If the US (ie the Republicans) remember their duty then Ukraine will win. If not then Russia will grind them into submission.
Why is the territorial integrity of Ukraine the "duty" of the US tax payer?
Anybody depending on the enduring commitment of the US to the cause was always heading for disappointment.
Now now, you'll be being accused of being a Putinist again.
Didn't you jut refer to Ukrainian 'Ultras' on the previous thread?
I did, we used to have a few here. Indeed some were outlining the exact terms for this conflict to end and nothing else would be acceptable. We do not have them here anymore. They seem to have found something else to spend time on.
There are only two ways this ends. Either Russia is forced to abandon its effort to defeat Ukraine, or Ukraine is defeated.
The 'terms' which accompany the first option won't be decided unless it happens. As for the second, we will have no say in them anyway.
I think it is in our interest to support Ukraine for a myriad of reasons however I can only see a ceasefire on current lines as the best option here.
We need to keep supporting Ukraine. However I suspect the desire to do this in the west is declining, especially with Israel pre-occupying peoples thoughts.
So basically you are now a Putinist troll. We see you.
The problem is there are lots of people who seem to want Putin to win, and for Russia to gain more power at the expense of liberalism, democracy and freedom. These people are often indistinguishable from people who screech 'peace!' whilst sharing pro-Russian propaganda, or those who want peace at any price.
The line between them can be so thin as to be nonexistent.
I don't want Putin to win. The problem with the Ukraine Ultras here is the Donald Rumsfeld/Dubya mindset. You are either with them 100% or against them.
Please can you define
1) Win for Putin 2) Draw 3) Win for Ukraine
Genuine question.
i Well, 3 possible outcomes - 1) the Donbass becomes like the "Serb entity" - autonomy within Ukraine but no right to secede - win for Ukraine 2) the Donbass becomes like Turkish Northern Cyprus - an unofficial country of its own - draw 3) the Donbass absorbed into Russia - win for Putin
Barring some unforeseen deterioration in the RF military situation I don't think 3 is enough to declare victory and halt the SMO. They need to get Odessa to make it seem worthwhile.
They would like regime change in Kiev to one not based around a quiz team but that situation is harder to influence since Green T-Shirt has cancelled elections and gone a bit caudillo.
And you pretend not to troll...
"Article 83 of the Ukrainian Constitution states that if the term of the Verkhovna Rada expires under martial law, it shall automatically be extended until a new Rada is seated following the end of martial law. Article 19 of Ukraine’s martial law legislation specifically forbids conducting national elections. Thus, for Ukraine to conduct elections while under martial law would be a violation of legal norms that predate Zelensky and the full-scale Russian invasion."
Whereas, as usual, you offer no criticism of Putin, who is a real dictator, and a fascist, and an imperialist. You (wrongly) attack Zelensky for the very things his opponent is.
Why? Are you sniffing the fetid output of Telegram channels so much that you actually believe the shit, or are you just a pathetic little troll. Or, perhaps, both?
If the US (ie the Republicans) remember their duty then Ukraine will win. If not then Russia will grind them into submission.
Why is the territorial integrity of Ukraine the "duty" of the US tax payer?
Anybody depending on the enduring commitment of the US to the cause was always heading for disappointment.
Now now, you'll be being accused of being a Putinist again.
Didn't you jut refer to Ukrainian 'Ultras' on the previous thread?
I did, we used to have a few here. Indeed some were outlining the exact terms for this conflict to end and nothing else would be acceptable. We do not have them here anymore. They seem to have found something else to spend time on.
There are only two ways this ends. Either Russia is forced to abandon its effort to defeat Ukraine, or Ukraine is defeated.
The 'terms' which accompany the first option won't be decided unless it happens. As for the second, we will have no say in them anyway.
I think it is in our interest to support Ukraine for a myriad of reasons however I can only see a ceasefire on current lines as the best option here.
We need to keep supporting Ukraine. However I suspect the desire to do this in the west is declining, especially with Israel pre-occupying peoples thoughts.
So basically you are now a Putinist troll. We see you.
The problem is there are lots of people who seem to want Putin to win, and for Russia to gain more power at the expense of liberalism, democracy and freedom. These people are often indistinguishable from people who screech 'peace!' whilst sharing pro-Russian propaganda, or those who want peace at any price.
The line between them can be so thin as to be nonexistent.
I don't want Putin to win. The problem with the Ukraine Ultras here is the Donald Rumsfeld/Dubya mindset. You are either with them 100% or against them.
Please can you define
1) Win for Putin 2) Draw 3) Win for Ukraine
Genuine question.
i Well, 3 possible outcomes - 1) the Donbass becomes like the "Serb entity" - autonomy within Ukraine but no right to secede - win for Ukraine 2) the Donbass becomes like Turkish Northern Cyprus - an unofficial country of its own - draw 3) the Donbass absorbed into Russia - win for Putin
Acquiring only the Donbass wouldn't be such a triumph when you consider the initial war aim was to take the whole country.
Yes, well, too bad. Although I share some of the scepticism about Ukrainian nationalist ultras, I think it's entirely legitimate for the West not to want a clear Putin victory to emerge from the invasion. We need to show that invasion doesn't pay, without encouraging the "every inch of Donbas and Crimea must be Ukrainian" camp. Offering a deal with 2) or 3), backed up by a NATO presence in Ukraine to make further incursion=World War 3, seems to me better than encouraging Ukraine to fight for years. Ukraine isn't monolithic, and as long as we say we'll keep supplying more and better weapons until they win, it squeezes out those who would be willing to settle for roughly current lines.
Some say Putin wouldn't accept that. OK, then the war continues until he or his successors see sense, but the West needs a strategy for a deal which is more than carrying on indefinitely. Otherwise the ultras on both sides have no incentive to even negotiate.
Thread for you to read, Nick.
This is already making rounds, so I will try to shed some more light on March/April 2022 Ukraine-Russia talks since the article is still far from the point, and because Poland played a much bigger role than anyone is willing to admit publicly https://twitter.com/dszeligowski/status/1780183950507262201
Not one of his better efforts though. The gist seems to be that because 'the markets' are ultimately composed of human beings, then there is human agency at play and therefore a conspiracy (of some sort) must have existed to send Liz to her doom. QED.
Truss is right about a lot of things IMO. But her presentation skills are terrible.
Truss looks ridiculous because she's painting herself as some kind of Thatcherite libertarian while at the same time moaning about the beastliness of unfettered capitalism. Completely incoherent. She'd be better off coming out as diehard Corbynite - no less mad perhaps but at least internally consistent.
Not one of his better efforts though. The gist seems to be that because 'the markets' are ultimately composed of human beings, then there is human agency at play and therefore a conspiracy (of some sort) must have existed to send Liz to her doom. QED.
If your policy platform can’t cope with the fact that the people in your target audience don’t like it & act against it then it’s not much of a policy platform is it?
Politics is the art of the possible after all: It doesn’t matter why your policy turned out to be impossible, if you continue to jump up and down screaming that you were right all along & the people were wrong then you just end up looking like a deranged toddler. Truss failed to carry a crucial set of people with her*, so her policy platform failed dismally & that is why she was a failure as a politician, not because there was some deep state campaign against her.
If your policy platform can’t cope with the fact that the people in your target audience don’t like it & act against it then it’s not much of a policy platform is it?
Politics is the art of the possible after all: It doesn’t matter why your policy turned out to be impossible, if you continue to jump up and down screaming that you were right all along & the people were wrong then you just end up looking like a deranged toddler. Truss failed to carry a crucial set of people with her*, so her policy platform failed dismally & that is why she was a failure as a politician, not because there was some deep state campaign against her.
* gilt buyers.
But this was the point made earlier. Truss "learned the lesson of Brexit" which was that it doesn't matter if your policy platform is utter shit, do it anyway...
And that's why she still can't understand why it didn't work.
If the US (ie the Republicans) remember their duty then Ukraine will win. If not then Russia will grind them into submission.
Why is the territorial integrity of Ukraine the "duty" of the US tax payer?
Anybody depending on the enduring commitment of the US to the cause was always heading for disappointment.
Now now, you'll be being accused of being a Putinist again.
Didn't you jut refer to Ukrainian 'Ultras' on the previous thread?
I did, we used to have a few here. Indeed some were outlining the exact terms for this conflict to end and nothing else would be acceptable. We do not have them here anymore. They seem to have found something else to spend time on.
There are only two ways this ends. Either Russia is forced to abandon its effort to defeat Ukraine, or Ukraine is defeated.
The 'terms' which accompany the first option won't be decided unless it happens. As for the second, we will have no say in them anyway.
I think it is in our interest to support Ukraine for a myriad of reasons however I can only see a ceasefire on current lines as the best option here.
We need to keep supporting Ukraine. However I suspect the desire to do this in the west is declining, especially with Israel pre-occupying peoples thoughts.
So basically you are now a Putinist troll. We see you.
The problem is there are lots of people who seem to want Putin to win, and for Russia to gain more power at the expense of liberalism, democracy and freedom. These people are often indistinguishable from people who screech 'peace!' whilst sharing pro-Russian propaganda, or those who want peace at any price.
The line between them can be so thin as to be nonexistent.
I don't want Putin to win. The problem with the Ukraine Ultras here is the Donald Rumsfeld/Dubya mindset. You are either with them 100% or against them.
Please can you define
1) Win for Putin 2) Draw 3) Win for Ukraine
Genuine question.
i Well, 3 possible outcomes - 1) the Donbass becomes like the "Serb entity" - autonomy within Ukraine but no right to secede - win for Ukraine 2) the Donbass becomes like Turkish Northern Cyprus - an unofficial country of its own - draw 3) the Donbass absorbed into Russia - win for Putin
Acquiring only the Donbass wouldn't be such a triumph when you consider the initial war aim was to take the whole country.
Yes, well, too bad. Although I share some of the scepticism about Ukrainian nationalist ultras, I think it's entirely legitimate for the West not to want a clear Putin victory to emerge from the invasion. We need to show that invasion doesn't pay, without encouraging the "every inch of Donbas and Crimea must be Ukrainian" camp. Offering a deal with 2) or 3), backed up by a NATO presence in Ukraine to make further incursion=World War 3, seems to me better than encouraging Ukraine to fight for years. Ukraine isn't monolithic, and as long as we say we'll keep supplying more and better weapons until they win, it squeezes out those who would be willing to settle for roughly current lines.
Some say Putin wouldn't accept that. OK, then the war continues until he or his successors see sense, but the West needs a strategy for a deal which is more than carrying on indefinitely. Otherwise the ultras on both sides have no incentive to even negotiate.
"We need to show that invasion doesn't pay by offering Putin a deal that lets him keep all the territory he acquired by invading it."
If your policy platform can’t cope with the fact that the people in your target audience don’t like it & act against it then it’s not much of a policy platform is it?
Politics is the art of the possible after all: It doesn’t matter why your policy turned out to be impossible, if you continue to jump up and down screaming that you were right all along & the people were wrong then you just end up looking like a deranged toddler. Truss failed to carry a crucial set of people with her*, so her policy platform failed dismally & that is why she was a failure as a politician, not because there was some deep state campaign against her.
* gilt buyers.
But this was the point made earlier. Truss "learned the lesson of Brexit" which was that it doesn't matter if your policy platform is utter shit, do it anyway...
And that's why she still can't understand why it didn't work.
Could she have clung on if wasn't for that night of piss drenched neurotic chaos over the fracking vote? I can't recall the exact sequence of events because it all seems like a laudanum fuelled delerium now but she had already ditched her stupid tax bollocks by then.
If the US (ie the Republicans) remember their duty then Ukraine will win. If not then Russia will grind them into submission.
Why is the territorial integrity of Ukraine the "duty" of the US tax payer?
Anybody depending on the enduring commitment of the US to the cause was always heading for disappointment.
Now now, you'll be being accused of being a Putinist again.
Didn't you jut refer to Ukrainian 'Ultras' on the previous thread?
I did, we used to have a few here. Indeed some were outlining the exact terms for this conflict to end and nothing else would be acceptable. We do not have them here anymore. They seem to have found something else to spend time on.
There are only two ways this ends. Either Russia is forced to abandon its effort to defeat Ukraine, or Ukraine is defeated.
The 'terms' which accompany the first option won't be decided unless it happens. As for the second, we will have no say in them anyway.
I think it is in our interest to support Ukraine for a myriad of reasons however I can only see a ceasefire on current lines as the best option here.
We need to keep supporting Ukraine. However I suspect the desire to do this in the west is declining, especially with Israel pre-occupying peoples thoughts.
So basically you are now a Putinist troll. We see you.
The problem is there are lots of people who seem to want Putin to win, and for Russia to gain more power at the expense of liberalism, democracy and freedom. These people are often indistinguishable from people who screech 'peace!' whilst sharing pro-Russian propaganda, or those who want peace at any price.
The line between them can be so thin as to be nonexistent.
I don't want Putin to win. The problem with the Ukraine Ultras here is the Donald Rumsfeld/Dubya mindset. You are either with them 100% or against them.
Please can you define
1) Win for Putin 2) Draw 3) Win for Ukraine
Genuine question.
i Well, 3 possible outcomes - 1) the Donbass becomes like the "Serb entity" - autonomy within Ukraine but no right to secede - win for Ukraine 2) the Donbass becomes like Turkish Northern Cyprus - an unofficial country of its own - draw 3) the Donbass absorbed into Russia - win for Putin
Acquiring only the Donbass wouldn't be such a triumph when you consider the initial war aim was to take the whole country.
Yes, well, too bad. Although I share some of the scepticism about Ukrainian nationalist ultras, I think it's entirely legitimate for the West not to want a clear Putin victory to emerge from the invasion. We need to show that invasion doesn't pay, without encouraging the "every inch of Donbas and Crimea must be Ukrainian" camp. Offering a deal with 2) or 3), backed up by a NATO presence in Ukraine to make further incursion=World War 3, seems to me better than encouraging Ukraine to fight for years. Ukraine isn't monolithic, and as long as we say we'll keep supplying more and better weapons until they win, it squeezes out those who would be willing to settle for roughly current lines.
Some say Putin wouldn't accept that. OK, then the war continues until he or his successors see sense, but the West needs a strategy for a deal which is more than carrying on indefinitely. Otherwise the ultras on both sides have no incentive to even negotiate.
"We need to show that invasion doesn't pay by offering Putin a deal that lets him keep all the territory he acquired by invading it."
If the US (ie the Republicans) remember their duty then Ukraine will win. If not then Russia will grind them into submission.
Why is the territorial integrity of Ukraine the "duty" of the US tax payer?
Anybody depending on the enduring commitment of the US to the cause was always heading for disappointment.
Now now, you'll be being accused of being a Putinist again.
Didn't you jut refer to Ukrainian 'Ultras' on the previous thread?
I did, we used to have a few here. Indeed some were outlining the exact terms for this conflict to end and nothing else would be acceptable. We do not have them here anymore. They seem to have found something else to spend time on.
There are only two ways this ends. Either Russia is forced to abandon its effort to defeat Ukraine, or Ukraine is defeated.
The 'terms' which accompany the first option won't be decided unless it happens. As for the second, we will have no say in them anyway.
I think it is in our interest to support Ukraine for a myriad of reasons however I can only see a ceasefire on current lines as the best option here.
We need to keep supporting Ukraine. However I suspect the desire to do this in the west is declining, especially with Israel pre-occupying peoples thoughts.
So basically you are now a Putinist troll. We see you.
The problem is there are lots of people who seem to want Putin to win, and for Russia to gain more power at the expense of liberalism, democracy and freedom. These people are often indistinguishable from people who screech 'peace!' whilst sharing pro-Russian propaganda, or those who want peace at any price.
The line between them can be so thin as to be nonexistent.
I don't want Putin to win. The problem with the Ukraine Ultras here is the Donald Rumsfeld/Dubya mindset. You are either with them 100% or against them.
Please can you define
1) Win for Putin 2) Draw 3) Win for Ukraine
Genuine question.
i Well, 3 possible outcomes - 1) the Donbass becomes like the "Serb entity" - autonomy within Ukraine but no right to secede - win for Ukraine 2) the Donbass becomes like Turkish Northern Cyprus - an unofficial country of its own - draw 3) the Donbass absorbed into Russia - win for Putin
Barring some unforeseen deterioration in the RF military situation I don't think 3 is enough to declare victory and halt the SMO. They need to get Odessa to make it seem worthwhile.
