Is anyone on Pb still of the view the UK should have joined the war?
We should have sent the RAF to attack Iranian missile sites as Kemi rightly said. If Trump commits ground troops we should join Israel and provide them with support from the air in my view too as that would be the only way to topple the regime.
However as Starmer is in power neither will happen as he is sticking to his line offensive actions in Iran are not authorised under international law
If we'd done that we'd be counting body bags in London, Birmingham, Glasgow, Cardiff, Belfast, Leeds, Liverpool, Newcastle, Edinburgh and any other town or city
Sleepers in our midst revenge lone rangers martyrs
Are you implying that the U.K. has a unique number of Iranian sleepers in the population?
Sounds a bit racist.
Note that, world wide, the number of sleeper attacks is somewhere between 0 and not a lot (the ambulances was probably some criminal being recruited/paid over the internet)
Starmer needs to get ahead of this oil crisis. Do some unpopular stuff that people will come to appreciate and will signal this is a big deal.
Cut speed limits, mandate wfh where possible, introduce carpool lanes all over the place...
Tories and Reform will oppose on reflex and it will show he's the serious politician thinking about national interest.
And Labour will be decimated.
Nigel and Kemi have it sewn up. If the Government issued new North Sea drilling licences for 2030 there would be no fuel crisis now. It is a compelling argument supported by Donald Trump, GB News, the Telegraph, the Mail, the Express and Nick Ferrari.
Objectively though it’s daft to shut down profitable production. It won’t change prices globally but it would create wealth and tax income in the uk which could be used to subsidise prices if the government chose to
They both want to abolish the windfall tax
Handing money to oil companies who avoid and evade tax.
Approaching summer we are closer to higher levels of solar and wind renewable are quickly reducing heating...
Thats where quick reinvestment wins can be gleaned faster than drilling and cheaper.
More wind, more solar, specifically more DIY solar that can generate we've in a few hours of winter sun.
Is anyone on Pb still of the view the UK should have joined the war?
We should have sent the RAF to attack Iranian missile sites as Kemi rightly said. If Trump commits ground troops we should join Israel and provide them with support from the air in my view too as that would be the only way to topple the regime.
However as Starmer is in power neither will happen as he is sticking to his line offensive actions in Iran are not authorised under international law
The US does not have a clear war aim. It is unclear how much they are aiming to topple the regime. Should we commit military forces to try to achieve our war aim (regime change) if we can't agree with the US what the war aims are?
If they commit ground troops yes as that shows they want to topple the regime
Committing ground troops does not show they want to topple the regime. Committing ground troops doesn't suddenly mean Trump gains some cognitive clarity. He gives multiple different and contradictory rationales for the war within the same press conference. He has often talked about a deal that leaves the current regime in power, which is of course what he did in Venezuela.
Badenoch has got the oil bit right but the renewables bit completely wrong.
The solution is both. Yet the Tories and Reform only want to talk about one.
Therefore for me as renewables are clearly the superior long term option given a forced choice, Labour wins by default. They should overturn their policy on North Sea oil drilling though.
Is anyone on Pb still of the view the UK should have joined the war?
We should have sent the RAF to attack Iranian missile sites as Kemi rightly said. If Trump commits ground troops we should join Israel and provide them with support from the air in my view too as that would be the only way to topple the regime.
However as Starmer is in power neither will happen as he is sticking to his line offensive actions in Iran are not authorised under international law
How many times do we have to tell you this is a stupid war that we should have nothing to do with.
In fact the end result is always going to be paying Iran for access through the Straits so we may as well get on and start paying it.
Iran executes homosexuals and hangs students who protested against its regime and oppresses women and has funded terrorism against Israel and the wider West. As a conservative I believe that if Trump fully commits to remove the evil regime in Iran we should join Israel and back him, having removed it we would also control the Straits again with a more sympathetic Iranian regime hopefully headed by the son of the late Shah and regime opponents in Iran and in exile
I think some minor corrections on your comments are worth making. Iran is hugely oppressive towards the lesbian and gay community, but Iran has not executed anyone for consensual homosexual acts alone for 20 years. Iran has funded terrorism against Israel, but then Israel has funded terrorism against Israel, and numerous other countries in the region have funded terrorism, including the UAE, Qatar and Saudi Arabia.
More importantly, you suggest what we should do "if Trump fully commits to remove the evil regime in Iran", but Trump has not fully committed to removing the Iranian regime. So, what should we do given that?
Is anyone on Pb still of the view the UK should have joined the war?
We should have sent the RAF to attack Iranian missile sites as Kemi rightly said. If Trump commits ground troops we should join Israel and provide them with support from the air in my view too as that would be the only way to topple the regime.
However as Starmer is in power neither will happen as he is sticking to his line offensive actions in Iran are not authorised under international law
The US does not have a clear war aim. It is unclear how much they are aiming to topple the regime. Should we commit military forces to try to achieve our war aim (regime change) if we can't agree with the US what the war aims are?
If they commit ground troops yes as that shows they want to topple the regime
Committing ground troops does not show they want to topple the regime. Committing ground troops doesn't suddenly mean Trump gains some cognitive clarity. He gives multiple different and contradictory rationales for the war within the same press conference. He has often talked about a deal that leaves the current regime in power, which is of course what he did in Venezuela.
He didn't launch a full scale invasion of Venezuela to topple the regime, just captured Maduro who was succeeded by his VP. Little different to his strikes so far just killing the Supreme Leader and putting his son in his place. Ground troops show he is serious
Starmer needs to get ahead of this oil crisis. Do some unpopular stuff that people will come to appreciate and will signal this is a big deal.
Cut speed limits, mandate wfh where possible, introduce carpool lanes all over the place...
Tories and Reform will oppose on reflex and it will show he's the serious politician thinking about national interest.
And Labour will be decimated.
Nigel and Kemi have it sewn up. If the Government issued new North Sea drilling licences for 2030 there would be no fuel crisis now. It is a compelling argument supported by Donald Trump, GB News, the Telegraph, the Mail, the Express and Nick Ferrari.
Objectively though it’s daft to shut down profitable production. It won’t change prices globally but it would create wealth and tax income in the uk which could be used to subsidise prices if the government chose to
They both want to abolish the windfall tax
Handing money to oil companies who avoid and evade tax.
Approaching summer we are closer to higher levels of solar and wind renewable are quickly reducing heating...
Thats where quick reinvestment wins can be gleaned faster than drilling and cheaper.
More wind, more solar, specifically more DIY solar that can generate we've in a few hours of winter sun.
Why should oil companies pay extra tax? They are supplying a commodity at market price. We want to incentivise them to pump at a faster rate during times of high prices rather than to extract* all the extra profit from them in tax
But yes, more solar would be good. I’m less keen on wind power because of the impact on the visual environment and bird migratory patterns but it has its place.
I absolutely expect there will be no free midterms. He can’t.
I can't see how he can risk free and fair elections. Rigging or abandonment look to be the only options. I think the chances of an election accepted by all major interests as free and fair and without major controversy are at about 0%. This is not good betting territory.
Almost all the charges of outrageous behaviour by the Iranian government could equally be laid at the door of Saudi Arabia. Which is even less democratic. Would it be right to bomb them to achieve regime change?
The war - although it can't be that, or Congress would have to approve it - was indeed ill-thought out, a knee-jerk reaction to Netanyahu seeing a moment in time to kill a large number of Iranians resposible for funding Hamas and Hisbollah and for posing an existential threat to Israel with their intent to acquire nuclear-armed missiles.
We were not a party to the intial strikes that killed 40 top Iranains and 175 Iranian school girls. But it was an event, that had consequences from which we cannot hide.
When Iran lashed out at our commercial interests in the Gulf, do people really think it wise not to do all we can to stop the vulnerable infrastruture from being trashed? Infrstructure upon which our energy, our industry, our food depend. This is nothing to do with helping getting Trump out a hole. He was a fuckwit for not foreseeing the consequences of his actions. We should not be fuckwits in allowing Iran to prosecute its campaign of revenge.
Iran's actions in trying to lay waste to the economic interests of its neighbours should leave us in little doubt that the current Iranian regime having the bomb should be prevented. They would use it.
Is anyone on Pb still of the view the UK should have joined the war?
We should have sent the RAF to attack Iranian missile sites as Kemi rightly said. If Trump commits ground troops we should join Israel and provide them with support from the air in my view too as that would be the only way to topple the regime.
However as Starmer is in power neither will happen as he is sticking to his line offensive actions in Iran are not authorised under international law
How many times do we have to tell you this is a stupid war that we should have nothing to do with.
In fact the end result is always going to be paying Iran for access through the Straits so we may as well get on and start paying it.
Iran executes homosexuals and hangs students who protested against its regime and oppresses women and has funded terrorism against Israel and the wider West. As a conservative I believe that if Trump fully commits to remove the evil regime in Iran we should join Israel and back him, having removed it we would also control the Straits again with a more sympathetic Iranian regime hopefully headed by the son of the late Shah and regime opponents in Iran and in exile
I think some minor corrections on your comments are worth making. Iran is hugely oppressive towards the lesbian and gay community, but Iran has not executed anyone for consensual homosexual acts alone for 20 years. Iran has funded terrorism against Israel, but then Israel has funded terrorism against Israel, and numerous other countries in the region have funded terrorism, including the UAE, Qatar and Saudi Arabia.
More importantly, you suggest what we should do "if Trump fully commits to remove the evil regime in Iran", but Trump has not fully committed to removing the Iranian regime. So, what should we do given that?
That NBC story relates to a charge of forced sodomy, i.e. rape.
If you wish to believe the Iranian regime and excuse the execution of 2 gay men that is up to you, of course under Iranian law consensual sodomy is also punished by death.
I notice you did not comment on the 19 year old star wrestler Iran also recently executed along with some other young men just as they had taken to the streets to protest against the regime
Is anyone on Pb still of the view the UK should have joined the war?
We should have sent the RAF to attack Iranian missile sites as Kemi rightly said. If Trump commits ground troops we should join Israel and provide them with support from the air in my view too as that would be the only way to topple the regime.
However as Starmer is in power neither will happen as he is sticking to his line offensive actions in Iran are not authorised under international law
If we'd done that we'd be counting body bags in London, Birmingham, Glasgow, Cardiff, Belfast, Leeds, Liverpool, Newcastle, Edinburgh and any other town or city
Sleepers in our midst revenge lone rangers martyrs
Forget all that. That is not the reason we should not be doing this. If Iran was a genuine threat to us and we needed to change the regime there then attacks in the UK are simply part of that scenario and one we have to deal with.
The real issue here is we should not be attacking Iran or supporting the US and Israel in attacking them. They are not and were not a threat to ourselves, Europe or the US. They did not attack us. They did not attack the US or Israel. They were attacked and we should not be supporting or condoning the aggressors.
I think you can make an argument that they were attacking Israel fairly regularly via their proxies
I've seen it suggested Africa could be the big winners from all this with countries like Angola, Nigeria and Mozambique expanding their production of oil and LNG to cover the gaps caused by the closure of Hormuz.
I don't know how much of our oil now comes from Africa or the quality of said but it's clearly a big difference from the early 70s when the petrochemical industry in Africa hardly existed.
The war - although it can't be that, or Congress would have to approve it - was indeed ill-thought out, a knee-jerk reaction to Netanyahu seeing a moment in time to kill a large number of Iranians resposible for funding Hamas and Hisbollah and for posing an existential threat to Israel with their intent to acquire nuclear-armed missiles.
We were not a party to the intial strikes that killed 40 top Iranains and 175 Iranian school girls. But it was an event, that had consequences from which we cannot hide.
