No police officer or government employee has ever been imprisoned for their gross misconduct in dealing with the grooming gangs horror.
But I’ve got plans to expose many of them in 2025 and reveal some of the senior leaders who failed to tackle the atrocity. Stay tuned.
You’ve posted this, it’s a horrendous story. It really is. So many victims and victims being not only targetted by paedophiles but the Police doing nothing and in some cases arresting the victims. Disgraceful and by doing nothing they simply enable the hard right to use it for their own purposes. They don’t care about the victims any more than the Authorities do. But look at the reaction of some of the usual suspects here. Cheap digs at Musk.
Still, they’re only working class girls.
Is there an imprisonable offence committed by “police officers or government employees” though?
If people were locked up for gross misconducted we’d need more jails…
That’s a very high standard though. A police officer messing up a case wouldn’t trigger it in my view
Threatening people so as not to report serious crimes, though? And refusing to handle reports of such crimes?
If there is credible evidence then that should be prosecuted
Ha. You’ve only to look at the Post Office case to see where that will end up. Even lying to a parliamentary committee (after lying in court) - still nothing. Even pardons were blocked until Parliament simply declared people innocent by fiat.
Happy new year all, from a beautiful and frosty Maconnais. After a week of freezing fog the sun is out and the world looks like Elsa has been practising for Frozen III.
Net zero sceptics will be delighted to learn that my new air source heat pump does not perform very well in minus 6. It’s warm enough inside, but it’s eating up the kilowatts like nobody’s business and keeps tripping our circuit breaker.
2024 was a lot about domestic politics, with an election as the centrepiece. 2025 feels like it’ll be all about international events. Trump’s second presidency and those tariffs, a possible denouement for good or bad in Ukraine, and a big test of nation building for the Syrians.
We - and I mean democratic nations - cannot afford Ukraine to be forced to give way. That is the truth of it. If Trump backs off Europe must take up the slack. We must see Putin and Putinism as the utter evil that it is and defend Ukraine and ourselves against it.
That assumes Trump will be chill with Europe keeping the SMO on the road. If he brokers a deal with VVP (I assume Zelenskiy can couped out of the way if necessary) then he might not want Europe fucking it up. If DJT says it's over, then it's over.
Trump clearly thinks he's going to fix a deal on Ukraine. Risk is he's not nearly as savvy in that department as he thinks he is.
My uninformed hunch is that he thinks there will be some sort of economic boost, for which he will take fulsome credit, if he shuts the SMO down. He doesn't particularly care where the line in the mud is.
If he does shut the SMO down ... My guess is Trump will go for a deal, which will fail mainly because Ukraine and Russia have incompatible goals and Putin overestimates the strength of his position, and also because Trump is a lousy negotiator. What happens next is hard to predict.
This is my view as well. Trump is not in a position to force a deal on either side, and a deal that is not accepted by Zelensky is not likely to be acceptable to the rest of Europe. The simple lesson is that Putin cannot be appeased. Nor morally should he benefit from the chaos and destruction he has wrought. There is not a deal that is acceptable to the west that will be acceptable to Russia,
Trump in the game does increase the chances of escalation as much as it increases the chance of Ukraine being forced to concede. Trump didn’t want to intervene in Syria on his previous watch, until he saw photos of what Assad had been doing.
I'm not sure that Western Europe, willing or not to replace the Americans, will be that decisive. The real Russian position appears to be reabsorption of the eastern provinces and Crimea - Putin is unlikely to really want the western provinces with their predominantly anti-Russian populations. Conversely the Ukrainian public seem less willing to stick to the "not an inch" position, and the government is probably less keen on the heavily damaged and underpopulated eastern provinces than it seems. So a deal isn't all that unlikely, but may hinge on how far Russia gets a gradual relaxation of sanctions if it doesn't proceed to "and now, Moldova and Transdniester". The most likely in the short to medium term is probably failure to get that, and a cold peace with borders roughly as they are.
Lots of assumptions there Nick
I pity the poor people of Eastern Ukraine that you are willing to sacrifice
It's not really assumptions, it's willful blindness about the opinions of the people who were living in Eastern Ukraine at the start of the war, and who are now suffering under Russian occupation.
Has there ever been a war in the history of mainland Europe which has left the borders of the combatants completely the same as when it started? I get the sentiment that Russia shouldn't win out of this and that it's not up to other countries to demand that Ukraine gives up sovereign territory. At the same time though the war has to end eventually and history tells us that it will probably involve some redrawing of maps.
Ww2?
The post WW2 settlement left several borders in E. and C. Europe changed. Notably Germany and Poland.
Happy new year all, from a beautiful and frosty Maconnais. After a week of freezing fog the sun is out and the world looks like Elsa has been practising for Frozen III.
Net zero sceptics will be delighted to learn that my new air source heat pump does not perform very well in minus 6. It’s warm enough inside, but it’s eating up the kilowatts like nobody’s business and keeps tripping our circuit breaker.
2024 was a lot about domestic politics, with an election as the centrepiece. 2025 feels like it’ll be all about international events. Trump’s second presidency and those tariffs, a possible denouement for good or bad in Ukraine, and a big test of nation building for the Syrians.
We - and I mean democratic nations - cannot afford Ukraine to be forced to give way. That is the truth of it. If Trump backs off Europe must take up the slack. We must see Putin and Putinism as the utter evil that it is and defend Ukraine and ourselves against it.
That assumes Trump will be chill with Europe keeping the SMO on the road. If he brokers a deal with VVP (I assume Zelenskiy can couped out of the way if necessary) then he might not want Europe fucking it up. If DJT says it's over, then it's over.
Trump clearly thinks he's going to fix a deal on Ukraine. Risk is he's not nearly as savvy in that department as he thinks he is.
My uninformed hunch is that he thinks there will be some sort of economic boost, for which he will take fulsome credit, if he shuts the SMO down. He doesn't particularly care where the line in the mud is.
If he does shut the SMO down ... My guess is Trump will go for a deal, which will fail mainly because Ukraine and Russia have incompatible goals and Putin overestimates the strength of his position, and also because Trump is a lousy negotiator. What happens next is hard to predict.
This is my view as well. Trump is not in a position to force a deal on either side, and a deal that is not accepted by Zelensky is not likely to be acceptable to the rest of Europe. The simple lesson is that Putin cannot be appeased. Nor morally should he benefit from the chaos and destruction he has wrought. There is not a deal that is acceptable to the west that will be acceptable to Russia,
Trump in the game does increase the chances of escalation as much as it increases the chance of Ukraine being forced to concede. Trump didn’t want to intervene in Syria on his previous watch, until he saw photos of what Assad had been doing.
I'm not sure that Western Europe, willing or not to replace the Americans, will be that decisive. The real Russian position appears to be reabsorption of the eastern provinces and Crimea - Putin is unlikely to really want the western provinces with their predominantly anti-Russian populations. Conversely the Ukrainian public seem less willing to stick to the "not an inch" position, and the government is probably less keen on the heavily damaged and underpopulated eastern provinces than it seems. So a deal isn't all that unlikely, but may hinge on how far Russia gets a gradual relaxation of sanctions if it doesn't proceed to "and now, Moldova and Transdniester". The most likely in the short to medium term is probably failure to get that, and a cold peace with borders roughly as they are.
Lots of assumptions there Nick
I pity the poor people of Eastern Ukraine that you are willing to sacrifice
It's not really assumptions, it's willful blindness about the opinions of the people who were living in Eastern Ukraine at the start of the war, and who are now suffering under Russian occupation.
Has there ever been a war in the history of mainland Europe which has left the borders of the combatants completely the same as when it started? I get the sentiment that Russia shouldn't win out of this and that it's not up to other countries to demand that Ukraine gives up sovereign territory. At the same time though the war has to end eventually and history tells us that it will probably involve some redrawing of maps.
No police officer or government employee has ever been imprisoned for their gross misconduct in dealing with the grooming gangs horror.
But I’ve got plans to expose many of them in 2025 and reveal some of the senior leaders who failed to tackle the atrocity. Stay tuned.
You’ve posted this, it’s a horrendous story. It really is. So many victims and victims being not only targetted by paedophiles but the Police doing nothing and in some cases arresting the victims. Disgraceful and by doing nothing they simply enable the hard right to use it for their own purposes. They don’t care about the victims any more than the Authorities do. But look at the reaction of some of the usual suspects here. Cheap digs at Musk.
Still, they’re only working class girls.
Is there an imprisonable offence committed by “police officers or government employees” though?
If people were locked up for gross misconducted we’d need more jails…
That’s a very high standard though. A police officer messing up a case wouldn’t trigger it in my view
Threatening people so as not to report serious crimes, though? And refusing to handle reports of such crimes?
If there is credible evidence then that should be prosecuted
Ha. You’ve only to look at the Post Office case to see where that will end up. Even lying to a parliamentary committee (after lying in court) - still nothing. Even pardons were blocked until Parliament simply declared people innocent by fiat.
I think we have to wait for the Report. The Chair was very careful to be even handed, but even he got cross at times.
During the last hour the temperature here has dropped by 6C
Just been for a bike ride. I've never seen the Mersey so high, nor heard it so loud. Water everywhere. Fun if this lot freezes.
The aerial shots of the Spey are astonishing. Demonstrates how important the upland flood plains (eg RSPB Insh Marshes) are for protecting Speyside, Moray etc. The new beavers in the Cairngorms are probably helping too.
No police officer or government employee has ever been imprisoned for their gross misconduct in dealing with the grooming gangs horror.
But I’ve got plans to expose many of them in 2025 and reveal some of the senior leaders who failed to tackle the atrocity. Stay tuned.
If it is a 'defining issue' it will only be because Musk is race-baiting for his mate Farage.
And you're slurping up the hate.
(And no, I am not defending the shits who committed the crimes; or the people who covered it up. But if you think Musk is making these comments from a good place, then I've got a Hyperloop to sell you.)
The simple answer, since the evidence was destroyed, is to put those involved in hiding what happened (police and officials) on one of the sex offenders registers.
That will sort out the criminals and the fuckwits trying to make political capital out of it.
The Home Sec has the arbitrary power to do this.
Unfortunately we don't go after the law enforcement agencies in the UK. If the police are bad then the courts are far worse. I am barely shockable but the love in which is the self-resolved Post Office Enquiry is bloody shocking to me. Yes, they are lining up the totems from the Post Office and Fujitsu - some of these will soon be taking a look on the bright side of life as in the Life of Brian. But what about the Courts ? It just will not do to say they had to assume the computers were working, that will not do. It is like saying you have to assume a lamb is the offspring of a cow and a camel. It was obvious to anyone by 2004 the programme was to use the technical term a crock of shite. Crikey even Computer Weekly worked that out by 2007. For any story to make it to CW with the greatest of respect it had to have been doing the rounds for 4 or 5 years before that.
I have no doubt Mr Winn is a good guy and he will self evidently do his best. But it is ridiculous that the judges and the lawyers who got very fat over the bogus prosecutions are not just as much in the firing line as the hapless PO staff.
The courts are there to see that justice is done. As Jimmy Carr would point out, it is their only job, their reason for existing. They failed just as much as the Post Office.
The Computer Weekly reporter on the story was OBE'd in the New Year Honours overnight "for services to justice" (along with four subpostmasters).
So many people at all levels of power in the UK need to be in prison for this.
He's right, as usual.
The Rochdale scandal is like a grotesque family skeleton that lurks in the closet, waiting to burst out and scatter its bones across the kitchen table.
No police officer or government employee has ever been imprisoned for their gross misconduct in dealing with the grooming gangs horror.
But I’ve got plans to expose many of them in 2025 and reveal some of the senior leaders who failed to tackle the atrocity. Stay tuned.
If it is a 'defining issue' it will only be because Musk is race-baiting for his mate Farage.
And you're slurping up the hate.
(And no, I am not defending the shits who committed the crimes; or the people who covered it up. But if you think Musk is making these comments from a good place, then I've got a Hyperloop to sell you.)
The simple answer, since the evidence was destroyed, is to put those involved in hiding what happened (police and officials) on one of the sex offenders registers.
That will sort out the criminals and the fuckwits trying to make political capital out of it.
The Home Sec has the arbitrary power to do this.
Unfortunately we don't go after the law enforcement agencies in the UK. If the police are bad then the courts are far worse. I am barely shockable but the love in which is the self-resolved Post Office Enquiry is bloody shocking to me. Yes, they are lining up the totems from the Post Office and Fujitsu - some of these will soon be taking a look on the bright side of life as in the Life of Brian. But what about the Courts ? It just will not do to say they had to assume the computers were working, that will not do. It is like saying you have to assume a lamb is the offspring of a cow and a camel. It was obvious to anyone by 2004 the programme was to use the technical term a crock of shite. Crikey even Computer Weekly worked that out by 2007. For any story to make it to CW with the greatest of respect it had to have been doing the rounds for 4 or 5 years before that.
I have no doubt Mr Winn is a good guy and he will self evidently do his best. But it is ridiculous that the judges and the lawyers who got very fat over the bogus prosecutions are not just as much in the firing line as the hapless PO staff.
The courts are there to see that justice is done. As Jimmy Carr would point out, it is their only job, their reason for existing. They failed just as much as the Post Office.
The Computer Weekly reporter on the story was OBE'd in the New Year Honours overnight "for services to justice" (along with four subpostmasters).
... one of UK’s oldest missing person cases is SOLVED 50 years after schoolgirl, 16, disappeared from home ... Sheila disappeared in 1972, having last been seen in Coventry city centre. ... But cops announced today that the missing woman has been found safe and well - and is living in another part of the country. https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/32561718/mystery-oldest-missing-person-cases-solved-schoolgirl-sheila-fox/
So many people at all levels of power in the UK need to be in prison for this.
He's right, as usual.
The Rochdale scandal is like a grotesque family skeleton that lurks in the closet, waiting to burst out and scatter its bones across the kitchen table.
I've always maintained that Trump was primarily a grifter, in politics for the money he could get out of it, and therefore with no fixed ideology as such. So I feel a certain grim satisfaction in catching up with the news that Trump has reversed his policy on banning tiktok, because one of his larger donors owns a stake in the company.
In a few weeks time the President of the United States will be an individual who is determined to sell himself and his administration to the highest bidder. That's the guiding principle we should expect to see followed, and not mistake anything as part of a coherent ideology on isolationism, nationalism, populism, whatever. He will take money and do a u-turn.
Happy new year all, from a beautiful and frosty Maconnais. After a week of freezing fog the sun is out and the world looks like Elsa has been practising for Frozen III.
Net zero sceptics will be delighted to learn that my new air source heat pump does not perform very well in minus 6. It’s warm enough inside, but it’s eating up the kilowatts like nobody’s business and keeps tripping our circuit breaker.
2024 was a lot about domestic politics, with an election as the centrepiece. 2025 feels like it’ll be all about international events. Trump’s second presidency and those tariffs, a possible denouement for good or bad in Ukraine, and a big test of nation building for the Syrians.
We - and I mean democratic nations - cannot afford Ukraine to be forced to give way. That is the truth of it. If Trump backs off Europe must take up the slack. We must see Putin and Putinism as the utter evil that it is and defend Ukraine and ourselves against it.
That assumes Trump will be chill with Europe keeping the SMO on the road. If he brokers a deal with VVP (I assume Zelenskiy can couped out of the way if necessary) then he might not want Europe fucking it up. If DJT says it's over, then it's over.
Trump clearly thinks he's going to fix a deal on Ukraine. Risk is he's not nearly as savvy in that department as he thinks he is.
My uninformed hunch is that he thinks there will be some sort of economic boost, for which he will take fulsome credit, if he shuts the SMO down. He doesn't particularly care where the line in the mud is.
If he does shut the SMO down ... My guess is Trump will go for a deal, which will fail mainly because Ukraine and Russia have incompatible goals and Putin overestimates the strength of his position, and also because Trump is a lousy negotiator. What happens next is hard to predict.
This is my view as well. Trump is not in a position to force a deal on either side, and a deal that is not accepted by Zelensky is not likely to be acceptable to the rest of Europe. The simple lesson is that Putin cannot be appeased. Nor morally should he benefit from the chaos and destruction he has wrought. There is not a deal that is acceptable to the west that will be acceptable to Russia,
Trump in the game does increase the chances of escalation as much as it increases the chance of Ukraine being forced to concede. Trump didn’t want to intervene in Syria on his previous watch, until he saw photos of what Assad had been doing.
I'm not sure that Western Europe, willing or not to replace the Americans, will be that decisive. The real Russian position appears to be reabsorption of the eastern provinces and Crimea - Putin is unlikely to really want the western provinces with their predominantly anti-Russian populations. Conversely the Ukrainian public seem less willing to stick to the "not an inch" position, and the government is probably less keen on the heavily damaged and underpopulated eastern provinces than it seems. So a deal isn't all that unlikely, but may hinge on how far Russia gets a gradual relaxation of sanctions if it doesn't proceed to "and now, Moldova and Transdniester". The most likely in the short to medium term is probably failure to get that, and a cold peace with borders roughly as they are.
Lots of assumptions there Nick
I pity the poor people of Eastern Ukraine that you are willing to sacrifice
It's not really assumptions, it's willful blindness about the opinions of the people who were living in Eastern Ukraine at the start of the war, and who are now suffering under Russian occupation.
Has there ever been a war in the history of mainland Europe which has left the borders of the combatants completely the same as when it started? I get the sentiment that Russia shouldn't win out of this and that it's not up to other countries to demand that Ukraine gives up sovereign territory. At the same time though the war has to end eventually and history tells us that it will probably involve some redrawing of maps.
The flaw in your argument is that Russia will stop at whatever appeasement is on offer. History also tells us that aggressors have to be beaten.
Happy new year all, from a beautiful and frosty Maconnais. After a week of freezing fog the sun is out and the world looks like Elsa has been practising for Frozen III.
Net zero sceptics will be delighted to learn that my new air source heat pump does not perform very well in minus 6. It’s warm enough inside, but it’s eating up the kilowatts like nobody’s business and keeps tripping our circuit breaker.
2024 was a lot about domestic politics, with an election as the centrepiece. 2025 feels like it’ll be all about international events. Trump’s second presidency and those tariffs, a possible denouement for good or bad in Ukraine, and a big test of nation building for the Syrians.
We - and I mean democratic nations - cannot afford Ukraine to be forced to give way. That is the truth of it. If Trump backs off Europe must take up the slack. We must see Putin and Putinism as the utter evil that it is and defend Ukraine and ourselves against it.
That assumes Trump will be chill with Europe keeping the SMO on the road. If he brokers a deal with VVP (I assume Zelenskiy can couped out of the way if necessary) then he might not want Europe fucking it up. If DJT says it's over, then it's over.
Trump clearly thinks he's going to fix a deal on Ukraine. Risk is he's not nearly as savvy in that department as he thinks he is.
My uninformed hunch is that he thinks there will be some sort of economic boost, for which he will take fulsome credit, if he shuts the SMO down. He doesn't particularly care where the line in the mud is.
If he does shut the SMO down ... My guess is Trump will go for a deal, which will fail mainly because Ukraine and Russia have incompatible goals and Putin overestimates the strength of his position, and also because Trump is a lousy negotiator. What happens next is hard to predict.
This is my view as well. Trump is not in a position to force a deal on either side, and a deal that is not accepted by Zelensky is not likely to be acceptable to the rest of Europe. The simple lesson is that Putin cannot be appeased. Nor morally should he benefit from the chaos and destruction he has wrought. There is not a deal that is acceptable to the west that will be acceptable to Russia,
Trump in the game does increase the chances of escalation as much as it increases the chance of Ukraine being forced to concede. Trump didn’t want to intervene in Syria on his previous watch, until he saw photos of what Assad had been doing.
I'm not sure that Western Europe, willing or not to replace the Americans, will be that decisive. The real Russian position appears to be reabsorption of the eastern provinces and Crimea - Putin is unlikely to really want the western provinces with their predominantly anti-Russian populations. Conversely the Ukrainian public seem less willing to stick to the "not an inch" position, and the government is probably less keen on the heavily damaged and underpopulated eastern provinces than it seems. So a deal isn't all that unlikely, but may hinge on how far Russia gets a gradual relaxation of sanctions if it doesn't proceed to "and now, Moldova and Transdniester". The most likely in the short to medium term is probably failure to get that, and a cold peace with borders roughly as they are.
A deal might happen with adequate security guarantees for Ukraine - which basically means either NATO membership, or western troops on the ground in Ukraine.
But as Trump has made it quite clear that he won't be party to any such guarantee, it's again up to Europe and Ukraine. It's not something Trump can impose.
I think the risk that most worries me there is that it would be a Putin tactic to tie up a chunk of the better European military forces, he could do hybrid warfare there, and pivot his forces to another NATO border.
The 50 mile Lebanon-Israel border had 10k peace keepers. The Ukraine / Russia front line and border is ~1200 miles, with another 670 miles to Belarus, and a further 300 miles to Transnistria.