They would like regime change in Kiev to one not based around a quiz team but that situation is harder to influence since Green T-Shirt has cancelled elections and gone a bit caudillo.
All war leaders go a bit Churchill & the generals...
But I have rather more confidence in a victorious Zelensky voluntarily retiring from politics postwar - as he's said he'll do - than you might have in Putin doing the same.
Also 'caudillo' seems rather inappropriate. But I understand you tend to deprecate democracy as an institution, so it's more vibe than analysis.
In this case, it's more admiration for Putin's violations of bourgeois norms. Like many self described Trotskyites/Left Anarchists the poster above has an admiration for The Propaganda Of The Deed. Which in turn leads to admiring the exponents of this. See the leftist admiration for Stalin, Mao, D'Annunzio and Pol Pot in their various days.
In this case Zelensky aspires to Western democracy. Which makes it even worse - a rough, tough man (and culture) of The Deed* being forced to yield to the forces of decadence.
A theme in HG Wells "The Land Ironclads" is rough tough outdoorsmen being defeated by "a crowd of devitalised townsmen... They're clerks, they're factory hands, they're students, they're civilised men. They can write, they can talk, they can make and do all sorts of things, but they're poor amateurs at war. They've got no physical staying power, and that's the whole thing."
*Note Putin's love of being portrayed as a Man of the Wild, not a city dweller.
If the US (ie the Republicans) remember their duty then Ukraine will win. If not then Russia will grind them into submission.
Why is the territorial integrity of Ukraine the "duty" of the US tax payer?
Anybody depending on the enduring commitment of the US to the cause was always heading for disappointment.
Now now, you'll be being accused of being a Putinist again.
Didn't you jut refer to Ukrainian 'Ultras' on the previous thread?
I did, we used to have a few here. Indeed some were outlining the exact terms for this conflict to end and nothing else would be acceptable. We do not have them here anymore. They seem to have found something else to spend time on.
There are only two ways this ends. Either Russia is forced to abandon its effort to defeat Ukraine, or Ukraine is defeated.
The 'terms' which accompany the first option won't be decided unless it happens. As for the second, we will have no say in them anyway.
I think it is in our interest to support Ukraine for a myriad of reasons however I can only see a ceasefire on current lines as the best option here.
We need to keep supporting Ukraine. However I suspect the desire to do this in the west is declining, especially with Israel pre-occupying peoples thoughts.
So basically you are now a Putinist troll. We see you.
The problem is there are lots of people who seem to want Putin to win, and for Russia to gain more power at the expense of liberalism, democracy and freedom. These people are often indistinguishable from people who screech 'peace!' whilst sharing pro-Russian propaganda, or those who want peace at any price.
The line between them can be so thin as to be nonexistent.
I don't want Putin to win. The problem with the Ukraine Ultras here is the Donald Rumsfeld/Dubya mindset. You are either with them 100% or against them.
Please can you define
1) Win for Putin 2) Draw 3) Win for Ukraine
Genuine question.
i Well, 3 possible outcomes - 1) the Donbass becomes like the "Serb entity" - autonomy within Ukraine but no right to secede - win for Ukraine 2) the Donbass becomes like Turkish Northern Cyprus - an unofficial country of its own - draw 3) the Donbass absorbed into Russia - win for Putin
Acquiring only the Donbass wouldn't be such a triumph when you consider the initial war aim was to take the whole country.
Yes, well, too bad. Although I share some of the scepticism about Ukrainian nationalist ultras, I think it's entirely legitimate for the West not to want a clear Putin victory to emerge from the invasion. We need to show that invasion doesn't pay, without encouraging the "every inch of Donbas and Crimea must be Ukrainian" camp. Offering a deal with 2) or 3), backed up by a NATO presence in Ukraine to make further incursion=World War 3, seems to me better than encouraging Ukraine to fight for years. Ukraine isn't monolithic, and as long as we say we'll keep supplying more and better weapons until they win, it squeezes out those who would be willing to settle for roughly current lines.
Some say Putin wouldn't accept that. OK, then the war continues until he or his successors see sense, but the West needs a strategy for a deal which is more than carrying on indefinitely. Otherwise the ultras on both sides have no incentive to even negotiate.
"We need to show that invasion doesn't pay by offering Putin a deal that lets him keep all the territory he acquired by invading it."
Exactly. Anyone expressing such thpughts 1 year ago would have been derided yet here we are. It seems most people are now Putin appeasers willing to see Ukraine sliced in 2 for peace. Shameful.
If the US (ie the Republicans) remember their duty then Ukraine will win. If not then Russia will grind them into submission.
Why is the territorial integrity of Ukraine the "duty" of the US tax payer?
Anybody depending on the enduring commitment of the US to the cause was always heading for disappointment.
Now now, you'll be being accused of being a Putinist again.
Didn't you jut refer to Ukrainian 'Ultras' on the previous thread?
I did, we used to have a few here. Indeed some were outlining the exact terms for this conflict to end and nothing else would be acceptable. We do not have them here anymore. They seem to have found something else to spend time on.
There are only two ways this ends. Either Russia is forced to abandon its effort to defeat Ukraine, or Ukraine is defeated.
The 'terms' which accompany the first option won't be decided unless it happens. As for the second, we will have no say in them anyway.
I think it is in our interest to support Ukraine for a myriad of reasons however I can only see a ceasefire on current lines as the best option here.
We need to keep supporting Ukraine. However I suspect the desire to do this in the west is declining, especially with Israel pre-occupying peoples thoughts.
So basically you are now a Putinist troll. We see you.
The problem is there are lots of people who seem to want Putin to win, and for Russia to gain more power at the expense of liberalism, democracy and freedom. These people are often indistinguishable from people who screech 'peace!' whilst sharing pro-Russian propaganda, or those who want peace at any price.
The line between them can be so thin as to be nonexistent.
I don't want Putin to win. The problem with the Ukraine Ultras here is the Donald Rumsfeld/Dubya mindset. You are either with them 100% or against them.
Please can you define
1) Win for Putin 2) Draw 3) Win for Ukraine
Genuine question.
i Well, 3 possible outcomes - 1) the Donbass becomes like the "Serb entity" - autonomy within Ukraine but no right to secede - win for Ukraine 2) the Donbass becomes like Turkish Northern Cyprus - an unofficial country of its own - draw 3) the Donbass absorbed into Russia - win for Putin
Acquiring only the Donbass wouldn't be such a triumph when you consider the initial war aim was to take the whole country.
Yes, well, too bad. Although I share some of the scepticism about Ukrainian nationalist ultras, I think it's entirely legitimate for the West not to want a clear Putin victory to emerge from the invasion. We need to show that invasion doesn't pay, without encouraging the "every inch of Donbas and Crimea must be Ukrainian" camp. Offering a deal with 2) or 3), backed up by a NATO presence in Ukraine to make further incursion=World War 3, seems to me better than encouraging Ukraine to fight for years. Ukraine isn't monolithic, and as long as we say we'll keep supplying more and better weapons until they win, it squeezes out those who would be willing to settle for roughly current lines.
Some say Putin wouldn't accept that. OK, then the war continues until he or his successors see sense, but the West needs a strategy for a deal which is more than carrying on indefinitely. Otherwise the ultras on both sides have no incentive to even negotiate.
"We need to show that invasion doesn't pay by offering Putin a deal that lets him keep all the territory he acquired by invading it."
And the practical alternative is?
If there's no practical alternative we should at least not delude ourselves.
If the US (ie the Republicans) remember their duty then Ukraine will win. If not then Russia will grind them into submission.
Why is the territorial integrity of Ukraine the "duty" of the US tax payer?
Anybody depending on the enduring commitment of the US to the cause was always heading for disappointment.
Now now, you'll be being accused of being a Putinist again.
Didn't you jut refer to Ukrainian 'Ultras' on the previous thread?
I did, we used to have a few here. Indeed some were outlining the exact terms for this conflict to end and nothing else would be acceptable. We do not have them here anymore. They seem to have found something else to spend time on.
There are only two ways this ends. Either Russia is forced to abandon its effort to defeat Ukraine, or Ukraine is defeated.
The 'terms' which accompany the first option won't be decided unless it happens. As for the second, we will have no say in them anyway.
I think it is in our interest to support Ukraine for a myriad of reasons however I can only see a ceasefire on current lines as the best option here.
We need to keep supporting Ukraine. However I suspect the desire to do this in the west is declining, especially with Israel pre-occupying peoples thoughts.
So basically you are now a Putinist troll. We see you.
The problem is there are lots of people who seem to want Putin to win, and for Russia to gain more power at the expense of liberalism, democracy and freedom. These people are often indistinguishable from people who screech 'peace!' whilst sharing pro-Russian propaganda, or those who want peace at any price.
The line between them can be so thin as to be nonexistent.
I don't want Putin to win. The problem with the Ukraine Ultras here is the Donald Rumsfeld/Dubya mindset. You are either with them 100% or against them.
Please can you define
1) Win for Putin 2) Draw 3) Win for Ukraine
Genuine question.
i Well, 3 possible outcomes - 1) the Donbass becomes like the "Serb entity" - autonomy within Ukraine but no right to secede - win for Ukraine 2) the Donbass becomes like Turkish Northern Cyprus - an unofficial country of its own - draw 3) the Donbass absorbed into Russia - win for Putin
Acquiring only the Donbass wouldn't be such a triumph when you consider the initial war aim was to take the whole country.
Yes, well, too bad. Although I share some of the scepticism about Ukrainian nationalist ultras, I think it's entirely legitimate for the West not to want a clear Putin victory to emerge from the invasion. We need to show that invasion doesn't pay, without encouraging the "every inch of Donbas and Crimea must be Ukrainian" camp. Offering a deal with 2) or 3), backed up by a NATO presence in Ukraine to make further incursion=World War 3, seems to me better than encouraging Ukraine to fight for years. Ukraine isn't monolithic, and as long as we say we'll keep supplying more and better weapons until they win, it squeezes out those who would be willing to settle for roughly current lines.
Some say Putin wouldn't accept that. OK, then the war continues until he or his successors see sense, but the West needs a strategy for a deal which is more than carrying on indefinitely. Otherwise the ultras on both sides have no incentive to even negotiate.
"We need to show that invasion doesn't pay by offering Putin a deal that lets him keep all the territory he acquired by invading it."
And the practical alternative is?
One practical alternative is to defeat him militarily, which means destroying his capacity to continue to conduct offensive operations, and then start talking. If the US aid bill passes, that's far from impossible.
Absent that he's not seriously going to talk anyway.
If your policy platform can’t cope with the fact that the people in your target audience don’t like it & act against it then it’s not much of a policy platform is it?
Politics is the art of the possible after all: It doesn’t matter why your policy turned out to be impossible, if you continue to jump up and down screaming that you were right all along & the people were wrong then you just end up looking like a deranged toddler. Truss failed to carry a crucial set of people with her*, so her policy platform failed dismally & that is why she was a failure as a politician, not because there was some deep state campaign against her.
* gilt buyers.
But this was the point made earlier. Truss "learned the lesson of Brexit" which was that it doesn't matter if your policy platform is utter shit, do it anyway...
And that's why she still can't understand why it didn't work.
Could she have clung on if wasn't for that night of piss drenched neurotic chaos over the fracking vote? I can't recall the exact sequence of events because it all seems like a laudanum fuelled delerium now but she had already ditched her stupid tax bollocks by then.
By that time the Men in Grey Bondage Necklaces had presumably decided she was an existential threat to the Tory Party and her fate was sealed.
On a previous thread - I should say that I personally know (or knew) quite a few of the Turnip Taliban. They were, without exception, decent people and true Conservatives. La Truss's affair that was mentioned was far from the only issue that they had with her. It was almost a preview of the wider process of the hollowing out and destruction of the Con Party that has since happened. The Con Party is where it is now because it didn't listen to people like the Turnip Taliban. So be it - now the whirlwind will have to be reaped
If the US (ie the Republicans) remember their duty then Ukraine will win. If not then Russia will grind them into submission.
Why is the territorial integrity of Ukraine the "duty" of the US tax payer?
Anybody depending on the enduring commitment of the US to the cause was always heading for disappointment.
Now now, you'll be being accused of being a Putinist again.
Didn't you jut refer to Ukrainian 'Ultras' on the previous thread?
I did, we used to have a few here. Indeed some were outlining the exact terms for this conflict to end and nothing else would be acceptable. We do not have them here anymore. They seem to have found something else to spend time on.
There are only two ways this ends. Either Russia is forced to abandon its effort to defeat Ukraine, or Ukraine is defeated.
The 'terms' which accompany the first option won't be decided unless it happens. As for the second, we will have no say in them anyway.
I think it is in our interest to support Ukraine for a myriad of reasons however I can only see a ceasefire on current lines as the best option here.
We need to keep supporting Ukraine. However I suspect the desire to do this in the west is declining, especially with Israel pre-occupying peoples thoughts.
So basically you are now a Putinist troll. We see you.
The problem is there are lots of people who seem to want Putin to win, and for Russia to gain more power at the expense of liberalism, democracy and freedom. These people are often indistinguishable from people who screech 'peace!' whilst sharing pro-Russian propaganda, or those who want peace at any price.
The line between them can be so thin as to be nonexistent.
I don't want Putin to win. The problem with the Ukraine Ultras here is the Donald Rumsfeld/Dubya mindset. You are either with them 100% or against them.
Please can you define
1) Win for Putin 2) Draw 3) Win for Ukraine
Genuine question.
i Well, 3 possible outcomes - 1) the Donbass becomes like the "Serb entity" - autonomy within Ukraine but no right to secede - win for Ukraine 2) the Donbass becomes like Turkish Northern Cyprus - an unofficial country of its own - draw 3) the Donbass absorbed into Russia - win for Putin
Acquiring only the Donbass wouldn't be such a triumph when you consider the initial war aim was to take the whole country.
Yes, well, too bad. Although I share some of the scepticism about Ukrainian nationalist ultras, I think it's entirely legitimate for the West not to want a clear Putin victory to emerge from the invasion. We need to show that invasion doesn't pay, without encouraging the "every inch of Donbas and Crimea must be Ukrainian" camp. Offering a deal with 2) or 3), backed up by a NATO presence in Ukraine to make further incursion=World War 3, seems to me better than encouraging Ukraine to fight for years. Ukraine isn't monolithic, and as long as we say we'll keep supplying more and better weapons until they win, it squeezes out those who would be willing to settle for roughly current lines.
Some say Putin wouldn't accept that. OK, then the war continues until he or his successors see sense, but the West needs a strategy for a deal which is more than carrying on indefinitely. Otherwise the ultras on both sides have no incentive to even negotiate.
Assume this IS what happens - the war ends with Russia gaining Crimea and the Donbass, the remainder of Ukraine secured by NATO membership. You then have to ask the question: if Putin had known this at the start would he still have ordered the invasion?
The answer you want is "No". Because if it's "Yes" it means the aggression has paid off. That's how I think whether Putin has a "win" or not should be assessed. Is the outcome such that if he'd have known it at the start he'd still have gone ahead? The answer needs to be that he wouldn't have.
One thing on ukraine Biden has been pathetically weak. It seems policy is determined by what gas prices are at the pumps rather than whats best for Ukraine. As Trump would say weak, weak, weak.
If the US (ie the Republicans) remember their duty then Ukraine will win. If not then Russia will grind them into submission.
Why is the territorial integrity of Ukraine the "duty" of the US tax payer?
Anybody depending on the enduring commitment of the US to the cause was always heading for disappointment.
Now now, you'll be being accused of being a Putinist again.
Didn't you jut refer to Ukrainian 'Ultras' on the previous thread?
I did, we used to have a few here. Indeed some were outlining the exact terms for this conflict to end and nothing else would be acceptable. We do not have them here anymore. They seem to have found something else to spend time on.
There are only two ways this ends. Either Russia is forced to abandon its effort to defeat Ukraine, or Ukraine is defeated.
The 'terms' which accompany the first option won't be decided unless it happens. As for the second, we will have no say in them anyway.
I think it is in our interest to support Ukraine for a myriad of reasons however I can only see a ceasefire on current lines as the best option here.
We need to keep supporting Ukraine. However I suspect the desire to do this in the west is declining, especially with Israel pre-occupying peoples thoughts.
So basically you are now a Putinist troll. We see you.
