Incidentally, I remember when we were having one of our AI debates and a PBer, perhaps @Benpointer, expressed disinterest, and said "get back to me when a robot can do my dishes"
The vid is accelerated to make it look even more impressive, but it is nonetheless strikingly impressive. They are getting there
What’s wrong with dishwashers?
Nothing, except the robot will now stack them, rather than you
Emptying the dishwasher is the most time consuming task, so that’s where they should target the cutting edge of AI next.
Ironing, surely
I am rich enough to get all my shirts laundered and pressed but before I was affluent... my God. Ironing. The dullest task in human history???
Actually these days getting shirts dry-cleaned is really cheap: your (well, not yours) local dry cleaners will probably do three for a tenner. If you go to the chains like Timpson of Johnsons/Waitrose they'll be more expensive, but you can shop around.
I tend to wash mine then take them to the dry cleaners to be pressed folded and packaged. Ideal for travelling
This is actually something the UK can be proud of. We have some of the safest roads in the world. The chances of your British kid getting squashed by an idiot in a SUV tomorrow are lower than in almost any other nation
You're trying to use a general stat to justify a particular interpretation, which doesn't work in basic logic. Unless you have some data to support the particular interpretation,
Specific data on SUVs in Europe is not that common yet; here is one example from a Belgian study showing the danger imposed on vulnerable road users by larger, heavier, more powerful vehicles - which is your "child-being-run-down-by-an-SUV" example. In the UK the crucible is the school run.
Making a road safety comparison Europe vs USA is making a 1st world vs 3rd comparison.
SUVs in the USA, in the Light Trucks category, have much poorer safety regulations than even cars there, and massively poorer than anything in Europe. Things like bumpers not being all at the same height to ensure that crumple zones become active in collisions. It lets the manufacturers pump out dangerous vehicles more cheaply for gullible Usonians to swallow; imo that's a problem of a Third World road culture in the USA.
Consider that the Tesla Cybertruck is not coming to Europe since it can't meet even basic safety standards without a redesign from frame level.
Who are you arguing with? Not me, I don’t think
I’m saying UK roads are much safer than US roads - which they are. And one reason US roads are dangerous, especially for pedestrians, is the prevalence of SUVs. Which is also undisputed
UK roads are not just safer than US roads.
The small gap between Belgium and France surprises me. Maybe they just drive like maniacs abroad (or maybe the built up nature of the country with fewer rural roads - like the UK - explains it).
The high Luxembourg figure is I think because such a large proportion of vehicles on the roads are border commuters - large number of cars vs official population.
Gunpoint in Vladivostok. He was a big unit and probably bratva so I handed over the decoy wallet.
Knifepoint in Vitebsk. Took the knife off the skinny junkie and punched him repeatedly in the face.
When I was a teenager our car got stopped by machete wielding randoms in Nigeria who relieved my father of all his money and watch while my mother subjected them to a torrent of obscenities that I never heard surpassed in my 20 year naval career. My father gave them a shrug of apology for her outburst and the chief machete wielder gave my father a look that I think was a gesture of sympathy.
The Ukrainian have a desperate shortage of ammunition. There is apparently a decent amount available on the open market but inside the EU the French plus Greece and Cyprus are insisting on it being domestically produced. Why don't we just frigging buy it ourselves? How much does half a million rounds of ammunition actually cost?
$4.5 to $5bn at current market rates.
But it wouldn't be a simple purchase as there isn't that much supply around.
I thought the Czechs were claiming there was?
There’s a shortage of stock of ammunition in NATO countries, and there’s I think three new plants currently under construction to manufacture them.
Ukraine is apparently using 7,000-9,000 shells per day, mostly of the NATO-spec 155mm or the Soviet-spec 152mm. There’s even an American factory making 152mm, for existing Ukranian kit from before this war.
This is actually something the UK can be proud of. We have some of the safest roads in the world. The chances of your British kid getting squashed by an idiot in a SUV tomorrow are lower than in almost any other nation
You're trying to use a general stat to justify a particular interpretation, which doesn't work in basic logic. Unless you have some data to support the particular interpretation,
Specific data on SUVs in Europe is not that common yet; here is one example from a Belgian study showing the danger imposed on vulnerable road users by larger, heavier, more powerful vehicles - which is your "child-being-run-down-by-an-SUV" example. In the UK the crucible is the school run.
Making a road safety comparison Europe vs USA is making a 1st world vs 3rd comparison.
SUVs in the USA, in the Light Trucks category, have much poorer safety regulations than even cars there, and massively poorer than anything in Europe. Things like bumpers not being all at the same height to ensure that crumple zones become active in collisions. It lets the manufacturers pump out dangerous vehicles more cheaply for gullible Usonians to swallow; imo that's a problem of a Third World road culture in the USA.
Consider that the Tesla Cybertruck is not coming to Europe since it can't meet even basic safety standards without a redesign from frame level.
Who are you arguing with? Not me, I don’t think
I’m saying UK roads are much safer than US roads - which they are. And one reason US roads are dangerous, especially for pedestrians, is the prevalence of SUVs. Which is also undisputed
UK roads are not just safer than US roads.
The small gap between Belgium and France surprises me. Maybe they just drive like maniacs abroad (or maybe the built up nature of the country with fewer rural roads - like the UK - explains it).
The high Luxembourg figure is I think because such a large proportion of vehicles on the roads are border commuters - large number of cars vs official population.
What’s the most dangerous place you’ve driven?
Mine is Thailand. Fourth from bottom in the world table
And it was motorbikes with no helmets - classic way to die
After that: Armenia. My god, driving through Yerevan at rush hour. Help
So instead of tax cuts the following story plays out in March.
Hunt/Sunak stands up, we’ve reviewed the national security situation and HMG has decided this is not the time for tax cuts, we need to invest in defence. So HMG is going to channel X £30B into U.K. defence invest (in x marginal constituencies). We will be funding this through cuts across the board. To succeed this has to be a sustained investment over five years, therefore we are now going to the country to ask for a mandate to secure our nations future.
£30bn would help at the edges, increase the E-7 buy, ammo stockpiles, etc. but generally to give the MoD more money would be indistinguishable from burning it.
Ultimately, there isn't sufficient industrial capacity in the UK to support and extra £30bn of defence expenditure. They could probably do a new Typhoon buy but there is no prospect of building any more ships because there are no available shipyards.
So that moiety of the new funding that wasn't spunked up the wall would end up in foreign countries not "marginal constiuencies".
It does seem like madness just supplying more and more weapons. It might make sense supplying a nuclear bomb as a deterrant but just supplying the means to blow each other apart for years and years until one side or the other can't take it anymore seems like pointless cruelty. It also follows the strange logic of American gun supporters that the way to protect yourself is to carry arms
The American gun policy analogy rather falls down when you realise we can’t legislate to ban Russia from carrying weapons.
There's a disturbing thread on TwiX today, by some American whose wife and kid were nearly killed in a virtual head-on with a truck. The guy concludes (surely rightly) that his family only survived because they were driving a massive SUV. His thread is followed by lots of other Americans saying Fuck yeah, this is why we have big cars, so we are safe, make them even bigger!!
And yet America suffers appalling lethal road traffic accident rates, especially pedestrians, way out of whack with the rest of the world. Why? Parly because so many people drive enormous cars, any collision with the soft human body is fatal
So it's a bit like their gun laws. A kind of tragedy of the commons
"A new study paints a grim picture of American roads: every day, 20 people walk outside and end up killed by a moving vehicle.
"There are more pedestrians being killed today than in decades," Russ Martin, the senior director of policy and government relations at the Governors Highway Safety Association, told NPR."
That is kind of the ethos of American society, look after your own and fuck everyone else.
That is unfair to Americans who are among the most generous people in the world. It is more that their society is rigged to hide externalities, whether they be hidden harms to others, the tragedy of the commons writ large, or at the opposite end, hidden favourable inputs to good fortune, such as education, stability or hidden government subsidies.
This is actually something the UK can be proud of. We have some of the safest roads in the world. The chances of your British kid getting squashed by an idiot in a SUV tomorrow are lower than in almost any other nation
You're trying to use a general stat to justify a particular interpretation, which doesn't work in basic logic. Unless you have some data to support the particular interpretation,
Specific data on SUVs in Europe is not that common yet; here is one example from a Belgian study showing the danger imposed on vulnerable road users by larger, heavier, more powerful vehicles - which is your "child-being-run-down-by-an-SUV" example. In the UK the crucible is the school run.
Making a road safety comparison Europe vs USA is making a 1st world vs 3rd comparison.
SUVs in the USA, in the Light Trucks category, have much poorer safety regulations than even cars there, and massively poorer than anything in Europe. Things like bumpers not being all at the same height to ensure that crumple zones become active in collisions. It lets the manufacturers pump out dangerous vehicles more cheaply for gullible Usonians to swallow; imo that's a problem of a Third World road culture in the USA.
Consider that the Tesla Cybertruck is not coming to Europe since it can't meet even basic safety standards without a redesign from frame level.
Who are you arguing with? Not me, I don’t think
I’m saying UK roads are much safer than US roads - which they are. And one reason US roads are dangerous, especially for pedestrians, is the prevalence of SUVs. Which is also undisputed
UK roads are not just safer than US roads.
The small gap between Belgium and France surprises me. Maybe they just drive like maniacs abroad (or maybe the built up nature of the country with fewer rural roads - like the UK - explains it).
The high Luxembourg figure is I think because such a large proportion of vehicles on the roads are border commuters - large number of cars vs official population.
What’s the most dangerous place you’ve driven?
Mine is Thailand. Fourth from bottom in the world table
And it was motorbikes with no helmets - classic way to die
After that: Armenia. My god, driving through Yerevan at rush hour. Help
Amman, Jordan. Totally without rules, cars all over the place. Thankfully the customer I was meeting out there lent me his car and driver.
The Ukrainian have a desperate shortage of ammunition. There is apparently a decent amount available on the open market but inside the EU the French plus Greece and Cyprus are insisting on it being domestically produced. Why don't we just frigging buy it ourselves? How much does half a million rounds of ammunition actually cost?
$4.5 to $5bn at current market rates.
But it wouldn't be a simple purchase as there isn't that much supply around.
I thought the Czechs were claiming there was?
There’s a shortage of stock of ammunition in NATO countries, and there’s I think three new plants currently under construction to manufacture them.
Ukraine is apparently using 7,000-9,000 shells per day, mostly of the NATO-spec 155mm or the Soviet-spec 152mm. There’s even an American factory making 152mm, for existing Ukranian kit from before this war.
This is actually something the UK can be proud of. We have some of the safest roads in the world. The chances of your British kid getting squashed by an idiot in a SUV tomorrow are lower than in almost any other nation
You're trying to use a general stat to justify a particular interpretation, which doesn't work in basic logic. Unless you have some data to support the particular interpretation,
Specific data on SUVs in Europe is not that common yet; here is one example from a Belgian study showing the danger imposed on vulnerable road users by larger, heavier, more powerful vehicles - which is your "child-being-run-down-by-an-SUV" example. In the UK the crucible is the school run.
Making a road safety comparison Europe vs USA is making a 1st world vs 3rd comparison.
SUVs in the USA, in the Light Trucks category, have much poorer safety regulations than even cars there, and massively poorer than anything in Europe. Things like bumpers not being all at the same height to ensure that crumple zones become active in collisions. It lets the manufacturers pump out dangerous vehicles more cheaply for gullible Usonians to swallow; imo that's a problem of a Third World road culture in the USA.
Consider that the Tesla Cybertruck is not coming to Europe since it can't meet even basic safety standards without a redesign from frame level.
Who are you arguing with? Not me, I don’t think
I’m saying UK roads are much safer than US roads - which they are. And one reason US roads are dangerous, especially for pedestrians, is the prevalence of SUVs. Which is also undisputed
FYI I'm currently digging into the stats on SUV collisions in the UK.
No conclusions on pedestrians/cyclists yet, want to pass it by some statistician friends first. There are some weird things going on during COVID around vehicle mileage, pedestrian counts, cyclists counts, and collisions causing KSIs which I can't wrap my head around.
But we shouldn't depend on UK data. We should see the experience of countries that are "ahead" of us on car size and act now.
Gunpoint in Vladivostok. He was a big unit and probably bratva so I handed over the decoy wallet.
Knifepoint in Vitebsk. Took the knife off the skinny junkie and punched him repeatedly in the face.
When I was a teenager our car got stopped by machete wielding randoms in Nigeria who relieved my father of all his money and watch while my mother subjected them to a torrent of obscenities that I never heard surpassed in my 20 year naval career. My father gave them a shrug of apology for her outburst and the chief machete wielder gave my father a look that I think was a gesture of sympathy.
My story of a knife mugging is on Charing X road outside a club. Many years ago about 2am
It was so long ago I was off my face on E so when this kid pulled a knife on me I just started laughing at the insanity of it and I said “oh come on, you’re not gonna really use that are you” and he looked down at the knife and started laughing as well, and said “nah, probably not” - and he chuckled and walked away
I was saved by intoxication
I have had much nastier encounters but they are all my fault for going to dangerous places to do illegal things
This is actually something the UK can be proud of. We have some of the safest roads in the world. The chances of your British kid getting squashed by an idiot in a SUV tomorrow are lower than in almost any other nation
This is actually something the UK can be proud of. We have some of the safest roads in the world. The chances of your British kid getting squashed by an idiot in a SUV tomorrow are lower than in almost any other nation
This is actually something the UK can be proud of. We have some of the safest roads in the world. The chances of your British kid getting squashed by an idiot in a SUV tomorrow are lower than in almost any other nation
The US is so bad because people still all drive home from the pub there, something which is now much better in the UK.
On drink driving blood alcohol levels the UK (except Scotland) is in line with the USA, not Europe. Consider that someone driving at the UK blood-alcohol level limit in France could reasonably expect a 2 year jail term:
Drink driving limit France has very strict drink driving laws. The French drink-driving limit is 50mg of alcohol in 100ml of blood.
Sanctions and Penalties :
Drivers found with between 50mg and 80mg of alcohol in your blood can be fined € 135 (£ 112). The driver will not be permitted to continue with his journey until the alcohol level in his bloodstream falls below the legal limit.
If the breath-test reveals that a driver has more than 80mg of alcohol, it is considered as a major offense. The driver could be fined to € 4,500 (£ 3,744) with his driving licence confiscated immediately for three years and a possibility up to two years emprisonment. https://www.bison-fute.gouv.fr/imprimer,article10259.html
Drink-drive casualties in the UK are rising as a proportion of casualties (except in Scotland), and drug driving is an even larger issue. Drink drive data:
This is actually something the UK can be proud of. We have some of the safest roads in the world. The chances of your British kid getting squashed by an idiot in a SUV tomorrow are lower than in almost any other nation
This is actually something the UK can be proud of. We have some of the safest roads in the world. The chances of your British kid getting squashed by an idiot in a SUV tomorrow are lower than in almost any other nation
My daughter was only involved in 2 RTAs in Uganda in their 2 week honeymoon which she considered pretty good going.
India is pretty bad
On my first ever visit to the country - an assignment in Calcutta - I saw a fatal accident on the drive from the airport. A nasty one as well - car overturned and pancaked, several dead, blood everywhere
The Ukrainian have a desperate shortage of ammunition. There is apparently a decent amount available on the open market but inside the EU the French plus Greece and Cyprus are insisting on it being domestically produced. Why don't we just frigging buy it ourselves? How much does half a million rounds of ammunition actually cost?
$4.5 to $5bn at current market rates.
But it wouldn't be a simple purchase as there isn't that much supply around.
I thought the Czechs were claiming there was?
There’s a shortage of stock of ammunition in NATO countries, and there’s I think three new plants currently under construction to manufacture them.
Ukraine is apparently using 7,000-9,000 shells per day, mostly of the NATO-spec 155mm or the Soviet-spec 152mm. There’s even an American factory making 152mm, for existing Ukranian kit from before this war.
