So, if I’m keeping up, the fact that the Allies didn’t seem to care much about protecting Axis lives in World War II, 75 years ago, demonstrates that lockdowns aren’t actually about public health but something else completely?
Did I miss a step or two, or is that it?
Wait until you hear what Sweden did during WWII.
That's the example we should have followed.
It would have saved so many British lives.
And Sweden’s economy was in so much better shape than Britain’s in ‘45..
Really disappointed. I thought we had the makings of a debate over what constitutes a proper county but it just fizzled out.
(This post brought to you from the West Riding of Yorkshire)
I always think a county is not a real county if people from the said area are sort of ashamed of it - Nobody takes pride in coming from the fair and just county of the West Midlands or Humberside imho
Not surprising, considering neither of them have existed for 24 years.
I thought West Midlands was still around but if both gone all the better for my argument that they are not proper counties!
The county was abolished in 1986, repeat 1986, but the new ‘metro mayor’ combined authority is called ‘the West Midlands.’
Well there you go , a crap county , souless and gone
Not gone, never went.
Gone for all intents and purposes. Same as Tyne and Wear.
They have a mayor now with serious devolved powers over the county, I'd suggest becoming more important not less.
Similar Greater Manchester, West & South Yorkshire.
Tyne and Wear does not have a mayor. Or a police force.
So, if I’m keeping up, the fact that the Allies didn’t seem to care much about protecting Axis lives in World War II, 75 years ago, demonstrates that lockdowns aren’t actually about public health but something else completely?
Did I miss a step or two, or is that it?
Wait until you hear what Sweden did during WWII.
That's the example we should have followed.
It would have saved so many British lives.
You mean, stayed out of the war and sold iron to Germany to keep them sweet?
Quite a lot of serious historians reckon that if the UK had followed the WWI plan for defeat in France - retreat to the UK, massively reinforce the Navy and wait, basically - that without active fighting, Hitler would have simply turned to other things. Like Russia.
Any evidence lockdowns working yet? Presumably about to go into another one because governments need to be seen to be able to control things - even when they patently cannot
You mean, apart from the fact when we locked down the virus declined and when we opened up it skyrocketed?
so err a lot of misery and poverty occurred to kick it down the road a bit?
You asked if they worked, not about the side effects.
The issue is that you don’t avoid economic damage by not locking down, you just have thousands more deaths on top.
Deaths that were on average aged 82(?) - and generally people in poor health for 82. Its never been worth it for the damage it has caused.
I'm curious - how much is your life worth?
Well its a good and hard question. For instance in war , governments talk about sacrificing lives to maintain freedom , in pandemics governments talk about sacrificng freedom to maintain lives. The one consistent thing governments are about is not saving life but maintaining control. The UK government not that long ago deliberately killed 30K people in a targeting of Dresden in a fire bombing exercise so they do not care about life just about showing they can control stuff. You know bomb this , impose lockdown here , invade Iraq there. I wish a lot of people on here coudl see past death stats (why dont they publish deaths from non covid daily (they are actually higher and you can make nice graphs of those as well)
Dresden was 80 years ago, in the middle of WWII - times and morals have changed.
Invading Iraq is not generally considered to have been a good idea - largely because of the number of dead people...
If we let COVID rip, then the hospitals would fill up. Very very rapidly. This has been demonstrated, multiple times in multiple countries. Then you don't have a health care system.
I find people dying in the street dreadfully untidy. It upsets the more excitable servants, for one thing.
Dresden was also during a period of total war. A bit different from now.
Governments never change - if they needed to exert control and the way to do that was by war and killing people (to save freedom) they would and will. Dresden was at the end of a already won war - still thought 30K lives should be killed though to make a point? Government dont have life saving at the top of any agenda , they have maintaining the veneer of control
Pretty sure allied troops were still dying. I don’t get what you point about Dresden is. Is it worse than Hamburg? If they could have, bomber command would have inflicted that kind of punishment on every German city. That was the point - to win the war, and stop having us and our allies killed.
The point about Dresden is to show that governments (even western democracies) dont care about saving life - The atomic bomb on Japan may have had more of a life versus life calculation but the fire bombing of Dresden (the fire was deliberately started to cause maximum civilian loss of life) was never about saving other lifes . It was becasue the government coudl do it ,so they did
Wasn't one of the arguments put forth for such bombings is that they would help shorten the war, saving Allied lives?
I am sure that argument was put forward - do you think it was valid ? I don't -
During WWII I do. It was a total war against a totalitarian regime.
Given it was a city packed full of civilian refugees with little or no military there , I am being generous I think in saying the bombing took place because of its rather nice buildings as well as just a load of civilians rather than just cold blooded executions of thousands
Not sure your opinion would have been popular among anyone living in the U.K. at the time. You know, the ones who had been bombed themselves, or lost husbands, fathers, sons. It easy with 75 years of hindsight to think we shouldn’t have bombed Dresden. It’s an easy opinion to hold. But it must be set into the context of the time.
yes true and I have never held a view just because it would be popular . My point is that governments are not paragons of virtue with saving life as some kind of ultimate aim. Wars clearly demonstrate that to be not true . When it is convinient governments talk about sacrificing lives for freedom and now its convienient to talk about sacrificing freedom for lives
So, if I’m keeping up, the fact that the Allies didn’t seem to care much about protecting Axis lives in World War II, 75 years ago, demonstrates that lockdowns aren’t actually about public health but something else completely?
Did I miss a step or two, or is that it?
Wait until you hear what Sweden did during WWII.
That's the example we should have followed.
It would have saved so many British lives.
And Sweden’s economy was in so much better shape than Britain’s in ‘45..
Really disappointed. I thought we had the makings of a debate over what constitutes a proper county but it just fizzled out.
(This post brought to you from the West Riding of Yorkshire)
I always think a county is not a real county if people from the said area are sort of ashamed of it - Nobody takes pride in coming from the fair and just county of the West Midlands or Humberside imho
Not surprising, considering neither of them have existed for 24 years.
I thought West Midlands was still around but if both gone all the better for my argument that they are not proper counties!
Not as a unitary authority. Birmingham, Wolverhampton, Dudley, Sandwell, Solihull and Coventry and are Metropolitan Boroughs/Cities.
Whilst Andy Street is mayor of the West Midlands county.
Any evidence lockdowns working yet? Presumably about to go into another one because governments need to be seen to be able to control things - even when they patently cannot
You mean, apart from the fact when we locked down the virus declined and when we opened up it skyrocketed?
so err a lot of misery and poverty occurred to kick it down the road a bit?
You asked if they worked, not about the side effects.
The issue is that you don’t avoid economic damage by not locking down, you just have thousands more deaths on top.
Deaths that were on average aged 82(?) - and generally people in poor health for 82. Its never been worth it for the damage it has caused.
I'm curious - how much is your life worth?
Well its a good and hard question. For instance in war , governments talk about sacrificing lives to maintain freedom , in pandemics governments talk about sacrificng freedom to maintain lives. The one consistent thing governments are about is not saving life but maintaining control. The UK government not that long ago deliberately killed 30K people in a targeting of Dresden in a fire bombing exercise so they do not care about life just about showing they can control stuff. You know bomb this , impose lockdown here , invade Iraq there. I wish a lot of people on here coudl see past death stats (why dont they publish deaths from non covid daily (they are actually higher and you can make nice graphs of those as well)
Dresden was 80 years ago, in the middle of WWII - times and morals have changed.
Invading Iraq is not generally considered to have been a good idea - largely because of the number of dead people...
If we let COVID rip, then the hospitals would fill up. Very very rapidly. This has been demonstrated, multiple times in multiple countries. Then you don't have a health care system.
I find people dying in the street dreadfully untidy. It upsets the more excitable servants, for one thing.
Dresden was also during a period of total war. A bit different from now.
Governments never change - if they needed to exert control and the way to do that was by war and killing people (to save freedom) they would and will. Dresden was at the end of a already won war - still thought 30K lives should be killed though to make a point? Government dont have life saving at the top of any agenda , they have maintaining the veneer of control
Pretty sure allied troops were still dying. I don’t get what you point about Dresden is. Is it worse than Hamburg? If they could have, bomber command would have inflicted that kind of punishment on every German city. That was the point - to win the war, and stop having us and our allies killed.
The point about Dresden is to show that governments (even western democracies) dont care about saving life - The atomic bomb on Japan may have had more of a life versus life calculation but the fire bombing of Dresden (the fire was deliberately started to cause maximum civilian loss of life) was never about saving other lifes . It was becasue the government coudl do it ,so they did
Wasn't one of the arguments put forth for such bombings is that they would help shorten the war, saving Allied lives?
I am sure that argument was put forward - do you think it was valid ? I don't -
During WWII I do. It was a total war against a totalitarian regime.
Given it was a city packed full of civilian refugees with little or no military there , I am being generous I think in saying the bombing took place because of its rather nice buildings as well as just a load of civilians rather than just cold blooded executions of thousands
Not sure your opinion would have been popular among anyone living in the U.K. at the time. You know, the ones who had been bombed themselves, or lost husbands, fathers, sons. It easy with 75 years of hindsight to think we shouldn’t have bombed Dresden. It’s an easy opinion to hold. But it must be set into the context of the time.
Even at the time there were protests - including from the Bishop of Chichester, George Bell, in the House of Lords.
So, if I’m keeping up, the fact that the Allies didn’t seem to care much about protecting Axis lives in World War II, 75 years ago, demonstrates that lockdowns aren’t actually about public health but something else completely?
Did I miss a step or two, or is that it?
Wait until you hear what Sweden did during WWII.
That's the example we should have followed.
It would have saved so many British lives.
You mean, stayed out of the war and sold iron to Germany to keep them sweet?
Quite a lot of serious historians reckon that if the UK had followed the WWI plan for defeat in France - retreat to the UK, massively reinforce the Navy and wait, basically - that without active fighting, Hitler would have simply turned to other things. Like Russia.
Any evidence lockdowns working yet? Presumably about to go into another one because governments need to be seen to be able to control things - even when they patently cannot
You mean, apart from the fact when we locked down the virus declined and when we opened up it skyrocketed?
so err a lot of misery and poverty occurred to kick it down the road a bit?
You asked if they worked, not about the side effects.
The issue is that you don’t avoid economic damage by not locking down, you just have thousands more deaths on top.
Deaths that were on average aged 82(?) - and generally people in poor health for 82. Its never been worth it for the damage it has caused.
I'm curious - how much is your life worth?
Well its a good and hard question. For instance in war , governments talk about sacrificing lives to maintain freedom , in pandemics governments talk about sacrificng freedom to maintain lives. The one consistent thing governments are about is not saving life but maintaining control. The UK government not that long ago deliberately killed 30K people in a targeting of Dresden in a fire bombing exercise so they do not care about life just about showing they can control stuff. You know bomb this , impose lockdown here , invade Iraq there. I wish a lot of people on here coudl see past death stats (why dont they publish deaths from non covid daily (they are actually higher and you can make nice graphs of those as well)
Dresden was 80 years ago, in the middle of WWII - times and morals have changed.
Invading Iraq is not generally considered to have been a good idea - largely because of the number of dead people...
If we let COVID rip, then the hospitals would fill up. Very very rapidly. This has been demonstrated, multiple times in multiple countries. Then you don't have a health care system.
I find people dying in the street dreadfully untidy. It upsets the more excitable servants, for one thing.
Dresden was also during a period of total war. A bit different from now.
Governments never change - if they needed to exert control and the way to do that was by war and killing people (to save freedom) they would and will. Dresden was at the end of a already won war - still thought 30K lives should be killed though to make a point? Government dont have life saving at the top of any agenda , they have maintaining the veneer of control
Pretty sure allied troops were still dying. I don’t get what you point about Dresden is. Is it worse than Hamburg? If they could have, bomber command would have inflicted that kind of punishment on every German city. That was the point - to win the war, and stop having us and our allies killed.
