Face to face campaigning speaking directly to voters is of course BJ's strong point (not seen it in Scotland before, mind). Once he's got Doogie back on board it'll be a dawdle..
'He is not expected to meet his party's Scottish leader, Douglas Ross, who last month demanded his resignation, a call later backed by Tory members of the Scottish Parliament. Mr Ross's attack triggered a furious civil war between Tories at Holyrood and Westminster, after then Commons Leader Jacob Rees-Mogg - one of the PM's closest allies - branded Mr Ross "a lightweight". This weekend it was reported that Mr Johnson attempted to begin a rapprochement with Mr Ross by sending him a handwritten birthday card two weeks after he made his resignation demand.'
'Happy burpday to Ross Douglas. Lurv u xxx'
A week of Johnson cosplay and photo-stunts with handpicked audiences. He only appears in front of heavily vetted party placemen, never "Face to face campaigning speaking directly to voters "
There’s nothing new in politics. When Blair ascended to the thrown became prime minister and entered no 10, it wasn’t random folk of the street who turned up to cheer him in, it was labour staffers and party members.
Nevertheless it seemed genuine because it reflected the public mood at the time. Scenes of Bozo being cheered by the minority even of his own party members who can summon the enthusiasm would surely be counted-productive.
Hands up how many PB-ears would have correctly guessed that Voronezh and Rostov are in Russia not Ukraine (or some other Russiany-but-not-actually-Russian place?
I’m pretty damn good at geography, but I would have not confidently known. My only knowledge is that Rostov is surely also known as “Rostov-on-Don” so that means it is probably in the Donbas, which is disputed territory of Ukraine?
The Fiendish Russians phrased the question to embarrass her. Now, arguably, the Foreign Sec should not be so “easily” tripped up, but I can see why she got it wrong
The fiendish Russian asked a question about Russian territory to the foreigner who flew over to lecture Russia about territorial claims. The location of Russia's troops is hardly irrelevant to the issue she flew in to remonstrate over. She should have spent more time reading her brief and less doing Thatcher cosplay.
She made us like like what we are - irrelevant idiots. Meanwhile the EU fronted by Macron in control both of a brief and a brain continues to represent European interests whilst the supposedly senile Biden does the same for NATO.
Hmmm. Not sure Macron has actually achieved much other than a bit of posturing over his DNA. I think you also forget the number of missteps Germany has made, including Schönbach's unfortunate faux pas which was actually even worse than Truss'.
What must be annoying the hell out of the Russians is that the West seems serious about sanctions. They must have thought the Germans at least would still buy their gas, but it looks as thought there would be at least a temporary hiatus there.
"According to Russian media reports, not denied by the UK side, Truss’s chilly encounter with her vastly more experienced Russian opposite number, Sergey Lavrov, included an exchange that went roughly like this.
Truss: ‘Russia must move its troops away from the Ukrainian border, or else…’ Lavrov: ‘Why should we? It’s up to Russia where it deploys its troops inside Russia’ (which, of course, it is). He then asked, for good measure: ‘Do you recognise Russia’s sovereignty over the Rostov and Voronezh regions?’ At which point Truss mounted her high horse and responded with all the authority of the UK’s chief diplomat: ‘The UK will never recognise Russia’s sovereignty over these regions.’
This is where the UK’s ambassador to Moscow, Deborah Bronnert, is said to have leant across to Truss and discreetly informed her that these regions were actually in Russia. Her assumption had apparently been that they were the two so-called breakaway regions on the Ukrainian side of the border."
Lavrov asked a silly trick question and Truss made a mistake. Zero consequence except among the useful idiots in the UK who use it to undermine Truss. Which is why Lavrov did it.
A strong post, StillWaters, a damn fine try at spinning it. Unfortunately you would ask us to believe absolutely everybody would have blundered into that trap - but that isn’t true, is it?
No, she made a mistake. But whatever - people misspeak all the time.
She did not misspeak. The Foreign Secretary might reasonably be expected to have read her brief and maybe glanced at a map on the flight over for crisis talks.
Of course. And then in a discussion the names of 2 oblasts are thrown out. Perhaps she misheard, perhaps she thought they were a different name.
Consider her options:
1. Say they recognise sovereignty - real downside if it’s a quirky babe for Donblas 2. Bristle and push back - establishes the principle; downside risk is she looks a little silly 3. Ignore/redefine the question “we’re not here to talk about that. We’re here to talk about X”
I personally would have gone with option 3. But I’m not going to condemn her for going with option 2 and getting called out.