Yeah but I think the Czechs were talking about outside Nato.
If they know of anyone stockpiling ammo that Ukraine might find useful, it would be kind of them to say where we can find it. I suspect there’s quite a bit in Africa and South America, but they won’t be too interested in selling as they have their own perpetual wars to fight.
Increasing production seems to be the way forward, but these things unfortunately take time and should have started when the war did.
Was it an actual mugging. Did they menace you with a knife or hit you?
I’m not being facetious. An actual mugging is much more upsetting than a stealthy robbery or a pocket picked
Sympathies if that is the case. Its happened to lots of people I know and can be really destabilising
I gave my account of being mugged in ~2001, in I think Hampstead Green, the other day. It involved being held against a wall, and tapped as threat with a large wooden thing that felt like a baseball bat.
Yes, it's destabilising. Especially as I lived 5 minutes walk away at the time.
This is actually something the UK can be proud of. We have some of the safest roads in the world. The chances of your British kid getting squashed by an idiot in a SUV tomorrow are lower than in almost any other nation
You're trying to use a general stat to justify a particular interpretation, which doesn't work in basic logic. Unless you have some data to support the particular interpretation,
Specific data on SUVs in Europe is not that common yet; here is one example from a Belgian study showing the danger imposed on vulnerable road users by larger, heavier, more powerful vehicles - which is your "child-being-run-down-by-an-SUV" example. In the UK the crucible is the school run.
Making a road safety comparison Europe vs USA is making a 1st world vs 3rd comparison.
SUVs in the USA, in the Light Trucks category, have much poorer safety regulations than even cars there, and massively poorer than anything in Europe. Things like bumpers not being all at the same height to ensure that crumple zones become active in collisions. It lets the manufacturers pump out dangerous vehicles more cheaply for gullible Usonians to swallow; imo that's a problem of a Third World road culture in the USA.
Consider that the Tesla Cybertruck is not coming to Europe since it can't meet even basic safety standards without a redesign from frame level.
Who are you arguing with? Not me, I don’t think
I’m saying UK roads are much safer than US roads - which they are. And one reason US roads are dangerous, especially for pedestrians, is the prevalence of SUVs. Which is also undisputed
UK roads are not just safer than US roads.
The small gap between Belgium and France surprises me. Maybe they just drive like maniacs abroad (or maybe the built up nature of the country with fewer rural roads - like the UK - explains it).
The high Luxembourg figure is I think because such a large proportion of vehicles on the roads are border commuters - large number of cars vs official population.
What’s the most dangerous place you’ve driven?
Probably Lagos, but I was only 16 and driving a Series 2 Land Rover so I almost certainly thought it was worse than it actually was due to the callowness of youth.
Mexico City is no joke and I agree with Sandpit about Amman.
On Newsnight last night one of the guests suggested it wasn’t in Putin’s interests to kill Navalny as this would embolden the pro Ukraine camp especially in the USA where there is more pressure on the House to pass aid proposals .
Yes that sounds fair. He wasn’t going anywhere from the Siberian gulag, so why kill him and make headlines around the world.
Navalny’s death likely does escalate things in the US, where Biden needs to get a handful of House Republicans onside for more aid to Ukraine.
I wonder if he was actively murdered - asside from the slow motion combination of the illness from the previous attempts on his life combined with the deliberately horrible conditions he was kept in.
I have no doubt that a slow death was what Putin wanted for him. A death now?
Yes, it is peculiar
Cui bono? How does Putin gain from this death, other than putting the Fear of God in his last remaining opponents? Surely they are already either dead or crapping themselves?
Putin is a bastard so it could just be him being a bastard, but the timing doesn't seem optimal, for him. Better to appear reasonable, right now, so he can paint the Ukrainians as war mongering Nazis? As he did with Carlson?
Russian prisons are fucking horrible with minimal or even no medical services. People die in them all the time.
I've never had the pleasure myself but my mate did 18 months in the Black Dolphin at Orenburg and had three cellmates die in the cell in that time. All from AIDS/pneumonia. So dying in a Russian hoosegow doesn't necessarily mean it was at the direction of VVP.
Your continued apologism for Putin and the VVD, out of some weird desire to posture on here as the true expert of Russia on here, is deeply concerning.
I do not believe @Dura_Ace is defending VVP, at least not here
We are wondering whether Navalny really was murdered at the behest of Vlad, or whether there is another explanation. It is not shilling for Putin to ask this. Why did he need to kill Navalny now? The man was zero threat, stuck in the Arctic forever, and arguably the timing is BAD for Putin, when he apparently wants to appear reasonable (cf the Tucker interview)
Of course, it could be Vlad just said SLOT HIM and they did. But we do not know
I had similar thoughts. It didn't make sense. I assumed for once someone had just died (he wouldn't have been in the best of health) and not been bumped off because I couldn't see the upside for Putin for all the reasons you give. However is there some contorted logic in him doing this (I can't see it) because we do have in the past the use of certain poisons where Russia deny it was them when it really couldn't have been anyone else. Why do they use exotic poisons when simple ones are just ,if not more, effective? Clearly they want us to know it is them while denying it.
So he just died and wasn't bumped off or there is some reason for Putin bumping him off that is above our heads currently or a cockup in the assassination department.
The reason for Putin killing Navalny is to discourage other political opponents in the run-up to the Russian election in March (which might take Putin past Stalin's record as longest serving big cheese).
There is absolutely no doubt whatsoever in my mind that Putin had him killed. He was previously poisoned, which didn't do it, and he was sent to a Siberian camp where he was tortured, abused and starved. Why so slow? Why so brutal?
So the terror serves as a warning to others. It will be a slow and painful death if you try and oppose Putin, and cause him some damage in the process.
Today, we have Biden and David Cameron all over the airwaves personally calling Putin to account for it - and bear in mind they will have all the intelligence of Five Eyes to inform that behind the scenes - and calling him out in the strongest possible terms. And on top we have ongoing evidence of democratic opponents being disqualified, expelled, evicted or imprisoned on fabricated charges.
To deny or question it isn't far off what the Russian troll farms try and do - sow doubt about everything so you're not sure what to believe.
I was robbed but not mugged and it was in the mildest possible way - it was by a prostitute in Prague (no, I wasn't looking for her or inviting an encouter) who came over to me to 'ask me a question' and then shook me in a "do you want to jiggy jiggy?" manner by putting her leg between my legs.
I was so pissed I did nothing except say, "no thanks", and gently disentangle myself, and I didn't even notice my wallet was gone until I got back to the hostel.
This is actually something the UK can be proud of. We have some of the safest roads in the world. The chances of your British kid getting squashed by an idiot in a SUV tomorrow are lower than in almost any other nation
You're trying to use a general stat to justify a particular interpretation, which doesn't work in basic logic. Unless you have some data to support the particular interpretation,
Specific data on SUVs in Europe is not that common yet; here is one example from a Belgian study showing the danger imposed on vulnerable road users by larger, heavier, more powerful vehicles - which is your "child-being-run-down-by-an-SUV" example. In the UK the crucible is the school run.
Making a road safety comparison Europe vs USA is making a 1st world vs 3rd comparison.
SUVs in the USA, in the Light Trucks category, have much poorer safety regulations than even cars there, and massively poorer than anything in Europe. Things like bumpers not being all at the same height to ensure that crumple zones become active in collisions. It lets the manufacturers pump out dangerous vehicles more cheaply for gullible Usonians to swallow; imo that's a problem of a Third World road culture in the USA.
Consider that the Tesla Cybertruck is not coming to Europe since it can't meet even basic safety standards without a redesign from frame level.
Who are you arguing with? Not me, I don’t think
I’m saying UK roads are much safer than US roads - which they are. And one reason US roads are dangerous, especially for pedestrians, is the prevalence of SUVs. Which is also undisputed
UK roads are not just safer than US roads.
The small gap between Belgium and France surprises me. Maybe they just drive like maniacs abroad (or maybe the built up nature of the country with fewer rural roads - like the UK - explains it).
The high Luxembourg figure is I think because such a large proportion of vehicles on the roads are border commuters - large number of cars vs official population.
What’s the most dangerous place you’ve driven?
Probably Lagos, but I was only 16 and driving a Series 2 Land Rover so I almost certainly thought it was worse than it actually was due to the callowness of youth.
Mexico City is no joke and I agree with Sandpit about Amman.
It was all the taxis being at least a foot shorter than when they left the factory, that left the biggest impression about Amman. I mean, who would flag down a car that’s clearly already been in several accidents? It was like being on the dodgems at the fairground.
The Ukrainian have a desperate shortage of ammunition. There is apparently a decent amount available on the open market but inside the EU the French plus Greece and Cyprus are insisting on it being domestically produced. Why don't we just frigging buy it ourselves? How much does half a million rounds of ammunition actually cost?
$4.5 to $5bn at current market rates.
But it wouldn't be a simple purchase as there isn't that much supply around.
I thought the Czechs were claiming there was?
There’s a shortage of stock of ammunition in NATO countries, and there’s I think three new plants currently under construction to manufacture them.
Ukraine is apparently using 7,000-9,000 shells per day, mostly of the NATO-spec 155mm or the Soviet-spec 152mm. There’s even an American factory making 152mm, for existing Ukranian kit from before this war.
Yeah but I think the Czechs were talking about outside Nato.
If they know of anyone stockpiling ammo that Ukraine might find useful, it would be kind of them to say where we can find it. I suspect there’s quite a bit in Africa and South America, but they won’t be too interested in selling as they have their own perpetual wars to fight.
Increasing production seems to be the way forward, but these things unfortunately take time and should have started when the war did.
theres supposedly 22,000 tons of munitions 2 km within the border of Transnistria next to the Ukranian border. Varying states of quality no doubt. But its there and would piss Putin off if he lost it.
This is actually something the UK can be proud of. We have some of the safest roads in the world. The chances of your British kid getting squashed by an idiot in a SUV tomorrow are lower than in almost any other nation
You're trying to use a general stat to justify a particular interpretation, which doesn't work in basic logic. Unless you have some data to support the particular interpretation,
Specific data on SUVs in Europe is not that common yet; here is one example from a Belgian study showing the danger imposed on vulnerable road users by larger, heavier, more powerful vehicles - which is your "child-being-run-down-by-an-SUV" example. In the UK the crucible is the school run.
Making a road safety comparison Europe vs USA is making a 1st world vs 3rd comparison.
SUVs in the USA, in the Light Trucks category, have much poorer safety regulations than even cars there, and massively poorer than anything in Europe. Things like bumpers not being all at the same height to ensure that crumple zones become active in collisions. It lets the manufacturers pump out dangerous vehicles more cheaply for gullible Usonians to swallow; imo that's a problem of a Third World road culture in the USA.
Consider that the Tesla Cybertruck is not coming to Europe since it can't meet even basic safety standards without a redesign from frame level.
Who are you arguing with? Not me, I don’t think
I’m saying UK roads are much safer than US roads - which they are. And one reason US roads are dangerous, especially for pedestrians, is the prevalence of SUVs. Which is also undisputed
UK roads are not just safer than US roads.
The small gap between Belgium and France surprises me. Maybe they just drive like maniacs abroad (or maybe the built up nature of the country with fewer rural roads - like the UK - explains it).
The high Luxembourg figure is I think because such a large proportion of vehicles on the roads are border commuters - large number of cars vs official population.
What’s the most dangerous place you’ve driven?
Mine is Thailand. Fourth from bottom in the world table
And it was motorbikes with no helmets - classic way to die
After that: Armenia. My god, driving through Yerevan at rush hour. Help
Amman, Jordan. Totally without rules, cars all over the place. Thankfully the customer I was meeting out there lent me his car and driver.
In terms of fear of causing a fatality the foothills of the Moroccan Atlas where at every corner there seemed to be a young man jumping out in front of the car with crystal geode in his hands.
Fortunately this was a few years before The Forgiven came out.
I was robbed but not mugged and it was in the mildest possible way - it was by a prostitute in Prague (no, I wasn't looking for her or inviting an encouter) who came over to me to 'ask me a question' and then shook me in a "do you want to jiggy jiggy?" manner by putting her leg between my legs.
I was so pissed I did nothing except say, "no thanks", and gently disentangle myself, and I didn't even notice my wallet was gone until I got back to the hostel.
You should have accepted jiggy-jiggy
It's a lesson in life. Always accept jiggy-jiggy. And boom-boom
I was robbed but not mugged and it was in the mildest possible way - it was by a prostitute in Prague (no, I wasn't looking for her or inviting an encouter) who came over to me to 'ask me a question' and then shook me in a "do you want to jiggy jiggy?" manner by putting her leg between my legs.
I was so pissed I did nothing except say, "no thanks", and gently disentangle myself, and I didn't even notice my wallet was gone until I got back to the hostel.
You should have accepted jiggy-jiggy
It's a lesson in life. Always accept jiggy-jiggy. And boom-boom
She was 3/10 and about 45 years old.
As I young twenty-something at the time I was convinced I could do better- and for free.
The Ukrainian have a desperate shortage of ammunition. There is apparently a decent amount available on the open market but inside the EU the French plus Greece and Cyprus are insisting on it being domestically produced. Why don't we just frigging buy it ourselves? How much does half a million rounds of ammunition actually cost?
$4.5 to $5bn at current market rates.
But it wouldn't be a simple purchase as there isn't that much supply around.
I thought the Czechs were claiming there was?
There’s a shortage of stock of ammunition in NATO countries, and there’s I think three new plants currently under construction to manufacture them.
Ukraine is apparently using 7,000-9,000 shells per day, mostly of the NATO-spec 155mm or the Soviet-spec 152mm. There’s even an American factory making 152mm, for existing Ukranian kit from before this war.
Yeah but I think the Czechs were talking about outside Nato.
If they know of anyone stockpiling ammo that Ukraine might find useful, it would be kind of them to say where we can find it. I suspect there’s quite a bit in Africa and South America, but they won’t be too interested in selling as they have their own perpetual wars to fight.
Increasing production seems to be the way forward, but these things unfortunately take time and should have started when the war did.
theres supposedly 22,000 tons of munitions 2 km within the border of Transnistria next to the Ukranian border. Varying states of quality no doubt. But its there and would piss Putin off if he lost it.
On Newsnight last night one of the guests suggested it wasn’t in Putin’s interests to kill Navalny as this would embolden the pro Ukraine camp especially in the USA where there is more pressure on the House to pass aid proposals .
Yes that sounds fair. He wasn’t going anywhere from the Siberian gulag, so why kill him and make headlines around the world.
Navalny’s death likely does escalate things in the US, where Biden needs to get a handful of House Republicans onside for more aid to Ukraine.
I wonder if he was actively murdered - asside from the slow motion combination of the illness from the previous attempts on his life combined with the deliberately horrible conditions he was kept in.
I have no doubt that a slow death was what Putin wanted for him. A death now?
Yes, it is peculiar
Cui bono? How does Putin gain from this death, other than putting the Fear of God in his last remaining opponents? Surely they are already either dead or crapping themselves?
Putin is a bastard so it could just be him being a bastard, but the timing doesn't seem optimal, for him. Better to appear reasonable, right now, so he can paint the Ukrainians as war mongering Nazis? As he did with Carlson?
Russian prisons are fucking horrible with minimal or even no medical services. People die in them all the time.
I've never had the pleasure myself but my mate did 18 months in the Black Dolphin at Orenburg and had three cellmates die in the cell in that time. All from AIDS/pneumonia. So dying in a Russian hoosegow doesn't necessarily mean it was at the direction of VVP.
Your continued apologism for Putin and the VVD, out of some weird desire to posture on here as the true expert of Russia on here, is deeply concerning.
