And deliberately set things up so the final evacuation which would inevitably be chaotic would only happen after the election.
How can Trump control what Biden's team do 18 months after the inauguration? They had time to organise the withdrawal any way they preferred. Cutting and running was a good idea, the fact that it was a lethal fiasco was on the incumbents.
May 2021 (the date Trump’s withdrawal deal took effect) was four months after the inauguration. The withdrawal as the Taliban took Kabul was August - seven months.
Edit - if you check the dates, you will also find significant troop transfers that had not been planned (amounting to around 75% of US forces) happened in November and December 2020.
Incidentally, the only reason I would disagree that withdrawing was the right idea is because I’ve never understood why some people thought the invasion would be a good idea in the first place.
Biden wanted to celebrate the withdrawal on September 11th 2021, and was pushing everything towards that deadline.
That’s why it ended up being such a mess.
America had failed to win the war and peace after 20 years in the country, that's why it ended up being such a mess.
Withdrawals after being defeated are rarely pleasant.
Still, America's mess in Afghanistan is nothing like the mess that Putin has gotten Russia into in Ukraine - that's a whole another level.
The Ukranians are still advancing into Russia, it’s totally nuts.
The Russians are digging trenches around the railways at Lvov, but the Ukranians now have main battle tanks advancing their positions which don’t care much about trenches.
10 days now, and they’ve been totally unable to throw much more than untrained conscripts at the situation, most of which are now PoWs, because we all would be when confronted with an actual enemy army.
I had first assumed that this was some sort of special forces raid that would go and get something close to the border and then extract themselves, but it’s clearly as much of an invasion as we saw in Feb ‘22, just better organised and with reinforcements coming from behind. Oh, and without the indiscriminate killing of civilians. Meanwhile, there’s now 200,000 evacuees in the wider region, that the Russians have to put somewhere.
One of the Russian cope strategies online was to say: "We're slowly advancing in the east of Ukraine whilst our great armoured fist, complete with T-14s and SU-57s, is being prepared for the knockout blow on Kyiv / Kharkiv / Odessa!!!!"
In other words, that Russia had a large force ready to go into Ukraine once they had denuded Ukraine enough.
I think it's now clear that that was utter copium b/s. The Ukrainians may be being denuded, but the Russians have also been. They don't seem to have a great deal spare.
Let's not get ahead of ourselves. The Ukrainians have captured an area about the size of Berkshire. At the same time, they have lost an area the size of England and Wales combined and they seem to be falling back in the south.
Yes, highly embarrassing for Putin. Makes him look stupid. But it comes with significant risks for Ukraine and it's not wholly clear yet what they expect to get from it, never mind will get.
It may put an end to the idea of a stalemated war, Korea Mark 2. But given Russia's size and resources that may not be to Ukraine's advantage.
Ukraine is doing what it can do, not what it wants to do, with its invasion of Kursk. If they hoped to draw Russian troops from Donbas that aim has failed so far. Russia is prioritising its continuing advance in Ukraine over preventing the loss of its own territory in Kursk.
The operation has been a morale booster for Ukraine. This is valuable but as you point out there's a potentially large cost.
Its too early to say it has failed so far, there are already reports of troops going from Donbas to Kursk, but more importantly there's only a finite amount of troops in Donbas and the rate at which Russia is losing them means they need to be continually refreshed.
Now Russia has a major headache, does it send new reinforcements to Kursk or to Donbas. If reinforcements go to Kursk instead of Donbas, then even if no troops leave Donbas, that's still weakening Russia in Donbas.
Plus its "advance" in Donbas is minute and costly. Slowly pulling back while your enemy loses a lot of troops and munitions in a costly grind can be a good strategy.
Sure. My point is a limited one. If the purpose of this invasion was to divert Russian resources to Kursk and away from Donbas, the upshot for now is Ukrainian resources have been diverted and the Russian ones haven't.
I couldn't disagree with you more.
Ukraine isn't sending it elite forces forwards in Donbas, its letting Russia send its troops into the meat grinder and killing them off. So long as Ukraine maintains the ability to grind down what Russia sends at it, then its not diverting its own forces.
And Russia has already sent reinforcements to Kursk (including reinforcements that have already been killed and captured), that's quite potentially already diverting away reinforcements away from Donbas.
Opportunity cost is as real in war as it is in economics and Russia faces that opportunity cost struggle with what to do with reinforcements now. Reinforcements it needs in both places, because Ukraine is successfully grinding down its troops in Donbas, and successfully expanding operations in Kursk.
Ukraine is sending their elite forces into Russia, where they’re encountering a surprisingly limited pushback from the enemy.
By now, those special forces have likely evacuated themselves and are looking at the next undefended Russian border.
Seattle Times - USS Ronald Reagan aircraft carrier docks at Naval Base Kitsap
After nearly a decade deployed in the Indo-Pacific, the U.S. Navy aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan and its thousands of sailors returned to Bremerton’s Naval Base Kitsap on Tuesday.
The base will serve as the home port for the aircraft carrier as it undergoes routine maintenance. . . .
Before arriving in Bremerton [WA], the USS Ronald Reagan had been the Navy’s only aircraft carrier with a home port in a foreign country. The ship departed from Yokosuka, Japan, on May 16, where it had been deployed since 2015.
During its tenure, the aircraft carrier participated in dozens of multilateral exercises and visited more than a dozen foreign ports, including a historic port call in Da Nang, Vietnam, last year. . . .
Friends, family and loved ones greeted more than 2,500 sailors onboard the aircraft carrier. . . .
I went on the Nimitz back around 1975 when it visited the Firth of Forth. Never forgotten that visit. Too big to come into port so we just got a boat ride out there and I had a wander around for an hour or two. All one had to do was to get a ticket from the US Consulate.
Not sure if they'd do that today. Last time I was in Plymouth a US submarine was in dock with orange buoys all around and, presumably, guarded by US people with automatic rifles and LMGs on the territory of the UK.
Back at the beginning of her career, my wife was the Nimitz’s mascot 😊
The US Navy still has bizarre (to my ears) things called Friends and Family Cruises, where they take hundreds of Friends and Family out for the day to sea. Applies to all kinds of USN ships.
Flight operations with thousands of civilians on the flight deck.
I'm sure it does wonders for public engagement, and is to do with a society far more permeated by the military - which may be where we need to be going again, but our Admirals would have kittens.
OTOH the USA is not a risk-averse society.
Here's one from the George H W Bush ie the top aircraft carrier costing $6bn+ from June 2023.
Seattle Times - USS Ronald Reagan aircraft carrier docks at Naval Base Kitsap
After nearly a decade deployed in the Indo-Pacific, the U.S. Navy aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan and its thousands of sailors returned to Bremerton’s Naval Base Kitsap on Tuesday.
The base will serve as the home port for the aircraft carrier as it undergoes routine maintenance. . . .
Before arriving in Bremerton [WA], the USS Ronald Reagan had been the Navy’s only aircraft carrier with a home port in a foreign country. The ship departed from Yokosuka, Japan, on May 16, where it had been deployed since 2015.
During its tenure, the aircraft carrier participated in dozens of multilateral exercises and visited more than a dozen foreign ports, including a historic port call in Da Nang, Vietnam, last year. . . .
Friends, family and loved ones greeted more than 2,500 sailors onboard the aircraft carrier. . . .
I went on the Nimitz back around 1975 when it visited the Firth of Forth. Never forgotten that visit. Too big to come into port so we just got a boat ride out there and I had a wander around for an hour or two. All one had to do was to get a ticket from the US Consulate.
Not sure if they'd do that today. Last time I was in Plymouth a US submarine was in dock with orange buoys all around and, presumably, guarded by US people with automatic rifles and LMGs on the territory of the UK.
Back at the beginning of her career, my wife was the Nimitz’s mascot 😊
The US Navy still has bizarre (to my ears) things called Friends and Family Cruises, where they take hundreds of Friends and Family out for the day to sea. Applies to all kinds of USN ships.
Flight operations with thousands of civilians on the flight deck.
I'm sure it does wonders for public engagement, and is to do with a society far more permeated by the military - which may be where we need to be going, but our Admirals would have kittens. But the USA is not a risk-averse society.
Her principal qualification, being Trump's largest political donor. I know Trump isn't particularly popular with the military, but this amounts to taking a large and very public dump on them.
Trump: When we gave her the Presidential Medal of Freedom… It’s the equivalent of the Congressional Medal of Honor— it’s actually much better because everyone who gets the Congressional Medal, they’re soldiers. They’re either in very bad shape because they’ve been hit so many times by bullets or they’re dead. She gets it and she’s a healthy beautiful woman https://x.com/Acyn/status/1824244644714369470
This is what I don't get - why Trump dissing military heroes doesn't just immediately finish off his candidacy. I mean what the hell is going on? I get that I high proportion of those getting military medals won't be white and that might annoy Trump because he's a fucking racist, but still, how do his patriotic supporters explain this stuff away? He's got a fair bit of form on this, I guess he just doesn't love America.
It's enough to make your head explode, isn't it. There's about a million public instances of him being either imbecilic, eg the 'supply chains' ramble, or crass/nasty, eg this one about preferring 'healthy beautiful women' (pass the sick bucket) to wounded or dead soldiers who've shown heroism in battle, or (which he often manages tbf) imbecilic and crass/nasty at the same time.
Yet here he stands, the GOP candidate for president with either a 45% or a 33% chance of winning, depending on whether you listen to the market or to me.
Trump was always going to find having a running mate hard. It required him to think about someone else for a moment or two. He also sent a mob to lynch his previous running mate so not everyone would be up for the job.
Pence at least brought his evangelicals into the tent. I am really not sure what Vance was meant to bring but for Trump to pick someone with such a rich vein of misogyny going back for years seems to have doubled down on a weakness of his own. If I was to point to one single factor that was weighing this race Harris's way it would be the differential on women voters. Its the abortion thing, the misogyny, the pussy grabbing thing, the lack of loyalty to serial spouses, the patronising crap and the gratuitous rudeness handed out to Harris. Its a long list of reasons that is going to alienate a lot of women.
Trump didn't pick Vance to bring anything to the ticket - and the selection was one vetted by his son, and really at the prompting of a handful of billionaire donors.
As much as anything, it was an expression of hubris, rather than electoral calculation.
Yet Harris picked Walz from Minnesota, which has voted Democrat since 1976, over Shapiro from swing state Pennsylvania. Indeed Vance represents Ohio which voted for Obama, so is more of a swing state than Minnesota.
Though Harris will hope Walz has appeal in upper Midwest swing states Wisconsin and Michigan too
Coach Walz appeals across a wide spectrum. If AI was asked to generate a VP pick that would maximise support across the political spectrum, it would be hard pushed to generate something better than Walz.
If an assassin took out President Trump/President Harris, which VP would you want stepping up? No contest. A marginal - but non-trivial - factor in how people will vote.
This may also be a consideration given Trump’s age and the fact he doesn’t look or sound well.
The biggest bonus of Walz really though is his skill in warming up the crowds. You see lots of happy, cheering people behind Harris as she mouths platitudes at a modest pace, and lots of puzzled,bored people behind Trump as he witters on about stolen elections, persecution, massive crowds and sharks.
The contrast is stark. Trump won in 2016 partly because his energy and his backers’ enthusiasm were palpable compared to Clinton, who was dull, controversial and had a few health episodes. Now, the candidate who fits *that* bill is Trump himself.
Plus one is more likely to actually be locked up.
If Trump wins, we can be pretty sure Harris will be locked up.
Unless he has the army behind him to impose a dictatorship highly unlikely unless Harris commits a serious crime
She's already committed one. Calling the Great Leader a fraudster and sexual creep.
And he doesn't need the army, just the courts.
Who are, of course, entirely impartial and not at all throwing out cases for political reasons, or declaring Presidents have immunity because it's June.
The courts aren't just going to jail someone who has committed no crime even if most of the judges are Republicans.
They just need to say in light of whatever the Supreme Court called their nonsense on immunity that they have no power to release her.
That's why it was such a stupid, stupid ruling.
Yes but that would assume a lower court had already convicted her of a criminal offence and jailed her, yet if she had committed no criminal offence in the first place that would not happen anyway.
The President has no constitutional powers to sentence and jail individuals himself, immunity just relates to his own liberty from prosecution
If he is immune from prosecution what is to stop him holding Harris under house arrest and denying any application she is granted for habeus corpus?
I don't think you really understand the significance of the idea of keeping elected leaders within the law, any more than the Supreme Court do.
As the police only implement the sentences of the court or arrest those who breach existing state or Federal criminal law not do what the President decides on a whim
Second sentence confirmed.