The point about Dresden is to show that governments (even western democracies) dont care about saving life - The atomic bomb on Japan may have had more of a life versus life calculation but the fire bombing of Dresden (the fire was deliberately started to cause maximum civilian loss of life) was never about saving other lifes . It was becasue the government coudl do it ,so they did
Wasn't one of the arguments put forth for such bombings is that they would help shorten the war, saving Allied lives?
I am sure that argument was put forward - do you think it was valid ? I don't -
During WWII I do. It was a total war against a totalitarian regime.
Given it was a city packed full of civilian refugees with little or no military there , I am being generous I think in saying the bombing took place because of its rather nice buildings as well as just a load of civilians rather than just cold blooded executions of thousands
WWII wasn't just a military war, it was a total war.
Dresden was a strategic target against a city with industrial, transport and communication strengths to destroy.
In normal circumstances absolutely it would be a horror but against the Nazis? A valid target.
Ummm, if the government's sole aim was maintaining control over its own population, then wouldn't it - 1984-style - have had perpetual war?
Call me stupid, but I don't think that mass restrictions on peoples' liberty is particularly popular.
I may be confusing the stories, but isn’t that down to the International Conspiracy of Scientists browbeating hapless Governments around the world into subjugating their populations for unspoken but nefarious authoritarian purposes?
So, if I’m keeping up, the fact that the Allies didn’t seem to care much about protecting Axis lives in World War II, 75 years ago, demonstrates that lockdowns aren’t actually about public health but something else completely?
Did I miss a step or two, or is that it?
Wait until you hear what Sweden did during WWII.
That's the example we should have followed.
It would have saved so many British lives.
And Sweden’s economy was in so much better shape than Britain’s in ‘45..
It was in oresome shape.
They'd got their bearings.
You were pining for that opportunity, weren’t you?
Really disappointed. I thought we had the makings of a debate over what constitutes a proper county but it just fizzled out.
(This post brought to you from the West Riding of Yorkshire)
I always think a county is not a real county if people from the said area are sort of ashamed of it - Nobody takes pride in coming from the fair and just county of the West Midlands or Humberside imho
Not surprising, considering neither of them have existed for 24 years.
I thought West Midlands was still around but if both gone all the better for my argument that they are not proper counties!
Not as a unitary authority. Birmingham, Wolverhampton, Dudley, Sandwell, Solihull and Coventry are Metropolitan Boroughs/Cities.
That takes you down the slippery slope where you end up claiming that Leicester isn't in Leicestershire as it is a separate unitary authority
In other words, the UK Government have not taken into account an important Scottish industry. I used to work in it, albeit as a student, and I know people who have whole farms based on it. That is actually a pretty serious issue.
Edit: for those PBers who are unfamiliar with it, the Scottish farming industry produces a lot of seed potatoes for the rest of the UK, because of the specific climatic conditions and also its specialist knowledge. No seed potatoes, no crop. I'm not sure what the Irish farmers will do now.
The EU is < 10% of their market.
Does that stat include the recent change to Northern Ireland's status?
In other words, the UK Government have not taken into account an important Scottish industry. I used to work in it, albeit as a student, and I know people who have whole farms based on it. That is actually a pretty serious issue.
Edit: for those PBers who are unfamiliar with it, the Scottish farming industry produces a lot of seed potatoes for the rest of the UK, because of the specific climatic conditions and also its specialist knowledge. No seed potatoes, no crop. I'm not sure what the Irish farmers will do now.
TBH if you wanted to use an example from WWII about why the current government cannot be trusted on saving lives you really shouldn't use the Dresden campaign but the Fall of Singapore.
The more you read about the Fall of Singapore it really is a clusterfuck of shithousery.
The Fall of Singapore was undoubtedly the British Army's second most inglorious moment in its history.
So, if I’m keeping up, the fact that the Allies didn’t seem to care much about protecting Axis lives in World War II, 75 years ago, demonstrates that lockdowns aren’t actually about public health but something else completely?
Did I miss a step or two, or is that it?
Wait until you hear what Sweden did during WWII.
That's the example we should have followed.
It would have saved so many British lives.
You mean, stayed out of the war and sold iron to Germany to keep them sweet?
Quite a lot of serious historians reckon that if the UK had followed the WWI plan for defeat in France - retreat to the UK, massively reinforce the Navy and wait, basically - that without active fighting, Hitler would have simply turned to other things. Like Russia.
Really disappointed. I thought we had the makings of a debate over what constitutes a proper county but it just fizzled out.
(This post brought to you from the West Riding of Yorkshire)
I always think a county is not a real county if people from the said area are sort of ashamed of it - Nobody takes pride in coming from the fair and just county of the West Midlands or Humberside imho
Not surprising, considering neither of them have existed for 24 years.
I thought West Midlands was still around but if both gone all the better for my argument that they are not proper counties!
Not as a unitary authority. Birmingham, Wolverhampton, Dudley, Sandwell, Solihull and Coventry are Metropolitan Boroughs/Cities.
That takes you down the slippery slope where you end up claiming that Leicester isn't in Leicestershire as it is a separate unitary authority
Everyone from the West Midlands will tell you that Birmingham, Solihull, and Coventry are in Warwickshire.
In other words, the UK Government have not taken into account an important Scottish industry. I used to work in it, albeit as a student, and I know people who have whole farms based on it. That is actually a pretty serious issue.
Edit: for those PBers who are unfamiliar with it, the Scottish farming industry produces a lot of seed potatoes for the rest of the UK, because of the specific climatic conditions and also its specialist knowledge. No seed potatoes, no crop. I'm not sure what the Irish farmers will do now.
The EU is < 10% of their market.
Does that stat include the recent change to Northern Ireland's status?
I should think so, given that Northern Ireland also has a seed potato industry. Anyway, lets see what the deal says...
Really disappointed. I thought we had the makings of a debate over what constitutes a proper county but it just fizzled out.
(This post brought to you from the West Riding of Yorkshire)
I always think a county is not a real county if people from the said area are sort of ashamed of it - Nobody takes pride in coming from the fair and just county of the West Midlands or Humberside imho
Not surprising, considering neither of them have existed for 24 years.
I thought West Midlands was still around but if both gone all the better for my argument that they are not proper counties!
Not as a unitary authority. Birmingham, Wolverhampton, Dudley, Sandwell, Solihull and Coventry are Metropolitan Boroughs/Cities.
That takes you down the slippery slope where you end up claiming that Leicester isn't in Leicestershire as it is a separate unitary authority
Well, it kind of, sort of isn't, but sort of is.
South Gloucestershire, of course has definitely declared UDI from Gloucestershire..
No relief. It was never in doubt. No Deal was not and never was a real world option. Thus a Deal was a real world certainty. The late theatrics were to create the optics and the atmosphere Johnson wanted to help him sell the outcome. This is the word and it has the great merit of being palpably true.
So, if I’m keeping up, the fact that the Allies didn’t seem to care much about protecting Axis lives in World War II, 75 years ago, demonstrates that lockdowns aren’t actually about public health but something else completely?
Did I miss a step or two, or is that it?
Wait until you hear what Sweden did during WWII.
That's the example we should have followed.
It would have saved so many British lives.
You mean, stayed out of the war and sold iron to Germany to keep them sweet?
Traitor Halifax would have done that if he had become PM, encouraged by King Edward VIII if he hadn't abdicated.
In other words, the UK Government have not taken into account an important Scottish industry. I used to work in it, albeit as a student, and I know people who have whole farms based on it. That is actually a pretty serious issue.
Edit: for those PBers who are unfamiliar with it, the Scottish farming industry produces a lot of seed potatoes for the rest of the UK, because of the specific climatic conditions and also its specialist knowledge. No seed potatoes, no crop. I'm not sure what the Irish farmers will do now.
We'll just not call them seed potatoes then.
Just potatoes.
Slap an "Entertainment purposes only" sticker on the side of the crate.
There is a quote from Churchill regarding the bombing of German cities. Along the lines of:
Earlier in the war Britain faced an existential threat so we had to do whatever it took to survive. Now that threat has receded, will we stop bombing the cities? Will we fuck!
Part of my OU module on Just War Theory.
Churchill shat it after Dresden though, even he realised it wasn’t a good look. He hung Harris out to dry somewhat, didn’t he?
Really disappointed. I thought we had the makings of a debate over what constitutes a proper county but it just fizzled out.
(This post brought to you from the West Riding of Yorkshire)
I always think a county is not a real county if people from the said area are sort of ashamed of it - Nobody takes pride in coming from the fair and just county of the West Midlands or Humberside imho
Not surprising, considering neither of them have existed for 24 years.
I thought West Midlands was still around but if both gone all the better for my argument that they are not proper counties!
Not as a unitary authority. Birmingham, Wolverhampton, Dudley, Sandwell, Solihull and Coventry are Metropolitan Boroughs/Cities.
That takes you down the slippery slope where you end up claiming that Leicester isn't in Leicestershire as it is a separate unitary authority
Well, it kind of, sort of isn't, but sort of is.
South Gloucestershire, of course has definitely declared UDI from Gloucestershire..
That’s OK. Nobody in Gloucestershire wanted them back anyway.
Really disappointed. I thought we had the makings of a debate over what constitutes a proper county but it just fizzled out.
(This post brought to you from the West Riding of Yorkshire)
I always think a county is not a real county if people from the said area are sort of ashamed of it - Nobody takes pride in coming from the fair and just county of the West Midlands or Humberside imho
Not surprising, considering neither of them have existed for 24 years.
I thought West Midlands was still around but if both gone all the better for my argument that they are not proper counties!
The county was abolished in 1986, repeat 1986, but the new ‘metro mayor’ combined authority is called ‘the West Midlands.’
Well there you go , a crap county , souless and gone
Not gone, never went.
Gone for all intents and purposes. Same as Tyne and Wear.
They have a mayor now with serious devolved powers over the county, I'd suggest becoming more important not less.
Similar Greater Manchester, West & South Yorkshire.
Tyne and Wear does not have a mayor. Or a police force.
Any evidence lockdowns working yet? Presumably about to go into another one because governments need to be seen to be able to control things - even when they patently cannot
You mean, apart from the fact when we locked down the virus declined and when we opened up it skyrocketed?
so err a lot of misery and poverty occurred to kick it down the road a bit?
You asked if they worked, not about the side effects.
The issue is that you don’t avoid economic damage by not locking down, you just have thousands more deaths on top.
Deaths that were on average aged 82(?) - and generally people in poor health for 82. Its never been worth it for the damage it has caused.
I'm curious - how much is your life worth?
Well its a good and hard question. For instance in war , governments talk about sacrificing lives to maintain freedom , in pandemics governments talk about sacrificng freedom to maintain lives. The one consistent thing governments are about is not saving life but maintaining control. The UK government not that long ago deliberately killed 30K people in a targeting of Dresden in a fire bombing exercise so they do not care about life just about showing they can control stuff. You know bomb this , impose lockdown here , invade Iraq there. I wish a lot of people on here coudl see past death stats (why dont they publish deaths from non covid daily (they are actually higher and you can make nice graphs of those as well)
Dresden was 80 years ago, in the middle of WWII - times and morals have changed.
Invading Iraq is not generally considered to have been a good idea - largely because of the number of dead people...
If we let COVID rip, then the hospitals would fill up. Very very rapidly. This has been demonstrated, multiple times in multiple countries. Then you don't have a health care system.
I find people dying in the street dreadfully untidy. It upsets the more excitable servants, for one thing.