I do not believe @Dura_Ace is defending VVP, at least not here
We are wondering whether Navalny really was murdered at the behest of Vlad, or whether there is another explanation. It is not shilling for Putin to ask this. Why did he need to kill Navalny now? The man was zero threat, stuck in the Arctic forever, and arguably the timing is BAD for Putin, when he apparently wants to appear reasonable (cf the Tucker interview)
Of course, it could be Vlad just said SLOT HIM and they did. But we do not know
I had similar thoughts. It didn't make sense. I assumed for once someone had just died (he wouldn't have been in the best of health) and not been bumped off because I couldn't see the upside for Putin for all the reasons you give. However is there some contorted logic in him doing this (I can't see it) because we do have in the past the use of certain poisons where Russia deny it was them when it really couldn't have been anyone else. Why do they use exotic poisons when simple ones are just ,if not more, effective? Clearly they want us to know it is them while denying it.
So he just died and wasn't bumped off or there is some reason for Putin bumping him off that is above our heads currently or a cockup in the assassination department.
The reason for Putin killing Navalny is to discourage other political opponents in the run-up to the Russian election in March (which might take Putin past Stalin's record as longest serving big cheese).
There is absolutely no doubt whatsoever in my mind that Putin had him killed. He was previously poisoned, which didn't do it, and he was sent to a Siberian camp where he was tortured, abused and starved. Why so slow? Why so brutal?
So the terror serves as a warning to others. It will be a slow and painful death if you try and oppose Putin, and cause him some damage in the process.
Today, we have Biden and David Cameron all over the airwaves personally calling Putin to account for it - and bear in mind they will have all the intelligence of Five Eyes to inform that behind the scenes - and calling him out in the strongest possible terms. And on top we have ongoing evidence of democratic opponents being disqualified, expelled, evicted or imprisoned on fabricated charges.
To deny or question it isn't far off what the Russian troll farms try and do - sow doubt about everything so you're not sure what to believe.
Putin did it. 100%.
Even if there's nothing with Putin's name on it saying "KILL HIM" like in the recurring Armstrong and Miller sketch, there didn't need to be, because it was blooming obviously Putin's will.
As General Franco used to say when relatives of his victims questioned him, "the nationalists did it".
This is actually something the UK can be proud of. We have some of the safest roads in the world. The chances of your British kid getting squashed by an idiot in a SUV tomorrow are lower than in almost any other nation
You're trying to use a general stat to justify a particular interpretation, which doesn't work in basic logic. Unless you have some data to support the particular interpretation,
Specific data on SUVs in Europe is not that common yet; here is one example from a Belgian study showing the danger imposed on vulnerable road users by larger, heavier, more powerful vehicles - which is your "child-being-run-down-by-an-SUV" example. In the UK the crucible is the school run.
Making a road safety comparison Europe vs USA is making a 1st world vs 3rd comparison.
SUVs in the USA, in the Light Trucks category, have much poorer safety regulations than even cars there, and massively poorer than anything in Europe. Things like bumpers not being all at the same height to ensure that crumple zones become active in collisions. It lets the manufacturers pump out dangerous vehicles more cheaply for gullible Usonians to swallow; imo that's a problem of a Third World road culture in the USA.
Consider that the Tesla Cybertruck is not coming to Europe since it can't meet even basic safety standards without a redesign from frame level.
Who are you arguing with? Not me, I don’t think
I’m saying UK roads are much safer than US roads - which they are. And one reason US roads are dangerous, especially for pedestrians, is the prevalence of SUVs. Which is also undisputed
I'm not arguing. I'm pointing out that your claim cannot be supported by your data:
1 - "The chances of your British kid getting squashed by an idiot in a SUV tomorrow are lower than in almost any other nation"
2 - " We have some of the safest roads in the world."
2 does not imply 1, because incidents involving SUVs and children are both subcategories. To support that claim you need data about SUVs and children, not overall populations.
It's a regular fail in eg the pages of the Spectator, especially when one of the columnists (eg Mary Dejevsky or Jake Wallis Simons recently on road safety) has wound themselves up into a lather.
I think "idiot in an SUV" is also problematic - that's a pretence that people involved in running down kids driving an SUV are some kind of "not me". In fact they are normal everyday people just like us who have got something wrong - kids KSI'd outside schools may well be killed or injured by school-run parents who think they are good drivers.
That's just another consequence of the stat that perhaps 80-90% of drivers think of themselves as "above average". It's a mechanism to avoid taking responsibility for our own actions.
On Newsnight last night one of the guests suggested it wasn’t in Putin’s interests to kill Navalny as this would embolden the pro Ukraine camp especially in the USA where there is more pressure on the House to pass aid proposals .
Yes that sounds fair. He wasn’t going anywhere from the Siberian gulag, so why kill him and make headlines around the world.
Navalny’s death likely does escalate things in the US, where Biden needs to get a handful of House Republicans onside for more aid to Ukraine.
I wonder if he was actively murdered - asside from the slow motion combination of the illness from the previous attempts on his life combined with the deliberately horrible conditions he was kept in.
I have no doubt that a slow death was what Putin wanted for him. A death now?
Yes, it is peculiar
Cui bono? How does Putin gain from this death, other than putting the Fear of God in his last remaining opponents? Surely they are already either dead or crapping themselves?
Putin is a bastard so it could just be him being a bastard, but the timing doesn't seem optimal, for him. Better to appear reasonable, right now, so he can paint the Ukrainians as war mongering Nazis? As he did with Carlson?
Russian prisons are fucking horrible with minimal or even no medical services. People die in them all the time.
I've never had the pleasure myself but my mate did 18 months in the Black Dolphin at Orenburg and had three cellmates die in the cell in that time. All from AIDS/pneumonia. So dying in a Russian hoosegow doesn't necessarily mean it was at the direction of VVP.
Your continued apologism for Putin and the VVD, out of some weird desire to posture on here as the true expert of Russia on here, is deeply concerning.
I do not believe @Dura_Ace is defending VVP, at least not here
We are wondering whether Navalny really was murdered at the behest of Vlad, or whether there is another explanation. It is not shilling for Putin to ask this. Why did he need to kill Navalny now? The man was zero threat, stuck in the Arctic forever, and arguably the timing is BAD for Putin, when he apparently wants to appear reasonable (cf the Tucker interview)
Of course, it could be Vlad just said SLOT HIM and they did. But we do not know
I had similar thoughts. It didn't make sense. I assumed for once someone had just died (he wouldn't have been in the best of health) and not been bumped off because I couldn't see the upside for Putin for all the reasons you give. However is there some contorted logic in him doing this (I can't see it) because we do have in the past the use of certain poisons where Russia deny it was them when it really couldn't have been anyone else. Why do they use exotic poisons when simple ones are just ,if not more, effective? Clearly they want us to know it is them while denying it.
So he just died and wasn't bumped off or there is some reason for Putin bumping him off that is above our heads currently or a cockup in the assassination department.
The reason for Putin killing Navalny is to discourage other political opponents in the run-up to the Russian election in March (which might take Putin past Stalin's record as longest serving big cheese).
There is absolutely no doubt whatsoever in my mind that Putin had him killed. He was previously poisoned, which didn't do it, and he was sent to a Siberian camp where he was tortured, abused and starved. Why so slow? Why so brutal?
So the terror serves as a warning to others. It will be a slow and painful death if you try and oppose Putin, and cause him some damage in the process.
Today, we have Biden and David Cameron all over the airwaves personally calling Putin to account for it - and bear in mind they will have all the intelligence of Five Eyes to inform that behind the scenes - and calling him out in the strongest possible terms. And on top we have ongoing evidence of democratic opponents being disqualified, expelled, evicted or imprisoned on fabricated charges.
To deny or question it isn't far off what the Russian troll farms try and do - sow doubt about everything so you're not sure what to believe.
Putin did it. 100%.
Even if there's nothing with Putin's name on it saying "KILL HIM" like in the recurring Armstrong and Miller sketch, there didn't need to be, because it was blooming obviously Putin's will.
As General Franco used to say when relatives of his victims questioned him, "the nationalists did it".
I assume the Ukrainians have a tacit agreement with Russia not to assassinate their head of state in return for Zelenskyy being spared, but I note Budanov’s wife seems to have been poisoned recently so that maybe brings into play a few senior Russians.
The Ukrainian have a desperate shortage of ammunition. There is apparently a decent amount available on the open market but inside the EU the French plus Greece and Cyprus are insisting on it being domestically produced. Why don't we just frigging buy it ourselves? How much does half a million rounds of ammunition actually cost?
$4.5 to $5bn at current market rates.
But it wouldn't be a simple purchase as there isn't that much supply around.
I thought the Czechs were claiming there was?
There’s a shortage of stock of ammunition in NATO countries, and there’s I think three new plants currently under construction to manufacture them.
Ukraine is apparently using 7,000-9,000 shells per day, mostly of the NATO-spec 155mm or the Soviet-spec 152mm. There’s even an American factory making 152mm, for existing Ukranian kit from before this war.
Yeah but I think the Czechs were talking about outside Nato.
If they know of anyone stockpiling ammo that Ukraine might find useful, it would be kind of them to say where we can find it. I suspect there’s quite a bit in Africa and South America, but they won’t be too interested in selling as they have their own perpetual wars to fight.
Increasing production seems to be the way forward, but these things unfortunately take time and should have started when the war did.
theres supposedly 22,000 tons of munitions 2 km within the border of Transnistria next to the Ukranian border. Varying states of quality no doubt. But its there and would piss Putin off if he lost it.
This is actually something the UK can be proud of. We have some of the safest roads in the world. The chances of your British kid getting squashed by an idiot in a SUV tomorrow are lower than in almost any other nation
You're trying to use a general stat to justify a particular interpretation, which doesn't work in basic logic. Unless you have some data to support the particular interpretation,
Specific data on SUVs in Europe is not that common yet; here is one example from a Belgian study showing the danger imposed on vulnerable road users by larger, heavier, more powerful vehicles - which is your "child-being-run-down-by-an-SUV" example. In the UK the crucible is the school run.
Making a road safety comparison Europe vs USA is making a 1st world vs 3rd comparison.
SUVs in the USA, in the Light Trucks category, have much poorer safety regulations than even cars there, and massively poorer than anything in Europe. Things like bumpers not being all at the same height to ensure that crumple zones become active in collisions. It lets the manufacturers pump out dangerous vehicles more cheaply for gullible Usonians to swallow; imo that's a problem of a Third World road culture in the USA.
Consider that the Tesla Cybertruck is not coming to Europe since it can't meet even basic safety standards without a redesign from frame level.
Who are you arguing with? Not me, I don’t think
I’m saying UK roads are much safer than US roads - which they are. And one reason US roads are dangerous, especially for pedestrians, is the prevalence of SUVs. Which is also undisputed
I'm not arguing. I'm pointing out that your claim cannot be supported by your data:
1 - "The chances of your British kid getting squashed by an idiot in a SUV tomorrow are lower than in almost any other nation"
2 - " We have some of the safest roads in the world."
2 does not imply 1, because incidents involving SUVs and children are both subcategories. To support that claim you need data about SUVs and children, not overall populations.
It's a regular fail in eg the pages of the Spectator, especially when one of the columnists (eg Mary Dejevsky or Jake Wallis Simons recently on road safety) has wound themselves up into a lather.
I think "idiot in an SUV" is also problematic - that's a pretence that people involved in running down kids driving an SUV are some kind of "not me". In fact they are normal everyday people just like us who have got something wrong - kids KSI'd outside schools may well be killed or injured by school-run parents who think they are good drivers.
That's just another consequence of the stat that perhaps 80-90% of drivers think of themselves as "above average". It's a mechanism to avoid taking responsibility for our own actions.
Having driven on the roads recently unfortunately I can confirm it is only me above average and the rest of you are either speeding maniacs, annoying dawdlers or just unfit to be on the roads at all.
I was robbed but not mugged and it was in the mildest possible way - it was by a prostitute in Prague (no, I wasn't looking for her or inviting an encouter) who came over to me to 'ask me a question' and then shook me in a "do you want to jiggy jiggy?" manner by putting her leg between my legs.
I was so pissed I did nothing except say, "no thanks", and gently disentangle myself, and I didn't even notice my wallet was gone until I got back to the hostel.
You should have accepted jiggy-jiggy
It's a lesson in life. Always accept jiggy-jiggy. And boom-boom
A good friend of mine has the ultimate travel horror story which I suspect cannot be beaten. If anyone on PB can, then chapeau and I will buy you a virtual martini on Bassac Lane
He's ex territorial SAS. During the Bosnian war, and for various reasons, he found himself in a Croatian bar (Bar Adolf) full of hardnut Croat soldiers and gangsters, drinking slivovitz and looking over, with menaces. As my friend sensed the danger he kept quiet even as he watched the Croats beating up this nerdy guy in the corner
The lying low didn't work, the chief Croatian nutter associated my friend with tbe nerd - two foreigners - then the nerd tried to make his way out of the bar, so the nutter took out his Kalashnikov. And shot the nerd in the back of the head, blowing his brains out. My friend felt the splat of wet brains on his face
The Croat then turned to my friend, and put his gun right in my mate's mouth, and laughed and everyone chanted Kill him, Kill him, but then the Croat said Fuck it, that's enough - and he didn't kill him
However the Croat DID then insist that my friend continue drinking with him, through the rest of the night, as he deemed they were now best mates, having been through all that together
On Newsnight last night one of the guests suggested it wasn’t in Putin’s interests to kill Navalny as this would embolden the pro Ukraine camp especially in the USA where there is more pressure on the House to pass aid proposals .
Yes that sounds fair. He wasn’t going anywhere from the Siberian gulag, so why kill him and make headlines around the world.
Navalny’s death likely does escalate things in the US, where Biden needs to get a handful of House Republicans onside for more aid to Ukraine.
I wonder if he was actively murdered - asside from the slow motion combination of the illness from the previous attempts on his life combined with the deliberately horrible conditions he was kept in.
I have no doubt that a slow death was what Putin wanted for him. A death now?
Yes, it is peculiar
Cui bono? How does Putin gain from this death, other than putting the Fear of God in his last remaining opponents? Surely they are already either dead or crapping themselves?
Putin is a bastard so it could just be him being a bastard, but the timing doesn't seem optimal, for him. Better to appear reasonable, right now, so he can paint the Ukrainians as war mongering Nazis? As he did with Carlson?
Looking at the massive grin on his face when he appeared in public yesterday, it's reasonably clear.
Despots rely on the despair of their opponents, not on posing as reasonable.
It’s amazing how the west can instantly identify exactly what happened to one man locked away in an Arctic gulag somewhere in Russia, yet we can’t work out where, say, a weirdly dangerous novel bat coronavirus originated, which killed 20 million people after starting off in Wuhan China, despite us funding the research in the only lab in the world making novel bat coronaviruses more weirdly dangerous. In Wuhan, China
Well the guy looked healthy enough at his court appearance the day before.
'Natural causes' is of course possible, but given his prior poisoning and baseless imprisonment in harsh conditions, it would still effectively be murder.
"Reasonably clear" doesn't mean certainty. But you understand language, so your reply is just whatsboutery rhetoric.
That’s a very thin piece of bandwagon-jumping, but it’s definitely true that hotels adjust prices, often considerably, when there’s a major event in town. Large hotels have a person with a fancy title like “Director of Revenue” who works to ‘optimise’ room rates based on expected demand for every night, often working several months ahead of time looking at likely drivers of demand. (That’s likely to be a job replaced with an AI some point soon).
On the other hand, one could argue that most of the ticket price ends up as invisible exports, mostly to the US.
This is actually something the UK can be proud of. We have some of the safest roads in the world. The chances of your British kid getting squashed by an idiot in a SUV tomorrow are lower than in almost any other nation
You're trying to use a general stat to justify a particular interpretation, which doesn't work in basic logic. Unless you have some data to support the particular interpretation,
Specific data on SUVs in Europe is not that common yet; here is one example from a Belgian study showing the danger imposed on vulnerable road users by larger, heavier, more powerful vehicles - which is your "child-being-run-down-by-an-SUV" example. In the UK the crucible is the school run.