Even the Secret Service are only there to protect the President not arrest others except those directly threatening the President's life. The armed forces in the US swear to uphold the constitution as well as follow the orders of the President
The US Secret Service also deals with currency-related crimes and can make arrests for that purpose.
"We are now back to the same electoral map that we had before Mr. Biden’s summertime polling collapse: Once again, the winner in November will come down to the seven battleground states of Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin."
Seattle Times - USS Ronald Reagan aircraft carrier docks at Naval Base Kitsap
After nearly a decade deployed in the Indo-Pacific, the U.S. Navy aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan and its thousands of sailors returned to Bremerton’s Naval Base Kitsap on Tuesday.
The base will serve as the home port for the aircraft carrier as it undergoes routine maintenance. . . .
Before arriving in Bremerton [WA], the USS Ronald Reagan had been the Navy’s only aircraft carrier with a home port in a foreign country. The ship departed from Yokosuka, Japan, on May 16, where it had been deployed since 2015.
During its tenure, the aircraft carrier participated in dozens of multilateral exercises and visited more than a dozen foreign ports, including a historic port call in Da Nang, Vietnam, last year. . . .
Friends, family and loved ones greeted more than 2,500 sailors onboard the aircraft carrier. . . .
I went on the Nimitz back around 1975 when it visited the Firth of Forth. Never forgotten that visit. Too big to come into port so we just got a boat ride out there and I had a wander around for an hour or two. All one had to do was to get a ticket from the US Consulate.
Not sure if they'd do that today. Last time I was in Plymouth a US submarine was in dock with orange buoys all around and, presumably, guarded by US people with automatic rifles and LMGs on the territory of the UK.
Back at the beginning of her career, my wife was the Nimitz’s mascot 😊
The US Navy still has bizarre (to my ears) things called Friends and Family Cruises, where they take hundreds of Friends and Family out for the day to sea. Applies to all kinds of USN ships.
Flight operations with thousands of civilians on the flight deck.
I'm sure it does wonders for public engagement, and is to do with a society far more permeated by the military - which may be where we need to be going, but our Admirals would have kittens. But the USA is not a risk-averse society.
Trump was always going to find having a running mate hard. It required him to think about someone else for a moment or two. He also sent a mob to lynch his previous running mate so not everyone would be up for the job.
Pence at least brought his evangelicals into the tent. I am really not sure what Vance was meant to bring but for Trump to pick someone with such a rich vein of misogyny going back for years seems to have doubled down on a weakness of his own. If I was to point to one single factor that was weighing this race Harris's way it would be the differential on women voters. Its the abortion thing, the misogyny, the pussy grabbing thing, the lack of loyalty to serial spouses, the patronising crap and the gratuitous rudeness handed out to Harris. Its a long list of reasons that is going to alienate a lot of women.
Trump didn't pick Vance to bring anything to the ticket - and the selection was one vetted by his son, and really at the prompting of a handful of billionaire donors.
As much as anything, it was an expression of hubris, rather than electoral calculation.
Yet Harris picked Walz from Minnesota, which has voted Democrat since 1976, over Shapiro from swing state Pennsylvania. Indeed Vance represents Ohio which voted for Obama, so is more of a swing state than Minnesota.
Though Harris will hope Walz has appeal in upper Midwest swing states Wisconsin and Michigan too
Coach Walz appeals across a wide spectrum. If AI was asked to generate a VP pick that would maximise support across the political spectrum, it would be hard pushed to generate something better than Walz.
If an assassin took out President Trump/President Harris, which VP would you want stepping up? No contest. A marginal - but non-trivial - factor in how people will vote.
This may also be a consideration given Trump’s age and the fact he doesn’t look or sound well.
The biggest bonus of Walz really though is his skill in warming up the crowds. You see lots of happy, cheering people behind Harris as she mouths platitudes at a modest pace, and lots of puzzled,bored people behind Trump as he witters on about stolen elections, persecution, massive crowds and sharks.
The contrast is stark. Trump won in 2016 partly because his energy and his backers’ enthusiasm were palpable compared to Clinton, who was dull, controversial and had a few health episodes. Now, the candidate who fits *that* bill is Trump himself.
Plus one is more likely to actually be locked up.
If Trump wins, we can be pretty sure Harris will be locked up.
Unless he has the army behind him to impose a dictatorship highly unlikely unless Harris commits a serious crime
She's already committed one. Calling the Great Leader a fraudster and sexual creep.
And he doesn't need the army, just the courts.
Who are, of course, entirely impartial and not at all throwing out cases for political reasons, or declaring Presidents have immunity because it's June.
The courts aren't just going to jail someone who has committed no crime even if most of the judges are Republicans.
They just need to say in light of whatever the Supreme Court called their nonsense on immunity that they have no power to release her.
That's why it was such a stupid, stupid ruling.
Yes but that would assume a lower court had already convicted her of a criminal offence and jailed her, yet if she had committed no criminal offence in the first place that would not happen anyway.
The President has no constitutional powers to sentence and jail individuals himself, immunity just relates to his own liberty from prosecution
If he is immune from prosecution what is to stop him holding Harris under house arrest and denying any application she is granted for habeus corpus?
I don't think you really understand the significance of the idea of keeping elected leaders within the law, any more than the Supreme Court do.
As the police only implement the sentences of the court or arrest those who breach existing state or Federal criminal law not do what the President decides on a whim
Second sentence confirmed.
Even the Secret Service are only there to protect the President not arrest others except those directly threatening the President's life. The armed forces in the US swear to uphold the constitution as well as follow the orders of the President
The US Secret Service also deals with currency-related crimes and can make arrests for that purpose.
Trump was always going to find having a running mate hard. It required him to think about someone else for a moment or two. He also sent a mob to lynch his previous running mate so not everyone would be up for the job.
Pence at least brought his evangelicals into the tent. I am really not sure what Vance was meant to bring but for Trump to pick someone with such a rich vein of misogyny going back for years seems to have doubled down on a weakness of his own. If I was to point to one single factor that was weighing this race Harris's way it would be the differential on women voters. Its the abortion thing, the misogyny, the pussy grabbing thing, the lack of loyalty to serial spouses, the patronising crap and the gratuitous rudeness handed out to Harris. Its a long list of reasons that is going to alienate a lot of women.
Trump didn't pick Vance to bring anything to the ticket - and the selection was one vetted by his son, and really at the prompting of a handful of billionaire donors.
As much as anything, it was an expression of hubris, rather than electoral calculation.
Yet Harris picked Walz from Minnesota, which has voted Democrat since 1976, over Shapiro from swing state Pennsylvania. Indeed Vance represents Ohio which voted for Obama, so is more of a swing state than Minnesota.
Though Harris will hope Walz has appeal in upper Midwest swing states Wisconsin and Michigan too
Coach Walz appeals across a wide spectrum. If AI was asked to generate a VP pick that would maximise support across the political spectrum, it would be hard pushed to generate something better than Walz.
If an assassin took out President Trump/President Harris, which VP would you want stepping up? No contest. A marginal - but non-trivial - factor in how people will vote.
This may also be a consideration given Trump’s age and the fact he doesn’t look or sound well.
The biggest bonus of Walz really though is his skill in warming up the crowds. You see lots of happy, cheering people behind Harris as she mouths platitudes at a modest pace, and lots of puzzled,bored people behind Trump as he witters on about stolen elections, persecution, massive crowds and sharks.
The contrast is stark. Trump won in 2016 partly because his energy and his backers’ enthusiasm were palpable compared to Clinton, who was dull, controversial and had a few health episodes. Now, the candidate who fits *that* bill is Trump himself.
Plus one is more likely to actually be locked up.
If Trump wins, we can be pretty sure Harris will be locked up.
Unless he has the army behind him to impose a dictatorship highly unlikely unless Harris commits a serious crime
She's already committed one. Calling the Great Leader a fraudster and sexual creep.
And he doesn't need the army, just the courts.
Who are, of course, entirely impartial and not at all throwing out cases for political reasons, or declaring Presidents have immunity because it's June.
The courts aren't just going to jail someone who has committed no crime even if most of the judges are Republicans.
They just need to say in light of whatever the Supreme Court called their nonsense on immunity that they have no power to release her.
That's why it was such a stupid, stupid ruling.
Yes but that would assume a lower court had already convicted her of a criminal offence and jailed her, yet if she had committed no criminal offence in the first place that would not happen anyway.
The President has no constitutional powers to sentence and jail individuals himself, immunity just relates to his own liberty from prosecution
If he is immune from prosecution what is to stop him holding Harris under house arrest and denying any application she is granted for habeus corpus?
I don't think you really understand the significance of the idea of keeping elected leaders within the law, any more than the Supreme Court do.
As the police only implement the sentences of the court or arrest those who breach existing state or Federal criminal law not do what the President decides on a whim
Second sentence confirmed.
Even the Secret Service are only there to protect the President not arrest others except those directly threatening the President's life. The armed forces in the US swear to uphold the constitution as well as follow the orders of the President
The US Secret Service also deals with currency-related crimes and can make arrests for that purpose.
Trump was always going to find having a running mate hard. It required him to think about someone else for a moment or two. He also sent a mob to lynch his previous running mate so not everyone would be up for the job.
Pence at least brought his evangelicals into the tent. I am really not sure what Vance was meant to bring but for Trump to pick someone with such a rich vein of misogyny going back for years seems to have doubled down on a weakness of his own. If I was to point to one single factor that was weighing this race Harris's way it would be the differential on women voters. Its the abortion thing, the misogyny, the pussy grabbing thing, the lack of loyalty to serial spouses, the patronising crap and the gratuitous rudeness handed out to Harris. Its a long list of reasons that is going to alienate a lot of women.
Trump didn't pick Vance to bring anything to the ticket - and the selection was one vetted by his son, and really at the prompting of a handful of billionaire donors.
As much as anything, it was an expression of hubris, rather than electoral calculation.
Yet Harris picked Walz from Minnesota, which has voted Democrat since 1976, over Shapiro from swing state Pennsylvania. Indeed Vance represents Ohio which voted for Obama, so is more of a swing state than Minnesota.
Though Harris will hope Walz has appeal in upper Midwest swing states Wisconsin and Michigan too
Coach Walz appeals across a wide spectrum. If AI was asked to generate a VP pick that would maximise support across the political spectrum, it would be hard pushed to generate something better than Walz.
If an assassin took out President Trump/President Harris, which VP would you want stepping up? No contest. A marginal - but non-trivial - factor in how people will vote.
This may also be a consideration given Trump’s age and the fact he doesn’t look or sound well.
The biggest bonus of Walz really though is his skill in warming up the crowds. You see lots of happy, cheering people behind Harris as she mouths platitudes at a modest pace, and lots of puzzled,bored people behind Trump as he witters on about stolen elections, persecution, massive crowds and sharks.
The contrast is stark. Trump won in 2016 partly because his energy and his backers’ enthusiasm were palpable compared to Clinton, who was dull, controversial and had a few health episodes. Now, the candidate who fits *that* bill is Trump himself.
Plus one is more likely to actually be locked up.
If Trump wins, we can be pretty sure Harris will be locked up.
Unless he has the army behind him to impose a dictatorship highly unlikely unless Harris commits a serious crime
She's already committed one. Calling the Great Leader a fraudster and sexual creep.
And he doesn't need the army, just the courts.
Who are, of course, entirely impartial and not at all throwing out cases for political reasons, or declaring Presidents have immunity because it's June.
The courts aren't just going to jail someone who has committed no crime even if most of the judges are Republicans.
They just need to say in light of whatever the Supreme Court called their nonsense on immunity that they have no power to release her.
That's why it was such a stupid, stupid ruling.
Yes but that would assume a lower court had already convicted her of a criminal offence and jailed her, yet if she had committed no criminal offence in the first place that would not happen anyway.
The President has no constitutional powers to sentence and jail individuals himself, immunity just relates to his own liberty from prosecution
If he is immune from prosecution what is to stop him holding Harris under house arrest and denying any application she is granted for habeus corpus?
I don't think you really understand the significance of the idea of keeping elected leaders within the law, any more than the Supreme Court do.
As the police only implement the sentences of the court or arrest those who breach existing state or Federal criminal law not do what the President decides on a whim
Second sentence confirmed.
Even the Secret Service are only there to protect the President not arrest others except those directly threatening the President's life. The armed forces in the US swear to uphold the constitution as well as follow the orders of the President
The US Secret Service also deals with currency-related crimes and can make arrests for that purpose.
And deliberately set things up so the final evacuation which would inevitably be chaotic would only happen after the election.
