Apple, with the first episode free. One of the two writers worked on the earlier volumes and one of the directors is retained from the Pacific, and Spielberg and Hanks are executive directors.
Early reviews sound very positive. Any idea if it will eventually reach other platforms? Apple is one of the ones I dont subscribe too...
Eventually, I expect so, and DVD. The first episode you can watch free to see if you want more; I think there's also a seven day free trial offer, so you can binge the whole thing without paying
I love BoB, but have never finished the pacific. Don't quite know why.
Thee action stuff was good in The Pacific, the human interest stuff less so, cringey and/or boring.
James Holland and Al Murray are good on their Pod (We have ways of making you talk). One of their things is to change the narrative of the second world war. For many of us its very much:
Dunkirk - Battle of Britain - D-Day - Arnhem - VE day.
There is a lot of truth in that - a lot of fighting went on in 1945 in Western Europe, but most people know little about it. I suspect the pacific is a bit like that for many Brits, as in:
Pearl Harbour - (Midway, maybe?) - Hiroshima/Nagasaki- VJ day.
High profile battles always attract public attention.
But, the Royal Naval blockade of Germany probably did more damage to the enemy than any victory, prior to 1944.
This is very true, and Holland makes a lot of this in his trilogy about WW2 (still waiting for part 3!). I had not been aware of just how resource poor Germany was in the second world war and how bad rationing was from the start of the war. It reveals just how little concept Hitler had of the power of the British empire in terms of shipping and trade and just how vast and powerful the Navy was. I had no idea that Bread was NEVER rationed in the UK, for instance.
By the Spring of 1941, a lot of Germany's economic planners were growing very pessimistic that Germany could even continue fighting, beyond the end of 1942. They thought that Ukraine could make good the deficiency in food imports, and the Caucasus the deficiency in oil imports. The drive to conquer the Western Soviet Union was driven as much by economic need, as much as ideology.
The problem was, they were also pretty clear-sighted that Germany really could not sustain a campaign more than 1,000 km into the Soviet Union. The Red Army had to be drawn into battles in the West and destroyed. But, by October 1941, the bulk of the Red Army had pulled back sufficiently, that at a logistical level, German victory had become vanishingly unlikely.
The whole Nazi theory of economics was based upon plunder, but plunder does not get you very far in a modern economy.
Holland also makes a really good point about the oil of the Caucasus - even if they had captured the oil fields, firstly they would have been put out of use (scorched earth) and second even running Germany had no way to move the oil where it was needed. No oil tankers. Not enough trucks, or railway wagons. It was all nonsense. The point about the range of operations is absolutely bang on. Clearly a lot of fighting and dying had to happen but arguably by Oct 1941 Germany had lost the war.
Didn’t feel that to a child listening to the bombers overhead at night. In his bed in an air-raid shelter.
I can well believe that! Its a bit like the planned German invasion of the UK - it was never going to happen, would have been a disaster if it had been tried and the British Government new that. Yet they acted to the public as if the threat was real - Home Guard, coastal defences, pill boxes along defence lines.
Even Fox News reports that the economy is in a sweet spot with good growth but not so much as to reignite inflation.
I remain of the view that these economic performance figures are going to drive Biden's popularity northwards during the coming months. If we end up with a Biden Trump rematch (and I think we will) it will not be as close as it was in 2020.
My view too. Economy plus incumbency plus uncommitted minds focusing properly on Trump. He loses again and it's not that close.
I've long thought that Biden will easily beat Trump. They could have indicted Trump eons ago for the January 6th nonsense. FFS he was telling the notrights beforehand to fight like hell on Twitter. I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but it suits the Democrats down to the ground to have the Court stuff running in election year and keeping January 6th omnipresent
Having Trump as the candidate helps a million other Democrats too down ticket fighting their own battles.
Matchup polls at this time are different from previous years because of Trump's name recognition. That is why he is riding high.
Biden's approval rating is only 38.7%
That is not the rating that wins re-election.
Fortunately for Biden, Trump's approval rating is little better.
O/T but the third TV drama serial, companion to Band of Brothers and The Pacific, Masters of the Air, is released today from Apple, with the first episode free. One of the two writers worked on the earlier volumes and one of the directors is retained from the Pacific, and Spielberg and Hanks are executive directors.
Early reviews sound very positive. Any idea if it will eventually reach other platforms? Apple is one of the ones I dont subscribe too...
Eventually, I expect so, and DVD. The first episode you can watch free to see if you want more; I think there's also a seven day free trial offer, so you can binge the whole thing without paying
I love BoB, but have never finished the pacific. Don't quite know why.
Thee action stuff was good in The Pacific, the human interest stuff less so, cringey and/or boring.
James Holland and Al Murray are good on their Pod (We have ways of making you talk). One of their things is to change the narrative of the second world war. For many of us its very much:
Dunkirk - Battle of Britain - D-Day - Arnhem - VE day.
There is a lot of truth in that - a lot of fighting went on in 1945 in Western Europe, but most people know little about it. I suspect the pacific is a bit like that for many Brits, as in:
Pearl Harbour - (Midway, maybe?) - Hiroshima/Nagasaki- VJ day.
High profile battles always attract public attention.
But, the Royal Naval blockade of Germany probably did more damage to the enemy than any victory, prior to 1944.
The naval blockade of Germany was probably the largest factor in ending the First World War. In the second, Germany could be supplied by rail from Eastern Europe.
As for the war in the Far East, remember everyone would have known about our bits like the fall of Singapore and the defence of India and Burma (see It Ain't Half Hot Mum) from the Japanese, even if it was less salient than the war in Europe (hence the "forgotten army"). Likewise the Eastern front where Germany fought Russia in what was often not far removed from First World War slaughter and attrition.
Germany got much less out of the occupied territories in WWII than it expected to. When you plunder, you can only do it once.
A good example is the French aircraft industry. In 1939 it was the world's largest. The problem was, it depended upon power generated by coal imported from Britain. So, it was useless to Germany. Periodically, Germany exported coal from the Ruhr to France, but that meant cutting production in other areas.
O/T but the third TV drama serial, companion to Band of Brothers and The Pacific, Masters of the Air, is released today from Apple, with the first episode free. One of the two writers worked on the earlier volumes and one of the directors is retained from the Pacific, and Spielberg and Hanks are executive directors.
Early reviews sound very positive. Any idea if it will eventually reach other platforms? Apple is one of the ones I dont subscribe too...
Eventually, I expect so, and DVD. The first episode you can watch free to see if you want more; I think there's also a seven day free trial offer, so you can binge the whole thing without paying
I love BoB, but have never finished the pacific. Don't quite know why.
Thee action stuff was good in The Pacific, the human interest stuff less so, cringey and/or boring.
James Holland and Al Murray are good on their Pod (We have ways of making you talk). One of their things is to change the narrative of the second world war. For many of us its very much:
Dunkirk - Battle of Britain - D-Day - Arnhem - VE day.
There is a lot of truth in that - a lot of fighting went on in 1945 in Western Europe, but most people know little about it. I suspect the pacific is a bit like that for many Brits, as in:
Pearl Harbour - (Midway, maybe?) - Hiroshima/Nagasaki- VJ day.
I said this before, but a while back I watched a Youtube channel covering the entirety of World War One. I reckon the majority of Brits just think of the big western front battles; perhaps Gallipoli, or even Lawrence of Arabia. In reality the war was much more widespread and complex than that. How many of us in the UK think about the German/Russia side of the war, which was perhaps more significant given the Russian revolution?
I like history; but my knowledge is incredibly patchy on so many areas.
Totally. One of the things I find very interesting is the different attitudes to Germany in 1914-18 compared to the Nazi flavour. And yet they were not that different. Plenty of atrocities, including in occupied parts of the West. And their territorial demands at Brest Litovsk would not be out of place for a Nazi settlement (had sense prevailed at the end of 1941 and they tried for peace.) People like to characterise WW1 as something that shouldn't have been fought, but this is a false interpretation, brought about by too much sodding poetry of by mostly posho public school officers...
If you think of the three big world wars which has Europe at their centre - Napoleonic War, WWI and WWII - the big difference with WWI is that it is the one where the main action involved the British Army fighting for the duration at the centre of the action. Consequently British losses, of men and money, were much greater.
If the British Army had been defeated in France in 1914, then even had Britain continued the war until achieving victory over Germany, the cost incurred would likely have been less.
Wars on land are astonishingly destructive, and that naturally makes people wonder if the cost were worthwhile.
Even Fox News reports that the economy is in a sweet spot with good growth but not so much as to reignite inflation.
I remain of the view that these economic performance figures are going to drive Biden's popularity northwards during the coming months. If we end up with a Biden Trump rematch (and I think we will) it will not be as close as it was in 2020.
My view too. Economy plus incumbency plus uncommitted minds focusing properly on Trump. He loses again and it's not that close.
I've long thought that Biden will easily beat Trump. They could have indicted Trump eons ago for the January 6th nonsense. FFS he was telling the notrights beforehand to fight like hell on Twitter. I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but it suits the Democrats down to the ground to have the Court stuff running in election year and keeping January 6th omnipresent
Having Trump as the candidate helps a million other Democrats too down ticket fighting their own battles.