When Iran lashed out at our commercial interests in the Gulf, do people really think it wise not to do all we can to stop the vulnerable infrastruture from being trashed? Infrstructure upon which our energy, our industry, our food depend. This is nothing to do with helping getting Trump out a hole. He was a fuckwit for not foreseeing the consequences of his actions. We should not be fuckwits in allowing Iran to prosecute its campaign of revenge.
Iran's actions in trying to lay waste to the economic interests of its neighbours should leave us in little doubt that the current Iranian regime having the bomb should be prevented. They would use it.
Severe red flag that Badenoch and Farage wanted to jump head first in.
Badenoch has got the oil bit right but the renewables bit completely wrong.
The solution is both. Yet the Tories and Reform only want to talk about one.
Therefore for me as renewables are clearly the superior long term option given a forced choice, Labour wins by default. They should overturn their policy on North Sea oil drilling though.
I saw her yesterday. She's hopeless. She just wants to get her face on tv. What's going on is too serious for a publicity seeker to join the party and add nothing
Is anyone on Pb still of the view the UK should have joined the war?
We should have sent the RAF to attack Iranian missile sites as Kemi rightly said. If Trump commits ground troops we should join Israel and provide them with support from the air in my view too as that would be the only way to topple the regime.
However as Starmer is in power neither will happen as he is sticking to his line offensive actions in Iran are not authorised under international law
The US does not have a clear war aim. It is unclear how much they are aiming to topple the regime. Should we commit military forces to try to achieve our war aim (regime change) if we can't agree with the US what the war aims are?
If they commit ground troops yes as that shows they want to topple the regime
Committing ground troops does not show they want to topple the regime. Committing ground troops doesn't suddenly mean Trump gains some cognitive clarity. He gives multiple different and contradictory rationales for the war within the same press conference. He has often talked about a deal that leaves the current regime in power, which is of course what he did in Venezuela.
He didn't launch a full scale invasion of Venezuela to topple the regime, just captured Maduro who was succeeded by his VP. Little different to his strikes so far just killing the Supreme Leader and putting his son in his place. Ground troops show he is serious
“Tactics without strategy is just the noise before defeat.”
I can see no strategy here, and we would simply be throwing lives away for no reason, if we got involved.
It may be that we, and other powers, will have no choice but to get involved, but that’s a decision that should only be taken after careful thought.
The war - although it can't be that, or Congress would have to approve it - was indeed ill-thought out, a knee-jerk reaction to Netanyahu seeing a moment in time to kill a large number of Iranians resposible for funding Hamas and Hisbollah and for posing an existential threat to Israel with their intent to acquire nuclear-armed missiles.
We were not a party to the intial strikes that killed 40 top Iranains and 175 Iranian school girls. But it was an event, that had consequences from which we cannot hide.
When Iran lashed out at our commercial interests in the Gulf, do people really think it wise not to do all we can to stop the vulnerable infrastruture from being trashed? Infrstructure upon which our energy, our industry, our food depend. This is nothing to do with helping getting Trump out a hole. He was a fuckwit for not foreseeing the consequences of his actions. We should not be fuckwits in allowing Iran to prosecute its campaign of revenge.
Iran's actions in trying to lay waste to the economic interests of its neighbours should leave us in little doubt that the current Iranian regime having the bomb should be prevented. They would use it.
Which is all well and good. But what would you suggest we do differently which would be practical and effective?
Starmer needs to get ahead of this oil crisis. Do some unpopular stuff that people will come to appreciate and will signal this is a big deal.
Cut speed limits, mandate wfh where possible, introduce carpool lanes all over the place...
Tories and Reform will oppose on reflex and it will show he's the serious politician thinking about national interest.
Better still, apply speed limits to ICE vehicles only, thereby encouraging the switch to EVs.
I am Ed Milliband and claim my £5.
Genius. I’m annoyed I didn’t think of that.
Similar policy - traffic lights to switch to red if they detect speeding. No fine, you get where you want to be faster if you drive slower, and it affects the part of the road where a fatal collision with a pedestrian or cyclist is most likely to happen.
Badenoch has got the oil bit right but the renewables bit completely wrong.
The solution is both. Yet the Tories and Reform only want to talk about one.
Therefore for me as renewables are clearly the superior long term option given a forced choice, Labour wins by default. They should overturn their policy on North Sea oil drilling though.
I saw her yesterday. She's hopeless. She just wants to get her face on tv. What's going on is too serious for a publicity seeker to join the party and add nothing
That’s wrong Roger, take the blinkers off.
Badenoch has done a good job and has some good policies. But this Iran War stuff has not been a good hour for her.
She was I thought very poor on Sky News. She needs to work on her interviewing technique.
Almost all the charges of outrageous behaviour by the Iranian government could equally be laid at the door of Saudi Arabia. Which is even less democratic. Would it be right to bomb them to achieve regime change?
I am not a great fan of the Saudi regime but Iran executed 5 times the number Saudi did in 2023 for instance and Saudi is not actively funding terrorism now against Israel and the West as Iran is
The war - although it can't be that, or Congress would have to approve it - was indeed ill-thought out, a knee-jerk reaction to Netanyahu seeing a moment in time to kill a large number of Iranians resposible for funding Hamas and Hisbollah and for posing an existential threat to Israel with their intent to acquire nuclear-armed missiles.
We were not a party to the intial strikes that killed 40 top Iranains and 175 Iranian school girls. But it was an event, that had consequences from which we cannot hide.
When Iran lashed out at our commercial interests in the Gulf, do people really think it wise not to do all we can to stop the vulnerable infrastruture from being trashed? Infrstructure upon which our energy, our industry, our food depend. This is nothing to do with helping getting Trump out a hole. He was a fuckwit for not foreseeing the consequences of his actions. We should not be fuckwits in allowing Iran to prosecute its campaign of revenge.
Iran'sactions in trying to lay waste to the economic interests of its neighbours should leave us in little doubt that the current Iranian regime having the bomb should be prevented. They would use it.
It is wise to do what we can to stop the vulnerable infrastructure from being trashed. What is the best way to do that? Join the war, or stay out of the war, make clear that the war is a bad idea and seek a diplomatic solution going forward?
Iran has retaliated after being attacked. I don't think that demonstrates that Iran is ruled by a uniquely evil regime. That's just what most countries would do.
I've seen it suggested Africa could be the big winners from all this with countries like Angola, Nigeria and Mozambique expanding their production of oil and LNG to cover the gaps caused by the closure of Hormuz.
I don't know how much of our oil now comes from Africa or the quality of said but it's clearly a big difference from the early 70s when the petrochemical industry in Africa hardly existed.
Well. African nations that have oil that is. Those that don't, not so much.
I've seen it suggested Africa could be the big winners from all this with countries like Angola, Nigeria and Mozambique expanding their production of oil and LNG to cover the gaps caused by the closure of Hormuz.
I don't know how much of our oil now comes from Africa or the quality of said but it's clearly a big difference from the early 70s when the petrochemical industry in Africa hardly existed.
There are certainly very large gas reserves off east Africa, both Mozambique and Tanzania, discovered in the past 20 years. Mozambique was quicker off the blocks in their development than Tanzania, who managed to throw up every roadblock, real and imagined. to moving ahead.
Somali pirates used to head down as far as Tanzania, until they learnt they would be blown out the water.
Almost all the charges of outrageous behaviour by the Iranian government could equally be laid at the door of Saudi Arabia. Which is even less democratic. Would it be right to bomb them to achieve regime change?
I am not a great fan of the Saudi regime but Iran executed 5 times the number Saudi did in 2023 for instance and Saudi is not actively funding terrorism now against Israel and the West as Iran is
On topic, history tells us the midterms are rarely pretty for the party holding the Presidency.
Whether it will be a 1994-style blowout I don't know. In that election, the GOP won by just under seven points and gained 54 House and 8 Seante seats.
Obviously, our old mate Gerry Mandering has been at work since but it still seems a very tall order for the Republicans to hold the House. The Senate looks much harder for the Democrats but not insurmountable.
Will it make much difference? Presumably, not having a friendly legislature will force Trump to govern more executively but I suspect he won't find the last two years (presumably) that comfortable and thoughts will turn to the 2028 Presidential contest.
Is anyone on Pb still of the view the UK should have joined the war?
We should have sent the RAF to attack Iranian missile sites as Kemi rightly said. If Trump commits ground troops we should join Israel and provide them with support from the air in my view too as that would be the only way to topple the regime.
However as Starmer is in power neither will happen as he is sticking to his line offensive actions in Iran are not authorised under international law
How many times do we have to tell you this is a stupid war that we should have nothing to do with.
In fact the end result is always going to be paying Iran for access through the Straits so we may as well get on and start paying it.
Iran executes homosexuals and hangs students who protested against its regime and oppresses women and has funded terrorism against Israel and the wider West. As a conservative I believe that if Trump fully commits to remove the evil regime in Iran we should join Israel and back him, having removed it we would also control the Straits again with a more sympathetic Iranian regime hopefully headed by the son of the late Shah and regime opponents in Iran and in exile
I think some minor corrections on your comments are worth making. Iran is hugely oppressive towards the lesbian and gay community, but Iran has not executed anyone for consensual homosexual acts alone for 20 years. Iran has funded terrorism against Israel, but then Israel has funded terrorism against Israel, and numerous other countries in the region have funded terrorism, including the UAE, Qatar and Saudi Arabia.
More importantly, you suggest what we should do "if Trump fully commits to remove the evil regime in Iran", but Trump has not fully committed to removing the Iranian regime. So, what should we do given that?
That NBC story relates to a charge of forced sodomy, i.e. rape.
If you wish to believe the Iranian regime and excuse the execution of 2 gay men that is up to you, of course under Iranian law consensual sodomy is also punished by death.
I notice you did not comment on the 19 year old star wrestler Iran also recently executed along with some other young men just as they had taken to the streets to protest against the regime
I never contested your claim that Iran has hung protestors. The Iranian regime has acted horrifically. But it's still better to be accurate about what they have and haven't done.
Starmer needs to get ahead of this oil crisis. Do some unpopular stuff that people will come to appreciate and will signal this is a big deal.
Cut speed limits, mandate wfh where possible, introduce carpool lanes all over the place...
Tories and Reform will oppose on reflex and it will show he's the serious politician thinking about national interest.
Better still, apply speed limits to ICE vehicles only, thereby encouraging the switch to EVs.
I am Ed Milliband and claim my £5.
Genius. I’m annoyed I didn’t think of that.
Similar policy - traffic lights to switch to red if they detect speeding. No fine, you get where you want to be faster if you drive slower, and it affects the part of the road where a fatal collision with a pedestrian or cyclist is most likely to happen.
Trouble is that effects all the non speeding cars as well. MOreover, even the craziest driver tends to slow down on approach to traffic lights and will generally be going below the limit in the distance where they could be picked up by a camera at the lights.
Trump couldn’t care less if the Iranian regime executed thousands of people a day .
He tried to dupe the gullible with his concern for the protesters as a means of justifying this stupid illegal war.
By any measure Trump is a psychopath shorn of any humanity or empathy .
I believe high intelligence is a 'symptom'/indicator of psychopathology. They also are capable of emulating charm. Trump is a narcissist, and one with a shit attention span. A psychopath would be doing far better.
Is anyone on Pb still of the view the UK should have joined the war?
We should have sent the RAF to attack Iranian missile sites as Kemi rightly said. If Trump commits ground troops we should join Israel and provide them with support from the air in my view too as that would be the only way to topple the regime.