How can Trump control what Biden's team do 18 months after the inauguration? They had time to organise the withdrawal any way they preferred. Cutting and running was a good idea, the fact that it was a lethal fiasco was on the incumbents.
May 2021 (the date Trump’s withdrawal deal took effect) was four months after the inauguration. The withdrawal as the Taliban took Kabul was August - seven months.
Edit - if you check the dates, you will also find significant troop transfers that had not been planned (amounting to around 75% of US forces) happened in November and December 2020.
Incidentally, the only reason I would disagree that withdrawing was the right idea is because I’ve never understood why some people thought the invasion would be a good idea in the first place.
Biden wanted to celebrate the withdrawal on September 11th 2021, and was pushing everything towards that deadline.
That’s why it ended up being such a mess.
America had failed to win the war and peace after 20 years in the country, that's why it ended up being such a mess.
Withdrawals after being defeated are rarely pleasant.
Still, America's mess in Afghanistan is nothing like the mess that Putin has gotten Russia into in Ukraine - that's a whole another level.
The Ukranians are still advancing into Russia, it’s totally nuts.
The Russians are digging trenches around the railways at Lvov, but the Ukranians now have main battle tanks advancing their positions which don’t care much about trenches.
10 days now, and they’ve been totally unable to throw much more than untrained conscripts at the situation, most of which are now PoWs, because we all would be when confronted with an actual enemy army.
I had first assumed that this was some sort of special forces raid that would go and get something close to the border and then extract themselves, but it’s clearly as much of an invasion as we saw in Feb ‘22, just better organised and with reinforcements coming from behind. Oh, and without the indiscriminate killing of civilians. Meanwhile, there’s now 200,000 evacuees in the wider region, that the Russians have to put somewhere.
One of the Russian cope strategies online was to say: "We're slowly advancing in the east of Ukraine whilst our great armoured fist, complete with T-14s and SU-57s, is being prepared for the knockout blow on Kyiv / Kharkiv / Odessa!!!!"
In other words, that Russia had a large force ready to go into Ukraine once they had denuded Ukraine enough.
I think it's now clear that that was utter copium b/s. The Ukrainians may be being denuded, but the Russians have also been. They don't seem to have a great deal spare.
Let's not get ahead of ourselves. The Ukrainians have captured an area about the size of Berkshire. At the same time, they have lost an area the size of England and Wales combined and they seem to be falling back in the south.
Yes, highly embarrassing for Putin. Makes him look stupid. But it comes with significant risks for Ukraine and it's not wholly clear yet what they expect to get from it, never mind will get.
It may put an end to the idea of a stalemated war, Korea Mark 2. But given Russia's size and resources that may not be to Ukraine's advantage.
Ukraine is doing what it can do, not what it wants to do, with its invasion of Kursk. If they hoped to draw Russian troops from Donbas that aim has failed so far. Russia is prioritising its continuing advance in Ukraine over preventing the loss of its own territory in Kursk.
The operation has been a morale booster for Ukraine. This is valuable but as you point out there's a potentially large cost.
Its too early to say it has failed so far, there are already reports of troops going from Donbas to Kursk, but more importantly there's only a finite amount of troops in Donbas and the rate at which Russia is losing them means they need to be continually refreshed.
Now Russia has a major headache, does it send new reinforcements to Kursk or to Donbas. If reinforcements go to Kursk instead of Donbas, then even if no troops leave Donbas, that's still weakening Russia in Donbas.
Plus its "advance" in Donbas is minute and costly. Slowly pulling back while your enemy loses a lot of troops and munitions in a costly grind can be a good strategy.
Sure. My point is a limited one. If the purpose of this invasion was to divert Russian resources to Kursk and away from Donbas, the upshot for now is Ukrainian resources have been diverted and the Russian ones haven't.
Surely none of us can know what level of resource has or has not been diverted? No-one outside the Russian military command structure is going to know that.
If it were Mexico pushing into the US with weapons supplied by the Chinese and Russians, how long would it be before they broke out the nukes?
10 minutes and I am not joking.
Seems unlikely, given they could utterly destroy any such force with conventional weapons.
If you can imagine Mexico invading the US then surely your imagination can cope with Mexico winning with conventional weapons!
Er.... no.
So let me get this straight - you're willing to go along with Mexico hypothetically invading the USA, but you draw the line at them having any success as being just too unrealistic?
I assume in this analogy it is a case of USA invaded Mexico first, and now Mexico is counterattacking not invading unprovoked?
What part of "fuck off" don't you get?
Can you stop doing that? It's extremely impolite to someone making perfectly reasonable posts.
Ooh, vigilante modding !!!
Sorry if that breaks some kind of etiquette but it does seem a bit unnecessary
Some context here.
The 'fuck off' from Kamski (to BR) isn't regarding that specific comment. It's in general. They had a spat a couple of days ago whereby BR was rolling out some of his trademark unthinking anti-German bile and Kamski took offence to it and told BR to stop interacting with him.
@kamski will correct me if I'm wrong but that's my take.
Seattle Times - USS Ronald Reagan aircraft carrier docks at Naval Base Kitsap
After nearly a decade deployed in the Indo-Pacific, the U.S. Navy aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan and its thousands of sailors returned to Bremerton’s Naval Base Kitsap on Tuesday.
The base will serve as the home port for the aircraft carrier as it undergoes routine maintenance. . . .
Before arriving in Bremerton [WA], the USS Ronald Reagan had been the Navy’s only aircraft carrier with a home port in a foreign country. The ship departed from Yokosuka, Japan, on May 16, where it had been deployed since 2015.
During its tenure, the aircraft carrier participated in dozens of multilateral exercises and visited more than a dozen foreign ports, including a historic port call in Da Nang, Vietnam, last year. . . .
Friends, family and loved ones greeted more than 2,500 sailors onboard the aircraft carrier. . . .
I went on the Nimitz back around 1975 when it visited the Firth of Forth. Never forgotten that visit. Too big to come into port so we just got a boat ride out there and I had a wander around for an hour or two. All one had to do was to get a ticket from the US Consulate.
Not sure if they'd do that today. Last time I was in Plymouth a US submarine was in dock with orange buoys all around and, presumably, guarded by US people with automatic rifles and LMGs on the territory of the UK.
Back at the beginning of her career, my wife was the Nimitz’s mascot 😊
The US Navy still has bizarre (to my ears) things called Friends and Family Cruises, where they take hundreds of Friends and Family out for the day to sea. Applies to all kinds of USN ships.
Flight operations with thousands of civilians on the flight deck.
I'm sure it does wonders for public engagement, and is to do with a society far more permeated by the military - which may be where we need to be going, but our Admirals would have kittens. But the USA is not a risk-averse society.
Seattle Times - USS Ronald Reagan aircraft carrier docks at Naval Base Kitsap
After nearly a decade deployed in the Indo-Pacific, the U.S. Navy aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan and its thousands of sailors returned to Bremerton’s Naval Base Kitsap on Tuesday.
The base will serve as the home port for the aircraft carrier as it undergoes routine maintenance. . . .
Before arriving in Bremerton [WA], the USS Ronald Reagan had been the Navy’s only aircraft carrier with a home port in a foreign country. The ship departed from Yokosuka, Japan, on May 16, where it had been deployed since 2015.
During its tenure, the aircraft carrier participated in dozens of multilateral exercises and visited more than a dozen foreign ports, including a historic port call in Da Nang, Vietnam, last year. . . .
Friends, family and loved ones greeted more than 2,500 sailors onboard the aircraft carrier. . . .
I went on the Nimitz back around 1975 when it visited the Firth of Forth. Never forgotten that visit. Too big to come into port so we just got a boat ride out there and I had a wander around for an hour or two. All one had to do was to get a ticket from the US Consulate.
Not sure if they'd do that today. Last time I was in Plymouth a US submarine was in dock with orange buoys all around and, presumably, guarded by US people with automatic rifles and LMGs on the territory of the UK.
Back at the beginning of her career, my wife was the Nimitz’s mascot 😊
The US Navy still has bizarre (to my ears) things called Friends and Family Cruises, where they take hundreds of Friends and Family out for the day to sea. Applies to all kinds of USN ships.
Flight operations with thousands of civilians on the flight deck.
I'm sure it does wonders for public engagement, and is to do with a society far more permeated by the military - which may be where we need to be going, but our Admirals would have kittens. But the USA is not a risk-averse society.
Trump was always going to find having a running mate hard. It required him to think about someone else for a moment or two. He also sent a mob to lynch his previous running mate so not everyone would be up for the job.
Pence at least brought his evangelicals into the tent. I am really not sure what Vance was meant to bring but for Trump to pick someone with such a rich vein of misogyny going back for years seems to have doubled down on a weakness of his own. If I was to point to one single factor that was weighing this race Harris's way it would be the differential on women voters. Its the abortion thing, the misogyny, the pussy grabbing thing, the lack of loyalty to serial spouses, the patronising crap and the gratuitous rudeness handed out to Harris. Its a long list of reasons that is going to alienate a lot of women.
Trump didn't pick Vance to bring anything to the ticket - and the selection was one vetted by his son, and really at the prompting of a handful of billionaire donors.
As much as anything, it was an expression of hubris, rather than electoral calculation.
Yet Harris picked Walz from Minnesota, which has voted Democrat since 1976, over Shapiro from swing state Pennsylvania. Indeed Vance represents Ohio which voted for Obama, so is more of a swing state than Minnesota.
Though Harris will hope Walz has appeal in upper Midwest swing states Wisconsin and Michigan too
Coach Walz appeals across a wide spectrum. If AI was asked to generate a VP pick that would maximise support across the political spectrum, it would be hard pushed to generate something better than Walz.
If an assassin took out President Trump/President Harris, which VP would you want stepping up? No contest. A marginal - but non-trivial - factor in how people will vote.
This may also be a consideration given Trump’s age and the fact he doesn’t look or sound well.
The biggest bonus of Walz really though is his skill in warming up the crowds. You see lots of happy, cheering people behind Harris as she mouths platitudes at a modest pace, and lots of puzzled,bored people behind Trump as he witters on about stolen elections, persecution, massive crowds and sharks.
The contrast is stark. Trump won in 2016 partly because his energy and his backers’ enthusiasm were palpable compared to Clinton, who was dull, controversial and had a few health episodes. Now, the candidate who fits *that* bill is Trump himself.
Plus one is more likely to actually be locked up.
If Trump wins, we can be pretty sure Harris will be locked up.
Unless he has the army behind him to impose a dictatorship highly unlikely unless Harris commits a serious crime
She's already committed one. Calling the Great Leader a fraudster and sexual creep.
And he doesn't need the army, just the courts.
Who are, of course, entirely impartial and not at all throwing out cases for political reasons, or declaring Presidents have immunity because it's June.
The courts aren't just going to jail someone who has committed no crime even if most of the judges are Republicans.
They just need to say in light of whatever the Supreme Court called their nonsense on immunity that they have no power to release her.
That's why it was such a stupid, stupid ruling.
Yes but that would assume a lower court had already convicted her of a criminal offence and jailed her, yet if she had committed no criminal offence in the first place that would not happen anyway.
The President has no constitutional powers to sentence and jail individuals himself, immunity just relates to his own liberty from prosecution
If he is immune from prosecution what is to stop him holding Harris under house arrest and denying any application she is granted for habeus corpus?
I don't think you really understand the significance of the idea of keeping elected leaders within the law, any more than the Supreme Court do.
As the police only implement the sentences of the court or arrest those who breach existing state or Federal criminal law not do what the President decides on a whim
Second sentence confirmed.
Even the Secret Service are only there to protect the President not arrest others except those directly threatening the President's life. The armed forces in the US swear to uphold the constitution as well as follow the orders of the President
The US Secret Service also deals with currency-related crimes and can make arrests for that purpose.
Such arrests are a dime a dozen.
I wouldn't give a nickel....
Trump will certainly give no quarter.
Really cool video about the history of money in film.
Seattle Times - USS Ronald Reagan aircraft carrier docks at Naval Base Kitsap
After nearly a decade deployed in the Indo-Pacific, the U.S. Navy aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan and its thousands of sailors returned to Bremerton’s Naval Base Kitsap on Tuesday.
The base will serve as the home port for the aircraft carrier as it undergoes routine maintenance. . . .
Before arriving in Bremerton [WA], the USS Ronald Reagan had been the Navy’s only aircraft carrier with a home port in a foreign country. The ship departed from Yokosuka, Japan, on May 16, where it had been deployed since 2015.
During its tenure, the aircraft carrier participated in dozens of multilateral exercises and visited more than a dozen foreign ports, including a historic port call in Da Nang, Vietnam, last year. . . .