At every stage of the Ukraine war, in 2014, and in 2022, Putin has been very confident that NATO would not get directly involved, and he would not have to fight NATO armies or airforces.
The point of European military forces in Ukraine would be to change that calculus. Any further attack would involve fighting the combined militaries of Britain, France, Germany, Poland, etc. I don't think he'd do it.
He'd only attack one of the Baltic States, say, if he thought Europe would back down and not fight back. At the moment I think Europe would fight back, but if Le Pen is President of France, Farage is Prime Minister of Britain, and the Germans unwilling to take the lead, then I could foresee Putin believing the Baltic States would be sacrificed.
Which is why the Swedes and Finns and indeed the Baltics themselves are spending a fortune on new weapons. The Combined GDP of the Nordic Baltic 8 is larger than Russia´s so you can see why the region does not intend to be sold out by anyone.
No police officer or government employee has ever been imprisoned for their gross misconduct in dealing with the grooming gangs horror.
But I’ve got plans to expose many of them in 2025 and reveal some of the senior leaders who failed to tackle the atrocity. Stay tuned.
If it is a 'defining issue' it will only be because Musk is race-baiting for his mate Farage.
And you're slurping up the hate.
(And no, I am not defending the shits who committed the crimes; or the people who covered it up. But if you think Musk is making these comments from a good place, then I've got a Hyperloop to sell you.)
The simple answer, since the evidence was destroyed, is to put those involved in hiding what happened (police and officials) on one of the sex offenders registers.
That will sort out the criminals and the fuckwits trying to make political capital out of it.
The Home Sec has the arbitrary power to do this.
Unfortunately we don't go after the law enforcement agencies in the UK. If the police are bad then the courts are far worse. I am barely shockable but the love in which is the self-resolved Post Office Enquiry is bloody shocking to me. Yes, they are lining up the totems from the Post Office and Fujitsu - some of these will soon be taking a look on the bright side of life as in the Life of Brian. But what about the Courts ? It just will not do to say they had to assume the computers were working, that will not do. It is like saying you have to assume a lamb is the offspring of a cow and a camel. It was obvious to anyone by 2004 the programme was to use the technical term a crock of shite. Crikey even Computer Weekly worked that out by 2007. For any story to make it to CW with the greatest of respect it had to have been doing the rounds for 4 or 5 years before that....
A Tony Blair era law said that the courts had to do precisely that. (Absence evidence to the contrary - which the defendants simply weren't in a position to obtain.)
The fault lies with the PO, their prosecutors, and their computer company.
I've always maintained that Trump was primarily a grifter, in politics for the money he could get out of it, and therefore with no fixed ideology as such. So I feel a certain grim satisfaction in catching up with the news that Trump has reversed his policy on banning tiktok, because one of his larger donors owns a stake in the company.
In a few weeks time the President of the United States will be an individual who is determined to sell himself and his administration to the highest bidder. That's the guiding principle we should expect to see followed, and not mistake anything as part of a coherent ideology on isolationism, nationalism, populism, whatever. He will take money and do a u-turn.
You have described the Biden crime family!
Oh God, not another person who’s swallowed all the MAGA conspiracies…
During the last hour the temperature here has dropped by 6C
Just been for a bike ride. I've never seen the Mersey so high, nor heard it so loud. Water everywhere. Fun if this lot freezes.
The aerial shots of the Spey are astonishing. Demonstrates how important the upland flood plains (eg RSPB Insh Marshes) are for protecting Speyside, Moray etc. The new beavers in the Cairngorms are probably helping too.
They were "accidentally" all over the Tay catchment for years but I didn't know they'd been released on Speyside.
I do like the Insh Marshes, it looks like a floodplain should. I think someone did a naughty at one point though because we found true Crack Willow growing there (not the hybrid).
An attempt to troll botanists in the Flatlands with a cutting has failed so far.
[Edit - is that mess on the right from the A9 dualing?]
No police officer or government employee has ever been imprisoned for their gross misconduct in dealing with the grooming gangs horror.
But I’ve got plans to expose many of them in 2025 and reveal some of the senior leaders who failed to tackle the atrocity. Stay tuned.
If it is a 'defining issue' it will only be because Musk is race-baiting for his mate Farage.
And you're slurping up the hate.
(And no, I am not defending the shits who committed the crimes; or the people who covered it up. But if you think Musk is making these comments from a good place, then I've got a Hyperloop to sell you.)
The simple answer, since the evidence was destroyed, is to put those involved in hiding what happened (police and officials) on one of the sex offenders registers.
That will sort out the criminals and the fuckwits trying to make political capital out of it.
The Home Sec has the arbitrary power to do this.
Unfortunately we don't go after the law enforcement agencies in the UK. If the police are bad then the courts are far worse. I am barely shockable but the love in which is the self-resolved Post Office Enquiry is bloody shocking to me. Yes, they are lining up the totems from the Post Office and Fujitsu - some of these will soon be taking a look on the bright side of life as in the Life of Brian. But what about the Courts ? It just will not do to say they had to assume the computers were working, that will not do. It is like saying you have to assume a lamb is the offspring of a cow and a camel. It was obvious to anyone by 2004 the programme was to use the technical term a crock of shite. Crikey even Computer Weekly worked that out by 2007. For any story to make it to CW with the greatest of respect it had to have been doing the rounds for 4 or 5 years before that....
A Tong Blair era law said that the courts had to do precisely that.
Yes.
Along with detention without trial, and Home Sec given arbitrary powers to punish.
No police officer or government employee has ever been imprisoned for their gross misconduct in dealing with the grooming gangs horror.
But I’ve got plans to expose many of them in 2025 and reveal some of the senior leaders who failed to tackle the atrocity. Stay tuned.
If it is a 'defining issue' it will only be because Musk is race-baiting for his mate Farage.
And you're slurping up the hate.
(And no, I am not defending the shits who committed the crimes; or the people who covered it up. But if you think Musk is making these comments from a good place, then I've got a Hyperloop to sell you.)
The simple answer, since the evidence was destroyed, is to put those involved in hiding what happened (police and officials) on one of the sex offenders registers.
That will sort out the criminals and the fuckwits trying to make political capital out of it.
The Home Sec has the arbitrary power to do this.
Unfortunately we don't go after the law enforcement agencies in the UK. If the police are bad then the courts are far worse. I am barely shockable but the love in which is the self-resolved Post Office Enquiry is bloody shocking to me. Yes, they are lining up the totems from the Post Office and Fujitsu - some of these will soon be taking a look on the bright side of life as in the Life of Brian. But what about the Courts ? It just will not do to say they had to assume the computers were working, that will not do. It is like saying you have to assume a lamb is the offspring of a cow and a camel. It was obvious to anyone by 2004 the programme was to use the technical term a crock of shite. Crikey even Computer Weekly worked that out by 2007. For any story to make it to CW with the greatest of respect it had to have been doing the rounds for 4 or 5 years before that....
A Tong Blair era law said that the courts had to do precisely that.
It's about time we got rid of these laws from the Tong Dynasty.
Happy new year all, from a beautiful and frosty Maconnais. After a week of freezing fog the sun is out and the world looks like Elsa has been practising for Frozen III.
Net zero sceptics will be delighted to learn that my new air source heat pump does not perform very well in minus 6. It’s warm enough inside, but it’s eating up the kilowatts like nobody’s business and keeps tripping our circuit breaker.
2024 was a lot about domestic politics, with an election as the centrepiece. 2025 feels like it’ll be all about international events. Trump’s second presidency and those tariffs, a possible denouement for good or bad in Ukraine, and a big test of nation building for the Syrians.
We - and I mean democratic nations - cannot afford Ukraine to be forced to give way. That is the truth of it. If Trump backs off Europe must take up the slack. We must see Putin and Putinism as the utter evil that it is and defend Ukraine and ourselves against it.
That assumes Trump will be chill with Europe keeping the SMO on the road. If he brokers a deal with VVP (I assume Zelenskiy can couped out of the way if necessary) then he might not want Europe fucking it up. If DJT says it's over, then it's over.
Trump clearly thinks he's going to fix a deal on Ukraine. Risk is he's not nearly as savvy in that department as he thinks he is.
My uninformed hunch is that he thinks there will be some sort of economic boost, for which he will take fulsome credit, if he shuts the SMO down. He doesn't particularly care where the line in the mud is.
If he does shut the SMO down ... My guess is Trump will go for a deal, which will fail mainly because Ukraine and Russia have incompatible goals and Putin overestimates the strength of his position, and also because Trump is a lousy negotiator. What happens next is hard to predict.
This is my view as well. Trump is not in a position to force a deal on either side, and a deal that is not accepted by Zelensky is not likely to be acceptable to the rest of Europe. The simple lesson is that Putin cannot be appeased. Nor morally should he benefit from the chaos and destruction he has wrought. There is not a deal that is acceptable to the west that will be acceptable to Russia,
Trump in the game does increase the chances of escalation as much as it increases the chance of Ukraine being forced to concede. Trump didn’t want to intervene in Syria on his previous watch, until he saw photos of what Assad had been doing.
I'm not sure that Western Europe, willing or not to replace the Americans, will be that decisive. The real Russian position appears to be reabsorption of the eastern provinces and Crimea - Putin is unlikely to really want the western provinces with their predominantly anti-Russian populations. Conversely the Ukrainian public seem less willing to stick to the "not an inch" position, and the government is probably less keen on the heavily damaged and underpopulated eastern provinces than it seems. So a deal isn't all that unlikely, but may hinge on how far Russia gets a gradual relaxation of sanctions if it doesn't proceed to "and now, Moldova and Transdniester". The most likely in the short to medium term is probably failure to get that, and a cold peace with borders roughly as they are.
Lots of assumptions there Nick
I pity the poor people of Eastern Ukraine that you are willing to sacrifice
It's not really assumptions, it's willful blindness about the opinions of the people who were living in Eastern Ukraine at the start of the war, and who are now suffering under Russian occupation.
Has there ever been a war in the history of mainland Europe which has left the borders of the combatants completely the same as when it started? I get the sentiment that Russia shouldn't win out of this and that it's not up to other countries to demand that Ukraine gives up sovereign territory. At the same time though the war has to end eventually and history tells us that it will probably involve some redrawing of maps.
The flaw in your argument is that Russia will stop at whatever appeasement is on offer. History also tells us that aggressors have to be beaten.
Those saying things like "Oh, give Putin the territory he has so we get peace" are ignoring the things Putin, Lavrov and the regime have been saying for the last three years. They want much, much more in Ukraine and beyond, and having won that territory, they'd return to get it by whatever method.
It's also interesting that a new line has developed from the pro-Russian shills over the last few months: "Oh, the eastern territories have been trashed and are now worthless. Why not give Russia them?"
Which poses the question: if that territory is so valueless, why does Russia want it so badly?
Also, as ever: when talking about giving up territory in the 'east' of Ukraine; state what is meant. It can mean either the current frontlines, or (as Russia sees it) all the provinces in which Russia already has a foothold, even where that foothold is tiny. That would subject millions of Ukrainians to Russian tyranny.
Happy new year all, from a beautiful and frosty Maconnais. After a week of freezing fog the sun is out and the world looks like Elsa has been practising for Frozen III.
Net zero sceptics will be delighted to learn that my new air source heat pump does not perform very well in minus 6. It’s warm enough inside, but it’s eating up the kilowatts like nobody’s business and keeps tripping our circuit breaker.
2024 was a lot about domestic politics, with an election as the centrepiece. 2025 feels like it’ll be all about international events. Trump’s second presidency and those tariffs, a possible denouement for good or bad in Ukraine, and a big test of nation building for the Syrians.
We - and I mean democratic nations - cannot afford Ukraine to be forced to give way. That is the truth of it. If Trump backs off Europe must take up the slack. We must see Putin and Putinism as the utter evil that it is and defend Ukraine and ourselves against it.
That assumes Trump will be chill with Europe keeping the SMO on the road. If he brokers a deal with VVP (I assume Zelenskiy can couped out of the way if necessary) then he might not want Europe fucking it up. If DJT says it's over, then it's over.
Trump clearly thinks he's going to fix a deal on Ukraine. Risk is he's not nearly as savvy in that department as he thinks he is.
My uninformed hunch is that he thinks there will be some sort of economic boost, for which he will take fulsome credit, if he shuts the SMO down. He doesn't particularly care where the line in the mud is.
If he does shut the SMO down ... My guess is Trump will go for a deal, which will fail mainly because Ukraine and Russia have incompatible goals and Putin overestimates the strength of his position, and also because Trump is a lousy negotiator. What happens next is hard to predict.
This is my view as well. Trump is not in a position to force a deal on either side, and a deal that is not accepted by Zelensky is not likely to be acceptable to the rest of Europe. The simple lesson is that Putin cannot be appeased. Nor morally should he benefit from the chaos and destruction he has wrought. There is not a deal that is acceptable to the west that will be acceptable to Russia,
Trump in the game does increase the chances of escalation as much as it increases the chance of Ukraine being forced to concede. Trump didn’t want to intervene in Syria on his previous watch, until he saw photos of what Assad had been doing.
I'm not sure that Western Europe, willing or not to replace the Americans, will be that decisive. The real Russian position appears to be reabsorption of the eastern provinces and Crimea - Putin is unlikely to really want the western provinces with their predominantly anti-Russian populations. Conversely the Ukrainian public seem less willing to stick to the "not an inch" position, and the government is probably less keen on the heavily damaged and underpopulated eastern provinces than it seems. So a deal isn't all that unlikely, but may hinge on how far Russia gets a gradual relaxation of sanctions if it doesn't proceed to "and now, Moldova and Transdniester". The most likely in the short to medium term is probably failure to get that, and a cold peace with borders roughly as they are.
Lots of assumptions there Nick
I pity the poor people of Eastern Ukraine that you are willing to sacrifice
It's not really assumptions, it's willful blindness about the opinions of the people who were living in Eastern Ukraine at the start of the war, and who are now suffering under Russian occupation.
Has there ever been a war in the history of mainland Europe which has left the borders of the combatants completely the same as when it started? I get the sentiment that Russia shouldn't win out of this and that it's not up to other countries to demand that Ukraine gives up sovereign territory. At the same time though the war has to end eventually and history tells us that it will probably involve some redrawing of maps.
The flaw in your argument is that Russia will stop at whatever appeasement is on offer. History also tells us that aggressors have to be beaten.
Those saying things like "Oh, give Putin the territory he has so we get peace" are ignoring the things Putin, Lavrov and the regime have been saying for the last three years. They want much, much more in Ukraine and beyond, and having won that territory, they'd return to get it by whatever method.
Based on this argument then you couldn't agree to any peace deal at all since even if they agreed to go back to the 1991 borders, it would only be temporary and they'd soon be back after regrouping.
No police officer or government employee has ever been imprisoned for their gross misconduct in dealing with the grooming gangs horror.
But I’ve got plans to expose many of them in 2025 and reveal some of the senior leaders who failed to tackle the atrocity. Stay tuned.
If it is a 'defining issue' it will only be because Musk is race-baiting for his mate Farage.
And you're slurping up the hate.
(And no, I am not defending the shits who committed the crimes; or the people who covered it up. But if you think Musk is making these comments from a good place, then I've got a Hyperloop to sell you.)
Elon Musk said Matt Gaetz would be a great Attorney General. This indeed does not suggest that Musk actually cares much about the treatment of young girls who are raped.
No police officer or government employee has ever been imprisoned for their gross misconduct in dealing with the grooming gangs horror.
But I’ve got plans to expose many of them in 2025 and reveal some of the senior leaders who failed to tackle the atrocity. Stay tuned.
You’ve posted this, it’s a horrendous story. It really is. So many victims and victims being not only targetted by paedophiles but the Police doing nothing and in some cases arresting the victims. Disgraceful and by doing nothing they simply enable the hard right to use it for their own purposes. They don’t care about the victims any more than the Authorities do. But look at the reaction of some of the usual suspects here. Cheap digs at Musk.
Still, they’re only working class girls.
Is there an imprisonable offence committed by “police officers or government employees” though?
If people were locked up for gross misconducted we’d need more jails…
There's always the catch all 'misconduct in a public office' offence.
But if what we're talking about is a decade or more ago with records destroyed, @Malmesbury 's solution would be far cheaper, and wouldn't tie up the courts for the next ten years. (See the Post Office disaster.)
You mean declaring everyone (in officialdom) involved a cave diver?
That would be funny - if only for the violent reaction to the use of the arbitrary powers of the Home Sec.
For further LOLs, they could strip everyone involved who has dual citizenship of their passport and exile them. Again, at the Home Secs. whim.
If nothing else, it would teach the permanent state a generational lesson on the value of due process.
Very odd conjunction with the Neronian discussion, all this talk of exile.
Not really very odd.
It's All Been Done Before.
Wait till a Reform government discovers the power of primary legislation. Acts of Attainder, anyone?
No police officer or government employee has ever been imprisoned for their gross misconduct in dealing with the grooming gangs horror.
But I’ve got plans to expose many of them in 2025 and reveal some of the senior leaders who failed to tackle the atrocity. Stay tuned.
If it is a 'defining issue' it will only be because Musk is race-baiting for his mate Farage.
And you're slurping up the hate.
(And no, I am not defending the shits who committed the crimes; or the people who covered it up. But if you think Musk is making these comments from a good place, then I've got a Hyperloop to sell you.)
Elon Musk said Matt Gaetz would be a great Attorney General. This indeed does not suggest that Musk actually cares much about the treatment of young girls who are raped.
Matt Gaetz would be a great Attorney General for the purposes of generating clicks on TwiXtter. On any other metric, an abomination.
Happy new year all, from a beautiful and frosty Maconnais. After a week of freezing fog the sun is out and the world looks like Elsa has been practising for Frozen III.
Net zero sceptics will be delighted to learn that my new air source heat pump does not perform very well in minus 6. It’s warm enough inside, but it’s eating up the kilowatts like nobody’s business and keeps tripping our circuit breaker.
2024 was a lot about domestic politics, with an election as the centrepiece. 2025 feels like it’ll be all about international events. Trump’s second presidency and those tariffs, a possible denouement for good or bad in Ukraine, and a big test of nation building for the Syrians.
We - and I mean democratic nations - cannot afford Ukraine to be forced to give way. That is the truth of it. If Trump backs off Europe must take up the slack. We must see Putin and Putinism as the utter evil that it is and defend Ukraine and ourselves against it.
That assumes Trump will be chill with Europe keeping the SMO on the road. If he brokers a deal with VVP (I assume Zelenskiy can couped out of the way if necessary) then he might not want Europe fucking it up. If DJT says it's over, then it's over.
Trump clearly thinks he's going to fix a deal on Ukraine. Risk is he's not nearly as savvy in that department as he thinks he is.
My uninformed hunch is that he thinks there will be some sort of economic boost, for which he will take fulsome credit, if he shuts the SMO down. He doesn't particularly care where the line in the mud is.
If he does shut the SMO down ... My guess is Trump will go for a deal, which will fail mainly because Ukraine and Russia have incompatible goals and Putin overestimates the strength of his position, and also because Trump is a lousy negotiator. What happens next is hard to predict.
This is my view as well. Trump is not in a position to force a deal on either side, and a deal that is not accepted by Zelensky is not likely to be acceptable to the rest of Europe. The simple lesson is that Putin cannot be appeased. Nor morally should he benefit from the chaos and destruction he has wrought. There is not a deal that is acceptable to the west that will be acceptable to Russia,
Trump in the game does increase the chances of escalation as much as it increases the chance of Ukraine being forced to concede. Trump didn’t want to intervene in Syria on his previous watch, until he saw photos of what Assad had been doing.
I'm not sure that Western Europe, willing or not to replace the Americans, will be that decisive. The real Russian position appears to be reabsorption of the eastern provinces and Crimea - Putin is unlikely to really want the western provinces with their predominantly anti-Russian populations. Conversely the Ukrainian public seem less willing to stick to the "not an inch" position, and the government is probably less keen on the heavily damaged and underpopulated eastern provinces than it seems. So a deal isn't all that unlikely, but may hinge on how far Russia gets a gradual relaxation of sanctions if it doesn't proceed to "and now, Moldova and Transdniester". The most likely in the short to medium term is probably failure to get that, and a cold peace with borders roughly as they are.
Lots of assumptions there Nick
I pity the poor people of Eastern Ukraine that you are willing to sacrifice
It's not really assumptions, it's willful blindness about the opinions of the people who were living in Eastern Ukraine at the start of the war, and who are now suffering under Russian occupation.
Has there ever been a war in the history of mainland Europe which has left the borders of the combatants completely the same as when it started? I get the sentiment that Russia shouldn't win out of this and that it's not up to other countries to demand that Ukraine gives up sovereign territory. At the same time though the war has to end eventually and history tells us that it will probably involve some redrawing of maps.
Ww2?
Borders changed quite significantly after WW2, for example the Soviets annexed swathes of Eastern Europe. Germany, Japan, and Italy lost territory.