Dresden was also during a period of total war. A bit different from now.
Governments never change - if they needed to exert control and the way to do that was by war and killing people (to save freedom) they would and will. Dresden was at the end of a already won war - still thought 30K lives should be killed though to make a point? Government dont have life saving at the top of any agenda , they have maintaining the veneer of control
Pretty sure allied troops were still dying. I don’t get what you point about Dresden is. Is it worse than Hamburg? If they could have, bomber command would have inflicted that kind of punishment on every German city. That was the point - to win the war, and stop having us and our allies killed.
Although it has to be said, they were very bad at it. Indeed, a case was made in the 1960s that all Allied bombing did was focus minds on the fact the Germans were at war and therefore spur the workforce on to greater efforts with a resultant improvement in the German economy.
It is true that Germany’s war industry reached peak output in mid-1944 just as Allied bombing reached a crescendo, although it is now accepted many other factors were at play.
But for the loss of, without checking, 50% of the aircrews involved it wasn’t a great return for the war effort.
This is nonsense. We bombed the Germans into submission and chaos. Bomber Harris was right. He could have won the war by himself (and with his exceptionally brave crews). The question is: was this morally correct, given the inevitable and grotesque loss of German civilian life?
In the end the Allies decided No (possibly for political reasons), and drove on to Berlin (thus killing many Allied soldiers who would have lived if we'd relied on air power alone).
After Okinawa, the Americans made exactly the opposite moral choice: they decided that hundreds of thousands of Japanese should die in a few seconds, via bombing, thereby ending the war in a week and saving more American lives (and probably Japanese lives too)
No, @ydoethur is correct. It doesn't reduce the bravery of our bomber crews to question how effective in its aims the strategic bombing campaign was. Harris though he could stop Germany's war economy, and also break German morale. He did neither.
Indeed probably the biggest effect was to divert German Air and artillery production to shooting down British and American bombers, rather than to supporting the Eastern front. Indirectly it helped Stalin.
By the end of a war, people are usually brutalised, so care little about enemy casualties. Like Andersonville prison or the 1919 blockade of Germany, there is little mercy left.
TBH if you wanted to use an example from WWII about why the current government cannot be trusted on saving lives you really shouldn't use the Dresden campaign but the Fall of Singapore.
The more you read about the Fall of Singapore it really is a clusterfuck of shithousery.
The Fall of Singapore was undoubtedly the British Army's second most inglorious moment in its history.
What about Crete - when in possession of intelligence that didn't just include how many paratroops, where and armed how* but detail down to the number of spare underpants** they would have - they still managed to lose?
*Due to the rubbish design of their parachutes, German paratroops were armed with pistols only, when they landed. Everything else was in containers dropped separately. **Yes, indeed.
Any evidence lockdowns working yet? Presumably about to go into another one because governments need to be seen to be able to control things - even when they patently cannot
You mean, apart from the fact when we locked down the virus declined and when we opened up it skyrocketed?
so err a lot of misery and poverty occurred to kick it down the road a bit?
You asked if they worked, not about the side effects.
The issue is that you don’t avoid economic damage by not locking down, you just have thousands more deaths on top.
Deaths that were on average aged 82(?) - and generally people in poor health for 82. Its never been worth it for the damage it has caused.
I'm curious - how much is your life worth?
Well its a good and hard question. For instance in war , governments talk about sacrificing lives to maintain freedom , in pandemics governments talk about sacrificng freedom to maintain lives. The one consistent thing governments are about is not saving life but maintaining control. The UK government not that long ago deliberately killed 30K people in a targeting of Dresden in a fire bombing exercise so they do not care about life just about showing they can control stuff. You know bomb this , impose lockdown here , invade Iraq there. I wish a lot of people on here coudl see past death stats (why dont they publish deaths from non covid daily (they are actually higher and you can make nice graphs of those as well)
Dresden was 80 years ago, in the middle of WWII - times and morals have changed.
Invading Iraq is not generally considered to have been a good idea - largely because of the number of dead people...
If we let COVID rip, then the hospitals would fill up. Very very rapidly. This has been demonstrated, multiple times in multiple countries. Then you don't have a health care system.
I find people dying in the street dreadfully untidy. It upsets the more excitable servants, for one thing.
Dresden was also during a period of total war. A bit different from now.
Governments never change - if they needed to exert control and the way to do that was by war and killing people (to save freedom) they would and will. Dresden was at the end of a already won war - still thought 30K lives should be killed though to make a point? Government dont have life saving at the top of any agenda , they have maintaining the veneer of control
Pretty sure allied troops were still dying. I don’t get what you point about Dresden is. Is it worse than Hamburg? If they could have, bomber command would have inflicted that kind of punishment on every German city. That was the point - to win the war, and stop having us and our allies killed.
The point about Dresden is to show that governments (even western democracies) dont care about saving life - The atomic bomb on Japan may have had more of a life versus life calculation but the fire bombing of Dresden (the fire was deliberately started to cause maximum civilian loss of life) was never about saving other lifes . It was becasue the government coudl do it ,so they did
Wasn't one of the arguments put forth for such bombings is that they would help shorten the war, saving Allied lives?
I am sure that argument was put forward - do you think it was valid ? I don't -
During WWII I do. It was a total war against a totalitarian regime.
Given it was a city packed full of civilian refugees with little or no military there , I am being generous I think in saying the bombing took place because of its rather nice buildings as well as just a load of civilians rather than just cold blooded executions of thousands
Not sure your opinion would have been popular among anyone living in the U.K. at the time. You know, the ones who had been bombed themselves, or lost husbands, fathers, sons. It easy with 75 years of hindsight to think we shouldn’t have bombed Dresden. It’s an easy opinion to hold. But it must be set into the context of the time.
yes true and I have never held a view just because it would be popular . My point is that governments are not paragons of virtue with saving life as some kind of ultimate aim. Wars clearly demonstrate that to be not true . When it is convinient governments talk about sacrificing lives for freedom and now its convienient to talk about sacrificing freedom for lives
But your comparison with WW2 is absurd. If Nazi Germany had defeated Britain in that war, we would have sacrificed EVERYTHING: lives, economy, freedom, humanity. Germany would have taken over the British Empire, ruling the world, and deliberately slaughtering every Jewish person on most of the globe (and many dissidents, intellectuals, Roma, homosexuals, and so on). It would have been a complete defeat for humankind and the the human soul. An apocalypse.
Defeating Hitler, and utterly vanquishing Nazism, was a profound moral imperative. Which justified otherwise abhorrent acts.
After Nanjing, the same can be said for Imperial Japan. It was a truly evil polity. The Americans were right to A-bomb Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Given the deal hasn't been published then how does the SNP know seed potatoes aren't covered?
And if there was prior public domain knowledge they might not be then why only bring it up after negotiations close and not before hand where maybe it could have influenced the negotiations?
Unless the SNP would rather stand idly by in order to stoke a grievance?
TBH if you wanted to use an example from WWII about why the current government cannot be trusted on saving lives you really shouldn't use the Dresden campaign but the Fall of Singapore.
The more you read about the Fall of Singapore it really is a clusterfuck of shithousery.
The Fall of Singapore was undoubtedly the British Army's second most inglorious moment in its history.
What about Crete - when in possession of intelligence that didn't just include how many paratroops, where and armed how* but detail down to the number of spare underpants** they would have - they still managed to lose?
*Due to the rubbish design of their parachutes, German paratroops were armed with pistols only, when they landed. Everything else was in containers dropped separately. **Yes, indeed.
That was pretty bad but Singapore's sheer number of POWs was something special.
Any evidence lockdowns working yet? Presumably about to go into another one because governments need to be seen to be able to control things - even when they patently cannot
You mean, apart from the fact when we locked down the virus declined and when we opened up it skyrocketed?
so err a lot of misery and poverty occurred to kick it down the road a bit?
You asked if they worked, not about the side effects.
The issue is that you don’t avoid economic damage by not locking down, you just have thousands more deaths on top.
Deaths that were on average aged 82(?) - and generally people in poor health for 82. Its never been worth it for the damage it has caused.
I'm curious - how much is your life worth?
Well its a good and hard question. For instance in war , governments talk about sacrificing lives to maintain freedom , in pandemics governments talk about sacrificng freedom to maintain lives. The one consistent thing governments are about is not saving life but maintaining control. The UK government not that long ago deliberately killed 30K people in a targeting of Dresden in a fire bombing exercise so they do not care about life just about showing they can control stuff. You know bomb this , impose lockdown here , invade Iraq there. I wish a lot of people on here coudl see past death stats (why dont they publish deaths from non covid daily (they are actually higher and you can make nice graphs of those as well)
Dresden was 80 years ago, in the middle of WWII - times and morals have changed.
Invading Iraq is not generally considered to have been a good idea - largely because of the number of dead people...
If we let COVID rip, then the hospitals would fill up. Very very rapidly. This has been demonstrated, multiple times in multiple countries. Then you don't have a health care system.
I find people dying in the street dreadfully untidy. It upsets the more excitable servants, for one thing.
Dresden was also during a period of total war. A bit different from now.
Governments never change - if they needed to exert control and the way to do that was by war and killing people (to save freedom) they would and will. Dresden was at the end of a already won war - still thought 30K lives should be killed though to make a point? Government dont have life saving at the top of any agenda , they have maintaining the veneer of control
Pretty sure allied troops were still dying. I don’t get what you point about Dresden is. Is it worse than Hamburg? If they could have, bomber command would have inflicted that kind of punishment on every German city. That was the point - to win the war, and stop having us and our allies killed.
Although it has to be said, they were very bad at it. Indeed, a case was made in the 1960s that all Allied bombing did was focus minds on the fact the Germans were at war and therefore spur the workforce on to greater efforts with a resultant improvement in the German economy.
It is true that Germany’s war industry reached peak output in mid-1944 just as Allied bombing reached a crescendo, although it is now accepted many other factors were at play.
But for the loss of, without checking, 50% of the aircrews involved it wasn’t a great return for the war effort.
This is nonsense. We bombed the Germans into submission and chaos. Bomber Harris was right. He could have won the war by himself (and with his exceptionally brave crews). The question is: was this morally correct, given the inevitable and grotesque loss of German civilian life?
In the end the Allies decided No (possibly for political reasons), and drove on to Berlin (thus killing many Allied soldiers who would have lived if we'd relied on air power alone).
After Okinawa, the Americans made exactly the opposite moral choice: they decided that hundreds of thousands of Japanese should die in a few seconds, via bombing, thereby ending the war in a week and saving more American lives (and probably Japanese lives too)
No, @ydoethur is correct. It doesn't reduce the bravery of our bomber crews to question how effective in its aims the strategic bombing campaign was. Harris though he could stop Germany's war economy, and also break German morale. He did neither.
Indeed probably the biggest effect was to divert German Air and artillery production to shooting down British and American bombers, rather than to supporting the Eastern front. Indirectly it helped Stalin.
By the end of a war, people are usually brutalised, so care little about enemy casualties. Like Andersonville prison or the 1919 blockade of Germany, there is little mercy left.
I have read an awful lot of literature about the air campaigns of WW2, and their utility (I became mildly obsessed with it for a year or so). It would be tedious to rehearse it all on here. Let's just say I disagree.
No relief. It was never in doubt. No Deal was not and never was a real world option. Thus a Deal was a real world certainty. The late theatrics were to create the optics and the atmosphere Johnson wanted to help him sell the outcome. This is the word and it has the great merit of being palpably true.
And of course because any quality negotiations always go to the wire. Unavoidable truth.
Any evidence lockdowns working yet? Presumably about to go into another one because governments need to be seen to be able to control things - even when they patently cannot
You mean, apart from the fact when we locked down the virus declined and when we opened up it skyrocketed?
so err a lot of misery and poverty occurred to kick it down the road a bit?