The problem is there are lots of people who seem to want Putin to win, and for Russia to gain more power at the expense of liberalism, democracy and freedom. These people are often indistinguishable from people who screech 'peace!' whilst sharing pro-Russian propaganda, or those who want peace at any price.
The line between them can be so thin as to be nonexistent.
I don't want Putin to win. The problem with the Ukraine Ultras here is the Donald Rumsfeld/Dubya mindset. You are either with them 100% or against them.
Please can you define
1) Win for Putin 2) Draw 3) Win for Ukraine
Genuine question.
i Well, 3 possible outcomes - 1) the Donbass becomes like the "Serb entity" - autonomy within Ukraine but no right to secede - win for Ukraine 2) the Donbass becomes like Turkish Northern Cyprus - an unofficial country of its own - draw 3) the Donbass absorbed into Russia - win for Putin
Acquiring only the Donbass wouldn't be such a triumph when you consider the initial war aim was to take the whole country.
Yes, well, too bad. Although I share some of the scepticism about Ukrainian nationalist ultras, I think it's entirely legitimate for the West not to want a clear Putin victory to emerge from the invasion. We need to show that invasion doesn't pay, without encouraging the "every inch of Donbas and Crimea must be Ukrainian" camp. Offering a deal with 2) or 3), backed up by a NATO presence in Ukraine to make further incursion=World War 3, seems to me better than encouraging Ukraine to fight for years. Ukraine isn't monolithic, and as long as we say we'll keep supplying more and better weapons until they win, it squeezes out those who would be willing to settle for roughly current lines.
Some say Putin wouldn't accept that. OK, then the war continues until he or his successors see sense, but the West needs a strategy for a deal which is more than carrying on indefinitely. Otherwise the ultras on both sides have no incentive to even negotiate.
"We need to show that invasion doesn't pay by offering Putin a deal that lets him keep all the territory he acquired by invading it."
Exactly. Anyone expressing such thpughts 1 year ago would have been derided yet here we are. It seems most people are now Putin appeasers willing to see Ukraine sliced in 2 for peace. Shameful.
If we are offering land for peace, why Donbas? Why not Wales or Gaza?
EDIT: A good part of the slow down of giving weapons to Ukraine is the proclaimed worry that they might use them *too* well. All that naughty sinking the Black Sea fleet etc.
If your policy platform can’t cope with the fact that the people in your target audience don’t like it & act against it then it’s not much of a policy platform is it?
Politics is the art of the possible after all: It doesn’t matter why your policy turned out to be impossible, if you continue to jump up and down screaming that you were right all along & the people were wrong then you just end up looking like a deranged toddler. Truss failed to carry a crucial set of people with her*, so her policy platform failed dismally & that is why she was a failure as a politician, not because there was some deep state campaign against her.
* gilt buyers.
But this was the point made earlier. Truss "learned the lesson of Brexit" which was that it doesn't matter if your policy platform is utter shit, do it anyway...
And that's why she still can't understand why it didn't work.
Could she have clung on if wasn't for that night of piss drenched neurotic chaos over the fracking vote? I can't recall the exact sequence of events because it all seems like a laudanum fuelled delerium now but she had already ditched her stupid tax bollocks by then.
She'd already lost the confidence of the party at that point.
According to Steve Richards, she lost the party so badly she had to appoint Hunt as Chancellor with such a free hand he undid everything she did. She had an idea of what was wrong with the country and a plan on how to fix it. She tried it and failed horribly. As she had no idea on how to proceed at that point and everybody was frightened or disdainful of her, there was no point on keeping her in post.
I have some sympathy with those who say her plan was good. Fine, she can go be an ideologue. It worked for Keith Joseph and Dan Hannan. But to PM you need the gifts to teach, to persuade, and to manage people. She was bad at all of them. She was simply in the wrong job.
Boeing whistleblower says 787 fleet should be grounded https://thehill.com/homenews/4598076-boeing-whistleblower-says-787-fleet-should-be-grounded/ ..The letter outlined problems with the production of the company’s 787 and 777 jets, saying specifically that sections of the fuselage of the 787 Dreamliner are improperly fastened together and could break after thousands of trips...
If the US (ie the Republicans) remember their duty then Ukraine will win. If not then Russia will grind them into submission.
Why is the territorial integrity of Ukraine the "duty" of the US tax payer?
Anybody depending on the enduring commitment of the US to the cause was always heading for disappointment.
Now now, you'll be being accused of being a Putinist again.
Didn't you jut refer to Ukrainian 'Ultras' on the previous thread?
I did, we used to have a few here. Indeed some were outlining the exact terms for this conflict to end and nothing else would be acceptable. We do not have them here anymore. They seem to have found something else to spend time on.
There are only two ways this ends. Either Russia is forced to abandon its effort to defeat Ukraine, or Ukraine is defeated.
The 'terms' which accompany the first option won't be decided unless it happens. As for the second, we will have no say in them anyway.
I think it is in our interest to support Ukraine for a myriad of reasons however I can only see a ceasefire on current lines as the best option here.
We need to keep supporting Ukraine. However I suspect the desire to do this in the west is declining, especially with Israel pre-occupying peoples thoughts.
So basically you are now a Putinist troll. We see you.
The problem is there are lots of people who seem to want Putin to win, and for Russia to gain more power at the expense of liberalism, democracy and freedom. These people are often indistinguishable from people who screech 'peace!' whilst sharing pro-Russian propaganda, or those who want peace at any price.
The line between them can be so thin as to be nonexistent.
I don't want Putin to win. The problem with the Ukraine Ultras here is the Donald Rumsfeld/Dubya mindset. You are either with them 100% or against them.
Please can you define
1) Win for Putin 2) Draw 3) Win for Ukraine
Genuine question.
i Well, 3 possible outcomes - 1) the Donbass becomes like the "Serb entity" - autonomy within Ukraine but no right to secede - win for Ukraine 2) the Donbass becomes like Turkish Northern Cyprus - an unofficial country of its own - draw 3) the Donbass absorbed into Russia - win for Putin
Acquiring only the Donbass wouldn't be such a triumph when you consider the initial war aim was to take the whole country.
Yes, well, too bad. Although I share some of the scepticism about Ukrainian nationalist ultras, I think it's entirely legitimate for the West not to want a clear Putin victory to emerge from the invasion. We need to show that invasion doesn't pay, without encouraging the "every inch of Donbas and Crimea must be Ukrainian" camp. Offering a deal with 2) or 3), backed up by a NATO presence in Ukraine to make further incursion=World War 3, seems to me better than encouraging Ukraine to fight for years. Ukraine isn't monolithic, and as long as we say we'll keep supplying more and better weapons until they win, it squeezes out those who would be willing to settle for roughly current lines.
Some say Putin wouldn't accept that. OK, then the war continues until he or his successors see sense, but the West needs a strategy for a deal which is more than carrying on indefinitely. Otherwise the ultras on both sides have no incentive to even negotiate.
Thread for you to read, Nick.
This is already making rounds, so I will try to shed some more light on March/April 2022 Ukraine-Russia talks since the article is still far from the point, and because Poland played a much bigger role than anyone is willing to admit publicly https://twitter.com/dszeligowski/status/1780183950507262201
Very interesting piece, thanks. That's very much what I had in mind, but I didn't know that it got so close (or that it was partly undermined by our reluctance to postwar guarantees).
Not one of his better efforts though. The gist seems to be that because 'the markets' are ultimately composed of human beings, then there is human agency at play and therefore a conspiracy (of some sort) must have existed to send Liz to her doom. QED.
Truss is right about a lot of things IMO. But her presentation skills are terrible.
Truss looks ridiculous because she's painting herself as some kind of Thatcherite libertarian while at the same time moaning about the beastliness of unfettered capitalism. Completely incoherent. She'd be better off coming out as diehard Corbynite - no less mad perhaps but at least internally consistent.
It seems to me that Truss is trying to be a Libertarian and a NatCon all at once and hadn't twigged that these are contradictory political platforms. You can't be a champion of capitalism and then complain that financial markets are a sinister cabal set on thwarting our national destiny. All this stuff about the "blob" is just her trying to rationalise to voters, or maybe even to herself, why the Tories have been such a miserable failure in office.
If your policy platform can’t cope with the fact that the people in your target audience don’t like it & act against it then it’s not much of a policy platform is it?
Politics is the art of the possible after all: It doesn’t matter why your policy turned out to be impossible, if you continue to jump up and down screaming that you were right all along & the people were wrong then you just end up looking like a deranged toddler. Truss failed to carry a crucial set of people with her*, so her policy platform failed dismally & that is why she was a failure as a politician, not because there was some deep state campaign against her.
* gilt buyers.
But this was the point made earlier. Truss "learned the lesson of Brexit" which was that it doesn't matter if your policy platform is utter shit, do it anyway...
And that's why she still can't understand why it didn't work.
Could she have clung on if wasn't for that night of piss drenched neurotic chaos over the fracking vote? I can't recall the exact sequence of events because it all seems like a laudanum fuelled delerium now but she had already ditched her stupid tax bollocks by then.
She'd already lost the confidence of the party at that point.
According to Steve Richards, she lost the party so badly she had to appoint Hunt as Chancellor with such a free hand he undid everything she did. She had an idea of what was wrong with the country and a plan on how to fix it. She tried it and failed horribly. As she had no idea on how to proceed at that point and everybody was frightened or disdainful of her, there was no point on keeping her in post.
I have some sympathy with those who say her plan was good. Fine, she can go be an ideologue. It worked for Keith Joseph and Dan Hannan. But to PM you need the gifts to teach, to persuade, and to manage people. She was bad at all of them. She was simply in the wrong job.
And she would never come anywhere near being elected by the public under such a prospectus. Right or wrong (and she was proved wrong), it was the height of hubris to imagine she could conduct such a radical change of policy, against all advice, without any electoral consent.
If the US (ie the Republicans) remember their duty then Ukraine will win. If not then Russia will grind them into submission.
Why is the territorial integrity of Ukraine the "duty" of the US tax payer?
Anybody depending on the enduring commitment of the US to the cause was always heading for disappointment.
Now now, you'll be being accused of being a Putinist again.
Didn't you jut refer to Ukrainian 'Ultras' on the previous thread?
I did, we used to have a few here. Indeed some were outlining the exact terms for this conflict to end and nothing else would be acceptable. We do not have them here anymore. They seem to have found something else to spend time on.
There are only two ways this ends. Either Russia is forced to abandon its effort to defeat Ukraine, or Ukraine is defeated.
The 'terms' which accompany the first option won't be decided unless it happens. As for the second, we will have no say in them anyway.
I think it is in our interest to support Ukraine for a myriad of reasons however I can only see a ceasefire on current lines as the best option here.
We need to keep supporting Ukraine. However I suspect the desire to do this in the west is declining, especially with Israel pre-occupying peoples thoughts.
So basically you are now a Putinist troll. We see you.
The problem is there are lots of people who seem to want Putin to win, and for Russia to gain more power at the expense of liberalism, democracy and freedom. These people are often indistinguishable from people who screech 'peace!' whilst sharing pro-Russian propaganda, or those who want peace at any price.
The line between them can be so thin as to be nonexistent.
I don't want Putin to win. The problem with the Ukraine Ultras here is the Donald Rumsfeld/Dubya mindset. You are either with them 100% or against them.
Please can you define
1) Win for Putin 2) Draw 3) Win for Ukraine
Genuine question.
i Well, 3 possible outcomes - 1) the Donbass becomes like the "Serb entity" - autonomy within Ukraine but no right to secede - win for Ukraine 2) the Donbass becomes like Turkish Northern Cyprus - an unofficial country of its own - draw 3) the Donbass absorbed into Russia - win for Putin
Acquiring only the Donbass wouldn't be such a triumph when you consider the initial war aim was to take the whole country.
Yes, well, too bad. Although I share some of the scepticism about Ukrainian nationalist ultras, I think it's entirely legitimate for the West not to want a clear Putin victory to emerge from the invasion. We need to show that invasion doesn't pay, without encouraging the "every inch of Donbas and Crimea must be Ukrainian" camp. Offering a deal with 2) or 3), backed up by a NATO presence in Ukraine to make further incursion=World War 3, seems to me better than encouraging Ukraine to fight for years. Ukraine isn't monolithic, and as long as we say we'll keep supplying more and better weapons until they win, it squeezes out those who would be willing to settle for roughly current lines.
Some say Putin wouldn't accept that. OK, then the war continues until he or his successors see sense, but the West needs a strategy for a deal which is more than carrying on indefinitely. Otherwise the ultras on both sides have no incentive to even negotiate.
Assume this IS what happens - the war ends with Russia gaining Crimea and the Donbass, the remainder of Ukraine secured by NATO membership. You then have to ask the question: if Putin had known this at the start would he still have ordered the invasion?
The answer you want is "No". Because if it's "Yes" it means the aggression has paid off. That's how I think whether Putin has a "win" or not should be assessed. Is the outcome such that if he'd have known it at the start he'd still have gone ahead? The answer needs to be that he wouldn't have.
Russia will not accept the remainder of ukraine in NATO. So thats a non starter.
If the US (ie the Republicans) remember their duty then Ukraine will win. If not then Russia will grind them into submission.
Why is the territorial integrity of Ukraine the "duty" of the US tax payer?
Anybody depending on the enduring commitment of the US to the cause was always heading for disappointment.
Now now, you'll be being accused of being a Putinist again.
Didn't you jut refer to Ukrainian 'Ultras' on the previous thread?
I did, we used to have a few here. Indeed some were outlining the exact terms for this conflict to end and nothing else would be acceptable. We do not have them here anymore. They seem to have found something else to spend time on.
There are only two ways this ends. Either Russia is forced to abandon its effort to defeat Ukraine, or Ukraine is defeated.
The 'terms' which accompany the first option won't be decided unless it happens. As for the second, we will have no say in them anyway.
I think it is in our interest to support Ukraine for a myriad of reasons however I can only see a ceasefire on current lines as the best option here.
We need to keep supporting Ukraine. However I suspect the desire to do this in the west is declining, especially with Israel pre-occupying peoples thoughts.
So basically you are now a Putinist troll. We see you.
The problem is there are lots of people who seem to want Putin to win, and for Russia to gain more power at the expense of liberalism, democracy and freedom. These people are often indistinguishable from people who screech 'peace!' whilst sharing pro-Russian propaganda, or those who want peace at any price.
The line between them can be so thin as to be nonexistent.
I don't want Putin to win. The problem with the Ukraine Ultras here is the Donald Rumsfeld/Dubya mindset. You are either with them 100% or against them.
Please can you define
1) Win for Putin 2) Draw 3) Win for Ukraine
Genuine question.
i Well, 3 possible outcomes - 1) the Donbass becomes like the "Serb entity" - autonomy within Ukraine but no right to secede - win for Ukraine 2) the Donbass becomes like Turkish Northern Cyprus - an unofficial country of its own - draw 3) the Donbass absorbed into Russia - win for Putin
Acquiring only the Donbass wouldn't be such a triumph when you consider the initial war aim was to take the whole country.
Yes, well, too bad. Although I share some of the scepticism about Ukrainian nationalist ultras, I think it's entirely legitimate for the West not to want a clear Putin victory to emerge from the invasion. We need to show that invasion doesn't pay, without encouraging the "every inch of Donbas and Crimea must be Ukrainian" camp. Offering a deal with 2) or 3), backed up by a NATO presence in Ukraine to make further incursion=World War 3, seems to me better than encouraging Ukraine to fight for years. Ukraine isn't monolithic, and as long as we say we'll keep supplying more and better weapons until they win, it squeezes out those who would be willing to settle for roughly current lines.
Some say Putin wouldn't accept that. OK, then the war continues until he or his successors see sense, but the West needs a strategy for a deal which is more than carrying on indefinitely. Otherwise the ultras on both sides have no incentive to even negotiate.
Thread for you to read, Nick.
This is already making rounds, so I will try to shed some more light on March/April 2022 Ukraine-Russia talks since the article is still far from the point, and because Poland played a much bigger role than anyone is willing to admit publicly https://twitter.com/dszeligowski/status/1780183950507262201
Very interesting piece, thanks. That's very much what I had in mind, but I didn't know that it got so close (or that it was partly undermined by our reluctance to postwar guarantees).
It didn't get that close, if you read the thread.