Friends, family and loved ones greeted more than 2,500 sailors onboard the aircraft carrier. . . .
I went on the Nimitz back around 1975 when it visited the Firth of Forth. Never forgotten that visit. Too big to come into port so we just got a boat ride out there and I had a wander around for an hour or two. All one had to do was to get a ticket from the US Consulate.
Not sure if they'd do that today. Last time I was in Plymouth a US submarine was in dock with orange buoys all around and, presumably, guarded by US people with automatic rifles and LMGs on the territory of the UK.
Back at the beginning of her career, my wife was the Nimitz’s mascot 😊
The US Navy still has bizarre (to my ears) things called Friends and Family Cruises, where they take hundreds of Friends and Family out for the day to sea. Applies to all kinds of USN ships.
Flight operations with thousands of civilians on the flight deck.
I'm sure it does wonders for public engagement, and is to do with a society far more permeated by the military - which may be where we need to be going again, but our Admirals would have kittens.
OTOH the USA is not a risk-averse society.
Here's one from the George H W Bush ie the top aircraft carrier costing $6bn+ from June 2023.
Trump was always going to find having a running mate hard. It required him to think about someone else for a moment or two. He also sent a mob to lynch his previous running mate so not everyone would be up for the job.
Pence at least brought his evangelicals into the tent. I am really not sure what Vance was meant to bring but for Trump to pick someone with such a rich vein of misogyny going back for years seems to have doubled down on a weakness of his own. If I was to point to one single factor that was weighing this race Harris's way it would be the differential on women voters. Its the abortion thing, the misogyny, the pussy grabbing thing, the lack of loyalty to serial spouses, the patronising crap and the gratuitous rudeness handed out to Harris. Its a long list of reasons that is going to alienate a lot of women.
Trump didn't pick Vance to bring anything to the ticket - and the selection was one vetted by his son, and really at the prompting of a handful of billionaire donors.
As much as anything, it was an expression of hubris, rather than electoral calculation.
Yet Harris picked Walz from Minnesota, which has voted Democrat since 1976, over Shapiro from swing state Pennsylvania. Indeed Vance represents Ohio which voted for Obama, so is more of a swing state than Minnesota.
Though Harris will hope Walz has appeal in upper Midwest swing states Wisconsin and Michigan too
Coach Walz appeals across a wide spectrum. If AI was asked to generate a VP pick that would maximise support across the political spectrum, it would be hard pushed to generate something better than Walz.
If an assassin took out President Trump/President Harris, which VP would you want stepping up? No contest. A marginal - but non-trivial - factor in how people will vote.
This may also be a consideration given Trump’s age and the fact he doesn’t look or sound well.
The biggest bonus of Walz really though is his skill in warming up the crowds. You see lots of happy, cheering people behind Harris as she mouths platitudes at a modest pace, and lots of puzzled,bored people behind Trump as he witters on about stolen elections, persecution, massive crowds and sharks.
The contrast is stark. Trump won in 2016 partly because his energy and his backers’ enthusiasm were palpable compared to Clinton, who was dull, controversial and had a few health episodes. Now, the candidate who fits *that* bill is Trump himself.
Plus one is more likely to actually be locked up.
If Trump wins, we can be pretty sure Harris will be locked up.
Unless he has the army behind him to impose a dictatorship highly unlikely unless Harris commits a serious crime
She's already committed one. Calling the Great Leader a fraudster and sexual creep.
And he doesn't need the army, just the courts.
Who are, of course, entirely impartial and not at all throwing out cases for political reasons, or declaring Presidents have immunity because it's June.
The courts aren't just going to jail someone who has committed no crime even if most of the judges are Republicans.
They just need to say in light of whatever the Supreme Court called their nonsense on immunity that they have no power to release her.
That's why it was such a stupid, stupid ruling.
Yes but that would assume a lower court had already convicted her of a criminal offence and jailed her, yet if she had committed no criminal offence in the first place that would not happen anyway.
The President has no constitutional powers to sentence and jail individuals himself, immunity just relates to his own liberty from prosecution
If he is immune from prosecution what is to stop him holding Harris under house arrest and denying any application she is granted for habeus corpus?
I don't think you really understand the significance of the idea of keeping elected leaders within the law, any more than the Supreme Court do.
As the police only implement the sentences of the court or arrest those who breach existing state or Federal criminal law not do what the President decides on a whim
Second sentence confirmed.
Even the Secret Service are only there to protect the President not arrest others except those directly threatening the President's life. The armed forces in the US swear to uphold the constitution as well as follow the orders of the President
The US Secret Service also deals with currency-related crimes and can make arrests for that purpose.
Such arrests are a dime a dozen.
You may think you won this punning round baht to be franc it is time to get real and it will be clear who the rightful owner of this crown is.
Somehow you can always trust the left to destroy itself.
If you allow strikes to work, you will get more of them. I don't know why Labour finds this so hard to understand.
It's possible to distinguish. I think most people have far less sympathy with the train drivers than with the doctors. If Labour have any sense they will make sure a deal is done quickly with the latter while standing firm against the former.
Trump was always going to find having a running mate hard. It required him to think about someone else for a moment or two. He also sent a mob to lynch his previous running mate so not everyone would be up for the job.
Pence at least brought his evangelicals into the tent. I am really not sure what Vance was meant to bring but for Trump to pick someone with such a rich vein of misogyny going back for years seems to have doubled down on a weakness of his own. If I was to point to one single factor that was weighing this race Harris's way it would be the differential on women voters. Its the abortion thing, the misogyny, the pussy grabbing thing, the lack of loyalty to serial spouses, the patronising crap and the gratuitous rudeness handed out to Harris. Its a long list of reasons that is going to alienate a lot of women.
Trump didn't pick Vance to bring anything to the ticket - and the selection was one vetted by his son, and really at the prompting of a handful of billionaire donors.
As much as anything, it was an expression of hubris, rather than electoral calculation.
Yet Harris picked Walz from Minnesota, which has voted Democrat since 1976, over Shapiro from swing state Pennsylvania. Indeed Vance represents Ohio which voted for Obama, so is more of a swing state than Minnesota.
Though Harris will hope Walz has appeal in upper Midwest swing states Wisconsin and Michigan too
Coach Walz appeals across a wide spectrum. If AI was asked to generate a VP pick that would maximise support across the political spectrum, it would be hard pushed to generate something better than Walz.
If an assassin took out President Trump/President Harris, which VP would you want stepping up? No contest. A marginal - but non-trivial - factor in how people will vote.
This may also be a consideration given Trump’s age and the fact he doesn’t look or sound well.
The biggest bonus of Walz really though is his skill in warming up the crowds. You see lots of happy, cheering people behind Harris as she mouths platitudes at a modest pace, and lots of puzzled,bored people behind Trump as he witters on about stolen elections, persecution, massive crowds and sharks.
The contrast is stark. Trump won in 2016 partly because his energy and his backers’ enthusiasm were palpable compared to Clinton, who was dull, controversial and had a few health episodes. Now, the candidate who fits *that* bill is Trump himself.
Plus one is more likely to actually be locked up.
If Trump wins, we can be pretty sure Harris will be locked up.
Unless he has the army behind him to impose a dictatorship highly unlikely unless Harris commits a serious crime
She's already committed one. Calling the Great Leader a fraudster and sexual creep.
And he doesn't need the army, just the courts.
Who are, of course, entirely impartial and not at all throwing out cases for political reasons, or declaring Presidents have immunity because it's June.
The courts aren't just going to jail someone who has committed no crime even if most of the judges are Republicans.
They just need to say in light of whatever the Supreme Court called their nonsense on immunity that they have no power to release her.
That's why it was such a stupid, stupid ruling.
Yes but that would assume a lower court had already convicted her of a criminal offence and jailed her, yet if she had committed no criminal offence in the first place that would not happen anyway.
The President has no constitutional powers to sentence and jail individuals himself, immunity just relates to his own liberty from prosecution
If he is immune from prosecution what is to stop him holding Harris under house arrest and denying any application she is granted for habeus corpus?
I don't think you really understand the significance of the idea of keeping elected leaders within the law, any more than the Supreme Court do.
As the police only implement the sentences of the court or arrest those who breach existing state or Federal criminal law not do what the President decides on a whim
Second sentence confirmed.
Even the Secret Service are only there to protect the President not arrest others except those directly threatening the President's life. The armed forces in the US swear to uphold the constitution as well as follow the orders of the President
The US Secret Service also deals with currency-related crimes and can make arrests for that purpose.
Such arrests are a dime a dozen.
You may think you won this punning round baht to be franc it is time to get real and it will be clear who the rightful owner of this crown is.
Yes.
It will be clear that unlike this one, your effort was not up to the mark.
Seattle Times - USS Ronald Reagan aircraft carrier docks at Naval Base Kitsap
After nearly a decade deployed in the Indo-Pacific, the U.S. Navy aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan and its thousands of sailors returned to Bremerton’s Naval Base Kitsap on Tuesday.
The base will serve as the home port for the aircraft carrier as it undergoes routine maintenance. . . .
Before arriving in Bremerton [WA], the USS Ronald Reagan had been the Navy’s only aircraft carrier with a home port in a foreign country. The ship departed from Yokosuka, Japan, on May 16, where it had been deployed since 2015.
During its tenure, the aircraft carrier participated in dozens of multilateral exercises and visited more than a dozen foreign ports, including a historic port call in Da Nang, Vietnam, last year. . . .
Friends, family and loved ones greeted more than 2,500 sailors onboard the aircraft carrier. . . .
I went on the Nimitz back around 1975 when it visited the Firth of Forth. Never forgotten that visit. Too big to come into port so we just got a boat ride out there and I had a wander around for an hour or two. All one had to do was to get a ticket from the US Consulate.
Not sure if they'd do that today. Last time I was in Plymouth a US submarine was in dock with orange buoys all around and, presumably, guarded by US people with automatic rifles and LMGs on the territory of the UK.
Back at the beginning of her career, my wife was the Nimitz’s mascot 😊
The US Navy still has bizarre (to my ears) things called Friends and Family Cruises, where they take hundreds of Friends and Family out for the day to sea. Applies to all kinds of USN ships.
Flight operations with thousands of civilians on the flight deck.
I'm sure it does wonders for public engagement, and is to do with a society far more permeated by the military - which may be where we need to be going again, but our Admirals would have kittens.
OTOH the USA is not a risk-averse society.
Here's one from the George H W Bush ie the top aircraft carrier costing $6bn+ from June 2023.
I was on HMS Bulwark (R08) for a Family Day in about 1974, in the Solent outside Portsmouth Harbour. Stood on the command superstructure to watch a Harrier land and take off, had lunch in the officers mess, clambered about below decks to see my father's cabin. Such fun!
P.S. I was christened on board HMS Ark Royal (R09) in 1964, using the ship's bell as a baptismal font. My name should be engraved in the bell, but last I heard it was missing.
Seattle Times - USS Ronald Reagan aircraft carrier docks at Naval Base Kitsap
After nearly a decade deployed in the Indo-Pacific, the U.S. Navy aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan and its thousands of sailors returned to Bremerton’s Naval Base Kitsap on Tuesday.
The base will serve as the home port for the aircraft carrier as it undergoes routine maintenance. . . .
Before arriving in Bremerton [WA], the USS Ronald Reagan had been the Navy’s only aircraft carrier with a home port in a foreign country. The ship departed from Yokosuka, Japan, on May 16, where it had been deployed since 2015.
During its tenure, the aircraft carrier participated in dozens of multilateral exercises and visited more than a dozen foreign ports, including a historic port call in Da Nang, Vietnam, last year. . . .
Friends, family and loved ones greeted more than 2,500 sailors onboard the aircraft carrier. . . .
I went on the Nimitz back around 1975 when it visited the Firth of Forth. Never forgotten that visit. Too big to come into port so we just got a boat ride out there and I had a wander around for an hour or two. All one had to do was to get a ticket from the US Consulate.
Not sure if they'd do that today. Last time I was in Plymouth a US submarine was in dock with orange buoys all around and, presumably, guarded by US people with automatic rifles and LMGs on the territory of the UK.
Back at the beginning of her career, my wife was the Nimitz’s mascot 😊
The US Navy still has bizarre (to my ears) things called Friends and Family Cruises, where they take hundreds of Friends and Family out for the day to sea. Applies to all kinds of USN ships.
Flight operations with thousands of civilians on the flight deck.
I'm sure it does wonders for public engagement, and is to do with a society far more permeated by the military - which may be where we need to be going again, but our Admirals would have kittens.