Happy new year all, from a beautiful and frosty Maconnais. After a week of freezing fog the sun is out and the world looks like Elsa has been practising for Frozen III.
Net zero sceptics will be delighted to learn that my new air source heat pump does not perform very well in minus 6. It’s warm enough inside, but it’s eating up the kilowatts like nobody’s business and keeps tripping our circuit breaker.
2024 was a lot about domestic politics, with an election as the centrepiece. 2025 feels like it’ll be all about international events. Trump’s second presidency and those tariffs, a possible denouement for good or bad in Ukraine, and a big test of nation building for the Syrians.
We - and I mean democratic nations - cannot afford Ukraine to be forced to give way. That is the truth of it. If Trump backs off Europe must take up the slack. We must see Putin and Putinism as the utter evil that it is and defend Ukraine and ourselves against it.
That assumes Trump will be chill with Europe keeping the SMO on the road. If he brokers a deal with VVP (I assume Zelenskiy can couped out of the way if necessary) then he might not want Europe fucking it up. If DJT says it's over, then it's over.
Trump clearly thinks he's going to fix a deal on Ukraine. Risk is he's not nearly as savvy in that department as he thinks he is.
My uninformed hunch is that he thinks there will be some sort of economic boost, for which he will take fulsome credit, if he shuts the SMO down. He doesn't particularly care where the line in the mud is.
If he does shut the SMO down ... My guess is Trump will go for a deal, which will fail mainly because Ukraine and Russia have incompatible goals and Putin overestimates the strength of his position, and also because Trump is a lousy negotiator. What happens next is hard to predict.
This is my view as well. Trump is not in a position to force a deal on either side, and a deal that is not accepted by Zelensky is not likely to be acceptable to the rest of Europe. The simple lesson is that Putin cannot be appeased. Nor morally should he benefit from the chaos and destruction he has wrought. There is not a deal that is acceptable to the west that will be acceptable to Russia,
Trump in the game does increase the chances of escalation as much as it increases the chance of Ukraine being forced to concede. Trump didn’t want to intervene in Syria on his previous watch, until he saw photos of what Assad had been doing.
I'm not sure that Western Europe, willing or not to replace the Americans, will be that decisive. The real Russian position appears to be reabsorption of the eastern provinces and Crimea - Putin is unlikely to really want the western provinces with their predominantly anti-Russian populations. Conversely the Ukrainian public seem less willing to stick to the "not an inch" position, and the government is probably less keen on the heavily damaged and underpopulated eastern provinces than it seems. So a deal isn't all that unlikely, but may hinge on how far Russia gets a gradual relaxation of sanctions if it doesn't proceed to "and now, Moldova and Transdniester". The most likely in the short to medium term is probably failure to get that, and a cold peace with borders roughly as they are.
A deal might happen with adequate security guarantees for Ukraine - which basically means either NATO membership, or western troops on the ground in Ukraine.
But as Trump has made it quite clear that he won't be party to any such guarantee, it's again up to Europe and Ukraine. It's not something Trump can impose.
I think the risk that most worries me there is that it would be a Putin tactic to tie up a chunk of the better European military forces, he could do hybrid warfare there, and pivot his forces to another NATO border.
The 50 mile Lebanon-Israel border had 10k peace keepers. The Ukraine / Russia front line and border is ~1200 miles, with another 670 miles to Belarus, and a further 300 miles to Transnistria.
At every stage of the Ukraine war, in 2014, and in 2022, Putin has been very confident that NATO would not get directly involved, and he would not have to fight NATO armies or airforces.
The point of European military forces in Ukraine would be to change that calculus. Any further attack would involve fighting the combined militaries of Britain, France, Germany, Poland, etc. I don't think he'd do it.
He'd only attack one of the Baltic States, say, if he thought Europe would back down and not fight back. At the moment I think Europe would fight back, but if Le Pen is President of France, Farage is Prime Minister of Britain, and the Germans unwilling to take the lead, then I could foresee Putin believing the Baltic States would be sacrificed.
Remember that Putin has several ways of getting what he wants. A main one is to interfere with politics in enemy nations; as he has tried to do in many countries, including Georgia, Ukraine (before 2014...), and Romania two months ago. Going to war is only resorted to when that does not work (see Georgian 2008 and Ukraine 2014/2022).. Another was energy - and I can see that being straight back on the table if he wins.
He will be planning to split Europe up politically; where possible to put more Russia-friendly politicians in power, and where not to make us disagree amongst ourselves in a divide-and-conquer approach. We are already seeing this as part of his hybrid warfare actions.
He will not be too concerned about European troops in Ukraine - or anywhere else - as he will believe, having won in Ukraine, that he can win by both political and military means.
Happy new year all, from a beautiful and frosty Maconnais. After a week of freezing fog the sun is out and the world looks like Elsa has been practising for Frozen III.
Net zero sceptics will be delighted to learn that my new air source heat pump does not perform very well in minus 6. It’s warm enough inside, but it’s eating up the kilowatts like nobody’s business and keeps tripping our circuit breaker.
2024 was a lot about domestic politics, with an election as the centrepiece. 2025 feels like it’ll be all about international events. Trump’s second presidency and those tariffs, a possible denouement for good or bad in Ukraine, and a big test of nation building for the Syrians.
We - and I mean democratic nations - cannot afford Ukraine to be forced to give way. That is the truth of it. If Trump backs off Europe must take up the slack. We must see Putin and Putinism as the utter evil that it is and defend Ukraine and ourselves against it.
That assumes Trump will be chill with Europe keeping the SMO on the road. If he brokers a deal with VVP (I assume Zelenskiy can couped out of the way if necessary) then he might not want Europe fucking it up. If DJT says it's over, then it's over.
Trump clearly thinks he's going to fix a deal on Ukraine. Risk is he's not nearly as savvy in that department as he thinks he is.
My uninformed hunch is that he thinks there will be some sort of economic boost, for which he will take fulsome credit, if he shuts the SMO down. He doesn't particularly care where the line in the mud is.
If he does shut the SMO down ... My guess is Trump will go for a deal, which will fail mainly because Ukraine and Russia have incompatible goals and Putin overestimates the strength of his position, and also because Trump is a lousy negotiator. What happens next is hard to predict.
This is my view as well. Trump is not in a position to force a deal on either side, and a deal that is not accepted by Zelensky is not likely to be acceptable to the rest of Europe. The simple lesson is that Putin cannot be appeased. Nor morally should he benefit from the chaos and destruction he has wrought. There is not a deal that is acceptable to the west that will be acceptable to Russia,
Trump in the game does increase the chances of escalation as much as it increases the chance of Ukraine being forced to concede. Trump didn’t want to intervene in Syria on his previous watch, until he saw photos of what Assad had been doing.
I'm not sure that Western Europe, willing or not to replace the Americans, will be that decisive. The real Russian position appears to be reabsorption of the eastern provinces and Crimea - Putin is unlikely to really want the western provinces with their predominantly anti-Russian populations. Conversely the Ukrainian public seem less willing to stick to the "not an inch" position, and the government is probably less keen on the heavily damaged and underpopulated eastern provinces than it seems. So a deal isn't all that unlikely, but may hinge on how far Russia gets a gradual relaxation of sanctions if it doesn't proceed to "and now, Moldova and Transdniester". The most likely in the short to medium term is probably failure to get that, and a cold peace with borders roughly as they are.
Lots of assumptions there Nick
I pity the poor people of Eastern Ukraine that you are willing to sacrifice
It's not really assumptions, it's willful blindness about the opinions of the people who were living in Eastern Ukraine at the start of the war, and who are now suffering under Russian occupation.
Has there ever been a war in the history of mainland Europe which has left the borders of the combatants completely the same as when it started? I get the sentiment that Russia shouldn't win out of this and that it's not up to other countries to demand that Ukraine gives up sovereign territory. At the same time though the war has to end eventually and history tells us that it will probably involve some redrawing of maps.
The flaw in your argument is that Russia will stop at whatever appeasement is on offer. History also tells us that aggressors have to be beaten.
Those saying things like "Oh, give Putin the territory he has so we get peace" are ignoring the things Putin, Lavrov and the regime have been saying for the last three years. They want much, much more in Ukraine and beyond, and having won that territory, they'd return to get it by whatever method.
Based on this argument then you couldn't agree to any peace deal at all since even if they agreed to go back to the 1991 borders, it would only be temporary and they'd soon be back after regrouping.
So presumably you think there’s no tactical difference between refusing all pay rises for striking unions or giving them everything they ask for first time?
Happy new year all, from a beautiful and frosty Maconnais. After a week of freezing fog the sun is out and the world looks like Elsa has been practising for Frozen III.
Net zero sceptics will be delighted to learn that my new air source heat pump does not perform very well in minus 6. It’s warm enough inside, but it’s eating up the kilowatts like nobody’s business and keeps tripping our circuit breaker.
2024 was a lot about domestic politics, with an election as the centrepiece. 2025 feels like it’ll be all about international events. Trump’s second presidency and those tariffs, a possible denouement for good or bad in Ukraine, and a big test of nation building for the Syrians.
We - and I mean democratic nations - cannot afford Ukraine to be forced to give way. That is the truth of it. If Trump backs off Europe must take up the slack. We must see Putin and Putinism as the utter evil that it is and defend Ukraine and ourselves against it.
That assumes Trump will be chill with Europe keeping the SMO on the road. If he brokers a deal with VVP (I assume Zelenskiy can couped out of the way if necessary) then he might not want Europe fucking it up. If DJT says it's over, then it's over.
Trump clearly thinks he's going to fix a deal on Ukraine. Risk is he's not nearly as savvy in that department as he thinks he is.
My uninformed hunch is that he thinks there will be some sort of economic boost, for which he will take fulsome credit, if he shuts the SMO down. He doesn't particularly care where the line in the mud is.
If he does shut the SMO down ... My guess is Trump will go for a deal, which will fail mainly because Ukraine and Russia have incompatible goals and Putin overestimates the strength of his position, and also because Trump is a lousy negotiator. What happens next is hard to predict.
This is my view as well. Trump is not in a position to force a deal on either side, and a deal that is not accepted by Zelensky is not likely to be acceptable to the rest of Europe. The simple lesson is that Putin cannot be appeased. Nor morally should he benefit from the chaos and destruction he has wrought. There is not a deal that is acceptable to the west that will be acceptable to Russia,
Trump in the game does increase the chances of escalation as much as it increases the chance of Ukraine being forced to concede. Trump didn’t want to intervene in Syria on his previous watch, until he saw photos of what Assad had been doing.
I'm not sure that Western Europe, willing or not to replace the Americans, will be that decisive. The real Russian position appears to be reabsorption of the eastern provinces and Crimea - Putin is unlikely to really want the western provinces with their predominantly anti-Russian populations. Conversely the Ukrainian public seem less willing to stick to the "not an inch" position, and the government is probably less keen on the heavily damaged and underpopulated eastern provinces than it seems. So a deal isn't all that unlikely, but may hinge on how far Russia gets a gradual relaxation of sanctions if it doesn't proceed to "and now, Moldova and Transdniester". The most likely in the short to medium term is probably failure to get that, and a cold peace with borders roughly as they are.
Lots of assumptions there Nick
I pity the poor people of Eastern Ukraine that you are willing to sacrifice
It's not really assumptions, it's willful blindness about the opinions of the people who were living in Eastern Ukraine at the start of the war, and who are now suffering under Russian occupation.
Has there ever been a war in the history of mainland Europe which has left the borders of the combatants completely the same as when it started? I get the sentiment that Russia shouldn't win out of this and that it's not up to other countries to demand that Ukraine gives up sovereign territory. At the same time though the war has to end eventually and history tells us that it will probably involve some redrawing of maps.
I wouldn't call it a sentiment. I would call it a vital national interest for all the democratic countries of Europe. If Russia wins the war - which any redrawing of borders in their favour I would classify as a win - then a subsequent war between Europe and Russia over a Russian attempt to extend its borders is inevitable.
Maybe that's a lesson that Europe has to learn again, and we will collectively make the mistake of trying to get away with doing less than what is necessary to defend ourselves.
I saw that. By then Mr Chump will be starting the next round of his "how do I stay out of prison" maze game.
Is the lawfare going to resume when he can no longer become president again? Would be a bit pointless, no?
Federal prosecutions have been paused because he’s (about to be) President, but theoretically will re-start when he ceases to be President. Of course, Trump and the Republicans may come up with some wheeze to stop the cases permanently. He might try a self-pardon, for starters.
Civil cases continue. He still owes Jean Carroll millions. The Georgia election case is up in the air.
I've always maintained that Trump was primarily a grifter, in politics for the money he could get out of it, and therefore with no fixed ideology as such. So I feel a certain grim satisfaction in catching up with the news that Trump has reversed his policy on banning tiktok, because one of his larger donors owns a stake in the company.
In a few weeks time the President of the United States will be an individual who is determined to sell himself and his administration to the highest bidder. That's the guiding principle we should expect to see followed, and not mistake anything as part of a coherent ideology on isolationism, nationalism, populism, whatever. He will take money and do a u-turn.
You have described the Biden crime family!
Oh God, not another person who’s swallowed all the MAGA conspiracies…
tbf, the breadth of the pardon has quite understandably stoked the conspiracies...
Happy new year all, from a beautiful and frosty Maconnais. After a week of freezing fog the sun is out and the world looks like Elsa has been practising for Frozen III.
Net zero sceptics will be delighted to learn that my new air source heat pump does not perform very well in minus 6. It’s warm enough inside, but it’s eating up the kilowatts like nobody’s business and keeps tripping our circuit breaker.
2024 was a lot about domestic politics, with an election as the centrepiece. 2025 feels like it’ll be all about international events. Trump’s second presidency and those tariffs, a possible denouement for good or bad in Ukraine, and a big test of nation building for the Syrians.
We - and I mean democratic nations - cannot afford Ukraine to be forced to give way. That is the truth of it. If Trump backs off Europe must take up the slack. We must see Putin and Putinism as the utter evil that it is and defend Ukraine and ourselves against it.
That assumes Trump will be chill with Europe keeping the SMO on the road. If he brokers a deal with VVP (I assume Zelenskiy can couped out of the way if necessary) then he might not want Europe fucking it up. If DJT says it's over, then it's over.
Trump clearly thinks he's going to fix a deal on Ukraine. Risk is he's not nearly as savvy in that department as he thinks he is.
My uninformed hunch is that he thinks there will be some sort of economic boost, for which he will take fulsome credit, if he shuts the SMO down. He doesn't particularly care where the line in the mud is.
If he does shut the SMO down ... My guess is Trump will go for a deal, which will fail mainly because Ukraine and Russia have incompatible goals and Putin overestimates the strength of his position, and also because Trump is a lousy negotiator. What happens next is hard to predict.
This is my view as well. Trump is not in a position to force a deal on either side, and a deal that is not accepted by Zelensky is not likely to be acceptable to the rest of Europe. The simple lesson is that Putin cannot be appeased. Nor morally should he benefit from the chaos and destruction he has wrought. There is not a deal that is acceptable to the west that will be acceptable to Russia,
Trump in the game does increase the chances of escalation as much as it increases the chance of Ukraine being forced to concede. Trump didn’t want to intervene in Syria on his previous watch, until he saw photos of what Assad had been doing.
I'm not sure that Western Europe, willing or not to replace the Americans, will be that decisive. The real Russian position appears to be reabsorption of the eastern provinces and Crimea - Putin is unlikely to really want the western provinces with their predominantly anti-Russian populations. Conversely the Ukrainian public seem less willing to stick to the "not an inch" position, and the government is probably less keen on the heavily damaged and underpopulated eastern provinces than it seems. So a deal isn't all that unlikely, but may hinge on how far Russia gets a gradual relaxation of sanctions if it doesn't proceed to "and now, Moldova and Transdniester". The most likely in the short to medium term is probably failure to get that, and a cold peace with borders roughly as they are.
Lots of assumptions there Nick
I pity the poor people of Eastern Ukraine that you are willing to sacrifice
It's not really assumptions, it's willful blindness about the opinions of the people who were living in Eastern Ukraine at the start of the war, and who are now suffering under Russian occupation.
Has there ever been a war in the history of mainland Europe which has left the borders of the combatants completely the same as when it started? I get the sentiment that Russia shouldn't win out of this and that it's not up to other countries to demand that Ukraine gives up sovereign territory. At the same time though the war has to end eventually and history tells us that it will probably involve some redrawing of maps.
The flaw in your argument is that Russia will stop at whatever appeasement is on offer. History also tells us that aggressors have to be beaten.
Those saying things like "Oh, give Putin the territory he has so we get peace" are ignoring the things Putin, Lavrov and the regime have been saying for the last three years. They want much, much more in Ukraine and beyond, and having won that territory, they'd return to get it by whatever method.
Based on this argument then you couldn't agree to any peace deal at all since even if they agreed to go back to the 1991 borders, it would only be temporary and they'd soon be back after regrouping.
So presumably you think there’s no tactical difference between refusing all pay rises for striking unions or giving them everything they ask for first time?
I don't think pay negotiations are a good analogy.
Think of WW1 instead. Germany lost and ceded a lot of territory to Poland, but they still came back later. If you think Russian militarism is a similar threat then even a deal that gave Ukraine part of Russia wouldn't be good enough.
No police officer or government employee has ever been imprisoned for their gross misconduct in dealing with the grooming gangs horror.
But I’ve got plans to expose many of them in 2025 and reveal some of the senior leaders who failed to tackle the atrocity. Stay tuned.
If it is a 'defining issue' it will only be because Musk is race-baiting for his mate Farage.
And you're slurping up the hate.
(And no, I am not defending the shits who committed the crimes; or the people who covered it up. But if you think Musk is making these comments from a good place, then I've got a Hyperloop to sell you.)
Elon Musk said Matt Gaetz would be a great Attorney General. This indeed does not suggest that Musk actually cares much about the treatment of young girls who are raped.
Is statutory rape a comparable crime to torture and murder?
During the last hour the temperature here has dropped by 6C
Just been for a bike ride. I've never seen the Mersey so high, nor heard it so loud. Water everywhere. Fun if this lot freezes.
Yellow warnings for snow abound.
Even for central London, come Sunday
It's been a long time since there was proper snow in London. I have a recollection of a bus trying to skid and slide its way up Piccadilly - may have been early 90s.
Happy New Year to all PBers, and a big pat on the head of 'for scale'
Happy new year all, from a beautiful and frosty Maconnais. After a week of freezing fog the sun is out and the world looks like Elsa has been practising for Frozen III.
Net zero sceptics will be delighted to learn that my new air source heat pump does not perform very well in minus 6. It’s warm enough inside, but it’s eating up the kilowatts like nobody’s business and keeps tripping our circuit breaker.
2024 was a lot about domestic politics, with an election as the centrepiece. 2025 feels like it’ll be all about international events. Trump’s second presidency and those tariffs, a possible denouement for good or bad in Ukraine, and a big test of nation building for the Syrians.
We - and I mean democratic nations - cannot afford Ukraine to be forced to give way. That is the truth of it. If Trump backs off Europe must take up the slack. We must see Putin and Putinism as the utter evil that it is and defend Ukraine and ourselves against it.
That assumes Trump will be chill with Europe keeping the SMO on the road. If he brokers a deal with VVP (I assume Zelenskiy can couped out of the way if necessary) then he might not want Europe fucking it up. If DJT says it's over, then it's over.
Trump clearly thinks he's going to fix a deal on Ukraine. Risk is he's not nearly as savvy in that department as he thinks he is.
My uninformed hunch is that he thinks there will be some sort of economic boost, for which he will take fulsome credit, if he shuts the SMO down. He doesn't particularly care where the line in the mud is.
If he does shut the SMO down ... My guess is Trump will go for a deal, which will fail mainly because Ukraine and Russia have incompatible goals and Putin overestimates the strength of his position, and also because Trump is a lousy negotiator. What happens next is hard to predict.
This is my view as well. Trump is not in a position to force a deal on either side, and a deal that is not accepted by Zelensky is not likely to be acceptable to the rest of Europe. The simple lesson is that Putin cannot be appeased. Nor morally should he benefit from the chaos and destruction he has wrought. There is not a deal that is acceptable to the west that will be acceptable to Russia,
Trump in the game does increase the chances of escalation as much as it increases the chance of Ukraine being forced to concede. Trump didn’t want to intervene in Syria on his previous watch, until he saw photos of what Assad had been doing.
I'm not sure that Western Europe, willing or not to replace the Americans, will be that decisive. The real Russian position appears to be reabsorption of the eastern provinces and Crimea - Putin is unlikely to really want the western provinces with their predominantly anti-Russian populations. Conversely the Ukrainian public seem less willing to stick to the "not an inch" position, and the government is probably less keen on the heavily damaged and underpopulated eastern provinces than it seems. So a deal isn't all that unlikely, but may hinge on how far Russia gets a gradual relaxation of sanctions if it doesn't proceed to "and now, Moldova and Transdniester". The most likely in the short to medium term is probably failure to get that, and a cold peace with borders roughly as they are.