..We were never close to any deal. Russia never negotiated in good faith. Moscow sent a delegation that was composed of the most anti-Ukrainian officials you can imagine. Their goal was to present the Ukrainian side with an ultimatum, not to *negotiate*.. etc
If your policy platform can’t cope with the fact that the people in your target audience don’t like it & act against it then it’s not much of a policy platform is it?
Politics is the art of the possible after all: It doesn’t matter why your policy turned out to be impossible, if you continue to jump up and down screaming that you were right all along & the people were wrong then you just end up looking like a deranged toddler. Truss failed to carry a crucial set of people with her*, so her policy platform failed dismally & that is why she was a failure as a politician, not because there was some deep state campaign against her.
* gilt buyers.
But this was the point made earlier. Truss "learned the lesson of Brexit" which was that it doesn't matter if your policy platform is utter shit, do it anyway...
And that's why she still can't understand why it didn't work.
Could she have clung on if wasn't for that night of piss drenched neurotic chaos over the fracking vote? I can't recall the exact sequence of events because it all seems like a laudanum fuelled delerium now but she had already ditched her stupid tax bollocks by then.
She'd already lost the confidence of the party at that point.
According to Steve Richards, she lost the party so badly she had to appoint Hunt as Chancellor with such a free hand he undid everything she did. She had an idea of what was wrong with the country and a plan on how to fix it. She tried it and failed horribly. As she had no idea on how to proceed at that point and everybody was frightened or disdainful of her, there was no point on keeping her in post.
I have some sympathy with those who say her plan was good. Fine, she can go be an ideologue. It worked for Keith Joseph and Dan Hannan. But to PM you need the gifts to teach, to persuade, and to manage people. She was bad at all of them. She was simply in the wrong job.
Pretty much my view on it.
She also played fast and loose with the electoral cycle and decided a mandate from Tory members gave her the political capital to be radical. Constitutionally she may have been right, but in the real world it didn’t wash. She hadn’t won the battle of ideas.
She is also wrecking whatever goodwill she had left by claiming it was all a deep state conspiracy to bring her down.
If the US (ie the Republicans) remember their duty then Ukraine will win. If not then Russia will grind them into submission.
Why is the territorial integrity of Ukraine the "duty" of the US tax payer?
Anybody depending on the enduring commitment of the US to the cause was always heading for disappointment.
Now now, you'll be being accused of being a Putinist again.
Didn't you jut refer to Ukrainian 'Ultras' on the previous thread?
I did, we used to have a few here. Indeed some were outlining the exact terms for this conflict to end and nothing else would be acceptable. We do not have them here anymore. They seem to have found something else to spend time on.
There are only two ways this ends. Either Russia is forced to abandon its effort to defeat Ukraine, or Ukraine is defeated.
The 'terms' which accompany the first option won't be decided unless it happens. As for the second, we will have no say in them anyway.
I think it is in our interest to support Ukraine for a myriad of reasons however I can only see a ceasefire on current lines as the best option here.
We need to keep supporting Ukraine. However I suspect the desire to do this in the west is declining, especially with Israel pre-occupying peoples thoughts.
So basically you are now a Putinist troll. We see you.
The problem is there are lots of people who seem to want Putin to win, and for Russia to gain more power at the expense of liberalism, democracy and freedom. These people are often indistinguishable from people who screech 'peace!' whilst sharing pro-Russian propaganda, or those who want peace at any price.
The line between them can be so thin as to be nonexistent.
I don't want Putin to win. The problem with the Ukraine Ultras here is the Donald Rumsfeld/Dubya mindset. You are either with them 100% or against them.
Please can you define
1) Win for Putin 2) Draw 3) Win for Ukraine
Genuine question.
i Well, 3 possible outcomes - 1) the Donbass becomes like the "Serb entity" - autonomy within Ukraine but no right to secede - win for Ukraine 2) the Donbass becomes like Turkish Northern Cyprus - an unofficial country of its own - draw 3) the Donbass absorbed into Russia - win for Putin
Acquiring only the Donbass wouldn't be such a triumph when you consider the initial war aim was to take the whole country.
Yes, well, too bad. Although I share some of the scepticism about Ukrainian nationalist ultras, I think it's entirely legitimate for the West not to want a clear Putin victory to emerge from the invasion. We need to show that invasion doesn't pay, without encouraging the "every inch of Donbas and Crimea must be Ukrainian" camp. Offering a deal with 2) or 3), backed up by a NATO presence in Ukraine to make further incursion=World War 3, seems to me better than encouraging Ukraine to fight for years. Ukraine isn't monolithic, and as long as we say we'll keep supplying more and better weapons until they win, it squeezes out those who would be willing to settle for roughly current lines.
Some say Putin wouldn't accept that. OK, then the war continues until he or his successors see sense, but the West needs a strategy for a deal which is more than carrying on indefinitely. Otherwise the ultras on both sides have no incentive to even negotiate.
Assume this IS what happens - the war ends with Russia gaining Crimea and the Donbass, the remainder of Ukraine secured by NATO membership. You then have to ask the question: if Putin had known this at the start would he still have ordered the invasion?
The answer you want is "No". Because if it's "Yes" it means the aggression has paid off. That's how I think whether Putin has a "win" or not should be assessed. Is the outcome such that if he'd have known it at the start he'd still have gone ahead? The answer needs to be that he wouldn't have.
Russia will not accept the remainder of ukraine in NATO. So thats a non starter.
I am a liberal. I think people should be free. Sunak's smoking proposals are a restriction on people's freedoms to buy cigarettes. So, why support them?
Most people who smoke want to give up. That's because nicotine is astonishingly addictive. Most people smoking are doing something they would rather not be doing, because they are compelled by their addiction. That is a restriction on people's freedoms. We increase liberty by banning an addictive drug.
Social media is also astonishingly addictive. Maybe it also needs to be banned.
Why are ecstasy and mushrooms banned? There could be huge social and economic benefits to regulating them.
If the US (ie the Republicans) remember their duty then Ukraine will win. If not then Russia will grind them into submission.
Why is the territorial integrity of Ukraine the "duty" of the US tax payer?
Anybody depending on the enduring commitment of the US to the cause was always heading for disappointment.
Now now, you'll be being accused of being a Putinist again.
Didn't you jut refer to Ukrainian 'Ultras' on the previous thread?
I did, we used to have a few here. Indeed some were outlining the exact terms for this conflict to end and nothing else would be acceptable. We do not have them here anymore. They seem to have found something else to spend time on.
There are only two ways this ends. Either Russia is forced to abandon its effort to defeat Ukraine, or Ukraine is defeated.
The 'terms' which accompany the first option won't be decided unless it happens. As for the second, we will have no say in them anyway.
I think it is in our interest to support Ukraine for a myriad of reasons however I can only see a ceasefire on current lines as the best option here.
We need to keep supporting Ukraine. However I suspect the desire to do this in the west is declining, especially with Israel pre-occupying peoples thoughts.
So basically you are now a Putinist troll. We see you.
The problem is there are lots of people who seem to want Putin to win, and for Russia to gain more power at the expense of liberalism, democracy and freedom. These people are often indistinguishable from people who screech 'peace!' whilst sharing pro-Russian propaganda, or those who want peace at any price.
The line between them can be so thin as to be nonexistent.
I don't want Putin to win. The problem with the Ukraine Ultras here is the Donald Rumsfeld/Dubya mindset. You are either with them 100% or against them.
Please can you define
1) Win for Putin 2) Draw 3) Win for Ukraine
Genuine question.
i Well, 3 possible outcomes - 1) the Donbass becomes like the "Serb entity" - autonomy within Ukraine but no right to secede - win for Ukraine 2) the Donbass becomes like Turkish Northern Cyprus - an unofficial country of its own - draw 3) the Donbass absorbed into Russia - win for Putin
Acquiring only the Donbass wouldn't be such a triumph when you consider the initial war aim was to take the whole country.
Yes, well, too bad. Although I share some of the scepticism about Ukrainian nationalist ultras, I think it's entirely legitimate for the West not to want a clear Putin victory to emerge from the invasion. We need to show that invasion doesn't pay, without encouraging the "every inch of Donbas and Crimea must be Ukrainian" camp. Offering a deal with 2) or 3), backed up by a NATO presence in Ukraine to make further incursion=World War 3, seems to me better than encouraging Ukraine to fight for years. Ukraine isn't monolithic, and as long as we say we'll keep supplying more and better weapons until they win, it squeezes out those who would be willing to settle for roughly current lines.
Some say Putin wouldn't accept that. OK, then the war continues until he or his successors see sense, but the West needs a strategy for a deal which is more than carrying on indefinitely. Otherwise the ultras on both sides have no incentive to even negotiate.
Assume this IS what happens - the war ends with Russia gaining Crimea and the Donbass, the remainder of Ukraine secured by NATO membership. You then have to ask the question: if Putin had known this at the start would he still have ordered the invasion?
The answer you want is "No". Because if it's "Yes" it means the aggression has paid off. That's how I think whether Putin has a "win" or not should be assessed. Is the outcome such that if he'd have known it at the start he'd still have gone ahead? The answer needs to be that he wouldn't have.
Russia will not accept the remainder of ukraine in NATO. So thats a non starter.
Russia may not have an option and may end up forcing something to happen they never wanted.
Is it me or does Netanyahu come across as a bit ungrateful to David Cameron for the RAF support we provided to shoot down Iranian missiles heading toward Tel Aviv ?
Would it have been the a similar tone with Blinken ?
If your policy platform can’t cope with the fact that the people in your target audience don’t like it & act against it then it’s not much of a policy platform is it?
Politics is the art of the possible after all: It doesn’t matter why your policy turned out to be impossible, if you continue to jump up and down screaming that you were right all along & the people were wrong then you just end up looking like a deranged toddler. Truss failed to carry a crucial set of people with her*, so her policy platform failed dismally & that is why she was a failure as a politician, not because there was some deep state campaign against her.
* gilt buyers.
But this was the point made earlier. Truss "learned the lesson of Brexit" which was that it doesn't matter if your policy platform is utter shit, do it anyway...
And that's why she still can't understand why it didn't work.
Could she have clung on if wasn't for that night of piss drenched neurotic chaos over the fracking vote? I can't recall the exact sequence of events because it all seems like a laudanum fuelled delerium now but she had already ditched her stupid tax bollocks by then.
That might be another "lesson of Brexit". The on/off yes/no/maybe Schrodinger's confidence vote, like the one Boris used to justify throwing his opponents out of the party because it was a confidence vote, but not his own resignation because it was not a confidence vote.
I am a liberal. I think people should be free. Sunak's smoking proposals are a restriction on people's freedoms to buy cigarettes. So, why support them?
Most people who smoke want to give up. That's because nicotine is astonishingly addictive. Most people smoking are doing something they would rather not be doing, because they are compelled by their addiction. That is a restriction on people's freedoms. We increase liberty by banning an addictive drug.
Social media is also astonishingly addictive. Maybe it also needs to be banned.
Why are ecstasy and mushrooms banned? There could be huge social and economic benefits to regulating them.
Less likely from mushrooms (as long as you pick the right ones)
Drug testing in the Netherlands seems to have eliminated Ecstasy related deaths - which were associated with contaminants, wildly varying dosages and pills simply being other drugs.
Valuable PMQ question from Sarah Olney. Of interest to @Cyclefree perhaps.
About raped women told that reading the trial transcript will help them come to terms with the experience, then told that getting the Transcript will cost £10-20k.
The system for accessing trial transcripts (they are recorded as audio) is an expensive, commercialised mess. I have run into this trying to factcheck partial reports of vehicle collisions in media.
Perhaps the way with this is to make the bookmarked audio available for free or a nominal price.
One thing on ukraine Biden has been pathetically weak. It seems policy is determined by what gas prices are at the pumps rather than whats best for Ukraine. As Trump would say weak, weak, weak.
I've heard it said that you're a troll. But maybe you just don't know how the US system of government works. Biden wants to send more arms to Ukraine but the House of Representatives is controlled by the Republicans and some of them support Russia. "The House's exclusive powers include initiating all revenue bills" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_House_of_Representatives
Is it me or does Netanyahu come across as a bit ungrateful to David Cameron for the RAF support we provided to shoot down Iranian missiles heading toward Tel Aviv ?
Would it have been the a similar tone with Blinken ?
If the US (ie the Republicans) remember their duty then Ukraine will win. If not then Russia will grind them into submission.
Why is the territorial integrity of Ukraine the "duty" of the US tax payer?
Anybody depending on the enduring commitment of the US to the cause was always heading for disappointment.
Now now, you'll be being accused of being a Putinist again.
Didn't you jut refer to Ukrainian 'Ultras' on the previous thread?
I did, we used to have a few here. Indeed some were outlining the exact terms for this conflict to end and nothing else would be acceptable. We do not have them here anymore. They seem to have found something else to spend time on.
There are only two ways this ends. Either Russia is forced to abandon its effort to defeat Ukraine, or Ukraine is defeated.
The 'terms' which accompany the first option won't be decided unless it happens. As for the second, we will have no say in them anyway.
I think it is in our interest to support Ukraine for a myriad of reasons however I can only see a ceasefire on current lines as the best option here.
We need to keep supporting Ukraine. However I suspect the desire to do this in the west is declining, especially with Israel pre-occupying peoples thoughts.
So basically you are now a Putinist troll. We see you.
The problem is there are lots of people who seem to want Putin to win, and for Russia to gain more power at the expense of liberalism, democracy and freedom. These people are often indistinguishable from people who screech 'peace!' whilst sharing pro-Russian propaganda, or those who want peace at any price.
The line between them can be so thin as to be nonexistent.
I don't want Putin to win. The problem with the Ukraine Ultras here is the Donald Rumsfeld/Dubya mindset. You are either with them 100% or against them.
Please can you define
1) Win for Putin 2) Draw 3) Win for Ukraine
Genuine question.
i Well, 3 possible outcomes - 1) the Donbass becomes like the "Serb entity" - autonomy within Ukraine but no right to secede - win for Ukraine 2) the Donbass becomes like Turkish Northern Cyprus - an unofficial country of its own - draw 3) the Donbass absorbed into Russia - win for Putin
Barring some unforeseen deterioration in the RF military situation I don't think 3 is enough to declare victory and halt the SMO. They need to get Odessa to make it seem worthwhile.
They would like regime change in Kiev to one not based around a quiz team but that situation is harder to influence since Green T-Shirt has cancelled elections and gone a bit caudillo.
And you pretend not to troll...
"Article 83 of the Ukrainian Constitution states that if the term of the Verkhovna Rada expires under martial law, it shall automatically be extended until a new Rada is seated following the end of martial law. Article 19 of Ukraine’s martial law legislation specifically forbids conducting national elections. Thus, for Ukraine to conduct elections while under martial law would be a violation of legal norms that predate Zelensky and the full-scale Russian invasion."
Whereas, as usual, you offer no criticism of Putin, who is a real dictator, and a fascist, and an imperialist. You (wrongly) attack Zelensky for the very things his opponent is.
Why? Are you sniffing the fetid output of Telegram channels so much that you actually believe the shit, or are you just a pathetic little troll. Or, perhaps, both?
If the US (ie the Republicans) remember their duty then Ukraine will win. If not then Russia will grind them into submission.
Why is the territorial integrity of Ukraine the "duty" of the US tax payer?
Anybody depending on the enduring commitment of the US to the cause was always heading for disappointment.
Now now, you'll be being accused of being a Putinist again.
Didn't you jut refer to Ukrainian 'Ultras' on the previous thread?
I did, we used to have a few here. Indeed some were outlining the exact terms for this conflict to end and nothing else would be acceptable. We do not have them here anymore. They seem to have found something else to spend time on.
There are only two ways this ends. Either Russia is forced to abandon its effort to defeat Ukraine, or Ukraine is defeated.
The 'terms' which accompany the first option won't be decided unless it happens. As for the second, we will have no say in them anyway.
I think it is in our interest to support Ukraine for a myriad of reasons however I can only see a ceasefire on current lines as the best option here.
We need to keep supporting Ukraine. However I suspect the desire to do this in the west is declining, especially with Israel pre-occupying peoples thoughts.
So basically you are now a Putinist troll. We see you.
The problem is there are lots of people who seem to want Putin to win, and for Russia to gain more power at the expense of liberalism, democracy and freedom. These people are often indistinguishable from people who screech 'peace!' whilst sharing pro-Russian propaganda, or those who want peace at any price.
The line between them can be so thin as to be nonexistent.