You asked if they worked, not about the side effects.
The issue is that you don’t avoid economic damage by not locking down, you just have thousands more deaths on top.
Deaths that were on average aged 82(?) - and generally people in poor health for 82. Its never been worth it for the damage it has caused.
I'm curious - how much is your life worth?
Well its a good and hard question. For instance in war , governments talk about sacrificing lives to maintain freedom , in pandemics governments talk about sacrificng freedom to maintain lives. The one consistent thing governments are about is not saving life but maintaining control. The UK government not that long ago deliberately killed 30K people in a targeting of Dresden in a fire bombing exercise so they do not care about life just about showing they can control stuff. You know bomb this , impose lockdown here , invade Iraq there. I wish a lot of people on here coudl see past death stats (why dont they publish deaths from non covid daily (they are actually higher and you can make nice graphs of those as well)
Dresden was 80 years ago, in the middle of WWII - times and morals have changed.
Invading Iraq is not generally considered to have been a good idea - largely because of the number of dead people...
If we let COVID rip, then the hospitals would fill up. Very very rapidly. This has been demonstrated, multiple times in multiple countries. Then you don't have a health care system.
I find people dying in the street dreadfully untidy. It upsets the more excitable servants, for one thing.
Dresden was also during a period of total war. A bit different from now.
Governments never change - if they needed to exert control and the way to do that was by war and killing people (to save freedom) they would and will. Dresden was at the end of a already won war - still thought 30K lives should be killed though to make a point? Government dont have life saving at the top of any agenda , they have maintaining the veneer of control
Pretty sure allied troops were still dying. I don’t get what you point about Dresden is. Is it worse than Hamburg? If they could have, bomber command would have inflicted that kind of punishment on every German city. That was the point - to win the war, and stop having us and our allies killed.
Although it has to be said, they were very bad at it. Indeed, a case was made in the 1960s that all Allied bombing did was focus minds on the fact the Germans were at war and therefore spur the workforce on to greater efforts with a resultant improvement in the German economy.
It is true that Germany’s war industry reached peak output in mid-1944 just as Allied bombing reached a crescendo, although it is now accepted many other factors were at play.
But for the loss of, without checking, 50% of the aircrews involved it wasn’t a great return for the war effort.
This is nonsense. We bombed the Germans into submission and chaos. Bomber Harris was right. He could have won the war by himself (and with his exceptionally brave crews). The question is: was this morally correct, given the inevitable and grotesque loss of German civilian life?
In the end the Allies decided No (possibly for political reasons), and drove on to Berlin (thus killing many Allied soldiers who would have lived if we'd relied on air power alone).
After Okinawa, the Americans made exactly the opposite moral choice: they decided that hundreds of thousands of Japanese should die in a few seconds, via bombing, thereby ending the war in a week and saving more American lives (and probably Japanese lives too)
No, @ydoethur is correct. It doesn't reduce the bravery of our bomber crews to question how effective in its aims the strategic bombing campaign was. Harris though he could stop Germany's war economy, and also break German morale. He did neither.
Indeed probably the biggest effect was to divert German Air and artillery production to shooting down British and American bombers, rather than to supporting the Eastern front. Indirectly it helped Stalin.
By the end of a war, people are usually brutalised, so care little about enemy casualties. Like Andersonville prison or the 1919 blockade of Germany, there is little mercy left.
On morale, I’ve always wondered why, seeing the Incredible resilience of London under the blitz, the ‘we can take it’ attitude, we thought that the German civilian response would be different...
Really disappointed. I thought we had the makings of a debate over what constitutes a proper county but it just fizzled out.
(This post brought to you from the West Riding of Yorkshire)
I always think a county is not a real county if people from the said area are sort of ashamed of it - Nobody takes pride in coming from the fair and just county of the West Midlands or Humberside imho
Not surprising, considering neither of them have existed for 24 years.
I thought West Midlands was still around but if both gone all the better for my argument that they are not proper counties!
Not as a unitary authority. Birmingham, Wolverhampton, Dudley, Sandwell, Solihull and Coventry are Metropolitan Boroughs/Cities.
That takes you down the slippery slope where you end up claiming that Leicester isn't in Leicestershire as it is a separate unitary authority
Everyone from the West Midlands will tell you that Birmingham, Solihull, and Coventry are in Warwickshire.
I was pleased to see that PBers pushed this price to 13/1 over the course of today, from 6/1 at the start of it. And amused to see it snap back to 7/1 tonight.
If that was the entire budget they might have a point.
Don't see why that would be relevant - if he has raised specific things as complaints but he had proposed those same things, then what else is in it is immaterial, he would still be nonsensically ridiculous even if the rest of it was a pile of crap.
Really disappointed. I thought we had the makings of a debate over what constitutes a proper county but it just fizzled out.
(This post brought to you from the West Riding of Yorkshire)
I always think a county is not a real county if people from the said area are sort of ashamed of it - Nobody takes pride in coming from the fair and just county of the West Midlands or Humberside imho
Not surprising, considering neither of them have existed for 24 years.
I thought West Midlands was still around but if both gone all the better for my argument that they are not proper counties!
Not as a unitary authority. Birmingham, Wolverhampton, Dudley, Sandwell, Solihull and Coventry are Metropolitan Boroughs/Cities.
That takes you down the slippery slope where you end up claiming that Leicester isn't in Leicestershire as it is a separate unitary authority
Everyone from the West Midlands will tell you that Birmingham, Solihull, and Coventry are in Warwickshire.
If that was the entire budget they might have a point.
Don't see why that would be relevant - if he has raised specific things as complaints but he had proposed those same things, then what else is in it is immaterial, he would still be nonsensically ridiculous even if the rest of it was a pile of crap.
Depends if the money is being used the same way in each case? That's not clear here.
Any evidence lockdowns working yet? Presumably about to go into another one because governments need to be seen to be able to control things - even when they patently cannot
You mean, apart from the fact when we locked down the virus declined and when we opened up it skyrocketed?
so err a lot of misery and poverty occurred to kick it down the road a bit?
You asked if they worked, not about the side effects.
The issue is that you don’t avoid economic damage by not locking down, you just have thousands more deaths on top.
Deaths that were on average aged 82(?) - and generally people in poor health for 82. Its never been worth it for the damage it has caused.
I'm curious - how much is your life worth?
Well its a good and hard question. For instance in war , governments talk about sacrificing lives to maintain freedom , in pandemics governments talk about sacrificng freedom to maintain lives. The one consistent thing governments are about is not saving life but maintaining control. The UK government not that long ago deliberately killed 30K people in a targeting of Dresden in a fire bombing exercise so they do not care about life just about showing they can control stuff. You know bomb this , impose lockdown here , invade Iraq there. I wish a lot of people on here coudl see past death stats (why dont they publish deaths from non covid daily (they are actually higher and you can make nice graphs of those as well)
Dresden was 80 years ago, in the middle of WWII - times and morals have changed.
Invading Iraq is not generally considered to have been a good idea - largely because of the number of dead people...
If we let COVID rip, then the hospitals would fill up. Very very rapidly. This has been demonstrated, multiple times in multiple countries. Then you don't have a health care system.
I find people dying in the street dreadfully untidy. It upsets the more excitable servants, for one thing.
Dresden was also during a period of total war. A bit different from now.
Governments never change - if they needed to exert control and the way to do that was by war and killing people (to save freedom) they would and will. Dresden was at the end of a already won war - still thought 30K lives should be killed though to make a point? Government dont have life saving at the top of any agenda , they have maintaining the veneer of control
Pretty sure allied troops were still dying. I don’t get what you point about Dresden is. Is it worse than Hamburg? If they could have, bomber command would have inflicted that kind of punishment on every German city. That was the point - to win the war, and stop having us and our allies killed.
Although it has to be said, they were very bad at it. Indeed, a case was made in the 1960s that all Allied bombing did was focus minds on the fact the Germans were at war and therefore spur the workforce on to greater efforts with a resultant improvement in the German economy.
It is true that Germany’s war industry reached peak output in mid-1944 just as Allied bombing reached a crescendo, although it is now accepted many other factors were at play.
But for the loss of, without checking, 50% of the aircrews involved it wasn’t a great return for the war effort.
This is nonsense. We bombed the Germans into submission and chaos. Bomber Harris was right. He could have won the war by himself (and with his exceptionally brave crews). The question is: was this morally correct, given the inevitable and grotesque loss of German civilian life?
In the end the Allies decided No (possibly for political reasons), and drove on to Berlin (thus killing many Allied soldiers who would have lived if we'd relied on air power alone).
After Okinawa, the Americans made exactly the opposite moral choice: they decided that hundreds of thousands of Japanese should die in a few seconds, via bombing, thereby ending the war in a week and saving more American lives (and probably Japanese lives too)
No, @ydoethur is correct. It doesn't reduce the bravery of our bomber crews to question how effective in its aims the strategic bombing campaign was. Harris though he could stop Germany's war economy, and also break German morale. It did neither.
Indeed probably the biggest effect was to divert German Air and artillery production to shooting down British and American bombers, rather than to supporting the Eastern front. Indirectly it helped Stalin.
By the end of a war, people are usually brutalised, so care little about enemy casualties. Like Andersonville prison or the 1919 blockade of Germany, there is little mercy left.
On morale, I’ve always wondered why, seeing the Incredible resilience of London under the blitz, the ‘we can take it’ attitude, we thought that the German civilian response would be different...
The German reaction WAS different, after the firestorms of Hamburg, and when the British realised they could repeat this Satanic device, elsewhere. A firestorm is a unique thing, more like an A-bomb. The Blitz was bad but people did not get sucked into tornadoes of flame.
For the first it may not amount to it automatically, but has a higher risk of it occurring perhaps. The second is why procedures are so important if you are to avoid corruption.
If that was the entire budget they might have a point.
Don't see why that would be relevant - if he has raised specific things as complaints but he had proposed those same things, then what else is in it is immaterial, he would still be nonsensically ridiculous even if the rest of it was a pile of crap.
Depends if the money is being used the same way in each case? That's not clear here.
With the numbers so similar does it really seem likely that the fundamental nature of how that money was to be used in those areas is markedly different? Or that Trump is capable of making such a nuanced point?
Any evidence lockdowns working yet? Presumably about to go into another one because governments need to be seen to be able to control things - even when they patently cannot
You mean, apart from the fact when we locked down the virus declined and when we opened up it skyrocketed?
so err a lot of misery and poverty occurred to kick it down the road a bit?
You asked if they worked, not about the side effects.
The issue is that you don’t avoid economic damage by not locking down, you just have thousands more deaths on top.
Deaths that were on average aged 82(?) - and generally people in poor health for 82. Its never been worth it for the damage it has caused.
I'm curious - how much is your life worth?
Well its a good and hard question. For instance in war , governments talk about sacrificing lives to maintain freedom , in pandemics governments talk about sacrificng freedom to maintain lives. The one consistent thing governments are about is not saving life but maintaining control. The UK government not that long ago deliberately killed 30K people in a targeting of Dresden in a fire bombing exercise so they do not care about life just about showing they can control stuff. You know bomb this , impose lockdown here , invade Iraq there. I wish a lot of people on here coudl see past death stats (why dont they publish deaths from non covid daily (they are actually higher and you can make nice graphs of those as well)
Dresden was 80 years ago, in the middle of WWII - times and morals have changed.
Invading Iraq is not generally considered to have been a good idea - largely because of the number of dead people...
If we let COVID rip, then the hospitals would fill up. Very very rapidly. This has been demonstrated, multiple times in multiple countries. Then you don't have a health care system.