Lots of assumptions there Nick
I pity the poor people of Eastern Ukraine that you are willing to sacrifice
It's not really assumptions, it's willful blindness about the opinions of the people who were living in Eastern Ukraine at the start of the war, and who are now suffering under Russian occupation.
Has there ever been a war in the history of mainland Europe which has left the borders of the combatants completely the same as when it started? I get the sentiment that Russia shouldn't win out of this and that it's not up to other countries to demand that Ukraine gives up sovereign territory. At the same time though the war has to end eventually and history tells us that it will probably involve some redrawing of maps.
The flaw in your argument is that Russia will stop at whatever appeasement is on offer. History also tells us that aggressors have to be beaten.
Those saying things like "Oh, give Putin the territory he has so we get peace" are ignoring the things Putin, Lavrov and the regime have been saying for the last three years. They want much, much more in Ukraine and beyond, and having won that territory, they'd return to get it by whatever method.
Based on this argument then you couldn't agree to any peace deal at all since even if they agreed to go back to the 1991 borders, it would only be temporary and they'd soon be back after regrouping.
And of course, they could.
But that is far more likely to occur if Putin could sell a 'win' to the public back home. If he 'loses' (to the extent he cannot sell a win), then it becomes much more difficult for him to sell another war to the oligarchs and wider public.
"I know we lost a million dead and wounded, but my friends, if we attack again, this time it will be different!"
Compared to:
"But my friends, we won all that territory! True, we lost a million dead and wounded, but they are not our sons, were they? And you Ivan, you have gained all those mineral rights in Donetsk. And you Mikheil, you have got all those farms that are selling hundreds of millions in grain each year. And you, Igor, you have all those nice new hotels built on the sites of our glorious war crimes. Our enemies are more divided now, and another little push will see even more money for us... I mean, glory for Russia!"
I've always maintained that Trump was primarily a grifter, in politics for the money he could get out of it, and therefore with no fixed ideology as such. So I feel a certain grim satisfaction in catching up with the news that Trump has reversed his policy on banning tiktok, because one of his larger donors owns a stake in the company.
In a few weeks time the President of the United States will be an individual who is determined to sell himself and his administration to the highest bidder. That's the guiding principle we should expect to see followed, and not mistake anything as part of a coherent ideology on isolationism, nationalism, populism, whatever. He will take money and do a u-turn.
You have described the Biden crime family!
Oh God, not another person who’s swallowed all the MAGA conspiracies…
No police officer or government employee has ever been imprisoned for their gross misconduct in dealing with the grooming gangs horror.
But I’ve got plans to expose many of them in 2025 and reveal some of the senior leaders who failed to tackle the atrocity. Stay tuned.
If it is a 'defining issue' it will only be because Musk is race-baiting for his mate Farage.
And you're slurping up the hate.
(And no, I am not defending the shits who committed the crimes; or the people who covered it up. But if you think Musk is making these comments from a good place, then I've got a Hyperloop to sell you.)
Elon Musk said Matt Gaetz would be a great Attorney General. This indeed does not suggest that Musk actually cares much about the treatment of young girls who are raped.
Matt Gaetz would be a great Attorney General for the purposes of generating clicks on TwiXtter. On any other metric, an abomination.
Gates also has not been convicted, indeed the Washington Post said last year he was unlikely to be charged.
The Gangs to which Musk referred have all been convicted and the action, or inaction, of the police and other bodies is a matter of public record. So quite a difference
Happy new year all, from a beautiful and frosty Maconnais. After a week of freezing fog the sun is out and the world looks like Elsa has been practising for Frozen III.
Net zero sceptics will be delighted to learn that my new air source heat pump does not perform very well in minus 6. It’s warm enough inside, but it’s eating up the kilowatts like nobody’s business and keeps tripping our circuit breaker.
2024 was a lot about domestic politics, with an election as the centrepiece. 2025 feels like it’ll be all about international events. Trump’s second presidency and those tariffs, a possible denouement for good or bad in Ukraine, and a big test of nation building for the Syrians.
We - and I mean democratic nations - cannot afford Ukraine to be forced to give way. That is the truth of it. If Trump backs off Europe must take up the slack. We must see Putin and Putinism as the utter evil that it is and defend Ukraine and ourselves against it.
That assumes Trump will be chill with Europe keeping the SMO on the road. If he brokers a deal with VVP (I assume Zelenskiy can couped out of the way if necessary) then he might not want Europe fucking it up. If DJT says it's over, then it's over.
Trump clearly thinks he's going to fix a deal on Ukraine. Risk is he's not nearly as savvy in that department as he thinks he is.
My uninformed hunch is that he thinks there will be some sort of economic boost, for which he will take fulsome credit, if he shuts the SMO down. He doesn't particularly care where the line in the mud is.
If he does shut the SMO down ... My guess is Trump will go for a deal, which will fail mainly because Ukraine and Russia have incompatible goals and Putin overestimates the strength of his position, and also because Trump is a lousy negotiator. What happens next is hard to predict.
This is my view as well. Trump is not in a position to force a deal on either side, and a deal that is not accepted by Zelensky is not likely to be acceptable to the rest of Europe. The simple lesson is that Putin cannot be appeased. Nor morally should he benefit from the chaos and destruction he has wrought. There is not a deal that is acceptable to the west that will be acceptable to Russia,
Trump in the game does increase the chances of escalation as much as it increases the chance of Ukraine being forced to concede. Trump didn’t want to intervene in Syria on his previous watch, until he saw photos of what Assad had been doing.
I'm not sure that Western Europe, willing or not to replace the Americans, will be that decisive. The real Russian position appears to be reabsorption of the eastern provinces and Crimea - Putin is unlikely to really want the western provinces with their predominantly anti-Russian populations. Conversely the Ukrainian public seem less willing to stick to the "not an inch" position, and the government is probably less keen on the heavily damaged and underpopulated eastern provinces than it seems. So a deal isn't all that unlikely, but may hinge on how far Russia gets a gradual relaxation of sanctions if it doesn't proceed to "and now, Moldova and Transdniester". The most likely in the short to medium term is probably failure to get that, and a cold peace with borders roughly as they are.
Lots of assumptions there Nick
I pity the poor people of Eastern Ukraine that you are willing to sacrifice
It's not really assumptions, it's willful blindness about the opinions of the people who were living in Eastern Ukraine at the start of the war, and who are now suffering under Russian occupation.
Has there ever been a war in the history of mainland Europe which has left the borders of the combatants completely the same as when it started? I get the sentiment that Russia shouldn't win out of this and that it's not up to other countries to demand that Ukraine gives up sovereign territory. At the same time though the war has to end eventually and history tells us that it will probably involve some redrawing of maps.
The flaw in your argument is that Russia will stop at whatever appeasement is on offer. History also tells us that aggressors have to be beaten.
Those saying things like "Oh, give Putin the territory he has so we get peace" are ignoring the things Putin, Lavrov and the regime have been saying for the last three years. They want much, much more in Ukraine and beyond, and having won that territory, they'd return to get it by whatever method.
Based on this argument then you couldn't agree to any peace deal at all since even if they agreed to go back to the 1991 borders, it would only be temporary and they'd soon be back after regrouping.
So presumably you think there’s no tactical difference between refusing all pay rises for striking unions or giving them everything they ask for first time?
I don't think pay negotiations are a good analogy.
Think of WW1 instead. Germany lost and ceded a lot of territory to Poland, but they still came back later. If you think Russian militarism is a similar threat then even a deal that gave Ukraine part of Russia wouldn't be good enough.
Only internal change in Russia can make us truly safe in the long-term. In the meantime, we have to make sure that the leaders of Russia are more scared of us than we are of them, that they understand where our red lines are, and that they believe we can and will fight and defeat them to defend those red lines. Those red lines should be internationally recognised sovereign borders.
The danger of forcing Ukraine to cede territory in exchange for "peace", is that it teaches Russia that we are not prepared to defend international borders, even when doing so only requires us to spend a modest amount of money to supply Ukraine with weapons.
During the last hour the temperature here has dropped by 6C
Just been for a bike ride. I've never seen the Mersey so high, nor heard it so loud. Water everywhere. Fun if this lot freezes.
Yellow warnings for snow abound.
Even for central London, come Sunday
It's been a long time since there was proper snow in London. I have a recollection of a bus trying to skid and slide its way up Piccadilly - may have been early 90s.
Happy New Year to all PBers, and a big pat on the head of 'for scale'
I went to London for professional exams in, I think, 1987. Snowstorm, deep snow and frost - all meh for a Scot or Northerner but London just fell over completely. Fortunately I'd seen the forecast and taken my wellies with me. I was supposed to be staying with a relative in Orpington but the trains were kaput. By the end of the week I'd had to move to somewhere nearer and then doss with an old student mate near Paddington, and the toilets in the course place were frozen.
The next time, it was a party in London on the evening of the Great Storm!
Happy new year all, from a beautiful and frosty Maconnais. After a week of freezing fog the sun is out and the world looks like Elsa has been practising for Frozen III.
Net zero sceptics will be delighted to learn that my new air source heat pump does not perform very well in minus 6. It’s warm enough inside, but it’s eating up the kilowatts like nobody’s business and keeps tripping our circuit breaker.
2024 was a lot about domestic politics, with an election as the centrepiece. 2025 feels like it’ll be all about international events. Trump’s second presidency and those tariffs, a possible denouement for good or bad in Ukraine, and a big test of nation building for the Syrians.
We - and I mean democratic nations - cannot afford Ukraine to be forced to give way. That is the truth of it. If Trump backs off Europe must take up the slack. We must see Putin and Putinism as the utter evil that it is and defend Ukraine and ourselves against it.
That assumes Trump will be chill with Europe keeping the SMO on the road. If he brokers a deal with VVP (I assume Zelenskiy can couped out of the way if necessary) then he might not want Europe fucking it up. If DJT says it's over, then it's over.
Trump clearly thinks he's going to fix a deal on Ukraine. Risk is he's not nearly as savvy in that department as he thinks he is.
My uninformed hunch is that he thinks there will be some sort of economic boost, for which he will take fulsome credit, if he shuts the SMO down. He doesn't particularly care where the line in the mud is.
If he does shut the SMO down ... My guess is Trump will go for a deal, which will fail mainly because Ukraine and Russia have incompatible goals and Putin overestimates the strength of his position, and also because Trump is a lousy negotiator. What happens next is hard to predict.
This is my view as well. Trump is not in a position to force a deal on either side, and a deal that is not accepted by Zelensky is not likely to be acceptable to the rest of Europe. The simple lesson is that Putin cannot be appeased. Nor morally should he benefit from the chaos and destruction he has wrought. There is not a deal that is acceptable to the west that will be acceptable to Russia,
Trump in the game does increase the chances of escalation as much as it increases the chance of Ukraine being forced to concede. Trump didn’t want to intervene in Syria on his previous watch, until he saw photos of what Assad had been doing.
I'm not sure that Western Europe, willing or not to replace the Americans, will be that decisive. The real Russian position appears to be reabsorption of the eastern provinces and Crimea - Putin is unlikely to really want the western provinces with their predominantly anti-Russian populations. Conversely the Ukrainian public seem less willing to stick to the "not an inch" position, and the government is probably less keen on the heavily damaged and underpopulated eastern provinces than it seems. So a deal isn't all that unlikely, but may hinge on how far Russia gets a gradual relaxation of sanctions if it doesn't proceed to "and now, Moldova and Transdniester". The most likely in the short to medium term is probably failure to get that, and a cold peace with borders roughly as they are.
Lots of assumptions there Nick
I pity the poor people of Eastern Ukraine that you are willing to sacrifice
It's not really assumptions, it's willful blindness about the opinions of the people who were living in Eastern Ukraine at the start of the war, and who are now suffering under Russian occupation.
Has there ever been a war in the history of mainland Europe which has left the borders of the combatants completely the same as when it started? I get the sentiment that Russia shouldn't win out of this and that it's not up to other countries to demand that Ukraine gives up sovereign territory. At the same time though the war has to end eventually and history tells us that it will probably involve some redrawing of maps.
The flaw in your argument is that Russia will stop at whatever appeasement is on offer. History also tells us that aggressors have to be beaten.
Those saying things like "Oh, give Putin the territory he has so we get peace" are ignoring the things Putin, Lavrov and the regime have been saying for the last three years. They want much, much more in Ukraine and beyond, and having won that territory, they'd return to get it by whatever method.
Based on this argument then you couldn't agree to any peace deal at all since even if they agreed to go back to the 1991 borders, it would only be temporary and they'd soon be back after regrouping.
So presumably you think there’s no tactical difference between refusing all pay rises for striking unions or giving them everything they ask for first time?
I don't think pay negotiations are a good analogy.
Think of WW1 instead. Germany lost and ceded a lot of territory to Poland, but they still came back later. If you think Russian militarism is a similar threat then even a deal that gave Ukraine part of Russia wouldn't be good enough.
Only internal change in Russia can make us truly safe in the long-term. In the meantime, we have to make sure that the leaders of Russia are more scared of us than we are of them, that they understand where our red lines are, and that they believe we can and will fight and defeat them to defend those red lines. Those red lines should be internationally recognised sovereign borders.
The danger of forcing Ukraine to cede territory in exchange for "peace", is that it teaches Russia that we are not prepared to defend international borders, even when doing so only requires us to spend a modest amount of money to supply Ukraine with weapons.
Americans are way ahead in AI now. This will transform geopolitics and mean Russia wont be such a factor in the future.
I've always maintained that Trump was primarily a grifter, in politics for the money he could get out of it, and therefore with no fixed ideology as such. So I feel a certain grim satisfaction in catching up with the news that Trump has reversed his policy on banning tiktok, because one of his larger donors owns a stake in the company.
In a few weeks time the President of the United States will be an individual who is determined to sell himself and his administration to the highest bidder. That's the guiding principle we should expect to see followed, and not mistake anything as part of a coherent ideology on isolationism, nationalism, populism, whatever. He will take money and do a u-turn.
You have described the Biden crime family!
Oh God, not another person who’s swallowed all the MAGA conspiracies…
Where is your evidence?
He’s a dreary centrist Dad who thinks he’s right and knowledgable about anything and everything he has a passing interest in.
That mindset does not command evidence based posting
Happy new year all, from a beautiful and frosty Maconnais. After a week of freezing fog the sun is out and the world looks like Elsa has been practising for Frozen III.
Net zero sceptics will be delighted to learn that my new air source heat pump does not perform very well in minus 6. It’s warm enough inside, but it’s eating up the kilowatts like nobody’s business and keeps tripping our circuit breaker.
2024 was a lot about domestic politics, with an election as the centrepiece. 2025 feels like it’ll be all about international events. Trump’s second presidency and those tariffs, a possible denouement for good or bad in Ukraine, and a big test of nation building for the Syrians.
We - and I mean democratic nations - cannot afford Ukraine to be forced to give way. That is the truth of it. If Trump backs off Europe must take up the slack. We must see Putin and Putinism as the utter evil that it is and defend Ukraine and ourselves against it.
That assumes Trump will be chill with Europe keeping the SMO on the road. If he brokers a deal with VVP (I assume Zelenskiy can couped out of the way if necessary) then he might not want Europe fucking it up. If DJT says it's over, then it's over.
Trump clearly thinks he's going to fix a deal on Ukraine. Risk is he's not nearly as savvy in that department as he thinks he is.
My uninformed hunch is that he thinks there will be some sort of economic boost, for which he will take fulsome credit, if he shuts the SMO down. He doesn't particularly care where the line in the mud is.
If he does shut the SMO down ... My guess is Trump will go for a deal, which will fail mainly because Ukraine and Russia have incompatible goals and Putin overestimates the strength of his position, and also because Trump is a lousy negotiator. What happens next is hard to predict.
This is my view as well. Trump is not in a position to force a deal on either side, and a deal that is not accepted by Zelensky is not likely to be acceptable to the rest of Europe. The simple lesson is that Putin cannot be appeased. Nor morally should he benefit from the chaos and destruction he has wrought. There is not a deal that is acceptable to the west that will be acceptable to Russia,
Trump in the game does increase the chances of escalation as much as it increases the chance of Ukraine being forced to concede. Trump didn’t want to intervene in Syria on his previous watch, until he saw photos of what Assad had been doing.
I'm not sure that Western Europe, willing or not to replace the Americans, will be that decisive. The real Russian position appears to be reabsorption of the eastern provinces and Crimea - Putin is unlikely to really want the western provinces with their predominantly anti-Russian populations. Conversely the Ukrainian public seem less willing to stick to the "not an inch" position, and the government is probably less keen on the heavily damaged and underpopulated eastern provinces than it seems. So a deal isn't all that unlikely, but may hinge on how far Russia gets a gradual relaxation of sanctions if it doesn't proceed to "and now, Moldova and Transdniester". The most likely in the short to medium term is probably failure to get that, and a cold peace with borders roughly as they are.
Lots of assumptions there Nick
I pity the poor people of Eastern Ukraine that you are willing to sacrifice
It's not really assumptions, it's willful blindness about the opinions of the people who were living in Eastern Ukraine at the start of the war, and who are now suffering under Russian occupation.
Has there ever been a war in the history of mainland Europe which has left the borders of the combatants completely the same as when it started? I get the sentiment that Russia shouldn't win out of this and that it's not up to other countries to demand that Ukraine gives up sovereign territory. At the same time though the war has to end eventually and history tells us that it will probably involve some redrawing of maps.
The flaw in your argument is that Russia will stop at whatever appeasement is on offer. History also tells us that aggressors have to be beaten.
Those saying things like "Oh, give Putin the territory he has so we get peace" are ignoring the things Putin, Lavrov and the regime have been saying for the last three years. They want much, much more in Ukraine and beyond, and having won that territory, they'd return to get it by whatever method.
Based on this argument then you couldn't agree to any peace deal at all since even if they agreed to go back to the 1991 borders, it would only be temporary and they'd soon be back after regrouping.
So presumably you think there’s no tactical difference between refusing all pay rises for striking unions or giving them everything they ask for first time?
I don't think pay negotiations are a good analogy.
Think of WW1 instead. Germany lost and ceded a lot of territory to Poland, but they still came back later. If you think Russian militarism is a similar threat then even a deal that gave Ukraine part of Russia wouldn't be good enough.
There’s an almost certain chance that a clear defeat for Russia will result in the removal of Putin and the further disintegration of Russia. All those Buryats, Chechens and Dagestanis are not going to continue their subservience to a weakened Muscovite regime. After all, they can see how independence has favoured other former CIS states, many of whom are continuing to seek to break their ties with Moscow.
The biggest winner in this is Xi. He’s watching Putin immolate Russia’s global influence, he’s moving in to the Central Asian vaccuum peddling Chinese influence and it’s barely costing him a yen. He’s laughing.
Happy new year all, from a beautiful and frosty Maconnais. After a week of freezing fog the sun is out and the world looks like Elsa has been practising for Frozen III.
Net zero sceptics will be delighted to learn that my new air source heat pump does not perform very well in minus 6. It’s warm enough inside, but it’s eating up the kilowatts like nobody’s business and keeps tripping our circuit breaker.
2024 was a lot about domestic politics, with an election as the centrepiece. 2025 feels like it’ll be all about international events. Trump’s second presidency and those tariffs, a possible denouement for good or bad in Ukraine, and a big test of nation building for the Syrians.
We - and I mean democratic nations - cannot afford Ukraine to be forced to give way. That is the truth of it. If Trump backs off Europe must take up the slack. We must see Putin and Putinism as the utter evil that it is and defend Ukraine and ourselves against it.
That assumes Trump will be chill with Europe keeping the SMO on the road. If he brokers a deal with VVP (I assume Zelenskiy can couped out of the way if necessary) then he might not want Europe fucking it up. If DJT says it's over, then it's over.
Trump clearly thinks he's going to fix a deal on Ukraine. Risk is he's not nearly as savvy in that department as he thinks he is.
My uninformed hunch is that he thinks there will be some sort of economic boost, for which he will take fulsome credit, if he shuts the SMO down. He doesn't particularly care where the line in the mud is.
If he does shut the SMO down ... My guess is Trump will go for a deal, which will fail mainly because Ukraine and Russia have incompatible goals and Putin overestimates the strength of his position, and also because Trump is a lousy negotiator. What happens next is hard to predict.
This is my view as well. Trump is not in a position to force a deal on either side, and a deal that is not accepted by Zelensky is not likely to be acceptable to the rest of Europe. The simple lesson is that Putin cannot be appeased. Nor morally should he benefit from the chaos and destruction he has wrought. There is not a deal that is acceptable to the west that will be acceptable to Russia,
Trump in the game does increase the chances of escalation as much as it increases the chance of Ukraine being forced to concede. Trump didn’t want to intervene in Syria on his previous watch, until he saw photos of what Assad had been doing.