Matchup polls at this time are different from previous years because of Trump's name recognition. That is why he is riding high.
The opinion polls think different.
Now, with that said, the Democrats outperformed their polling markedly in the midterms, and I expect a little bit of swingback.
But anyone expecting this to be a cakewalk for Biden is engaging in wishcasting.
It should be fascinating, although potentially horrific too. Will Kennedy have an influence, if so who will it hurt the most? Impact of all the court cases? Will the "sane" Republicans finally make a last stand? Turnout differentials from abortion and migration in states with different demographics.
My guess is that Kennedy will have very little impact on the election.
Even Fox News reports that the economy is in a sweet spot with good growth but not so much as to reignite inflation.
I remain of the view that these economic performance figures are going to drive Biden's popularity northwards during the coming months. If we end up with a Biden Trump rematch (and I think we will) it will not be as close as it was in 2020.
My view too. Economy plus incumbency plus uncommitted minds focusing properly on Trump. He loses again and it's not that close.
I've long thought that Biden will easily beat Trump. They could have indicted Trump eons ago for the January 6th nonsense. FFS he was telling the notrights beforehand to fight like hell on Twitter. I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but it suits the Democrats down to the ground to have the Court stuff running in election year and keeping January 6th omnipresent
Having Trump as the candidate helps a million other Democrats too down ticket fighting their own battles.
Matchup polls at this time are different from previous years because of Trump's name recognition. That is why he is riding high.
The opinion polls think different.
Now, with that said, the Democrats outperformed their polling markedly in the midterms, and I expect a little bit of swingback.
But anyone expecting this to be a cakewalk for Biden is engaging in wishcasting.
"Despite a loud chorus of naysayers claiming that the polls were either underestimating Democratic support or biased yet again against Republicans, the polls were more accurate in 2022 than in any cycle since at least 1998, with almost no bias toward either party."
"Ironically, after the election, a narrative emerged that 2022 polling was actually too good for Republicans — a claim that our data doesn’t bear out, either. While the polls in a few closely watched races — like Arizona’s governorship and Pennsylvania’s Senate seat — were biased toward Republicans, the polls overall still had a bit of a bias toward Democrats. That’s because generic-ballot polls, the most common type of poll last cycle, had a weighted-average bias of D+1.9, and polls of several less closely watched races, like the governorships in Ohio and Florida, also skewed toward Democrats. It was a weird year in that some states zigged and other states zagged; usually, polling bias in a given year is correlated from race to race."
With a note that the generic house polls actually did a bit better than D+1.9 because the Dems had more seats uncontested than Republicans so it is more like D+0.9%
1% drop under Thatcher 33% drop under Major 10% drop under Blair/Brown 21% cut under Cameron 5% cut under May/Johnson/Truss/Sunak
So the big cuts in numbers were under Major and Cameron. Obviously military commitments varied over this period, particularly in Northern Ireland, Germany, Iraq and Afghanistan.
Biggest cuts surely as a result of the end of the Cold War? Less need to station armies in Germany.
Also, as we see now, technology means headcount is not always the best measure for effectiveness.
There was a decent case for cutting headcount prior to 2010. After 2010, it was based upon nothing more than wishful thinking.
1% drop under Thatcher 33% drop under Major 10% drop under Blair/Brown 21% cut under Cameron 5% cut under May/Johnson/Truss/Sunak
So the big cuts in numbers were under Major and Cameron. Obviously military commitments varied over this period, particularly in Northern Ireland, Germany, Iraq and Afghanistan.
So you agree there were cuts under New Labour then?
Even Fox News reports that the economy is in a sweet spot with good growth but not so much as to reignite inflation.
I remain of the view that these economic performance figures are going to drive Biden's popularity northwards during the coming months. If we end up with a Biden Trump rematch (and I think we will) it will not be as close as it was in 2020.
My view too. Economy plus incumbency plus uncommitted minds focusing properly on Trump. He loses again and it's not that close.
I've long thought that Biden will easily beat Trump. They could have indicted Trump eons ago for the January 6th nonsense. FFS he was telling the notrights beforehand to fight like hell on Twitter. I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but it suits the Democrats down to the ground to have the Court stuff running in election year and keeping January 6th omnipresent
Having Trump as the candidate helps a million other Democrats too down ticket fighting their own battles.
Matchup polls at this time are different from previous years because of Trump's name recognition. That is why he is riding high.
The opinion polls think different.
Now, with that said, the Democrats outperformed their polling markedly in the midterms, and I expect a little bit of swingback.
But anyone expecting this to be a cakewalk for Biden is engaging in wishcasting.
"Despite a loud chorus of naysayers claiming that the polls were either underestimating Democratic support or biased yet again against Republicans, the polls were more accurate in 2022 than in any cycle since at least 1998, with almost no bias toward either party."
"Ironically, after the election, a narrative emerged that 2022 polling was actually too good for Republicans — a claim that our data doesn’t bear out, either. While the polls in a few closely watched races — like Arizona’s governorship and Pennsylvania’s Senate seat — were biased toward Republicans, the polls overall still had a bit of a bias toward Democrats. That’s because generic-ballot polls, the most common type of poll last cycle, had a weighted-average bias of D+1.9, and polls of several less closely watched races, like the governorships in Ohio and Florida, also skewed toward Democrats. It was a weird year in that some states zigged and other states zagged; usually, polling bias in a given year is correlated from race to race."
With a note that the generic house polls actually did a bit better than D+1.9 because the Dems had more seats uncontested than Republicans so it is more like D+0.9%
Fair enough: I wasn't thinking of the generic ballot, more in the fact that the betting had the Republicans as narrow favourites in Arizona and Georgia, and the Democtats held them both.
Back on topic, no wonder the Tories tried to keep the elderly alive during Covid, at the expense of the prosperity and mental health of younger people. Imagine the effect on Tory votes if oldies had been allowed to die to protect the rest of the population, and there were 50% fewer over 65s. Or would under 65s have been more grateful and more inclined to vote Tory?
Absolutely spot on. We should have allowed the elderly to shield whilst young people got on with life. All that’s happened is the entitled older generation have got everything handed to them and instead of being reflective they just shout at everyone and call them thick, woke and stupid. Enough.
Quite a few people on this site give every impression of favouring euthanaising anyone aged over 55. I guess it's irritating to wait for an inheritance.
As a 56 year old, I can't say that I am fully convinced by this policy.
Ah, so when you say that you think the earth is overpopulated, it's other people who are the problem?
Again, the Tories haven't been in office for the last four decades.
Not continuously, but then he didn't say that!
In which case it's utterly meaningless.
Defence spending under Thatcher rose to 1985-1986.
The Thatcher government initially cut defence, which was a factor leading to the Falklands War, after which some ships needed replacing before the cuts resumed.
She increased spending overall and invested heavily in nuclear defence and the army.
You're trying to be highly selective in choosing the facts to fit your narrative.
It's not helpful because the overarching problem since the end of the Cold War has been successive governments cutting back- cuts that Labour show no intention of reversing, despite you intimating they will.
O/T but the third TV drama serial, companion to Band of Brothers and The Pacific, Masters of the Air, is released today from Apple, with the first episode free. One of the two writers worked on the earlier volumes and one of the directors is retained from the Pacific, and Spielberg and Hanks are executive directors.
Early reviews sound very positive. Any idea if it will eventually reach other platforms? Apple is one of the ones I dont subscribe too...
Eventually, I expect so, and DVD. The first episode you can watch free to see if you want more; I think there's also a seven day free trial offer, so you can binge the whole thing without paying
I love BoB, but have never finished the pacific. Don't quite know why.
Thee action stuff was good in The Pacific, the human interest stuff less so, cringey and/or boring.
James Holland and Al Murray are good on their Pod (We have ways of making you talk). One of their things is to change the narrative of the second world war. For many of us its very much:
Dunkirk - Battle of Britain - D-Day - Arnhem - VE day.
There is a lot of truth in that - a lot of fighting went on in 1945 in Western Europe, but most people know little about it. I suspect the pacific is a bit like that for many Brits, as in:
Pearl Harbour - (Midway, maybe?) - Hiroshima/Nagasaki- VJ day.
I said this before, but a while back I watched a Youtube channel covering the entirety of World War One. I reckon the majority of Brits just think of the big western front battles; perhaps Gallipoli, or even Lawrence of Arabia. In reality the war was much more widespread and complex than that. How many of us in the UK think about the German/Russia side of the war, which was perhaps more significant given the Russian revolution?
I like history; but my knowledge is incredibly patchy on so many areas.
Totally. One of the things I find very interesting is the different attitudes to Germany in 1914-18 compared to the Nazi flavour. And yet they were not that different. Plenty of atrocities, including in occupied parts of the West. And their territorial demands at Brest Litovsk would not be out of place for a Nazi settlement (had sense prevailed at the end of 1941 and they tried for peace.) People like to characterise WW1 as something that shouldn't have been fought, but this is a false interpretation, brought about by too much sodding poetry of by mostly posho public school officers...