I don't want Putin to win. The problem with the Ukraine Ultras here is the Donald Rumsfeld/Dubya mindset. You are either with them 100% or against them.
Please can you define
1) Win for Putin 2) Draw 3) Win for Ukraine
Genuine question.
i Well, 3 possible outcomes - 1) the Donbass becomes like the "Serb entity" - autonomy within Ukraine but no right to secede - win for Ukraine 2) the Donbass becomes like Turkish Northern Cyprus - an unofficial country of its own - draw 3) the Donbass absorbed into Russia - win for Putin
Acquiring only the Donbass wouldn't be such a triumph when you consider the initial war aim was to take the whole country.
Yes, well, too bad. Although I share some of the scepticism about Ukrainian nationalist ultras, I think it's entirely legitimate for the West not to want a clear Putin victory to emerge from the invasion. We need to show that invasion doesn't pay, without encouraging the "every inch of Donbas and Crimea must be Ukrainian" camp. Offering a deal with 2) or 3), backed up by a NATO presence in Ukraine to make further incursion=World War 3, seems to me better than encouraging Ukraine to fight for years. Ukraine isn't monolithic, and as long as we say we'll keep supplying more and better weapons until they win, it squeezes out those who would be willing to settle for roughly current lines.
Some say Putin wouldn't accept that. OK, then the war continues until he or his successors see sense, but the West needs a strategy for a deal which is more than carrying on indefinitely. Otherwise the ultras on both sides have no incentive to even negotiate.
Assume this IS what happens - the war ends with Russia gaining Crimea and the Donbass, the remainder of Ukraine secured by NATO membership. You then have to ask the question: if Putin had known this at the start would he still have ordered the invasion?
The answer you want is "No". Because if it's "Yes" it means the aggression has paid off. That's how I think whether Putin has a "win" or not should be assessed. Is the outcome such that if he'd have known it at the start he'd still have gone ahead? The answer needs to be that he wouldn't have.
Russia will not accept the remainder of ukraine in NATO. So thats a non starter.
Not a "win" then. Therefore meets the criteria for being a starter.
If your policy platform can’t cope with the fact that the people in your target audience don’t like it & act against it then it’s not much of a policy platform is it?
Politics is the art of the possible after all: It doesn’t matter why your policy turned out to be impossible, if you continue to jump up and down screaming that you were right all along & the people were wrong then you just end up looking like a deranged toddler. Truss failed to carry a crucial set of people with her*, so her policy platform failed dismally & that is why she was a failure as a politician, not because there was some deep state campaign against her.
* gilt buyers.
But this was the point made earlier. Truss "learned the lesson of Brexit" which was that it doesn't matter if your policy platform is utter shit, do it anyway...
And that's why she still can't understand why it didn't work.
Could she have clung on if wasn't for that night of piss drenched neurotic chaos over the fracking vote? I can't recall the exact sequence of events because it all seems like a laudanum fuelled delerium now but she had already ditched her stupid tax bollocks by then.
maybe she could have, but it was clear for that last week she was away with the fairies
Valuable PMQ question from Sarah Olney. Of interest to @Cyclefree perhaps.
About raped women told that reading the trial transcript will help them come to terms with the experience, then told that getting the Transcript will cost £10-20k.
The system for accessing trial transcripts (they are recorded as audio) is an expensive, commercialised mess. I have run into this trying to factcheck partial reports of vehicle collisions in media.
Perhaps the way with this is to make the bookmarked audio available for free or a nominal price.
One thing about Kyiv is that they do always thank us for our support. Israel OTOH seems to EXPECT it.
And always on their own terms. He who pays the piper etc etc....
I'm not suggesting you should conduct geopolitics on the basis of manners, but a statement along the lines of "We've spoken.. foreign secretary and ... grateful and thank... support of the RAF" somewhere in there wouldn't be amiss.
Daniel Szeligowski's tweet[1] commentary on this article[2]
The article authors "...Charap & Radchenko rely heavily on the *Western* sources, but these were interesting times when our Western colleagues found themselves not being really in the loop, although they happily provide you with some post-factum interpretation today,
PART 1
We were never close to any deal. Russia never negotiated in good faith.
Moscow sent a delegation that was composed of the most anti-Ukrainian officials you can imagine. Their goal was to present the Ukrainian side with an ultimatum, not to *negotiate*. The Russian delegation is led by Vladimir Medinsky, a Russian imperialist, author of Putin's speeches on Ukraine, who despises the Ukrainians. Speaks pretty much about Putin's attitude towards the negotiations with Ukraine. During the talks, the Russian officials issued threats against members of the Ukrainian delegation and their families. This pretty tells you what the Russian attitude was at that particular time. While still in Belarus, the Russian delegation openly suggested to the Ukrainian delegation that they declare capitulation. Ukrainians responded with a now legendary sentence: иди на хуй (roughly: f* off).
The talks moved to Turkey then. On the plane, members of the Ukrainian delegation had symptoms of poisoning. Later on, test results proved an unknown chemical substance in the body of now Ukraine's Defence Minister, Rustem Umerov. Russians "sent a message" - we can get you.
Daniel Szeligowski's tweet[1] commentary on this article[2]
The article authors "...Charap & Radchenko rely heavily on the *Western* sources, but these were interesting times when our Western colleagues found themselves not being really in the loop, although they happily provide you with some post-factum interpretation today,
PART 1
We were never close to any deal. Russia never negotiated in good faith.
Moscow sent a delegation that was composed of the most anti-Ukrainian officials you can imagine. Their goal was to present the Ukrainian side with an ultimatum, not to *negotiate*. The Russian delegation is led by Vladimir Medinsky, a Russian imperialist, author of Putin's speeches on Ukraine, who despises the Ukrainians. Speaks pretty much about Putin's attitude towards the negotiations with Ukraine. During the talks, the Russian officials issued threats against members of the Ukrainian delegation and their families. This pretty tells you what the Russian attitude was at that particular time. While still in Belarus, the Russian delegation openly suggested to the Ukrainian delegation that they declare capitulation. Ukrainians responded with a now legendary sentence: иди на хуй (roughly: f* off).
The talks moved to Turkey then. On the plane, members of the Ukrainian delegation had symptoms of poisoning. Later on, test results proved an unknown chemical substance in the body of now Ukraine's Defence Minister, Rustem Umerov. Russians "sent a message" - we can get you.
PART 2
Russia never abandoned its maximalist goal.
Realising that the plan to seize Kyiv "in three days" had failed, Moscow wanted to subjugate Ukraine at the negotiating table, but missed the moment when the fortune turned in favour of Ukraine and they were thrown out from Kyiv region. Unlike our Western colleagues, Poland believed from the beginning that the Russians were bluffing and so we advised accordingly our Ukrainian friends. We were in a pretty comfortable position to do it, since Polish SOF provided security for the Ukrainian delegation. Yes, Ukraine was ready to make concessions, but they were conditional on western security guarantees, which the West was ultimately not ready to give (one reason was that our western colleagues simply did not know much about the talks as such). The talks collapsed because the Russians never negotiated seriously, and so they did not show due flexibility (contrary to what Charap and Radchenko claim). Russia demanded Ukraine's demilitarisation and aimed at sanctioning of Russian influence over Ukrainian domestic.
Daniel Szeligowski's tweet[1] commentary on this article[2]
The article authors "...Charap & Radchenko rely heavily on the *Western* sources, but these were interesting times when our Western colleagues found themselves not being really in the loop, although they happily provide you with some post-factum interpretation today,
PART 1
We were never close to any deal. Russia never negotiated in good faith.
Moscow sent a delegation that was composed of the most anti-Ukrainian officials you can imagine. Their goal was to present the Ukrainian side with an ultimatum, not to *negotiate*. The Russian delegation is led by Vladimir Medinsky, a Russian imperialist, author of Putin's speeches on Ukraine, who despises the Ukrainians. Speaks pretty much about Putin's attitude towards the negotiations with Ukraine. During the talks, the Russian officials issued threats against members of the Ukrainian delegation and their families. This pretty tells you what the Russian attitude was at that particular time. While still in Belarus, the Russian delegation openly suggested to the Ukrainian delegation that they declare capitulation. Ukrainians responded with a now legendary sentence: иди на хуй (roughly: f* off).
The talks moved to Turkey then. On the plane, members of the Ukrainian delegation had symptoms of poisoning. Later on, test results proved an unknown chemical substance in the body of now Ukraine's Defence Minister, Rustem Umerov. Russians "sent a message" - we can get you.
PART 2
Russia never abandoned its maximalist goal.
Realising that the plan to seize Kyiv "in three days" had failed, Moscow wanted to subjugate Ukraine at the negotiating table, but missed the moment when the fortune turned in favour of Ukraine and they were thrown out from Kyiv region. Unlike our Western colleagues, Poland believed from the beginning that the Russians were bluffing and so we advised accordingly our Ukrainian friends. We were in a pretty comfortable position to do it, since Polish SOF provided security for the Ukrainian delegation. Yes, Ukraine was ready to make concessions, but they were conditional on western security guarantees, which the West was ultimately not ready to give (one reason was that our western colleagues simply did not know much about the talks as such). The talks collapsed because the Russians never negotiated seriously, and so they did not show due flexibility (contrary to what Charap and Radchenko claim). Russia demanded Ukraine's demilitarisation and aimed at sanctioning of Russian influence over Ukrainian domestic.
PART 3
And then Bucha came.
The scale of Russian crimes was so huge that it shocked even the Polish side (which, after all, has experienced Russian atrocities itself). Further talks with Russia were simply no-go for Zelensky, especially that Russian troops were already on defensive. Ever since, Russians have argued that an agreement with Ukraine was close, but the West intervened, notably Boris Johnson, whom Russia accused of forcing Ukraine to abandon the negotiations. This bears no relation to reality, of course, but somehow still resonates with many of the Western decision-makers and their pundits..."
Valuable PMQ question from Sarah Olney. Of interest to @Cyclefree perhaps.
About raped women told that reading the trial transcript will help them come to terms with the experience, then told that getting the Transcript will cost £10-20k.
The system for accessing trial transcripts (they are recorded as audio) is an expensive, commercialised mess. I have run into this trying to factcheck partial reports of vehicle collisions in media.
Perhaps the way with this is to make the bookmarked audio available for free or a nominal price.
Is it me or does Netanyahu come across as a bit ungrateful to David Cameron for the RAF support we provided to shoot down Iranian missiles heading toward Tel Aviv ?
Would it have been the a similar tone with Blinken ?
There are a lot of ways that could have gone wrong and been colossal political pain in the dick for Big Rish but Nutteryahu doesn't seem to give a fuck. Mid-air collision, blue on blue or an uncontained engine failure could have killed the crew or worse, not killed them and left them on the ground in the desert in the hands of bearded castration enthusiasts.
If the US (ie the Republicans) remember their duty then Ukraine will win. If not then Russia will grind them into submission.
Why is the territorial integrity of Ukraine the "duty" of the US tax payer?
Anybody depending on the enduring commitment of the US to the cause was always heading for disappointment.
Now now, you'll be being accused of being a Putinist again.
Ah Didn't you jut refer to Ukrainian 'Ultras' on the previous thread?
I did, we used to have a few here. Indeed some were outlining the exact terms for this conflict to end and nothing else would be acceptable. We do not have them here anymore. They seem to have found something else to spend time on.
There are only two ways this ends. Either Russia is forced to abandon its effort to defeat Ukraine, or Ukraine is defeated.
The 'terms' which accompany the first option won't be decided unless it happens. As for the second, we will have no say in them anyway.
I think it is in our interest to support Ukraine for a myriad of reasons however I can only see a ceasefire on current lines as the best option here.
We need to keep supporting Ukraine. However I suspect the desire to do this in the west is declining, especially with Israel pre-occupying peoples thoughts.
So basically you are now a Putinist troll. We see you.
The problem is there are lots of people who seem to want Putin to win, and for Russia to gain more power at the expense of liberalism, democracy and freedom. These people are often indistinguishable from people who screech 'peace!' whilst sharing pro-Russian propaganda, or those who want peace at any price.
The line between them can be so thin as to be nonexistent.
I don't want Putin to win. The problem with the Ukraine Ultras here is the Donald Rumsfeld/Dubya mindset. You are either with them 100% or against them.
Please can you define
1) Win for Putin 2) Draw 3) Win for Ukraine
Genuine question.
i Well, 3 possible outcomes - 1) the Donbass becomes like the "Serb entity" - autonomy within Ukraine but no right to secede - win for Ukraine 2) the Donbass becomes like Turkish Northern Cyprus - an unofficial country of its own - draw 3) the Donbass absorbed into Russia - win for Putin
Acquiring only the Donbass wouldn't be such a triumph when you consider the initial war aim was to take the whole country.
Yes, well, too bad. Although I share some of the scepticism about Ukrainian nationalist ultras, I think it's entirely legitimate for the West not to want a clear Putin victory to emerge from the invasion. We need to show that invasion doesn't pay, without encouraging the "every inch of Donbas and Crimea must be Ukrainian" camp. Offering a deal with 2) or 3), backed up by a NATO presence in Ukraine to make further incursion=World War 3, seems to me better than encouraging Ukraine to fight for years. Ukraine isn't monolithic, and as long as we say we'll keep supplying more and better weapons until they win, it squeezes out those who would be willing to settle for roughly current lines.
Some say Putin wouldn't accept that. OK, then the war continues until he or his successors see sense, but the West needs a strategy for a deal which is more than carrying on indefinitely. Otherwise the ultras on both sides have no incentive to even negotiate.
"Ukrainian nationalist ultras,"
That says more about you than the target of the comment.
The problem with the "NATO presence in Ukraine" argument is that Putin will see that he has already beaten NATO; politically, not militarily. He will see that it is easy to subvert democracy in the west; and therefore the NATO threat is a hollow one. All he needs are a few more people like Orban, or preferably Trump.
The problem with appeasers is that they forget the past.
If the US (ie the Republicans) remember their duty then Ukraine will win. If not then Russia will grind them into submission.
Why is the territorial integrity of Ukraine the "duty" of the US tax payer?
Anybody depending on the enduring commitment of the US to the cause was always heading for disappointment.
Now now, you'll be being accused of being a Putinist again.
Didn't you jut refer to Ukrainian 'Ultras' on the previous thread?
I did, we used to have a few here. Indeed some were outlining the exact terms for this conflict to end and nothing else would be acceptable. We do not have them here anymore. They seem to have found something else to spend time on.
There are only two ways this ends. Either Russia is forced to abandon its effort to defeat Ukraine, or Ukraine is defeated.
The 'terms' which accompany the first option won't be decided unless it happens. As for the second, we will have no say in them anyway.
I think it is in our interest to support Ukraine for a myriad of reasons however I can only see a ceasefire on current lines as the best option here.
We need to keep supporting Ukraine. However I suspect the desire to do this in the west is declining, especially with Israel pre-occupying peoples thoughts.
So basically you are now a Putinist troll. We see you.
The problem is there are lots of people who seem to want Putin to win, and for Russia to gain more power at the expense of liberalism, democracy and freedom. These people are often indistinguishable from people who screech 'peace!' whilst sharing pro-Russian propaganda, or those who want peace at any price.
The line between them can be so thin as to be nonexistent.
I don't want Putin to win. The problem with the Ukraine Ultras here is the Donald Rumsfeld/Dubya mindset. You are either with them 100% or against them.
Please can you define
1) Win for Putin 2) Draw 3) Win for Ukraine
Genuine question.
i Well, 3 possible outcomes - 1) the Donbass becomes like the "Serb entity" - autonomy within Ukraine but no right to secede - win for Ukraine 2) the Donbass becomes like Turkish Northern Cyprus - an unofficial country of its own - draw 3) the Donbass absorbed into Russia - win for Putin
Acquiring only the Donbass wouldn't be such a triumph when you consider the initial war aim was to take the whole country.
Yes, well, too bad. Although I share some of the scepticism about Ukrainian nationalist ultras, I think it's entirely legitimate for the West not to want a clear Putin victory to emerge from the invasion. We need to show that invasion doesn't pay, without encouraging the "every inch of Donbas and Crimea must be Ukrainian" camp. Offering a deal with 2) or 3), backed up by a NATO presence in Ukraine to make further incursion=World War 3, seems to me better than encouraging Ukraine to fight for years. Ukraine isn't monolithic, and as long as we say we'll keep supplying more and better weapons until they win, it squeezes out those who would be willing to settle for roughly current lines.