I'm not sure that Western Europe, willing or not to replace the Americans, will be that decisive. The real Russian position appears to be reabsorption of the eastern provinces and Crimea - Putin is unlikely to really want the western provinces with their predominantly anti-Russian populations. Conversely the Ukrainian public seem less willing to stick to the "not an inch" position, and the government is probably less keen on the heavily damaged and underpopulated eastern provinces than it seems. So a deal isn't all that unlikely, but may hinge on how far Russia gets a gradual relaxation of sanctions if it doesn't proceed to "and now, Moldova and Transdniester". The most likely in the short to medium term is probably failure to get that, and a cold peace with borders roughly as they are.
Lots of assumptions there Nick
I pity the poor people of Eastern Ukraine that you are willing to sacrifice
It's not really assumptions, it's willful blindness about the opinions of the people who were living in Eastern Ukraine at the start of the war, and who are now suffering under Russian occupation.
Has there ever been a war in the history of mainland Europe which has left the borders of the combatants completely the same as when it started? I get the sentiment that Russia shouldn't win out of this and that it's not up to other countries to demand that Ukraine gives up sovereign territory. At the same time though the war has to end eventually and history tells us that it will probably involve some redrawing of maps.
The flaw in your argument is that Russia will stop at whatever appeasement is on offer. History also tells us that aggressors have to be beaten.
Those saying things like "Oh, give Putin the territory he has so we get peace" are ignoring the things Putin, Lavrov and the regime have been saying for the last three years. They want much, much more in Ukraine and beyond, and having won that territory, they'd return to get it by whatever method.
Based on this argument then you couldn't agree to any peace deal at all since even if they agreed to go back to the 1991 borders, it would only be temporary and they'd soon be back after regrouping.
And of course, they could.
But that is far more likely to occur if Putin could sell a 'win' to the public back home. If he 'loses' (to the extent he cannot sell a win), then it becomes much more difficult for him to sell another war to the oligarchs and wider public.
"I know we lost a million dead and wounded, but my friends, if we attack again, this time it will be different!"
Compared to:
"But my friends, we won all that territory! True, we lost a million dead and wounded, but they are not our sons, were they? And you Ivan, you have gained all those mineral rights in Donetsk. And you Mikheil, you have got all those farms that are selling hundreds of millions in grain each year. And you, Igor, you have all those nice new hotels built on the sites of our glorious war crimes. Our enemies are more divided now, and another little push will see even more money for us... I mean, glory for Russia!"
Watching the map of russian terrotory gained is so boring. I mean they are still trying to take Chasiv Yar lol
Happy new year all, from a beautiful and frosty Maconnais. After a week of freezing fog the sun is out and the world looks like Elsa has been practising for Frozen III.
Net zero sceptics will be delighted to learn that my new air source heat pump does not perform very well in minus 6. It’s warm enough inside, but it’s eating up the kilowatts like nobody’s business and keeps tripping our circuit breaker.
2024 was a lot about domestic politics, with an election as the centrepiece. 2025 feels like it’ll be all about international events. Trump’s second presidency and those tariffs, a possible denouement for good or bad in Ukraine, and a big test of nation building for the Syrians.
We - and I mean democratic nations - cannot afford Ukraine to be forced to give way. That is the truth of it. If Trump backs off Europe must take up the slack. We must see Putin and Putinism as the utter evil that it is and defend Ukraine and ourselves against it.
That assumes Trump will be chill with Europe keeping the SMO on the road. If he brokers a deal with VVP (I assume Zelenskiy can couped out of the way if necessary) then he might not want Europe fucking it up. If DJT says it's over, then it's over.
Trump clearly thinks he's going to fix a deal on Ukraine. Risk is he's not nearly as savvy in that department as he thinks he is.
My uninformed hunch is that he thinks there will be some sort of economic boost, for which he will take fulsome credit, if he shuts the SMO down. He doesn't particularly care where the line in the mud is.
If he does shut the SMO down ... My guess is Trump will go for a deal, which will fail mainly because Ukraine and Russia have incompatible goals and Putin overestimates the strength of his position, and also because Trump is a lousy negotiator. What happens next is hard to predict.
This is my view as well. Trump is not in a position to force a deal on either side, and a deal that is not accepted by Zelensky is not likely to be acceptable to the rest of Europe. The simple lesson is that Putin cannot be appeased. Nor morally should he benefit from the chaos and destruction he has wrought. There is not a deal that is acceptable to the west that will be acceptable to Russia,
Trump in the game does increase the chances of escalation as much as it increases the chance of Ukraine being forced to concede. Trump didn’t want to intervene in Syria on his previous watch, until he saw photos of what Assad had been doing.
I'm not sure that Western Europe, willing or not to replace the Americans, will be that decisive. The real Russian position appears to be reabsorption of the eastern provinces and Crimea - Putin is unlikely to really want the western provinces with their predominantly anti-Russian populations. Conversely the Ukrainian public seem less willing to stick to the "not an inch" position, and the government is probably less keen on the heavily damaged and underpopulated eastern provinces than it seems. So a deal isn't all that unlikely, but may hinge on how far Russia gets a gradual relaxation of sanctions if it doesn't proceed to "and now, Moldova and Transdniester". The most likely in the short to medium term is probably failure to get that, and a cold peace with borders roughly as they are.
Lots of assumptions there Nick
I pity the poor people of Eastern Ukraine that you are willing to sacrifice
It's not really assumptions, it's willful blindness about the opinions of the people who were living in Eastern Ukraine at the start of the war, and who are now suffering under Russian occupation.
Has there ever been a war in the history of mainland Europe which has left the borders of the combatants completely the same as when it started? I get the sentiment that Russia shouldn't win out of this and that it's not up to other countries to demand that Ukraine gives up sovereign territory. At the same time though the war has to end eventually and history tells us that it will probably involve some redrawing of maps.
The flaw in your argument is that Russia will stop at whatever appeasement is on offer. History also tells us that aggressors have to be beaten.
Those saying things like "Oh, give Putin the territory he has so we get peace" are ignoring the things Putin, Lavrov and the regime have been saying for the last three years. They want much, much more in Ukraine and beyond, and having won that territory, they'd return to get it by whatever method.
Based on this argument then you couldn't agree to any peace deal at all since even if they agreed to go back to the 1991 borders, it would only be temporary and they'd soon be back after regrouping.
So presumably you think there’s no tactical difference between refusing all pay rises for striking unions or giving them everything they ask for first time?
I don't think pay negotiations are a good analogy.
Think of WW1 instead. Germany lost and ceded a lot of territory to Poland, but they still came back later. If you think Russian militarism is a similar threat then even a deal that gave Ukraine part of Russia wouldn't be good enough.
There’s an almost certain chance that a clear defeat for Russia will result in the removal of Putin and the further disintegration of Russia. All those Buryats, Chechens and Dagestanis are not going to continue their subservience to a weakened Muscovite regime. After all, they can see how independence has favoured other former CIS states, many of whom are continuing to seek to break their ties with Moscow.
The biggest winner in this is Xi. He’s watching Putin immolate Russia’s global influence, he’s moving in to the Central Asian vaccuum peddling Chinese influence and it’s barely costing him a yen. He’s laughing.
Plus China is a big plater in AI. Wheres Russia nowhere.
No police officer or government employee has ever been imprisoned for their gross misconduct in dealing with the grooming gangs horror.
But I’ve got plans to expose many of them in 2025 and reveal some of the senior leaders who failed to tackle the atrocity. Stay tuned.
If it is a 'defining issue' it will only be because Musk is race-baiting for his mate Farage.
And you're slurping up the hate.
(And no, I am not defending the shits who committed the crimes; or the people who covered it up. But if you think Musk is making these comments from a good place, then I've got a Hyperloop to sell you.)
Elon Musk said Matt Gaetz would be a great Attorney General. This indeed does not suggest that Musk actually cares much about the treatment of young girls who are raped.
Is statutory rape a comparable crime to torture and murder?
No police officer or government employee has ever been imprisoned for their gross misconduct in dealing with the grooming gangs horror.
But I’ve got plans to expose many of them in 2025 and reveal some of the senior leaders who failed to tackle the atrocity. Stay tuned.
If it is a 'defining issue' it will only be because Musk is race-baiting for his mate Farage.
And you're slurping up the hate.
(And no, I am not defending the shits who committed the crimes; or the people who covered it up. But if you think Musk is making these comments from a good place, then I've got a Hyperloop to sell you.)
Elon Musk said Matt Gaetz would be a great Attorney General. This indeed does not suggest that Musk actually cares much about the treatment of young girls who are raped.
Is statutory rape a comparable crime to torture and murder?
Case unlikely to go ahead anyway according to Miami Herald.
Musk says he has presumption of innocence, that’s his perspective.
Happy new year all, from a beautiful and frosty Maconnais. After a week of freezing fog the sun is out and the world looks like Elsa has been practising for Frozen III.
Net zero sceptics will be delighted to learn that my new air source heat pump does not perform very well in minus 6. It’s warm enough inside, but it’s eating up the kilowatts like nobody’s business and keeps tripping our circuit breaker.
2024 was a lot about domestic politics, with an election as the centrepiece. 2025 feels like it’ll be all about international events. Trump’s second presidency and those tariffs, a possible denouement for good or bad in Ukraine, and a big test of nation building for the Syrians.
We - and I mean democratic nations - cannot afford Ukraine to be forced to give way. That is the truth of it. If Trump backs off Europe must take up the slack. We must see Putin and Putinism as the utter evil that it is and defend Ukraine and ourselves against it.
That assumes Trump will be chill with Europe keeping the SMO on the road. If he brokers a deal with VVP (I assume Zelenskiy can couped out of the way if necessary) then he might not want Europe fucking it up. If DJT says it's over, then it's over.
Trump clearly thinks he's going to fix a deal on Ukraine. Risk is he's not nearly as savvy in that department as he thinks he is.
My uninformed hunch is that he thinks there will be some sort of economic boost, for which he will take fulsome credit, if he shuts the SMO down. He doesn't particularly care where the line in the mud is.
If he does shut the SMO down ... My guess is Trump will go for a deal, which will fail mainly because Ukraine and Russia have incompatible goals and Putin overestimates the strength of his position, and also because Trump is a lousy negotiator. What happens next is hard to predict.
This is my view as well. Trump is not in a position to force a deal on either side, and a deal that is not accepted by Zelensky is not likely to be acceptable to the rest of Europe. The simple lesson is that Putin cannot be appeased. Nor morally should he benefit from the chaos and destruction he has wrought. There is not a deal that is acceptable to the west that will be acceptable to Russia,
Trump in the game does increase the chances of escalation as much as it increases the chance of Ukraine being forced to concede. Trump didn’t want to intervene in Syria on his previous watch, until he saw photos of what Assad had been doing.
I'm not sure that Western Europe, willing or not to replace the Americans, will be that decisive. The real Russian position appears to be reabsorption of the eastern provinces and Crimea - Putin is unlikely to really want the western provinces with their predominantly anti-Russian populations. Conversely the Ukrainian public seem less willing to stick to the "not an inch" position, and the government is probably less keen on the heavily damaged and underpopulated eastern provinces than it seems. So a deal isn't all that unlikely, but may hinge on how far Russia gets a gradual relaxation of sanctions if it doesn't proceed to "and now, Moldova and Transdniester". The most likely in the short to medium term is probably failure to get that, and a cold peace with borders roughly as they are.
Lots of assumptions there Nick
I pity the poor people of Eastern Ukraine that you are willing to sacrifice
It's not really assumptions, it's willful blindness about the opinions of the people who were living in Eastern Ukraine at the start of the war, and who are now suffering under Russian occupation.
Has there ever been a war in the history of mainland Europe which has left the borders of the combatants completely the same as when it started? I get the sentiment that Russia shouldn't win out of this and that it's not up to other countries to demand that Ukraine gives up sovereign territory. At the same time though the war has to end eventually and history tells us that it will probably involve some redrawing of maps.
The flaw in your argument is that Russia will stop at whatever appeasement is on offer. History also tells us that aggressors have to be beaten.
Those saying things like "Oh, give Putin the territory he has so we get peace" are ignoring the things Putin, Lavrov and the regime have been saying for the last three years. They want much, much more in Ukraine and beyond, and having won that territory, they'd return to get it by whatever method.
Based on this argument then you couldn't agree to any peace deal at all since even if they agreed to go back to the 1991 borders, it would only be temporary and they'd soon be back after regrouping.
So presumably you think there’s no tactical difference between refusing all pay rises for striking unions or giving them everything they ask for first time?
I don't think pay negotiations are a good analogy.
Think of WW1 instead. Germany lost and ceded a lot of territory to Poland, but they still came back later. If you think Russian militarism is a similar threat then even a deal that gave Ukraine part of Russia wouldn't be good enough.
Only internal change in Russia can make us truly safe in the long-term. In the meantime, we have to make sure that the leaders of Russia are more scared of us than we are of them, that they understand where our red lines are, and that they believe we can and will fight and defeat them to defend those red lines. Those red lines should be internationally recognised sovereign borders.
The danger of forcing Ukraine to cede territory in exchange for "peace", is that it teaches Russia that we are not prepared to defend international borders, even when doing so only requires us to spend a modest amount of money to supply Ukraine with weapons.
Two countries can both claim the same territory at the same time and be at peace with each other. There was a western-brokered agreement in 2014 that aimed to achieve this.
No police officer or government employee has ever been imprisoned for their gross misconduct in dealing with the grooming gangs horror.
But I’ve got plans to expose many of them in 2025 and reveal some of the senior leaders who failed to tackle the atrocity. Stay tuned.
If it is a 'defining issue' it will only be because Musk is race-baiting for his mate Farage.
And you're slurping up the hate.
(And no, I am not defending the shits who committed the crimes; or the people who covered it up. But if you think Musk is making these comments from a good place, then I've got a Hyperloop to sell you.)
Elon Musk said Matt Gaetz would be a great Attorney General. This indeed does not suggest that Musk actually cares much about the treatment of young girls who are raped.
Is statutory rape a comparable crime to torture and murder?
During the last hour the temperature here has dropped by 6C
Just been for a bike ride. I've never seen the Mersey so high, nor heard it so loud. Water everywhere. Fun if this lot freezes.
Yellow warnings for snow abound.
Even for central London, come Sunday
It's been a long time since there was proper snow in London. I have a recollection of a bus trying to skid and slide its way up Piccadilly - may have been early 90s.
Happy New Year to all PBers, and a big pat on the head of 'for scale'
I went to London for professional exams in, I think, 1987. Snowstorm, deep snow and frost - all meh for a Scot or Northerner but London just fell over completely. Fortunately I'd seen the forecast and taken my wellies with me. I was supposed to be staying with a relative in Orpington but the trains were kaput. By the end of the week I'd had to move to somewhere nearer and then doss with an old student mate near Paddington, and the toilets in the course place were frozen.
The next time, it was a party in London on the evening of the Great Storm!
I could be 1987 that I recall, although I think a bit later. (I've always lived in London. so these memories are tricky to disentangle)
Anyway London has been spared heavy snow and ice by my decision to buy 'heavy snow and ice' boots in perhaps 2017 - they're entirely unused in heavy snow or on ice.
No police officer or government employee has ever been imprisoned for their gross misconduct in dealing with the grooming gangs horror.
But I’ve got plans to expose many of them in 2025 and reveal some of the senior leaders who failed to tackle the atrocity. Stay tuned.
If it is a 'defining issue' it will only be because Musk is race-baiting for his mate Farage.
And you're slurping up the hate.
(And no, I am not defending the shits who committed the crimes; or the people who covered it up. But if you think Musk is making these comments from a good place, then I've got a Hyperloop to sell you.)
Elon Musk said Matt Gaetz would be a great Attorney General. This indeed does not suggest that Musk actually cares much about the treatment of young girls who are raped.
Matt Gaetz would be a great Attorney General for the purposes of generating clicks on TwiXtter. On any other metric, an abomination.
Gates also has not been convicted, indeed the Washington Post said last year he was unlikely to be charged.
The Gangs to which Musk referred have all been convicted and the action, or inaction, of the police and other bodies is a matter of public record. So quite a difference
So many people at all levels of power in the UK need to be in prison for this.
What’s the Kekius Maximus bullshit all about?
He's picked up a [4chan] meme from at least a decade ago that is long dead.
On the actual truth about Rotherham, the evidence of official culpability was destroyed. This was boasted about by officials, to the lady who wrote up the first report.
I suggested, at a political event, a simple way round that to the Home Sec of the time.
Despite the stupid rename on X, Musk isn't actually wrong on that point.
There's also, ahem, neighbouring authorities that might have done similar things, albeit on a smaller scale.
There's so much ammunition for Cyclefree it isn't funny.
Nothing about this is funny at all.
I'm not sure why this seems to be in the news now. The sentencing remarks of the judge in relation to a grooming case in Oxford (I think) in 2013 are circulating and they are frankly utterly revolting. (I won't link.)
Did the gangs got away with it for so long was because some police (and, possibly, councillors) turned a blind eye or, worse, were actively involved or benefited from what was happening? We shall see. Maybe.
Happy new year all, from a beautiful and frosty Maconnais. After a week of freezing fog the sun is out and the world looks like Elsa has been practising for Frozen III.
Net zero sceptics will be delighted to learn that my new air source heat pump does not perform very well in minus 6. It’s warm enough inside, but it’s eating up the kilowatts like nobody’s business and keeps tripping our circuit breaker.
2024 was a lot about domestic politics, with an election as the centrepiece. 2025 feels like it’ll be all about international events. Trump’s second presidency and those tariffs, a possible denouement for good or bad in Ukraine, and a big test of nation building for the Syrians.
We - and I mean democratic nations - cannot afford Ukraine to be forced to give way. That is the truth of it. If Trump backs off Europe must take up the slack. We must see Putin and Putinism as the utter evil that it is and defend Ukraine and ourselves against it.
That assumes Trump will be chill with Europe keeping the SMO on the road. If he brokers a deal with VVP (I assume Zelenskiy can couped out of the way if necessary) then he might not want Europe fucking it up. If DJT says it's over, then it's over.
Trump clearly thinks he's going to fix a deal on Ukraine. Risk is he's not nearly as savvy in that department as he thinks he is.
My uninformed hunch is that he thinks there will be some sort of economic boost, for which he will take fulsome credit, if he shuts the SMO down. He doesn't particularly care where the line in the mud is.
If he does shut the SMO down ... My guess is Trump will go for a deal, which will fail mainly because Ukraine and Russia have incompatible goals and Putin overestimates the strength of his position, and also because Trump is a lousy negotiator. What happens next is hard to predict.
This is my view as well. Trump is not in a position to force a deal on either side, and a deal that is not accepted by Zelensky is not likely to be acceptable to the rest of Europe. The simple lesson is that Putin cannot be appeased. Nor morally should he benefit from the chaos and destruction he has wrought. There is not a deal that is acceptable to the west that will be acceptable to Russia,
Trump in the game does increase the chances of escalation as much as it increases the chance of Ukraine being forced to concede. Trump didn’t want to intervene in Syria on his previous watch, until he saw photos of what Assad had been doing.
I'm not sure that Western Europe, willing or not to replace the Americans, will be that decisive. The real Russian position appears to be reabsorption of the eastern provinces and Crimea - Putin is unlikely to really want the western provinces with their predominantly anti-Russian populations. Conversely the Ukrainian public seem less willing to stick to the "not an inch" position, and the government is probably less keen on the heavily damaged and underpopulated eastern provinces than it seems. So a deal isn't all that unlikely, but may hinge on how far Russia gets a gradual relaxation of sanctions if it doesn't proceed to "and now, Moldova and Transdniester". The most likely in the short to medium term is probably failure to get that, and a cold peace with borders roughly as they are.
Lots of assumptions there Nick
I pity the poor people of Eastern Ukraine that you are willing to sacrifice
It's not really assumptions, it's willful blindness about the opinions of the people who were living in Eastern Ukraine at the start of the war, and who are now suffering under Russian occupation.
Has there ever been a war in the history of mainland Europe which has left the borders of the combatants completely the same as when it started? I get the sentiment that Russia shouldn't win out of this and that it's not up to other countries to demand that Ukraine gives up sovereign territory. At the same time though the war has to end eventually and history tells us that it will probably involve some redrawing of maps.
The flaw in your argument is that Russia will stop at whatever appeasement is on offer. History also tells us that aggressors have to be beaten.
Those saying things like "Oh, give Putin the territory he has so we get peace" are ignoring the things Putin, Lavrov and the regime have been saying for the last three years. They want much, much more in Ukraine and beyond, and having won that territory, they'd return to get it by whatever method.
Based on this argument then you couldn't agree to any peace deal at all since even if they agreed to go back to the 1991 borders, it would only be temporary and they'd soon be back after regrouping.
So presumably you think there’s no tactical difference between refusing all pay rises for striking unions or giving them everything they ask for first time?