However as Starmer is in power neither will happen as he is sticking to his line offensive actions in Iran are not authorised under international law
The US does not have a clear war aim. It is unclear how much they are aiming to topple the regime. Should we commit military forces to try to achieve our war aim (regime change) if we can't agree with the US what the war aims are?
If they commit ground troops yes as that shows they want to topple the regime
Committing ground troops does not show they want to topple the regime. Committing ground troops doesn't suddenly mean Trump gains some cognitive clarity. He gives multiple different and contradictory rationales for the war within the same press conference. He has often talked about a deal that leaves the current regime in power, which is of course what he did in Venezuela.
He didn't launch a full scale invasion of Venezuela to topple the regime, just captured Maduro who was succeeded by his VP. Little different to his strikes so far just killing the Supreme Leader and putting his son in his place. Ground troops show he is serious
“Tactics without strategy is just the noise before defeat.”
I can see no strategy here, and we would simply be throwing lives away for no reason, if we got involved.
It may be that we, and other powers, will have no choice but to get involved, but that’s a decision that should only be taken after careful thought.
If the strategy is to remove the regime, then Trump deploying ground troops would support that.
However our involvement is all theoretical at the moment as Starmer has made clear he does not believe international law justifies the US and Israeli strikes against Iran. So it would take probably a Reform led government propped up by a Kemi led Tories for the UK to even back offensive strikes against Iran let alone sending in UK ground troops and that is not going to happen for at least 2 or 3 years and only if Labour lose the next general election. By then Trump may have removed the regime anyway
I've seen it suggested Africa could be the big winners from all this with countries like Angola, Nigeria and Mozambique expanding their production of oil and LNG to cover the gaps caused by the closure of Hormuz.
I don't know how much of our oil now comes from Africa or the quality of said but it's clearly a big difference from the early 70s when the petrochemical industry in Africa hardly existed.
The war - although it can't be that, or Congress would have to approve it - was indeed ill-thought out, a knee-jerk reaction to Netanyahu seeing a moment in time to kill a large number of Iranians resposible for funding Hamas and Hisbollah and for posing an existential threat to Israel with their intent to acquire nuclear-armed missiles.
We were not a party to the intial strikes that killed 40 top Iranains and 175 Iranian school girls. But it was an event, that had consequences from which we cannot hide.
When Iran lashed out at our commercial interests in the Gulf, do people really think it wise not to do all we can to stop the vulnerable infrastruture from being trashed? Infrstructure upon which our energy, our industry, our food depend. This is nothing to do with helping getting Trump out a hole. He was a fuckwit for not foreseeing the consequences of his actions. We should not be fuckwits in allowing Iran to prosecute its campaign of revenge.
Iran'sactions in trying to lay waste to the economic interests of its neighbours should leave us in little doubt that the current Iranian regime having the bomb should be prevented. They would use it.
It is wise to do what we can to stop the vulnerable infrastructure from being trashed. What is the best way to do that? Join the war, or stay out of the war, make clear that the war is a bad idea and seek a diplomatic solution going forward?
Iran has retaliated after being attacked. I don't think that demonstrates that Iran is ruled by a uniquely evil regime. That's just what most countries would do.
Britain is perhaps uniquely placed in being seen by the Iranian regime as being ill-suited to offer diplomatic skills. Their distrust of us goes back far beyond the Americans.
We should use our assets to stop missiles and drones from reaching the Gulf states' assets. If that means hitting Iranian missile firing locations at source, that is sensible.
We are not a party to hitting civilan infrasturcture in Iran - such as electricity and desalination plants. We are not hitting hydrocarbons facilities. We are not hitting shipping. All that should be made clear in diplomatic language to Ira, More succinctly, we are only there because of Iran's actions.
Is anyone on Pb still of the view the UK should have joined the war?
We should have sent the RAF to attack Iranian missile sites as Kemi rightly said. If Trump commits ground troops we should join Israel and provide them with support from the air in my view too as that would be the only way to topple the regime.
However as Starmer is in power neither will happen as he is sticking to his line offensive actions in Iran are not authorised under international law
If we'd done that we'd be counting body bags in London, Birmingham, Glasgow, Cardiff, Belfast, Leeds, Liverpool, Newcastle, Edinburgh and any other town or city
Sleepers in our midst revenge lone rangers martyrs
Forget all that. That is not the reason we should not be doing this. If Iran was a genuine threat to us and we needed to change the regime there then attacks in the UK are simply part of that scenario and one we have to deal with.
The real issue here is we should not be attacking Iran or supporting the US and Israel in attacking them. They are not and were not a threat to ourselves, Europe or the US. They did not attack us. They did not attack the US or Israel. They were attacked and we should not be supporting or condoning the aggressors.
I think you can make an argument that they were attacking Israel fairly regularly via their proxies
You can also make the argument Israel was attacking Iran rather more heavily. Why should we get involved either way?
Trump couldn’t care less if the Iranian regime executed thousands of people a day .
He tried to dupe the gullible with his concern for the protesters as a means of justifying this stupid illegal war.
By any measure Trump is a psychopath shorn of any humanity or empathy .
Israel and the US started bombing Iranian university campuses, the location of many of the protests against the regime. They aren't interested in democracy.
Starmer needs to get ahead of this oil crisis. Do some unpopular stuff that people will come to appreciate and will signal this is a big deal.
Cut speed limits, mandate wfh where possible, introduce carpool lanes all over the place...
Tories and Reform will oppose on reflex and it will show he's the serious politician thinking about national interest.
Better still, apply speed limits to ICE vehicles only, thereby encouraging the switch to EVs.
I am Ed Milliband and claim my £5.
Genius. I’m annoyed I didn’t think of that.
Similar policy - traffic lights to switch to red if they detect speeding. No fine, you get where you want to be faster if you drive slower, and it affects the part of the road where a fatal collision with a pedestrian or cyclist is most likely to happen.
Trouble is that effects all the non speeding cars as well. MOreover, even the craziest driver tends to slow down on approach to traffic lights and will generally be going below the limit in the distance where they could be picked up by a camera at the lights.
Strategy is something that has to be worked out, before you start a war. There’s no point in trying to work it out, afterwards, which is what Trump and his clown show are doing.
Eisenhower once quoted the dictum that no plan survives contact with the enemy, but *planning* is essential.
@HYUFD Strategy is something that has to be worked out, before you start a war. There’s no point in trying to work it out, afterwards, which is what Trump and his clown show are doing.
Eisenhower once quoted the dictum that no plan survives contact with the enemy, but *planning* is essential.
Is anyone on Pb still of the view the UK should have joined the war?
We should have sent the RAF to attack Iranian missile sites as Kemi rightly said. If Trump commits ground troops we should join Israel and provide them with support from the air in my view too as that would be the only way to topple the regime.
However as Starmer is in power neither will happen as he is sticking to his line offensive actions in Iran are not authorised under international law
The US does not have a clear war aim. It is unclear how much they are aiming to topple the regime. Should we commit military forces to try to achieve our war aim (regime change) if we can't agree with the US what the war aims are?
If they commit ground troops yes as that shows they want to topple the regime
Committing ground troops does not show they want to topple the regime. Committing ground troops doesn't suddenly mean Trump gains some cognitive clarity. He gives multiple different and contradictory rationales for the war within the same press conference. He has often talked about a deal that leaves the current regime in power, which is of course what he did in Venezuela.
He didn't launch a full scale invasion of Venezuela to topple the regime, just captured Maduro who was succeeded by his VP. Little different to his strikes so far just killing the Supreme Leader and putting his son in his place. Ground troops show he is serious
“Tactics without strategy is just the noise before defeat.”
I can see no strategy here, and we would simply be throwing lives away for no reason, if we got involved.
It may be that we, and other powers, will have no choice but to get involved, but that’s a decision that should only be taken after careful thought.
If the strategy is to remove the regime, then Trump deploying ground troops would support that.
However our involvement is all theoretical at the moment as Starmer has made clear he does not believe international law justifies the US and Israeli strikes against Iran. So it would take probably a Reform led government propped up by a Kemi led Tories for the UK to even back offensive strikes against Iran let alone sending in UK ground troops and that is not going to happen for at least 2 or 3 years and only if Labour lose the next general election. By then Trump may have removed the regime anyway
If Reform go into an election proposing to put ground troops in Iran, they ain't going to win the election!
Badenoch has got the oil bit right but the renewables bit completely wrong.
The solution is both. Yet the Tories and Reform only want to talk about one.
Therefore for me as renewables are clearly the superior long term option given a forced choice, Labour wins by default. They should overturn their policy on North Sea oil drilling though.
The renewables bit is the important one and oil bit more or less less irrelevant. In any case Badenoch was part of the previous government. If she was "right" about the oil bit O&G would be flowing freely from the North Sea, rather than declining by one third over the next five years.
Badenoch has got the oil bit right but the renewables bit completely wrong.
The solution is both. Yet the Tories and Reform only want to talk about one.
Therefore for me as renewables are clearly the superior long term option given a forced choice, Labour wins by default. They should overturn their policy on North Sea oil drilling though.
I saw her yesterday. She's hopeless. She just wants to get her face on tv. What's going on is too serious for a publicity seeker to join the party and add nothing
That’s wrong Roger, take the blinkers off.
Badenoch has done a good job and has some good policies. But this Iran War stuff has not been a good hour for her.
She was I thought very poor on Sky News. She needs to work on her interviewing technique.
I'm generally pretty laissez-faire with politicians wanting to make a mark but yesterday her opportunism was so crass I felt like punching her
@HYUFD Strategy is something that has to be worked out, before you start a war. There’s no point in trying to work it out, afterwards, which is what Trump and his clown show are doing.
Eisenhower once quoted the dictum that no plan survives contact with the enemy, but *planning* is essential.
There is no planning here.
If there's no planning then that would be the fault of the US military, however I think there has been but Trump is unwilling to accept what the planning reports.
I'd suggest that Trump has started a war which requires accepting casualties but is not willing to accept those casualties.
Starmer needs to get ahead of this oil crisis. Do some unpopular stuff that people will come to appreciate and will signal this is a big deal.
Cut speed limits, mandate wfh where possible, introduce carpool lanes all over the place...
Tories and Reform will oppose on reflex and it will show he's the serious politician thinking about national interest.
Better still, apply speed limits to ICE vehicles only, thereby encouraging the switch to EVs.
I am Ed Milliband and claim my £5.
Genius. I’m annoyed I didn’t think of that.
Similar policy - traffic lights to switch to red if they detect speeding. No fine, you get where you want to be faster if you drive slower, and it affects the part of the road where a fatal collision with a pedestrian or cyclist is most likely to happen.
Trouble is that effects all the non speeding cars as well. MOreover, even the craziest driver tends to slow down on approach to traffic lights and will generally be going below the limit in the distance where they could be picked up by a camera at the lights.
Unless they're speeding up to beat the red and get done for doing 26 in a 20 zone and end up having to do another bloody speed awareness course. Which definitely didn't happen to me a year or two ago..
Is anyone on Pb still of the view the UK should have joined the war?
We should have sent the RAF to attack Iranian missile sites as Kemi rightly said. If Trump commits ground troops we should join Israel and provide them with support from the air in my view too as that would be the only way to topple the regime.
However as Starmer is in power neither will happen as he is sticking to his line offensive actions in Iran are not authorised under international law
The US does not have a clear war aim. It is unclear how much they are aiming to topple the regime. Should we commit military forces to try to achieve our war aim (regime change) if we can't agree with the US what the war aims are?
If they commit ground troops yes as that shows they want to topple the regime
Committing ground troops does not show they want to topple the regime. Committing ground troops doesn't suddenly mean Trump gains some cognitive clarity. He gives multiple different and contradictory rationales for the war within the same press conference. He has often talked about a deal that leaves the current regime in power, which is of course what he did in Venezuela.