Making a road safety comparison Europe vs USA is making a 1st world vs 3rd comparison.
SUVs in the USA, in the Light Trucks category, have much poorer safety regulations than even cars there, and massively poorer than anything in Europe. Things like bumpers not being all at the same height to ensure that crumple zones become active in collisions. It lets the manufacturers pump out dangerous vehicles more cheaply for gullible Usonians to swallow; imo that's a problem of a Third World road culture in the USA.
Consider that the Tesla Cybertruck is not coming to Europe since it can't meet even basic safety standards without a redesign from frame level.
Who are you arguing with? Not me, I don’t think
I’m saying UK roads are much safer than US roads - which they are. And one reason US roads are dangerous, especially for pedestrians, is the prevalence of SUVs. Which is also undisputed
UK roads are not just safer than US roads.
Wrong statistic. Safety is "fatalities per passenger mile" or even "fatalities per journey" not "fatalities per head of population".
I was robbed but not mugged and it was in the mildest possible way - it was by a prostitute in Prague (no, I wasn't looking for her or inviting an encouter) who came over to me to 'ask me a question' and then shook me in a "do you want to jiggy jiggy?" manner by putting her leg between my legs.
I was so pissed I did nothing except say, "no thanks", and gently disentangle myself, and I didn't even notice my wallet was gone until I got back to the hostel.
You should have accepted jiggy-jiggy
It's a lesson in life. Always accept jiggy-jiggy. And boom-boom
She was 3/10 and about 45 years old.
As I young twenty-something at the time I was convinced I could do better- and for free.
It is important for a sporting gentleman to be able to demonstrate 'cock range' in order to receive the salutations of his peers.
As a pink cheeked Sub Lt I was peer pressured in to tackling a garlic reeking Sudanese midget with teeth like Shergar in Alexandria. I would have rather fucked the actual Shergar, even if dead, but I got the job done.
The Ukrainian have a desperate shortage of ammunition. There is apparently a decent amount available on the open market but inside the EU the French plus Greece and Cyprus are insisting on it being domestically produced. Why don't we just frigging buy it ourselves? How much does half a million rounds of ammunition actually cost?
$4.5 to $5bn at current market rates.
But it wouldn't be a simple purchase as there isn't that much supply around.
I thought the Czechs were claiming there was?
There’s a shortage of stock of ammunition in NATO countries, and there’s I think three new plants currently under construction to manufacture them.
Ukraine is apparently using 7,000-9,000 shells per day, mostly of the NATO-spec 155mm or the Soviet-spec 152mm. There’s even an American factory making 152mm, for existing Ukranian kit from before this war.
Yeah but I think the Czechs were talking about outside Nato.
If they know of anyone stockpiling ammo that Ukraine might find useful, it would be kind of them to say where we can find it. I suspect there’s quite a bit in Africa and South America, but they won’t be too interested in selling as they have their own perpetual wars to fight.
Increasing production seems to be the way forward, but these things unfortunately take time and should have started when the war did.
theres supposedly 22,000 tons of munitions 2 km within the border of Transnistria next to the Ukranian border. Varying states of quality no doubt. But its there and would piss Putin off if he lost it.
I've sat in a room surrounded by expressionless Russian men clad in black leather jackets who just stared at me, whilst I was talking with a translator to just one, which was unnerving.
But this was in 2008 when I was doing a high-level survey of the facilities around Sheremetyevo Airport to support development of a new masterplan and we were all trying to be friends at the time.
That said, the chronic suspicion of the West and rampant nationalism was clearly on evidence even then.
The Ukrainian have a desperate shortage of ammunition. There is apparently a decent amount available on the open market but inside the EU the French plus Greece and Cyprus are insisting on it being domestically produced. Why don't we just frigging buy it ourselves? How much does half a million rounds of ammunition actually cost?
$4.5 to $5bn at current market rates.
But it wouldn't be a simple purchase as there isn't that much supply around.
I thought the Czechs were claiming there was?
There’s a shortage of stock of ammunition in NATO countries, and there’s I think three new plants currently under construction to manufacture them.
Ukraine is apparently using 7,000-9,000 shells per day, mostly of the NATO-spec 155mm or the Soviet-spec 152mm. There’s even an American factory making 152mm, for existing Ukranian kit from before this war.
Yeah but I think the Czechs were talking about outside Nato.
If they know of anyone stockpiling ammo that Ukraine might find useful, it would be kind of them to say where we can find it. I suspect there’s quite a bit in Africa and South America, but they won’t be too interested in selling as they have their own perpetual wars to fight.
Increasing production seems to be the way forward, but these things unfortunately take time and should have started when the war did.
theres supposedly 22,000 tons of munitions 2 km within the border of Transnistria next to the Ukranian border. Varying states of quality no doubt. But its there and would piss Putin off if he lost it.
Interesting. Would be a shame if a bunch of special forces managed to sneak in there and blow it halfway to the moon.
I think the problem there is that in international law Transnistria is part of Moldova. And Moldova does not have a lot of army.
I’m sure that if the Moldovan PM picks up the phone to David Cameron, he’ll find someone willing to lend him a few of the army’s finest for an operation like that.
This is actually something the UK can be proud of. We have some of the safest roads in the world. The chances of your British kid getting squashed by an idiot in a SUV tomorrow are lower than in almost any other nation
You're trying to use a general stat to justify a particular interpretation, which doesn't work in basic logic. Unless you have some data to support the particular interpretation,
Specific data on SUVs in Europe is not that common yet; here is one example from a Belgian study showing the danger imposed on vulnerable road users by larger, heavier, more powerful vehicles - which is your "child-being-run-down-by-an-SUV" example. In the UK the crucible is the school run.
Making a road safety comparison Europe vs USA is making a 1st world vs 3rd comparison.
SUVs in the USA, in the Light Trucks category, have much poorer safety regulations than even cars there, and massively poorer than anything in Europe. Things like bumpers not being all at the same height to ensure that crumple zones become active in collisions. It lets the manufacturers pump out dangerous vehicles more cheaply for gullible Usonians to swallow; imo that's a problem of a Third World road culture in the USA.
Consider that the Tesla Cybertruck is not coming to Europe since it can't meet even basic safety standards without a redesign from frame level.
Who are you arguing with? Not me, I don’t think
I’m saying UK roads are much safer than US roads - which they are. And one reason US roads are dangerous, especially for pedestrians, is the prevalence of SUVs. Which is also undisputed
I'm not arguing. I'm pointing out that your claim cannot be supported by your data:
1 - "The chances of your British kid getting squashed by an idiot in a SUV tomorrow are lower than in almost any other nation"
2 - " We have some of the safest roads in the world."
2 does not imply 1, because incidents involving SUVs and children are both subcategories. To support that claim you need data about SUVs and children, not overall populations.
It's a regular fail in eg the pages of the Spectator, especially when one of the columnists (eg Mary Dejevsky or Jake Wallis Simons recently on road safety) has wound themselves up into a lather.
I think "idiot in an SUV" is also problematic - that's a pretence that people involved in running down kids driving an SUV are some kind of "not me". In fact they are normal everyday people just like us who have got something wrong - kids KSI'd outside schools may well be killed or injured by school-run parents who think they are good drivers.
That's just another consequence of the stat that perhaps 80-90% of drivers think of themselves as "above average". It's a mechanism to avoid taking responsibility for our own actions.
No, you twit you are getting hung up on semantics
I am merely pointing out that your chances of being run over - in an SUV or anything - are less in the UK than in America. Which is the case
A good friend of mine has the ultimate travel horror story which I suspect cannot be beaten. If anyone on PB can, then chapeau and I will buy you a virtual martini on Bassac Lane
He's ex territorial SAS. During the Bosnian war, and for various reasons, he found himself in a Croatian bar (Bar Adolf) full of hardnut Croat soldiers and gangsters, drinking slivovitz and looking over, with menaces. As my friend sensed the danger he kept quiet even as he watched the Croats beating up this nerdy guy in the corner
The lying low didn't work, the chief Croatian nutter associated my friend with tbe nerd - two foreigners - then the nerd tried to make his way out of the bar, so the nutter took out his Kalashnikov. And shot the nerd in the back of the head, blowing his brains out. My friend felt the splat of wet brains on his face
The Croat then turned to my friend, and put his gun right in my mate's mouth, and laughed and everyone chanted Kill him, Kill him, but then the Croat said Fuck it, that's enough - and he didn't kill him
However the Croat DID then insist that my friend continue drinking with him, through the rest of the night, as he deemed they were now best mates, having been through all that together
If anyone can beat that, bravo
Point of order: he *claims* to be ex-territorial SAS. Unless you know for sure that he is one, have some doubt - there's probably fifty walts for every 'real' ex-SAS/SBS or territorial soldier. Many walts might actually have been in the army, and therefore know enough lingo to fake it.
As (I think) Andy McNab put it: "if every person who claimed to have been on the Iranian embassy balcony had been there, the building would have collapsed from the weight." Or someuch.
A good friend of mine has the ultimate travel horror story which I suspect cannot be beaten. If anyone on PB can, then chapeau and I will buy you a virtual martini on Bassac Lane
He's ex territorial SAS. During the Bosnian war, and for various reasons, he found himself in a Croatian bar (Bar Adolf) full of hardnut Croat soldiers and gangsters, drinking slivovitz and looking over, with menaces. As my friend sensed the danger he kept quiet even as he watched the Croats beating up this nerdy guy in the corner
The lying low didn't work, the chief Croatian nutter associated my friend with tbe nerd - two foreigners - then the nerd tried to make his way out of the bar, so the nutter took out his Kalashnikov. And shot the nerd in the back of the head, blowing his brains out. My friend felt the splat of wet brains on his face
The Croat then turned to my friend, and put his gun right in my mate's mouth, and laughed and everyone chanted Kill him, Kill him, but then the Croat said Fuck it, that's enough - and he didn't kill him
However the Croat DID then insist that my friend continue drinking with him, through the rest of the night, as he deemed they were now best mates, having been through all that together
If anyone can beat that, bravo
Point of order: he *claims* to be ex-territorial SAS. Unless you know for sure that he is one, have some doubt - there's probably fifty walts for every 'real' ex-SAS/SBS or territorial soldier. Many walts might actually have been in the army, and therefore know enough lingo to fake it.
As (I think) Andy McNab put it: "if every person who claimed to have been on the Iranian embassy balcony had been there, the building would have collapsed from the weight." Or someuch.
A good friend of mine has the ultimate travel horror story which I suspect cannot be beaten. If anyone on PB can, then chapeau and I will buy you a virtual martini on Bassac Lane
He's ex territorial SAS. During the Bosnian war, and for various reasons, he found himself in a Croatian bar (Bar Adolf) full of hardnut Croat soldiers and gangsters, drinking slivovitz and looking over, with menaces. As my friend sensed the danger he kept quiet even as he watched the Croats beating up this nerdy guy in the corner
The lying low didn't work, the chief Croatian nutter associated my friend with tbe nerd - two foreigners - then the nerd tried to make his way out of the bar, so the nutter took out his Kalashnikov. And shot the nerd in the back of the head, blowing his brains out. My friend felt the splat of wet brains on his face
The Croat then turned to my friend, and put his gun right in my mate's mouth, and laughed and everyone chanted Kill him, Kill him, but then the Croat said Fuck it, that's enough - and he didn't kill him
However the Croat DID then insist that my friend continue drinking with him, through the rest of the night, as he deemed they were now best mates, having been through all that together
If anyone can beat that, bravo
Point of order: he *claims* to be ex-territorial SAS. Unless you know for sure that he is one, have some doubt - there's probably fifty walts for every 'real' ex-SAS/SBS or territorial soldier. Many walts might actually have been in the army, and therefore know enough lingo to fake it.
As (I think) Andy McNab put it: "if every person who claimed to have been on the Iranian embassy balcony had been there, the building would have collapsed from the weight." Or someuch.
Do you think my friend is lying??
I don't know, and wouldn't say. I doubt you would know if he was lying, though.
And I stand by my point: lots of people *claim* to have been special forces when they didn't even get into the army. Or at best, failed selection for whichever force. It's an impressive claim and a good chat-up line for the girls.
Walts are quite common: I mean, we even had one person who pretended to be a bestselling author before he turned out to just be a knapper.
A good friend of mine has the ultimate travel horror story which I suspect cannot be beaten. If anyone on PB can, then chapeau and I will buy you a virtual martini on Bassac Lane
He's ex territorial SAS. During the Bosnian war, and for various reasons, he found himself in a Croatian bar (Bar Adolf) full of hardnut Croat soldiers and gangsters, drinking slivovitz and looking over, with menaces. As my friend sensed the danger he kept quiet even as he watched the Croats beating up this nerdy guy in the corner
The lying low didn't work, the chief Croatian nutter associated my friend with tbe nerd - two foreigners - then the nerd tried to make his way out of the bar, so the nutter took out his Kalashnikov. And shot the nerd in the back of the head, blowing his brains out. My friend felt the splat of wet brains on his face
The Croat then turned to my friend, and put his gun right in my mate's mouth, and laughed and everyone chanted Kill him, Kill him, but then the Croat said Fuck it, that's enough - and he didn't kill him
However the Croat DID then insist that my friend continue drinking with him, through the rest of the night, as he deemed they were now best mates, having been through all that together
If anyone can beat that, bravo
Point of order: he *claims* to be ex-territorial SAS. Unless you know for sure that he is one, have some doubt - there's probably fifty walts for every 'real' ex-SAS/SBS or territorial soldier. Many walts might actually have been in the army, and therefore know enough lingo to fake it.
As (I think) Andy McNab put it: "if every person who claimed to have been on the Iranian embassy balcony had been there, the building would have collapsed from the weight." Or someuch.
That’s like Ian Botham saying that in the last 40 years, he’s met at least 10 times the capacity of Headingly who have told him they were there for *that* test match. It wasn’t sold out.
This is actually something the UK can be proud of. We have some of the safest roads in the world. The chances of your British kid getting squashed by an idiot in a SUV tomorrow are lower than in almost any other nation
The US is so bad because people still all drive home from the pub there, something which is now much better in the UK.
On drink driving blood alcohol levels the UK (except Scotland) is in line with the USA, not Europe. Consider that someone driving at the UK blood-alcohol level limit in France could reasonably expect a 2 year jail term:
Drink driving limit France has very strict drink driving laws. The French drink-driving limit is 50mg of alcohol in 100ml of blood.
Sanctions and Penalties :
Drivers found with between 50mg and 80mg of alcohol in your blood can be fined € 135 (£ 112). The driver will not be permitted to continue with his journey until the alcohol level in his bloodstream falls below the legal limit.
If the breath-test reveals that a driver has more than 80mg of alcohol, it is considered as a major offense. The driver could be fined to € 4,500 (£ 3,744) with his driving licence confiscated immediately for three years and a possibility up to two years emprisonment. https://www.bison-fute.gouv.fr/imprimer,article10259.html
Drink-drive casualties in the UK are rising as a proportion of casualties (except in Scotland), and drug driving is an even larger issue. Drink drive data:
Anecdotal: drug driving seems to be a large and growing issue for road policing in Scotland.
Yes - that's true. But I thought three graphs at once would be a bit much for an aspiring journo like @Leon !
Drug driving is one reason imo why we need to reverse the major cut in numbers of road police over recent years, and make it a statutory service requirement, as this cannot be detected remotely, and drug-driving is a common occurrence in death or injury collisions. Then:
I was robbed but not mugged and it was in the mildest possible way - it was by a prostitute in Prague (no, I wasn't looking for her or inviting an encouter) who came over to me to 'ask me a question' and then shook me in a "do you want to jiggy jiggy?" manner by putting her leg between my legs.
I was so pissed I did nothing except say, "no thanks", and gently disentangle myself, and I didn't even notice my wallet was gone until I got back to the hostel.