I find people dying in the street dreadfully untidy. It upsets the more excitable servants, for one thing.
Dresden was also during a period of total war. A bit different from now.
Governments never change - if they needed to exert control and the way to do that was by war and killing people (to save freedom) they would and will. Dresden was at the end of a already won war - still thought 30K lives should be killed though to make a point? Government dont have life saving at the top of any agenda , they have maintaining the veneer of control
Pretty sure allied troops were still dying. I don’t get what you point about Dresden is. Is it worse than Hamburg? If they could have, bomber command would have inflicted that kind of punishment on every German city. That was the point - to win the war, and stop having us and our allies killed.
Although it has to be said, they were very bad at it. Indeed, a case was made in the 1960s that all Allied bombing did was focus minds on the fact the Germans were at war and therefore spur the workforce on to greater efforts with a resultant improvement in the German economy.
It is true that Germany’s war industry reached peak output in mid-1944 just as Allied bombing reached a crescendo, although it is now accepted many other factors were at play.
But for the loss of, without checking, 50% of the aircrews involved it wasn’t a great return for the war effort.
This is nonsense. We bombed the Germans into submission and chaos. Bomber Harris was right. He could have won the war by himself (and with his exceptionally brave crews). The question is: was this morally correct, given the inevitable and grotesque loss of German civilian life?
In the end the Allies decided No (possibly for political reasons), and drove on to Berlin (thus killing many Allied soldiers who would have lived if we'd relied on air power alone).
After Okinawa, the Americans made exactly the opposite moral choice: they decided that hundreds of thousands of Japanese should die in a few seconds, via bombing, thereby ending the war in a week and saving more American lives (and probably Japanese lives too)
No, @ydoethur is correct. It doesn't reduce the bravery of our bomber crews to question how effective in its aims the strategic bombing campaign was. Harris though he could stop Germany's war economyel, and also break German morale. He did neither.
Indeed probably the biggest effect was to divert German Air and artillery production to shooting down British and American bombers, rather than to supporting the Eastern front. Indirectly it helped Stalin.
By the end of a war, people are usually brutalised, so care little about enemy casualties. Like Andersonville prison or the 1919 blockade of Germany, there is little mercy left.
The recent Berlin 1945 documentary featured quite a few contemporary Allied newsreels. I wouldn’t say the the notes of vengeful glee over the destruction of the city were much more muted in the British ones than the Soviet.
The only people likely more frustrated in their jobs than the negotiating teams of Brexit in the pointlessness of most of their work are the employees of the Boundary Commission.
If that was the entire budget they might have a point.
Don't see why that would be relevant - if he has raised specific things as complaints but he had proposed those same things, then what else is in it is immaterial, he would still be nonsensically ridiculous even if the rest of it was a pile of crap.
Depends if the money is being used the same way in each case? That's not clear here.
With the numbers so similar does it really seem likely that the fundamental nature of how that money was to be used in those areas is markedly different? Or that Trump is capable of making such a nuanced point?
Some are likely to be the same, after all you don't win a negotiation by being absolutist. But you could imagine the amount of money being the same but earmarked for something other project.
With the numbers so similar does it really seem likely that the fundamental nature of how that money was to be used in those areas is markedly different? Or that Trump is capable of making such a nuanced point?
Any evidence lockdowns working yet? Presumably about to go into another one because governments need to be seen to be able to control things - even when they patently cannot
You mean, apart from the fact when we locked down the virus declined and when we opened up it skyrocketed?
so err a lot of misery and poverty occurred to kick it down the road a bit?
You asked if they worked, not about the side effects.
The issue is that you don’t avoid economic damage by not locking down, you just have thousands more deaths on top.
Deaths that were on average aged 82(?) - and generally people in poor health for 82. Its never been worth it for the damage it has caused.
I'm curious - how much is your life worth?
Well its a good and hard question. For instance in war , governments talk about sacrificing lives to maintain freedom , in pandemics governments talk about sacrificng freedom to maintain lives. The one consistent thing governments are about is not saving life but maintaining control. The UK government not that long ago deliberately killed 30K people in a targeting of Dresden in a fire bombing exercise so they do not care about life just about showing they can control stuff. You know bomb this , impose lockdown here , invade Iraq there. I wish a lot of people on here coudl see past death stats (why dont they publish deaths from non covid daily (they are actually higher and you can make nice graphs of those as well)
Dresden was 80 years ago, in the middle of WWII - times and morals have changed.
Invading Iraq is not generally considered to have been a good idea - largely because of the number of dead people...
If we let COVID rip, then the hospitals would fill up. Very very rapidly. This has been demonstrated, multiple times in multiple countries. Then you don't have a health care system.
I find people dying in the street dreadfully untidy. It upsets the more excitable servants, for one thing.
Dresden was also during a period of total war. A bit different from now.
Governments never change - if they needed to exert control and the way to do that was by war and killing people (to save freedom) they would and will. Dresden was at the end of a already won war - still thought 30K lives should be killed though to make a point? Government dont have life saving at the top of any agenda , they have maintaining the veneer of control
Pretty sure allied troops were still dying. I don’t get what you point about Dresden is. Is it worse than Hamburg? If they could have, bomber command would have inflicted that kind of punishment on every German city. That was the point - to win the war, and stop having us and our allies killed.
Although it has to be said, they were very bad at it. Indeed, a case was made in the 1960s that all Allied bombing did was focus minds on the fact the Germans were at war and therefore spur the workforce on to greater efforts with a resultant improvement in the German economy.
It is true that Germany’s war industry reached peak output in mid-1944 just as Allied bombing reached a crescendo, although it is now accepted many other factors were at play.
But for the loss of, without checking, 50% of the aircrews involved it wasn’t a great return for the war effort.
This is nonsense. We bombed the Germans into submission and chaos. Bomber Harris was right. He could have won the war by himself (and with his exceptionally brave crews). The question is: was this morally correct, given the inevitable and grotesque loss of German civilian life?
In the end the Allies decided No (possibly for political reasons), and drove on to Berlin (thus killing many Allied soldiers who would have lived if we'd relied on air power alone).
After Okinawa, the Americans made exactly the opposite moral choice: they decided that hundreds of thousands of Japanese should die in a few seconds, via bombing, thereby ending the war in a week and saving more American lives (and probably Japanese lives too)
No, @ydoethur is correct. It doesn't reduce the bravery of our bomber crews to question how effective in its aims the strategic bombing campaign was. Harris though he could stop Germany's war economyel, and also break German morale. He did neither.
Indeed probably the biggest effect was to divert German Air and artillery production to shooting down British and American bombers, rather than to supporting the Eastern front. Indirectly it helped Stalin.
By the end of a war, people are usually brutalised, so care little about enemy casualties. Like Andersonville prison or the 1919 blockade of Germany, there is little mercy left.
The recent Berlin 1945 documentary featured quite a few contemporary Allied newsreels. I wouldn’t say the the notes of vengeful glee over the destruction of the city were much more muted in the British ones than the Soviet.
Such is war. Not all sides will be equal in comportment, but I think we kid ourserlves about how detached and rational the 'good' side will have been at times.
If that was the entire budget they might have a point.
Don't see why that would be relevant - if he has raised specific things as complaints but he had proposed those same things, then what else is in it is immaterial, he would still be nonsensically ridiculous even if the rest of it was a pile of crap.
Depends if the money is being used the same way in each case? That's not clear here.
With the numbers so similar does it really seem likely that the fundamental nature of how that money was to be used in those areas is markedly different? Or that Trump is capable of making such a nuanced point?
Some are likely to be the same, after all you don't win a negotiation by being absolutist. But you could imagine the amount of money being the same but earmarked for something other project.
But as I say, do you think that is what Trump would be objecting to? I don't think he operates in a way which would allow him to make a subtle argument, and it didn't come across that way. The simpler explanation seems more likely.
In other words, the UK Government have not taken into account an important Scottish industry. I used to work in it, albeit as a student, and I know people who have whole farms based on it. That is actually a pretty serious issue.
Edit: for those PBers who are unfamiliar with it, the Scottish farming industry produces a lot of seed potatoes for the rest of the UK, because of the specific climatic conditions and also its specialist knowledge. No seed potatoes, no crop. I'm not sure what the Irish farmers will do now.
Complain to the French?
Or you could blame the Brits for not sending potatoes to Ireland?
TBH if you wanted to use an example from WWII about why the current government cannot be trusted on saving lives you really shouldn't use the Dresden campaign but the Fall of Singapore.
The more you read about the Fall of Singapore it really is a clusterfuck of shithousery.
The Fall of Singapore was undoubtedly the British Army's second most inglorious moment in its history.
What about Crete - when in possession of intelligence that didn't just include how many paratroops, where and armed how* but detail down to the number of spare underpants** they would have - they still managed to lose?
*Due to the rubbish design of their parachutes, German paratroops were armed with pistols only, when they landed. Everything else was in containers dropped separately. **Yes, indeed.
Wasn't Crete lost deliberately to cover up the fact we had broken Enigma? Or was that some other battle?
Really disappointed. I thought we had the makings of a debate over what constitutes a proper county but it just fizzled out.
(This post brought to you from the West Riding of Yorkshire)
I always think a county is not a real county if people from the said area are sort of ashamed of it - Nobody takes pride in coming from the fair and just county of the West Midlands or Humberside imho
Not surprising, considering neither of them have existed for 24 years.
I thought West Midlands was still around but if both gone all the better for my argument that they are not proper counties!
Not as a unitary authority. Birmingham, Wolverhampton, Dudley, Sandwell, Solihull and Coventry are Metropolitan Boroughs/Cities.
That takes you down the slippery slope where you end up claiming that Leicester isn't in Leicestershire as it is a separate unitary authority
Well, it kind of, sort of isn't, but sort of is.
South Gloucestershire, of course has definitely declared UDI from Gloucestershire..
That’s OK. Nobody in Gloucestershire wanted them back anyway.
Really disappointed. I thought we had the makings of a debate over what constitutes a proper county but it just fizzled out.
(This post brought to you from the West Riding of Yorkshire)
I always think a county is not a real county if people from the said area are sort of ashamed of it - Nobody takes pride in coming from the fair and just county of the West Midlands or Humberside imho
Not surprising, considering neither of them have existed for 24 years.
I thought West Midlands was still around but if both gone all the better for my argument that they are not proper counties!
Not as a unitary authority. Birmingham, Wolverhampton, Dudley, Sandwell, Solihull and Coventry are Metropolitan Boroughs/Cities.
That takes you down the slippery slope where you end up claiming that Leicester isn't in Leicestershire as it is a separate unitary authority
Well, it kind of, sort of isn't, but sort of is.
South Gloucestershire, of course has definitely declared UDI from Gloucestershire..
That’s OK. Nobody in Gloucestershire wanted them back anyway.
Any evidence lockdowns working yet? Presumably about to go into another one because governments need to be seen to be able to control things - even when they patently cannot
You mean, apart from the fact when we locked down the virus declined and when we opened up it skyrocketed?
so err a lot of misery and poverty occurred to kick it down the road a bit?
You asked if they worked, not about the side effects.
The issue is that you don’t avoid economic damage by not locking down, you just have thousands more deaths on top.
Deaths that were on average aged 82(?) - and generally people in poor health for 82. Its never been worth it for the damage it has caused.
I'm curious - how much is your life worth?
Well its a good and hard question. For instance in war , governments talk about sacrificing lives to maintain freedom , in pandemics governments talk about sacrificng freedom to maintain lives. The one consistent thing governments are about is not saving life but maintaining control. The UK government not that long ago deliberately killed 30K people in a targeting of Dresden in a fire bombing exercise so they do not care about life just about showing they can control stuff. You know bomb this , impose lockdown here , invade Iraq there. I wish a lot of people on here coudl see past death stats (why dont they publish deaths from non covid daily (they are actually higher and you can make nice graphs of those as well)
Dresden was 80 years ago, in the middle of WWII - times and morals have changed.