If you think of the three big world wars which has Europe at their centre - Napoleonic War, WWI and WWII - the big difference with WWI is that it is the one where the main action involved the British Army fighting for the duration at the centre of the action. Consequently British losses, of men and money, were much greater.
If the British Army had been defeated in France in 1914, then even had Britain continued the war until achieving victory over Germany, the cost incurred would likely have been less.
Wars on land are astonishingly destructive, and that naturally makes people wonder if the cost were worthwhile.
Hence the Steel not Flesh attitude of the second world war leaders. People like to deride Bomber Harris, but he believed he could defeat Germany from the air, with troops on the ground only need to occupy a defeated nation. Bomber Command lost 55,573 men trying to do this (not all against German cities). Some historians think this was wasted effort and that the vast resources would have been better spent elsewhere (such as Max Hastings) but I think the devastation of German cities, infrastructure and then the complete aerial dominance over the D-Day beached and subsequent campaign show that it was worth it.
Even Fox News reports that the economy is in a sweet spot with good growth but not so much as to reignite inflation.
I remain of the view that these economic performance figures are going to drive Biden's popularity northwards during the coming months. If we end up with a Biden Trump rematch (and I think we will) it will not be as close as it was in 2020.
My view too. Economy plus incumbency plus uncommitted minds focusing properly on Trump. He loses again and it's not that close.
I've long thought that Biden will easily beat Trump. They could have indicted Trump eons ago for the January 6th nonsense. FFS he was telling the notrights beforehand to fight like hell on Twitter. I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but it suits the Democrats down to the ground to have the Court stuff running in election year and keeping January 6th omnipresent
Having Trump as the candidate helps a million other Democrats too down ticket fighting their own battles.
Matchup polls at this time are different from previous years because of Trump's name recognition. That is why he is riding high.
Biden's approval rating is only 38.7%
That is not the rating that wins re-election.
Fortunately for Biden, Trump's approval rating is little better.
As I said, Trump's approval is "little better", acknowledging that is better, but not by much.
OK I would have called that more than a little better, and more useful to have the actual numbers than vague terms like 'little better'. The polls are measuring slightly different things, and both of them fluctuate quite a bit over time.
Even Fox News reports that the economy is in a sweet spot with good growth but not so much as to reignite inflation.
I remain of the view that these economic performance figures are going to drive Biden's popularity northwards during the coming months. If we end up with a Biden Trump rematch (and I think we will) it will not be as close as it was in 2020.
My view too. Economy plus incumbency plus uncommitted minds focusing properly on Trump. He loses again and it's not that close.
I've long thought that Biden will easily beat Trump. They could have indicted Trump eons ago for the January 6th nonsense. FFS he was telling the notrights beforehand to fight like hell on Twitter. I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but it suits the Democrats down to the ground to have the Court stuff running in election year and keeping January 6th omnipresent
Having Trump as the candidate helps a million other Democrats too down ticket fighting their own battles.
Matchup polls at this time are different from previous years because of Trump's name recognition. That is why he is riding high.
Biden's approval rating is only 38.7%
That is not the rating that wins re-election.
Fortunately for Biden, Trump's approval rating is little better.
Back on topic, no wonder the Tories tried to keep the elderly alive during Covid, at the expense of the prosperity and mental health of younger people. Imagine the effect on Tory votes if oldies had been allowed to die to protect the rest of the population, and there were 50% fewer over 65s. Or would under 65s have been more grateful and more inclined to vote Tory?
Absolutely spot on. We should have allowed the elderly to shield whilst young people got on with life. All that’s happened is the entitled older generation have got everything handed to them and instead of being reflective they just shout at everyone and call them thick, woke and stupid. Enough.
Quite a few people on this site give every impression of favouring euthanaising anyone aged over 55. I guess it's irritating to wait for an inheritance.
As a 56 year old, I can't say that I am fully convinced by this policy.
Back on topic, no wonder the Tories tried to keep the elderly alive during Covid, at the expense of the prosperity and mental health of younger people. Imagine the effect on Tory votes if oldies had been allowed to die to protect the rest of the population, and there were 50% fewer over 65s. Or would under 65s have been more grateful and more inclined to vote Tory?
Absolutely spot on. We should have allowed the elderly to shield whilst young people got on with life. All that’s happened is the entitled older generation have got everything handed to them and instead of being reflective they just shout at everyone and call them thick, woke and stupid. Enough.
Quite a few people on this site give every impression of favouring euthanaising anyone aged over 55. I guess it's irritating to wait for an inheritance.
As a 56 year old, I can't say that I am fully convinced by this policy.
Ah, so when you say that you think the earth is overpopulated, it's other people who are the problem?
See also - other people should have locked down, but not me. See also - raise taxes for other people.
O/T but the third TV drama serial, companion to Band of Brothers and The Pacific, Masters of the Air, is released today from Apple, with the first episode free. One of the two writers worked on the earlier volumes and one of the directors is retained from the Pacific, and Spielberg and Hanks are executive directors.
Early reviews sound very positive. Any idea if it will eventually reach other platforms? Apple is one of the ones I dont subscribe too...
Eventually, I expect so, and DVD. The first episode you can watch free to see if you want more; I think there's also a seven day free trial offer, so you can binge the whole thing without paying
I love BoB, but have never finished the pacific. Don't quite know why.
Thee action stuff was good in The Pacific, the human interest stuff less so, cringey and/or boring.
James Holland and Al Murray are good on their Pod (We have ways of making you talk). One of their things is to change the narrative of the second world war. For many of us its very much:
Dunkirk - Battle of Britain - D-Day - Arnhem - VE day.
There is a lot of truth in that - a lot of fighting went on in 1945 in Western Europe, but most people know little about it. I suspect the pacific is a bit like that for many Brits, as in:
Pearl Harbour - (Midway, maybe?) - Hiroshima/Nagasaki- VJ day.
High profile battles always attract public attention.
But, the Royal Naval blockade of Germany probably did more damage to the enemy than any victory, prior to 1944.
This is very true, and Holland makes a lot of this in his trilogy about WW2 (still waiting for part 3!). I had not been aware of just how resource poor Germany was in the second world war and how bad rationing was from the start of the war. It reveals just how little concept Hitler had of the power of the British empire in terms of shipping and trade and just how vast and powerful the Navy was. I had no idea that Bread was NEVER rationed in the UK, for instance.
By the Spring of 1941, a lot of Germany's economic planners were growing very pessimistic that Germany could even continue fighting, beyond the end of 1942. They thought that Ukraine could make good the deficiency in food imports, and the Caucasus the deficiency in oil imports. The drive to conquer the Western Soviet Union was driven as much by economic need, as much as ideology.
The problem was, they were also pretty clear-sighted that Germany really could not sustain a campaign more than 1,000 km into the Soviet Union. The Red Army had to be drawn into battles in the West and destroyed. But, by October 1941, the bulk of the Red Army had pulled back sufficiently, that at a logistical level, German victory had become vanishingly unlikely.
The whole Nazi theory of economics was based upon plunder, but plunder does not get you very far in a modern economy.
Holland also makes a really good point about the oil of the Caucasus - even if they had captured the oil fields, firstly they would have been put out of use (scorched earth) and second even running Germany had no way to move the oil where it was needed. No oil tankers. Not enough trucks, or railway wagons. It was all nonsense. The point about the range of operations is absolutely bang on. Clearly a lot of fighting and dying had to happen but arguably by Oct 1941 Germany had lost the war.
Victory was predicated on a rapid Soviet collapse: kick the door in and the whole rotten thing will come crashing down.
Back on topic, no wonder the Tories tried to keep the elderly alive during Covid, at the expense of the prosperity and mental health of younger people. Imagine the effect on Tory votes if oldies had been allowed to die to protect the rest of the population, and there were 50% fewer over 65s. Or would under 65s have been more grateful and more inclined to vote Tory?
Absolutely spot on. We should have allowed the elderly to shield whilst young people got on with life. All that’s happened is the entitled older generation have got everything handed to them and instead of being reflective they just shout at everyone and call them thick, woke and stupid. Enough.
Quite a few people on this site give every impression of favouring euthanaising anyone aged over 55. I guess it's irritating to wait for an inheritance.
And to an audience which is clearly a lot older than the mean of the population.
If there are 4 things I would assume about PB it is that:
a) The mean of PB is older than the population as a whole b) The mean of PB is richer than the population as a whole c) The mean is more intelligent than the population as a whole d) 100% are interested in politics.
Interesting comment by Will Dunn in the Staggers morning email:
'Good morning. Will here. When I began writing about Jeremy Hunt’s plan for chaos last year, I wondered if it might be a bit of a conspiracy theory. Surely no Chancellor would be so irresponsible as to base their economic policy on making life harder for their successor?
[...] One of these can be found in Michael Gove’s Leasehold and Freehold Reform Bill, currently at the committee stage. The bill has cross-party support and contains many sensible policies that address the unfairness inherent in an archaic property system. It also contains an unexploded bomb.