You should have accepted jiggy-jiggy
It's a lesson in life. Always accept jiggy-jiggy. And boom-boom
She was 3/10 and about 45 years old.
As I young twenty-something at the time I was convinced I could do better- and for free.
It is important for a sporting gentleman to be able to demonstrate 'cock range' in order to receive the salutations of his peers.
As a pink cheeked Sub Lt I was peer pressured in to tackling a garlic reeking Sudanese midget with teeth like Shergar in Alexandria. I would have rather fucked the actual Shergar, even if dead, but I got the job done.
When duty calls, you answer.
Friend of mine waa doing jiggy jiggy with a hooker in Belgium. She kept her top on which frustrated him as she seemed to be quite pleasanly mammacious. He asked if she could take her top off tp let him play with her boobs, she said No that's extra. He asked how much and she said "30 euro"
He only had 15 euro on him so he asked if he could look at and squeeze ONE breast and she agreed. And so she showed him one breast and he squeezed it. I'm not sure how he reached his decision. Left or right?
A good friend of mine has the ultimate travel horror story which I suspect cannot be beaten. If anyone on PB can, then chapeau and I will buy you a virtual martini on Bassac Lane
He's ex territorial SAS. During the Bosnian war, and for various reasons, he found himself in a Croatian bar (Bar Adolf) full of hardnut Croat soldiers and gangsters, drinking slivovitz and looking over, with menaces. As my friend sensed the danger he kept quiet even as he watched the Croats beating up this nerdy guy in the corner
The lying low didn't work, the chief Croatian nutter associated my friend with tbe nerd - two foreigners - then the nerd tried to make his way out of the bar, so the nutter took out his Kalashnikov. And shot the nerd in the back of the head, blowing his brains out. My friend felt the splat of wet brains on his face
The Croat then turned to my friend, and put his gun right in my mate's mouth, and laughed and everyone chanted Kill him, Kill him, but then the Croat said Fuck it, that's enough - and he didn't kill him
However the Croat DID then insist that my friend continue drinking with him, through the rest of the night, as he deemed they were now best mates, having been through all that together
If anyone can beat that, bravo
Point of order: he *claims* to be ex-territorial SAS. Unless you know for sure that he is one, have some doubt - there's probably fifty walts for every 'real' ex-SAS/SBS or territorial soldier. Many walts might actually have been in the army, and therefore know enough lingo to fake it.
As (I think) Andy McNab put it: "if every person who claimed to have been on the Iranian embassy balcony had been there, the building would have collapsed from the weight." Or someuch.
That’s like Ian Botham saying that in the last 40 years, he’s met at least 10 times the capacity of Headingly who have told him they were there for *that* test match. It wasn’t sold out.
So instead of tax cuts the following story plays out in March.
Hunt/Sunak stands up, we’ve reviewed the national security situation and HMG has decided this is not the time for tax cuts, we need to invest in defence. So HMG is going to channel X £30B into U.K. defence invest (in x marginal constituencies). We will be funding this through cuts across the board. To succeed this has to be a sustained investment over five years, therefore we are now going to the country to ask for a mandate to secure our nations future.
£30bn would help at the edges, increase the E-7 buy, ammo stockpiles, etc. but generally to give the MoD more money would be indistinguishable from burning it.
Ultimately, there isn't sufficient industrial capacity in the UK to support and extra £30bn of defence expenditure. They could probably do a new Typhoon buy but there is no prospect of building any more ships because there are no available shipyards.
So that moiety of the new funding that wasn't spunked up the wall would end up in foreign countries not "marginal constiuencies".
It does seem like madness just supplying more and more weapons. It might make sense supplying a nuclear bomb as a deterrant but just supplying the means to blow each other apart for years and years until one side or the other can't take it anymore seems like pointless cruelty. It also follows the strange logic of American gun supporters that the way to protect yourself is to carry arms
The American gun policy analogy rather falls down when you realise we can’t legislate to ban Russia from carrying weapons.
There's a disturbing thread on TwiX today, by some American whose wife and kid were nearly killed in a virtual head-on with a truck. The guy concludes (surely rightly) that his family only survived because they were driving a massive SUV. His thread is followed by lots of other Americans saying Fuck yeah, this is why we have big cars, so we are safe, make them even bigger!!
And yet America suffers appalling lethal road traffic accident rates, especially pedestrians, way out of whack with the rest of the world. Why? Parly because so many people drive enormous cars, any collision with the soft human body is fatal
So it's a bit like their gun laws. A kind of tragedy of the commons
"A new study paints a grim picture of American roads: every day, 20 people walk outside and end up killed by a moving vehicle.
"There are more pedestrians being killed today than in decades," Russ Martin, the senior director of policy and government relations at the Governors Highway Safety Association, told NPR."
That is kind of the ethos of American society, look after your own and fuck everyone else.
That is unfair to Americans who are among the most generous people in the world. It is more that their society is rigged to hide externalities, whether they be hidden harms to others, the tragedy of the commons writ large, or at the opposite end, hidden favourable inputs to good fortune, such as education, stability or hidden government subsidies.
I lived in America for five years, loved it and there are indeed many lovely generous people, on a one on one basis. But the idea of collective action is anathema and there is a kind of cult of the individual that verges on the psychotic.
A good friend of mine has the ultimate travel horror story which I suspect cannot be beaten. If anyone on PB can, then chapeau and I will buy you a virtual martini on Bassac Lane
He's ex territorial SAS. During the Bosnian war, and for various reasons, he found himself in a Croatian bar (Bar Adolf) full of hardnut Croat soldiers and gangsters, drinking slivovitz and looking over, with menaces. As my friend sensed the danger he kept quiet even as he watched the Croats beating up this nerdy guy in the corner
The lying low didn't work, the chief Croatian nutter associated my friend with tbe nerd - two foreigners - then the nerd tried to make his way out of the bar, so the nutter took out his Kalashnikov. And shot the nerd in the back of the head, blowing his brains out. My friend felt the splat of wet brains on his face
The Croat then turned to my friend, and put his gun right in my mate's mouth, and laughed and everyone chanted Kill him, Kill him, but then the Croat said Fuck it, that's enough - and he didn't kill him
However the Croat DID then insist that my friend continue drinking with him, through the rest of the night, as he deemed they were now best mates, having been through all that together
If anyone can beat that, bravo
Point of order: he *claims* to be ex-territorial SAS. Unless you know for sure that he is one, have some doubt - there's probably fifty walts for every 'real' ex-SAS/SBS or territorial soldier. Many walts might actually have been in the army, and therefore know enough lingo to fake it.
As (I think) Andy McNab put it: "if every person who claimed to have been on the Iranian embassy balcony had been there, the building would have collapsed from the weight." Or someuch.
That’s like Ian Botham saying that in the last 40 years, he’s met at least 10 times the capacity of Headingly who have told him they were there for *that* test match. It wasn’t sold out.
Or early Sex Pistols gigs, or in the Blind Beggar that day. One genuine claim you used to hear, although of course it is subject to survivorship bias, is that if we had or hadn't moved or caught that troopship during the war, we'd have been killed.
A good friend of mine has the ultimate travel horror story which I suspect cannot be beaten. If anyone on PB can, then chapeau and I will buy you a virtual martini on Bassac Lane
He's ex territorial SAS. During the Bosnian war, and for various reasons, he found himself in a Croatian bar (Bar Adolf) full of hardnut Croat soldiers and gangsters, drinking slivovitz and looking over, with menaces. As my friend sensed the danger he kept quiet even as he watched the Croats beating up this nerdy guy in the corner
The lying low didn't work, the chief Croatian nutter associated my friend with tbe nerd - two foreigners - then the nerd tried to make his way out of the bar, so the nutter took out his Kalashnikov. And shot the nerd in the back of the head, blowing his brains out. My friend felt the splat of wet brains on his face
The Croat then turned to my friend, and put his gun right in my mate's mouth, and laughed and everyone chanted Kill him, Kill him, but then the Croat said Fuck it, that's enough - and he didn't kill him
However the Croat DID then insist that my friend continue drinking with him, through the rest of the night, as he deemed they were now best mates, having been through all that together
If anyone can beat that, bravo
Point of order: he *claims* to be ex-territorial SAS. Unless you know for sure that he is one, have some doubt - there's probably fifty walts for every 'real' ex-SAS/SBS or territorial soldier. Many walts might actually have been in the army, and therefore know enough lingo to fake it.
As (I think) Andy McNab put it: "if every person who claimed to have been on the Iranian embassy balcony had been there, the building would have collapsed from the weight." Or someuch.
That’s like Ian Botham saying that in the last 40 years, he’s met at least 10 times the capacity of Headingly who have told him they were there for *that* test match. It wasn’t sold out.
Do you think he's lying as well?
Must have a good memory to remember, recognise, and count 200,000 people from short conversations over many years and sift out all the duplicates too.
A good friend of mine has the ultimate travel horror story which I suspect cannot be beaten. If anyone on PB can, then chapeau and I will buy you a virtual martini on Bassac Lane
He's ex territorial SAS. During the Bosnian war, and for various reasons, he found himself in a Croatian bar (Bar Adolf) full of hardnut Croat soldiers and gangsters, drinking slivovitz and looking over, with menaces. As my friend sensed the danger he kept quiet even as he watched the Croats beating up this nerdy guy in the corner
The lying low didn't work, the chief Croatian nutter associated my friend with tbe nerd - two foreigners - then the nerd tried to make his way out of the bar, so the nutter took out his Kalashnikov. And shot the nerd in the back of the head, blowing his brains out. My friend felt the splat of wet brains on his face
The Croat then turned to my friend, and put his gun right in my mate's mouth, and laughed and everyone chanted Kill him, Kill him, but then the Croat said Fuck it, that's enough - and he didn't kill him
However the Croat DID then insist that my friend continue drinking with him, through the rest of the night, as he deemed they were now best mates, having been through all that together
If anyone can beat that, bravo
Point of order: he *claims* to be ex-territorial SAS. Unless you know for sure that he is one, have some doubt - there's probably fifty walts for every 'real' ex-SAS/SBS or territorial soldier. Many walts might actually have been in the army, and therefore know enough lingo to fake it.
As (I think) Andy McNab put it: "if every person who claimed to have been on the Iranian embassy balcony had been there, the building would have collapsed from the weight." Or someuch.
That’s like Ian Botham saying that in the last 40 years, he’s met at least 10 times the capacity of Headingly who have told him they were there for *that* test match. It wasn’t sold out.
Do you think he's lying as well?
Must have a good memory to remember, recognise, and count 200,000 people from short conversations over many years and sift out all the duplicates too.
This is actually something the UK can be proud of. We have some of the safest roads in the world. The chances of your British kid getting squashed by an idiot in a SUV tomorrow are lower than in almost any other nation
You're trying to use a general stat to justify a particular interpretation, which doesn't work in basic logic. Unless you have some data to support the particular interpretation,
Specific data on SUVs in Europe is not that common yet; here is one example from a Belgian study showing the danger imposed on vulnerable road users by larger, heavier, more powerful vehicles - which is your "child-being-run-down-by-an-SUV" example. In the UK the crucible is the school run.
Making a road safety comparison Europe vs USA is making a 1st world vs 3rd comparison.
SUVs in the USA, in the Light Trucks category, have much poorer safety regulations than even cars there, and massively poorer than anything in Europe. Things like bumpers not being all at the same height to ensure that crumple zones become active in collisions. It lets the manufacturers pump out dangerous vehicles more cheaply for gullible Usonians to swallow; imo that's a problem of a Third World road culture in the USA.
Consider that the Tesla Cybertruck is not coming to Europe since it can't meet even basic safety standards without a redesign from frame level.
Who are you arguing with? Not me, I don’t think
I’m saying UK roads are much safer than US roads - which they are. And one reason US roads are dangerous, especially for pedestrians, is the prevalence of SUVs. Which is also undisputed
UK roads are not just safer than US roads.
Wrong statistic. Safety is "fatalities per passenger mile" or even "fatalities per journey" not "fatalities per head of population".
It is extraordinary how many statistics posted on here show the UK at the top or bottom of the table depending on which is the favourable end.. Carlotta when she posted was particularly good at finding them. I often wondered what it must be like those unfortunates who didn't live here
A good friend of mine has the ultimate travel horror story which I suspect cannot be beaten. If anyone on PB can, then chapeau and I will buy you a virtual martini on Bassac Lane
He's ex territorial SAS. During the Bosnian war, and for various reasons, he found himself in a Croatian bar (Bar Adolf) full of hardnut Croat soldiers and gangsters, drinking slivovitz and looking over, with menaces. As my friend sensed the danger he kept quiet even as he watched the Croats beating up this nerdy guy in the corner
The lying low didn't work, the chief Croatian nutter associated my friend with tbe nerd - two foreigners - then the nerd tried to make his way out of the bar, so the nutter took out his Kalashnikov. And shot the nerd in the back of the head, blowing his brains out. My friend felt the splat of wet brains on his face
The Croat then turned to my friend, and put his gun right in my mate's mouth, and laughed and everyone chanted Kill him, Kill him, but then the Croat said Fuck it, that's enough - and he didn't kill him
However the Croat DID then insist that my friend continue drinking with him, through the rest of the night, as he deemed they were now best mates, having been through all that together
If anyone can beat that, bravo
Point of order: he *claims* to be ex-territorial SAS. Unless you know for sure that he is one, have some doubt - there's probably fifty walts for every 'real' ex-SAS/SBS or territorial soldier. Many walts might actually have been in the army, and therefore know enough lingo to fake it.
As (I think) Andy McNab put it: "if every person who claimed to have been on the Iranian embassy balcony had been there, the building would have collapsed from the weight." Or someuch.
That’s like Ian Botham saying that in the last 40 years, he’s met at least 10 times the capacity of Headingly who have told him they were there for *that* test match. It wasn’t sold out.
Or early Sex Pistols gigs, or in the Blind Beggar that day. One genuine claim you used to hear, although of course it is subject to survivorship bias, is that if we had or hadn't moved or caught that troopship during the war, we'd have been killed.
I was robbed but not mugged and it was in the mildest possible way - it was by a prostitute in Prague (no, I wasn't looking for her or inviting an encouter) who came over to me to 'ask me a question' and then shook me in a "do you want to jiggy jiggy?" manner by putting her leg between my legs.
I was so pissed I did nothing except say, "no thanks", and gently disentangle myself, and I didn't even notice my wallet was gone until I got back to the hostel.
You should have accepted jiggy-jiggy
It's a lesson in life. Always accept jiggy-jiggy. And boom-boom
She was 3/10 and about 45 years old.
As I young twenty-something at the time I was convinced I could do better- and for free.
It is important for a sporting gentleman to be able to demonstrate 'cock range' in order to receive the salutations of his peers.
As a pink cheeked Sub Lt I was peer pressured in to tackling a garlic reeking Sudanese midget with teeth like Shergar in Alexandria. I would have rather fucked the actual Shergar, even if dead, but I got the job done.
When duty calls, you answer.
Friend of mine waa doing jiggy jiggy with a hooker in Belgium. She kept her top on which frustrated him as she seemed to be quite pleasanly mammacious. He asked if she could take her top off tp let him play with her boobs, she said No that's extra. He asked how much and she said "30 euro"
He only had 15 euro on him so he asked if he could look at and squeeze ONE breast and she agreed. And so she showed him one breast and he squeezed it. I'm not sure how he reached his decision. Left or right?
Was that before or after Ryanair introduced their pricing model? One wonders where she got the idea ...
Incidentally, it's worth recalling what a huge misjudgement Putin made with the initial invasion. It was meant to last a couple of weeks, if that.
Either his judgement or his intelligence (in either sense) is lacking compared to a decade or two ago.
It was a close run thing, and the UK under Johnson was one of the countries that made a difference, which explains a lot of the vitriol directed against us by their propagandists.