Some say Putin wouldn't accept that. OK, then the war continues until he or his successors see sense, but the West needs a strategy for a deal which is more than carrying on indefinitely. Otherwise the ultras on both sides have no incentive to even negotiate.
Assume this IS what happens - the war ends with Russia gaining Crimea and the Donbass, the remainder of Ukraine secured by NATO membership. You then have to ask the question: if Putin had known this at the start would he still have ordered the invasion?
The answer you want is "No". Because if it's "Yes" it means the aggression has paid off. That's how I think whether Putin has a "win" or not should be assessed. Is the outcome such that if he'd have known it at the start he'd still have gone ahead? The answer needs to be that he wouldn't have.
Russia will not accept the remainder of ukraine in NATO. So thats a non starter.
Russia may not have an option and may end up forcing something to happen they never wanted.
They've already forced Sweden and Finland into NATO. Starting the full scale war in Ukraine has been a disaster for Russia.
Arriving at work now, but a final thought on the smoking/vaping legislation - it is a combination of unnecessarily strict and completely ineffective:
- It focusses solely on the sale of tobacco in the UK. So it is as strict on vaping as it is cigarettes. - It does not make smoking illegal for anyone, so no one can stop a young person smoking or allow the police to question where they got them from. It's perfectly legal for them to buy cigarettes or vapes abroad and bring them into the UK, or be gifted them from someone older. - The above fact means it will simply encourage the small-time black market and reduce taxation from tobacco.
So even if you support its goals it's a pretty crap piece of legislation.
I do support its goals and would like to see smoking disappear altogether. But I genuinely don't quite understand how shopkeepers are supposed to police it as the age limit rises into the 20s and 30s. Will a 33-year-old be required to prove he's not a 32-year-old? I suppose it's possible that we'll all need to carry proof of age in due course and we'd get used to it as teenagers do now.
The BBC report seems quite sympathetic.
I think Nudge can have value, as can softer edged enforcement. I think the concern about "what about telling the difference between an X year old and an X+1 year old" may be overdone in practice. It gives a time to adapt, as when stopping smoking is not easy to go from Zero to Hero in one jump.
I think a softer edged change - as a nudge which gradually goes into stronger enforcement over a period of years - may be one way of gradually ramping the reform in.
A 33 year old is tricky to tell from a 32 year old, but the practice in many shops for alcohol is to challenge "those who our staff think may be under 25" rather than trying to tell (say) a 17 year old from an 18 year old. There's no reason why the same approach cannot be used here - and before long it will be "no one under 30 can purchase tobacco", when teens will be clearly identifiable.
Do I think it will work? Not sure, and I'd like to hear of any alternative proposals.
@Ratters first point seems strange - how does regulation of sale of tobacco affect vaping, which aiui only carries the nicotine across, not the tobacco?
Mr Sunak is overegging the "unique contribution to public health" claims. There are plenty of other things that need to be done - UK law for example pretty uniquely in Europe permits seriously alcohol impaired driving, and we have had strong evidence of that for many years - yet Sunak and our last 10 or 15 roads ministers have ignored that major public health issue. The same goes for the behaviour of young male drivers, who are a far greater risk to the public than others, including young female drivers.
Given that the prefrontal cortex doesn’t develop fully until the mid twenties, there is a case for raising the minimum driving age to 25, or at least prohibiting under 25s from carrying passengers. I wonder if smoking was banned until people were 25, how many would start smoking after 25?
IMO it would need a graduated introduction of the driving license over a period of several years, and perhaps a different regime for women and men. That latter would make it crystal clear that the problem is mainly young men, not young women.
At the moment Transport Ministers think that trying to improve Road Safety is somehow "anti-driver", which imo is just another delusional political lie they are telling themselves; it will vanish into the dustbin of history with this Government.
All very positive, but how would you deal with self-ID?
In practice, I think it would have to be age - or time since licence obtained - based, given what - if IRRC - we saw with insurance. In fact, time since licence gained might be more defensible* and would also put restrictions on those who lost licences for various reasons (might be better in some cases to have a shorter ban and then graduated return rather than current ban and then back to doing whatever you like).
*it's partly age, but also partly experience - I got my licence at age 17, but drove very little until I bought a car after uni aged 21. I was a pretty crap driver for a while until I got more experience, probably worse than when I'd just passed my test. Of course, time since licence or age both probably wouldn't help with my case.
Self-ID is a rounding error, and probably manageable, and perhaps gets far more attention that it deserves.
In the 2021 census 0.5% of adult over 16 answered "no" to " “Is the gender you identify with the same as your sex registered at birth?”.
Gender Change surgery is an even smaller rounding error - at approximately one person per day, or ~350 per annum *, on the latest figures I can find.
(* This is the Daily Mail having kittens in 2023 about how MANY it is.)
So an exception procedure should do it if we distinguish between sexes.
Another way would be progressive hazard perception tests applied to all, for example, if the men whine too much.
I span my parent's family car off a frosty roundabout at 17 and 8 months. My sister did the same to my first car 5 days after I bought it due to snow inexperience; she was 18.
I agree about graduated returns from bans - I'm a fan of indeterminate bans with proof of mental health required before driving privileges are earned back.
The self-ID question was not a genuine enquiry, if I'm honest. Just trying to reignite the trans debate and cause trouble.
Agree on the rest.
If you want to cause trouble… I think there’s a parallel between vaping and puberty blockers. The Cass review discusses at length the limited evidence base for puberty blockers. Vaping seems to be safer than smoking, but again we lack long-term evidence.
True. So we should follow the Cass Review and ban vaping except as part of research studies? Afterall, any denied blockers vapes can simply smoke, right?
On a serious point, the NHS Smoking Reduction Programme treats vaping as a stage, and then encourage stopping of vaping.
Since smoking amongst adults reduced from 22.2% to 12.9% between 2011 and 2022, that seems to be working.
The group where smoking is at risk of increasing is 20s/30s, so increased restrictions on turning vapes into a product targeted at children also seem rational.
I am a liberal. I think people should be free. Sunak's smoking proposals are a restriction on people's freedoms to buy cigarettes. So, why support them?
Most people who smoke want to give up. That's because nicotine is astonishingly addictive. Most people smoking are doing something they would rather not be doing, because they are compelled by their addiction. That is a restriction on people's freedoms. We increase liberty by banning an addictive drug.
Social media is also astonishingly addictive. Maybe it also needs to be banned.
Why are ecstasy and mushrooms banned? There could be huge social and economic benefits to regulating them.
Less likely from mushrooms (as long as you pick the right ones)
Drug testing in the Netherlands seems to have eliminated Ecstasy related deaths - which were associated with contaminants, wildly varying dosages and pills simply being other drugs.
Valuable PMQ question from Sarah Olney. Of interest to @Cyclefree perhaps.
About raped women told that reading the trial transcript will help them come to terms with the experience, then told that getting the Transcript will cost £10-20k.
The system for accessing trial transcripts (they are recorded as audio) is an expensive, commercialised mess. I have run into this trying to factcheck partial reports of vehicle collisions in media.
Perhaps the way with this is to make the bookmarked audio available for free or a nominal price.
Isn't fair access to trial transcripts a vital part of all justice? If someone were to appeal their sentence, surely they would need access to the transcripts, and that cost is one heck of a barrier. Or do people appealing get the transcripts at a cheaper rate?
One thing about Kyiv is that they do always thank us for our support. Israel OTOH seems to EXPECT it.
And always on their own terms. He who pays the piper etc etc....
I'm not suggesting you should conduct geopolitics on the basis of manners, but a statement along the lines of "We've spoken.. foreign secretary and ... grateful and thank... support of the RAF" somewhere in there wouldn't be amiss.
Is this the first time you have ever encountered Bibi? He doesn’t need to kiss Cameron's ample arse because he knows the UK would do it again tomorrow so why bother with bullshit niceties.
Is it me or does Netanyahu come across as a bit ungrateful to David Cameron for the RAF support we provided to shoot down Iranian missiles heading toward Tel Aviv ?
Would it have been the a similar tone with Blinken ?
Entirely possible he would take a similar tone right now. He seems to have decided he’ll just do what he wants now and hope that the West will just have to back him up.
If the US (ie the Republicans) remember their duty then Ukraine will win. If not then Russia will grind them into submission.
Why is the territorial integrity of Ukraine the "duty" of the US tax payer?
Anybody depending on the enduring commitment of the US to the cause was always heading for disappointment.
Now now, you'll be being accused of being a Putinist again.
Ah Didn't you jut refer to Ukrainian 'Ultras' on the previous thread?
I did, we used to have a few here. Indeed some were outlining the exact terms for this conflict to end and nothing else would be acceptable. We do not have them here anymore. They seem to have found something else to spend time on.
There are only two ways this ends. Either Russia is forced to abandon its effort to defeat Ukraine, or Ukraine is defeated.
The 'terms' which accompany the first option won't be decided unless it happens. As for the second, we will have no say in them anyway.
I think it is in our interest to support Ukraine for a myriad of reasons however I can only see a ceasefire on current lines as the best option here.
We need to keep supporting Ukraine. However I suspect the desire to do this in the west is declining, especially with Israel pre-occupying peoples thoughts.
So basically you are now a Putinist troll. We see you.
The problem is there are lots of people who seem to want Putin to win, and for Russia to gain more power at the expense of liberalism, democracy and freedom. These people are often indistinguishable from people who screech 'peace!' whilst sharing pro-Russian propaganda, or those who want peace at any price.
The line between them can be so thin as to be nonexistent.
I don't want Putin to win. The problem with the Ukraine Ultras here is the Donald Rumsfeld/Dubya mindset. You are either with them 100% or against them.
Please can you define
1) Win for Putin 2) Draw 3) Win for Ukraine
Genuine question.
i Well, 3 possible outcomes - 1) the Donbass becomes like the "Serb entity" - autonomy within Ukraine but no right to secede - win for Ukraine 2) the Donbass becomes like Turkish Northern Cyprus - an unofficial country of its own - draw 3) the Donbass absorbed into Russia - win for Putin
Acquiring only the Donbass wouldn't be such a triumph when you consider the initial war aim was to take the whole country.
Yes, well, too bad. Although I share some of the scepticism about Ukrainian nationalist ultras, I think it's entirely legitimate for the West not to want a clear Putin victory to emerge from the invasion. We need to show that invasion doesn't pay, without encouraging the "every inch of Donbas and Crimea must be Ukrainian" camp. Offering a deal with 2) or 3), backed up by a NATO presence in Ukraine to make further incursion=World War 3, seems to me better than encouraging Ukraine to fight for years. Ukraine isn't monolithic, and as long as we say we'll keep supplying more and better weapons until they win, it squeezes out those who would be willing to settle for roughly current lines.
Some say Putin wouldn't accept that. OK, then the war continues until he or his successors see sense, but the West needs a strategy for a deal which is more than carrying on indefinitely. Otherwise the ultras on both sides have no incentive to even negotiate.
"Ukrainian nationalist ultras,"
That says more about you than the target of the comment.
The problem with the "NATO presence in Ukraine" argument is that Putin will see that he has already beaten NATO; politically, not militarily. He will see that it is easy to subvert democracy in the west; and therefore the NATO threat is a hollow one. All he needs are a few more people like Orban, or preferably Trump.
The problem with appeasers is that they forget the past.
Can someone define "Palestinian nationalist ultras" ? Can someone define "Irish nationalist ultras" ?
I am a liberal. I think people should be free. Sunak's smoking proposals are a restriction on people's freedoms to buy cigarettes. So, why support them?
Most people who smoke want to give up. That's because nicotine is astonishingly addictive. Most people smoking are doing something they would rather not be doing, because they are compelled by their addiction. That is a restriction on people's freedoms. We increase liberty by banning an addictive drug.
Social media is also astonishingly addictive. Maybe it also needs to be banned.
Why are ecstasy and mushrooms banned? There could be huge social and economic benefits to regulating them.
Less likely from mushrooms (as long as you pick the right ones)
Drug testing in the Netherlands seems to have eliminated Ecstasy related deaths - which were associated with contaminants, wildly varying dosages and pills simply being other drugs.
Which strongly suggests that legalised and regulated sale would have a similar effect.
I think you are probably right with this, however I think ecstasy is still a pretty dangerous drug to take.
David Nutt's point about horse riding is germane. Plenty die or are paralysed riding horses each year but we don't ban it. Should people be allowed to take the chance on regulated, QC passed ecstasy? Probably. Mushrooms I'd argue definitely.
One thing about Kyiv is that they do always thank us for our support. Israel OTOH seems to EXPECT it.
And always on their own terms. He who pays the piper etc etc....
I'm not suggesting you should conduct geopolitics on the basis of manners, but a statement along the lines of "We've spoken.. foreign secretary and ... grateful and thank... support of the RAF" somewhere in there wouldn't be amiss.
He knows that we're doing it to be relevant to the US.
Valuable PMQ question from Sarah Olney. Of interest to @Cyclefree perhaps.
About raped women told that reading the trial transcript will help them come to terms with the experience, then told that getting the Transcript will cost £10-20k.
The system for accessing trial transcripts (they are recorded as audio) is an expensive, commercialised mess. I have run into this trying to factcheck partial reports of vehicle collisions in media.
Perhaps the way with this is to make the bookmarked audio available for free or a nominal price.
Isn't fair access to trial transcripts a vital part of all justice? If someone were to appeal their sentence, surely they would need access to the transcripts, and that cost is one heck of a barrier. Or do people appealing get the transcripts at a cheaper rate?
"In England, justice is open to all—like the Ritz Hotel." Sir James Mathew 1830–1908.
Valuable PMQ question from Sarah Olney. Of interest to @Cyclefree perhaps.
About raped women told that reading the trial transcript will help them come to terms with the experience, then told that getting the Transcript will cost £10-20k.
The system for accessing trial transcripts (they are recorded as audio) is an expensive, commercialised mess. I have run into this trying to factcheck partial reports of vehicle collisions in media.
Perhaps the way with this is to make the bookmarked audio available for free or a nominal price.
Isn't fair access to trial transcripts a vital part of all justice? If someone were to appeal their sentence, surely they would need access to the transcripts, and that cost is one heck of a barrier. Or do people appealing get the transcripts at a cheaper rate?
Is there some reason those who want trial transcripts can’t be given access to the recordings themselves, from which they can make their own transcripts of the parts they want to read?
One thing about Kyiv is that they do always thank us for our support. Israel OTOH seems to EXPECT it.
And always on their own terms. He who pays the piper etc etc....
I'm not suggesting you should conduct geopolitics on the basis of manners, but a statement along the lines of "We've spoken.. foreign secretary and ... grateful and thank... support of the RAF" somewhere in there wouldn't be amiss.
He knows that we're doing it to be relevant to the US.
I'd suggest we don't bother again if Bibi's response is too OTT.
If the US (ie the Republicans) remember their duty then Ukraine will win. If not then Russia will grind them into submission.
Why is the territorial integrity of Ukraine the "duty" of the US tax payer?
Anybody depending on the enduring commitment of the US to the cause was always heading for disappointment.
Now now, you'll be being accused of being a Putinist again.
Didn't you jut refer to Ukrainian 'Ultras' on the previous thread?
I did, we used to have a few here. Indeed some were outlining the exact terms for this conflict to end and nothing else would be acceptable. We do not have them here anymore. They seem to have found something else to spend time on.
There are only two ways this ends. Either Russia is forced to abandon its effort to defeat Ukraine, or Ukraine is defeated.
The 'terms' which accompany the first option won't be decided unless it happens. As for the second, we will have no say in them anyway.
I think it is in our interest to support Ukraine for a myriad of reasons however I can only see a ceasefire on current lines as the best option here.
We need to keep supporting Ukraine. However I suspect the desire to do this in the west is declining, especially with Israel pre-occupying peoples thoughts.
So basically you are now a Putinist troll. We see you.
The problem is there are lots of people who seem to want Putin to win, and for Russia to gain more power at the expense of liberalism, democracy and freedom. These people are often indistinguishable from people who screech 'peace!' whilst sharing pro-Russian propaganda, or those who want peace at any price.
The line between them can be so thin as to be nonexistent.
I don't want Putin to win. The problem with the Ukraine Ultras here is the Donald Rumsfeld/Dubya mindset. You are either with them 100% or against them.