OTOH the USA is not a risk-averse society.
Here's one from the George H W Bush ie the top aircraft carrier costing $6bn+ from June 2023.
I was on HMS Bulwark (R08) for a Family Day in about 1974, in the Solent outside Portsmouth Harbour. Stood on the command superstructure to watch a Harrier land and take off, had lunch in the officers mess, clambered about below decks to see my father's cabin. Such fun!
P.S. I was christened on board HMS Ark Royal (R09) in 1964, using the ship's bell as a baptismal font. My name should be engraved in the bell, but last I heard it was missing.
Somehow you can always trust the left to destroy itself.
If you allow strikes to work, you will get more of them. I don't know why Labour finds this so hard to understand.
It's possible to distinguish. I think most people have far less sympathy with the train drivers than with the doctors. If Labour have any sense they will make sure a deal is done quickly with the latter while standing firm against the former.
Not sure what is going on with the doctors tbh and wonder if someone did not notice that junior hospital doctors and GPs are not the same.
Seattle Times - USS Ronald Reagan aircraft carrier docks at Naval Base Kitsap
After nearly a decade deployed in the Indo-Pacific, the U.S. Navy aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan and its thousands of sailors returned to Bremerton’s Naval Base Kitsap on Tuesday.
The base will serve as the home port for the aircraft carrier as it undergoes routine maintenance. . . .
Before arriving in Bremerton [WA], the USS Ronald Reagan had been the Navy’s only aircraft carrier with a home port in a foreign country. The ship departed from Yokosuka, Japan, on May 16, where it had been deployed since 2015.
During its tenure, the aircraft carrier participated in dozens of multilateral exercises and visited more than a dozen foreign ports, including a historic port call in Da Nang, Vietnam, last year. . . .
Friends, family and loved ones greeted more than 2,500 sailors onboard the aircraft carrier. . . .
I went on the Nimitz back around 1975 when it visited the Firth of Forth. Never forgotten that visit. Too big to come into port so we just got a boat ride out there and I had a wander around for an hour or two. All one had to do was to get a ticket from the US Consulate.
Not sure if they'd do that today. Last time I was in Plymouth a US submarine was in dock with orange buoys all around and, presumably, guarded by US people with automatic rifles and LMGs on the territory of the UK.
Back at the beginning of her career, my wife was the Nimitz’s mascot 😊
The US Navy still has bizarre (to my ears) things called Friends and Family Cruises, where they take hundreds of Friends and Family out for the day to sea. Applies to all kinds of USN ships.
Flight operations with thousands of civilians on the flight deck.
I'm sure it does wonders for public engagement, and is to do with a society far more permeated by the military - which may be where we need to be going, but our Admirals would have kittens. But the USA is not a risk-averse society.
Thank goodness for lightning protectors. I couldn't do that and wear white trousers. I can hardly bear to watch as it is.
Ooh, it's all retro Navy stuff to which I can contribute. They used to do that at HMS Ganges, which was the naval training establishment for boy seamen. My father had to do that when he was 15 or 16, around 1956. The topmost position was called the button boy, and got (IIRC) sixpence for doing it each time, as you had to hold on with your knees only. I bet it was that Health n Safety lot what stopped it.
Somehow you can always trust the left to destroy itself.
If you allow strikes to work, you will get more of them. I don't know why Labour finds this so hard to understand.
And if you never allow strikes to work you're effectively removing the right to strike. So both extremes being sub-optimal you're left with negotiation/compromise and settlements informed by a mixture of balance of power and merit of the claim.
Seattle Times - USS Ronald Reagan aircraft carrier docks at Naval Base Kitsap
After nearly a decade deployed in the Indo-Pacific, the U.S. Navy aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan and its thousands of sailors returned to Bremerton’s Naval Base Kitsap on Tuesday.
The base will serve as the home port for the aircraft carrier as it undergoes routine maintenance. . . .
Before arriving in Bremerton [WA], the USS Ronald Reagan had been the Navy’s only aircraft carrier with a home port in a foreign country. The ship departed from Yokosuka, Japan, on May 16, where it had been deployed since 2015.
During its tenure, the aircraft carrier participated in dozens of multilateral exercises and visited more than a dozen foreign ports, including a historic port call in Da Nang, Vietnam, last year. . . .
Friends, family and loved ones greeted more than 2,500 sailors onboard the aircraft carrier. . . .
I went on the Nimitz back around 1975 when it visited the Firth of Forth. Never forgotten that visit. Too big to come into port so we just got a boat ride out there and I had a wander around for an hour or two. All one had to do was to get a ticket from the US Consulate.
Not sure if they'd do that today. Last time I was in Plymouth a US submarine was in dock with orange buoys all around and, presumably, guarded by US people with automatic rifles and LMGs on the territory of the UK.
Back at the beginning of her career, my wife was the Nimitz’s mascot 😊
The US Navy still has bizarre (to my ears) things called Friends and Family Cruises, where they take hundreds of Friends and Family out for the day to sea. Applies to all kinds of USN ships.
Flight operations with thousands of civilians on the flight deck.
I'm sure it does wonders for public engagement, and is to do with a society far more permeated by the military - which may be where we need to be going again, but our Admirals would have kittens.
OTOH the USA is not a risk-averse society.
Here's one from the George H W Bush ie the top aircraft carrier costing $6bn+ from June 2023.
I was on HMS Bulwark (R08) for a Family Day in about 1974, in the Solent outside Portsmouth Harbour. Stood on the command superstructure to watch a Harrier land and take off, had lunch in the officers mess, clambered about below decks to see my father's cabin. Such fun!
P.S. I was christened on board HMS Ark Royal (R09) in 1964, using the ship's bell as a baptismal font. My name should be engraved in the bell, but last I heard it was missing.
Your name, the bell or the engraving on the bell?
The bell. They normally go into storage for the next time the name is used, but Ark Royal (R07) had to have a new bell.
Seattle Times - USS Ronald Reagan aircraft carrier docks at Naval Base Kitsap
After nearly a decade deployed in the Indo-Pacific, the U.S. Navy aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan and its thousands of sailors returned to Bremerton’s Naval Base Kitsap on Tuesday.
The base will serve as the home port for the aircraft carrier as it undergoes routine maintenance. . . .
Before arriving in Bremerton [WA], the USS Ronald Reagan had been the Navy’s only aircraft carrier with a home port in a foreign country. The ship departed from Yokosuka, Japan, on May 16, where it had been deployed since 2015.
During its tenure, the aircraft carrier participated in dozens of multilateral exercises and visited more than a dozen foreign ports, including a historic port call in Da Nang, Vietnam, last year. . . .
Friends, family and loved ones greeted more than 2,500 sailors onboard the aircraft carrier. . . .
I went on the Nimitz back around 1975 when it visited the Firth of Forth. Never forgotten that visit. Too big to come into port so we just got a boat ride out there and I had a wander around for an hour or two. All one had to do was to get a ticket from the US Consulate.
Not sure if they'd do that today. Last time I was in Plymouth a US submarine was in dock with orange buoys all around and, presumably, guarded by US people with automatic rifles and LMGs on the territory of the UK.
Back at the beginning of her career, my wife was the Nimitz’s mascot 😊
The US Navy still has bizarre (to my ears) things called Friends and Family Cruises, where they take hundreds of Friends and Family out for the day to sea. Applies to all kinds of USN ships.
Flight operations with thousands of civilians on the flight deck.
Popularly know as a "Tiger Cruise" and it's a very big deal. After we'd finished blowing the shit out of Afghanistan in 2001, we flew the entire air wing off the ship at Pearl to make room for the Tigers. We had to tank across the Pacific to Lemoore, CA then Meridian, MS then the weather turned to shit and our four ship diverted into the civvie airport at Branson, MO where we treated like royalty or the Osmonds.
Unthinkable in the RN. Image somebody's mum being fed baby head stew that a reeking cook has stirred with his arm because he couldn't find a spoon.
Seattle Times - USS Ronald Reagan aircraft carrier docks at Naval Base Kitsap
After nearly a decade deployed in the Indo-Pacific, the U.S. Navy aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan and its thousands of sailors returned to Bremerton’s Naval Base Kitsap on Tuesday.
The base will serve as the home port for the aircraft carrier as it undergoes routine maintenance. . . .
Before arriving in Bremerton [WA], the USS Ronald Reagan had been the Navy’s only aircraft carrier with a home port in a foreign country. The ship departed from Yokosuka, Japan, on May 16, where it had been deployed since 2015.
During its tenure, the aircraft carrier participated in dozens of multilateral exercises and visited more than a dozen foreign ports, including a historic port call in Da Nang, Vietnam, last year. . . .
Friends, family and loved ones greeted more than 2,500 sailors onboard the aircraft carrier. . . .
I went on the Nimitz back around 1975 when it visited the Firth of Forth. Never forgotten that visit. Too big to come into port so we just got a boat ride out there and I had a wander around for an hour or two. All one had to do was to get a ticket from the US Consulate.
Not sure if they'd do that today. Last time I was in Plymouth a US submarine was in dock with orange buoys all around and, presumably, guarded by US people with automatic rifles and LMGs on the territory of the UK.
Back at the beginning of her career, my wife was the Nimitz’s mascot 😊
The US Navy still has bizarre (to my ears) things called Friends and Family Cruises, where they take hundreds of Friends and Family out for the day to sea. Applies to all kinds of USN ships.
Flight operations with thousands of civilians on the flight deck.
Popularly know as a "Tiger Cruise" and it's a very big deal. After we'd finished blowing the shit out of Afghanistan in 2001, we flew the entire air wing off the ship at Pearl to make room for the Tigers. We had to tank across the Pacific to Lemoore, CA then Meridian, MS then the weather turned to shit and our four ship diverted into the civvie airport at Branson, MO where we treated like royalty or the Osmonds.
Unthinkable in the RN. Image somebody's mum being fed baby head stew that a reeking cook has stirred with his arm because he couldn't find a spoon.
The RN invented family days! (See my earlier post)
Seattle Times - USS Ronald Reagan aircraft carrier docks at Naval Base Kitsap
After nearly a decade deployed in the Indo-Pacific, the U.S. Navy aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan and its thousands of sailors returned to Bremerton’s Naval Base Kitsap on Tuesday.
The base will serve as the home port for the aircraft carrier as it undergoes routine maintenance. . . .
Before arriving in Bremerton [WA], the USS Ronald Reagan had been the Navy’s only aircraft carrier with a home port in a foreign country. The ship departed from Yokosuka, Japan, on May 16, where it had been deployed since 2015.
During its tenure, the aircraft carrier participated in dozens of multilateral exercises and visited more than a dozen foreign ports, including a historic port call in Da Nang, Vietnam, last year. . . .
Friends, family and loved ones greeted more than 2,500 sailors onboard the aircraft carrier. . . .
I went on the Nimitz back around 1975 when it visited the Firth of Forth. Never forgotten that visit. Too big to come into port so we just got a boat ride out there and I had a wander around for an hour or two. All one had to do was to get a ticket from the US Consulate.
Not sure if they'd do that today. Last time I was in Plymouth a US submarine was in dock with orange buoys all around and, presumably, guarded by US people with automatic rifles and LMGs on the territory of the UK.
Back at the beginning of her career, my wife was the Nimitz’s mascot 😊
The US Navy still has bizarre (to my ears) things called Friends and Family Cruises, where they take hundreds of Friends and Family out for the day to sea. Applies to all kinds of USN ships.
Flight operations with thousands of civilians on the flight deck.
Popularly know as a "Tiger Cruise" and it's a very big deal. After we'd finished blowing the shit out of Afghanistan in 2001, we flew the entire air wing off the ship at Pearl to make room for the Tigers. We had to tank across the Pacific to Lemoore, CA then Meridian, MS then the weather turned to shit and our four ship diverted into the civvie airport at Branson, MO where we treated like royalty or the Osmonds.
Unthinkable in the RN. Image somebody's mum being fed baby head stew that a reeking cook has stirred with his arm because he couldn't find a spoon.
Somehow you can always trust the left to destroy itself.
If you allow strikes to work, you will get more of them. I don't know why Labour finds this so hard to understand.
It's possible to distinguish. I think most people have far less sympathy with the train drivers than with the doctors. If Labour have any sense they will make sure a deal is done quickly with the latter while standing firm against the former.
I’m not entirely convinced there is much sympathy with the doctors, to be frank.
Somehow you can always trust the left to destroy itself.
If you allow strikes to work, you will get more of them. I don't know why Labour finds this so hard to understand.