Or maybe Johnson was potentially already compromised by his Russian links, and they aren't happy that he didn't play along when it came to it, as so many of the US Republicans appear to be doing?
The early provision of arms and support to Ukraine was Ben Wallace's project I believe. Johnson was initially sceptical but didn't stop it. To give Johnson rare credit where it's due he did a reverse ferret on being the Cabinet's biggest supporter of Russia to become a full throated advocate for Ukraine.
Had he not done so, he would have been toast, and one thing he never lacked was an instinct for self-preservation. The shame is that the same dynamic doesn't seem to operate in the US.
The idea that he was ever "the Cabinet's biggest supporter of Russia" is a total fantasy. It's just a spin-off from the idea that Brexit was somehow bought by Russia, therefore the face of Brexit must surely be a Russian agent. It's all smears and innuendo.
Merkel and Cameron did far more to appease Putin than ever Johnson did.
We are in the middle of a unit transfer, so Chosen is no longer there.
One main factor that you could see become a detriment was time off the front. The 59th and other units in the sector have never had a rotation off the front. Which physically and mentally does effect the fighting capacity. By the end of 2023 Chosen members were all injured atleast once and most of us were doing operations at 80% ability. We had men(Hound I love you brother) going out with gaping fragmentation wounds bandaged from a injury a week earlier. None of this was forced on us however. We would check ourselves out of the hospital to continue the fight. And the Ukrainians were much the same. Hell, our commander Kozak consistently put off medical so he could stay on the front and coordinate and fight. We had a drone pilot get 6 or 7 contusions including from TOS1s twice in one day who basically was in a permanent shuttle of hospital, checking himself out, fly drones, back to hospital.
The fighting spirit of the men in our sector is nothing short of heroic, but it is not a long term benefit to fighting capabilities doing what Chosen and the Ukrainians were doing. Sheer will and determination only goes so far.
This is actually something the UK can be proud of. We have some of the safest roads in the world. The chances of your British kid getting squashed by an idiot in a SUV tomorrow are lower than in almost any other nation
You're trying to use a general stat to justify a particular interpretation, which doesn't work in basic logic. Unless you have some data to support the particular interpretation,
Specific data on SUVs in Europe is not that common yet; here is one example from a Belgian study showing the danger imposed on vulnerable road users by larger, heavier, more powerful vehicles - which is your "child-being-run-down-by-an-SUV" example. In the UK the crucible is the school run.
Making a road safety comparison Europe vs USA is making a 1st world vs 3rd comparison.
SUVs in the USA, in the Light Trucks category, have much poorer safety regulations than even cars there, and massively poorer than anything in Europe. Things like bumpers not being all at the same height to ensure that crumple zones become active in collisions. It lets the manufacturers pump out dangerous vehicles more cheaply for gullible Usonians to swallow; imo that's a problem of a Third World road culture in the USA.
Consider that the Tesla Cybertruck is not coming to Europe since it can't meet even basic safety standards without a redesign from frame level.
Who are you arguing with? Not me, I don’t think
I’m saying UK roads are much safer than US roads - which they are. And one reason US roads are dangerous, especially for pedestrians, is the prevalence of SUVs. Which is also undisputed
UK roads are not just safer than US roads.
Wrong statistic. Safety is "fatalities per passenger mile" or even "fatalities per journey" not "fatalities per head of population".
It is extraordinary how many statistics posted on here show the UK at the top or bottom of the table depending on which is the favourable end.. Carlotta when she posted was particularly good at finding them. I often wondered what it must be like those unfortunates who didn't live here
A good friend of mine has the ultimate travel horror story which I suspect cannot be beaten. If anyone on PB can, then chapeau and I will buy you a virtual martini on Bassac Lane
He's ex territorial SAS. During the Bosnian war, and for various reasons, he found himself in a Croatian bar (Bar Adolf) full of hardnut Croat soldiers and gangsters, drinking slivovitz and looking over, with menaces. As my friend sensed the danger he kept quiet even as he watched the Croats beating up this nerdy guy in the corner
The lying low didn't work, the chief Croatian nutter associated my friend with tbe nerd - two foreigners - then the nerd tried to make his way out of the bar, so the nutter took out his Kalashnikov. And shot the nerd in the back of the head, blowing his brains out. My friend felt the splat of wet brains on his face
The Croat then turned to my friend, and put his gun right in my mate's mouth, and laughed and everyone chanted Kill him, Kill him, but then the Croat said Fuck it, that's enough - and he didn't kill him
However the Croat DID then insist that my friend continue drinking with him, through the rest of the night, as he deemed they were now best mates, having been through all that together
If anyone can beat that, bravo
Point of order: he *claims* to be ex-territorial SAS. Unless you know for sure that he is one, have some doubt - there's probably fifty walts for every 'real' ex-SAS/SBS or territorial soldier. Many walts might actually have been in the army, and therefore know enough lingo to fake it.
As (I think) Andy McNab put it: "if every person who claimed to have been on the Iranian embassy balcony had been there, the building would have collapsed from the weight." Or someuch.
That’s like Ian Botham saying that in the last 40 years, he’s met at least 10 times the capacity of Headingly who have told him they were there for *that* test match. It wasn’t sold out.
Or early Sex Pistols gigs, or in the Blind Beggar that day. One genuine claim you used to hear, although of course it is subject to survivorship bias, is that if we had or hadn't moved or caught that troopship during the war, we'd have been killed.
So YOU think he's lying, as well?
tbh I responded to the Botham anecdote and did not even expand the "previous quotes".
This is actually something the UK can be proud of. We have some of the safest roads in the world. The chances of your British kid getting squashed by an idiot in a SUV tomorrow are lower than in almost any other nation
You're trying to use a general stat to justify a particular interpretation, which doesn't work in basic logic. Unless you have some data to support the particular interpretation,
Specific data on SUVs in Europe is not that common yet; here is one example from a Belgian study showing the danger imposed on vulnerable road users by larger, heavier, more powerful vehicles - which is your "child-being-run-down-by-an-SUV" example. In the UK the crucible is the school run.
Making a road safety comparison Europe vs USA is making a 1st world vs 3rd comparison.
SUVs in the USA, in the Light Trucks category, have much poorer safety regulations than even cars there, and massively poorer than anything in Europe. Things like bumpers not being all at the same height to ensure that crumple zones become active in collisions. It lets the manufacturers pump out dangerous vehicles more cheaply for gullible Usonians to swallow; imo that's a problem of a Third World road culture in the USA.
Consider that the Tesla Cybertruck is not coming to Europe since it can't meet even basic safety standards without a redesign from frame level.
Who are you arguing with? Not me, I don’t think
I’m saying UK roads are much safer than US roads - which they are. And one reason US roads are dangerous, especially for pedestrians, is the prevalence of SUVs. Which is also undisputed
I'm not arguing. I'm pointing out that your claim cannot be supported by your data:
1 - "The chances of your British kid getting squashed by an idiot in a SUV tomorrow are lower than in almost any other nation"
2 - " We have some of the safest roads in the world."
2 does not imply 1, because incidents involving SUVs and children are both subcategories. To support that claim you need data about SUVs and children, not overall populations.
It's a regular fail in eg the pages of the Spectator, especially when one of the columnists (eg Mary Dejevsky or Jake Wallis Simons recently on road safety) has wound themselves up into a lather.
I think "idiot in an SUV" is also problematic - that's a pretence that people involved in running down kids driving an SUV are some kind of "not me". In fact they are normal everyday people just like us who have got something wrong - kids KSI'd outside schools may well be killed or injured by school-run parents who think they are good drivers.
That's just another consequence of the stat that perhaps 80-90% of drivers think of themselves as "above average". It's a mechanism to avoid taking responsibility for our own actions.
No, you twit you are getting hung up on semantics
I am merely pointing out that your chances of being run over - in an SUV or anything - are less in the UK than in America. Which is the case
It's Sunday and you have time to be accurate.
If you mean "SUV or anything" then don't say "SUV" . If you mean "you" then don't say "child" .
On the issue of USA roads being a killing zone, where they kill approximately the same 50k with their motors as the 50k they kill with their guns, there are multiple causes.
One is that USA drivers get perhaps half the time being trained to drive as in Western Europe including the UK, and get given motor vehicles when they are still in their mid-teens. Usonian drivers are as undertrained as Usonian police officers.
Another is that their system maximises conflict between motors and everyone else - eg just not installing footways, or making walking to the shops or the football practically impossible.
A good friend of mine has the ultimate travel horror story which I suspect cannot be beaten. If anyone on PB can, then chapeau and I will buy you a virtual martini on Bassac Lane
He's ex territorial SAS. During the Bosnian war, and for various reasons, he found himself in a Croatian bar (Bar Adolf) full of hardnut Croat soldiers and gangsters, drinking slivovitz and looking over, with menaces. As my friend sensed the danger he kept quiet even as he watched the Croats beating up this nerdy guy in the corner
The lying low didn't work, the chief Croatian nutter associated my friend with tbe nerd - two foreigners - then the nerd tried to make his way out of the bar, so the nutter took out his Kalashnikov. And shot the nerd in the back of the head, blowing his brains out. My friend felt the splat of wet brains on his face
The Croat then turned to my friend, and put his gun right in my mate's mouth, and laughed and everyone chanted Kill him, Kill him, but then the Croat said Fuck it, that's enough - and he didn't kill him
However the Croat DID then insist that my friend continue drinking with him, through the rest of the night, as he deemed they were now best mates, having been through all that together
If anyone can beat that, bravo
Point of order: he *claims* to be ex-territorial SAS. Unless you know for sure that he is one, have some doubt - there's probably fifty walts for every 'real' ex-SAS/SBS or territorial soldier. Many walts might actually have been in the army, and therefore know enough lingo to fake it.
As (I think) Andy McNab put it: "if every person who claimed to have been on the Iranian embassy balcony had been there, the building would have collapsed from the weight." Or someuch.
That’s like Ian Botham saying that in the last 40 years, he’s met at least 10 times the capacity of Headingly who have told him they were there for *that* test match. It wasn’t sold out.
Or early Sex Pistols gigs, or in the Blind Beggar that day. One genuine claim you used to hear, although of course it is subject to survivorship bias, is that if we had or hadn't moved or caught that troopship during the war, we'd have been killed.
So YOU think he's lying, as well?
tbh I responded to the Botham anecdote and did not even expand the "previous quotes".
You implied my friend is lying and that I'm a credulous fool for believing him
This is actually something the UK can be proud of. We have some of the safest roads in the world. The chances of your British kid getting squashed by an idiot in a SUV tomorrow are lower than in almost any other nation
You're trying to use a general stat to justify a particular interpretation, which doesn't work in basic logic. Unless you have some data to support the particular interpretation,
Specific data on SUVs in Europe is not that common yet; here is one example from a Belgian study showing the danger imposed on vulnerable road users by larger, heavier, more powerful vehicles - which is your "child-being-run-down-by-an-SUV" example. In the UK the crucible is the school run.
Making a road safety comparison Europe vs USA is making a 1st world vs 3rd comparison.
SUVs in the USA, in the Light Trucks category, have much poorer safety regulations than even cars there, and massively poorer than anything in Europe. Things like bumpers not being all at the same height to ensure that crumple zones become active in collisions. It lets the manufacturers pump out dangerous vehicles more cheaply for gullible Usonians to swallow; imo that's a problem of a Third World road culture in the USA.
Consider that the Tesla Cybertruck is not coming to Europe since it can't meet even basic safety standards without a redesign from frame level.
Who are you arguing with? Not me, I don’t think
I’m saying UK roads are much safer than US roads - which they are. And one reason US roads are dangerous, especially for pedestrians, is the prevalence of SUVs. Which is also undisputed
UK roads are not just safer than US roads.
The small gap between Belgium and France surprises me. Maybe they just drive like maniacs abroad (or maybe the built up nature of the country with fewer rural roads - like the UK - explains it).
The high Luxembourg figure is I think because such a large proportion of vehicles on the roads are border commuters - large number of cars vs official population.
Norway, where almost everyone observes the speed limits to the kmph, and they throw you in prison for being significantly over the limit, is off the bottom. The best in Europe, I believe, despite the weather and terrain.
This is actually something the UK can be proud of. We have some of the safest roads in the world. The chances of your British kid getting squashed by an idiot in a SUV tomorrow are lower than in almost any other nation
You're trying to use a general stat to justify a particular interpretation, which doesn't work in basic logic. Unless you have some data to support the particular interpretation,
Specific data on SUVs in Europe is not that common yet; here is one example from a Belgian study showing the danger imposed on vulnerable road users by larger, heavier, more powerful vehicles - which is your "child-being-run-down-by-an-SUV" example. In the UK the crucible is the school run.
Making a road safety comparison Europe vs USA is making a 1st world vs 3rd comparison.
SUVs in the USA, in the Light Trucks category, have much poorer safety regulations than even cars there, and massively poorer than anything in Europe. Things like bumpers not being all at the same height to ensure that crumple zones become active in collisions. It lets the manufacturers pump out dangerous vehicles more cheaply for gullible Usonians to swallow; imo that's a problem of a Third World road culture in the USA.
Consider that the Tesla Cybertruck is not coming to Europe since it can't meet even basic safety standards without a redesign from frame level.
Who are you arguing with? Not me, I don’t think
I’m saying UK roads are much safer than US roads - which they are. And one reason US roads are dangerous, especially for pedestrians, is the prevalence of SUVs. Which is also undisputed
I'm not arguing. I'm pointing out that your claim cannot be supported by your data:
1 - "The chances of your British kid getting squashed by an idiot in a SUV tomorrow are lower than in almost any other nation"
2 - " We have some of the safest roads in the world."
2 does not imply 1, because incidents involving SUVs and children are both subcategories. To support that claim you need data about SUVs and children, not overall populations.
It's a regular fail in eg the pages of the Spectator, especially when one of the columnists (eg Mary Dejevsky or Jake Wallis Simons recently on road safety) has wound themselves up into a lather.
I think "idiot in an SUV" is also problematic - that's a pretence that people involved in running down kids driving an SUV are some kind of "not me". In fact they are normal everyday people just like us who have got something wrong - kids KSI'd outside schools may well be killed or injured by school-run parents who think they are good drivers.
That's just another consequence of the stat that perhaps 80-90% of drivers think of themselves as "above average". It's a mechanism to avoid taking responsibility for our own actions.
No, you twit you are getting hung up on semantics
I am merely pointing out that your chances of being run over - in an SUV or anything - are less in the UK than in America. Which is the case
It's Sunday and you have time to be accurate.
If you mean "SUV or anything" then don't say "SUV" . If you mean "you" then don't say "child" .
On the issue of USA roads being a killing zone, where they kill approximately the same 50k with their motors as the 50k they kill with their guns, there are multiple causes.
One is that USA drivers get perhaps half the time being trained to drive as in Western Europe including the UK, and get given motor vehicles when they are still in their mid-teens. Usonian drivers are as undertrained as Usonian police officers.
Another is that their system maximises conflict between motors and everyone else - eg just not installing footways, or making walking to the shops or the football practically impossible.
A good friend of mine has the ultimate travel horror story which I suspect cannot be beaten. If anyone on PB can, then chapeau and I will buy you a virtual martini on Bassac Lane
He's ex territorial SAS. During the Bosnian war, and for various reasons, he found himself in a Croatian bar (Bar Adolf) full of hardnut Croat soldiers and gangsters, drinking slivovitz and looking over, with menaces. As my friend sensed the danger he kept quiet even as he watched the Croats beating up this nerdy guy in the corner
The lying low didn't work, the chief Croatian nutter associated my friend with tbe nerd - two foreigners - then the nerd tried to make his way out of the bar, so the nutter took out his Kalashnikov. And shot the nerd in the back of the head, blowing his brains out. My friend felt the splat of wet brains on his face
The Croat then turned to my friend, and put his gun right in my mate's mouth, and laughed and everyone chanted Kill him, Kill him, but then the Croat said Fuck it, that's enough - and he didn't kill him
However the Croat DID then insist that my friend continue drinking with him, through the rest of the night, as he deemed they were now best mates, having been through all that together
If anyone can beat that, bravo
Point of order: he *claims* to be ex-territorial SAS. Unless you know for sure that he is one, have some doubt - there's probably fifty walts for every 'real' ex-SAS/SBS or territorial soldier. Many walts might actually have been in the army, and therefore know enough lingo to fake it.