Please can you define
1) Win for Putin 2) Draw 3) Win for Ukraine
Genuine question.
i Well, 3 possible outcomes - 1) the Donbass becomes like the "Serb entity" - autonomy within Ukraine but no right to secede - win for Ukraine 2) the Donbass becomes like Turkish Northern Cyprus - an unofficial country of its own - draw 3) the Donbass absorbed into Russia - win for Putin
There's Crimea too of course. Despite the demographics and history which suggest Crimea is rather less Ukrainian than Donbass, it seems to have been much more militarily vulnerable with narrower supply lines.
History - Crimea is part of Ukraine. The Tartars used to range over the plains to the north until they were penned in. It wasn’t conquered until Catherine the Great’s day. It was only part of Russia for about 200 years.
Demographics - only thanks to mad exile / murder / repopulation by the Russians
Valuable PMQ question from Sarah Olney. Of interest to @Cyclefree perhaps.
About raped women told that reading the trial transcript will help them come to terms with the experience, then told that getting the Transcript will cost £10-20k.
The system for accessing trial transcripts (they are recorded as audio) is an expensive, commercialised mess. I have run into this trying to factcheck partial reports of vehicle collisions in media.
Perhaps the way with this is to make the bookmarked audio available for free or a nominal price.
Isn't fair access to trial transcripts a vital part of all justice? If someone were to appeal their sentence, surely they would need access to the transcripts, and that cost is one heck of a barrier. Or do people appealing get the transcripts at a cheaper rate?
Is there some reason those who want trial transcripts can’t be given access to the recordings themselves, from which they can make their own transcripts of the parts they want to read?
IA (obviously) NAL, but my *guess* would be that the transcripts are potentially less open to interpretation than the actual recordings. But I'm probably very wrong on that.
If the US (ie the Republicans) remember their duty then Ukraine will win. If not then Russia will grind them into submission.
Why is the territorial integrity of Ukraine the "duty" of the US tax payer?
Anybody depending on the enduring commitment of the US to the cause was always heading for disappointment.
Now now, you'll be being accused of being a Putinist again.
Didn't you jut refer to Ukrainian 'Ultras' on the previous thread?
I did, we used to have a few here. Indeed some were outlining the exact terms for this conflict to end and nothing else would be acceptable. We do not have them here anymore. They seem to have found something else to spend time on.
There are only two ways this ends. Either Russia is forced to abandon its effort to defeat Ukraine, or Ukraine is defeated.
The 'terms' which accompany the first option won't be decided unless it happens. As for the second, we will have no say in them anyway.
I think it is in our interest to support Ukraine for a myriad of reasons however I can only see a ceasefire on current lines as the best option here.
We need to keep supporting Ukraine. However I suspect the desire to do this in the west is declining, especially with Israel pre-occupying peoples thoughts.
So basically you are now a Putinist troll. We see you.
The problem is there are lots of people who seem to want Putin to win, and for Russia to gain more power at the expense of liberalism, democracy and freedom. These people are often indistinguishable from people who screech 'peace!' whilst sharing pro-Russian propaganda, or those who want peace at any price.
The line between them can be so thin as to be nonexistent.
I don't want Putin to win. The problem with the Ukraine Ultras here is the Donald Rumsfeld/Dubya mindset. You are either with them 100% or against them.
Please can you define
1) Win for Putin 2) Draw 3) Win for Ukraine
Genuine question.
i Well, 3 possible outcomes - 1) the Donbass becomes like the "Serb entity" - autonomy within Ukraine but no right to secede - win for Ukraine 2) the Donbass becomes like Turkish Northern Cyprus - an unofficial country of its own - draw 3) the Donbass absorbed into Russia - win for Putin
Barring some unforeseen deterioration in the RF military situation I don't think 3 is enough to declare victory and halt the SMO. They need to get Odessa to make it seem worthwhile.
They would like regime change in Kiev to one not based around a quiz team but that situation is harder to influence since Green T-Shirt has cancelled elections and gone a bit caudillo.
How many general elections did the UK have between 1935 and 1945?
Would you have criticised the national government for that?
Valuable PMQ question from Sarah Olney. Of interest to @Cyclefree perhaps.
About raped women told that reading the trial transcript will help them come to terms with the experience, then told that getting the Transcript will cost £10-20k.
The system for accessing trial transcripts (they are recorded as audio) is an expensive, commercialised mess. I have run into this trying to factcheck partial reports of vehicle collisions in media.
Perhaps the way with this is to make the bookmarked audio available for free or a nominal price.
Isn't fair access to trial transcripts a vital part of all justice? If someone were to appeal their sentence, surely they would need access to the transcripts, and that cost is one heck of a barrier. Or do people appealing get the transcripts at a cheaper rate?
This is the pricing table which applies in some circumstances:
I assume that rape victims would be being quoted the Crown Court rate, which I assume is more expensive.
A folio - 72 words - is presumably about FORTY SECONDS to ONE MINUTE of Court Proceedings. So we are at around £100 to £200 for transcript per hour of court time for OTHER THAN CROWN COURT.
Valuable PMQ question from Sarah Olney. Of interest to @Cyclefree perhaps.
About raped women told that reading the trial transcript will help them come to terms with the experience, then told that getting the Transcript will cost £10-20k.
The system for accessing trial transcripts (they are recorded as audio) is an expensive, commercialised mess. I have run into this trying to factcheck partial reports of vehicle collisions in media.
Perhaps the way with this is to make the bookmarked audio available for free or a nominal price.
Isn't fair access to trial transcripts a vital part of all justice? If someone were to appeal their sentence, surely they would need access to the transcripts, and that cost is one heck of a barrier. Or do people appealing get the transcripts at a cheaper rate?
Is there some reason those who want trial transcripts can’t be given access to the recordings themselves, from which they can make their own transcripts of the parts they want to read?
IA (obviously) NAL, but my *guess* would be that the transcripts are potentially less open to interpretation than the actual recordings. But I'm probably very wrong on that.
An important practical issue, especially as the bare wording might give a different meaning to that understood in open court (from expressions in voice and face, for instance).
I suspect that making transcripts official would open a massive tankerload of worms because everything would have to be validated. Which is impossible when everyone has gone home/to jail etc. And add translations ...
One thing about Kyiv is that they do always thank us for our support. Israel OTOH seems to EXPECT it.
And always on their own terms. He who pays the piper etc etc....
I'm not suggesting you should conduct geopolitics on the basis of manners, but a statement along the lines of "We've spoken.. foreign secretary and ... grateful and thank... support of the RAF" somewhere in there wouldn't be amiss.
Is this the first time you have ever encountered Bibi? He doesn’t need to kiss Cameron's ample arse because he knows the UK would do it again tomorrow so why bother with bullshit niceties.
I am a liberal. I think people should be free. Sunak's smoking proposals are a restriction on people's freedoms to buy cigarettes. So, why support them?
Most people who smoke want to give up. That's because nicotine is astonishingly addictive. Most people smoking are doing something they would rather not be doing, because they are compelled by their addiction. That is a restriction on people's freedoms. We increase liberty by banning an addictive drug.
Social media is also astonishingly addictive. Maybe it also needs to be banned.
Why are ecstasy and mushrooms banned? There could be huge social and economic benefits to regulating them.
Less likely from mushrooms (as long as you pick the right ones)
Drug testing in the Netherlands seems to have eliminated Ecstasy related deaths - which were associated with contaminants, wildly varying dosages and pills simply being other drugs.
Which strongly suggests that legalised and regulated sale would have a similar effect.
I think you are probably right with this, however I think ecstasy is still a pretty dangerous drug to take.
David Nutt's point about horse riding is germane. Plenty die or are paralysed riding horses each year but we don't ban it. Should people be allowed to take the chance on regulated, QC passed ecstasy? Probably. Mushrooms I'd argue definitely.
A pretty dangerous drug on what basis? Toxicity, risk, harm to others? And compared to what, alcohol, caffeine, paracetamol?
As @Malmsbury has shown, ecstasy deaths have been effectively eliminated where quasi-regulation and decriminalisation exists.
One thing about Kyiv is that they do always thank us for our support. Israel OTOH seems to EXPECT it.
And always on their own terms. He who pays the piper etc etc....
I'm not suggesting you should conduct geopolitics on the basis of manners, but a statement along the lines of "We've spoken.. foreign secretary and ... grateful and thank... support of the RAF" somewhere in there wouldn't be amiss.
He knows that we're doing it to be relevant to the US.
The same strategic "thinking" that took us into Iraq.
Valuable PMQ question from Sarah Olney. Of interest to @Cyclefree perhaps.
About raped women told that reading the trial transcript will help them come to terms with the experience, then told that getting the Transcript will cost £10-20k.
The system for accessing trial transcripts (they are recorded as audio) is an expensive, commercialised mess. I have run into this trying to factcheck partial reports of vehicle collisions in media.
Perhaps the way with this is to make the bookmarked audio available for free or a nominal price.
It is yet another way in which the justice system has become pretty much inaccessible to all but the very rich indeed. I have written about some other examples of this in past headers.
It is worth listening to the closing remarks of Sir Anthony Hooper, a retired judge, in the PO Inquiry. He was brought in to chair the mediation scheme following the Second Sight report and became increasingly furious and frustrated with the Post Office.
His remarks are quite emotional, given that he practised at the criminal Bar and was a judge in the Court of Appeal so is hardly innocent of the various ways in which wickedness manifests itself. But he effectively says that the destruction of legal aid has all but destroyed justice for defendants, especially given the relatively low bar for prosecution - something he thinks ought to be looked at again
Valuable PMQ question from Sarah Olney. Of interest to @Cyclefree perhaps.
About raped women told that reading the trial transcript will help them come to terms with the experience, then told that getting the Transcript will cost £10-20k.
The system for accessing trial transcripts (they are recorded as audio) is an expensive, commercialised mess. I have run into this trying to factcheck partial reports of vehicle collisions in media.
Perhaps the way with this is to make the bookmarked audio available for free or a nominal price.
Isn't fair access to trial transcripts a vital part of all justice? If someone were to appeal their sentence, surely they would need access to the transcripts, and that cost is one heck of a barrier. Or do people appealing get the transcripts at a cheaper rate?
Is there some reason those who want trial transcripts can’t be given access to the recordings themselves, from which they can make their own transcripts of the parts they want to read?
IA (obviously) NAL, but my *guess* would be that the transcripts are potentially less open to interpretation than the actual recordings. But I'm probably very wrong on that.
An important practical issue, especially as the bare wording might give a different meaning to that understood in open court (from expressions in voice and face, for instance).
I suspect that making transcripts official would open a massive tankerload of worms because everything would have to be validated. Which is impossible when everyone has gone home/to jail etc. And add translations ...
I think the answer is probably some version of take out the middleman and make the audio available at a nominal price, maybe for personal / private study / research use, and have stronger requirements including transcripts if it is to be used in an official proceeding.
I would suggest that for a victim, audio is more appropriate anyway.
The charging structure, which I assume is machine transcription plus a (possibly simultaneous) check, punishes the first person wanting a transcript.
At present it smells of screwing the people who needs transcripts to reduce Govt costs very slightly.
Valuable PMQ question from Sarah Olney. Of interest to @Cyclefree perhaps.
About raped women told that reading the trial transcript will help them come to terms with the experience, then told that getting the Transcript will cost £10-20k.
The system for accessing trial transcripts (they are recorded as audio) is an expensive, commercialised mess. I have run into this trying to factcheck partial reports of vehicle collisions in media.
Perhaps the way with this is to make the bookmarked audio available for free or a nominal price.
Isn't fair access to trial transcripts a vital part of all justice? If someone were to appeal their sentence, surely they would need access to the transcripts, and that cost is one heck of a barrier. Or do people appealing get the transcripts at a cheaper rate?
This is the pricing table which applies in some circumstances:
I assume that rape victims would be being quoted the Crown Court rate, which I assume is more expensive.
A folio - 72 words - is presumably about FORTY SECONDS to ONE MINUTE of Court Proceedings. So we are at around £100 to £200 for transcript per hour of court time for OTHER THAN CROWN COURT.
"Although AI technology is available, the most recent pilots to test voice-to-text technology do not demonstrate sufficient accuracy—an element that is crucial where criminal trial records are concerned."
I expect those companies above probably just run the audio through AI speech to text anyway and then have someone read the script to correct errors. But because it's not officially "AI" it's OK..
Valuable PMQ question from Sarah Olney. Of interest to @Cyclefree perhaps.
About raped women told that reading the trial transcript will help them come to terms with the experience, then told that getting the Transcript will cost £10-20k.
The system for accessing trial transcripts (they are recorded as audio) is an expensive, commercialised mess. I have run into this trying to factcheck partial reports of vehicle collisions in media.
Perhaps the way with this is to make the bookmarked audio available for free or a nominal price.
Isn't fair access to trial transcripts a vital part of all justice? If someone were to appeal their sentence, surely they would need access to the transcripts, and that cost is one heck of a barrier. Or do people appealing get the transcripts at a cheaper rate?
Is there some reason those who want trial transcripts can’t be given access to the recordings themselves, from which they can make their own transcripts of the parts they want to read?
IA (obviously) NAL, but my *guess* would be that the transcripts are potentially less open to interpretation than the actual recordings. But I'm probably very wrong on that.
An important practical issue, especially as the bare wording might give a different meaning to that understood in open court (from expressions in voice and face, for instance).
I suspect that making transcripts official would open a massive tankerload of worms because everything would have to be validated. Which is impossible when everyone has gone home/to jail etc. And add translations ...
I think the answer is probably some version of take out the middleman and make the audio available at a nominal price.
The charging structure, which I assume is machine transcription plus a (possibly simultaneous) check, punishes the first person wanting a transcript.
At present it smells of screwing the people who needs transcripts to reduce Govt costs very slightly.
If transcripts are only generated from recordings on demand, who pays when, say, an appeal is being heard? Or is a transcript of the original trial not automatically part of related court proceedings?
Valuable PMQ question from Sarah Olney. Of interest to @Cyclefree perhaps.
About raped women told that reading the trial transcript will help them come to terms with the experience, then told that getting the Transcript will cost £10-20k.
The system for accessing trial transcripts (they are recorded as audio) is an expensive, commercialised mess. I have run into this trying to factcheck partial reports of vehicle collisions in media.
Perhaps the way with this is to make the bookmarked audio available for free or a nominal price.
Isn't fair access to trial transcripts a vital part of all justice? If someone were to appeal their sentence, surely they would need access to the transcripts, and that cost is one heck of a barrier. Or do people appealing get the transcripts at a cheaper rate?
Is there some reason those who want trial transcripts can’t be given access to the recordings themselves, from which they can make their own transcripts of the parts they want to read?
IA (obviously) NAL, but my *guess* would be that the transcripts are potentially less open to interpretation than the actual recordings. But I'm probably very wrong on that.
An important practical issue, especially as the bare wording might give a different meaning to that understood in open court (from expressions in voice and face, for instance).
I suspect that making transcripts official would open a massive tankerload of worms because everything would have to be validated. Which is impossible when everyone has gone home/to jail etc. And add translations ...
I think the answer is probably some version of take out the middleman and make the audio available at a nominal price.
The charging structure, which I assume is machine transcription plus a (possibly simultaneous) check, punishes the first person wanting a transcript.
At present it smells of screwing the people who needs transcripts to reduce Govt costs very slightly.
If transcripts are only generated from recordings on demand, who pays when, say, an appeal is being heard? Or is a transcript of the original trial not automatically part of related court proceedings?
If they are generated anyway, then the public are being screwed even harder.
I suggest that the "copy" (photocopy? - 10p to 50p per page) rate applies where something already exists - eg if a second copy is needed.
One thing about Kyiv is that they do always thank us for our support. Israel OTOH seems to EXPECT it.
And always on their own terms. He who pays the piper etc etc....
I'm not suggesting you should conduct geopolitics on the basis of manners, but a statement along the lines of "We've spoken.. foreign secretary and ... grateful and thank... support of the RAF" somewhere in there wouldn't be amiss.
Is this the first time you have ever encountered Bibi? He doesn’t need to kiss Cameron's ample arse because he knows the UK would do it again tomorrow so why bother with bullshit niceties.
Seen any good bits of flying in the SMO?
Su-27 vs MQ-9 over the Black Sea was impressively mental.
One thing about Kyiv is that they do always thank us for our support. Israel OTOH seems to EXPECT it.