How does one avoid allowing strikes to work? Obstruct, prevaricate and lie with resultant extended industrial action like the last shower which as one of them admitted ended up costing more than the pay demands?
Fresh train strikes have been announced, breaking a peace agreement between the train drivers’ union, Aslef, and the rail industry that lasted less than 48 hours.
Members working for LNER – the government-owned train operator on the East Coast main line – will walk out at weekends from 31 August to 10 November.
The union says the 22 days of planned strikes are in response to “bullying by management and persistent breaking of agreements by the company”.
It is unrelated to the pay dispute that saw three years of strikes by train drivers across England.
Aslef general secretary Mick Whelan said: “The continued failure of the company to resolve long-standing industrial relations issues has forced us into this position. We would much rather not be here.
Whelan's got Starmer on the rack and he's cracking the whip now.
Who can blame him. People go on about Mick Lynch being a canny operator. He's a boorish Corbynite who eventually folded. On the other hand Mick Whelan is a smart cookie. He knows he has the govt on the rack and he is exerting the pressure.
The only question is when the government cave in, not if they cave in.
Doubtful about Whelan being a smart cookie. You go on strike every weekend because you think LNER is being horrid? What actually is your goal that strikes might deliver? If you strike over pay your hoped for objective is a bigger pay packet.
And by the way the proposed pay settlement isn't that great, at a bit below national average pay increases over the period. Train drivers will have forgone a chunk of their income when striking to get it.
What is clear however is strikes are ASLEF's weapon of first instance rather than keeping them in reserve for maximum effect.
Somehow you can always trust the left to destroy itself.
If you allow strikes to work, you will get more of them. I don't know why Labour finds this so hard to understand.
And if you never allow strikes to work you're effectively removing the right to strike. So both extremes being sub-optimal you're left with negotiation/compromise and settlements informed by a mixture of balance of power and merit of the claim.
I'm not suggesting removing the right to strike. I can't see why it should be illegal to withold your labour. But I'd suggest for an employer, acceding to the demands of a strike is counter productive: there won't be any less striking as a result, and there will probably be more. Like paying Danegeld - valid as a short term solution, but the people demanding money have a disappointing tendency to come back and demand more: you'd better have a long term alternative.
Somehow you can always trust the left to destroy itself.
If you allow strikes to work, you will get more of them. I don't know why Labour finds this so hard to understand.
It's possible to distinguish. I think most people have far less sympathy with the train drivers than with the doctors. If Labour have any sense they will make sure a deal is done quickly with the latter while standing firm against the former.
IMO you need strong unions more in the private sector than the public sector (since rank exploitation by an employer is more likely there) but in practice it seems the other way round. Unions struggle for influence in the private sector.
Trump was always going to find having a running mate hard. It required him to think about someone else for a moment or two. He also sent a mob to lynch his previous running mate so not everyone would be up for the job.
Pence at least brought his evangelicals into the tent. I am really not sure what Vance was meant to bring but for Trump to pick someone with such a rich vein of misogyny going back for years seems to have doubled down on a weakness of his own. If I was to point to one single factor that was weighing this race Harris's way it would be the differential on women voters. Its the abortion thing, the misogyny, the pussy grabbing thing, the lack of loyalty to serial spouses, the patronising crap and the gratuitous rudeness handed out to Harris. Its a long list of reasons that is going to alienate a lot of women.
Trump didn't pick Vance to bring anything to the ticket - and the selection was one vetted by his son, and really at the prompting of a handful of billionaire donors.
As much as anything, it was an expression of hubris, rather than electoral calculation.
Yet Harris picked Walz from Minnesota, which has voted Democrat since 1976, over Shapiro from swing state Pennsylvania. Indeed Vance represents Ohio which voted for Obama, so is more of a swing state than Minnesota.
Though Harris will hope Walz has appeal in upper Midwest swing states Wisconsin and Michigan too
Coach Walz appeals across a wide spectrum. If AI was asked to generate a VP pick that would maximise support across the political spectrum, it would be hard pushed to generate something better than Walz.
If an assassin took out President Trump/President Harris, which VP would you want stepping up? No contest. A marginal - but non-trivial - factor in how people will vote.
This may also be a consideration given Trump’s age and the fact he doesn’t look or sound well.
The biggest bonus of Walz really though is his skill in warming up the crowds. You see lots of happy, cheering people behind Harris as she mouths platitudes at a modest pace, and lots of puzzled,bored people behind Trump as he witters on about stolen elections, persecution, massive crowds and sharks.
The contrast is stark. Trump won in 2016 partly because his energy and his backers’ enthusiasm were palpable compared to Clinton, who was dull, controversial and had a few health episodes. Now, the candidate who fits *that* bill is Trump himself.
Plus one is more likely to actually be locked up.
If Trump wins, we can be pretty sure Harris will be locked up.
Unless he has the army behind him to impose a dictatorship highly unlikely unless Harris commits a serious crime
She's already committed one. Calling the Great Leader a fraudster and sexual creep.
And he doesn't need the army, just the courts.
Who are, of course, entirely impartial and not at all throwing out cases for political reasons, or declaring Presidents have immunity because it's June.
The courts aren't just going to jail someone who has committed no crime even if most of the judges are Republicans.
They just need to say in light of whatever the Supreme Court called their nonsense on immunity that they have no power to release her.
That's why it was such a stupid, stupid ruling.
Yes but that would assume a lower court had already convicted her of a criminal offence and jailed her, yet if she had committed no criminal offence in the first place that would not happen anyway.
The President has no constitutional powers to sentence and jail individuals himself, immunity just relates to his own liberty from prosecution
If he is immune from prosecution what is to stop him holding Harris under house arrest and denying any application she is granted for habeus corpus?
I don't think you really understand the significance of the idea of keeping elected leaders within the law, any more than the Supreme Court do.
As the police only implement the sentences of the court or arrest those who breach existing state or Federal criminal law not do what the President decides on a whim
Second sentence confirmed.
Even the Secret Service are only there to protect the President not arrest others except those directly threatening the President's life. The armed forces in the US swear to uphold the constitution as well as follow the orders of the President
The US Secret Service also deals with currency-related crimes and can make arrests for that purpose.
Somehow you can always trust the left to destroy itself.
If you allow strikes to work, you will get more of them. I don't know why Labour finds this so hard to understand.
And if you never allow strikes to work you're effectively removing the right to strike. So both extremes being sub-optimal you're left with negotiation/compromise and settlements informed by a mixture of balance of power and merit of the claim.
The sane. modern approach is no-strike agreements, complete with independent pay review boards, independent resolution for grievances and a final recourse to law and then strikes, if all of the above fail.
Wonder if Harris realizes that President Nixon actually instituted wage and price controls? As I recall, they were popular with the public at first, but that faded. He also put controls on soy bean exports -- which killed the sales to japan.
Perhaps she should propose cuts in gas taxes, or housing costs in places like San Francisco.
Somehow you can always trust the left to destroy itself.
If you allow strikes to work, you will get more of them. I don't know why Labour finds this so hard to understand.
It's possible to distinguish. I think most people have far less sympathy with the train drivers than with the doctors. If Labour have any sense they will make sure a deal is done quickly with the latter while standing firm against the former.
IMO you need strong unions more in the private sector than the public sector (since rank exploitation by an employer is more likely there) but in practice it seems the other way round. Unions struggle for influence in the private sector.
"since rank exploitation by an employer is more likely there"
Just from *using* the NHS, I've seen employment practises that would get you booted in large chunks of the private sector.
Somehow you can always trust the left to destroy itself.
If you allow strikes to work, you will get more of them. I don't know why Labour finds this so hard to understand.
And if you never allow strikes to work you're effectively removing the right to strike. So both extremes being sub-optimal you're left with negotiation/compromise and settlements informed by a mixture of balance of power and merit of the claim.
The sane. modern approach is no-strike agreements, complete with independent pay review boards, independent resolution for grievances and a final recourse to law and then strikes, if all of the above fail.
They very rarely fail.
Which is why the government consistently overriding the Doctors "independent" payload pissed people off so much as to precipitate the recent strikes.
If it were Mexico pushing into the US with weapons supplied by the Chinese and Russians, how long would it be before they broke out the nukes?
10 minutes and I am not joking.
Seems unlikely, given they could utterly destroy any such force with conventional weapons.
If you can imagine Mexico invading the US then surely your imagination can cope with Mexico winning with conventional weapons!
Er.... no.
So let me get this straight - you're willing to go along with Mexico hypothetically invading the USA, but you draw the line at them having any success as being just too unrealistic?
I assume in this analogy it is a case of USA invaded Mexico first, and now Mexico is counterattacking not invading unprovoked?
What part of "fuck off" don't you get?
Can you stop doing that? It's extremely impolite to someone making perfectly reasonable posts.
Ooh, vigilante modding !!!
Sorry if that breaks some kind of etiquette but it does seem a bit unnecessary
You’re right it is whatever people,feel about anyone, and I shouldn’t call you out for it as I risk being a vigilante mod too 😀
Somehow you can always trust the left to destroy itself.
If you allow strikes to work, you will get more of them. I don't know why Labour finds this so hard to understand.
And if you never allow strikes to work you're effectively removing the right to strike. So both extremes being sub-optimal you're left with negotiation/compromise and settlements informed by a mixture of balance of power and merit of the claim.
The sane. modern approach is no-strike agreements, complete with independent pay review boards, independent resolution for grievances and a final recourse to law and then strikes, if all of the above fail.
They very rarely fail.
Which is why the government consistently overriding the Doctors "independent" payload pissed people off so much as to precipitate the recent strikes.
In order for a no strike agreement to work, you need far more than just an independent pay review.
As far as I can tell, you'd need to burn down much of the employment practises in the NHS. And start again.
Somehow you can always trust the left to destroy itself.
If you allow strikes to work, you will get more of them. I don't know why Labour finds this so hard to understand.
It's possible to distinguish. I think most people have far less sympathy with the train drivers than with the doctors. If Labour have any sense they will make sure a deal is done quickly with the latter while standing firm against the former.
IMO you need strong unions more in the private sector than the public sector (since rank exploitation by an employer is more likely there) but in practice it seems the other way round. Unions struggle for influence in the private sector.
In the private sector, it's easier to move from one employer to another if you are dissatisfied with your job. Also, the private sector has been more successful at sidelining unions and dealing with individuals.
PB Tories have short memories, as far as political history is concerned. I look forward to their denunciation of the fatally flawed Mrs T.
According to this logic the 25 % pay rise that Margaret Thatcher agreed with public sector unions in 1979 would make her the weakest Prime Minister in British history https://x.com/APHClarkson/status/1824087765434208692
Somehow you can always trust the left to destroy itself.
If you allow strikes to work, you will get more of them. I don't know why Labour finds this so hard to understand.
It's possible to distinguish. I think most people have far less sympathy with the train drivers than with the doctors. If Labour have any sense they will make sure a deal is done quickly with the latter while standing firm against the former.
IMO you need strong unions more in the private sector than the public sector (since rank exploitation by an employer is more likely there) but in practice it seems the other way round. Unions struggle for influence in the private sector.
"since rank exploitation by an employer is more likely there"
Just from *using* the NHS, I've seen employment practises that would get you booted in large chunks of the private sector.
Oh yes for sure. But on the whole, on a ranking of UK employers for predilection to rankly exploit, the Govt (even a Tory one) will not feature towards the top.
Somehow you can always trust the left to destroy itself.
If you allow strikes to work, you will get more of them. I don't know why Labour finds this so hard to understand.
It's possible to distinguish. I think most people have far less sympathy with the train drivers than with the doctors. If Labour have any sense they will make sure a deal is done quickly with the latter while standing firm against the former.
IMO you need strong unions more in the private sector than the public sector (since rank exploitation by an employer is more likely there) but in practice it seems the other way round. Unions struggle for influence in the private sector.
In the private sector, it's easier to move from one employer to another if you are dissatisfied with your job. Also, the private sector has been more successful at sidelining unions and dealing with individuals.
You're not agreeing with me then? That it'd be better if unions were stronger in the private sector than in the public sector whereas as we have it in reverse?
Thought I'd come up with a real 'hands across the water' there.
Hopefully a certain other billionaire will be able to send a congratulatory "Well done on making orbit" message to Bezos soon
It's very good, and Bezos's obvious enthusiasm and knowledge has put some of the Elonstans in a bad mood.
The different approaches between the two companies are quite interesting; it'll be intriguing to see how the first New Glenn launch goes later in the year.
Somehow you can always trust the left to destroy itself.
If you allow strikes to work, you will get more of them. I don't know why Labour finds this so hard to understand.