[...] Should the bill pass as it currently stands, the government (by which I mean the next government, whoever that may be) would face a legal challenge from the country’s freeholders. Some of these are extremely well resourced, most notably the Duke of Westminster [...] Many others are small investors, for whom a freehold is part of their retirement portfolio, [...] Between them, these groups could create a multibillion-pound problem for the next government. James Wyatt, a property expert who I’ve spoken to before about the leasehold “gravy train”, told me the costs could grow to “over £30bn”, and that current legal advice gives the freeholders a 50 per cent chance of winning.'
So we’re NOT giving back Diego Garcia, in particular we are NOT handing back the Chagos Islands to Mauritius (alias China)
Good. We have to stop seeing the world as this peaceful place where we can do nice Wokey things just because. The world is a lot more hostile than it was - Russia and China scheme against the entire west
It's a disgusting decision. The Chagossians have been denied justice for too long. Let them return to their homeland. There's nothing "wokey" about the idea that people shouldn't be forcibly removed from their homes and have their lives destroyed by high handed imperial powers. Their return doesn't prevent the US continuing to operate the base on Diego Garcia. The fight will continue and in the end justice will prevail, whatever this unelected privileged POS says.
Let's see how much "justice" there is in the world when Russia, China and Iran all call the shots - as real imperial powers.
The rules have changed. We're no longer in a happy 1990s situation where the liberal democratic rules-based international order rules supreme, and we can freely indulge in lop-sided self-hatred.
We need to retain strategic bases and they need to be British. I'm sure the few hundred Chagossians who were displaced many decades ago - just as those displaced in London when Heathrow was built- can live with it.
You say we need to retain strategic bases and they need to be British, but the base on the Chagos archipelago is not British. It is American. Are you suggesting we kick the Americans out and set up a British base there?
O/T but the third TV drama serial, companion to Band of Brothers and The Pacific, Masters of the Air, is released today from Apple, with the first episode free. One of the two writers worked on the earlier volumes and one of the directors is retained from the Pacific, and Spielberg and Hanks are executive directors.
Early reviews sound very positive. Any idea if it will eventually reach other platforms? Apple is one of the ones I dont subscribe too...
Eventually, I expect so, and DVD. The first episode you can watch free to see if you want more; I think there's also a seven day free trial offer, so you can binge the whole thing without paying
I love BoB, but have never finished the pacific. Don't quite know why.
Thee action stuff was good in The Pacific, the human interest stuff less so, cringey and/or boring.
James Holland and Al Murray are good on their Pod (We have ways of making you talk). One of their things is to change the narrative of the second world war. For many of us its very much:
Dunkirk - Battle of Britain - D-Day - Arnhem - VE day.
There is a lot of truth in that - a lot of fighting went on in 1945 in Western Europe, but most people know little about it. I suspect the pacific is a bit like that for many Brits, as in:
Pearl Harbour - (Midway, maybe?) - Hiroshima/Nagasaki- VJ day.
I said this before, but a while back I watched a Youtube channel covering the entirety of World War One. I reckon the majority of Brits just think of the big western front battles; perhaps Gallipoli, or even Lawrence of Arabia. In reality the war was much more widespread and complex than that. How many of us in the UK think about the German/Russia side of the war, which was perhaps more significant given the Russian revolution?
I like history; but my knowledge is incredibly patchy on so many areas.
Totally. One of the things I find very interesting is the different attitudes to Germany in 1914-18 compared to the Nazi flavour. And yet they were not that different. Plenty of atrocities, including in occupied parts of the West. And their territorial demands at Brest Litovsk would not be out of place for a Nazi settlement (had sense prevailed at the end of 1941 and they tried for peace.) People like to characterise WW1 as something that shouldn't have been fought, but this is a false interpretation, brought about by too much sodding poetry of by mostly posho public school officers...
If you think of the three big world wars which has Europe at their centre - Napoleonic War, WWI and WWII - the big difference with WWI is that it is the one where the main action involved the British Army fighting for the duration at the centre of the action. Consequently British losses, of men and money, were much greater.
If the British Army had been defeated in France in 1914, then even had Britain continued the war until achieving victory over Germany, the cost incurred would likely have been less.
Wars on land are astonishingly destructive, and that naturally makes people wonder if the cost were worthwhile.
British casualties between 1793-1815 were enormous, numerically similar to those in WWI, albeit over a much longer time period, but at the same time, coming out of a much smaller population. The War also cost the UK an enormous sum, but the investment in war production gave a huge boost to industrialisation.
1% drop under Thatcher 33% drop under Major 10% drop under Blair/Brown 21% cut under Cameron 5% cut under May/Johnson/Truss/Sunak
So the big cuts in numbers were under Major and Cameron. Obviously military commitments varied over this period, particularly in Northern Ireland, Germany, Iraq and Afghanistan.
Biggest cuts surely as a result of the end of the Cold War? Less need to station armies in Germany.
Also, as we see now, technology means headcount is not always the best measure for effectiveness.
Military technology is increasingly expensive certainly, but the cuts in terms of ships, planes, tanks, artillery etc are in proportion to the cuts in numbers.
In any case the current debate is on personnel and conscription.
O/T but the third TV drama serial, companion to Band of Brothers and The Pacific, Masters of the Air, is released today from Apple, with the first episode free. One of the two writers worked on the earlier volumes and one of the directors is retained from the Pacific, and Spielberg and Hanks are executive directors.
Early reviews sound very positive. Any idea if it will eventually reach other platforms? Apple is one of the ones I dont subscribe too...
Eventually, I expect so, and DVD. The first episode you can watch free to see if you want more; I think there's also a seven day free trial offer, so you can binge the whole thing without paying
I love BoB, but have never finished the pacific. Don't quite know why.
Thee action stuff was good in The Pacific, the human interest stuff less so, cringey and/or boring.
James Holland and Al Murray are good on their Pod (We have ways of making you talk). One of their things is to change the narrative of the second world war. For many of us its very much:
Dunkirk - Battle of Britain - D-Day - Arnhem - VE day.
There is a lot of truth in that - a lot of fighting went on in 1945 in Western Europe, but most people know little about it. I suspect the pacific is a bit like that for many Brits, as in:
Pearl Harbour - (Midway, maybe?) - Hiroshima/Nagasaki- VJ day.
High profile battles always attract public attention.
But, the Royal Naval blockade of Germany probably did more damage to the enemy than any victory, prior to 1944.
This is very true, and Holland makes a lot of this in his trilogy about WW2 (still waiting for part 3!). I had not been aware of just how resource poor Germany was in the second world war and how bad rationing was from the start of the war. It reveals just how little concept Hitler had of the power of the British empire in terms of shipping and trade and just how vast and powerful the Navy was. I had no idea that Bread was NEVER rationed in the UK, for instance.
By the Spring of 1941, a lot of Germany's economic planners were growing very pessimistic that Germany could even continue fighting, beyond the end of 1942. They thought that Ukraine could make good the deficiency in food imports, and the Caucasus the deficiency in oil imports. The drive to conquer the Western Soviet Union was driven as much by economic need, as much as ideology.
The problem was, they were also pretty clear-sighted that Germany really could not sustain a campaign more than 1,000 km into the Soviet Union. The Red Army had to be drawn into battles in the West and destroyed. But, by October 1941, the bulk of the Red Army had pulled back sufficiently, that at a logistical level, German victory had become vanishingly unlikely.
The whole Nazi theory of economics was based upon plunder, but plunder does not get you very far in a modern economy.
Holland also makes a really good point about the oil of the Caucasus - even if they had captured the oil fields, firstly they would have been put out of use (scorched earth) and second even running Germany had no way to move the oil where it was needed. No oil tankers. Not enough trucks, or railway wagons. It was all nonsense. The point about the range of operations is absolutely bang on. Clearly a lot of fighting and dying had to happen but arguably by Oct 1941 Germany had lost the war.
Didn’t feel that to a child listening to the bombers overhead at night. In his bed in an air-raid shelter.
I can well believe that! Its a bit like the planned German invasion of the UK - it was never going to happen, would have been a disaster if it had been tried and the British Government new that. Yet they acted to the public as if the threat was real - Home Guard, coastal defences, pill boxes along defence lines.
So we’re NOT giving back Diego Garcia, in particular we are NOT handing back the Chagos Islands to Mauritius (alias China)
Good. We have to stop seeing the world as this peaceful place where we can do nice Wokey things just because. The world is a lot more hostile than it was - Russia and China scheme against the entire west
It's a disgusting decision. The Chagossians have been denied justice for too long. Let them return to their homeland. There's nothing "wokey" about the idea that people shouldn't be forcibly removed from their homes and have their lives destroyed by high handed imperial powers. Their return doesn't prevent the US continuing to operate the base on Diego Garcia. The fight will continue and in the end justice will prevail, whatever this unelected privileged POS says.
Let's see how much "justice" there is in the world when Russia, China and Iran all call the shots - as real imperial powers.