And always on their own terms. He who pays the piper etc etc....
I'm not suggesting you should conduct geopolitics on the basis of manners, but a statement along the lines of "We've spoken.. foreign secretary and ... grateful and thank... support of the RAF" somewhere in there wouldn't be amiss.
Is this the first time you have ever encountered Bibi? He doesn’t need to kiss Cameron's ample arse because he knows the UK would do it again tomorrow so why bother with bullshit niceties.
Seen any good bits of flying in the SMO?
Su-27 vs MQ-9 over the Black Sea was impressively mental.
Think he meant to knock the propeller?
Been watching the low level UA helicopters. Surely they will be losing pilots to the ground as they're constantly flying so low?
One thing about Kyiv is that they do always thank us for our support. Israel OTOH seems to EXPECT it.
And always on their own terms. He who pays the piper etc etc....
I'm not suggesting you should conduct geopolitics on the basis of manners, but a statement along the lines of "We've spoken.. foreign secretary and ... grateful and thank... support of the RAF" somewhere in there wouldn't be amiss.
Is this the first time you have ever encountered Bibi? He doesn’t need to kiss Cameron's ample arse because he knows the UK would do it again tomorrow so why bother with bullshit niceties.
Seen any good bits of flying in the SMO?
Su-27 vs MQ-9 over the Black Sea was impressively mental.
Think he meant to knock the propeller?
Been watching the low level UA helicopters. Surely they will be losing pilots to the ground as they're constantly flying so low?
I am a liberal. I think people should be free. Sunak's smoking proposals are a restriction on people's freedoms to buy cigarettes. So, why support them?
Most people who smoke want to give up. That's because nicotine is astonishingly addictive. Most people smoking are doing something they would rather not be doing, because they are compelled by their addiction. That is a restriction on people's freedoms. We increase liberty by banning an addictive drug.
Social media is also astonishingly addictive. Maybe it also needs to be banned.
Why are ecstasy and mushrooms banned? There could be huge social and economic benefits to regulating them.
Less likely from mushrooms (as long as you pick the right ones)
Drug testing in the Netherlands seems to have eliminated Ecstasy related deaths - which were associated with contaminants, wildly varying dosages and pills simply being other drugs.
Which strongly suggests that legalised and regulated sale would have a similar effect.
I think you are probably right with this, however I think ecstasy is still a pretty dangerous drug to take.
David Nutt's point about horse riding is germane. Plenty die or are paralysed riding horses each year but we don't ban it. Should people be allowed to take the chance on regulated, QC passed ecstasy? Probably. Mushrooms I'd argue definitely.
A pretty dangerous drug on what basis? Toxicity, risk, harm to others? And compared to what, alcohol, caffeine, paracetamol?
As @Malmsbury has shown, ecstasy deaths have been effectively eliminated where quasi-regulation and decriminalisation exists.
No time to go into much depth but a cursory flick through web of science suggests enough to be concerned (even if only for safety doing other things after taking MDMA).
I am a liberal. I think people should be free. Sunak's smoking proposals are a restriction on people's freedoms to buy cigarettes. So, why support them?
Most people who smoke want to give up. That's because nicotine is astonishingly addictive. Most people smoking are doing something they would rather not be doing, because they are compelled by their addiction. That is a restriction on people's freedoms. We increase liberty by banning an addictive drug.
Social media is also astonishingly addictive. Maybe it also needs to be banned.
Why are ecstasy and mushrooms banned? There could be huge social and economic benefits to regulating them.
Less likely from mushrooms (as long as you pick the right ones)
Drug testing in the Netherlands seems to have eliminated Ecstasy related deaths - which were associated with contaminants, wildly varying dosages and pills simply being other drugs.
Which strongly suggests that legalised and regulated sale would have a similar effect.
I think you are probably right with this, however I think ecstasy is still a pretty dangerous drug to take.
David Nutt's point about horse riding is germane. Plenty die or are paralysed riding horses each year but we don't ban it. Should people be allowed to take the chance on regulated, QC passed ecstasy? Probably. Mushrooms I'd argue definitely.
A pretty dangerous drug on what basis? Toxicity, risk, harm to others? And compared to what, alcohol, caffeine, paracetamol?
As @Malmsbury has shown, ecstasy deaths have been effectively eliminated where quasi-regulation and decriminalisation exists.
No time to go into much depth but a cursory flick through web of science suggests enough to be concerned (even if only for safety doing other things after taking MDMA).
Er, so like booze, mushrooms or, erm, most other drugs. True, one shouldn't drive or work on building site when loved up, but I guess most of us knew that.
Is it me or does Netanyahu come across as a bit ungrateful to David Cameron for the RAF support we provided to shoot down Iranian missiles heading toward Tel Aviv ?
Would it have been the a similar tone with Blinken ?
There might be a little bit of being playing to the gallery here too - I suspect in certain parts of his coalition there are decidedly ambivalent attitudes to the British given our "split the difference" attitude of the 1930s and 1940s, and he probably has Irgun sympathisers in his core vote.
Comments
https://x.com/JohnRentoul/status/1780571118291628102
This is already making rounds, so I will try to shed some more light on March/April 2022 Ukraine-Russia talks since the article is still far from the point, and because Poland played a much bigger role than anyone is willing to admit publicly
https://twitter.com/dszeligowski/status/1780183950507262201
Politics is the art of the possible after all: It doesn’t matter why your policy turned out to be impossible, if you continue to jump up and down screaming that you were right all along & the people were wrong then you just end up looking like a deranged toddler. Truss failed to carry a crucial set of people with her*, so her policy platform failed dismally & that is why she was a failure as a politician, not because there was some deep state campaign against her.
* gilt buyers.
With my limited intellect/attention span, it confuses me no end
And that's why she still can't understand why it didn't work.
In this case Zelensky aspires to Western democracy. Which makes it even worse - a rough, tough man (and culture) of The Deed* being forced to yield to the forces of decadence.
A theme in HG Wells "The Land Ironclads" is rough tough outdoorsmen being defeated by "a crowd of devitalised townsmen... They're clerks, they're factory hands, they're students, they're civilised men. They can write, they can talk, they can make and do all sorts of things, but they're poor amateurs at war. They've got no physical staying power, and that's the whole thing."
*Note Putin's love of being portrayed as a Man of the Wild, not a city dweller.
If the US aid bill passes, that's far from impossible.
Absent that he's not seriously going to talk anyway.
The answer you want is "No". Because if it's "Yes" it means the aggression has paid off. That's how I think whether Putin has a "win" or not should be assessed. Is the outcome such that if he'd have known it at the start he'd still have gone ahead? The answer needs to be that he wouldn't have.
EDIT: A good part of the slow down of giving weapons to Ukraine is the proclaimed worry that they might use them *too* well. All that naughty sinking the Black Sea fleet etc.
According to Steve Richards, she lost the party so badly she had to appoint Hunt as Chancellor with such a free hand he undid everything she did. She had an idea of what was wrong with the country and a plan on how to fix it. She tried it and failed horribly. As she had no idea on how to proceed at that point and everybody was frightened or disdainful of her, there was no point on keeping her in post.
I have some sympathy with those who say her plan was good. Fine, she can go be an ideologue. It worked for Keith Joseph and Dan Hannan. But to PM you need the gifts to teach, to persuade, and to manage people. She was bad at all of them. She was simply in the wrong job.
Boeing whistleblower says 787 fleet should be grounded
https://thehill.com/homenews/4598076-boeing-whistleblower-says-787-fleet-should-be-grounded/
..The letter outlined problems with the production of the company’s 787 and 777 jets, saying specifically that sections of the fuselage of the 787 Dreamliner are improperly fastened together and could break after thousands of trips...
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/uknews/ed-davey-apologises-to-alan-bates-and-accuses-ex-post-office-bosses-of-lies-on-industrial-scale/ar-BB1lIXtl?ocid=entnewsntp&pc=U531&cvid=5a84ea75d9f64d3d968574c552a29f70&ei=8
Right or wrong (and she was proved wrong), it was the height of hubris to imagine she could conduct such a radical change of policy, against all advice, without any electoral consent.
..We were never close to any deal. Russia never negotiated in good faith. Moscow sent a delegation that was composed of the most anti-Ukrainian officials you can imagine. Their goal was to present the Ukrainian side with an ultimatum, not to *negotiate*.. etc
She also played fast and loose with the electoral cycle and decided a mandate from Tory members gave her the political capital to be radical. Constitutionally she may have been right, but in the real world it didn’t wash. She hadn’t won the battle of ideas.
She is also wrecking whatever goodwill she had left by claiming it was all a deep state conspiracy to bring her down.
It's a step up for Congress, the Speakership, gives him something to do....
Less likely from mushrooms (as long as you pick the right ones)
Would it have been the a similar tone with Blinken ?
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-68833121
https://www.bmj.com/content/365/bmj.l1784
Which strongly suggests that legalised and regulated sale would have a similar effect.
About raped women told that reading the trial transcript will help them come to terms with the experience, then told that getting the Transcript will cost £10-20k.
The system for accessing trial transcripts (they are recorded as audio) is an expensive, commercialised mess. I have run into this trying to factcheck partial reports of vehicle collisions in media.
Perhaps the way with this is to make the bookmarked audio available for free or a nominal price.
https://youtu.be/kB_XBw4gN0U?t=1207
Update: Reasonably positive response from Mr Sunak, but not an immediate complete resolution.
But maybe you just don't know how the US system of government works. Biden wants to send more arms to Ukraine but the House of Representatives is controlled by the Republicans and some of them support Russia.
"The House's exclusive powers include initiating all revenue bills"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_House_of_Representatives
https://www.gov.uk/apply-transcript-court-tribunal-hearing
The article authors "...Charap & Radchenko rely heavily on the *Western* sources, but these were interesting times when our Western colleagues found themselves not being really in the loop, although they happily provide you with some post-factum interpretation today,
PART 1
We were never close to any deal. Russia never negotiated in good faith.
Moscow sent a delegation that was composed of the most anti-Ukrainian officials you can imagine. Their goal was to present the Ukrainian side with an ultimatum, not to *negotiate*. The Russian delegation is led by Vladimir Medinsky, a Russian imperialist, author of Putin's speeches on Ukraine, who despises the Ukrainians. Speaks pretty much about Putin's attitude towards the negotiations with Ukraine. During the talks, the Russian officials issued threats against members of the Ukrainian delegation and their families. This pretty tells you what the Russian attitude was at that particular time. While still in Belarus, the Russian delegation openly suggested to the Ukrainian delegation that they declare capitulation. Ukrainians responded with a now legendary sentence: иди на хуй (roughly: f* off).
The talks moved to Turkey then. On the plane, members of the Ukrainian delegation had symptoms of poisoning. Later on, test results proved an unknown chemical substance in the body of now Ukraine's Defence Minister, Rustem Umerov. Russians "sent a message" - we can get you.
Russia never abandoned its maximalist goal.
Realising that the plan to seize Kyiv "in three days" had failed, Moscow wanted to subjugate Ukraine at the negotiating table, but missed the moment when the fortune turned in favour of Ukraine and they were thrown out from Kyiv region. Unlike our Western colleagues, Poland believed from the beginning that the Russians were bluffing and so we advised accordingly our Ukrainian friends. We were in a pretty comfortable position to do it, since Polish SOF provided security for the Ukrainian delegation. Yes, Ukraine was ready to make concessions, but they were conditional on western security guarantees, which the West was ultimately not ready to give (one reason was that our western colleagues simply did not know much about the talks as such). The talks collapsed because the Russians never negotiated seriously, and so they did not show due flexibility (contrary to what Charap and Radchenko claim). Russia demanded Ukraine's demilitarisation and aimed at sanctioning of Russian influence over Ukrainian domestic.
And then Bucha came.
The scale of Russian crimes was so huge that it shocked even the Polish side (which, after all, has experienced Russian atrocities itself). Further talks with Russia were simply no-go for Zelensky, especially that Russian troops were already on defensive. Ever since, Russians have argued that an agreement with Ukraine was close, but the West intervened, notably Boris Johnson, whom Russia accused of forcing Ukraine to abandon the negotiations. This bears no relation to reality, of course, but somehow still resonates with many of the Western decision-makers and their pundits..."
[1] https://x.com/dszeligowski/status/1780183950507262201
[2] https://www.foreignaffairs.com/ukraine/talks-could-have-ended-war-ukraine
That says more about you than the target of the comment.
The problem with the "NATO presence in Ukraine" argument is that Putin will see that he has already beaten NATO; politically, not militarily. He will see that it is easy to subvert democracy in the west; and therefore the NATO threat is a hollow one. All he needs are a few more people like Orban, or preferably Trump.
The problem with appeasers is that they forget the past.
Starting the full scale war in Ukraine has been a disaster for Russia.
Since smoking amongst adults reduced from 22.2% to 12.9% between 2011 and 2022, that seems to be working.
The group where smoking is at risk of increasing is 20s/30s, so increased restrictions on turning vapes into a product targeted at children also seem rational.
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthandsocialcare/healthandlifeexpectancies/bulletins/adultsmokinghabitsingreatbritain/2022
Can someone define "Irish nationalist ultras" ?
David Nutt's point about horse riding is germane. Plenty die or are paralysed riding horses each year but we don't ban it. Should people be allowed to take the chance on regulated, QC passed ecstasy? Probably. Mushrooms I'd argue definitely.
"In England, justice is open to all—like the Ritz Hotel."
Sir James Mathew 1830–1908.
Demographics - only thanks to mad exile / murder / repopulation by the Russians
Would you have criticised the national government for that?
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/65fd586bf1d3a0001d32ad98/EX107_static_0823v2.pdf
You need to read the Guidance Notes EX107GN before filling in form EX107.
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/65c1ff1663a23d000dc8225a/EX107_GN_0224.pdf
This is the pricing table which applies in some circumstances:
I assume that rape victims would be being quoted the Crown Court rate, which I assume is more expensive.
A folio - 72 words - is presumably about FORTY SECONDS to ONE MINUTE of Court Proceedings. So we are at around £100 to £200 for transcript per hour of court time for OTHER THAN CROWN COURT.
I suspect that making transcripts official would open a massive tankerload of worms because everything would have to be validated. Which is impossible when everyone has gone home/to jail etc. And add translations ...
As @Malmsbury has shown, ecstasy deaths have been effectively eliminated where quasi-regulation and decriminalisation exists.
“A pretty dangerous drug” is quite a claim.
Show your working.
It is worth listening to the closing remarks of Sir Anthony Hooper, a retired judge, in the PO Inquiry. He was brought in to chair the mediation scheme following the Second Sight report and became increasingly furious and frustrated with the Post Office.
His remarks are quite emotional, given that he practised at the criminal Bar and was a judge in the Court of Appeal so is hardly innocent of the various ways in which wickedness manifests itself. But he effectively says that the destruction of legal aid has all but destroyed justice for defendants, especially given the relatively low bar for prosecution - something he thinks ought to be looked at again
It is quite something to hear what he has to say.
The attached article is also interesting - https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/inequalities/2024/03/27/horizon-windrush-grenfell-epistemic-justice/
I may write some more on this. The wider ramifications of what James Arbuthnot and Anthony Hooper had to say are well worth exploring.
I would suggest that for a victim, audio is more appropriate anyway.
The charging structure, which I assume is machine transcription plus a (possibly simultaneous) check, punishes the first person wanting a transcript.
At present it smells of screwing the people who needs transcripts to reduce Govt costs very slightly.
I expect those companies above probably just run the audio through AI speech to text anyway and then have someone read the script to correct errors. But because it's not officially "AI" it's OK..
If transcripts are only generated from recordings on demand, who pays when, say, an appeal is being heard? Or is a transcript of the original trial not automatically part of related court proceedings?
I suggest that the "copy" (photocopy? - 10p to 50p per page) rate applies where something already exists - eg if a second copy is needed.
So, Stoney, ARE you pimping for Putin?
Been watching the low level UA helicopters. Surely they will be losing pilots to the ground as they're constantly flying so low?
NEW THREAD
No time to go into much depth but a cursory flick through web of science suggests enough to be concerned (even if only for safety doing other things after taking MDMA).
There might be a little bit of being playing to the gallery here too - I suspect in certain parts of his coalition there are decidedly ambivalent attitudes to the British given our "split the difference" attitude of the 1930s and 1940s, and he probably has Irgun sympathisers in his core vote.