Invading Iraq is not generally considered to have been a good idea - largely because of the number of dead people...
If we let COVID rip, then the hospitals would fill up. Very very rapidly. This has been demonstrated, multiple times in multiple countries. Then you don't have a health care system.
I find people dying in the street dreadfully untidy. It upsets the more excitable servants, for one thing.
Dresden was also during a period of total war. A bit different from now.
Governments never change - if they needed to exert control and the way to do that was by war and killing people (to save freedom) they would and will. Dresden was at the end of a already won war - still thought 30K lives should be killed though to make a point? Government dont have life saving at the top of any agenda , they have maintaining the veneer of control
Pretty sure allied troops were still dying. I don’t get what you point about Dresden is. Is it worse than Hamburg? If they could have, bomber command would have inflicted that kind of punishment on every German city. That was the point - to win the war, and stop having us and our allies killed.
Although it has to be said, they were very bad at it. Indeed, a case was made in the 1960s that all Allied bombing did was focus minds on the fact the Germans were at war and therefore spur the workforce on to greater efforts with a resultant improvement in the German economy.
It is true that Germany’s war industry reached peak output in mid-1944 just as Allied bombing reached a crescendo, although it is now accepted many other factors were at play.
But for the loss of, without checking, 50% of the aircrews involved it wasn’t a great return for the war effort.
This is nonsense. We bombed the Germans into submission and chaos. Bomber Harris was right. He could have won the war by himself (and with his exceptionally brave crews). The question is: was this morally correct, given the inevitable and grotesque loss of German civilian life?
In the end the Allies decided No (possibly for political reasons), and drove on to Berlin (thus killing many Allied soldiers who would have lived if we'd relied on air power alone).
After Okinawa, the Americans made exactly the opposite moral choice: they decided that hundreds of thousands of Japanese should die in a few seconds, via bombing, thereby ending the war in a week and saving more American lives (and probably Japanese lives too)
No, @ydoethur is correct. It doesn't reduce the bravery of our bomber crews to question how effective in its aims the strategic bombing campaign was. Harris though he could stop Germany's war economy, and also break German morale. He did neither.
Indeed probably the biggest effect was to divert German Air and artillery production to shooting down British and American bombers, rather than to supporting the Eastern front. Indirectly it helped Stalin.
By the end of a war, people are usually brutalised, so care little about enemy casualties. Like Andersonville prison or the 1919 blockade of Germany, there is little mercy left.
I have read an awful lot of literature about the air campaigns of WW2, and their utility (I became mildly obsessed with it for a year or so). It would be tedious to rehearse it all on here. Let's just say I disagree.
What is interesting is that a increasing proportion of the effort after late 1943 was precision bombing. Oboe etc.
When you read the histories of various German armament programs, again and again they were crippled by specific factories being destroyed.
The idea that Harris was only randomly burning cities down doesn't bear up to inspection.
The percentage of value of production lost was small - but this falls into the tiger-tanks-are-equal-to-potatoes myth. A few percent of the German war economy was utterly critical to waging war. So the inability to use helical gearing in gearboxes due to a lack of machine tools means your tanks break down every 10 miles.... even if said machine tools would fit into one small factory....
Any evidence lockdowns working yet? Presumably about to go into another one because governments need to be seen to be able to control things - even when they patently cannot
You mean, apart from the fact when we locked down the virus declined and when we opened up it skyrocketed?
so err a lot of misery and poverty occurred to kick it down the road a bit?
You asked if they worked, not about the side effects.
The issue is that you don’t avoid economic damage by not locking down, you just have thousands more deaths on top.
Deaths that were on average aged 82(?) - and generally people in poor health for 82. Its never been worth it for the damage it has caused.
I'm curious - how much is your life worth?
Well its a good and hard question. For instance in war , governments talk about sacrificing lives to maintain freedom , in pandemics governments talk about sacrificng freedom to maintain lives. The one consistent thing governments are about is not saving life but maintaining control. The UK government not that long ago deliberately killed 30K people in a targeting of Dresden in a fire bombing exercise so they do not care about life just about showing they can control stuff. You know bomb this , impose lockdown here , invade Iraq there. I wish a lot of people on here coudl see past death stats (why dont they publish deaths from non covid daily (they are actually higher and you can make nice graphs of those as well)
Dresden was 80 years ago, in the middle of WWII - times and morals have changed.
Invading Iraq is not generally considered to have been a good idea - largely because of the number of dead people...
If we let COVID rip, then the hospitals would fill up. Very very rapidly. This has been demonstrated, multiple times in multiple countries. Then you don't have a health care system.
I find people dying in the street dreadfully untidy. It upsets the more excitable servants, for one thing.
Dresden was also during a period of total war. A bit different from now.
Governments never change - if they needed to exert control and the way to do that was by war and killing people (to save freedom) they would and will. Dresden was at the end of a already won war - still thought 30K lives should be killed though to make a point? Government dont have life saving at the top of any agenda , they have maintaining the veneer of control
Pretty sure allied troops were still dying. I don’t get what you point about Dresden is. Is it worse than Hamburg? If they could have, bomber command would have inflicted that kind of punishment on every German city. That was the point - to win the war, and stop having us and our allies killed.
Although it has to be said, they were very bad at it. Indeed, a case was made in the 1960s that all Allied bombing did was focus minds on the fact the Germans were at war and therefore spur the workforce on to greater efforts with a resultant improvement in the German economy.
It is true that Germany’s war industry reached peak output in mid-1944 just as Allied bombing reached a crescendo, although it is now accepted many other factors were at play.
But for the loss of, without checking, 50% of the aircrews involved it wasn’t a great return for the war effort.
This is nonsense. We bombed the Germans into submission and chaos. Bomber Harris was right. He could have won the war by himself (and with his exceptionally brave crews). The question is: was this morally correct, given the inevitable and grotesque loss of German civilian life?
In the end the Allies decided No (possibly for political reasons), and drove on to Berlin (thus killing many Allied soldiers who would have lived if we'd relied on air power alone).
After Okinawa, the Americans made exactly the opposite moral choice: they decided that hundreds of thousands of Japanese should die in a few seconds, via bombing, thereby ending the war in a week and saving more American lives (and probably Japanese lives too)
No, @ydoethur is correct. It doesn't reduce the bravery of our bomber crews to question how effective in its aims the strategic bombing campaign was. Harris though he could stop Germany's war economyel, and also break German morale. He did neither.
Indeed probably the biggest effect was to divert German Air and artillery production to shooting down British and American bombers, rather than to supporting the Eastern front. Indirectly it helped Stalin.
By the end of a war, people are usually brutalised, so care little about enemy casualties. Like Andersonville prison or the 1919 blockade of Germany, there is little mercy left.
The recent Berlin 1945 documentary featured quite a few contemporary Allied newsreels. I wouldn’t say the the notes of vengeful glee over the destruction of the city were much more muted in the British ones than the Soviet.
Such is war. Not all sides will be equal in comportment, but I think we kid ourserlves about how detached and rational the 'good' side will have been at times.
My grand mother was born in 1929 in Northern Germany.
She had a Nazi education.
During the 30's her family were given a Polish slave, until the day of her death in the 2010s she was 100% that the Polish slave was grateful to be allowed to liver in real Germany.
After the war she moved to the UK.
Her family back in Germany never ever forgave what the British did to the population of the local towns at the end and after the war, including shooting her best friend in the head as she broke a curfew to go to hospital as she had gone into labour, amongst many many other horrors.
War is bad, very very bad and no one can possible suggest their 'side' did not do bad shit.
I was pleased to see that PBers pushed this price to 13/1 over the course of today, from 6/1 at the start of it. And amused to see it snap back to 7/1 tonight.
Just doubled my exposure at 8.2, thought the 6 - 7 price might stick around more. Maybe it'll be back, who knows though - will put more in again if it is. He's now 9.4 - 12 at Smarkets. One reason I guess I'll continue to use Betunfair - all the schmucks are on it.
It's fascinating how many Tories on here think that the way forward for Starmer and Labour is to be....... more like the Tories.
It is to be more like the Tories. On both policy and flexibility. The Tories have just won over swathes of voters and seats that they haven't won previously. How? By appealing more to these voters than Labour did. To win these seats back and then seats that are now solidly Blue Labour have to do the same in reverse.
I thought that people used to understand this basic principle of politics, at least until the absurd footballification we now suffer where its all about supporting your team no matter how stupid they are.
The Tories have succeeded by spending money like a drunken sailor, saying f**k business and f**k the young. That wins votes in parts of the population and country, but ain't a grand strategy for the long term.
True. Though the problem for Labour is simple but massive - their former vote has largely written off their efforts as not helping them. They voted Brexit & Tory for a decisive change and that hasn't fixed things. Instead of turning back to Labour they either won't vote or will look for increasingly radical solutions like those offered by Nigel "sink the migrants" Farage
I am a former Labour voter that has gone Conservative in the last few elections, and so are a lot of my friends and family. One of the things that makes it pretty unappealing to go back to Labour is the fact that Labour members constantly call us things like thick racists that want to sink the migrants. In reality, we just want a party that is willing to have moderate levels of migration and is in tune with the bulk of voters outside of the London/university bubbles.
I don't think you the voter wants to sink the migrants - that would be the Nigel on his dinghy making angry videos. As for migration I get it though I disagree - it must be frustrating that neither party can deliver what you ask for. Labour were and are pro-migration and clearly say so. The Tories were and are pro-migration but lie about not being whilst slashing the budget for the Border Force to make the job even harder.
I find it very, very revealing that the question
- What size of population should the country have?
Is controversial, un-answerable, immoral etc.
Anyone who can't present a reasoned answer on that - fail.
It is not racist to want a discussion about migration or population numbers. Mature countries look strategically at such things and make policies accordingly. The problem is that England is not mature, thinks itself uniquely superior and able to both welcome in cheap labour from elsewhere for a fast profit and then complain about said cheap labour.
Parts of England are hugely over-populated, parts are hugely under-populated. The problem is that we concentrate the economy into pockets which drives in people who then say "England is full" when they just mean their bit of England. Our other basic problem is that people will not and cannot afford to do large numbers of jobs that are hard work and low paid. Hence the need for migrants.
What parts of England are "underpopulated"? I am from the East Midlands, one of the few regions with no big cities and everyone around the place is very happy with that, thank you very much. We don't want Nottingham and Leicester to become like Birmingham or London.
As for jobs, have you ever considered the fact that what are now "migrant jobs" are ones where employers have preferred to have Romanians and Lithuanians they can pay crap wages and give crap conditions to without much complaint? If the open door closes and the Tories don't sell us out with guest worker schemes, those jobs might just be able to pay an honest day's pay under decent conditions because employers would be forced into that to get the workers.
Why? What is wrong with this?
Oh now you have saddened me because we never got a second film.
What's the film?
Dredd?
Ok - thanks.
I liked SF when I was young. I liked comics too (I had what seems like a very valuable Marvel collection now, which I happily just gave away.) No Dredd though. Too young for me. (After having looked it up)
Judge Dredd is a bit too niche for the mainstream, so I am not surprised the Dredd film flopped despite being very true to concept.
One of many great 2000AD strips. Nemesis the Warlock was another of my favourites.
For me nothing beats Halo Jones. Alan Moore can sometimes be a bit hit and miss but that story was just about as close to comic perfection as you can get.
The only people likely more frustrated in their jobs than the negotiating teams of Brexit in the pointlessness of most of their work are the employees of the Boundary Commission.