And if you never allow strikes to work you're effectively removing the right to strike. So both extremes being sub-optimal you're left with negotiation/compromise and settlements informed by a mixture of balance of power and merit of the claim.
The sane. modern approach is no-strike agreements, complete with independent pay review boards, independent resolution for grievances and a final recourse to law and then strikes, if all of the above fail.
They very rarely fail.
Sounds good. So long as you can still withdraw your labour as a last resort.
Academic economist Alan Taylor appointed to the MPC. Impressive CV but he doesn't appear to have spent much time here since his student days at Cambridge. How well does he know the UK economy?
Somehow you can always trust the left to destroy itself.
If you allow strikes to work, you will get more of them. I don't know why Labour finds this so hard to understand.
And if you never allow strikes to work you're effectively removing the right to strike. So both extremes being sub-optimal you're left with negotiation/compromise and settlements informed by a mixture of balance of power and merit of the claim.
The sane. modern approach is no-strike agreements, complete with independent pay review boards, independent resolution for grievances and a final recourse to law and then strikes, if all of the above fail.
They very rarely fail.
Sounds good. So long as you can still withdraw your labour as a last resort.
Strikes should be safe and legal and rare.
See the various factories in the UK which moved to such agreements - car manufacturing was first, in the 80s.
Academic economist Alan Taylor appointed to the MPC. Impressive CV but he doesn't appear to have spent much time here since his student days at Cambridge. How well does he know the UK economy?
The impressive CV is needed for credibility with the markets. The only thing anyone will care about is how he votes though. Is he a Catherine Mann style hawk or a Swati Dinghra dove. Note he will not I think get a vote at the next MPC meeting.
Academic economist Alan Taylor appointed to the MPC. Impressive CV but he doesn't appear to have spent much time here since his student days at Cambridge. How well does he know the UK economy?
The impressive CV is needed for credibility with the markets. The only thing anyone will care about is how he votes though. Is he a Catherine Mann style hawk or a Swati Dinghra dove. Note he will not I think get a vote at the next MPC meeting.
That's a short termist financier/mortgage holder take. Surely the most important thing is whether he votes for rate rises/cuts at the right time. I would have thought a good understanding of the UK economy would be needed to do that, no?
Let's always remember how Cameron was about to tell the British public not to get into debt on their cards when someone from the Treasury or Bank of England warned him that the whole economy functions on the basis of people spending more than they have on cards, and he had to scrap the idea.
Yesterday, the @FT ran a piece about government assurances around compute. We’re confused by the government creating an AI Opportunities taskforce days before canning investment, and now backtracking. We’ve spoken to multiple insiders to figure out what’s going on. It's bad. 1/10
Academic economist Alan Taylor appointed to the MPC. Impressive CV but he doesn't appear to have spent much time here since his student days at Cambridge. How well does he know the UK economy?
That could be viewed as a positive. The last thing you want is groupthink, as has been in the past accused by the like of Mervyn King.
Academic economist Alan Taylor appointed to the MPC. Impressive CV but he doesn't appear to have spent much time here since his student days at Cambridge. How well does he know the UK economy?
The impressive CV is needed for credibility with the markets. The only thing anyone will care about is how he votes though. Is he a Catherine Mann style hawk or a Swati Dinghra dove. Note he will not I think get a vote at the next MPC meeting.
That's a short termist financier/mortgage holder take. Surely the most important thing is whether he votes for rate rises/cuts at the right time. I would have thought a good understanding of the UK economy would be needed to do that, no?
Mark Carney waves hello, he did a pretty good job despite being a Canuck.
Academic economist Alan Taylor appointed to the MPC. Impressive CV but he doesn't appear to have spent much time here since his student days at Cambridge. How well does he know the UK economy?
That could be viewed as a positive. The last thing you want is groupthink, as has been in the past accused by the like of Mervyn King.
Well one thing the MPC doesn't have right now is groupthink - Mann and Greene have very different views to Dinghra with Bailey and the others somewhere in the middle. It'll be interesting to see where Taylor is. Is anyone familiar enough with his work to be able to work out his likely positions ?
Academic economist Alan Taylor appointed to the MPC. Impressive CV but he doesn't appear to have spent much time here since his student days at Cambridge. How well does he know the UK economy?
The impressive CV is needed for credibility with the markets. The only thing anyone will care about is how he votes though. Is he a Catherine Mann style hawk or a Swati Dinghra dove. Note he will not I think get a vote at the next MPC meeting.
That's a short termist financier/mortgage holder take. Surely the most important thing is whether he votes for rate rises/cuts at the right time. I would have thought a good understanding of the UK economy would be needed to do that, no?
Mark Carney waves hello, he did a pretty good job despite being a Canuck.
He also contributed to Vote Leave winning the referendum.
One of the most powerful examples of leftist bigotry in our media is their unwillingness to mention PEPFAR, which is estimated to have saved more than 25 million lives, so far. Most of them poor blacks in sub-Saharan Africa. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/President's_Emergency_Plan_for_AIDS_Relief
Will the BBC will do a big series on the program, starting when the annual report comes out this September 30th, which is an important anniversary? I wouldn't bet on it.
PB Tories have short memories, as far as political history is concerned. I look forward to their denunciation of the fatally flawed Mrs T.
According to this logic the 25 % pay rise that Margaret Thatcher agreed with public sector unions in 1979 would make her the weakest Prime Minister in British history https://x.com/APHClarkson/status/1824087765434208692
Do you know the inflation rates from the second half of the 70s?
Yesterday, the @FT ran a piece about government assurances around compute. We’re confused by the government creating an AI Opportunities taskforce days before canning investment, and now backtracking. We’ve spoken to multiple insiders to figure out what’s going on. It's bad. 1/10
And whilst on the railways, ASLEF are striking on LNER, despite the payrise. "He accused the train operator of "repeatedly" breaking agreements, acting in "bad faith", and of "boorish behaviour and bullying tactics"."
Let's always remember how Cameron was about to tell the British public not to get into debt on their cards when someone from the Treasury or Bank of England warned him that the whole economy functions on the basis of people spending more than they have on cards, and he had to scrap the idea.
Somehow you can always trust the left to destroy itself.
If you allow strikes to work, you will get more of them. I don't know why Labour finds this so hard to understand.
And if you never allow strikes to work you're effectively removing the right to strike. So both extremes being sub-optimal you're left with negotiation/compromise and settlements informed by a mixture of balance of power and merit of the claim.
I'm not suggesting removing the right to strike. I can't see why it should be illegal to withold your labour. But I'd suggest for an employer, acceding to the demands of a strike is counter productive: there won't be any less striking as a result, and there will probably be more. Like paying Danegeld - valid as a short term solution, but the people demanding money have a disappointing tendency to come back and demand more: you'd better have a long term alternative.
Well there's already a failure in relations if there's a strike. It then has to be settled and your "acceding to its demands" usually means a negotiated settlement in the (ample) territory between two extremes, ie with neither the bosses nor the workers caving in entirely. Both of those outcomes are unhealthy because you don't want cowed bosses or cowed workers.
PB Tories have short memories, as far as political history is concerned. I look forward to their denunciation of the fatally flawed Mrs T.
According to this logic the 25 % pay rise that Margaret Thatcher agreed with public sector unions in 1979 would make her the weakest Prime Minister in British history https://x.com/APHClarkson/status/1824087765434208692
Do you know the inflation rates from the second half of the 70s?
Yesterday, the @FT ran a piece about government assurances around compute. We’re confused by the government creating an AI Opportunities taskforce days before canning investment, and now backtracking. We’ve spoken to multiple insiders to figure out what’s going on. It's bad. 1/10
And whilst on the railways, ASLEF are striking on LNER, despite the payrise. "He accused the train operator of "repeatedly" breaking agreements, acting in "bad faith", and of "boorish behaviour and bullying tactics"."
How awful these private companies are!
Oh.
LNER is run by the government...
I think it was obvious the unions were going to get their returns for all the years of backing Labour. However, I honestly presumed this growth mantra would mean that Labour would still be spending on infrastructure that could boost productivity and investment in the UK. Expanding big compute is not only sensible thing to do, but a necessity, if you have a knowledge based economy.
I find it difficult to argue with this thread. The decision on the Edinburgh computing centre just seems to have been a bad one, and they're unwilling to admit outright that it was wrong.
Yesterday, the @FT ran a piece about government assurances around compute. We’re confused by the government creating an AI Opportunities taskforce days before canning investment, and now backtracking.
That's a very bad sign of the new government's competence, orientation to short-term thinking and unwillingness to recognise mistakes instead of trying to ineptly spin their way out of them.
Seattle Times - USS Ronald Reagan aircraft carrier docks at Naval Base Kitsap
After nearly a decade deployed in the Indo-Pacific, the U.S. Navy aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan and its thousands of sailors returned to Bremerton’s Naval Base Kitsap on Tuesday.
The base will serve as the home port for the aircraft carrier as it undergoes routine maintenance. . . .
Before arriving in Bremerton [WA], the USS Ronald Reagan had been the Navy’s only aircraft carrier with a home port in a foreign country. The ship departed from Yokosuka, Japan, on May 16, where it had been deployed since 2015.
During its tenure, the aircraft carrier participated in dozens of multilateral exercises and visited more than a dozen foreign ports, including a historic port call in Da Nang, Vietnam, last year. . . .
Friends, family and loved ones greeted more than 2,500 sailors onboard the aircraft carrier. . . .
I went on the Nimitz back around 1975 when it visited the Firth of Forth. Never forgotten that visit. Too big to come into port so we just got a boat ride out there and I had a wander around for an hour or two. All one had to do was to get a ticket from the US Consulate.
Not sure if they'd do that today. Last time I was in Plymouth a US submarine was in dock with orange buoys all around and, presumably, guarded by US people with automatic rifles and LMGs on the territory of the UK.
Back at the beginning of her career, my wife was the Nimitz’s mascot 😊
The US Navy still has bizarre (to my ears) things called Friends and Family Cruises, where they take hundreds of Friends and Family out for the day to sea. Applies to all kinds of USN ships.
Flight operations with thousands of civilians on the flight deck.
I'm sure it does wonders for public engagement, and is to do with a society far more permeated by the military - which may be where we need to be going, but our Admirals would have kittens. But the USA is not a risk-averse society.
Thank goodness for lightning protectors. I couldn't do that and wear white trousers. I can hardly bear to watch as it is.
Ooh, it's all retro Navy stuff to which I can contribute. They used to do that at HMS Ganges, which was the naval training establishment for boy seamen. My father had to do that when he was 15 or 16, around 1956. The topmost position was called the button boy, and got (IIRC) sixpence for doing it each time, as you had to hold on with your knees only. I bet it was that Health n Safety lot what stopped it.
Oh dear, Ganges was grim. I've read the memoirs and history. My father had it easy as an artificer apprentice - even with lesson 1 being how to cut and file an accurate cube one inch all round *by hand*, lesson two a hollow cylinder from a lump of metal with an *off-centre* hole in it, and so on.
Yesterday, the @FT ran a piece about government assurances around compute. We’re confused by the government creating an AI Opportunities taskforce days before canning investment, and now backtracking. We’ve spoken to multiple insiders to figure out what’s going on. It's bad. 1/10
And whilst on the railways, ASLEF are striking on LNER, despite the payrise. "He accused the train operator of "repeatedly" breaking agreements, acting in "bad faith", and of "boorish behaviour and bullying tactics"."
One of the most powerful examples of leftist bigotry in our media is their unwillingness to mention PEPFAR, which is estimated to have saved more than 25 million lives, so far. Most of them poor blacks in sub-Saharan Africa. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/President's_Emergency_Plan_for_AIDS_Relief
Will the BBC will do a big series on the program, starting when the annual report comes out this September 30th, which is an important anniversary? I wouldn't bet on it.
One thing the Kursk (& likely Belgorod in time too) offensive does is make the war existential for Russia in a way it previously was only for Ukraine. Unless either Kyiv or Moscow falls, facts on the ground will determine any post settlement ceasefire.
It increases the peril for Putin, but it actually does that thing people were desperate to do early in the war - it provides Russia with an off-ramp.
It creates the space for a negotiated settlement where Ukraine gives up occupied Russian territory in exchange for occupied Ukrainian territory. Previously, Russia had nothing to gain from negotiations. Now it does.
One of the most powerful examples of leftist bigotry in our media is their unwillingness to mention PEPFAR, which is estimated to have saved more than 25 million lives, so far. Most of them poor blacks in sub-Saharan Africa. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/President's_Emergency_Plan_for_AIDS_Relief
Will the BBC will do a big series on the program, starting when the annual report comes out this September 30th, which is an important anniversary? I wouldn't bet on it.