She looks a little silly and gets mocked on Twitter. So f***ng what? Lavrov is an arse and got a cheap shot in. Real world consequence zero.
Sometimes people just need to ignore the trolls.
If she had been asked about Downing St parties she would have given a more diplomatic answer.
Diplomacy is her job. The moment required the upmost care. This is they very essence of her responsibility. Instead of using language with the precision of a surgeon’s knife she bluffed it. Not good.
Sure. She made a misstep on negotiations. Cost: zero
Now we have a choice:
1. Do we mock, undermine and weaken the Foreign Secretary at a time of serious international tension as the Russian hope we will do? 2. Do we not do what the Russians want us to do?
1. Oh fuck right off. She is a narcissistic vacuous self-promoting cretin.
Kinder politics.
The alternative apparently is that we all tearily clutch our hankies as Maggie Truss waves our brave boys off to war from Southampton Dock.
That would be just typical of Truss, with the navy in Portsmouth, Plymouth and Faslaine. She’d probably be waving off a load of oldies on some cruise.
Hands up how many PB-ears would have correctly guessed that Voronezh and Rostov are in Russia not Ukraine (or some other Russiany-but-not-actually-Russian place?
I’m pretty damn good at geography, but I would have not confidently known. My only knowledge is that Rostov is surely also known as “Rostov-on-Don” so that means it is probably in the Donbas, which is disputed territory of Ukraine?
The Fiendish Russians phrased the question to embarrass her. Now, arguably, the Foreign Sec should not be so “easily” tripped up, but I can see why she got it wrong
I would have had no idea. But I'm not foreign secretary and I haven't been (supposedly) focusing 24/7 on the details of this serious crisis. The fact that she was tripped up so easily demonstrates that she is a lightweight unsuited to the geopolitical front line. She should stick to what she's good at, looking pensive in front of various global landmarks while her taxpayer-funded photographer tells her to say Cheese.
The Sunday Rawnsley: Eager to wound, but unwilling to strike, Sir John and Mrs May reflect the state of the party they once led. It is simultaneously infuriated and paralysed by a scandal that is also a crisis. This leaves the Tory party and with it the government, marooned in no man’s land.
Waiting to see if the polls are verified by a heavy defeat at the May local elections “puts our councillors in the executioner’s tumbril”, as another MP puts it. The prime minister is solely focused on trying to save his own skin. He always governed from one week to the next. Now he governs from one day to the next.
One Conservative MP reports: “The phrase you hear a lot of in the tearoom is ‘we can’t go on like this’.” So I asked him whether he had submitted a letter calling for a confidence vote. He confessed that he hadn’t, before arguing that it was too early to move. He was choosing to go on like this… there is the substantial group who want Mr Johnson gone, but are hesitant about acting. “One of the worst outcomes is that we get a confidence vote and he narrowly survives it,” says one senior Tory. “If he wins by just one vote, he will stay. Anyone else would walk, but he will stay.”
The Conservative party will pay a penalty for its prevarication – indeed, it already is paying. The longer this goes on, the more this looks like a lawless government that thinks rules are for everyone else and the deeper the reputational damage sustained by the Tories. “A month ago, this was hurting only Boris,” says one former cabinet minister. “Now, it is hurting the whole government. The more they put up ministers to make a defence of him, the more it damages all of us.”
So I asked this senior Tory whether he had put in a confidence letter and discovered he was another who hadn’t done so yet. The government will remain trapped in this nightmare no man’s land, and the country with it, until Tory MPs cease equivocating and a critical mass of them decide to bring things to a head.
What a bunch of spineless wasters most Tory MPs are.
And meanwhile, the Government achieves nothing - save to bleed the young ruthlessly in order to stuff the mouths of the elderly with gold.
Research by the Intergenerational Foundation thinktank, to be published on Monday, claims that younger workers are being unfairly targeted by the government in a “tax by stealth” caused by freezes on income tax brackets and the student loan repayment threshold, as well as April’s national insurance rise.
Low-earning young people will be hit hardest by the changes, claims the report, having a significant impact on their take home pay, disposable income and potential to save for housing and pensions.
Researchers calculate a graduate earning £27,000 a year will see their deductions rise by about 20% over the next four years – from 18% of their pay to 22%. They predict their disposable income will drop by almost 30%.
...