As (I think) Andy McNab put it: "if every person who claimed to have been on the Iranian embassy balcony had been there, the building would have collapsed from the weight." Or someuch.
That’s like Ian Botham saying that in the last 40 years, he’s met at least 10 times the capacity of Headingly who have told him they were there for *that* test match. It wasn’t sold out.
Or early Sex Pistols gigs, or in the Blind Beggar that day. One genuine claim you used to hear, although of course it is subject to survivorship bias, is that if we had or hadn't moved or caught that troopship during the war, we'd have been killed.
So YOU think he's lying, as well?
tbh I responded to the Botham anecdote and did not even expand the "previous quotes".
You implied my friend is lying and that I'm a credulous fool for believing him
This is actually something the UK can be proud of. We have some of the safest roads in the world. The chances of your British kid getting squashed by an idiot in a SUV tomorrow are lower than in almost any other nation
You're trying to use a general stat to justify a particular interpretation, which doesn't work in basic logic. Unless you have some data to support the particular interpretation,
Specific data on SUVs in Europe is not that common yet; here is one example from a Belgian study showing the danger imposed on vulnerable road users by larger, heavier, more powerful vehicles - which is your "child-being-run-down-by-an-SUV" example. In the UK the crucible is the school run.
Making a road safety comparison Europe vs USA is making a 1st world vs 3rd comparison.
SUVs in the USA, in the Light Trucks category, have much poorer safety regulations than even cars there, and massively poorer than anything in Europe. Things like bumpers not being all at the same height to ensure that crumple zones become active in collisions. It lets the manufacturers pump out dangerous vehicles more cheaply for gullible Usonians to swallow; imo that's a problem of a Third World road culture in the USA.
Consider that the Tesla Cybertruck is not coming to Europe since it can't meet even basic safety standards without a redesign from frame level.
Who are you arguing with? Not me, I don’t think
I’m saying UK roads are much safer than US roads - which they are. And one reason US roads are dangerous, especially for pedestrians, is the prevalence of SUVs. Which is also undisputed
UK roads are not just safer than US roads.
The small gap between Belgium and France surprises me. Maybe they just drive like maniacs abroad (or maybe the built up nature of the country with fewer rural roads - like the UK - explains it).
The high Luxembourg figure is I think because such a large proportion of vehicles on the roads are border commuters - large number of cars vs official population.
What’s the most dangerous place you’ve driven?
Mine is Thailand. Fourth from bottom in the world table
And it was motorbikes with no helmets - classic way to die
After that: Armenia. My god, driving through Yerevan at rush hour. Help
Amman, Jordan. Totally without rules, cars all over the place. Thankfully the customer I was meeting out there lent me his car and driver.
Marrakech. Where, in addition to the chaos, bikes and animals all over the road, at that time at least, they still had the old French rule that you had priority on the right, theoretically at least
A good friend of mine has the ultimate travel horror story which I suspect cannot be beaten. If anyone on PB can, then chapeau and I will buy you a virtual martini on Bassac Lane
He's ex territorial SAS. During the Bosnian war, and for various reasons, he found himself in a Croatian bar (Bar Adolf) full of hardnut Croat soldiers and gangsters, drinking slivovitz and looking over, with menaces. As my friend sensed the danger he kept quiet even as he watched the Croats beating up this nerdy guy in the corner
The lying low didn't work, the chief Croatian nutter associated my friend with tbe nerd - two foreigners - then the nerd tried to make his way out of the bar, so the nutter took out his Kalashnikov. And shot the nerd in the back of the head, blowing his brains out. My friend felt the splat of wet brains on his face
The Croat then turned to my friend, and put his gun right in my mate's mouth, and laughed and everyone chanted Kill him, Kill him, but then the Croat said Fuck it, that's enough - and he didn't kill him
However the Croat DID then insist that my friend continue drinking with him, through the rest of the night, as he deemed they were now best mates, having been through all that together
If anyone can beat that, bravo
Point of order: he *claims* to be ex-territorial SAS. Unless you know for sure that he is one, have some doubt - there's probably fifty walts for every 'real' ex-SAS/SBS or territorial soldier. Many walts might actually have been in the army, and therefore know enough lingo to fake it.
As (I think) Andy McNab put it: "if every person who claimed to have been on the Iranian embassy balcony had been there, the building would have collapsed from the weight." Or someuch.
That’s like Ian Botham saying that in the last 40 years, he’s met at least 10 times the capacity of Headingly who have told him they were there for *that* test match. It wasn’t sold out.
Or early Sex Pistols gigs, or in the Blind Beggar that day. One genuine claim you used to hear, although of course it is subject to survivorship bias, is that if we had or hadn't moved or caught that troopship during the war, we'd have been killed.
I’m sure the ‘66 World Cup winners also met hundreds of thousands of people who said they were at Wembley for the final, or more recently Usain Bolt meeting people who saw him break the world record.
My own claim to fame, I was at at 2021 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix.
It seems a pretty pointless dispute. What was it? Some edgy journalist trying to spark a row between Britain and Ireland?
It is absolutely NOT pointless, Ireland spends a paltry 0.23% on defence at a time when we are all being asked to pony up. They are essentially a parasite on Britain, in defence, as they parasitise the rest of Europe, in their tax rates
And then they seek to lecture others morally, especially Britain!
Fuck them and their "oh we're peaceful and neutral" bullshit. They boast about how rich they are. Then they can jolly well give us 2% of their massive GDP - several billion quid - seeing as how we defend them, or they can spend it themselves and join NATO. The era of free riding is over
We are in the middle of a unit transfer, so Chosen is no longer there.
One main factor that you could see become a detriment was time off the front. The 59th and other units in the sector have never had a rotation off the front. Which physically and mentally does effect the fighting capacity. By the end of 2023 Chosen members were all injured atleast once and most of us were doing operations at 80% ability. We had men(Hound I love you brother) going out with gaping fragmentation wounds bandaged from a injury a week earlier. None of this was forced on us however. We would check ourselves out of the hospital to continue the fight. And the Ukrainians were much the same. Hell, our commander Kozak consistently put off medical so he could stay on the front and coordinate and fight. We had a drone pilot get 6 or 7 contusions including from TOS1s twice in one day who basically was in a permanent shuttle of hospital, checking himself out, fly drones, back to hospital.
The fighting spirit of the men in our sector is nothing short of heroic, but it is not a long term benefit to fighting capabilities doing what Chosen and the Ukrainians were doing. Sheer will and determination only goes so far.
In Barcelona as a young man I got surrounded by a group of younger teenagers who seemed intent on relieving me of my wallet, and no doubt would have succeeded as I am a timid soul, but luckily I was with a more pugnatious friend who punched one of the kids in the face and they scarpered.
A good friend of mine has the ultimate travel horror story which I suspect cannot be beaten. If anyone on PB can, then chapeau and I will buy you a virtual martini on Bassac Lane
He's ex territorial SAS. During the Bosnian war, and for various reasons, he found himself in a Croatian bar (Bar Adolf) full of hardnut Croat soldiers and gangsters, drinking slivovitz and looking over, with menaces. As my friend sensed the danger he kept quiet even as he watched the Croats beating up this nerdy guy in the corner
The lying low didn't work, the chief Croatian nutter associated my friend with tbe nerd - two foreigners - then the nerd tried to make his way out of the bar, so the nutter took out his Kalashnikov. And shot the nerd in the back of the head, blowing his brains out. My friend felt the splat of wet brains on his face
The Croat then turned to my friend, and put his gun right in my mate's mouth, and laughed and everyone chanted Kill him, Kill him, but then the Croat said Fuck it, that's enough - and he didn't kill him
However the Croat DID then insist that my friend continue drinking with him, through the rest of the night, as he deemed they were now best mates, having been through all that together
If anyone can beat that, bravo
Point of order: he *claims* to be ex-territorial SAS. Unless you know for sure that he is one, have some doubt - there's probably fifty walts for every 'real' ex-SAS/SBS or territorial soldier. Many walts might actually have been in the army, and therefore know enough lingo to fake it.
As (I think) Andy McNab put it: "if every person who claimed to have been on the Iranian embassy balcony had been there, the building would have collapsed from the weight." Or someuch.
That’s like Ian Botham saying that in the last 40 years, he’s met at least 10 times the capacity of Headingly who have told him they were there for *that* test match. It wasn’t sold out.
Or early Sex Pistols gigs, or in the Blind Beggar that day. One genuine claim you used to hear, although of course it is subject to survivorship bias, is that if we had or hadn't moved or caught that troopship during the war, we'd have been killed.
So YOU think he's lying, as well?
tbh I responded to the Botham anecdote and did not even expand the "previous quotes".
You implied my friend is lying and that I'm a credulous fool for believing him
I've no idea about your friend.
And I never even mentioned you, that was a reply to @DecrepiterJohnL
This is actually something the UK can be proud of. We have some of the safest roads in the world. The chances of your British kid getting squashed by an idiot in a SUV tomorrow are lower than in almost any other nation
You're trying to use a general stat to justify a particular interpretation, which doesn't work in basic logic. Unless you have some data to support the particular interpretation,
Specific data on SUVs in Europe is not that common yet; here is one example from a Belgian study showing the danger imposed on vulnerable road users by larger, heavier, more powerful vehicles - which is your "child-being-run-down-by-an-SUV" example. In the UK the crucible is the school run.
Making a road safety comparison Europe vs USA is making a 1st world vs 3rd comparison.
SUVs in the USA, in the Light Trucks category, have much poorer safety regulations than even cars there, and massively poorer than anything in Europe. Things like bumpers not being all at the same height to ensure that crumple zones become active in collisions. It lets the manufacturers pump out dangerous vehicles more cheaply for gullible Usonians to swallow; imo that's a problem of a Third World road culture in the USA.
Consider that the Tesla Cybertruck is not coming to Europe since it can't meet even basic safety standards without a redesign from frame level.
Who are you arguing with? Not me, I don’t think
I’m saying UK roads are much safer than US roads - which they are. And one reason US roads are dangerous, especially for pedestrians, is the prevalence of SUVs. Which is also undisputed
FYI I'm currently digging into the stats on SUV collisions in the UK.
No conclusions on pedestrians/cyclists yet, want to pass it by some statistician friends first. There are some weird things going on during COVID around vehicle mileage, pedestrian counts, cyclists counts, and collisions causing KSIs which I can't wrap my head around.
But we shouldn't depend on UK data. We should see the experience of countries that are "ahead" of us on car size and act now.
I generally look for 2019 vs 2022 data, but 2022 is a little early for full recovery from COVID and stats are still rebounding. I'll switch to 2023 when it is more universally out.
Examples of stuff that is still bouncing back post-Covid that I watch occasionally are ridership on the Nottingham Tram System, attendance for worship at English cathedrals, and trips by travel mode.
We do have data on eg LTNs, as there were interventions and studies pre-COVID, and modal shift on travel in London by Central / Inner / Outer as good quality mobility infra is gradually built out. There is presumably a dependent variable in Howard Cox's blood pressure or the amount of pink-noise emanating from Susan Hall.
It seems a pretty pointless dispute. What was it? Some edgy journalist trying to spark a row between Britain and Ireland?
It is absolutely NOT pointless, Ireland spends a paltry 0.23% on defence at a time when we are all being asked to pony up. They are essentially a parasite on Britain, in defence, as they parasitise the rest of Europe, in their tax rates
And then they seek to lecture others morally, especially Britain!
Fuck them and their "oh we're peaceful and neutral" bullshit. They boast about how rich they are. Then they can jolly well give us 2% of their massive GDP - several billion quid - seeing as how we defend them, or they can spend it themselves and join NATO. The era of free riding is over
I mean you have a lot of recurring memes, but the Hibernophobia is an odd one. Did your maw get a bad pint of Guinness while with Leon child?
In Barcelona as a young man I got surrounded by a group of younger teenagers who seemed intent on relieving me of my wallet, and no doubt would have succeeded as I am a timid soul, but luckily I was with a more pugnatious friend who punched one of the kids in the face and they scarpered.
This is actually something the UK can be proud of. We have some of the safest roads in the world. The chances of your British kid getting squashed by an idiot in a SUV tomorrow are lower than in almost any other nation
You're trying to use a general stat to justify a particular interpretation, which doesn't work in basic logic. Unless you have some data to support the particular interpretation,
Specific data on SUVs in Europe is not that common yet; here is one example from a Belgian study showing the danger imposed on vulnerable road users by larger, heavier, more powerful vehicles - which is your "child-being-run-down-by-an-SUV" example. In the UK the crucible is the school run.
Making a road safety comparison Europe vs USA is making a 1st world vs 3rd comparison.
SUVs in the USA, in the Light Trucks category, have much poorer safety regulations than even cars there, and massively poorer than anything in Europe. Things like bumpers not being all at the same height to ensure that crumple zones become active in collisions. It lets the manufacturers pump out dangerous vehicles more cheaply for gullible Usonians to swallow; imo that's a problem of a Third World road culture in the USA.
Consider that the Tesla Cybertruck is not coming to Europe since it can't meet even basic safety standards without a redesign from frame level.
Who are you arguing with? Not me, I don’t think
I’m saying UK roads are much safer than US roads - which they are. And one reason US roads are dangerous, especially for pedestrians, is the prevalence of SUVs. Which is also undisputed
I'm not arguing. I'm pointing out that your claim cannot be supported by your data:
1 - "The chances of your British kid getting squashed by an idiot in a SUV tomorrow are lower than in almost any other nation"
2 - " We have some of the safest roads in the world."
2 does not imply 1, because incidents involving SUVs and children are both subcategories. To support that claim you need data about SUVs and children, not overall populations.
It's a regular fail in eg the pages of the Spectator, especially when one of the columnists (eg Mary Dejevsky or Jake Wallis Simons recently on road safety) has wound themselves up into a lather.
I think "idiot in an SUV" is also problematic - that's a pretence that people involved in running down kids driving an SUV are some kind of "not me". In fact they are normal everyday people just like us who have got something wrong - kids KSI'd outside schools may well be killed or injured by school-run parents who think they are good drivers.
That's just another consequence of the stat that perhaps 80-90% of drivers think of themselves as "above average". It's a mechanism to avoid taking responsibility for our own actions.
No, you twit you are getting hung up on semantics
I am merely pointing out that your chances of being run over - in an SUV or anything - are less in the UK than in America. Which is the case
It's Sunday and you have time to be accurate.
If you mean "SUV or anything" then don't say "SUV" . If you mean "you" then don't say "child" .
On the issue of USA roads being a killing zone, where they kill approximately the same 50k with their motors as the 50k they kill with their guns, there are multiple causes.
One is that USA drivers get perhaps half the time being trained to drive as in Western Europe including the UK, and get given motor vehicles when they are still in their mid-teens. Usonian drivers are as undertrained as Usonian police officers.
Another is that their system maximises conflict between motors and everyone else - eg just not installing footways, or making walking to the shops or the football practically impossible.
This is actually something the UK can be proud of. We have some of the safest roads in the world. The chances of your British kid getting squashed by an idiot in a SUV tomorrow are lower than in almost any other nation
You're trying to use a general stat to justify a particular interpretation, which doesn't work in basic logic. Unless you have some data to support the particular interpretation,
Specific data on SUVs in Europe is not that common yet; here is one example from a Belgian study showing the danger imposed on vulnerable road users by larger, heavier, more powerful vehicles - which is your "child-being-run-down-by-an-SUV" example. In the UK the crucible is the school run.