He didn't launch a full scale invasion of Venezuela to topple the regime, just captured Maduro who was succeeded by his VP. Little different to his strikes so far just killing the Supreme Leader and putting his son in his place. Ground troops show he is serious
“Tactics without strategy is just the noise before defeat.”
I can see no strategy here, and we would simply be throwing lives away for no reason, if we got involved.
It may be that we, and other powers, will have no choice but to get involved, but that’s a decision that should only be taken after careful thought.
If the strategy is to remove the regime, then Trump deploying ground troops would support that.
However our involvement is all theoretical at the moment as Starmer has made clear he does not believe international law justifies the US and Israeli strikes against Iran. So it would take probably a Reform led government propped up by a Kemi led Tories for the UK to even back offensive strikes against Iran let alone sending in UK ground troops and that is not going to happen for at least 2 or 3 years and only if Labour lose the next general election
...and is a very good reason why, when it comes to it, the voters will not go for any kind of Reform government.
As for the US midterms, I am beginning to wonder whether all of these AI forecasts might not be rather tame. Extraordinary and probably illegal and even unconstitutional measures by Trump are being answered by large-scale and growing resistance. The economic catastrophe of tariffs has just been joined by exactly the kind of war that Trump promised to avoid, coupled with vulgarity and brutality to friend and foe alike that seems almost literally demented. This seems to me to be the kind of election that could throw up some earthquake results, and all of these scenarios seem based on the input of the relative stability of the past, rather than some unexpectedly dramatic future shift, which certainly could happen now. AI is shaped by the past, and that may end up being a poor guide to future prospects.
Starmer needs to get ahead of this oil crisis. Do some unpopular stuff that people will come to appreciate and will signal this is a big deal.
Cut speed limits, mandate wfh where possible, introduce carpool lanes all over the place...
Tories and Reform will oppose on reflex and it will show he's the serious politician thinking about national interest.
Better still, apply speed limits to ICE vehicles only, thereby encouraging the switch to EVs.
I am Ed Milliband and claim my £5.
Genius. I’m annoyed I didn’t think of that.
Similar policy - traffic lights to switch to red if they detect speeding. No fine, you get where you want to be faster if you drive slower, and it affects the part of the road where a fatal collision with a pedestrian or cyclist is most likely to happen.
Trouble is that effects all the non speeding cars as well. MOreover, even the craziest driver tends to slow down on approach to traffic lights and will generally be going below the limit in the distance where they could be picked up by a camera at the lights.
There are a few of these scattered around rural France. They work well on country roads (typically at or near the entrance to villages) where, generally, there’s only one car affected.
It surely won’t be long before cars are all factory fitted with speed limiters that automatically detect the limit. Which will cause in its early days some very frustrating situations. My car convinced itself the speed limit was 5mph on a road yesterday and started beeping at me to slow down.
The war - although it can't be that, or Congress would have to approve it - was indeed ill-thought out, a knee-jerk reaction to Netanyahu seeing a moment in time to kill a large number of Iranians resposible for funding Hamas and Hisbollah and for posing an existential threat to Israel with their intent to acquire nuclear-armed missiles.
We were not a party to the intial strikes that killed 40 top Iranains and 175 Iranian school girls. But it was an event, that had consequences from which we cannot hide.
When Iran lashed out at our commercial interests in the Gulf, do people really think it wise not to do all we can to stop the vulnerable infrastruture from being trashed? Infrstructure upon which our energy, our industry, our food depend. This is nothing to do with helping getting Trump out a hole. He was a fuckwit for not foreseeing the consequences of his actions. We should not be fuckwits in allowing Iran to prosecute its campaign of revenge.
Iran'sactions in trying to lay waste to the economic interests of its neighbours should leave us in little doubt that the current Iranian regime having the bomb should be prevented. They would use it.
It is wise to do what we can to stop the vulnerable infrastructure from being trashed. What is the best way to do that? Join the war, or stay out of the war, make clear that the war is a bad idea and seek a diplomatic solution going forward?
Iran has retaliated after being attacked. I don't think that demonstrates that Iran is ruled by a uniquely evil regime. That's just what most countries would do.
Britain is perhaps uniquely placed in being seen by the Iranian regime as being ill-suited to offer diplomatic skills. Their distrust of us goes back far beyond the Americans.
We should use our assets to stop missiles and drones from reaching the Gulf states' assets. If that means hitting Iranian missile firing locations at source, that is sensible.
We are not a party to hitting civilan infrasturcture in Iran - such as electricity and desalination plants. We are not hitting hydrocarbons facilities. We are not hitting shipping. All that should be made clear in diplomatic language to Ira, More succinctly, we are only there because of Iran's actions.
The current, and indeed previous, Iranian regimes have a long-nurtured (?festered) distrust of the UK, due, AIUI, to our activities when their oil was realised to be both useful and valuable, and to our, again AIUI, rather ham-handed actions during WWII.
Consequently the best thing we can do is keep well away from the USA's current actions. I am rather sorry that we allowed them the use of air bases on the rather specious grounds that it wasn't for 'offensive' actions.
Taking a break while my kids do vintage clothing shopping in Shibuya. Japan wouldn't be a bad place to be stuck when the world runs out of oil and/or WW3 starts, I reckon.
Is anyone on Pb still of the view the UK should have joined the war?
We should have sent the RAF to attack Iranian missile sites as Kemi rightly said. If Trump commits ground troops we should join Israel and provide them with support from the air in my view too as that would be the only way to topple the regime.
However as Starmer is in power neither will happen as he is sticking to his line offensive actions in Iran are not authorised under international law
If we'd done that we'd be counting body bags in London, Birmingham, Glasgow, Cardiff, Belfast, Leeds, Liverpool, Newcastle, Edinburgh and any other town or city
Sleepers in our midst revenge lone rangers martyrs
Forget all that. That is not the reason we should not be doing this. If Iran was a genuine threat to us and we needed to change the regime there then attacks in the UK are simply part of that scenario and one we have to deal with.
The real issue here is we should not be attacking Iran or supporting the US and Israel in attacking them. They are not and were not a threat to ourselves, Europe or the US. They did not attack us. They did not attack the US or Israel. They were attacked and we should not be supporting or condoning the aggressors.
I think you can make an argument that they were attacking Israel fairly regularly via their proxies
Well yes, but by the same rote you could say Russia has been attacking us for decades. Nobody has suggested bombing St Petersburg in response.
Starmer needs to get ahead of this oil crisis. Do some unpopular stuff that people will come to appreciate and will signal this is a big deal.
Cut speed limits, mandate wfh where possible, introduce carpool lanes all over the place...
Tories and Reform will oppose on reflex and it will show he's the serious politician thinking about national interest.
Better still, apply speed limits to ICE vehicles only, thereby encouraging the switch to EVs.
I am Ed Milliband and claim my £5.
Genius. I’m annoyed I didn’t think of that.
Similar policy - traffic lights to switch to red if they detect speeding. No fine, you get where you want to be faster if you drive slower, and it affects the part of the road where a fatal collision with a pedestrian or cyclist is most likely to happen.
We tried lights that were speed sensitive in our village a few years ago. They didn’t work for two reasons. When the lights were faulty they weren’t fixed, sometimes for weeks. Drivers ignored them with impunity, which caused problems, as they were modified existing lights controlling the exit from a blind side road.
Badenoch has got the oil bit right but the renewables bit completely wrong.
The solution is both. Yet the Tories and Reform only want to talk about one.
Therefore for me as renewables are clearly the superior long term option given a forced choice, Labour wins by default. They should overturn their policy on North Sea oil drilling though.
I saw her yesterday. She's hopeless. She just wants to get her face on tv. What's going on is too serious for a publicity seeker to join the party and add nothing
That’s wrong Roger, take the blinkers off.
Badenoch has done a good job and has some good policies. But this Iran War stuff has not been a good hour for her.
She was I thought very poor on Sky News. She needs to work on her interviewing technique.
I'm generally pretty laissez-faire with politicians wanting to make a mark but yesterday her opportunism was so crass I felt like punching her
I hope you didn't
Disagree as much as you like but suggest violence especially against a woman is a step too far
Is anyone on Pb still of the view the UK should have joined the war?
We should have sent the RAF to attack Iranian missile sites as Kemi rightly said. If Trump commits ground troops we should join Israel and provide them with support from the air in my view too as that would be the only way to topple the regime.
However as Starmer is in power neither will happen as he is sticking to his line offensive actions in Iran are not authorised under international law
The US does not have a clear war aim. It is unclear how much they are aiming to topple the regime. Should we commit military forces to try to achieve our war aim (regime change) if we can't agree with the US what the war aims are?
If they commit ground troops yes as that shows they want to topple the regime
Committing ground troops does not show they want to topple the regime. Committing ground troops doesn't suddenly mean Trump gains some cognitive clarity. He gives multiple different and contradictory rationales for the war within the same press conference. He has often talked about a deal that leaves the current regime in power, which is of course what he did in Venezuela.
He didn't launch a full scale invasion of Venezuela to topple the regime, just captured Maduro who was succeeded by his VP. Little different to his strikes so far just killing the Supreme Leader and putting his son in his place. Ground troops show he is serious
“Tactics without strategy is just the noise before defeat.”
I can see no strategy here, and we would simply be throwing lives away for no reason, if we got involved.
It may be that we, and other powers, will have no choice but to get involved, but that’s a decision that should only be taken after careful thought.
If the strategy is to remove the regime, then Trump deploying ground troops would support that.
However our involvement is all theoretical at the moment as Starmer has made clear he does not believe international law justifies the US and Israeli strikes against Iran. So it would take probably a Reform led government propped up by a Kemi led Tories for the UK to even back offensive strikes against Iran let alone sending in UK ground troops and that is not going to happen for at least 2 or 3 years and only if Labour lose the next general election
...and is a very good reason why, when it comes to it, the voters will not go for any kind of Reform government.
As for the US midterms, I am beginning to wonder whether all of these AI forecasts might not be rather tame. Extraordinary and probably illegal and even unconstitutional measures by Trump are being answered by large-scale and growing resistance. The economic catastrophe of tariffs has just been joined by exactly the kind of war that Trump promised to avoid, coupled with vulgarity and brutality to friend and foe alike that seems almost literally demented. This seems to me to be the kind of election that could throw up some earthquake results, and all of these scenarios seem based on the input of the relative stability of the past, rather than some unexpectedly dramatic future shift, which certainly could happen now. AI is shaped by the past, and that may end up being a poor guide to future prospects.
Thoughtful post, as usual, and welcome. However there is the concern over Trump and his supporters' willingness to participate in electoral fraud.
Is anyone on Pb still of the view the UK should have joined the war?
We should have sent the RAF to attack Iranian missile sites as Kemi rightly said. If Trump commits ground troops we should join Israel and provide them with support from the air in my view too as that would be the only way to topple the regime.
However as Starmer is in power neither will happen as he is sticking to his line offensive actions in Iran are not authorised under international law
The US does not have a clear war aim. It is unclear how much they are aiming to topple the regime. Should we commit military forces to try to achieve our war aim (regime change) if we can't agree with the US what the war aims are?
If they commit ground troops yes as that shows they want to topple the regime
Committing ground troops does not show they want to topple the regime. Committing ground troops doesn't suddenly mean Trump gains some cognitive clarity. He gives multiple different and contradictory rationales for the war within the same press conference. He has often talked about a deal that leaves the current regime in power, which is of course what he did in Venezuela.