I know a guy who was on Britain's negotiating team to join the Euro in the mid nineties. Both sides of the table knew there was no point to the negotiations as Britain would never join, but neither side was willing to break off negotiations. The ultimate government sinecure for a few years for him.
TBH if you wanted to use an example from WWII about why the current government cannot be trusted on saving lives you really shouldn't use the Dresden campaign but the Fall of Singapore.
The more you read about the Fall of Singapore it really is a clusterfuck of shithousery.
The Fall of Singapore was undoubtedly the British Army's second most inglorious moment in its history.
What about Crete - when in possession of intelligence that didn't just include how many paratroops, where and armed how* but detail down to the number of spare underpants** they would have - they still managed to lose?
*Due to the rubbish design of their parachutes, German paratroops were armed with pistols only, when they landed. Everything else was in containers dropped separately. **Yes, indeed.
Wasn't Crete lost deliberately to cover up the fact we had broken Enigma? Or was that some other battle?
That's is simply wrong - invented because no-one could believe, when Enigma was revealed that they could have lost with the info.
Freyberg was given *everything*. Which he proceeded to disregard. Even when the first attacks proved the intelligence to be 100% correct.
It's fascinating how many Tories on here think that the way forward for Starmer and Labour is to be....... more like the Tories.
It is to be more like the Tories. On both policy and flexibility. The Tories have just won over swathes of voters and seats that they haven't won previously. How? By appealing more to these voters than Labour did. To win these seats back and then seats that are now solidly Blue Labour have to do the same in reverse.
I thought that people used to understand this basic principle of politics, at least until the absurd footballification we now suffer where its all about supporting your team no matter how stupid they are.
The Tories have succeeded by spending money like a drunken sailor, saying f**k business and f**k the young. That wins votes in parts of the population and country, but ain't a grand strategy for the long term.
True. Though the problem for Labour is simple but massive - their former vote has largely written off their efforts as not helping them. They voted Brexit & Tory for a decisive change and that hasn't fixed things. Instead of turning back to Labour they either won't vote or will look for increasingly radical solutions like those offered by Nigel "sink the migrants" Farage
I am a former Labour voter that has gone Conservative in the last few elections, and so are a lot of my friends and family. One of the things that makes it pretty unappealing to go back to Labour is the fact that Labour members constantly call us things like thick racists that want to sink the migrants. In reality, we just want a party that is willing to have moderate levels of migration and is in tune with the bulk of voters outside of the London/university bubbles.
I don't think you the voter wants to sink the migrants - that would be the Nigel on his dinghy making angry videos. As for migration I get it though I disagree - it must be frustrating that neither party can deliver what you ask for. Labour were and are pro-migration and clearly say so. The Tories were and are pro-migration but lie about not being whilst slashing the budget for the Border Force to make the job even harder.
I find it very, very revealing that the question
- What size of population should the country have?
Is controversial, un-answerable, immoral etc.
Anyone who can't present a reasoned answer on that - fail.
It is not racist to want a discussion about migration or population numbers. Mature countries look strategically at such things and make policies accordingly. The problem is that England is not mature, thinks itself uniquely superior and able to both welcome in cheap labour from elsewhere for a fast profit and then complain about said cheap labour.
Parts of England are hugely over-populated, parts are hugely under-populated. The problem is that we concentrate the economy into pockets which drives in people who then say "England is full" when they just mean their bit of England. Our other basic problem is that people will not and cannot afford to do large numbers of jobs that are hard work and low paid. Hence the need for migrants.
What parts of England are "underpopulated"? I am from the East Midlands, one of the few regions with no big cities and everyone around the place is very happy with that, thank you very much. We don't want Nottingham and Leicester to become like Birmingham or London.
As for jobs, have you ever considered the fact that what are now "migrant jobs" are ones where employers have preferred to have Romanians and Lithuanians they can pay crap wages and give crap conditions to without much complaint? If the open door closes and the Tories don't sell us out with guest worker schemes, those jobs might just be able to pay an honest day's pay under decent conditions because employers would be forced into that to get the workers.
Why? What is wrong with this?
Oh now you have saddened me because we never got a second film.
What's the film?
Dredd?
Ok - thanks.
I liked SF when I was young. I liked comics too (I had what seems like a very valuable Marvel collection now, which I happily just gave away.) No Dredd though. Too young for me. (After having looked it up)
I started buying 2000AD from issue 1 onwards. Stopped getting it after 6 months or so. I guess those early issues would be worth a few bob if I still had them.
I have the whole collection to date.
Number 1 is a hundred quid or so. Number 2 possibly twice that as it was the first appearance of Judge Dredd. Double that for both of them if they still have the free gifts
Any evidence lockdowns working yet? Presumably about to go into another one because governments need to be seen to be able to control things - even when they patently cannot
You mean, apart from the fact when we locked down the virus declined and when we opened up it skyrocketed?
so err a lot of misery and poverty occurred to kick it down the road a bit?
You asked if they worked, not about the side effects.
The issue is that you don’t avoid economic damage by not locking down, you just have thousands more deaths on top.
Deaths that were on average aged 82(?) - and generally people in poor health for 82. Its never been worth it for the damage it has caused.
I'm curious - how much is your life worth?
Well its a good and hard question. For instance in war , governments talk about sacrificing lives to maintain freedom , in pandemics governments talk about sacrificng freedom to maintain lives. The one consistent thing governments are about is not saving life but maintaining control. The UK government not that long ago deliberately killed 30K people in a targeting of Dresden in a fire bombing exercise so they do not care about life just about showing they can control stuff. You know bomb this , impose lockdown here , invade Iraq there. I wish a lot of people on here coudl see past death stats (why dont they publish deaths from non covid daily (they are actually higher and you can make nice graphs of those as well)
Dresden was 80 years ago, in the middle of WWII - times and morals have changed.
Invading Iraq is not generally considered to have been a good idea - largely because of the number of dead people...
If we let COVID rip, then the hospitals would fill up. Very very rapidly. This has been demonstrated, multiple times in multiple countries. Then you don't have a health care system.
I find people dying in the street dreadfully untidy. It upsets the more excitable servants, for one thing.
Dresden was also during a period of total war. A bit different from now.
Governments never change - if they needed to exert control and the way to do that was by war and killing people (to save freedom) they would and will. Dresden was at the end of a already won war - still thought 30K lives should be killed though to make a point? Government dont have life saving at the top of any agenda , they have maintaining the veneer of control
Pretty sure allied troops were still dying. I don’t get what you point about Dresden is. Is it worse than Hamburg? If they could have, bomber command would have inflicted that kind of punishment on every German city. That was the point - to win the war, and stop having us and our allies killed.
Although it has to be said, they were very bad at it. Indeed, a case was made in the 1960s that all Allied bombing did was focus minds on the fact the Germans were at war and therefore spur the workforce on to greater efforts with a resultant improvement in the German economy.
It is true that Germany’s war industry reached peak output in mid-1944 just as Allied bombing reached a crescendo, although it is now accepted many other factors were at play.
But for the loss of, without checking, 50% of the aircrews involved it wasn’t a great return for the war effort.
This is nonsense. We bombed the Germans into submission and chaos. Bomber Harris was right. He could have won the war by himself (and with his exceptionally brave crews). The question is: was this morally correct, given the inevitable and grotesque loss of German civilian life?
In the end the Allies decided No (possibly for political reasons), and drove on to Berlin (thus killing many Allied soldiers who would have lived if we'd relied on air power alone).
After Okinawa, the Americans made exactly the opposite moral choice: they decided that hundreds of thousands of Japanese should die in a few seconds, via bombing, thereby ending the war in a week and saving more American lives (and probably Japanese lives too)
No, @ydoethur is correct. It doesn't reduce the bravery of our bomber crews to question how effective in its aims the strategic bombing campaign was. Harris though he could stop Germany's war economyel, and also break German morale. He did neither.
Indeed probably the biggest effect was to divert German Air and artillery production to shooting down British and American bombers, rather than to supporting the Eastern front. Indirectly it helped Stalin.
By the end of a war, people are usually brutalised, so care little about enemy casualties. Like Andersonville prison or the 1919 blockade of Germany, there is little mercy left.
The recent Berlin 1945 documentary featured quite a few contemporary Allied newsreels. I wouldn’t say the the notes of vengeful glee over the destruction of the city were much more muted in the British ones than the Soviet.
Such is war. Not all sides will be equal in comportment, but I think we kid ourserlves about how detached and rational the 'good' side will have been at times.
Sure, it’s just the retrospective appropriation of virtue that gets on my wick, eg that arse Kelvin McKenzie suggesting Britain fought WWII to save six million Jews.
Any evidence lockdowns working yet? Presumably about to go into another one because governments need to be seen to be able to control things - even when they patently cannot
You mean, apart from the fact when we locked down the virus declined and when we opened up it skyrocketed?
so err a lot of misery and poverty occurred to kick it down the road a bit?
You asked if they worked, not about the side effects.
The issue is that you don’t avoid economic damage by not locking down, you just have thousands more deaths on top.
Deaths that were on average aged 82(?) - and generally people in poor health for 82. Its never been worth it for the damage it has caused.
I'm curious - how much is your life worth?
Well its a good and hard question. For instance in war , governments talk about sacrificing lives to maintain freedom , in pandemics governments talk about sacrificng freedom to maintain lives. The one consistent thing governments are about is not saving life but maintaining control. The UK government not that long ago deliberately killed 30K people in a targeting of Dresden in a fire bombing exercise so they do not care about life just about showing they can control stuff. You know bomb this , impose lockdown here , invade Iraq there. I wish a lot of people on here coudl see past death stats (why dont they publish deaths from non covid daily (they are actually higher and you can make nice graphs of those as well)
Dresden was 80 years ago, in the middle of WWII - times and morals have changed.
Invading Iraq is not generally considered to have been a good idea - largely because of the number of dead people...
If we let COVID rip, then the hospitals would fill up. Very very rapidly. This has been demonstrated, multiple times in multiple countries. Then you don't have a health care system.
I find people dying in the street dreadfully untidy. It upsets the more excitable servants, for one thing.
Dresden was also during a period of total war. A bit different from now.
Governments never change - if they needed to exert control and the way to do that was by war and killing people (to save freedom) they would and will. Dresden was at the end of a already won war - still thought 30K lives should be killed though to make a point? Government dont have life saving at the top of any agenda , they have maintaining the veneer of control
Pretty sure allied troops were still dying. I don’t get what you point about Dresden is. Is it worse than Hamburg? If they could have, bomber command would have inflicted that kind of punishment on every German city. That was the point - to win the war, and stop having us and our allies killed.
Although it has to be said, they were very bad at it. Indeed, a case was made in the 1960s that all Allied bombing did was focus minds on the fact the Germans were at war and therefore spur the workforce on to greater efforts with a resultant improvement in the German economy.
It is true that Germany’s war industry reached peak output in mid-1944 just as Allied bombing reached a crescendo, although it is now accepted many other factors were at play.
But for the loss of, without checking, 50% of the aircrews involved it wasn’t a great return for the war effort.
This is nonsense. We bombed the Germans into submission and chaos. Bomber Harris was right. He could have won the war by himself (and with his exceptionally brave crews). The question is: was this morally correct, given the inevitable and grotesque loss of German civilian life?
After Okinawa, the Americans made exactly the opposite moral choice: they decided that hundreds of thousands of Japanese should die in a few seconds, via bombing, thereby ending the war in a week and saving more American lives (and probably Japanese lives too)
No, @ydoethur is correct. It doesn't reduce the bravery of our bomber crews to question how effective in its aims the strategic bombing campaign was. Harris though he could stop Germany's war economyel, and also break German morale. He did neither.