The rules have changed. We're no longer in a happy 1990s situation where the liberal democratic rules-based international order rules supreme, and we can freely indulge in lop-sided self-hatred.
We need to retain strategic bases and they need to be British. I'm sure the few hundred Chagossians who were displaced many decades ago - just as those displaced in London when Heathrow was built- can live with it.
You say we need to retain strategic bases and they need to be British, but the base on the Chagos archipelago is not British. It is American. Are you suggesting we kick the Americans out and set up a British base there?
It is a British territory and we lease it to them. We also have signals intelligence and administration stationed there.
O/T but the third TV drama serial, companion to Band of Brothers and The Pacific, Masters of the Air, is released today from Apple, with the first episode free. One of the two writers worked on the earlier volumes and one of the directors is retained from the Pacific, and Spielberg and Hanks are executive directors.
Early reviews sound very positive. Any idea if it will eventually reach other platforms? Apple is one of the ones I dont subscribe too...
Eventually, I expect so, and DVD. The first episode you can watch free to see if you want more; I think there's also a seven day free trial offer, so you can binge the whole thing without paying
I love BoB, but have never finished the pacific. Don't quite know why.
Thee action stuff was good in The Pacific, the human interest stuff less so, cringey and/or boring.
James Holland and Al Murray are good on their Pod (We have ways of making you talk). One of their things is to change the narrative of the second world war. For many of us its very much:
Dunkirk - Battle of Britain - D-Day - Arnhem - VE day.
There is a lot of truth in that - a lot of fighting went on in 1945 in Western Europe, but most people know little about it. I suspect the pacific is a bit like that for many Brits, as in:
Pearl Harbour - (Midway, maybe?) - Hiroshima/Nagasaki- VJ day.
I said this before, but a while back I watched a Youtube channel covering the entirety of World War One. I reckon the majority of Brits just think of the big western front battles; perhaps Gallipoli, or even Lawrence of Arabia. In reality the war was much more widespread and complex than that. How many of us in the UK think about the German/Russia side of the war, which was perhaps more significant given the Russian revolution?
I like history; but my knowledge is incredibly patchy on so many areas.
Totally. One of the things I find very interesting is the different attitudes to Germany in 1914-18 compared to the Nazi flavour. And yet they were not that different. Plenty of atrocities, including in occupied parts of the West. And their territorial demands at Brest Litovsk would not be out of place for a Nazi settlement (had sense prevailed at the end of 1941 and they tried for peace.) People like to characterise WW1 as something that shouldn't have been fought, but this is a false interpretation, brought about by too much sodding poetry of by mostly posho public school officers...
If you think of the three big world wars which has Europe at their centre - Napoleonic War, WWI and WWII - the big difference with WWI is that it is the one where the main action involved the British Army fighting for the duration at the centre of the action. Consequently British losses, of men and money, were much greater.
If the British Army had been defeated in France in 1914, then even had Britain continued the war until achieving victory over Germany, the cost incurred would likely have been less.
Wars on land are astonishingly destructive, and that naturally makes people wonder if the cost were worthwhile.
British casualties between 1793-1815 were enormous, numerically similar to those in WWI, albeit over a much longer time period, but at the same time, coming out of a much smaller population. The War also cost the UK an enormous sum, but the investment in war production gave a huge boost to industrialisation.
But, also, quite a few were non battle related - we put far more faith in religion then than hygiene and medicine and life was cheap.
O/T but the third TV drama serial, companion to Band of Brothers and The Pacific, Masters of the Air, is released today from Apple, with the first episode free. One of the two writers worked on the earlier volumes and one of the directors is retained from the Pacific, and Spielberg and Hanks are executive directors.
Early reviews sound very positive. Any idea if it will eventually reach other platforms? Apple is one of the ones I dont subscribe too...
Eventually, I expect so, and DVD. The first episode you can watch free to see if you want more; I think there's also a seven day free trial offer, so you can binge the whole thing without paying
I love BoB, but have never finished the pacific. Don't quite know why.
Thee action stuff was good in The Pacific, the human interest stuff less so, cringey and/or boring.
James Holland and Al Murray are good on their Pod (We have ways of making you talk). One of their things is to change the narrative of the second world war. For many of us its very much:
Dunkirk - Battle of Britain - D-Day - Arnhem - VE day.
There is a lot of truth in that - a lot of fighting went on in 1945 in Western Europe, but most people know little about it. I suspect the pacific is a bit like that for many Brits, as in:
Pearl Harbour - (Midway, maybe?) - Hiroshima/Nagasaki- VJ day.
High profile battles always attract public attention.
But, the Royal Naval blockade of Germany probably did more damage to the enemy than any victory, prior to 1944.
This is very true, and Holland makes a lot of this in his trilogy about WW2 (still waiting for part 3!). I had not been aware of just how resource poor Germany was in the second world war and how bad rationing was from the start of the war. It reveals just how little concept Hitler had of the power of the British empire in terms of shipping and trade and just how vast and powerful the Navy was. I had no idea that Bread was NEVER rationed in the UK, for instance.
By the Spring of 1941, a lot of Germany's economic planners were growing very pessimistic that Germany could even continue fighting, beyond the end of 1942. They thought that Ukraine could make good the deficiency in food imports, and the Caucasus the deficiency in oil imports. The drive to conquer the Western Soviet Union was driven as much by economic need, as much as ideology.
The problem was, they were also pretty clear-sighted that Germany really could not sustain a campaign more than 1,000 km into the Soviet Union. The Red Army had to be drawn into battles in the West and destroyed. But, by October 1941, the bulk of the Red Army had pulled back sufficiently, that at a logistical level, German victory had become vanishingly unlikely.
The whole Nazi theory of economics was based upon plunder, but plunder does not get you very far in a modern economy.
Holland also makes a really good point about the oil of the Caucasus - even if they had captured the oil fields, firstly they would have been put out of use (scorched earth) and second even running Germany had no way to move the oil where it was needed. No oil tankers. Not enough trucks, or railway wagons. It was all nonsense. The point about the range of operations is absolutely bang on. Clearly a lot of fighting and dying had to happen but arguably by Oct 1941 Germany had lost the war.
Victory was predicated on a rapid Soviet collapse: kick the door in and the whole rotten thing will come crashing down.
That really was one heck of a gamble.
What you forget about Nazis is they really did believe their own propaganda.
Even Fox News reports that the economy is in a sweet spot with good growth but not so much as to reignite inflation.
I remain of the view that these economic performance figures are going to drive Biden's popularity northwards during the coming months. If we end up with a Biden Trump rematch (and I think we will) it will not be as close as it was in 2020.
My view too. Economy plus incumbency plus uncommitted minds focusing properly on Trump. He loses again and it's not that close.
I've long thought that Biden will easily beat Trump. They could have indicted Trump eons ago for the January 6th nonsense. FFS he was telling the notrights beforehand to fight like hell on Twitter. I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but it suits the Democrats down to the ground to have the Court stuff running in election year and keeping January 6th omnipresent
Having Trump as the candidate helps a million other Democrats too down ticket fighting their own battles.
Matchup polls at this time are different from previous years because of Trump's name recognition. That is why he is riding high.
The opinion polls think different.
Now, with that said, the Democrats outperformed their polling markedly in the midterms, and I expect a little bit of swingback.
But anyone expecting this to be a cakewalk for Biden is engaging in wishcasting.
It should be fascinating, although potentially horrific too. Will Kennedy have an influence, if so who will it hurt the most? Impact of all the court cases? Will the "sane" Republicans finally make a last stand? Turnout differentials from abortion and migration in states with different demographics.
My guess is that Kennedy will have very little impact on the election.
He doesnt need a lot of votes to have a big impact.
He could get 10% equally from Trump and Biden and have little impact. If he got 4% but 3% was from Biden and 1% from Trump it could be pivotal.
And as a Trumpite Democrat with a Democratic heritage name whilst he is now harming Biden in the polling who knows what that will be if he gets more airtime at a time Trump is facing court case after court case. It could be he gets more from Trump than Biden by the time of the election.
Back on topic, no wonder the Tories tried to keep the elderly alive during Covid, at the expense of the prosperity and mental health of younger people. Imagine the effect on Tory votes if oldies had been allowed to die to protect the rest of the population, and there were 50% fewer over 65s. Or would under 65s have been more grateful and more inclined to vote Tory?
Absolutely spot on. We should have allowed the elderly to shield whilst young people got on with life. All that’s happened is the entitled older generation have got everything handed to them and instead of being reflective they just shout at everyone and call them thick, woke and stupid. Enough.
Quite a few people on this site give every impression of favouring euthanaising anyone aged over 55. I guess it's irritating to wait for an inheritance.
And to an audience which is clearly a lot older than the mean of the population.
If there are 4 things I would assume about PB it is that:
a) The mean of PB is older than the population as a whole b) The mean of PB is richer than the population as a whole c) The mean is more intelligent than the population as a whole d) 100% are interested in politics.
Is that accumulator bet available anywhere?
You can have it with me if you like.
It fails on the fourth leg. Russian trolls are not remotely interested in politics.