He didn't launch a full scale invasion of Venezuela to topple the regime, just captured Maduro who was succeeded by his VP. Little different to his strikes so far just killing the Supreme Leader and putting his son in his place. Ground troops show he is serious
“Tactics without strategy is just the noise before defeat.”
I can see no strategy here, and we would simply be throwing lives away for no reason, if we got involved.
It may be that we, and other powers, will have no choice but to get involved, but that’s a decision that should only be taken after careful thought.
If the strategy is to remove the regime, then Trump deploying ground troops would support that.
However our involvement is all theoretical at the moment as Starmer has made clear he does not believe international law justifies the US and Israeli strikes against Iran. So it would take probably a Reform led government propped up by a Kemi led Tories for the UK to even back offensive strikes against Iran let alone sending in UK ground troops and that is not going to happen for at least 2 or 3 years and only if Labour lose the next general election. By then Trump may have removed the regime anyway
If Reform go into an election proposing to put ground troops in Iran, they ain't going to win the election!
Farage's core vote certainly backed the US strikes, Yougov found earlier this month 58% of Reform voters back the US strikes on Iran.
@HYUFD Strategy is something that has to be worked out, before you start a war. There’s no point in trying to work it out, afterwards, which is what Trump and his clown show are doing.
Eisenhower once quoted the dictum that no plan survives contact with the enemy, but *planning* is essential.
There is no planning here.
Trump is finding he needs ground troops to win the war but yes he should have considered that earlier
Is anyone on Pb still of the view the UK should have joined the war?
We should have sent the RAF to attack Iranian missile sites as Kemi rightly said. If Trump commits ground troops we should join Israel and provide them with support from the air in my view too as that would be the only way to topple the regime.
However as Starmer is in power neither will happen as he is sticking to his line offensive actions in Iran are not authorised under international law
The US does not have a clear war aim. It is unclear how much they are aiming to topple the regime. Should we commit military forces to try to achieve our war aim (regime change) if we can't agree with the US what the war aims are?
If they commit ground troops yes as that shows they want to topple the regime
Committing ground troops does not show they want to topple the regime. Committing ground troops doesn't suddenly mean Trump gains some cognitive clarity. He gives multiple different and contradictory rationales for the war within the same press conference. He has often talked about a deal that leaves the current regime in power, which is of course what he did in Venezuela.
He didn't launch a full scale invasion of Venezuela to topple the regime, just captured Maduro who was succeeded by his VP. Little different to his strikes so far just killing the Supreme Leader and putting his son in his place. Ground troops show he is serious
“Tactics without strategy is just the noise before defeat.”
I can see no strategy here, and we would simply be throwing lives away for no reason, if we got involved.
It may be that we, and other powers, will have no choice but to get involved, but that’s a decision that should only be taken after careful thought.
If the strategy is to remove the regime, then Trump deploying ground troops would support that.
However our involvement is all theoretical at the moment as Starmer has made clear he does not believe international law justifies the US and Israeli strikes against Iran. So it would take probably a Reform led government propped up by a Kemi led Tories for the UK to even back offensive strikes against Iran let alone sending in UK ground troops and that is not going to happen for at least 2 or 3 years and only if Labour lose the next general election
...and is a very good reason why, when it comes to it, the voters will not go for any kind of Reform government.
As for the US midterms, I am beginning to wonder whether all of these AI forecasts might not be rather tame. Extraordinary and probably illegal and even unconstitutional measures by Trump are being answered by large-scale and growing resistance. The economic catastrophe of tariffs has just been joined by exactly the kind of war that Trump promised to avoid, coupled with vulgarity and brutality to friend and foe alike that seems almost literally demented. This seems to me to be the kind of election that could throw up some earthquake results, and all of these scenarios seem based on the input of the relative stability of the past, rather than some unexpectedly dramatic future shift, which certainly could happen now. AI is shaped by the past, and that may end up being a poor guide to future prospects.
Thoughtful post, as usual, and welcome. However there is the concern over Trump and his supporters' willingness to participate in electoral fraud.
There is no way of knowing how far it will be attempted, and how far successful.
Starmer needs to get ahead of this oil crisis. Do some unpopular stuff that people will come to appreciate and will signal this is a big deal.
Cut speed limits, mandate wfh where possible, introduce carpool lanes all over the place...
Tories and Reform will oppose on reflex and it will show he's the serious politician thinking about national interest.
Better still, apply speed limits to ICE vehicles only, thereby encouraging the switch to EVs.
I am Ed Milliband and claim my £5.
Genius. I’m annoyed I didn’t think of that.
Similar policy - traffic lights to switch to red if they detect speeding. No fine, you get where you want to be faster if you drive slower, and it affects the part of the road where a fatal collision with a pedestrian or cyclist is most likely to happen.
This is already common practice surely? Drive into the centre of Gillingham (Dorset) and you pass 4 or 5 sets of lights mainly controlling side road access. Stick to 30 and you can be green lightes all the way; try it at 35 and every one will turn red. Guaranteed.
Is anyone on Pb still of the view the UK should have joined the war?
We should have sent the RAF to attack Iranian missile sites as Kemi rightly said. If Trump commits ground troops we should join Israel and provide them with support from the air in my view too as that would be the only way to topple the regime.
However as Starmer is in power neither will happen as he is sticking to his line offensive actions in Iran are not authorised under international law
The US does not have a clear war aim. It is unclear how much they are aiming to topple the regime. Should we commit military forces to try to achieve our war aim (regime change) if we can't agree with the US what the war aims are?
If they commit ground troops yes as that shows they want to topple the regime
Committing ground troops does not show they want to topple the regime. Committing ground troops doesn't suddenly mean Trump gains some cognitive clarity. He gives multiple different and contradictory rationales for the war within the same press conference. He has often talked about a deal that leaves the current regime in power, which is of course what he did in Venezuela.
He didn't launch a full scale invasion of Venezuela to topple the regime, just captured Maduro who was succeeded by his VP. Little different to his strikes so far just killing the Supreme Leader and putting his son in his place. Ground troops show he is serious
“Tactics without strategy is just the noise before defeat.”
I can see no strategy here, and we would simply be throwing lives away for no reason, if we got involved.
It may be that we, and other powers, will have no choice but to get involved, but that’s a decision that should only be taken after careful thought.
If the strategy is to remove the regime, then Trump deploying ground troops would support that.
However our involvement is all theoretical at the moment as Starmer has made clear he does not believe international law justifies the US and Israeli strikes against Iran. So it would take probably a Reform led government propped up by a Kemi led Tories for the UK to even back offensive strikes against Iran let alone sending in UK ground troops and that is not going to happen for at least 2 or 3 years and only if Labour lose the next general election. By then Trump may have removed the regime anyway
If Reform go into an election proposing to put ground troops in Iran, they ain't going to win the election!
Farage's core vote certainly backed the US strikes, Yougov found earlier this month 58% of Reform voters back the US strikes on Iran.
'The Conservatives have called on the government to remove VAT from household energy bills for the next three years to help ease the cost of living amid the war in the Middle East.
Is anyone on Pb still of the view the UK should have joined the war?
We should have sent the RAF to attack Iranian missile sites as Kemi rightly said. If Trump commits ground troops we should join Israel and provide them with support from the air in my view too as that would be the only way to topple the regime.
However as Starmer is in power neither will happen as he is sticking to his line offensive actions in Iran are not authorised under international law
The US does not have a clear war aim. It is unclear how much they are aiming to topple the regime. Should we commit military forces to try to achieve our war aim (regime change) if we can't agree with the US what the war aims are?
If they commit ground troops yes as that shows they want to topple the regime
Committing ground troops does not show they want to topple the regime. Committing ground troops doesn't suddenly mean Trump gains some cognitive clarity. He gives multiple different and contradictory rationales for the war within the same press conference. He has often talked about a deal that leaves the current regime in power, which is of course what he did in Venezuela.
He didn't launch a full scale invasion of Venezuela to topple the regime, just captured Maduro who was succeeded by his VP. Little different to his strikes so far just killing the Supreme Leader and putting his son in his place. Ground troops show he is serious
“Tactics without strategy is just the noise before defeat.”
I can see no strategy here, and we would simply be throwing lives away for no reason, if we got involved.
It may be that we, and other powers, will have no choice but to get involved, but that’s a decision that should only be taken after careful thought.
If the strategy is to remove the regime, then Trump deploying ground troops would support that.
However our involvement is all theoretical at the moment as Starmer has made clear he does not believe international law justifies the US and Israeli strikes against Iran. So it would take probably a Reform led government propped up by a Kemi led Tories for the UK to even back offensive strikes against Iran let alone sending in UK ground troops and that is not going to happen for at least 2 or 3 years and only if Labour lose the next general election. By then Trump may have removed the regime anyway
If Reform go into an election proposing to put ground troops in Iran, they ain't going to win the election!
Farage's core vote certainly backed the US strikes, Yougov found earlier this month 58% of Reform voters back the US strikes on Iran.
Starmer needs to get ahead of this oil crisis. Do some unpopular stuff that people will come to appreciate and will signal this is a big deal.
Cut speed limits, mandate wfh where possible, introduce carpool lanes all over the place...
Tories and Reform will oppose on reflex and it will show he's the serious politician thinking about national interest.
Better still, apply speed limits to ICE vehicles only, thereby encouraging the switch to EVs.
I am Ed Milliband and claim my £5.
Genius. I’m annoyed I didn’t think of that.
Similar policy - traffic lights to switch to red if they detect speeding. No fine, you get where you want to be faster if you drive slower, and it affects the part of the road where a fatal collision with a pedestrian or cyclist is most likely to happen.
This is already common practice surely? Drive into the centre of Gillingham (Dorset) and you pass 4 or 5 sets of lights mainly controlling side road access. Stick to 30 and you can be green lightes all the way; try it at 35 and every one will turn red. Guaranteed.
We have a similar arrangement in the centre of Cheltenham, except the lights are programmed to turn red when they see me approaching.
Is anyone on Pb still of the view the UK should have joined the war?
We should have sent the RAF to attack Iranian missile sites as Kemi rightly said. If Trump commits ground troops we should join Israel and provide them with support from the air in my view too as that would be the only way to topple the regime.
However as Starmer is in power neither will happen as he is sticking to his line offensive actions in Iran are not authorised under international law
The US does not have a clear war aim. It is unclear how much they are aiming to topple the regime. Should we commit military forces to try to achieve our war aim (regime change) if we can't agree with the US what the war aims are?
If they commit ground troops yes as that shows they want to topple the regime
Committing ground troops does not show they want to topple the regime. Committing ground troops doesn't suddenly mean Trump gains some cognitive clarity. He gives multiple different and contradictory rationales for the war within the same press conference. He has often talked about a deal that leaves the current regime in power, which is of course what he did in Venezuela.
He didn't launch a full scale invasion of Venezuela to topple the regime, just captured Maduro who was succeeded by his VP. Little different to his strikes so far just killing the Supreme Leader and putting his son in his place. Ground troops show he is serious
“Tactics without strategy is just the noise before defeat.”
I can see no strategy here, and we would simply be throwing lives away for no reason, if we got involved.
It may be that we, and other powers, will have no choice but to get involved, but that’s a decision that should only be taken after careful thought.
If the strategy is to remove the regime, then Trump deploying ground troops would support that.
However our involvement is all theoretical at the moment as Starmer has made clear he does not believe international law justifies the US and Israeli strikes against Iran. So it would take probably a Reform led government propped up by a Kemi led Tories for the UK to even back offensive strikes against Iran let alone sending in UK ground troops and that is not going to happen for at least 2 or 3 years and only if Labour lose the next general election. By then Trump may have removed the regime anyway
If Reform go into an election proposing to put ground troops in Iran, they ain't going to win the election!