Labelling under-30s the “packhorse generation”, the thinktank claims they are being targeted by the government, which it says is using high inflation to pull more low-income, and especially younger, workers into taxation sooner.
"According to Russian media reports, not denied by the UK side, Truss’s chilly encounter with her vastly more experienced Russian opposite number, Sergey Lavrov, included an exchange that went roughly like this.
Truss: ‘Russia must move its troops away from the Ukrainian border, or else…’ Lavrov: ‘Why should we? It’s up to Russia where it deploys its troops inside Russia’ (which, of course, it is). He then asked, for good measure: ‘Do you recognise Russia’s sovereignty over the Rostov and Voronezh regions?’ At which point Truss mounted her high horse and responded with all the authority of the UK’s chief diplomat: ‘The UK will never recognise Russia’s sovereignty over these regions.’
This is where the UK’s ambassador to Moscow, Deborah Bronnert, is said to have leant across to Truss and discreetly informed her that these regions were actually in Russia. Her assumption had apparently been that they were the two so-called breakaway regions on the Ukrainian side of the border."
Lavrov asked a silly trick question and Truss made a mistake. Zero consequence except among the useful idiots in the UK who use it to undermine Truss. Which is why Lavrov did it.
A strong post, StillWaters, a damn fine try at spinning it. Unfortunately you would ask us to believe absolutely everybody would have blundered into that trap - but that isn’t true, is it?
No, she made a mistake. But whatever - people misspeak all the time.
She did not misspeak. The Foreign Secretary might reasonably be expected to have read her brief and maybe glanced at a map on the flight over for crisis talks.
Of course. And then in a discussion the names of 2 oblasts are thrown out. Perhaps she misheard, perhaps she thought they were a different name.
Consider her options:
1. Say they recognise sovereignty - real downside if it’s a quirky babe for Donblas 2. Bristle and push back - establishes the principle; downside risk is she looks a little silly 3. Ignore/redefine the question “we’re not here to talk about that. We’re here to talk about X”
I personally would have gone with option 3. But I’m not going to condemn her for going with option 2 and getting called out.
She looks a little silly and gets mocked on Twitter. So f***ng what? Lavrov is an arse and got a cheap shot in. Real world consequence zero.
Sometimes people just need to ignore the trolls.
If she had been asked about Downing St parties she would have given a more diplomatic answer.
Diplomacy is her job. The moment required the upmost care. This is they very essence of her responsibility. Instead of using language with the precision of a surgeon’s knife she bluffed it. Not good.
Sure. She made a misstep on negotiations. Cost: zero
Now we have a choice:
1. Do we mock, undermine and weaken the Foreign Secretary at a time of serious international tension as the Russian hope we will do? 2. Do we not do what the Russians want us to do?
1. Oh fuck right off. She is a narcissistic vacuous self-promoting cretin.
Kinder politics.
The alternative apparently is that we all tearily clutch our hankies as Maggie Truss waves our brave boys off to war from Southampton Dock.
Calling out an incompetent simpleton making a laughing stock of this country on the international stage is not siding with the Russians. If we wanted to play a role in this crisis she has torpedoed it.
No, it isn’t the alternative. It is anything but it is, once again, a lazy caricature. We will not go to war with Russia over this.
I also don’t recall mentioning your needless personal attack on her as siding with the Russians either. So it’s odd you choose to raise that.
Your rabid invective where political opponents are concerned is becoming increasingly more and more tedious. What do you get from it ? Does it make you feel better with your life coming on here and calling Laura Pidcock ‘Laura Pillock’. Seriously, grow up.
"According to Russian media reports, not denied by the UK side, Truss’s chilly encounter with her vastly more experienced Russian opposite number, Sergey Lavrov, included an exchange that went roughly like this.
Truss: ‘Russia must move its troops away from the Ukrainian border, or else…’ Lavrov: ‘Why should we? It’s up to Russia where it deploys its troops inside Russia’ (which, of course, it is). He then asked, for good measure: ‘Do you recognise Russia’s sovereignty over the Rostov and Voronezh regions?’ At which point Truss mounted her high horse and responded with all the authority of the UK’s chief diplomat: ‘The UK will never recognise Russia’s sovereignty over these regions.’
This is where the UK’s ambassador to Moscow, Deborah Bronnert, is said to have leant across to Truss and discreetly informed her that these regions were actually in Russia. Her assumption had apparently been that they were the two so-called breakaway regions on the Ukrainian side of the border."