I don't think pay negotiations are a good analogy.
Think of WW1 instead. Germany lost and ceded a lot of territory to Poland, but they still came back later. If you think Russian militarism is a similar threat then even a deal that gave Ukraine part of Russia wouldn't be good enough.
Only internal change in Russia can make us truly safe in the long-term. In the meantime, we have to make sure that the leaders of Russia are more scared of us than we are of them, that they understand where our red lines are, and that they believe we can and will fight and defeat them to defend those red lines. Those red lines should be internationally recognised sovereign borders.
The danger of forcing Ukraine to cede territory in exchange for "peace", is that it teaches Russia that we are not prepared to defend international borders, even when doing so only requires us to spend a modest amount of money to supply Ukraine with weapons.
Two countries can both claim the same territory at the same time and be at peace with each other. There was a western-brokered agreement in 2014 that aimed to achieve this.
Yes. It is possible. But Russia rather demonstrated its unwillingness to stick to the Minsk agreements in 2022, did it not?
Perhaps we should learn from that experience rather than repeat the mistakes of the past?
This on AI a trend that makes our discussion on Putins miniscule gains trivial.
Sam was right—2024 was easily the most interesting year in history, except for all the years that come after it. The years ahead will make 2024 seem like a warm up.
No police officer or government employee has ever been imprisoned for their gross misconduct in dealing with the grooming gangs horror.
But I’ve got plans to expose many of them in 2025 and reveal some of the senior leaders who failed to tackle the atrocity. Stay tuned.
If it is a 'defining issue' it will only be because Musk is race-baiting for his mate Farage.
And you're slurping up the hate.
(And no, I am not defending the shits who committed the crimes; or the people who covered it up. But if you think Musk is making these comments from a good place, then I've got a Hyperloop to sell you.)
Elon Musk said Matt Gaetz would be a great Attorney General. This indeed does not suggest that Musk actually cares much about the treatment of young girls who are raped.
Is statutory rape a comparable crime to torture and murder?
Case unlikely to go ahead anyway according to Miami Herald.
Musk says he has presumption of innocence, that’s his perspective.
During the last hour the temperature here has dropped by 6C
Just been for a bike ride. I've never seen the Mersey so high, nor heard it so loud. Water everywhere. Fun if this lot freezes.
Yellow warnings for snow abound.
Even for central London, come Sunday
It's been a long time since there was proper snow in London. I have a recollection of a bus trying to skid and slide its way up Piccadilly - may have been early 90s.
Happy New Year to all PBers, and a big pat on the head of 'for scale'
There was quite bad snow in 2008/09, IIRC the biggest problem was there were inadequate plans for ensuring safe access of staff to bus depots and it caused chaos.
Happy new year all, from a beautiful and frosty Maconnais. After a week of freezing fog the sun is out and the world looks like Elsa has been practising for Frozen III.
Net zero sceptics will be delighted to learn that my new air source heat pump does not perform very well in minus 6. It’s warm enough inside, but it’s eating up the kilowatts like nobody’s business and keeps tripping our circuit breaker.
2024 was a lot about domestic politics, with an election as the centrepiece. 2025 feels like it’ll be all about international events. Trump’s second presidency and those tariffs, a possible denouement for good or bad in Ukraine, and a big test of nation building for the Syrians.
We - and I mean democratic nations - cannot afford Ukraine to be forced to give way. That is the truth of it. If Trump backs off Europe must take up the slack. We must see Putin and Putinism as the utter evil that it is and defend Ukraine and ourselves against it.
That assumes Trump will be chill with Europe keeping the SMO on the road. If he brokers a deal with VVP (I assume Zelenskiy can couped out of the way if necessary) then he might not want Europe fucking it up. If DJT says it's over, then it's over.
Trump clearly thinks he's going to fix a deal on Ukraine. Risk is he's not nearly as savvy in that department as he thinks he is.
My uninformed hunch is that he thinks there will be some sort of economic boost, for which he will take fulsome credit, if he shuts the SMO down. He doesn't particularly care where the line in the mud is.
If he does shut the SMO down ... My guess is Trump will go for a deal, which will fail mainly because Ukraine and Russia have incompatible goals and Putin overestimates the strength of his position, and also because Trump is a lousy negotiator. What happens next is hard to predict.
This is my view as well. Trump is not in a position to force a deal on either side, and a deal that is not accepted by Zelensky is not likely to be acceptable to the rest of Europe. The simple lesson is that Putin cannot be appeased. Nor morally should he benefit from the chaos and destruction he has wrought. There is not a deal that is acceptable to the west that will be acceptable to Russia,
Trump in the game does increase the chances of escalation as much as it increases the chance of Ukraine being forced to concede. Trump didn’t want to intervene in Syria on his previous watch, until he saw photos of what Assad had been doing.
I'm not sure that Western Europe, willing or not to replace the Americans, will be that decisive. The real Russian position appears to be reabsorption of the eastern provinces and Crimea - Putin is unlikely to really want the western provinces with their predominantly anti-Russian populations. Conversely the Ukrainian public seem less willing to stick to the "not an inch" position, and the government is probably less keen on the heavily damaged and underpopulated eastern provinces than it seems. So a deal isn't all that unlikely, but may hinge on how far Russia gets a gradual relaxation of sanctions if it doesn't proceed to "and now, Moldova and Transdniester". The most likely in the short to medium term is probably failure to get that, and a cold peace with borders roughly as they are.
Lots of assumptions there Nick
I pity the poor people of Eastern Ukraine that you are willing to sacrifice
It's not really assumptions, it's willful blindness about the opinions of the people who were living in Eastern Ukraine at the start of the war, and who are now suffering under Russian occupation.
Has there ever been a war in the history of mainland Europe which has left the borders of the combatants completely the same as when it started? I get the sentiment that Russia shouldn't win out of this and that it's not up to other countries to demand that Ukraine gives up sovereign territory. At the same time though the war has to end eventually and history tells us that it will probably involve some redrawing of maps.
The flaw in your argument is that Russia will stop at whatever appeasement is on offer. History also tells us that aggressors have to be beaten.
Those saying things like "Oh, give Putin the territory he has so we get peace" are ignoring the things Putin, Lavrov and the regime have been saying for the last three years. They want much, much more in Ukraine and beyond, and having won that territory, they'd return to get it by whatever method.
Based on this argument then you couldn't agree to any peace deal at all since even if they agreed to go back to the 1991 borders, it would only be temporary and they'd soon be back after regrouping.
So presumably you think there’s no tactical difference between refusing all pay rises for striking unions or giving them everything they ask for first time?
I don't think pay negotiations are a good analogy.
Think of WW1 instead. Germany lost and ceded a lot of territory to Poland, but they still came back later. If you think Russian militarism is a similar threat then even a deal that gave Ukraine part of Russia wouldn't be good enough.
There’s an almost certain chance that a clear defeat for Russia will result in the removal of Putin and the further disintegration of Russia. All those Buryats, Chechens and Dagestanis are not going to continue their subservience to a weakened Muscovite regime. After all, they can see how independence has favoured other former CIS states, many of whom are continuing to seek to break their ties with Moscow.
The biggest winner in this is Xi. He’s watching Putin immolate Russia’s global influence, he’s moving in to the Central Asian vaccuum peddling Chinese influence and it’s barely costing him a yen. He’s laughing.
Plus China is a big player in AI. Wheres Russia nowhere.
Reportedly Russia has begun using AI-powered drones to aid in targeting.
Whether they developed this technology themselves, or have bought it from China, I do not know.
This on AI a trend that makes our discussion on Putins miniscule gains trivial.
Sam was right—2024 was easily the most interesting year in history, except for all the years that come after it. The years ahead will make 2024 seem like a warm up.
No police officer or government employee has ever been imprisoned for their gross misconduct in dealing with the grooming gangs horror.
But I’ve got plans to expose many of them in 2025 and reveal some of the senior leaders who failed to tackle the atrocity. Stay tuned.
If it is a 'defining issue' it will only be because Musk is race-baiting for his mate Farage.
And you're slurping up the hate.
(And no, I am not defending the shits who committed the crimes; or the people who covered it up. But if you think Musk is making these comments from a good place, then I've got a Hyperloop to sell you.)
Elon Musk said Matt Gaetz would be a great Attorney General. This indeed does not suggest that Musk actually cares much about the treatment of young girls who are raped.
Is statutory rape a comparable crime to torture and murder?
Case unlikely to go ahead anyway according to Miami Herald.
Musk says he has presumption of innocence, that’s his perspective.
This on AI a trend that makes our discussion on Putins miniscule gains trivial.
Sam was right—2024 was easily the most interesting year in history, except for all the years that come after it. The years ahead will make 2024 seem like a warm up.
Happy new year all, from a beautiful and frosty Maconnais. After a week of freezing fog the sun is out and the world looks like Elsa has been practising for Frozen III.
Net zero sceptics will be delighted to learn that my new air source heat pump does not perform very well in minus 6. It’s warm enough inside, but it’s eating up the kilowatts like nobody’s business and keeps tripping our circuit breaker.
2024 was a lot about domestic politics, with an election as the centrepiece. 2025 feels like it’ll be all about international events. Trump’s second presidency and those tariffs, a possible denouement for good or bad in Ukraine, and a big test of nation building for the Syrians.
We - and I mean democratic nations - cannot afford Ukraine to be forced to give way. That is the truth of it. If Trump backs off Europe must take up the slack. We must see Putin and Putinism as the utter evil that it is and defend Ukraine and ourselves against it.
That assumes Trump will be chill with Europe keeping the SMO on the road. If he brokers a deal with VVP (I assume Zelenskiy can couped out of the way if necessary) then he might not want Europe fucking it up. If DJT says it's over, then it's over.
Trump clearly thinks he's going to fix a deal on Ukraine. Risk is he's not nearly as savvy in that department as he thinks he is.
My uninformed hunch is that he thinks there will be some sort of economic boost, for which he will take fulsome credit, if he shuts the SMO down. He doesn't particularly care where the line in the mud is.
If he does shut the SMO down ... My guess is Trump will go for a deal, which will fail mainly because Ukraine and Russia have incompatible goals and Putin overestimates the strength of his position, and also because Trump is a lousy negotiator. What happens next is hard to predict.
This is my view as well. Trump is not in a position to force a deal on either side, and a deal that is not accepted by Zelensky is not likely to be acceptable to the rest of Europe. The simple lesson is that Putin cannot be appeased. Nor morally should he benefit from the chaos and destruction he has wrought. There is not a deal that is acceptable to the west that will be acceptable to Russia,
Trump in the game does increase the chances of escalation as much as it increases the chance of Ukraine being forced to concede. Trump didn’t want to intervene in Syria on his previous watch, until he saw photos of what Assad had been doing.
I'm not sure that Western Europe, willing or not to replace the Americans, will be that decisive. The real Russian position appears to be reabsorption of the eastern provinces and Crimea - Putin is unlikely to really want the western provinces with their predominantly anti-Russian populations. Conversely the Ukrainian public seem less willing to stick to the "not an inch" position, and the government is probably less keen on the heavily damaged and underpopulated eastern provinces than it seems. So a deal isn't all that unlikely, but may hinge on how far Russia gets a gradual relaxation of sanctions if it doesn't proceed to "and now, Moldova and Transdniester". The most likely in the short to medium term is probably failure to get that, and a cold peace with borders roughly as they are.
Lots of assumptions there Nick
I pity the poor people of Eastern Ukraine that you are willing to sacrifice
It's not really assumptions, it's willful blindness about the opinions of the people who were living in Eastern Ukraine at the start of the war, and who are now suffering under Russian occupation.
Has there ever been a war in the history of mainland Europe which has left the borders of the combatants completely the same as when it started? I get the sentiment that Russia shouldn't win out of this and that it's not up to other countries to demand that Ukraine gives up sovereign territory. At the same time though the war has to end eventually and history tells us that it will probably involve some redrawing of maps.
The flaw in your argument is that Russia will stop at whatever appeasement is on offer. History also tells us that aggressors have to be beaten.
Those saying things like "Oh, give Putin the territory he has so we get peace" are ignoring the things Putin, Lavrov and the regime have been saying for the last three years. They want much, much more in Ukraine and beyond, and having won that territory, they'd return to get it by whatever method.
Based on this argument then you couldn't agree to any peace deal at all since even if they agreed to go back to the 1991 borders, it would only be temporary and they'd soon be back after regrouping.
So presumably you think there’s no tactical difference between refusing all pay rises for striking unions or giving them everything they ask for first time?
I don't think pay negotiations are a good analogy.
Think of WW1 instead. Germany lost and ceded a lot of territory to Poland, but they still came back later. If you think Russian militarism is a similar threat then even a deal that gave Ukraine part of Russia wouldn't be good enough.
There’s an almost certain chance that a clear defeat for Russia will result in the removal of Putin and the further disintegration of Russia. All those Buryats, Chechens and Dagestanis are not going to continue their subservience to a weakened Muscovite regime. After all, they can see how independence has favoured other former CIS states, many of whom are continuing to seek to break their ties with Moscow.
The biggest winner in this is Xi. He’s watching Putin immolate Russia’s global influence, he’s moving in to the Central Asian vaccuum peddling Chinese influence and it’s barely costing him a yen. He’s laughing.
Must be some fascinating war gaming gong on in Beijing though. If they ever wanted to acquire everything east of the Urals, then Russia has never been weaker... A series of local leaders who "decide" (= are bought off) that they owe their allegience to China rather than Russia would be testing for Putin. He'd basically have to go nuclear to have any chance of getting them back. Which may not exactly play out to his advantage.
And if no nukes, then China could take a vast swathe of Russia's acreage - and natural resources - with hardly a shot fired.
During the last hour the temperature here has dropped by 6C
Just been for a bike ride. I've never seen the Mersey so high, nor heard it so loud. Water everywhere. Fun if this lot freezes.
Yellow warnings for snow abound.
Even for central London, come Sunday
It's been a long time since there was proper snow in London. I have a recollection of a bus trying to skid and slide its way up Piccadilly - may have been early 90s.
Happy New Year to all PBers, and a big pat on the head of 'for scale'
There was quite bad snow in 2008/09, IIRC the biggest problem was there were inadequate plans for ensuring safe access of staff to bus depots and it caused chaos.
I have a long and increasingly inaccurate memory.
It would have been before 2008 - the bus driver was totally insane in trying to navigate the road. I guess at one time or another we've all seen the graceful slide of a car into another at 2mph, and the abject misery on the face of the driver. When you have a bus wandering into this territory it sticks in the mind.
2025 will feel like 3-5 years worth of technological progress packed into a single year - thanks to the unstoppable force of exponential growth. Skeptical? I’ll prove it. Starting in just a few hours. Get ready to witness the dawn of a new era, one headline at a time 11:27 AM · Jan 1, 2025 · 9,95
This on AI a trend that makes our discussion on Putins miniscule gains trivial.
Sam was right—2024 was easily the most interesting year in history, except for all the years that come after it. The years ahead will make 2024 seem like a warm up.
Happy new year all, from a beautiful and frosty Maconnais. After a week of freezing fog the sun is out and the world looks like Elsa has been practising for Frozen III.
Net zero sceptics will be delighted to learn that my new air source heat pump does not perform very well in minus 6. It’s warm enough inside, but it’s eating up the kilowatts like nobody’s business and keeps tripping our circuit breaker.
2024 was a lot about domestic politics, with an election as the centrepiece. 2025 feels like it’ll be all about international events. Trump’s second presidency and those tariffs, a possible denouement for good or bad in Ukraine, and a big test of nation building for the Syrians.
We - and I mean democratic nations - cannot afford Ukraine to be forced to give way. That is the truth of it. If Trump backs off Europe must take up the slack. We must see Putin and Putinism as the utter evil that it is and defend Ukraine and ourselves against it.
That assumes Trump will be chill with Europe keeping the SMO on the road. If he brokers a deal with VVP (I assume Zelenskiy can couped out of the way if necessary) then he might not want Europe fucking it up. If DJT says it's over, then it's over.
Trump clearly thinks he's going to fix a deal on Ukraine. Risk is he's not nearly as savvy in that department as he thinks he is.
My uninformed hunch is that he thinks there will be some sort of economic boost, for which he will take fulsome credit, if he shuts the SMO down. He doesn't particularly care where the line in the mud is.
If he does shut the SMO down ... My guess is Trump will go for a deal, which will fail mainly because Ukraine and Russia have incompatible goals and Putin overestimates the strength of his position, and also because Trump is a lousy negotiator. What happens next is hard to predict.
This is my view as well. Trump is not in a position to force a deal on either side, and a deal that is not accepted by Zelensky is not likely to be acceptable to the rest of Europe. The simple lesson is that Putin cannot be appeased. Nor morally should he benefit from the chaos and destruction he has wrought. There is not a deal that is acceptable to the west that will be acceptable to Russia,
Trump in the game does increase the chances of escalation as much as it increases the chance of Ukraine being forced to concede. Trump didn’t want to intervene in Syria on his previous watch, until he saw photos of what Assad had been doing.
I'm not sure that Western Europe, willing or not to replace the Americans, will be that decisive. The real Russian position appears to be reabsorption of the eastern provinces and Crimea - Putin is unlikely to really want the western provinces with their predominantly anti-Russian populations. Conversely the Ukrainian public seem less willing to stick to the "not an inch" position, and the government is probably less keen on the heavily damaged and underpopulated eastern provinces than it seems. So a deal isn't all that unlikely, but may hinge on how far Russia gets a gradual relaxation of sanctions if it doesn't proceed to "and now, Moldova and Transdniester". The most likely in the short to medium term is probably failure to get that, and a cold peace with borders roughly as they are.
Lots of assumptions there Nick
I pity the poor people of Eastern Ukraine that you are willing to sacrifice
It's not really assumptions, it's willful blindness about the opinions of the people who were living in Eastern Ukraine at the start of the war, and who are now suffering under Russian occupation.
Has there ever been a war in the history of mainland Europe which has left the borders of the combatants completely the same as when it started? I get the sentiment that Russia shouldn't win out of this and that it's not up to other countries to demand that Ukraine gives up sovereign territory. At the same time though the war has to end eventually and history tells us that it will probably involve some redrawing of maps.
The flaw in your argument is that Russia will stop at whatever appeasement is on offer. History also tells us that aggressors have to be beaten.
Those saying things like "Oh, give Putin the territory he has so we get peace" are ignoring the things Putin, Lavrov and the regime have been saying for the last three years. They want much, much more in Ukraine and beyond, and having won that territory, they'd return to get it by whatever method.
Based on this argument then you couldn't agree to any peace deal at all since even if they agreed to go back to the 1991 borders, it would only be temporary and they'd soon be back after regrouping.
So presumably you think there’s no tactical difference between refusing all pay rises for striking unions or giving them everything they ask for first time?
I don't think pay negotiations are a good analogy.
Think of WW1 instead. Germany lost and ceded a lot of territory to Poland, but they still came back later. If you think Russian militarism is a similar threat then even a deal that gave Ukraine part of Russia wouldn't be good enough.
There’s an almost certain chance that a clear defeat for Russia will result in the removal of Putin and the further disintegration of Russia. All those Buryats, Chechens and Dagestanis are not going to continue their subservience to a weakened Muscovite regime. After all, they can see how independence has favoured other former CIS states, many of whom are continuing to seek to break their ties with Moscow.
The biggest winner in this is Xi. He’s watching Putin immolate Russia’s global influence, he’s moving in to the Central Asian vaccuum peddling Chinese influence and it’s barely costing him a yen. He’s laughing.
Must be some fascinating war gaming gong on in Beijing though. If they ever wanted to acquire everything east of the Urals, then Russia has never been weaker... A series of local leaders who "decide" (= are bought off) that they owe their allegience to China rather than Russia would be testing for Putin. He'd basically have to go nuclear to have any chance of getting them back. Which may not exactly play out to his advantage.
And if no nukes, then China could take a vast swathe of Russia's acreage - and natural resources - with hardly a shot fired.
The Chinese would have to be idiots to do that. At the moment, they can freely access the resources with the application of quite small amounts of hard currency. Even the most feeble conflict would be far more expensive and problematic.
During the last hour the temperature here has dropped by 6C
Just been for a bike ride. I've never seen the Mersey so high, nor heard it so loud. Water everywhere. Fun if this lot freezes.
Yellow warnings for snow abound.
Even for central London, come Sunday
It's been a long time since there was proper snow in London. I have a recollection of a bus trying to skid and slide its way up Piccadilly - may have been early 90s.
Happy New Year to all PBers, and a big pat on the head of 'for scale'
There was quite bad snow in 2008/09, IIRC the biggest problem was there were inadequate plans for ensuring safe access of staff to bus depots and it caused chaos.
I have a long and increasingly inaccurate memory.
It would have been before 2008 - the bus driver was totally insane in trying to navigate the road. I guess at one time or another we've all seen the graceful slide of a car into another at 2mph, and the abject misery on the face of the driver. When you have a bus wandering into this territory it sticks in the mind.