Farage's core vote certainly backed the US strikes, Yougov found earlier this month 58% of Reform voters back the US strikes on Iran.
Starmer needs to get ahead of this oil crisis. Do some unpopular stuff that people will come to appreciate and will signal this is a big deal.
Cut speed limits, mandate wfh where possible, introduce carpool lanes all over the place...
Tories and Reform will oppose on reflex and it will show he's the serious politician thinking about national interest.
Better still, apply speed limits to ICE vehicles only, thereby encouraging the switch to EVs.
I am Ed Milliband and claim my £5.
Genius. I’m annoyed I didn’t think of that.
Similar policy - traffic lights to switch to red if they detect speeding. No fine, you get where you want to be faster if you drive slower, and it affects the part of the road where a fatal collision with a pedestrian or cyclist is most likely to happen.
But what about the law abiding motorists also held up by red lights triggered by someone else?
Is anyone on Pb still of the view the UK should have joined the war?
We should have sent the RAF to attack Iranian missile sites as Kemi rightly said. If Trump commits ground troops we should join Israel and provide them with support from the air in my view too as that would be the only way to topple the regime.
However as Starmer is in power neither will happen as he is sticking to his line offensive actions in Iran are not authorised under international law
The US does not have a clear war aim. It is unclear how much they are aiming to topple the regime. Should we commit military forces to try to achieve our war aim (regime change) if we can't agree with the US what the war aims are?
If they commit ground troops yes as that shows they want to topple the regime
Committing ground troops does not show they want to topple the regime. Committing ground troops doesn't suddenly mean Trump gains some cognitive clarity. He gives multiple different and contradictory rationales for the war within the same press conference. He has often talked about a deal that leaves the current regime in power, which is of course what he did in Venezuela.
He didn't launch a full scale invasion of Venezuela to topple the regime, just captured Maduro who was succeeded by his VP. Little different to his strikes so far just killing the Supreme Leader and putting his son in his place. Ground troops show he is serious
“Tactics without strategy is just the noise before defeat.”
I can see no strategy here, and we would simply be throwing lives away for no reason, if we got involved.
It may be that we, and other powers, will have no choice but to get involved, but that’s a decision that should only be taken after careful thought.
If the strategy is to remove the regime, then Trump deploying ground troops would support that.
However our involvement is all theoretical at the moment as Starmer has made clear he does not believe international law justifies the US and Israeli strikes against Iran. So it would take probably a Reform led government propped up by a Kemi led Tories for the UK to even back offensive strikes against Iran let alone sending in UK ground troops and that is not going to happen for at least 2 or 3 years and only if Labour lose the next general election. By then Trump may have removed the regime anyway
If Reform go into an election proposing to put ground troops in Iran, they ain't going to win the election!
Farage's core vote certainly backed the US strikes, Yougov found earlier this month 58% of Reform voters back the US strikes on Iran.
Why should we care what Reform voters think? Most of them are thick racists stuck in the 1950s.
As on every current poll Reform will win most seats at the next general election
That is true, Hyufd, only if you ignore the probable impact of tactical voting, and the difference between expressing an opinion to a pollster and actually casting a vote.
The war - although it can't be that, or Congress would have to approve it - was indeed ill-thought out, a knee-jerk reaction to Netanyahu seeing a moment in time to kill a large number of Iranians resposible for funding Hamas and Hisbollah and for posing an existential threat to Israel with their intent to acquire nuclear-armed missiles.
We were not a party to the intial strikes that killed 40 top Iranains and 175 Iranian school girls. But it was an event, that had consequences from which we cannot hide.
When Iran lashed out at our commercial interests in the Gulf, do people really think it wise not to do all we can to stop the vulnerable infrastruture from being trashed? Infrstructure upon which our energy, our industry, our food depend. This is nothing to do with helping getting Trump out a hole. He was a fuckwit for not foreseeing the consequences of his actions. We should not be fuckwits in allowing Iran to prosecute its campaign of revenge.
Iran'sactions in trying to lay waste to the economic interests of its neighbours should leave us in little doubt that the current Iranian regime having the bomb should be prevented. They would use it.
It is wise to do what we can to stop the vulnerable infrastructure from being trashed. What is the best way to do that? Join the war, or stay out of the war, make clear that the war is a bad idea and seek a diplomatic solution going forward?
Iran has retaliated after being attacked. I don't think that demonstrates that Iran is ruled by a uniquely evil regime. That's just what most countries would do.
But they have done so by attacking third party countries who had not been part of the initial attack. Most countries wouldn’t do that
I've seen it suggested Africa could be the big winners from all this with countries like Angola, Nigeria and Mozambique expanding their production of oil and LNG to cover the gaps caused by the closure of Hormuz.
I don't know how much of our oil now comes from Africa or the quality of said but it's clearly a big difference from the early 70s when the petrochemical industry in Africa hardly existed.
Well. African nations that have oil that is. Those that don't, not so much.
Sure you mean “leaders of African nations that have oil that is”?
@HYUFD Strategy is something that has to be worked out, before you start a war. There’s no point in trying to work it out, afterwards, which is what Trump and his clown show are doing.
Eisenhower once quoted the dictum that no plan survives contact with the enemy, but *planning* is essential.
There is no planning here.
Trump is finding he needs ground troops to win the war but yes he should have considered that earlier
'Ground troops' may just be the issue on which some MAGA types begin to peel off, but I wouldn't bank on it. My US informants assure me that TDS is incurable, so there may be no such tipping point.
I have a vague memory of my guesses being far more optimistic for the Democrats than most here. There's an off-chance Trump's lunacy might make my ill-informed forecasts more accurate than they should be.
If this goes on and the Republicans pick the ultra-loon rather than the very-loon in Texas, you can see the Dems picking up five Senate seats.
But if oil really does hit $200 a barrel it’s going to be total chaos anyway and all predictions are off.
James Talarico is a good candidate for the Dems and the loonier GOP candidate (Paxton) is ahead in the GOP run off so this is the Dems best shot for along time. Unfortunately I think voter suppression and corruption in Texas will be off the scale this time. Another narrow defeat probably unless Iran really goes tits up.
Badenoch has got the oil bit right but the renewables bit completely wrong.
The solution is both. Yet the Tories and Reform only want to talk about one.
Therefore for me as renewables are clearly the superior long term option given a forced choice, Labour wins by default. They should overturn their policy on North Sea oil drilling though.
I saw her yesterday. She's hopeless. She just wants to get her face on tv. What's going on is too serious for a publicity seeker to join the party and add nothing
That’s wrong Roger, take the blinkers off.
Badenoch has done a good job and has some good policies. But this Iran War stuff has not been a good hour for her.
She was I thought very poor on Sky News. She needs to work on her interviewing technique.
I'm generally pretty laissez-faire with politicians wanting to make a mark but yesterday her opportunism was so crass I felt like punching her
Is anyone on Pb still of the view the UK should have joined the war?
We should have sent the RAF to attack Iranian missile sites as Kemi rightly said. If Trump commits ground troops we should join Israel and provide them with support from the air in my view too as that would be the only way to topple the regime.
However as Starmer is in power neither will happen as he is sticking to his line offensive actions in Iran are not authorised under international law
The US does not have a clear war aim. It is unclear how much they are aiming to topple the regime. Should we commit military forces to try to achieve our war aim (regime change) if we can't agree with the US what the war aims are?
If they commit ground troops yes as that shows they want to topple the regime
Committing ground troops does not show they want to topple the regime. Committing ground troops doesn't suddenly mean Trump gains some cognitive clarity. He gives multiple different and contradictory rationales for the war within the same press conference. He has often talked about a deal that leaves the current regime in power, which is of course what he did in Venezuela.
He didn't launch a full scale invasion of Venezuela to topple the regime, just captured Maduro who was succeeded by his VP. Little different to his strikes so far just killing the Supreme Leader and putting his son in his place. Ground troops show he is serious
“Tactics without strategy is just the noise before defeat.”
I can see no strategy here, and we would simply be throwing lives away for no reason, if we got involved.
It may be that we, and other powers, will have no choice but to get involved, but that’s a decision that should only be taken after careful thought.
If the strategy is to remove the regime, then Trump deploying ground troops would support that.
However our involvement is all theoretical at the moment as Starmer has made clear he does not believe international law justifies the US and Israeli strikes against Iran. So it would take probably a Reform led government propped up by a Kemi led Tories for the UK to even back offensive strikes against Iran let alone sending in UK ground troops and that is not going to happen for at least 2 or 3 years and only if Labour lose the next general election. By then Trump may have removed the regime anyway
If Reform go into an election proposing to put ground troops in Iran, they ain't going to win the election!
The war is illegal and any result from it except for Israel and The US being comprehensively defeated will also be illegal. So unless we want a new world order where perhaps China takes the reins it's difficult to see how this concludes
Starmer needs to get ahead of this oil crisis. Do some unpopular stuff that people will come to appreciate and will signal this is a big deal.
Cut speed limits, mandate wfh where possible, introduce carpool lanes all over the place...
Tories and Reform will oppose on reflex and it will show he's the serious politician thinking about national interest.
You don't need to cut speed limits just get Martim Lewis to remind people that if you do 60 rather than 70 you will drive 10% further and that result in enough behaviour change that you get your result anyway.
Exactly.
Demand destruction.
We drove back and forth to the midlands this weekend.
Didn’t go as fast as normal and got back with far more in the tank.
I can get Brixham to Lichfield and back at 85mph on. M5 440 miles Xc60 D5 diesel
At 70mph steady I can get there and back and to Michaelwoid on next journey that's approx 570 miles
Doing North Durham to Shirley and back at 70MPH, with full EV on the hyrbrid for journey down I can do it there and back on two tanks and have about 115 miles left.
This weekend I had about 300 miles left according to the info.
Is anyone on Pb still of the view the UK should have joined the war?
We should have sent the RAF to attack Iranian missile sites as Kemi rightly said. If Trump commits ground troops we should join Israel and provide them with support from the air in my view too as that would be the only way to topple the regime.
However as Starmer is in power neither will happen as he is sticking to his line offensive actions in Iran are not authorised under international law
If we'd done that we'd be counting body bags in London, Birmingham, Glasgow, Cardiff, Belfast, Leeds, Liverpool, Newcastle, Edinburgh and any other town or city
Sleepers in our midst revenge lone rangers martyrs
Forget all that. That is not the reason we should not be doing this. If Iran was a genuine threat to us and we needed to change the regime there then attacks in the UK are simply part of that scenario and one we have to deal with.
The real issue here is we should not be attacking Iran or supporting the US and Israel in attacking them. They are not and were not a threat to ourselves, Europe or the US. They did not attack us. They did not attack the US or Israel. They were attacked and we should not be supporting or condoning the aggressors.
I think you can make an argument that they were attacking Israel fairly regularly via their proxies
Well yes, but by the same rote you could say Russia has been attacking us for decades. Nobody has suggested bombing St Petersburg in response.
Russia has been attacking us for decades
And bombing St Pete’s always been on the list of options.
Starmer needs to get ahead of this oil crisis. Do some unpopular stuff that people will come to appreciate and will signal this is a big deal.
Cut speed limits, mandate wfh where possible, introduce carpool lanes all over the place...
Tories and Reform will oppose on reflex and it will show he's the serious politician thinking about national interest.
And Labour will be decimated.
Nigel and Kemi have it sewn up. If the Government issued new North Sea drilling licences for 2030 there would be no fuel crisis now. It is a compelling argument supported by Donald Trump, GB News, the Telegraph, the Mail, the Express and Nick Ferrari.