O/T but the third TV drama serial, companion to Band of Brothers and The Pacific, Masters of the Air, is released today from Apple, with the first episode free. One of the two writers worked on the earlier volumes and one of the directors is retained from the Pacific, and Spielberg and Hanks are executive directors.
Early reviews sound very positive. Any idea if it will eventually reach other platforms? Apple is one of the ones I dont subscribe too...
Eventually, I expect so, and DVD. The first episode you can watch free to see if you want more; I think there's also a seven day free trial offer, so you can binge the whole thing without paying
I love BoB, but have never finished the pacific. Don't quite know why.
Thee action stuff was good in The Pacific, the human interest stuff less so, cringey and/or boring.
James Holland and Al Murray are good on their Pod (We have ways of making you talk). One of their things is to change the narrative of the second world war. For many of us its very much:
Dunkirk - Battle of Britain - D-Day - Arnhem - VE day.
There is a lot of truth in that - a lot of fighting went on in 1945 in Western Europe, but most people know little about it. I suspect the pacific is a bit like that for many Brits, as in:
Pearl Harbour - (Midway, maybe?) - Hiroshima/Nagasaki- VJ day.
I said this before, but a while back I watched a Youtube channel covering the entirety of World War One. I reckon the majority of Brits just think of the big western front battles; perhaps Gallipoli, or even Lawrence of Arabia. In reality the war was much more widespread and complex than that. How many of us in the UK think about the German/Russia side of the war, which was perhaps more significant given the Russian revolution?
I like history; but my knowledge is incredibly patchy on so many areas.
Totally. One of the things I find very interesting is the different attitudes to Germany in 1914-18 compared to the Nazi flavour. And yet they were not that different. Plenty of atrocities, including in occupied parts of the West. And their territorial demands at Brest Litovsk would not be out of place for a Nazi settlement (had sense prevailed at the end of 1941 and they tried for peace.) People like to characterise WW1 as something that shouldn't have been fought, but this is a false interpretation, brought about by too much sodding poetry of by mostly posho public school officers...
If you think of the three big world wars which has Europe at their centre - Napoleonic War, WWI and WWII - the big difference with WWI is that it is the one where the main action involved the British Army fighting for the duration at the centre of the action. Consequently British losses, of men and money, were much greater.
If the British Army had been defeated in France in 1914, then even had Britain continued the war until achieving victory over Germany, the cost incurred would likely have been less.
Wars on land are astonishingly destructive, and that naturally makes people wonder if the cost were worthwhile.
Hence the Steel not Flesh attitude of the second world war leaders. People like to deride Bomber Harris, but he believed he could defeat Germany from the air, with troops on the ground only need to occupy a defeated nation. Bomber Command lost 55,573 men trying to do this (not all against German cities). Some historians think this was wasted effort and that the vast resources would have been better spent elsewhere (such as Max Hastings) but I think the devastation of German cities, infrastructure and then the complete aerial dominance over the D-Day beached and subsequent campaign show that it was worth it.
Goering thought the same about bombing this country into submission.
Even Fox News reports that the economy is in a sweet spot with good growth but not so much as to reignite inflation.
I remain of the view that these economic performance figures are going to drive Biden's popularity northwards during the coming months. If we end up with a Biden Trump rematch (and I think we will) it will not be as close as it was in 2020.
My view too. Economy plus incumbency plus uncommitted minds focusing properly on Trump. He loses again and it's not that close.
I've long thought that Biden will easily beat Trump. They could have indicted Trump eons ago for the January 6th nonsense. FFS he was telling the notrights beforehand to fight like hell on Twitter. I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but it suits the Democrats down to the ground to have the Court stuff running in election year and keeping January 6th omnipresent
Having Trump as the candidate helps a million other Democrats too down ticket fighting their own battles.
Matchup polls at this time are different from previous years because of Trump's name recognition. That is why he is riding high.
The opinion polls think different.
Now, with that said, the Democrats outperformed their polling markedly in the midterms, and I expect a little bit of swingback.
But anyone expecting this to be a cakewalk for Biden is engaging in wishcasting.
It should be fascinating, although potentially horrific too. Will Kennedy have an influence, if so who will it hurt the most? Impact of all the court cases? Will the "sane" Republicans finally make a last stand? Turnout differentials from abortion and migration in states with different demographics.
I think you’ve correctly and succinctly identified the three major points of debate between now and the election, and a potential big fourth issue.
1. Kennedy. Big unknown, potentially puts the cat among the pigeons if he gets into the main TV debates. Will take votes from both main parties, in different ways in different States.
2. Immigration. Biggest Republican issue, could be about to blow up in Texas over the coming days and weeks, but also causing issues in Dem cities that have had their bluff called on being ‘sanctuaries’.
3. Abortion. Biggest Democratic issue, Dem-controlled States will try to put something on the ballot to drive turnout as happened in 2022, but also the chance of overreach of ballots that drive opposition turnout such as 40-week abortions.
4. Trump himself, and the various hurdles he needs to overcome between now and the election. At the moment, every attempt to drag him into court has led to his support increasing, but there’s going to be a line where that doesn’t work for the swing voters, and it’s possible that something could come up in one of the cases that crashes his support even among current supporters.
Paul Johnson @PJTheEconomist · 2h Bluntly, if we want to reduce immigration we need to pay more for social care. If we don't want to pay more for social care we will continue to rely on immigrants.
O/T but the third TV drama serial, companion to Band of Brothers and The Pacific, Masters of the Air, is released today from Apple, with the first episode free. One of the two writers worked on the earlier volumes and one of the directors is retained from the Pacific, and Spielberg and Hanks are executive directors.
Early reviews sound very positive. Any idea if it will eventually reach other platforms? Apple is one of the ones I dont subscribe too...
Eventually, I expect so, and DVD. The first episode you can watch free to see if you want more; I think there's also a seven day free trial offer, so you can binge the whole thing without paying
I love BoB, but have never finished the pacific. Don't quite know why.
Thee action stuff was good in The Pacific, the human interest stuff less so, cringey and/or boring.
James Holland and Al Murray are good on their Pod (We have ways of making you talk). One of their things is to change the narrative of the second world war. For many of us its very much:
Dunkirk - Battle of Britain - D-Day - Arnhem - VE day.
There is a lot of truth in that - a lot of fighting went on in 1945 in Western Europe, but most people know little about it. I suspect the pacific is a bit like that for many Brits, as in:
Pearl Harbour - (Midway, maybe?) - Hiroshima/Nagasaki- VJ day.
High profile battles always attract public attention.
But, the Royal Naval blockade of Germany probably did more damage to the enemy than any victory, prior to 1944.
This is very true, and Holland makes a lot of this in his trilogy about WW2 (still waiting for part 3!). I had not been aware of just how resource poor Germany was in the second world war and how bad rationing was from the start of the war. It reveals just how little concept Hitler had of the power of the British empire in terms of shipping and trade and just how vast and powerful the Navy was. I had no idea that Bread was NEVER rationed in the UK, for instance.
By the Spring of 1941, a lot of Germany's economic planners were growing very pessimistic that Germany could even continue fighting, beyond the end of 1942. They thought that Ukraine could make good the deficiency in food imports, and the Caucasus the deficiency in oil imports. The drive to conquer the Western Soviet Union was driven as much by economic need, as much as ideology.
The problem was, they were also pretty clear-sighted that Germany really could not sustain a campaign more than 1,000 km into the Soviet Union. The Red Army had to be drawn into battles in the West and destroyed. But, by October 1941, the bulk of the Red Army had pulled back sufficiently, that at a logistical level, German victory had become vanishingly unlikely.
The whole Nazi theory of economics was based upon plunder, but plunder does not get you very far in a modern economy.
Holland also makes a really good point about the oil of the Caucasus - even if they had captured the oil fields, firstly they would have been put out of use (scorched earth) and second even running Germany had no way to move the oil where it was needed. No oil tankers. Not enough trucks, or railway wagons. It was all nonsense. The point about the range of operations is absolutely bang on. Clearly a lot of fighting and dying had to happen but arguably by Oct 1941 Germany had lost the war.
Victory was predicated on a rapid Soviet collapse: kick the door in and the whole rotten thing will come crashing down.
That really was one heck of a gamble.
Again, Holland makes the point that Hitler had run out of ideas. Britain had not given up and would continue building tanks, increasing the size of the army and very importantly expanding the air force, including Bomber Command. The blockade would be maintained. Hitler saw defeating Russia as the only way to beat Britain (or England as most Germans would have said).
It was a colossal gamble with very little chance of success. Arguably the one way that it could have been different was to liberate Eastern Europe - march in and back the nationalists in the Baltics and the Ukraine, and get them onside. But of course, that was never palatable to the Race War Nazis who specifically planned to starve millions to death in the Hunger Plan.
Back on topic, no wonder the Tories tried to keep the elderly alive during Covid, at the expense of the prosperity and mental health of younger people. Imagine the effect on Tory votes if oldies had been allowed to die to protect the rest of the population, and there were 50% fewer over 65s. Or would under 65s have been more grateful and more inclined to vote Tory?