Normal for ... Gloucestershire.
As ever, the behavour of the people driving the motor vehicles - especially SUVs, white vans and buses - is the thing that needs to be controlled to keep everyone safe, since they can't control it themselves. They all think they are Ari Vatanen
Happy new year all, from a beautiful and frosty Maconnais. After a week of freezing fog the sun is out and the world looks like Elsa has been practising for Frozen III.
Net zero sceptics will be delighted to learn that my new air source heat pump does not perform very well in minus 6. It’s warm enough inside, but it’s eating up the kilowatts like nobody’s business and keeps tripping our circuit breaker.
2024 was a lot about domestic politics, with an election as the centrepiece. 2025 feels like it’ll be all about international events. Trump’s second presidency and those tariffs, a possible denouement for good or bad in Ukraine, and a big test of nation building for the Syrians.
We - and I mean democratic nations - cannot afford Ukraine to be forced to give way. That is the truth of it. If Trump backs off Europe must take up the slack. We must see Putin and Putinism as the utter evil that it is and defend Ukraine and ourselves against it.
That assumes Trump will be chill with Europe keeping the SMO on the road. If he brokers a deal with VVP (I assume Zelenskiy can couped out of the way if necessary) then he might not want Europe fucking it up. If DJT says it's over, then it's over.
Trump clearly thinks he's going to fix a deal on Ukraine. Risk is he's not nearly as savvy in that department as he thinks he is.
My uninformed hunch is that he thinks there will be some sort of economic boost, for which he will take fulsome credit, if he shuts the SMO down. He doesn't particularly care where the line in the mud is.
If he does shut the SMO down ... My guess is Trump will go for a deal, which will fail mainly because Ukraine and Russia have incompatible goals and Putin overestimates the strength of his position, and also because Trump is a lousy negotiator. What happens next is hard to predict.
This is my view as well. Trump is not in a position to force a deal on either side, and a deal that is not accepted by Zelensky is not likely to be acceptable to the rest of Europe. The simple lesson is that Putin cannot be appeased. Nor morally should he benefit from the chaos and destruction he has wrought. There is not a deal that is acceptable to the west that will be acceptable to Russia,
Trump in the game does increase the chances of escalation as much as it increases the chance of Ukraine being forced to concede. Trump didn’t want to intervene in Syria on his previous watch, until he saw photos of what Assad had been doing.
I'm not sure that Western Europe, willing or not to replace the Americans, will be that decisive. The real Russian position appears to be reabsorption of the eastern provinces and Crimea - Putin is unlikely to really want the western provinces with their predominantly anti-Russian populations. Conversely the Ukrainian public seem less willing to stick to the "not an inch" position, and the government is probably less keen on the heavily damaged and underpopulated eastern provinces than it seems. So a deal isn't all that unlikely, but may hinge on how far Russia gets a gradual relaxation of sanctions if it doesn't proceed to "and now, Moldova and Transdniester". The most likely in the short to medium term is probably failure to get that, and a cold peace with borders roughly as they are.
Lots of assumptions there Nick
I pity the poor people of Eastern Ukraine that you are willing to sacrifice
It's not really assumptions, it's willful blindness about the opinions of the people who were living in Eastern Ukraine at the start of the war, and who are now suffering under Russian occupation.
Has there ever been a war in the history of mainland Europe which has left the borders of the combatants completely the same as when it started? I get the sentiment that Russia shouldn't win out of this and that it's not up to other countries to demand that Ukraine gives up sovereign territory. At the same time though the war has to end eventually and history tells us that it will probably involve some redrawing of maps.
The flaw in your argument is that Russia will stop at whatever appeasement is on offer. History also tells us that aggressors have to be beaten.
Those saying things like "Oh, give Putin the territory he has so we get peace" are ignoring the things Putin, Lavrov and the regime have been saying for the last three years. They want much, much more in Ukraine and beyond, and having won that territory, they'd return to get it by whatever method.
Based on this argument then you couldn't agree to any peace deal at all since even if they agreed to go back to the 1991 borders, it would only be temporary and they'd soon be back after regrouping.
So presumably you think there’s no tactical difference between refusing all pay rises for striking unions or giving them everything they ask for first time?
I don't think pay negotiations are a good analogy.
Think of WW1 instead. Germany lost and ceded a lot of territory to Poland, but they still came back later. If you think Russian militarism is a similar threat then even a deal that gave Ukraine part of Russia wouldn't be good enough.
There’s an almost certain chance that a clear defeat for Russia will result in the removal of Putin and the further disintegration of Russia. All those Buryats, Chechens and Dagestanis are not going to continue their subservience to a weakened Muscovite regime. After all, they can see how independence has favoured other former CIS states, many of whom are continuing to seek to break their ties with Moscow.
The biggest winner in this is Xi. He’s watching Putin immolate Russia’s global influence, he’s moving in to the Central Asian vaccuum peddling Chinese influence and it’s barely costing him a yen. He’s laughing.
Must be some fascinating war gaming gong on in Beijing though. If they ever wanted to acquire everything east of the Urals, then Russia has never been weaker... A series of local leaders who "decide" (= are bought off) that they owe their allegience to China rather than Russia would be testing for Putin. He'd basically have to go nuclear to have any chance of getting them back. Which may not exactly play out to his advantage.
And if no nukes, then China could take a vast swathe of Russia's acreage - and natural resources - with hardly a shot fired.
The Chinese would have to be idiots to do that. At the moment, they can freely access the resources with the application of quite small amounts of hard currency. Even the most feeble conflict would be far more expensive and problematic.
Sure, the Chinese are very patient. But Putin has mistreated all the regions, to avoid having to use the young of St. Petersburg and Moscow in his meat-wave tactics. With damn all troops out east to put down any uprising, the time is unlikely to ever be more propitious for the Chinese to effect the most massive land grab going. Would make Putin's grab for Ukraine look like him nicking St. Kilda in comparison.
Happy new year all, from a beautiful and frosty Maconnais. After a week of freezing fog the sun is out and the world looks like Elsa has been practising for Frozen III.
Net zero sceptics will be delighted to learn that my new air source heat pump does not perform very well in minus 6. It’s warm enough inside, but it’s eating up the kilowatts like nobody’s business and keeps tripping our circuit breaker.
2024 was a lot about domestic politics, with an election as the centrepiece. 2025 feels like it’ll be all about international events. Trump’s second presidency and those tariffs, a possible denouement for good or bad in Ukraine, and a big test of nation building for the Syrians.
We - and I mean democratic nations - cannot afford Ukraine to be forced to give way. That is the truth of it. If Trump backs off Europe must take up the slack. We must see Putin and Putinism as the utter evil that it is and defend Ukraine and ourselves against it.
That assumes Trump will be chill with Europe keeping the SMO on the road. If he brokers a deal with VVP (I assume Zelenskiy can couped out of the way if necessary) then he might not want Europe fucking it up. If DJT says it's over, then it's over.
Trump clearly thinks he's going to fix a deal on Ukraine. Risk is he's not nearly as savvy in that department as he thinks he is.
My uninformed hunch is that he thinks there will be some sort of economic boost, for which he will take fulsome credit, if he shuts the SMO down. He doesn't particularly care where the line in the mud is.
If he does shut the SMO down ... My guess is Trump will go for a deal, which will fail mainly because Ukraine and Russia have incompatible goals and Putin overestimates the strength of his position, and also because Trump is a lousy negotiator. What happens next is hard to predict.
This is my view as well. Trump is not in a position to force a deal on either side, and a deal that is not accepted by Zelensky is not likely to be acceptable to the rest of Europe. The simple lesson is that Putin cannot be appeased. Nor morally should he benefit from the chaos and destruction he has wrought. There is not a deal that is acceptable to the west that will be acceptable to Russia,
Trump in the game does increase the chances of escalation as much as it increases the chance of Ukraine being forced to concede. Trump didn’t want to intervene in Syria on his previous watch, until he saw photos of what Assad had been doing.
I'm not sure that Western Europe, willing or not to replace the Americans, will be that decisive. The real Russian position appears to be reabsorption of the eastern provinces and Crimea - Putin is unlikely to really want the western provinces with their predominantly anti-Russian populations. Conversely the Ukrainian public seem less willing to stick to the "not an inch" position, and the government is probably less keen on the heavily damaged and underpopulated eastern provinces than it seems. So a deal isn't all that unlikely, but may hinge on how far Russia gets a gradual relaxation of sanctions if it doesn't proceed to "and now, Moldova and Transdniester". The most likely in the short to medium term is probably failure to get that, and a cold peace with borders roughly as they are.
Lots of assumptions there Nick
I pity the poor people of Eastern Ukraine that you are willing to sacrifice
It's not really assumptions, it's willful blindness about the opinions of the people who were living in Eastern Ukraine at the start of the war, and who are now suffering under Russian occupation.
Has there ever been a war in the history of mainland Europe which has left the borders of the combatants completely the same as when it started? I get the sentiment that Russia shouldn't win out of this and that it's not up to other countries to demand that Ukraine gives up sovereign territory. At the same time though the war has to end eventually and history tells us that it will probably involve some redrawing of maps.
The flaw in your argument is that Russia will stop at whatever appeasement is on offer. History also tells us that aggressors have to be beaten.
Those saying things like "Oh, give Putin the territory he has so we get peace" are ignoring the things Putin, Lavrov and the regime have been saying for the last three years. They want much, much more in Ukraine and beyond, and having won that territory, they'd return to get it by whatever method.
Based on this argument then you couldn't agree to any peace deal at all since even if they agreed to go back to the 1991 borders, it would only be temporary and they'd soon be back after regrouping.
So presumably you think there’s no tactical difference between refusing all pay rises for striking unions or giving them everything they ask for first time?
I don't think pay negotiations are a good analogy.
Think of WW1 instead. Germany lost and ceded a lot of territory to Poland, but they still came back later. If you think Russian militarism is a similar threat then even a deal that gave Ukraine part of Russia wouldn't be good enough.
There’s an almost certain chance that a clear defeat for Russia will result in the removal of Putin and the further disintegration of Russia. All those Buryats, Chechens and Dagestanis are not going to continue their subservience to a weakened Muscovite regime. After all, they can see how independence has favoured other former CIS states, many of whom are continuing to seek to break their ties with Moscow.
The biggest winner in this is Xi. He’s watching Putin immolate Russia’s global influence, he’s moving in to the Central Asian vaccuum peddling Chinese influence and it’s barely costing him a yen. He’s laughing.
Must be some fascinating war gaming gong on in Beijing though. If they ever wanted to acquire everything east of the Urals, then Russia has never been weaker... A series of local leaders who "decide" (= are bought off) that they owe their allegience to China rather than Russia would be testing for Putin. He'd basically have to go nuclear to have any chance of getting them back. Which may not exactly play out to his advantage.
And if no nukes, then China could take a vast swathe of Russia's acreage - and natural resources - with hardly a shot fired.
The Chinese would have to be idiots to do that. At the moment, they can freely access the resources with the application of quite small amounts of hard currency. Even the most feeble conflict would be far more expensive and problematic.
Sure, the Chinese are very patient. But Putin has mistreated all the regions, to avoid having to use the young of St. Petersburg and Moscow in his meat-wave tactics. With damn all troops out east to put down any uprising, the time is unlikely to ever be more propitious for the Chinese to effect the most massive land grab going. Would make Putin's grab for Ukraine look like him nicking St. Kilda in comparison.
During the last hour the temperature here has dropped by 6C
Just been for a bike ride. I've never seen the Mersey so high, nor heard it so loud. Water everywhere. Fun if this lot freezes.
Yellow warnings for snow abound.
Even for central London, come Sunday
It's been a long time since there was proper snow in London. I have a recollection of a bus trying to skid and slide its way up Piccadilly - may have been early 90s.
Happy New Year to all PBers, and a big pat on the head of 'for scale'
There was quite bad snow in 2008/09, IIRC the biggest problem was there were inadequate plans for ensuring safe access of staff to bus depots and it caused chaos.
I have a long and increasingly inaccurate memory.
It would have been before 2008 - the bus driver was totally insane in trying to navigate the road. I guess at one time or another we've all seen the graceful slide of a car into another at 2mph, and the abject misery on the face of the driver. When you have a bus wandering into this territory it sticks in the mind.
Normal for ... Gloucestershire.
As ever, the behavour of the people driving the motor vehicles - especially SUVs, white vans and buses - is the thing that needs to be controlled to keep everyone safe, since they can't control it themselves. They all think they are Ari Vatanen
Sticky situations when driving are oddly different to those otherwise. When driving - stick your foot down! Otherwise - see if there's someone around that can help.
BREAKING: Authorities confirm that 4 or 5 other suspects involved in the New Orleans attack in addition to Shamsud Din-Jabbar. 5:48 PM · Jan 1, 2025 · 8,255 Views https://x.com/charliekirk11/status/1874513129893405145
Happy new year all, from a beautiful and frosty Maconnais. After a week of freezing fog the sun is out and the world looks like Elsa has been practising for Frozen III.
Net zero sceptics will be delighted to learn that my new air source heat pump does not perform very well in minus 6. It’s warm enough inside, but it’s eating up the kilowatts like nobody’s business and keeps tripping our circuit breaker.
2024 was a lot about domestic politics, with an election as the centrepiece. 2025 feels like it’ll be all about international events. Trump’s second presidency and those tariffs, a possible denouement for good or bad in Ukraine, and a big test of nation building for the Syrians.
We - and I mean democratic nations - cannot afford Ukraine to be forced to give way. That is the truth of it. If Trump backs off Europe must take up the slack. We must see Putin and Putinism as the utter evil that it is and defend Ukraine and ourselves against it.
That assumes Trump will be chill with Europe keeping the SMO on the road. If he brokers a deal with VVP (I assume Zelenskiy can couped out of the way if necessary) then he might not want Europe fucking it up. If DJT says it's over, then it's over.
Trump clearly thinks he's going to fix a deal on Ukraine. Risk is he's not nearly as savvy in that department as he thinks he is.
My uninformed hunch is that he thinks there will be some sort of economic boost, for which he will take fulsome credit, if he shuts the SMO down. He doesn't particularly care where the line in the mud is.
If he does shut the SMO down ... My guess is Trump will go for a deal, which will fail mainly because Ukraine and Russia have incompatible goals and Putin overestimates the strength of his position, and also because Trump is a lousy negotiator. What happens next is hard to predict.
This is my view as well. Trump is not in a position to force a deal on either side, and a deal that is not accepted by Zelensky is not likely to be acceptable to the rest of Europe. The simple lesson is that Putin cannot be appeased. Nor morally should he benefit from the chaos and destruction he has wrought. There is not a deal that is acceptable to the west that will be acceptable to Russia,
Trump in the game does increase the chances of escalation as much as it increases the chance of Ukraine being forced to concede. Trump didn’t want to intervene in Syria on his previous watch, until he saw photos of what Assad had been doing.
I'm not sure that Western Europe, willing or not to replace the Americans, will be that decisive. The real Russian position appears to be reabsorption of the eastern provinces and Crimea - Putin is unlikely to really want the western provinces with their predominantly anti-Russian populations. Conversely the Ukrainian public seem less willing to stick to the "not an inch" position, and the government is probably less keen on the heavily damaged and underpopulated eastern provinces than it seems. So a deal isn't all that unlikely, but may hinge on how far Russia gets a gradual relaxation of sanctions if it doesn't proceed to "and now, Moldova and Transdniester". The most likely in the short to medium term is probably failure to get that, and a cold peace with borders roughly as they are.
Lots of assumptions there Nick
I pity the poor people of Eastern Ukraine that you are willing to sacrifice
It's not really assumptions, it's willful blindness about the opinions of the people who were living in Eastern Ukraine at the start of the war, and who are now suffering under Russian occupation.
Has there ever been a war in the history of mainland Europe which has left the borders of the combatants completely the same as when it started? I get the sentiment that Russia shouldn't win out of this and that it's not up to other countries to demand that Ukraine gives up sovereign territory. At the same time though the war has to end eventually and history tells us that it will probably involve some redrawing of maps.
The flaw in your argument is that Russia will stop at whatever appeasement is on offer. History also tells us that aggressors have to be beaten.
Those saying things like "Oh, give Putin the territory he has so we get peace" are ignoring the things Putin, Lavrov and the regime have been saying for the last three years. They want much, much more in Ukraine and beyond, and having won that territory, they'd return to get it by whatever method.
Based on this argument then you couldn't agree to any peace deal at all since even if they agreed to go back to the 1991 borders, it would only be temporary and they'd soon be back after regrouping.
So presumably you think there’s no tactical difference between refusing all pay rises for striking unions or giving them everything they ask for first time?
I don't think pay negotiations are a good analogy.
Think of WW1 instead. Germany lost and ceded a lot of territory to Poland, but they still came back later. If you think Russian militarism is a similar threat then even a deal that gave Ukraine part of Russia wouldn't be good enough.
Only internal change in Russia can make us truly safe in the long-term. In the meantime, we have to make sure that the leaders of Russia are more scared of us than we are of them, that they understand where our red lines are, and that they believe we can and will fight and defeat them to defend those red lines. Those red lines should be internationally recognised sovereign borders.
The danger of forcing Ukraine to cede territory in exchange for "peace", is that it teaches Russia that we are not prepared to defend international borders, even when doing so only requires us to spend a modest amount of money to supply Ukraine with weapons.
Two countries can both claim the same territory at the same time and be at peace with each other. There was a western-brokered agreement in 2014 that aimed to achieve this.
I think up until the time of Helmut Kohl Germany had a soft claim on some of the territories lost to Poland.
BREAKING: Authorities confirm that 4 or 5 other suspects involved in the New Orleans attack in addition to Shamsud Din-Jabbar. 5:48 PM · Jan 1, 2025 · 8,255 Views https://x.com/charliekirk11/status/1874513129893405145
BREAKING: Authorities confirm that 4 or 5 other suspects involved in the New Orleans attack in addition to Shamsud Din-Jabbar. 5:48 PM · Jan 1, 2025 · 8,255 Views https://x.com/charliekirk11/status/1874513129893405145
Just as Trump is about to take power.
This could get messy.
The FBI’s “this is not a terrorist event” didn’t last long.
So many people at all levels of power in the UK need to be in prison for this.
He's right, as usual.
The Rochdale scandal is like a grotesque family skeleton that lurks in the closet, waiting to burst out and scatter its bones across the kitchen table.
It's deeply upsetting and, I fear, very far from a one off.
No police officer or government employee has ever been imprisoned for their gross misconduct in dealing with the grooming gangs horror.
But I’ve got plans to expose many of them in 2025 and reveal some of the senior leaders who failed to tackle the atrocity. Stay tuned.
If it is a 'defining issue' it will only be because Musk is race-baiting for his mate Farage.
And you're slurping up the hate.
(And no, I am not defending the shits who committed the crimes; or the people who covered it up. But if you think Musk is making these comments from a good place, then I've got a Hyperloop to sell you.)
The simple answer, since the evidence was destroyed, is to put those involved in hiding what happened (police and officials) on one of the sex offenders registers.
That will sort out the criminals and the fuckwits trying to make political capital out of it.
The Home Sec has the arbitrary power to do this.
Unfortunately we don't go after the law enforcement agencies in the UK. If the police are bad then the courts are far worse. I am barely shockable but the love in which is the self-resolved Post Office Enquiry is bloody shocking to me. Yes, they are lining up the totems from the Post Office and Fujitsu - some of these will soon be taking a look on the bright side of life as in the Life of Brian. But what about the Courts ? It just will not do to say they had to assume the computers were working, that will not do. It is like saying you have to assume a lamb is the offspring of a cow and a camel. It was obvious to anyone by 2004 the programme was to use the technical term a crock of shite. Crikey even Computer Weekly worked that out by 2007. For any story to make it to CW with the greatest of respect it had to have been doing the rounds for 4 or 5 years before that....
A Tony Blair era law said that the courts had to do precisely that. (Absence evidence to the contrary - which the defendants simply weren't in a position to obtain.)
The fault lies with the PO, their prosecutors, and their computer company.
So many people at all levels of power in the UK need to be in prison for this.
He's right, as usual.
The Rochdale scandal is like a grotesque family skeleton that lurks in the closet, waiting to burst out and scatter its bones across the kitchen table.
It's deeply upsetting and, I fear, very far from a one off.
Given not only the number of prescriptions but the known inactions by those meant to protect these little girls in other places, like Rotherham, it isn’t.
During the last hour the temperature here has dropped by 6C
Just been for a bike ride. I've never seen the Mersey so high, nor heard it so loud. Water everywhere. Fun if this lot freezes.
Yellow warnings for snow abound.
Even for central London, come Sunday
It's been a long time since there was proper snow in London. I have a recollection of a bus trying to skid and slide its way up Piccadilly - may have been early 90s.