Objectively though it’s daft to shut down profitable production. It won’t change prices globally but it would create wealth and tax income in the uk which could be used to subsidise prices if the government chose to
They both want to abolish the windfall tax
Handing money to oil companies who avoid and evade tax.
Approaching summer we are closer to higher levels of solar and wind renewable are quickly reducing heating...
Thats where quick reinvestment wins can be gleaned faster than drilling and cheaper.
More wind, more solar, specifically more DIY solar that can generate we've in a few hours of winter sun.
Is anyone on Pb still of the view the UK should have joined the war?
We should have sent the RAF to attack Iranian missile sites as Kemi rightly said. If Trump commits ground troops we should join Israel and provide them with support from the air in my view too as that would be the only way to topple the regime.
However as Starmer is in power neither will happen as he is sticking to his line offensive actions in Iran are not authorised under international law
The US does not have a clear war aim. It is unclear how much they are aiming to topple the regime. Should we commit military forces to try to achieve our war aim (regime change) if we can't agree with the US what the war aims are?
If they commit ground troops yes as that shows they want to topple the regime
Committing ground troops does not show they want to topple the regime. Committing ground troops doesn't suddenly mean Trump gains some cognitive clarity. He gives multiple different and contradictory rationales for the war within the same press conference. He has often talked about a deal that leaves the current regime in power, which is of course what he did in Venezuela.
He didn't launch a full scale invasion of Venezuela to topple the regime, just captured Maduro who was succeeded by his VP. Little different to his strikes so far just killing the Supreme Leader and putting his son in his place. Ground troops show he is serious
“Tactics without strategy is just the noise before defeat.”
I can see no strategy here, and we would simply be throwing lives away for no reason, if we got involved.
It may be that we, and other powers, will have no choice but to get involved, but that’s a decision that should only be taken after careful thought.
If the strategy is to remove the regime, then Trump deploying ground troops would support that.
However our involvement is all theoretical at the moment as Starmer has made clear he does not believe international law justifies the US and Israeli strikes against Iran. So it would take probably a Reform led government propped up by a Kemi led Tories for the UK to even back offensive strikes against Iran let alone sending in UK ground troops and that is not going to happen for at least 2 or 3 years and only if Labour lose the next general election. By then Trump may have removed the regime anyway
If Reform go into an election proposing to put ground troops in Iran, they ain't going to win the election!
The war is illegal and any result from it except for Israel and The US being comprehensively defeated will also be illegal. So unless we want a new world order where perhaps China takes the reins it's difficult to see how this concludes
China will be the big winner from this if it goes on much longer.
Is anyone on Pb still of the view the UK should have joined the war?
We should have sent the RAF to attack Iranian missile sites as Kemi rightly said. If Trump commits ground troops we should join Israel and provide them with support from the air in my view too as that would be the only way to topple the regime.
However as Starmer is in power neither will happen as he is sticking to his line offensive actions in Iran are not authorised under international law
The US does not have a clear war aim. It is unclear how much they are aiming to topple the regime. Should we commit military forces to try to achieve our war aim (regime change) if we can't agree with the US what the war aims are?
If they commit ground troops yes as that shows they want to topple the regime
Committing ground troops does not show they want to topple the regime. Committing ground troops doesn't suddenly mean Trump gains some cognitive clarity. He gives multiple different and contradictory rationales for the war within the same press conference. He has often talked about a deal that leaves the current regime in power, which is of course what he did in Venezuela.
He didn't launch a full scale invasion of Venezuela to topple the regime, just captured Maduro who was succeeded by his VP. Little different to his strikes so far just killing the Supreme Leader and putting his son in his place. Ground troops show he is serious
“Tactics without strategy is just the noise before defeat.”
I can see no strategy here, and we would simply be throwing lives away for no reason, if we got involved.
It may be that we, and other powers, will have no choice but to get involved, but that’s a decision that should only be taken after careful thought.
If the strategy is to remove the regime, then Trump deploying ground troops would support that.
However our involvement is all theoretical at the moment as Starmer has made clear he does not believe international law justifies the US and Israeli strikes against Iran. So it would take probably a Reform led government propped up by a Kemi led Tories for the UK to even back offensive strikes against Iran let alone sending in UK ground troops and that is not going to happen for at least 2 or 3 years and only if Labour lose the next general election. By then Trump may have removed the regime anyway
If Reform go into an election proposing to put ground troops in Iran, they ain't going to win the election!
Farage's core vote certainly backed the US strikes, Yougov found earlier this month 58% of Reform voters back the US strikes on Iran.
'The Conservatives have called on the government to remove VAT from household energy bills for the next three years to help ease the cost of living amid the war in the Middle East.
'The Conservatives have called on the government to remove VAT from household energy bills for the next three years to help ease the cost of living amid the war in the Middle East.
Taking a break while my kids do vintage clothing shopping in Shibuya. Japan wouldn't be a bad place to be stuck when the world runs out of oil and/or WW3 starts, I reckon.
Starmer needs to get ahead of this oil crisis. Do some unpopular stuff that people will come to appreciate and will signal this is a big deal.
Cut speed limits, mandate wfh where possible, introduce carpool lanes all over the place...
Tories and Reform will oppose on reflex and it will show he's the serious politician thinking about national interest.
And Labour will be decimated.
Nigel and Kemi have it sewn up. If the Government issued new North Sea drilling licences for 2030 there would be no fuel crisis now. It is a compelling argument supported by Donald Trump, GB News, the Telegraph, the Mail, the Express and Nick Ferrari.
Yes Kemi and Nigel the lunatics from the asylum who can click a finger dressed like a clown on an oil rig and promise an instant solution
They should be certified
We don't need to rely upon Nigel, Kemi or GB News. We have someone who works in the offshore oil industry posting here, he will tell you what the effect of the Government's policy is.
Starmer needs to get ahead of this oil crisis. Do some unpopular stuff that people will come to appreciate and will signal this is a big deal.
Cut speed limits, mandate wfh where possible, introduce carpool lanes all over the place...
Tories and Reform will oppose on reflex and it will show he's the serious politician thinking about national interest.
And Labour will be decimated.
Nigel and Kemi have it sewn up. If the Government issued new North Sea drilling licences for 2030 there would be no fuel crisis now. It is a compelling argument supported by Donald Trump, GB News, the Telegraph, the Mail, the Express and Nick Ferrari.
Yes Kemi and Nigel the lunatics from the asylum who can click a finger dressed like a clown on an oil rig and promise an instant solution
They should be certified
We don't need to rely upon Nigel, Kemi or GB News. We have someone who works in the offshore oil industry posting here, he will tell you what the effect of the Government's policy is.
Come on, what would @richard Tyndall know about oil? Brixian knows better.
Taking a break while my kids do vintage clothing shopping in Shibuya. Japan wouldn't be a bad place to be stuck when the world runs out of oil and/or WW3 starts, I reckon.
Given my luck I’d probably be in West Bromwich.
I recently saw a Brummie-Iraqi comedian who is doing a tour called Death to the West... Midlands. He was very funny.
Is anyone on Pb still of the view the UK should have joined the war?
We should have sent the RAF to attack Iranian missile sites as Kemi rightly said. If Trump commits ground troops we should join Israel and provide them with support from the air in my view too as that would be the only way to topple the regime.
However as Starmer is in power neither will happen as he is sticking to his line offensive actions in Iran are not authorised under international law
If we'd done that we'd be counting body bags in London, Birmingham, Glasgow, Cardiff, Belfast, Leeds, Liverpool, Newcastle, Edinburgh and any other town or city
Sleepers in our midst revenge lone rangers martyrs
Forget all that. That is not the reason we should not be doing this. If Iran was a genuine threat to us and we needed to change the regime there then attacks in the UK are simply part of that scenario and one we have to deal with.
The real issue here is we should not be attacking Iran or supporting the US and Israel in attacking them. They are not and were not a threat to ourselves, Europe or the US. They did not attack us. They did not attack the US or Israel. They were attacked and we should not be supporting or condoning the aggressors.
I think you can make an argument that they were attacking Israel fairly regularly via their proxies
Well yes, but by the same rote you could say Russia has been attacking us for decades. Nobody has suggested bombing St Petersburg in response.
Russia has been attacking us for decades
And bombing St Pete’s always been on the list of options.
But wiser heads have prevailed to date
The Ukrainians might try it soon. If they haven't already.
Is anyone on Pb still of the view the UK should have joined the war?
We should have sent the RAF to attack Iranian missile sites as Kemi rightly said. If Trump commits ground troops we should join Israel and provide them with support from the air in my view too as that would be the only way to topple the regime.
However as Starmer is in power neither will happen as he is sticking to his line offensive actions in Iran are not authorised under international law
The US does not have a clear war aim. It is unclear how much they are aiming to topple the regime. Should we commit military forces to try to achieve our war aim (regime change) if we can't agree with the US what the war aims are?
If they commit ground troops yes as that shows they want to topple the regime
Committing ground troops does not show they want to topple the regime. Committing ground troops doesn't suddenly mean Trump gains some cognitive clarity. He gives multiple different and contradictory rationales for the war within the same press conference. He has often talked about a deal that leaves the current regime in power, which is of course what he did in Venezuela.
He didn't launch a full scale invasion of Venezuela to topple the regime, just captured Maduro who was succeeded by his VP. Little different to his strikes so far just killing the Supreme Leader and putting his son in his place. Ground troops show he is serious
“Tactics without strategy is just the noise before defeat.”
I can see no strategy here, and we would simply be throwing lives away for no reason, if we got involved.
It may be that we, and other powers, will have no choice but to get involved, but that’s a decision that should only be taken after careful thought.
If the strategy is to remove the regime, then Trump deploying ground troops would support that.
However our involvement is all theoretical at the moment as Starmer has made clear he does not believe international law justifies the US and Israeli strikes against Iran. So it would take probably a Reform led government propped up by a Kemi led Tories for the UK to even back offensive strikes against Iran let alone sending in UK ground troops and that is not going to happen for at least 2 or 3 years and only if Labour lose the next general election. By then Trump may have removed the regime anyway
If Reform go into an election proposing to put ground troops in Iran, they ain't going to win the election!
Farage's core vote certainly backed the US strikes, Yougov found earlier this month 58% of Reform voters back the US strikes on Iran.
Taking a break while my kids do vintage clothing shopping in Shibuya. Japan wouldn't be a bad place to be stuck when the world runs out of oil and/or WW3 starts, I reckon.
Given my luck I’d probably be in West Bromwich.
I recently saw a Brummie-Iraqi comedian who is doing a tour called Death to the West... Midlands. He was very funny.
Sounds like the sort of thing I’d enjoy. May look him up.
I’ve spent the last week in London and, despite the mostly grey weather, it’s been great. Creatively exuberant, noticeably younger than New York, seemingly better functioning across a range of small measures.
Not really the dystopian hellhole of X (formerly known as Twitter)’s imagination.
Starmer needs to get ahead of this oil crisis. Do some unpopular stuff that people will come to appreciate and will signal this is a big deal.
Cut speed limits, mandate wfh where possible, introduce carpool lanes all over the place...
Tories and Reform will oppose on reflex and it will show he's the serious politician thinking about national interest.
Better still, apply speed limits to ICE vehicles only, thereby encouraging the switch to EVs.
I am Ed Milliband and claim my £5.
Genius. I’m annoyed I didn’t think of that.
Similar policy - traffic lights to switch to red if they detect speeding. No fine, you get where you want to be faster if you drive slower, and it affects the part of the road where a fatal collision with a pedestrian or cyclist is most likely to happen.
But what about the law abiding motorists also held up by red lights triggered by someone else?