Making a road safety comparison Europe vs USA is making a 1st world vs 3rd comparison.
SUVs in the USA, in the Light Trucks category, have much poorer safety regulations than even cars there, and massively poorer than anything in Europe. Things like bumpers not being all at the same height to ensure that crumple zones become active in collisions. It lets the manufacturers pump out dangerous vehicles more cheaply for gullible Usonians to swallow; imo that's a problem of a Third World road culture in the USA.
Consider that the Tesla Cybertruck is not coming to Europe since it can't meet even basic safety standards without a redesign from frame level.
Who are you arguing with? Not me, I don’t think
I’m saying UK roads are much safer than US roads - which they are. And one reason US roads are dangerous, especially for pedestrians, is the prevalence of SUVs. Which is also undisputed
UK roads are not just safer than US roads.
That Malta stat must be due to the low speeds in play. The driving is atrocious.
Was this the flint-knapper who got married, the writer, or some other mysterious entity?
You are all such plonkers
If you think everyone around you is a plonker or an idiot, then unless you are in a lunatic asylum or similar (*), there is a good chance that *you* are the one that's a plonker or an idiot.
(*) Actually, this is PB, so you may have a point...
Well not to be outdone, I've been stripsearched at the French Belgian border, the vibe being not "let's see if you've got anything" but "we know you've got something and we're going to find it". Lining on my coat cut, cigarettes sliced apart, clothes off, every orifice probed. It was Christmas Eve too. Thank you Santa.
I think with Trump, building on my reply to Leon about what he did on the previous thread, the question is not whether what he did was illegal, but why on Earth the banks didn't rumble him? Re-evaluating properties at three times their size and four times their worth should have set alarm bells clanging.
Some possible theories;
1) They knew, but didn't care because they didn't think it mattered;
2) They knew, but didn't care because they wanted the business anyway;
3) They knew, but didn't care because they were all bezzy mates with Trump;
4) They didn't know, because they were stupid.
None of them exactly inspire confidence in the banks he was working with...
Maybe they just didn’t have the bigger picture. When the evidence is all laid out, the fraud is obvious, but one valuation at a time, to different banks, maybe no-one could put the picture together.
If it had been a few million dollars e.g. 25 against 18, I would agree. And the judge himself noted that you do get different valuations so if it had been small variations the case would never have come to court.
But not $700 million. That was so far out it should have been an immediate red flag.
IANAL but @DavidL is, and he is no friend of Trump (actively loathes him, I believe) and this is his verdict on the NY case from the prior thread
"It’s possible that NY State were conned out of some taxes in which case they should sue. The current proceedings do seem to me to be partisan, politically motivated and ill judged. I can’t see this nonsense surviving appeal."
That summarises my feelings, the case reeks. There are better ways to squash Trump than really dodgy court cases which bring the whole NY legal system into disrepute. One of them is: beat him in an election. He's a terrible candidate. He's easily beatable, so beat him and see him gone
No it doesn't. Just look at what Trump has done, and did not dispute doing, as I outlined on the last thread, and you'll see what the issue was and why he's been fined.
The criticism is that the crime was 'victimless' since everybody got their money. But it included tax evasion. Good luck arguing that is victimless if HMRC should ever pursue you for it.
You long since abandoned any semblance of objectivity on Trump issues - I'm embarrassed for you reading your posts about this, his age-related decline relative to Biden, and any other Trump thing. If they wanted to burn him at the stake without trial you'd reach for some spurious justification.
Incidentally, it's worth recalling what a huge misjudgement Putin made with the initial invasion. It was meant to last a couple of weeks, if that.
Either his judgement or his intelligence (in either sense) is lacking compared to a decade or two ago.
It was a close run thing, and the UK under Johnson was one of the countries that made a difference, which explains a lot of the vitriol directed against us by their propagandists.
Or maybe Johnson was potentially already compromised by his Russian links, and they aren't happy that he didn't play along when it came to it, as so many of the US Republicans appear to be doing?
The early provision of arms and support to Ukraine was Ben Wallace's project I believe. Johnson was initially sceptical but didn't stop it. To give Johnson rare credit where it's due he did a reverse ferret on being the Cabinet's biggest supporter of Russia to become a full throated advocate for Ukraine.
Had he not done so, he would have been toast, and one thing he never lacked was an instinct for self-preservation. The shame is that the same dynamic doesn't seem to operate in the US.
The idea that he was ever "the Cabinet's biggest supporter of Russia" is a total fantasy. It's just a spin-off from the idea that Brexit was somehow bought by Russia, therefore the face of Brexit must surely be a Russian agent. It's all smears and innuendo.
Merkel and Cameron did far more to appease Putin than ever Johnson did.
Comments
The high Luxembourg figure is I think because such a large proportion of vehicles on the roads are border commuters - large number of cars vs official population.
Knifepoint in Vitebsk. Took the knife off the skinny junkie and punched him repeatedly in the face.
When I was a teenager our car got stopped by machete wielding randoms in Nigeria who relieved my father of all his money and watch while my mother subjected them to a torrent of obscenities that I never heard surpassed in my 20 year naval career. My father gave them a shrug of apology for her outburst and the chief machete wielder gave my father a look that I think was a gesture of sympathy.
Ukraine is apparently using 7,000-9,000 shells per day, mostly of the NATO-spec 155mm or the Soviet-spec 152mm. There’s even an American factory making 152mm, for existing Ukranian kit from before this war.
https://www.defensedaily.com/army-details-recent-deals-to-significantly-increase-155mm-artillery-shell-production/army/
https://apnews.com/article/155mm-howitzer-ukraine-ammunition-russia-7d966c85046b73db2b013f93c51af2a5
Mine is Thailand. Fourth from bottom in the world table
And it was motorbikes with no helmets - classic way to die
After that: Armenia. My god, driving through Yerevan at rush hour. Help
No conclusions on pedestrians/cyclists yet, want to pass it by some statistician friends first. There are some weird things going on during COVID around vehicle mileage, pedestrian counts, cyclists counts, and collisions causing KSIs which I can't wrap my head around.
But we shouldn't depend on UK data. We should see the experience of countries that are "ahead" of us on car size and act now.
It was so long ago I was off my face on E so when this kid pulled a knife on me I just started laughing at the insanity of it and I said “oh come on, you’re not gonna really use that are you” and he looked down at the knife and started laughing as well, and said “nah, probably not” - and he chuckled and walked away
I was saved by intoxication
I have had much nastier encounters but they are all
my fault for going to dangerous places to do illegal
things
On my first ever visit to the country - an assignment in Calcutta - I saw a fatal accident on the drive from the airport. A nasty one as well - car overturned and pancaked, several dead, blood everywhere
The trip continued in that vein
Increasing production seems to be the way forward, but these things unfortunately take time and should have started when the war did.
Yes, it's destabilising. Especially as I lived 5 minutes walk away at the time.
Mexico City is no joke and I agree with Sandpit about Amman.
So the terror serves as a warning to others. It will be a slow and painful death if you try and oppose Putin, and cause him some damage in the process.
Today, we have Biden and David Cameron all over the airwaves personally calling Putin to account for it - and bear in mind they will have all the intelligence of Five Eyes to inform that behind the scenes - and calling him out in the strongest possible terms. And on top we have ongoing evidence of democratic opponents being disqualified, expelled, evicted or imprisoned on fabricated charges.
To deny or question it isn't far off what the Russian troll farms try and do - sow doubt about everything so you're not sure what to believe.
Putin did it. 100%.
I was so pissed I did nothing except say, "no thanks", and gently disentangle myself, and I didn't even notice my wallet was gone until I got back to the hostel.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobasna_ammunition_depot
Fortunately this was a few years before The Forgiven came out.
It's a lesson in life. Always accept jiggy-jiggy. And boom-boom
As I young twenty-something at the time I was convinced I could do better- and for free.
As General Franco used to say when relatives of his victims questioned him, "the nationalists did it".
1 - "The chances of your British kid getting squashed by an idiot in a SUV tomorrow are lower than in almost any other nation"
2 - " We have some of the safest roads in the world."
2 does not imply 1, because incidents involving SUVs and children are both subcategories. To support that claim you need data about SUVs and children, not overall populations.
It's a regular fail in eg the pages of the Spectator, especially when one of the columnists (eg Mary Dejevsky or Jake Wallis Simons recently on road safety) has wound themselves up into a lather.
I think "idiot in an SUV" is also problematic - that's a pretence that people involved in running down kids driving an SUV are some kind of "not me". In fact they are normal everyday people just like us who have got something wrong - kids KSI'd outside schools may well be killed or injured by school-run parents who think they are good drivers.
That's just another consequence of the stat that perhaps 80-90% of drivers think of themselves as "above average". It's a mechanism to avoid taking responsibility for our own actions.
https://www.cityam.com/swiftonomics-how-taylor-swifts-uk-eras-tour-could-boost-the-uk-economy/
He's ex territorial SAS. During the Bosnian war, and for various reasons, he found himself in a Croatian bar (Bar Adolf) full of hardnut Croat soldiers and gangsters, drinking slivovitz and looking over, with menaces. As my friend sensed the danger he kept quiet even as he watched the Croats beating up this nerdy guy in the corner
The lying low didn't work, the chief Croatian nutter associated my friend with tbe nerd - two foreigners - then the nerd tried to make his way out of the bar, so the nutter took out his Kalashnikov. And shot the nerd in the back of the head, blowing his brains out. My friend felt the splat of wet brains on his face
The Croat then turned to my friend, and put his gun right in my mate's mouth, and laughed and everyone chanted Kill him, Kill him, but then the Croat said Fuck it, that's enough - and he didn't kill him
However the Croat DID then insist that my friend continue drinking with him, through the rest of the night, as he deemed they were now best mates, having been through all that together
If anyone can beat that, bravo
'Natural causes' is of course possible, but given his prior poisoning and baseless imprisonment in harsh conditions, it would still effectively be murder.
"Reasonably clear" doesn't mean certainty. But you understand language, so your reply is just whatsboutery rhetoric.
On the other hand, one could argue that most of the ticket price ends up as invisible exports, mostly to the US.
As a pink cheeked Sub Lt I was peer pressured in to tackling a garlic reeking Sudanese midget with teeth like Shergar in Alexandria. I would have rather fucked the actual Shergar, even if dead, but I got the job done.
When duty calls, you answer.
then hand Transnistria back to Moldova,
But this was in 2008 when I was doing a high-level survey of the facilities around Sheremetyevo Airport to support development of a new masterplan and we were all trying to be friends at the time.
That said, the chronic suspicion of the West and rampant nationalism was clearly on evidence even then.
I am merely pointing out that your chances of being run over - in an SUV or anything - are less in the UK than in America. Which is the case
As (I think) Andy McNab put it: "if every person who claimed to have been on the Iranian embassy balcony had been there, the building would have collapsed from the weight." Or someuch.
Varadkar lying his sock off again.
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/uknews/taoiseach-contests-claim-ireland-is-reliant-on-uk-armed-forces/ar-BB1iqeFO?ocid=msedgntp&pc=U531&cvid=0c34414ee86b4c46b3367be6792b69af&ei=12
And I stand by my point: lots of people *claim* to have been special forces when they didn't even get into the army. Or at best, failed selection for whichever force. It's an impressive claim and a good chat-up line for the girls.
Walts are quite common: I mean, we even had one person who pretended to be a bestselling author before he turned out to just be a knapper.
Drug driving is one reason imo why we need to reverse the major cut in numbers of road police over recent years, and make it a statutory service requirement, as this cannot be detected remotely, and drug-driving is a common occurrence in death or injury collisions. Then:
The Home Office Minister told us that in 2002-3 there were 6,902 police officers whose primary role was roads policing; and in 2004-5 there were 7,104.
https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200506/cmselect/cmtran/975/97505.htm
Now:
Key points (2021/22)
The numbers of Roads Policing officers increased to 4,102, up by 11 officers (0.3%).
https://actionvisionzero.org/2022/08/24/avz-blog-august-2022-roads-policing-officer-numbers-england-and-wales/
He only had 15 euro on him so he asked if he could look at and squeeze ONE breast and she agreed. And so she showed him one breast and he squeezed it. I'm not sure how he reached his decision. Left or right?
https://twitter.com/IhateTrenches/status/1758828821623566493
The Ukrainian units fought and are still fighting extremely hard in the sector that Chosen was in.
We are in the middle of a unit transfer, so Chosen is no longer there.
One main factor that you could see become a detriment was time off the front. The 59th and other units in the sector have never had a rotation off the front. Which physically and mentally does effect the fighting capacity. By the end of 2023 Chosen members were all injured atleast once and most of us were doing operations at 80% ability. We had men(Hound I love you brother) going out with gaping fragmentation wounds bandaged from a injury a week earlier. None of this was forced on us however. We would check ourselves out of the hospital to continue the fight.
And the Ukrainians were much the same. Hell, our commander Kozak consistently put off medical so he could stay on the front and coordinate and fight. We had a drone pilot get 6 or 7 contusions including from TOS1s twice in one day who basically was in a permanent shuttle of hospital, checking himself out, fly drones, back to hospital.
The fighting spirit of the men in our sector is nothing short of heroic, but it is not a long term benefit to fighting capabilities doing what Chosen and the Ukrainians were doing. Sheer will and determination only goes so far.
If you mean "SUV or anything" then don't say "SUV"
If you mean "you" then don't say "child"
On the issue of USA roads being a killing zone, where they kill approximately the same 50k with their motors as the 50k they kill with their guns, there are multiple causes.
One is that USA drivers get perhaps half the time being trained to drive as in Western Europe including the UK, and get given motor vehicles when they are still in their mid-teens. Usonian drivers are as undertrained as Usonian police officers.
Another is that their system maximises conflict between motors and everyone else - eg just not installing footways, or making walking to the shops or the football practically impossible.
Good vid on this: "Why I hate Houston"
https://youtu.be/uxykI30fS54?t=258
My own claim to fame, I was at at 2021 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix.
And then they seek to lecture others morally, especially Britain!
Fuck them and their "oh we're peaceful and neutral" bullshit. They boast about how rich they are. Then they can jolly well give us 2% of their massive GDP - several billion quid - seeing as how we defend them, or they can spend it themselves and join NATO. The era of free riding is over
https://twitter.com/IhateTrenches/status/1758825982922825728
I may have to solace myself with gin in Brassac Lane
So a question: how do you *know* he's telling the truth about his service, given so many people lie about such things?
Examples of stuff that is still bouncing back post-Covid that I watch occasionally are ridership on the Nottingham Tram System, attendance for worship at English cathedrals, and trips by travel mode.
We do have data on eg LTNs, as there were interventions and studies pre-COVID, and modal shift on travel in London by Central / Inner / Outer as good quality mobility infra is gradually built out. There is presumably a dependent variable in Howard Cox's blood pressure or the amount of pink-noise emanating from Susan Hall.
Insane weirdoes from Norfolk who can kill people with their elbows
https://www.hurstpublishers.com/event/high-risk-a-true-story-of-the-sas-drugs-and-other-bad-behaviour-w-ben-timberlake/
here he is being interviewed by the Times newspaper about the book
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/drugs-sex-sas-missions-the-extraordinary-life-of-ben-timberlake-5th789ll7
And here he is on Times Radio recounting that exact Croat bar story. I actually spoke to him yesterday, he was best man at my wedding
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=70FeVwPaE8A
Apart from that, I have no reason to believe him
For me a large gin filled with blackberries makes me generate extra days, not lose them.
Ernest Hemingway eat your heart out !
Was this the flint-knapper who got married, the writer, or some other mysterious entity?
(*) Actually, this is PB, so you may have a point...
He clearly grasped the moment in February 2022 more than other leaders. Perhaps he had superior insight because of his personal experiences?