Lavrov asked a silly trick question and Truss made a mistake. Zero consequence except among the useful idiots in the UK who use it to undermine Truss. Which is why Lavrov did it.
A strong post, StillWaters, a damn fine try at spinning it. Unfortunately you would ask us to believe absolutely everybody would have blundered into that trap - but that isn’t true, is it?
No, she made a mistake. But whatever - people misspeak all the time.
She did not misspeak. The Foreign Secretary might reasonably be expected to have read her brief and maybe glanced at a map on the flight over for crisis talks.
Of course. And then in a discussion the names of 2 oblasts are thrown out. Perhaps she misheard, perhaps she thought they were a different name.
Consider her options:
1. Say they recognise sovereignty - real downside if it’s a quirky babe for Donblas 2. Bristle and push back - establishes the principle; downside risk is she looks a little silly 3. Ignore/redefine the question “we’re not here to talk about that. We’re here to talk about X”
I personally would have gone with option 3. But I’m not going to condemn her for going with option 2 and getting called out.
She looks a little silly and gets mocked on Twitter. So f***ng what? Lavrov is an arse and got a cheap shot in. Real world consequence zero.
Sometimes people just need to ignore the trolls.
If she had been asked about Downing St parties she would have given a more diplomatic answer.
Diplomacy is her job. The moment required the upmost care. This is they very essence of her responsibility. Instead of using language with the precision of a surgeon’s knife she bluffed it. Not good.
Sure. She made a misstep on negotiations. Cost: zero
Now we have a choice:
1. Do we mock, undermine and weaken the Foreign Secretary at a time of serious international tension as the Russian hope we will do? 2. Do we not do what the Russians want us to do?
1. Oh fuck right off. She is a narcissistic vacuous self-promoting cretin. 2. The Russians don't really care what we think - Britain has reduced itself to a bit player having left the big stage. Compare and contrast how Russia is dealing with France / EU with how it is dealing with the UK.
As with Ukraine. Ukrainian journalists didn’t bother asking Bozo a single question during his recent visit, focusing all their Qs on their own PM, and neither UK nor our imbecilic leader made much impression on the Ukrainian media.
It may not yet be sinking in to either the remaining pro-Brexit / pro-Boris rampers or the CCHQ plants who have been entertaining us on here in recent times (keep it up boys!) but Britain is a past-power.
Do we have a military threat? Well we don't have a viable army left, we have a quarter of a navy and we chopped up some of the planes we needed to even defend our own airspace properly. Carriers with no escorts and no planes are just funny. But we have Trident - a weapon so pointless that we wouldn't even fire it if nuclear war broke out.
Do we have a diplomatic threat? OK we're still a player in NATO albeit one reliant on other armed forces to do anything (hi France, can we borrow your navy as we scrapped ours?). But diplomatically? Power projects. Putin see the big powers - China, the EU, the US. He sees military groupings - NATO.
For some reason he doesn't seem bothered by impotent Britain who thinks that once having an empire means it is still relevant even having quit the big power block and destroyed its own armed force capabilities. We can't even stop him murdering people here on the streets. Then the final insult. We send Truss to tell them off. Truss - woman of a thousand instagram posts as she Thatcher cosplays her way around the world. Truss - that expert negotiator who can copy paste previous trade deals like a boss. Truss - who enters a meeting to discuss threatening troop deployments without knowing where the troops are what the countries are where any of it is.
So no. I won't stop laughing at the cosplaying joke of a Foreign Secretary. Because the rest of the world is laughing. At us. We are literally a joke. If you want to back *that*, go right ahead. Joke by association.
Hands up how many PB-ears would have correctly guessed that Voronezh and Rostov are in Russia not Ukraine (or some other Russiany-but-not-actually-Russian place?
I’m pretty damn good at geography, but I would have not confidently known. My only knowledge is that Rostov is surely also known as “Rostov-on-Don” so that means it is probably in the Donbas, which is disputed territory of Ukraine?
The Fiendish Russians phrased the question to embarrass her. Now, arguably, the Foreign Sec should not be so “easily” tripped up, but I can see why she got it wrong
The fiendish Russian asked a question about Russian territory to the foreigner who flew over to lecture Russia about territorial claims. The location of Russia's troops is hardly irrelevant to the issue she flew in to remonstrate over. She should have spent more time reading her brief and less doing Thatcher cosplay.