Absolutely spot on. We should have allowed the elderly to shield whilst young people got on with life. All that’s happened is the entitled older generation have got everything handed to them and instead of being reflective they just shout at everyone and call them thick, woke and stupid. Enough.
Quite a few people on this site give every impression of favouring euthanaising anyone aged over 55. I guess it's irritating to wait for an inheritance.
And to an audience which is clearly a lot older than the mean of the population.
If there are 4 things I would assume about PB it is that:
a) The mean of PB is older than the population as a whole b) The mean of PB is richer than the population as a whole c) The mean is more intelligent than the population as a whole d) 100% are interested in politics.
Is that accumulator bet available anywhere?
I wouldn't take it. KJH has worded it very carefully. 'population as a whole' includes children, so that's a bias in favour of b and c. And (with possibly a few exceptions) we don't get dements and the insane posting here, so that's b and c also biased.
Even Fox News reports that the economy is in a sweet spot with good growth but not so much as to reignite inflation.
I remain of the view that these economic performance figures are going to drive Biden's popularity northwards during the coming months. If we end up with a Biden Trump rematch (and I think we will) it will not be as close as it was in 2020.
My view too. Economy plus incumbency plus uncommitted minds focusing properly on Trump. He loses again and it's not that close.
I've long thought that Biden will easily beat Trump. They could have indicted Trump eons ago for the January 6th nonsense. FFS he was telling the notrights beforehand to fight like hell on Twitter. I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but it suits the Democrats down to the ground to have the Court stuff running in election year and keeping January 6th omnipresent
Having Trump as the candidate helps a million other Democrats too down ticket fighting their own battles.
Matchup polls at this time are different from previous years because of Trump's name recognition. That is why he is riding high.
The opinion polls think different.
Now, with that said, the Democrats outperformed their polling markedly in the midterms, and I expect a little bit of swingback.
But anyone expecting this to be a cakewalk for Biden is engaging in wishcasting.
It should be fascinating, although potentially horrific too. Will Kennedy have an influence, if so who will it hurt the most? Impact of all the court cases? Will the "sane" Republicans finally make a last stand? Turnout differentials from abortion and migration in states with different demographics.
I think you’ve correctly and succinctly identified the three major points of debate between now and the election, and a potential big fourth issue.
1. Kennedy. Big unknown, potentially puts the cat among the pigeons if he gets into the main TV debates. Will take votes from both main parties, in different ways in different States.
2. Immigration. Biggest Republican issue, could be about to blow up in Texas over the coming days and weeks, but also causing issues in Dem cities that have had their bluff called on being ‘sanctuaries’.
3. Abortion. Biggest Democratic issue, Dem-controlled States will try to put something on the ballot to drive turnout as happened in 2022, but also the chance of overreach of ballots that drive opposition turnout such as 40-week abortions.
4. Trump himself, and the various hurdles he needs to overcome between now and the election. At the moment, every attempt to drag him into court has led to his support increasing, but there’s going to be a line where that doesn’t work for the swing voters, and it’s possible that something could come up in one of the cases that crashes his support even among current supporters.
I think that's right, with one exception: I don't think Kennedy makes the debates. I think there's an enormous appetite in the US for a not-Biden, not-Trump sane (cogent) candidate, but Kennedy is not that person.
O/T but the third TV drama serial, companion to Band of Brothers and The Pacific, Masters of the Air, is released today from Apple, with the first episode free. One of the two writers worked on the earlier volumes and one of the directors is retained from the Pacific, and Spielberg and Hanks are executive directors.
Early reviews sound very positive. Any idea if it will eventually reach other platforms? Apple is one of the ones I dont subscribe too...
Eventually, I expect so, and DVD. The first episode you can watch free to see if you want more; I think there's also a seven day free trial offer, so you can binge the whole thing without paying
I love BoB, but have never finished the pacific. Don't quite know why.
Thee action stuff was good in The Pacific, the human interest stuff less so, cringey and/or boring.
James Holland and Al Murray are good on their Pod (We have ways of making you talk). One of their things is to change the narrative of the second world war. For many of us its very much:
Dunkirk - Battle of Britain - D-Day - Arnhem - VE day.
There is a lot of truth in that - a lot of fighting went on in 1945 in Western Europe, but most people know little about it. I suspect the pacific is a bit like that for many Brits, as in:
Pearl Harbour - (Midway, maybe?) - Hiroshima/Nagasaki- VJ day.
I said this before, but a while back I watched a Youtube channel covering the entirety of World War One. I reckon the majority of Brits just think of the big western front battles; perhaps Gallipoli, or even Lawrence of Arabia. In reality the war was much more widespread and complex than that. How many of us in the UK think about the German/Russia side of the war, which was perhaps more significant given the Russian revolution?
I like history; but my knowledge is incredibly patchy on so many areas.
Totally. One of the things I find very interesting is the different attitudes to Germany in 1914-18 compared to the Nazi flavour. And yet they were not that different. Plenty of atrocities, including in occupied parts of the West. And their territorial demands at Brest Litovsk would not be out of place for a Nazi settlement (had sense prevailed at the end of 1941 and they tried for peace.) People like to characterise WW1 as something that shouldn't have been fought, but this is a false interpretation, brought about by too much sodding poetry of by mostly posho public school officers...
If you think of the three big world wars which has Europe at their centre - Napoleonic War, WWI and WWII - the big difference with WWI is that it is the one where the main action involved the British Army fighting for the duration at the centre of the action. Consequently British losses, of men and money, were much greater.
If the British Army had been defeated in France in 1914, then even had Britain continued the war until achieving victory over Germany, the cost incurred would likely have been less.
Wars on land are astonishingly destructive, and that naturally makes people wonder if the cost were worthwhile.
British casualties between 1793-1815 were enormous, numerically similar to those in WWI, albeit over a much longer time period, but at the same time, coming out of a much smaller population. The War also cost the UK an enormous sum, but the investment in war production gave a huge boost to industrialisation.
But, also, quite a few were non battle related - we put far more faith in religion then than hygiene and medicine and life was cheap.
Most were due to disease. This was not directly battle-related, but very much so, indirectly. Cholera and dysentry followed the soldiers wherever they went; yellow fever and malaria took a massive toll of soldiers and sailors in the West Indies, and epidemics swept through ships' companies.
Comments
Dunkirk - Battle of Britain - D-Day - Arnhem - VE day.
There is a lot of truth in that - a lot of fighting went on in 1945 in Western Europe, but most people know little about it. I suspect the pacific is a bit like that for many Brits, as in:
Pearl Harbour - (Midway, maybe?) - Hiroshima/Nagasaki- VJ day.
That is not the rating that wins re-election.
But, the Royal Naval blockade of Germany probably did more damage to the enemy than any victory, prior to 1944.
They don't know what they're talking about and I don't want uninformed noise influencing my betting strategy.
It basically boils down to he shouldn't win because he's awful and therefore he won't.
IMV short-termism is a massive problem. Politicians and financiers all want quick results; anything more than five years away is risky. Anything on large timescales needs to be utterly derisked, leading to paralysis by analysis that just increases costs. Instead of "Just fu**ing do it!" we get: "Let's only do it if we can be really, really sure of everything," and then when we do it, it turns out we did not determine the risks anyway.
Three-year long public inquiries only do the lawyers and campaign groups good.
(I've recently been hearing scuttlebutt that even investors are getting more short-term in the UK; just looking to get out of a business as quickly as possible rather than building them up. It was bad before, it's worse now.)
Just fu***ing do it.
The former is justice. The latter is stupidity.
If there are 4 things I would assume about PB it is that:
a) The mean of PB is older than the population as a whole
b) The mean of PB is richer than the population as a whole
c) The mean is more intelligent than the population as a whole
d) 100% are interested in politics.
I've flown the route of their first mission, at least as far as the Dutch coast, and having flown above Kent and cross-Channel, of course it makes you think back to the air battles of the war. But it was a terrifying experience and not one I would have been eager to share. The first episode brings that across very clearly. Whether you lived, died, or were wounded, was pretty much random.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Sino-Japanese_War
I just call out bullshit when I see it.
The problem was, they were also pretty clear-sighted that Germany really could not sustain a campaign more than 1,000 km into the Soviet Union. The Red Army had to be drawn into battles in the West and destroyed. But, by October 1941, the bulk of the Red Army had pulled back sufficiently, that at a logistical level, German victory had become vanishingly unlikely.
The whole Nazi theory of economics was based upon plunder, but plunder does not get you very far in a modern economy.
It’s one thing to have a couple of mad councillors in an unexpected landslide, but to have a few mad MPs is on another level. Basic failures as well, such as checking Twitter from 2009. It doesn’t cost millions, each party could do it with a handful of people in a couple of months.
Somewhat ironically, the model to follow is Nigel Farage, and the way he dealt with UKIP councillors in recent years.
I like history; but my knowledge is incredibly patchy on so many areas.