Seattle Times - USS Ronald Reagan aircraft carrier docks at Naval Base Kitsap
After nearly a decade deployed in the Indo-Pacific, the U.S. Navy aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan and its thousands of sailors returned to Bremerton’s Naval Base Kitsap on Tuesday.
The base will serve as the home port for the aircraft carrier as it undergoes routine maintenance. . . .
Before arriving in Bremerton [WA], the USS Ronald Reagan had been the Navy’s only aircraft carrier with a home port in a foreign country. The ship departed from Yokosuka, Japan, on May 16, where it had been deployed since 2015.
During its tenure, the aircraft carrier participated in dozens of multilateral exercises and visited more than a dozen foreign ports, including a historic port call in Da Nang, Vietnam, last year. . . .
Friends, family and loved ones greeted more than 2,500 sailors onboard the aircraft carrier. . . .
I went on the Nimitz back around 1975 when it visited the Firth of Forth. Never forgotten that visit. Too big to come into port so we just got a boat ride out there and I had a wander around for an hour or two. All one had to do was to get a ticket from the US Consulate.
Not sure if they'd do that today. Last time I was in Plymouth a US submarine was in dock with orange buoys all around and, presumably, guarded by US people with automatic rifles and LMGs on the territory of the UK.
Back at the beginning of her career, my wife was the Nimitz’s mascot 😊
The US Navy still has bizarre (to my ears) things called Friends and Family Cruises, where they take hundreds of Friends and Family out for the day to sea. Applies to all kinds of USN ships.
Flight operations with thousands of civilians on the flight deck.
I'm sure it does wonders for public engagement, and is to do with a society far more permeated by the military - which may be where we need to be going, but our Admirals would have kittens. But the USA is not a risk-averse society.
Thank goodness for lightning protectors. I couldn't do that and wear white trousers. I can hardly bear to watch as it is.
Ooh, it's all retro Navy stuff to which I can contribute. They used to do that at HMS Ganges, which was the naval training establishment for boy seamen. My father had to do that when he was 15 or 16, around 1956. The topmost position was called the button boy, and got (IIRC) sixpence for doing it each time, as you had to hold on with your knees only. I bet it was that Health n Safety lot what stopped it.
Oh dear, Ganges was grim. I've read the memoirs and history. My father had it easy as an artificer apprentice - even with lesson 1 being how to cut and file an accurate cube one inch all round *by hand*, lesson two a hollow cylinder from a lump of metal with an *off-centre* hole in it, and so on.
Yeah, my spidey-sense is tingling about this study. What it actually shows is if you cross out the worst results and pretend they didn't happen, we're halfway to the broad, sunlit uplands.
The idea that replacing the GPs who treated these now-dead patients would massively improve outcomes is an assumption for which I'd want to see some evidence.
Yesterday, the @FT ran a piece about government assurances around compute. We’re confused by the government creating an AI Opportunities taskforce days before canning investment, and now backtracking. We’ve spoken to multiple insiders to figure out what’s going on. It's bad. 1/10
And whilst on the railways, ASLEF are striking on LNER, despite the payrise. "He accused the train operator of "repeatedly" breaking agreements, acting in "bad faith", and of "boorish behaviour and bullying tactics"."
How awful these private companies are!
Oh.
LNER is run by the government...
I think Haigh is miles out of her depth now.
As HMG keeps caving in to the rail unions who will want to have managment career in Rail ? They will have no confidence the government will stand its ground. This is the recipe for gradual decline.
If it were Mexico pushing into the US with weapons supplied by the Chinese and Russians, how long would it be before they broke out the nukes?
10 minutes and I am not joking.
Seems unlikely, given they could utterly destroy any such force with conventional weapons.
If you can imagine Mexico invading the US then surely your imagination can cope with Mexico winning with conventional weapons!
Er.... no.
So let me get this straight - you're willing to go along with Mexico hypothetically invading the USA, but you draw the line at them having any success as being just too unrealistic?
I assume in this analogy it is a case of USA invaded Mexico first, and now Mexico is counterattacking not invading unprovoked?
What part of "fuck off" don't you get?
Can you stop doing that? It's extremely impolite to someone making perfectly reasonable posts.
Ooh, vigilante modding !!!
Sorry if that breaks some kind of etiquette but it does seem a bit unnecessary
Some context here.
The 'fuck off' from Kamski (to BR) isn't regarding that specific comment. It's in general. They had a spat a couple of days ago whereby BR was rolling out some of his trademark unthinking anti-German bile and Kamski took offence to it and told BR to stop interacting with him.
@kamski will correct me if I'm wrong but that's my take.
More that he repeatedly called me a Putin apologist on more than one occasion, and I really can't be bothered to interact with him any more. I scroll past his posts, but if he's going to reply to mine directly I can only repeat my message. Not sure why he'd want a Putin apologist to be polite to him so I think I'll stick with direct language if it's all the same.
Some nice O'Neill/High frontier inspired slides about 15 minutes in.
Bezos has been fascinated by space all his life, going back to his time at school. His vision is also more consistent and (dare I say...) sensible than Musk's, which includes plenty of underpants-style uncertainty.
Yeah, my spidey-sense is tingling about this study. What it actually shows is if you cross out the worst results and pretend they didn't happen, we're halfway to the broad, sunlit uplands.
The idea that replacing the GPs who treated these now-dead patients would massively improve outcomes is an assumption for which I'd want to see some evidence.
Yes, me too - hence my comment. I would hope that they adjusted for confounding factors, though.
I'd also take a very close look at what Taiwan's health service does. The capacity to innovate locally, and then have best practices adopted nationally, looks very attractive.
The article doesn't say that. It just has a Think Tank opining that New Towns aren't a Silver Bullet.
Alan is desperate to declare failure, almost before they've started. I remain cautiously optimistic - not least as the policy I predicted pre-election, and which he said wouldn't happen, seems to be happening.
Comments
By now, those special forces have likely evacuated themselves and are looking at the next undefended Russian border.
Flight operations with thousands of civilians on the flight deck.
I'm sure it does wonders for public engagement, and is to do with a society far more permeated by the military - which may be where we need to be going again, but our Admirals would have kittens.
OTOH the USA is not a risk-averse society.
Here's one from the George H W Bush ie the top aircraft carrier costing $6bn+ from June 2023.
https://www.dvidshub.net/video/886781/uss-george-hw-bush-cvn-77-friends-and-family-day-cruise
"I don't wanna be ruled by Christian Nationalists with their Project 2025"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q8-RpAErmo4
Yet here he stands, the GOP candidate for president with either a 45% or a 33% chance of winning, depending on whether you listen to the market or to me.
NY Times analysis of the state of play.
I wonder if we will get Manning the Mast back after about 3 decades.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gFeUO1R3-eg
The 'fuck off' from Kamski (to BR) isn't regarding that specific comment. It's in general. They had a spat a couple of days ago whereby BR was rolling out some of his trademark unthinking anti-German bile and Kamski took offence to it and told BR to stop interacting with him.
@kamski will correct me if I'm wrong but that's my take.
I wonder if we will get Manning the Mast back after about 3 decades.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gFeUO1R3-eg
Adds:
I wonder if the Leeanderthal Man would suggest some of this in Parliament?
In 1915, a law was passed that made it illegal to film US currency. Here’s what happened afterwards…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=drLzVcgnBfI
It will be clear that unlike this one, your effort was not up to the mark.
P.S. I was christened on board HMS Ark Royal (R09) in 1964, using the ship's bell as a baptismal font. My name should be engraved in the bell, but last I heard it was missing.
Edit: Or maybe not since I see it's also on the Beeb.
Unthinkable in the RN. Image somebody's mum being fed baby head stew that a reeking cook has stirred with his arm because he couldn't find a spoon.
Teachers and nursing staff, absolutely.
And by the way the proposed pay settlement isn't that great, at a bit below national average pay increases over the period. Train drivers will have forgone a chunk of their income when striking to get it.
What is clear however is strikes are ASLEF's weapon of first instance rather than keeping them in reserve for maximum effect.
They very rarely fail.
Perhaps she should propose cuts in gas taxes, or housing costs in places like San Francisco.
Just from *using* the NHS, I've seen employment practises that would get you booted in large chunks of the private sector.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rsuqSn7ifpU
Hopefully a certain other billionaire will be able to send a congratulatory "Well done on making orbit" message to Bezos soon
As far as I can tell, you'd need to burn down much of the employment practises in the NHS. And start again.
Also, the private sector has been more successful at sidelining unions and dealing with individuals.
I look forward to their denunciation of the fatally flawed Mrs T.
According to this logic the 25 % pay rise that Margaret Thatcher agreed with public sector unions in 1979 would make her the weakest Prime Minister in British history
https://x.com/APHClarkson/status/1824087765434208692
We should do more of these.
Doctor quality matters a lot.
Norwegian study finds that replacing one of the 5% worst general practitioners with one of average quality generates a social benefit of $9.05 million.
https://x.com/StefanFSchubert/status/1823990866731512292
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election#Popular_vote_results
Anyone who touched Kistler should have been unhireable.
The GOP, though, is no longer the party of Lincoln; nor the Democratic Party the party of Jackson (who is now Trump's favourite president).
Thought I'd come up with a real 'hands across the water' there.
The different approaches between the two companies are quite interesting; it'll be intriguing to see how the first New Glenn launch goes later in the year.
Strikes should be safe and legal and rare.
https://x.com/MetaResistance/status/1824211918237864324
Yesterday, the @FT ran a piece about government assurances around compute. We’re confused by the government creating an AI Opportunities taskforce days before canning investment, and now backtracking. We’ve spoken to multiple insiders to figure out what’s going on. It's bad. 1/10
https://x.com/chalmermagne/status/1824387972952682514
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/President's_Emergency_Plan_for_AIDS_Relief
Will the BBC will do a big series on the program, starting when the annual report comes out this September 30th, which is an important anniversary? I wouldn't bet on it.
75 - 24.21%
76 - 16.56%
77 - 15.84%
78 - 8.26%
79 - 13.42%
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cvg49v5k771o
So the magic money tree helps Labour's own.
And whilst on the railways, ASLEF are striking on LNER, despite the payrise. "He accused the train operator of "repeatedly" breaking agreements, acting in "bad faith", and of "boorish behaviour and bullying tactics"."
How awful these private companies are!
Oh.
LNER is run by the government...
And what's the inflation rate for 2022, 2022, and 2024 ?
In that context, is the approx 5% per annum agreed worse than the deal Thatcher struck ?
Please.
Notoriously right wing NPR.
https://www.npr.org/2023/03/18/1164565617/a-look-at-pepfars-legacy-20-years-of-fighting-aids
Arch conservative Joe Biden.
https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2023/01/28/statement-from-president-joe-biden-on-the-20th-anniversary-of-the-u-s-presidents-emergency-plan-for-aids-relief-pepfar/
CSPAN
https://www.c-span.org/video/?528504-1/20th-anniversary-presidents-emergency-plan-aids-relief
NYT
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/08/opinion/aids-pepfar-bush.html
WaPo
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/01/28/pepfar-aids-congress-reauthorize/
Oh.
Republicans delay more than $1 billion in HIV program funding
https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2023/10/26/pepfar-funding-delays-hiv-abortion/
I'm happy to acknowledge it as one of the great successes of the otherwise largely miserable Bush administrations.
More ScoTory fun ...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GQ98hGUe6FM
Some nice O'Neill/High frontier inspired slides about 15 minutes in.
It creates the space for a negotiated settlement where Ukraine gives up occupied Russian territory in exchange for occupied Ukrainian territory. Previously, Russia had nothing to gain from negotiations. Now it does.
https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2023/oct/06/what-is-the-pepfar-fight-and-what-does-it-mean-for-africa
https://www.theguardian.com/society/article/2024/aug/16/angela-rayner-new-towns-plans-risk-not-meeting-england-housing-targets
You have to wonder how many more "economy press conferences" we'll see.
The idea that replacing the GPs who treated these now-dead patients would massively improve outcomes is an assumption for which I'd want to see some evidence.
They will have no confidence the government will stand its ground. This is the recipe for gradual decline.
Its back to the future for nationalised rail
And that's the last I have to say on the subject.
I would hope that they adjusted for confounding factors, though.
I'd also take a very close look at what Taiwan's health service does. The capacity to innovate locally, and then have best practices adopted nationally, looks very attractive.
Starmer is making BoJo look like a paragon of truth
I remain cautiously optimistic - not least as the policy I predicted pre-election, and which he said wouldn't happen, seems to be happening.