Certainly a drawback. But social pressure is an important driver of good behaviour, so I think that effect is actually one of the reasons it could work.
And frankly a bit of inconvenience is better than someone doing 35mph through a ped crossing.
An interesting video of Stephen Woodford analysing a conversation between Piers Morgan, a former IDF spokesperson, and Norman Finkelstein, around the Iran War, consistency and double standards.
On topic, history tells us the midterms are rarely pretty for the party holding the Presidency.
Whether it will be a 1994-style blowout I don't know. In that election, the GOP won by just under seven points and gained 54 House and 8 Seante seats.
Obviously, our old mate Gerry Mandering has been at work since but it still seems a very tall order for the Republicans to hold the House. The Senate looks much harder for the Democrats but not insurmountable.
Will it make much difference? Presumably, not having a friendly legislature will force Trump to govern more executively but I suspect he won't find the last two years (presumably) that comfortable and thoughts will turn to the 2028 Presidential contest.
In oder to maximise GOP seats in Texas the gerrymandering created a good number of seats with quite small GOP majorities. There is a reasonable chance that that could backfire spectacularly. Does depend on it not being rigged and Hispanics being able to get to the polls unhindered.
Starmer needs to get ahead of this oil crisis. Do some unpopular stuff that people will come to appreciate and will signal this is a big deal.
Cut speed limits, mandate wfh where possible, introduce carpool lanes all over the place...
Tories and Reform will oppose on reflex and it will show he's the serious politician thinking about national interest.
Pure authoritarianism that will do nothing to fix the problems.
Serious politics means fixing what the politicians control.
The Australian Labor Government has had good ideas on this. The price of fuel is mostly tax anyway, and the fuel cost is controlled by HMG. Australia has halved fuel duty, we should do the same, or go one better and suspend it altogether.
I met up with my friends: all “centrist dads”, whether in Law, Consulting, Advertising or IT.
They are now all ferociously anti-Israel, if not actively anti-Zionist.
There are few Dads on this site more centreist than me and I can tell you that I I am neither anti-Israel nor anti-Zionist, nor am I anti their opposite numbers.
In fact I have never been so happy not to have a dog in the fight.
@kinabalu My grocery order has arrived and the sardines in olive oil with it. (Sainsbury's, 120g/85g, £1.95).
Result! How I have them - if I had some which I still don't - is for lunch in a bowl with cannellini beans. Perhaps you can do that on my behalf. It's a pretty healthy option.
Is anyone on Pb still of the view the UK should have joined the war?
We should have sent the RAF to attack Iranian missile sites as Kemi rightly said. If Trump commits ground troops we should join Israel and provide them with support from the air in my view too as that would be the only way to topple the regime.
However as Starmer is in power neither will happen as he is sticking to his line offensive actions in Iran are not authorised under international law
If we'd done that we'd be counting body bags in London, Birmingham, Glasgow, Cardiff, Belfast, Leeds, Liverpool, Newcastle, Edinburgh and any other town or city
Sleepers in our midst revenge lone rangers martyrs
Forget all that. That is not the reason we should not be doing this. If Iran was a genuine threat to us and we needed to change the regime there then attacks in the UK are simply part of that scenario and one we have to deal with.
The real issue here is we should not be attacking Iran or supporting the US and Israel in attacking them. They are not and were not a threat to ourselves, Europe or the US. They did not attack us. They did not attack the US or Israel. They were attacked and we should not be supporting or condoning the aggressors.
I think you can make an argument that they were attacking Israel fairly regularly via their proxies
Well yes, but by the same rote you could say Russia has been attacking us for decades. Nobody has suggested bombing St Petersburg in response.
Russia has been attacking us for decades
And bombing St Pete’s always been on the list of options.
But wiser heads have prevailed to date
Because Russia has nukes.
Iran does not, yet, and its better to have this conflict now than after a mushroom cloud appears above Tel Aviv.
Comments
Sounds a bit racist.
Note that, world wide, the number of sleeper attacks is somewhere between 0 and not a lot (the ambulances was probably some criminal being recruited/paid over the internet)
Yes I did think it was dodgy news but it's from a Japanese University...
I'd take the House, nearly free money, but the Senate is probably a 35% shot not a 50% one.
The solution is both. Yet the Tories and Reform only want to talk about one.
Therefore for me as renewables are clearly the superior long term option given a forced choice, Labour wins by default. They should overturn their policy on North Sea oil drilling though.
But yes, more solar would be good. I’m less keen on wind power because of the impact on the visual environment and bird migratory patterns but it has its place.
* sorry
Would it be right to bomb them to achieve regime change?
We were not a party to the intial strikes that killed 40 top Iranains and 175 Iranian school girls. But it was an event, that had consequences from which we cannot hide.
When Iran lashed out at our commercial interests in the Gulf, do people really think it wise not to do all we can to stop the vulnerable infrastruture from being trashed? Infrstructure upon which our energy, our industry, our food depend. This is nothing to do with helping getting Trump out a hole. He was a fuckwit for not foreseeing the consequences of his actions. We should not be fuckwits in allowing Iran to prosecute its campaign of revenge.
Iran's actions in trying to lay waste to the economic interests of its neighbours should leave us in little doubt that the current Iranian regime having the bomb should be prevented. They would use it.
I notice you did not comment on the 19 year old star wrestler Iran also recently executed along with some other young men just as they had taken to the streets to protest against the regime
I've seen it suggested Africa could be the big winners from all this with countries like Angola, Nigeria and Mozambique expanding their production of oil and LNG to cover the gaps caused by the closure of Hormuz.
I don't know how much of our oil now comes from Africa or the quality of said but it's clearly a big difference from the early 70s when the petrochemical industry in Africa hardly existed.
I can see no strategy here, and we would simply be throwing lives away for no reason, if we got involved.
It may be that we, and other powers, will have no choice but to get involved, but that’s a decision that should only be taken after careful thought.
But what would you suggest we do differently which would be practical and effective?
Similar policy - traffic lights to switch to red if they detect speeding. No fine, you get where you want to be faster if you drive slower, and it affects the part of the road where a fatal collision with a pedestrian or cyclist is most likely to happen.
Badenoch has done a good job and has some good policies. But this Iran War stuff has not been a good hour for her.
She was I thought very poor on Sky News. She needs to work on her interviewing technique.
https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/policy-issues/policy/international/executions-around-the-world
Iran has retaliated after being attacked. I don't think that demonstrates that Iran is ruled by a uniquely evil regime. That's just what most countries would do.
He tried to dupe the gullible with his concern for the protesters as a means of justifying this stupid illegal war.
By any measure Trump is a psychopath shorn of any humanity or empathy .
African nations that have oil that is.
Those that don't, not so much.
Somali pirates used to head down as far as Tanzania, until they learnt they would be blown out the water.
So indirectly. And arguably more effectively and insidiously.
Whether it will be a 1994-style blowout I don't know. In that election, the GOP won by just under seven points and gained 54 House and 8 Seante seats.
Obviously, our old mate Gerry Mandering has been at work since but it still seems a very tall order for the Republicans to hold the House. The Senate looks much harder for the Democrats but not insurmountable.
Will it make much difference? Presumably, not having a friendly legislature will force Trump to govern more executively but I suspect he won't find the last two years (presumably) that comfortable and thoughts will turn to the 2028 Presidential contest.
However our involvement is all theoretical at the moment as Starmer has made clear he does not believe international law justifies the US and Israeli strikes against Iran. So it would take probably a Reform led government propped up by a Kemi led Tories for the UK to even back offensive strikes against Iran let alone sending in UK ground troops and that is not going to happen for at least 2 or 3 years and only if Labour lose the next general election. By then Trump may have removed the regime anyway
We should use our assets to stop missiles and drones from reaching the Gulf states' assets. If that means hitting Iranian missile firing locations at source, that is sensible.
We are not a party to hitting civilan infrasturcture in Iran - such as electricity and desalination plants. We are not hitting hydrocarbons facilities. We are not hitting shipping. All that should be made clear in diplomatic language to Ira, More succinctly, we are only there because of Iran's actions.
Any party which abolishes them gets my vote.
Eisenhower once quoted the dictum that no plan survives contact with the enemy, but *planning* is essential.
There is no planning here.
Eisenhower once quoted the dictum that no plan survives contact with the enemy, but *planning* is essential.
There is no planning here.
I'm no longer betting on the US Stock Market for the same reason.
I'd suggest that Trump has started a war which requires accepting casualties but is not willing to accept those casualties.
As for the US midterms, I am beginning to wonder whether all of these AI forecasts might not be rather tame. Extraordinary and probably illegal and even unconstitutional measures by Trump are being answered by large-scale and growing resistance. The economic catastrophe of tariffs has just been joined by exactly the kind of war that Trump promised to avoid, coupled with vulgarity and brutality to friend and foe alike that seems almost literally demented. This seems to me to be the kind of election that could throw up some earthquake results, and all of these scenarios seem based on the input of the relative stability of the past, rather than some unexpectedly dramatic future shift, which certainly could happen now. AI is shaped by the past, and that may end up being a poor guide to future prospects.
It surely won’t be long before cars are all factory fitted with speed limiters that automatically detect the limit. Which will cause in its early days some very frustrating situations. My car convinced itself the speed limit was 5mph on a road yesterday and started beeping at me to slow down.
Consequently the best thing we can do is keep well away from the USA's current actions. I am rather sorry that we allowed them the use of air bases on the rather specious grounds that it wasn't for 'offensive' actions.
Disagree as much as you like but suggest violence especially against a woman is a step too far
Haven't we learnt from Jo Cox and David Amess
However there is the concern over Trump and his supporters' willingness to participate in electoral fraud.
Even Reform wouldn't back ground troops though unless the US had already deployed US forces in Iran
https://yougov.com/en-gb/daily-results/20260302-14ed5-1
No bet.
The party said its proposals would be funded by scrapping a number of renewable energy schemes and green levies.'
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c4gx01d0re1o
This weekend I had about 300 miles left according to the info.
And bombing St Pete’s always been on the list of options.
But wiser heads have prevailed to date
I’ve noticed a new solar far in development on land by the A1 in Durham on the journey back and forth to the midlands at the weekend.
it's very probably excellent retail politics, but it's also the epitaph we look like deserving.
@kinabalu My grocery order has arrived and the sardines in olive oil with it. (Sainsbury's, 120g/85g, £1.95).
I’ve spent the last week in London and, despite the mostly grey weather, it’s been great. Creatively exuberant, noticeably younger than New York, seemingly better functioning across a range of small measures.
Not really the dystopian hellhole of X (formerly known as Twitter)’s imagination.
Sad to be leaving.
They are now all ferociously anti-Israel, if not actively anti-Zionist.
And frankly a bit of inconvenience is better than someone doing 35mph through a ped crossing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BLbrwE3Wmys
(Woodford is an atheist blogger who specialises in logical and philosophical inconsistencies, here turning his hand to evaluating politics. )
Serious politics means fixing what the politicians control.
The Australian Labor Government has had good ideas on this. The price of fuel is mostly tax anyway, and the fuel cost is controlled by HMG. Australia has halved fuel duty, we should do the same, or go one better and suspend it altogether.
This is a mission taking astronauts on a loop around the moon and back. Think Apollo 8.
Among other things, because of the trajectory, it will go further away from Earth than any other manned mission has done.
XY - Male
XX - Female
YYY - Delilah
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jZSpvQAMXUE
In fact I have never been so happy not to have a dog in the fight.
Iran does not, yet, and its better to have this conflict now than after a mushroom cloud appears above Tel Aviv.
Although, it begs the question are there centrist dads in such professions, in London, who aren’t really political in some way?