The 2nd carrier could have been very easily been cancelled by the Con-LD coalition in 2010 as it was still on the drawing board when they came to office, the contracts for both having been signed less than 2 years earlier. The 1st carrier was half built but there was still an option of selling it to the USA at a knock down price to recover a chunk of the sunk costs. Instead, Cameron chose to continue despite all the other cuts in his first spending review, and eventually the 2nd carrier was built too. He let his government be swayed by special pleading from the Navy and held to ransom by exaggerated threats of abortive cancellation costs from BAE systems. It wouldn't have been in BAE Systems' interests to follow through by milking the government only to reap the consequences when bidding for future work long into the future, yet Cameron decided not to call their bluff.
They made up for it by excellent junior officers and supreme tactical fighting skill but that wasn't enough.
As for the war in the Far East, remember everyone would have known about our bits like the fall of Singapore and the defence of India and Burma (see It Ain't Half Hot Mum) from the Japanese, even if it was less salient than the war in Europe (hence the "forgotten army"). Likewise the Eastern front where Germany fought Russia in what was often not far removed from First World War slaughter and attrition.
Defence is going to Europe’s biggest challenge in the next decade, as the US slowly withdraws from single-handedly propping up NATO - and most European governments are not really thinking about it at the moment, except in terms of what surplus old stock they can ship to Ukraine in the short term.
Uk armed forces personnel:
1979: 315 000
1989: 311 000
1997: 210 000
2010: 191 000
2016: 151 000
2023: 143 000
1% drop under Thatcher
33% drop under Major
10% drop under Blair/Brown
21% cut under Cameron
5% cut under May/Johnson/Truss/Sunak
So the big cuts in numbers were under Major and Cameron. Obviously military commitments varied over this period, particularly in Northern Ireland, Germany, Iraq and Afghanistan.
Now, with that said, the Democrats outperformed their polling markedly in the midterms, and I expect a little bit of swingback.
But anyone expecting this to be a cakewalk for Biden is engaging in wishcasting.
Also, as we see now, technology means headcount is not always the best measure for effectiveness.
I remain of the view that Biden will beat Trump. Trump has more unknowns than Biden. We don’t quite know how the legal stuff will go. He is perfectly capable of saying things that harm his cause with swing voters, etc.
That doesn’t mean it’s inconceivable that Trump would win. It’s an entirely plausible outcome looking at it now, though I’m still happy to maintain my current prediction.
Edit: this is still assuming he actually doesn’t get barred from running or taking office. I know that many have dismissed that, but I think there’s a not-insignificant chance.
@PJTheEconomist
·
2h
Bluntly, if we want to reduce immigration we need to pay more for social care. If we don't want to pay more for social care we will continue to rely on immigrants.
We need to pay significantly more for social care regardless.
If we don't want immigration we have to pay loads more for social care.
Trump net favorability -8.9
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/biden-approval-rating/
Did directors of a closed, unquoted, private company have responsibilities to all stakeholders when Horizon was created?
When I was a director of Post Office Counters Limited - an unquoted private company limited by shares (all owned by HMG) created under the 1985 Companies Act - in the early 1990s, it was made perfectly clear to us that our ONLY responsibility (apart from obeying the law) was to do what our sole shareholder (HMG) told us. Nothing in our Articles of Association created any other responsibility - and the Board of which I was a member didn't once meet in the whole of my tenure, because the Articles didn't require a meeting.
In the early 1990s, there were far more complex responsibilities legally imposed on quoted companies, and I'm perfectly happy to take the word of a lawyer familiar with modern commercial law if subsequent Companies Acts have revised the responsibilities of directors in private limited companies. But did the initial mismanagement of the company now called Post Office Ltd actually occur before the Companies Acts of 2006 or 2013 came into force?
https://meduza.io/en/news/2024/01/25/in-first-russia-fines-activist-for-giving-comment-to-news-outlet-designated-undesirable
A court in Russia’s Buryatia has fined human rights activist and lawyer Nadezhda Nizovkina 5,000 rubles ($56) under an article on participating in the activities of an “undesirable organization” for a comment she gave to the independent Russian news outlet Dozhd (TV Rain).
Mediazona reports that this is the first known case in Russia of a fine being imposed for a comment made to a media outlet that the authorities have declared an “undesirable organization.”..
Things that are very clear now with hindsight.
A good example is the French aircraft industry. In 1939 it was the world's largest. The problem was, it depended upon power generated by coal imported from Britain. So, it was useless to Germany. Periodically, Germany exported coal from the Ruhr to France, but that meant cutting production in other areas.
If the British Army had been defeated in France in 1914, then even had Britain continued the war until achieving victory over Germany, the cost incurred would likely have been less.
Wars on land are astonishingly destructive, and that naturally makes people wonder if the cost were worthwhile.
"Despite a loud chorus of naysayers claiming that the polls were either underestimating Democratic support or biased yet again against Republicans, the polls were more accurate in 2022 than in any cycle since at least 1998, with almost no bias toward either party."
"Ironically, after the election, a narrative emerged that 2022 polling was actually too good for Republicans — a claim that our data doesn’t bear out, either. While the polls in a few closely watched races — like Arizona’s governorship and Pennsylvania’s Senate seat — were biased toward Republicans, the polls overall still had a bit of a bias toward Democrats. That’s because generic-ballot polls, the most common type of poll last cycle, had a weighted-average bias of D+1.9, and polls of several less closely watched races, like the governorships in Ohio and Florida, also skewed toward Democrats. It was a weird year in that some states zigged and other states zagged; usually, polling bias in a given year is correlated from race to race."
With a note that the generic house polls actually did a bit better than D+1.9 because the Dems had more seats uncontested than Republicans so it is more like D+0.9%
Thanks.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/wwe-vince-mcmahon-sex-trafficking-b2485054.html
Some of the more salacious aspects are omitted from that piece, but google at your own risk.
Bizarrely, this is only now emerging because he hasn't paid the former employee $2m of the $3m hush money she'd agreed to in a prior settlement.
You're trying to be highly selective in choosing the facts to fit your narrative.
It's not helpful because the overarching problem since the end of the Cold War has been successive governments cutting back- cuts that Labour show no intention of reversing, despite you intimating they will.
See also - raise taxes for other people.
That really was one heck of a gamble.
'Good morning. Will here. When I began writing about Jeremy Hunt’s plan for chaos last year, I wondered if it might be a bit of a conspiracy theory. Surely no Chancellor would be so irresponsible as to base their economic policy on making life harder for their successor?
[...] One of these can be found in Michael Gove’s Leasehold and Freehold Reform Bill, currently at the committee stage. The bill has cross-party support and contains many sensible policies that address the unfairness inherent in an archaic property system. It also contains an unexploded bomb.
[...] Should the bill pass as it currently stands, the government (by which I mean the next government, whoever that may be) would face a legal challenge from the country’s freeholders. Some of these are extremely well resourced, most notably the Duke of Westminster [...] Many others are small investors, for whom a freehold is part of their retirement portfolio, [...] Between them, these groups could create a multibillion-pound problem for the next government. James Wyatt, a property expert who I’ve spoken to before about the leasehold “gravy train”, told me the costs could grow to “over £30bn”, and that current legal advice gives the freeholders a 50 per cent chance of winning.'
In any case the current debate is on personnel and conscription.
https://www.ltmuseum.co.uk/collections/stories/war/plessey-tubes-secret-wartime-underground-factory
The US is a close ally.
He could get 10% equally from Trump and Biden and have little impact.
If he got 4% but 3% was from Biden and 1% from Trump it could be pivotal.
And as a Trumpite Democrat with a Democratic heritage name whilst he is now harming Biden in the polling who knows what that will be if he gets more airtime at a time Trump is facing court case after court case. It could be he gets more from Trump than Biden by the time of the election.
It fails on the fourth leg. Russian trolls are not remotely interested in politics.
1. Kennedy. Big unknown, potentially puts the cat among the pigeons if he gets into the main TV debates. Will take votes from both main parties, in different ways in different States.
2. Immigration. Biggest Republican issue, could be about to blow up in Texas over the coming days and weeks, but also causing issues in Dem cities that have had their bluff called on being ‘sanctuaries’.
3. Abortion. Biggest Democratic issue, Dem-controlled States will try to put something on the ballot to drive turnout as happened in 2022, but also the chance of overreach of ballots that drive opposition turnout such as 40-week abortions.
4. Trump himself, and the various hurdles he needs to overcome between now and the election. At the moment, every attempt to drag him into court has led to his support increasing, but there’s going to be a line where that doesn’t work for the swing voters, and it’s possible that something could come up in one of the cases that crashes his support even among current supporters.
We would all live - say - two or three years less on average. But we'd pay significantly lower taxes.
I would suggest that, for people currently under the age of 49*, that once they hit 70, then a nice large dose of morphine is administered.
* There is no particular reason why I chose this age.
It was a colossal gamble with very little chance of success. Arguably the one way that it could have been different was to liberate Eastern Europe - march in and back the nationalists in the Baltics and the Ukraine, and get them onside. But of course, that was never palatable to the Race War Nazis who specifically planned to starve millions to death in the Hunger Plan.