She made us like like what we are - irrelevant idiots. Meanwhile the EU fronted by Macron in control both of a brief and a brain continues to represent European interests whilst the supposedly senile Biden does the same for NATO.
Hmmm. Not sure Macron has actually achieved much other than a bit of posturing over his DNA. I think you also forget the number of missteps Germany has made, including Schönbach's unfortunate faux pas which was actually even worse than Truss'.
What must be annoying the hell out of the Russians is that the West seems serious about sanctions. They must have thought the Germans at least would still buy their gas, but it looks as thought there would be at least a temporary hiatus there.
Macron sat the opposite end of Putin on a very big table. It looked quite daft.
Aren’t the Austrians refusing to approve sanctions that include gas.
"According to Russian media reports, not denied by the UK side, Truss’s chilly encounter with her vastly more experienced Russian opposite number, Sergey Lavrov, included an exchange that went roughly like this.
Truss: ‘Russia must move its troops away from the Ukrainian border, or else…’ Lavrov: ‘Why should we? It’s up to Russia where it deploys its troops inside Russia’ (which, of course, it is). He then asked, for good measure: ‘Do you recognise Russia’s sovereignty over the Rostov and Voronezh regions?’ At which point Truss mounted her high horse and responded with all the authority of the UK’s chief diplomat: ‘The UK will never recognise Russia’s sovereignty over these regions.’
This is where the UK’s ambassador to Moscow, Deborah Bronnert, is said to have leant across to Truss and discreetly informed her that these regions were actually in Russia. Her assumption had apparently been that they were the two so-called breakaway regions on the Ukrainian side of the border."
Lavrov asked a silly trick question and Truss made a mistake. Zero consequence except among the useful idiots in the UK who use it to undermine Truss. Which is why Lavrov did it.
A strong post, StillWaters, a damn fine try at spinning it. Unfortunately you would ask us to believe absolutely everybody would have blundered into that trap - but that isn’t true, is it?
No, she made a mistake. But whatever - people misspeak all the time.
She did not misspeak. The Foreign Secretary might reasonably be expected to have read her brief and maybe glanced at a map on the flight over for crisis talks.
Of course. And then in a discussion the names of 2 oblasts are thrown out. Perhaps she misheard, perhaps she thought they were a different name.
Consider her options:
1. Say they recognise sovereignty - real downside if it’s a quirky babe for Donblas 2. Bristle and push back - establishes the principle; downside risk is she looks a little silly 3. Ignore/redefine the question “we’re not here to talk about that. We’re here to talk about X”
I personally would have gone with option 3. But I’m not going to condemn her for going with option 2 and getting called out.
She looks a little silly and gets mocked on Twitter. So f***ng what? Lavrov is an arse and got a cheap shot in. Real world consequence zero.
Sometimes people just need to ignore the trolls.
If she had been asked about Downing St parties she would have given a more diplomatic answer.
Diplomacy is her job. The moment required the upmost care. This is they very essence of her responsibility. Instead of using language with the precision of a surgeon’s knife she bluffed it. Not good.
Sure. She made a misstep on negotiations. Cost: zero
Now we have a choice:
1. Do we mock, undermine and weaken the Foreign Secretary at a time of serious international tension as the Russian hope we will do? 2. Do we not do what the Russians want us to do?
To really defend British interests we might put someone half decent in such an important role. Bring back Hague? At the moment I suspect the Russians are not remotely concerned by either Truss or Boris.
We are more influential than you might realise behind the scenes. Our job is to keep the international coalition aligned and to demonstrate that it’s not just a US-Russian thing. That’s part of the reason we were early and public in arming Ukraine - we normalised that response.
Militarily we have some useful capabilities to contribute but of course we can’t defeat Russia without American might.
And to ensure we play that role effectively we need a Foreign Secretary who doesn't make basic errors and ends up looking like a complete fool.
Saying that Truss is a damaging presence who is incapable of getting the basics right and has made things somewhat worse is nothing to do with playing a Russian game. It's a statement of fact.
It was neither in his own interests, nor his constituents interests. I think he miscalculated, and said so at the time.
It is unquestionably in the interests of his constituents for BoZo to be removed.
Even if you ignore his unsuitability for the role, you can't ignore the fact that he has appointed the worst cabinet in living memory.