Indeed probably the biggest effect was to divert German Air and artillery production to shooting down British and American bombers, rather than to supporting the Eastern front. Indirectly it helped Stalin.
By the end of a war, people are usually brutalised, so care little about enemy casualties. Like Andersonville prison or the 1919 blockade of Germany, there is little mercy left.
The recent Berlin 1945 documentary featured quite a few contemporary Allied newsreels. I wouldn’t say the the notes of vengeful glee over the destruction of the city were much more muted in the British ones than the Soviet.
Such is war. Not all sides will be equal in comportment, but I think we kid ourserlves about how detached and rational the 'good' side will have been at times.
My grand mother was born in 1929 in Northern Germany.
She had a Nazi education.
During the 30's her family were given a Polish slave, until the day of her death in the 2010s she was 100% that the Polish slave was grateful to be allowed to liver in real Germany.
After the war she moved to the UK.
Her family back in Germany never ever forgave what the British did to the population of the local towns at the end and after the war, including shooting her best friend in the head as she broke a curfew to go to hospital as she had gone into labour, amongst many many other horrors.
War is bad, very very bad and no one can possible suggest their 'side' did not do bad shit.
Saw this recommended on PB years back, and it was a good read (as much as subject matter allows)
In other words, the UK Government have not taken into account an important Scottish industry. I used to work in it, albeit as a student, and I know people who have whole farms based on it. That is actually a pretty serious issue.
Edit: for those PBers who are unfamiliar with it, the Scottish farming industry produces a lot of seed potatoes for the rest of the UK, because of the specific climatic conditions and also its specialist knowledge. No seed potatoes, no crop. I'm not sure what the Irish farmers will do now.
Complain to the French?
Or you could blame the Brits for not sending potatoes to Ireland?
TBH if you wanted to use an example from WWII about why the current government cannot be trusted on saving lives you really shouldn't use the Dresden campaign but the Fall of Singapore.
The more you read about the Fall of Singapore it really is a clusterfuck of shithousery.
The Fall of Singapore was undoubtedly the British Army's second most inglorious moment in its history.
What about Crete - when in possession of intelligence that didn't just include how many paratroops, where and armed how* but detail down to the number of spare underpants** they would have - they still managed to lose?
*Due to the rubbish design of their parachutes, German paratroops were armed with pistols only, when they landed. Everything else was in containers dropped separately. **Yes, indeed.
That was pretty bad but Singapore's sheer number of POWs was something special.
It wasn't just the scale of the surrender, that made Singapore such a disaster. It wrecked the credibility of the British Empire in Asia. It was over after that, with the Asian countries independent, and Australia knowing that only America was a reliable protector.
It's not a fine toothcomb, you don't comb your teeth, its a fine-toothed comb. Why does that arse stay in a job?
No, he is correct. The prongs of a comb are called ‘teeth’. So what people call a ‘comb’ is traditionally a ‘toothcomb’ and if the teeth are close together it is a ‘fine toothcomb.’
Its not what the online dictionary and grammar sites say....
Either usage is acceptable, but ‘toothcomb’ is the original form.
From Oxford English dictionary....
Sometimes misunderstood as fine toothcomb, especially in the figurative sense. This form of the expression, and the associated concept of a toothcomb, is often considered erroneous, but fine toothcomb is said to be now “accepted in standard English” by at least the Oxford English Dictionary
I can’t help what Oxford considers right and wrong. ‘Toothcomb’ is a formulation I’ve seen from fifteenth century documents so I’m happy to stand by my statement.
A fine toothcomb would be an exceptionally good or valuable toothcomb, though, which is not the meaning required here.
If you can find your source again you should submit it to OED.
So a fine fishnet is ‘an exceptionally good or valuable’ fishnet?
Not an expression I'd use; you would say a fine-meshed fishnet, just as you'd say fine-toothed comb.
Fine toothcomb, or fine tooth-comb, oh fine tooth comb are all equally valid.
Just as you might say a fine frequency-comb (or frequency comb).
Really disappointed. I thought we had the makings of a debate over what constitutes a proper county but it just fizzled out.
(This post brought to you from the West Riding of Yorkshire)
I always think a county is not a real county if people from the said area are sort of ashamed of it - Nobody takes pride in coming from the fair and just county of the West Midlands or Humberside imho
Not surprising, considering neither of them have existed for 24 years.
I thought West Midlands was still around but if both gone all the better for my argument that they are not proper counties!
Not as a unitary authority. Birmingham, Wolverhampton, Dudley, Sandwell, Solihull and Coventry are Metropolitan Boroughs/Cities.
That takes you down the slippery slope where you end up claiming that Leicester isn't in Leicestershire as it is a separate unitary authority
Everyone from the West Midlands will tell you that Birmingham, Solihull, and Coventry are in Warwickshire.
As someone from Gateshead, County Durham I agree.
Gateshead, that small town in Greater Newcastle?
That's right. The one with a first class cricket team.
Any evidence lockdowns working yet? Presumably about to go into another one because governments need to be seen to be able to control things - even when they patently cannot
You mean, apart from the fact when we locked down the virus declined and when we opened up it skyrocketed?
so err a lot of misery and poverty occurred to kick it down the road a bit?
You asked if they worked, not about the side effects.
The issue is that you don’t avoid economic damage by not locking down, you just have thousands more deaths on top.
Deaths that were on average aged 82(?) - and generally people in poor health for 82. Its never been worth it for the damage it has caused.
I'm curious - how much is your life worth?
Well its a good and hard question. For instance in war , governments talk about sacrificing lives to maintain freedom , in pandemics governments talk about sacrificng freedom to maintain lives. The one consistent thing governments are about is not saving life but maintaining control. The UK government not that long ago deliberately killed 30K people in a targeting of Dresden in a fire bombing exercise so they do not care about life just about showing they can control stuff. You know bomb this , impose lockdown here , invade Iraq there. I wish a lot of people on here coudl see past death stats (why dont they publish deaths from non covid daily (they are actually higher and you can make nice graphs of those as well)
Dresden was 80 years ago, in the middle of WWII - times and morals have changed.
Invading Iraq is not generally considered to have been a good idea - largely because of the number of dead people...
If we let COVID rip, then the hospitals would fill up. Very very rapidly. This has been demonstrated, multiple times in multiple countries. Then you don't have a health care system.
I find people dying in the street dreadfully untidy. It upsets the more excitable servants, for one thing.
Dresden was also during a period of total war. A bit different from now.
Governments never change - if they needed to exert control and the way to do that was by war and killing people (to save freedom) they would and will. Dresden was at the end of a already won war - still thought 30K lives should be killed though to make a point? Government dont have life saving at the top of any agenda , they have maintaining the veneer of control
Pretty sure allied troops were still dying. I don’t get what you point about Dresden is. Is it worse than Hamburg? If they could have, bomber command would have inflicted that kind of punishment on every German city. That was the point - to win the war, and stop having us and our allies killed.
The point about Dresden is to show that governments (even western democracies) dont care about saving life - The atomic bomb on Japan may have had more of a life versus life calculation but the fire bombing of Dresden (the fire was deliberately started to cause maximum civilian loss of life) was never about saving other lifes . It was becasue the government coudl do it ,so they did
Wasn't one of the arguments put forth for such bombings is that they would help shorten the war, saving Allied lives?
I am sure that argument was put forward - do you think it was valid ? I don't -
During WWII I do. It was a total war against a totalitarian regime.
Given it was a city packed full of civilian refugees with little or no military there , I am being generous I think in saying the bombing took place because of its rather nice buildings as well as just a load of civilians rather than just cold blooded executions of thousands
WWII wasn't just a military war, it was a total war.
Dresden was a strategic target against a city with industrial, transport and communication strengths to destroy.
In normal circumstances absolutely it would be a horror but against the Nazis? A valid target.
It was a major rail junction 60 miles from the front with the Soviets. Of course it was a target. And Berlin, which suffered much heavier bombing had fewer casualties because the city authorities were organised. And yet decades later fools repeat Goebbels line (fed to the Swedish press) that it was "purely civilian".
Comments
The what-ifs from that are interesting.
a) The attack on Pearl Harbor (sic)
or
b) 9/11
Dresden was a strategic target against a city with industrial, transport and communication strengths to destroy.
In normal circumstances absolutely it would be a horror but against the Nazis? A valid target.
Just potatoes.
The more you read about the Fall of Singapore it really is a clusterfuck of shithousery.
The Fall of Singapore was undoubtedly the British Army's second most inglorious moment in its history.
South Gloucestershire, of course has definitely declared UDI from Gloucestershire..
Because even when they knew it was about to happen, they still didn’t believe it.
CF the Soviet response to Barbarossa.
Might be a good move for Warnock and Ossoff though
Indeed probably the biggest effect was to divert German Air and artillery production to shooting down British and American bombers, rather than to supporting the Eastern front. Indirectly it helped Stalin.
By the end of a war, people are usually brutalised, so care little about enemy casualties. Like Andersonville prison or the 1919 blockade of Germany, there is little mercy left.
*Due to the rubbish design of their parachutes, German paratroops were armed with pistols only, when they landed. Everything else was in containers dropped separately.
**Yes, indeed.
https://twitter.com/IanDunt/status/1341849847238975491
Defeating Hitler, and utterly vanquishing Nazism, was a profound moral imperative. Which justified otherwise abhorrent acts.
After Nanjing, the same can be said for Imperial Japan. It was a truly evil polity. The Americans were right to A-bomb Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
And if there was prior public domain knowledge they might not be then why only bring it up after negotiations close and not before hand where maybe it could have influenced the negotiations?
Unless the SNP would rather stand idly by in order to stoke a grievance?
This will be a useful exercise for creating a list of commentators whose opinions we can just dismiss out of hand.
https://twitter.com/CarlSurvation/status/1341855449910571008
https://www.thelocal.de/20180723/a-night-of-hell-hamburg-remembers-firestorm-which-left-the-city-in-ruins
https://twitter.com/Phil_Mattingly/status/1341791993782005762
Or you could blame the Brits for not sending potatoes to Ireland?
When you read the histories of various German armament programs, again and again they were crippled by specific factories being destroyed.
The idea that Harris was only randomly burning cities down doesn't bear up to inspection.
The percentage of value of production lost was small - but this falls into the tiger-tanks-are-equal-to-potatoes myth. A few percent of the German war economy was utterly critical to waging war. So the inability to use helical gearing in gearboxes due to a lack of machine tools means your tanks break down every 10 miles.... even if said machine tools would fit into one small factory....
https://twitter.com/MamerEric/status/1341854427142041607
She had a Nazi education.
During the 30's her family were given a Polish slave, until the day of her death in the 2010s she was 100% that the Polish slave was grateful to be allowed to liver in real Germany.
After the war she moved to the UK.
Her family back in Germany never ever forgave what the British did to the population of the local towns at the end and after the war, including shooting her best friend in the head as she broke a curfew to go to hospital as she had gone into labour, amongst many many other horrors.
War is bad, very very bad and no one can possible suggest their 'side' did not do bad shit.
One reason I guess I'll continue to use Bet
unfair - all the schmucks are on it.Freyberg was given *everything*. Which he proceeded to disregard. Even when the first attacks proved the intelligence to be 100% correct.
Number 1 is a hundred quid or so. Number 2 possibly twice that as it was the first appearance of Judge Dredd. Double that for both of them if they still have the free gifts
Tweets regularly quoted by Scott. ✅
NEW THREAD
By Sword and Fire: Cruelty and Atrocity in Medieval Warfare
https://twitter.com/BBCHelena/status/1341858268600217603
Just as you might say a fine frequency-comb (or frequency comb).