Happy New Year to all PBers, and a big pat on the head of 'for scale'
There was quite bad snow in 2008/09, IIRC the biggest problem was there were inadequate plans for ensuring safe access of staff to bus depots and it caused chaos.
I have a long and increasingly inaccurate memory.
It would have been before 2008 - the bus driver was totally insane in trying to navigate the road. I guess at one time or another we've all seen the graceful slide of a car into another at 2mph, and the abject misery on the face of the driver. When you have a bus wandering into this territory it sticks in the mind.
Normal for ... Gloucestershire.
As ever, the behavour of the people driving the motor vehicles - especially SUVs, white vans and buses - is the thing that needs to be controlled to keep everyone safe, since they can't control it themselves. They all think they are Ari Vatanen
Sticky situations when driving are oddly different to those otherwise. When driving - stick your foot down! Otherwise - see if there's someone around that can help.
There was the one in Ireland who did that, and when she got home her partner found a policeman's foot wedged in the front of her car ...
During the last hour the temperature here has dropped by 6C
Just been for a bike ride. I've never seen the Mersey so high, nor heard it so loud. Water everywhere. Fun if this lot freezes.
Yellow warnings for snow abound.
Even for central London, come Sunday
It's been a long time since there was proper snow in London. I have a recollection of a bus trying to skid and slide its way up Piccadilly - may have been early 90s.
Happy New Year to all PBers, and a big pat on the head of 'for scale'
There was quite bad snow in 2008/09, IIRC the biggest problem was there were inadequate plans for ensuring safe access of staff to bus depots and it caused chaos.
I have a long and increasingly inaccurate memory.
It would have been before 2008 - the bus driver was totally insane in trying to navigate the road. I guess at one time or another we've all seen the graceful slide of a car into another at 2mph, and the abject misery on the face of the driver. When you have a bus wandering into this territory it sticks in the mind.
Normal for ... Gloucestershire.
As ever, the behavour of the people driving the motor vehicles - especially SUVs, white vans and buses - is the thing that needs to be controlled to keep everyone safe, since they can't control it themselves. They all think they are Ari Vatanen
Sticky situations when driving are oddly different to those otherwise. When driving - stick your foot down! Otherwise - see if there's someone around that can help.
There was the one in Ireland who did that, and when she got home her partner found a policeman's foot wedged in the front of her car ...
The car is a "nobody else can be to blame" box - we all panic.
So many people at all levels of power in the UK need to be in prison for this.
He's right, as usual.
The Rochdale scandal is like a grotesque family skeleton that lurks in the closet, waiting to burst out and scatter its bones across the kitchen table.
It's deeply upsetting and, I fear, very far from a one off.
Anyone looking at the IICSA Reports already knows that Rochdale and Rotherham were not one-offs. The extent of child sexual abuse is horrible; the refusal of authorities - from the police to local authorities to schools, churches and the rest - is endemic and also goes back decades.
And it is not restricted to any one culture or race or religion either. The main common factor is that the perpetrators are men - of all types, ages and classes - and that the victims are children: mostly girls but not exclusively so.
It happens because we do not take such sexual violence seriously and because there is also a disdain for working class girls and a belief that somehow the victims are complicit. We do not take the safeguarding of children seriously. We do not value them as we ought.
If we did we would not allow men convicted of possession of images of children being abused (some babies and in unimaginably horrible ways) to walk free from court, as happens all too often. We would be insisting that the government took seriously the recommendations of the IICSA Reports seriously instead of burying it them in a drawer somewhere. We would not be honouring those who failed to protect children when they had a duty to do so (Hodge) or argued for the lowering of the age of consent to allow sex with children (Hewitt) nor someone who thought that child abuse was overblown and most videos of it simulated (Fox) and so on. We would fund those who try to deal with it properly. And so on.
If we really valued our children we would be behaving very differently as a society. But we don't. Or not enough. We only get outraged - some of us anyway - to make points against people or groups we dislike or to hide our discomfort with the reality of what goes on and our own hypocrisy when the awful stories come to light. What, for instance, have we done or are doing for any of the girls so harmed by the grooming gangs? Have we done anything at all for them other than thank them for their bravery for giving evidence?
Happy new year all, from a beautiful and frosty Maconnais. After a week of freezing fog the sun is out and the world looks like Elsa has been practising for Frozen III.
Net zero sceptics will be delighted to learn that my new air source heat pump does not perform very well in minus 6. It’s warm enough inside, but it’s eating up the kilowatts like nobody’s business and keeps tripping our circuit breaker.
2024 was a lot about domestic politics, with an election as the centrepiece. 2025 feels like it’ll be all about international events. Trump’s second presidency and those tariffs, a possible denouement for good or bad in Ukraine, and a big test of nation building for the Syrians.
We - and I mean democratic nations - cannot afford Ukraine to be forced to give way. That is the truth of it. If Trump backs off Europe must take up the slack. We must see Putin and Putinism as the utter evil that it is and defend Ukraine and ourselves against it.
That assumes Trump will be chill with Europe keeping the SMO on the road. If he brokers a deal with VVP (I assume Zelenskiy can couped out of the way if necessary) then he might not want Europe fucking it up. If DJT says it's over, then it's over.
Trump clearly thinks he's going to fix a deal on Ukraine. Risk is he's not nearly as savvy in that department as he thinks he is.
My uninformed hunch is that he thinks there will be some sort of economic boost, for which he will take fulsome credit, if he shuts the SMO down. He doesn't particularly care where the line in the mud is.
If he does shut the SMO down ... My guess is Trump will go for a deal, which will fail mainly because Ukraine and Russia have incompatible goals and Putin overestimates the strength of his position, and also because Trump is a lousy negotiator. What happens next is hard to predict.
This is my view as well. Trump is not in a position to force a deal on either side, and a deal that is not accepted by Zelensky is not likely to be acceptable to the rest of Europe. The simple lesson is that Putin cannot be appeased. Nor morally should he benefit from the chaos and destruction he has wrought. There is not a deal that is acceptable to the west that will be acceptable to Russia,
Trump in the game does increase the chances of escalation as much as it increases the chance of Ukraine being forced to concede. Trump didn’t want to intervene in Syria on his previous watch, until he saw photos of what Assad had been doing.
I'm not sure that Western Europe, willing or not to replace the Americans, will be that decisive. The real Russian position appears to be reabsorption of the eastern provinces and Crimea - Putin is unlikely to really want the western provinces with their predominantly anti-Russian populations. Conversely the Ukrainian public seem less willing to stick to the "not an inch" position, and the government is probably less keen on the heavily damaged and underpopulated eastern provinces than it seems. So a deal isn't all that unlikely, but may hinge on how far Russia gets a gradual relaxation of sanctions if it doesn't proceed to "and now, Moldova and Transdniester". The most likely in the short to medium term is probably failure to get that, and a cold peace with borders roughly as they are.
Lots of assumptions there Nick
I pity the poor people of Eastern Ukraine that you are willing to sacrifice
It's not really assumptions, it's willful blindness about the opinions of the people who were living in Eastern Ukraine at the start of the war, and who are now suffering under Russian occupation.
Has there ever been a war in the history of mainland Europe which has left the borders of the combatants completely the same as when it started? I get the sentiment that Russia shouldn't win out of this and that it's not up to other countries to demand that Ukraine gives up sovereign territory. At the same time though the war has to end eventually and history tells us that it will probably involve some redrawing of maps.
The flaw in your argument is that Russia will stop at whatever appeasement is on offer. History also tells us that aggressors have to be beaten.
Those saying things like "Oh, give Putin the territory he has so we get peace" are ignoring the things Putin, Lavrov and the regime have been saying for the last three years. They want much, much more in Ukraine and beyond, and having won that territory, they'd return to get it by whatever method.
Based on this argument then you couldn't agree to any peace deal at all since even if they agreed to go back to the 1991 borders, it would only be temporary and they'd soon be back after regrouping.
So presumably you think there’s no tactical difference between refusing all pay rises for striking unions or giving them everything they ask for first time?
I don't think pay negotiations are a good analogy.
Think of WW1 instead. Germany lost and ceded a lot of territory to Poland, but they still came back later. If you think Russian militarism is a similar threat then even a deal that gave Ukraine part of Russia wouldn't be good enough.
Only internal change in Russia can make us truly safe in the long-term. In the meantime, we have to make sure that the leaders of Russia are more scared of us than we are of them, that they understand where our red lines are, and that they believe we can and will fight and defeat them to defend those red lines. Those red lines should be internationally recognised sovereign borders.
The danger of forcing Ukraine to cede territory in exchange for "peace", is that it teaches Russia that we are not prepared to defend international borders, even when doing so only requires us to spend a modest amount of money to supply Ukraine with weapons.
Two countries can both claim the same territory at the same time and be at peace with each other. There was a western-brokered agreement in 2014 that aimed to achieve this.
I think up until the time of Helmut Kohl Germany had a soft claim on some of the territories lost to Poland.
I've just been reading The Last 1000 Days of the British Empire, and according to that, the Germans didn't really have a say!
So many people at all levels of power in the UK need to be in prison for this.
He's right, as usual.
The Rochdale scandal is like a grotesque family skeleton that lurks in the closet, waiting to burst out and scatter its bones across the kitchen table.
It's deeply upsetting and, I fear, very far from a one off.
Agreed, but isn't this news all about ten years old? We've known about this - and all the other places where it's happened - and it was met with a weary "yebbut racism" by those in power and nothing happened or ever will.
So many people at all levels of power in the UK need to be in prison for this.
He's right, as usual.
The Rochdale scandal is like a grotesque family skeleton that lurks in the closet, waiting to burst out and scatter its bones across the kitchen table.
It's deeply upsetting and, I fear, very far from a one off.
Anyone looking at the IICSA Reports already knows that Rochdale and Rotherham were not one-offs. The extent of child sexual abuse is horrible; the refusal of authorities - from the police to local authorities to schools, churches and the rest - is endemic and also goes back decades.
And it is not restricted to any one culture or race or religion either. The main common factor is that the perpetrators are men - of all types, ages and classes - and that the victims are children: mostly girls but not exclusively so.
It happens because we do not take such sexual violence seriously and because there is also a disdain for working class girls and a belief that somehow the victims are complicit. We do not take the safeguarding of children seriously. We do not value them as we ought.
If we did we would not allow men convicted of possession of images of children being abused (some babies and in unimaginably horrible ways) to walk free from court, as happens all too often. We would be insisting that the government took seriously the recommendations of the IICSA Reports seriously instead of burying it them in a drawer somewhere. We would not be honouring those who failed to protect children when they had a duty to do so (Hodge) or argued for the lowering of the age of consent to allow sex with children (Hewitt) nor someone who thought that child abuse was overblown and most videos of it simulated (Fox) and so on. We would fund those who try to deal with it properly. And so on.
If we really valued our children we would be behaving very differently as a society. But we don't. Or not enough. We only get outraged - some of us anyway - to make points against people or groups we dislike or to hide our discomfort with the reality of what goes on and our own hypocrisy when the awful stories come to light. What, for instance, have we done or are doing for any of the girls so harmed by the grooming gangs? Have we done anything at all for them other than thank them for their bravery for giving evidence?
It happens because while those in power consider the mass rape of girls in towns like Rochdale "bad", they consider it less bad than the possibility that tge population might take a sub-optimal view of immigration from Islamic countries. So it's brushed under the carpet.
So many people at all levels of power in the UK need to be in prison for this.
He's right, as usual.
The Rochdale scandal is like a grotesque family skeleton that lurks in the closet, waiting to burst out and scatter its bones across the kitchen table.
It's deeply upsetting and, I fear, very far from a one off.
Agreed, but isn't this news all about ten years old? We've known about this - and all the other places where it's happened - and it was met with a weary "yebbut racism" by those in power and nothing happened or ever will.
Not only those in power. A few here today too. Yebbut Musk.
It’s genuinely appalling how little the victims have been cared about.
So many people at all levels of power in the UK need to be in prison for this.
He's right, as usual.
The Rochdale scandal is like a grotesque family skeleton that lurks in the closet, waiting to burst out and scatter its bones across the kitchen table.
It's deeply upsetting and, I fear, very far from a one off.
Agreed, but isn't this news all about ten years old? We've known about this - and all the other places where it's happened - and it was met with a weary "yebbut racism" by those in power and nothing happened or ever will.
Doesn’t make things any better. Or easier for the girls as they become adults, does it?
So many people at all levels of power in the UK need to be in prison for this.
He's right, as usual.
The Rochdale scandal is like a grotesque family skeleton that lurks in the closet, waiting to burst out and scatter its bones across the kitchen table.
It's deeply upsetting and, I fear, very far from a one off.
Agreed, but isn't this news all about ten years old? We've known about this - and all the other places where it's happened - and it was met with a weary "yebbut racism" by those in power and nothing happened or ever will.
The assumption would seem to be that Farage has had a word in Musk's shell-like.
Comments
https://x.com/NetworkRailSCOT/status/1874470296700563512?t=UX0G2BiAZGH-0YvLRnqBYA&s=19
...
Sheila disappeared in 1972, having last been seen in Coventry city centre.
...
But cops announced today that the missing woman has been found safe and well - and is living in another part of the country.
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/32561718/mystery-oldest-missing-person-cases-solved-schoolgirl-sheila-fox/
(Absence evidence to the contrary - which the defendants simply weren't in a position to obtain.)
The fault lies with the PO, their prosecutors, and their computer company.
They were "accidentally" all over the Tay catchment for years but I didn't know they'd been released on Speyside.
I do like the Insh Marshes, it looks like a floodplain should. I think someone did a naughty at one point though because we found true Crack Willow growing there (not the hybrid).
An attempt to troll botanists in the Flatlands with a cutting has failed so far.
[Edit - is that mess on the right from the A9 dualing?]
Along with detention without trial, and Home Sec given arbitrary powers to punish.
It's also interesting that a new line has developed from the pro-Russian shills over the last few months: "Oh, the eastern territories have been trashed and are now worthless. Why not give Russia them?"
Which poses the question: if that territory is so valueless, why does Russia want it so badly?
Also, as ever: when talking about giving up territory in the 'east' of Ukraine; state what is meant. It can mean either the current frontlines, or (as Russia sees it) all the provinces in which Russia already has a foothold, even where that foothold is tiny. That would subject millions of Ukrainians to Russian tyranny.
It's All Been Done Before.
Wait till a Reform government discovers the power of primary legislation. Acts of Attainder, anyone?
He will be planning to split Europe up politically; where possible to put more Russia-friendly politicians in power, and where not to make us disagree amongst ourselves in a divide-and-conquer approach. We are already seeing this as part of his hybrid warfare actions.
He will not be too concerned about European troops in Ukraine - or anywhere else - as he will believe, having won in Ukraine, that he can win by both political and military means.
Maybe that's a lesson that Europe has to learn again, and we will collectively make the mistake of trying to get away with doing less than what is necessary to defend ourselves.
Civil cases continue. He still owes Jean Carroll millions. The Georgia election case is up in the air.
Think of WW1 instead. Germany lost and ceded a lot of territory to Poland, but they still came back later. If you think Russian militarism is a similar threat then even a deal that gave Ukraine part of Russia wouldn't be good enough.
Happy New Year to all PBers, and a big pat on the head of 'for scale'
But that is far more likely to occur if Putin could sell a 'win' to the public back home. If he 'loses' (to the extent he cannot sell a win), then it becomes much more difficult for him to sell another war to the oligarchs and wider public.
"I know we lost a million dead and wounded, but my friends, if we attack again, this time it will be different!"
Compared to:
"But my friends, we won all that territory! True, we lost a million dead and wounded, but they are not our sons, were they? And you Ivan, you have gained all those mineral rights in Donetsk. And you Mikheil, you have got all those farms that are selling hundreds of millions in grain each year. And you, Igor, you have all those nice new hotels built on the sites of our glorious war crimes. Our enemies are more divided now, and another little push will see even more money for us... I mean, glory for Russia!"
The Gangs to which Musk referred have all been convicted and the action, or inaction, of the police and other bodies is a matter of public record. So quite a difference
The danger of forcing Ukraine to cede territory in exchange for "peace", is that it teaches Russia that we are not prepared to defend international borders, even when doing so only requires us to spend a modest amount of money to supply Ukraine with weapons.
The next time, it was a party in London on the evening of the Great Storm!
That mindset does not command evidence based posting
The biggest winner in this is Xi. He’s watching Putin immolate Russia’s global influence, he’s moving in to the Central Asian vaccuum peddling Chinese influence and it’s barely costing him a yen. He’s laughing.
Musk says he has presumption of innocence, that’s his perspective.
https://www.miamiherald.com/news/politics-government/article297644103.html
So you are comparing acts that have seen convictions in a court of law against accusations unlikely to go to court.
Anyway London has been spared heavy snow and ice by my decision to buy 'heavy snow and ice' boots in perhaps 2017 - they're entirely unused in heavy snow or on ice.
Effing predictive text.
I'm not sure why this seems to be in the news now. The sentencing remarks of the judge in relation to a grooming case in Oxford (I think) in 2013 are circulating and they are frankly utterly revolting. (I won't link.)
But one aspect is likely to make the news this year: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/dec/18/two-former-rotherham-police-officers-arrested-over-child-sexual-abuse.
Did the gangs got away with it for so long was because some police (and, possibly, councillors) turned a blind eye or, worse, were actively involved or benefited from what was happening? We shall see. Maybe.
Perhaps we should learn from that experience rather than repeat the mistakes of the past?
Sam was right—2024 was easily the most interesting year in history, except for all the years that come after it. The years ahead will make 2024 seem like a warm up.
https://x.com/Dr_Singularity/status/1874484398697091087
Whether they developed this technology themselves, or have bought it from China, I do not know.
And if no nukes, then China could take a vast swathe of Russia's acreage - and natural resources - with hardly a shot fired.
It would have been before 2008 - the bus driver was totally insane in trying to navigate the road. I guess at one time or another we've all seen the graceful slide of a car into another at 2mph, and the abject misery on the face of the driver. When you have a bus wandering into this territory it sticks in the mind.
2025 will feel like 3-5 years worth of technological progress packed into a single year - thanks to the unstoppable force of exponential growth. Skeptical? I’ll prove it. Starting in just a few hours. Get ready to witness the dawn of a new era, one headline at a time
11:27 AM · Jan 1, 2025
·
9,95
https://x.com/Dr_Singularity/status/1874417154961084919
https://x.com/bennyjohnson/status/1874509519558189223
Might as well have 2 terror attacks to bring in the new year.
https://x.com/insiderwire/status/1874508818572607743
https://x.com/charliekirk11/status/1874502664706568662
As ever, the behavour of the people driving the motor vehicles - especially SUVs, white vans and buses - is the thing that needs to be controlled to keep everyone safe, since they can't control it themselves. They all think they are Ari Vatanen
https://www.newsflare.com/video/530660/cars-slipping-sliding-and-crashing-in-heavy-snow-in-gloucestershire-extended
5:48 PM · Jan 1, 2025
·
8,255
Views
https://x.com/charliekirk11/status/1874513129893405145
Had several "red alerts" this afternoon.
Bit chillier out than it has been though...
This could get messy.
https://x.com/skynews/status/1874446344275791957
5:55 PM · Jan 1, 2025
·
6,955
Views
https://x.com/sentdefender/status/1874514725264036121
I explained all this here - https://www2.politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2023/11/29/how-was-this-sausage-made/
And here - https://www2.politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2023/11/30/what-did-parliament-do/
Horrendous
What is wrong with some people. Given not only the number of prescriptions but the known inactions by those meant to protect these little girls in other places, like Rotherham, it isn’t.
And it is not restricted to any one culture or race or religion either. The main common factor is that the perpetrators are men - of all types, ages and classes - and that the victims are children: mostly girls but not exclusively so.
It happens because we do not take such sexual violence seriously and because there is also a disdain for working class girls and a belief that somehow the victims are complicit. We do not take the safeguarding of children seriously. We do not value them as we ought.
If we did we would not allow men convicted of possession of images of children being abused (some babies and in unimaginably horrible ways) to walk free from court, as happens all too often. We would be insisting that the government took seriously the recommendations of the IICSA Reports seriously instead of burying it them in a drawer somewhere. We would not be honouring those who failed to protect children when they had a duty to do so (Hodge) or argued for the lowering of the age of consent to allow sex with children (Hewitt) nor someone who thought that child abuse was overblown and most videos of it simulated (Fox) and so on. We would fund those who try to deal with it properly. And so on.
If we really valued our children we would be behaving very differently as a society. But we don't. Or not enough. We only get outraged - some of us anyway - to make points against people or groups we dislike or to hide our discomfort with the reality of what goes on and our own hypocrisy when the awful stories come to light. What, for instance, have we done or are doing for any of the girls so harmed by the grooming gangs? Have we done anything at all for them other than thank them for their bravery for giving evidence?
It’s genuinely appalling how little the victims have been cared about.
https://x.com/lara_e_brown/status/1874456402892296676?s=61