When he goes, they go, and that would be good for everybody
And in any event, even if the clown hangs on for a bit, the Tories would be mad to send him into another election and remind everyone, in a year or two’s time, of the pandemic and all of our privations and his largesse. Taking a longer view, Aaron will be on the right side of history. And if his seat isn’t holdable, what does his long term career prospects matter anyway?
He might do a David Amess and run off to a safer seat.
He should cross the floor. He seems like a nice, reasonable, guy, I'm sure he would fit right in with Starmer's moderate and sensible Labour party.
Truss should have used diplomatic language. It’s her job. It’s not as if she didn’t know it was a tricky situation. Instead she made an assumption, bluffed, failed and looked silly.
What’s weird is if this was Radio 4 she would have been fine giving nuanced answers.
The positive take away is that she now knows that - to quote @Dura_Ace - Lavrov is a “sneaky old twat”.
That’s a good lesson to learn for a very low cost.
Whilst I applaud your desire to find a silver lining, I fear if she learned Lavrov was a tricky customer for the first time at that moment someone really isn’t doing their job.
It wasn't a trick by Lavrov. The naming of Voronezh and Rostov was in the context of, and immediately following Lavrov saying that Russia could do what it likes within its Sovereign territory. A smarter cookie would have known this, and said that of course Russia could do what it likes in its sovereign territory, as can Ukraine do what it likes in its.
That would have been the wrong response - it would have given permission for the military build up.
The right response would have been that they may be sovereign Russian territory but that does not give them the right to use them as a launchpad to threaten a sovereign and independent country.
To which they would have responded that isn't their intention.
They would have been lying, of course, but we would have no way of proving it.
It was an elephant trap on a number of levels, but if she said what she's reported as saying that's still a barely believable gaffe and in a proper government, would be a resigning matter.
Now your just being silly. It is not a resigning matter
"According to Russian media reports, not denied by the UK side, Truss’s chilly encounter with her vastly more experienced Russian opposite number, Sergey Lavrov, included an exchange that went roughly like this.
Truss: ‘Russia must move its troops away from the Ukrainian border, or else…’ Lavrov: ‘Why should we? It’s up to Russia where it deploys its troops inside Russia’ (which, of course, it is). He then asked, for good measure: ‘Do you recognise Russia’s sovereignty over the Rostov and Voronezh regions?’ At which point Truss mounted her high horse and responded with all the authority of the UK’s chief diplomat: ‘The UK will never recognise Russia’s sovereignty over these regions.’
This is where the UK’s ambassador to Moscow, Deborah Bronnert, is said to have leant across to Truss and discreetly informed her that these regions were actually in Russia. Her assumption had apparently been that they were the two so-called breakaway regions on the Ukrainian side of the border."
Lavrov asked a silly trick question and Truss made a mistake. Zero consequence except among the useful idiots in the UK who use it to undermine Truss. Which is why Lavrov did it.
A strong post, StillWaters, a damn fine try at spinning it. Unfortunately you would ask us to believe absolutely everybody would have blundered into that trap - but that isn’t true, is it?
No, she made a mistake. But whatever - people misspeak all the time.
She did not misspeak. The Foreign Secretary might reasonably be expected to have read her brief and maybe glanced at a map on the flight over for crisis talks.
Of course. And then in a discussion the names of 2 oblasts are thrown out. Perhaps she misheard, perhaps she thought they were a different name.
Consider her options:
1. Say they recognise sovereignty - real downside if it’s a quirky babe for Donblas 2. Bristle and push back - establishes the principle; downside risk is she looks a little silly 3. Ignore/redefine the question “we’re not here to talk about that. We’re here to talk about X”
I personally would have gone with option 3. But I’m not going to condemn her for going with option 2 and getting called out.
She looks a little silly and gets mocked on Twitter. So f***ng what? Lavrov is an arse and got a cheap shot in. Real world consequence zero.
Sometimes people just need to ignore the trolls.
If she had been asked about Downing St parties she would have given a more diplomatic answer.
Diplomacy is her job. The moment required the upmost care. This is they very essence of her responsibility. Instead of using language with the precision of a surgeon’s knife she bluffed it. Not good.
Sure. She made a misstep on negotiations. Cost: zero
Now we have a choice:
1. Do we mock, undermine and weaken the Foreign Secretary at a time of serious international tension as the Russian hope we will do? 2. Do we not do what the Russians want us to do?
1. Oh fuck right off. She is a narcissistic vacuous self-promoting cretin. 2. The Russians don't really care what we think - Britain has reduced itself to a bit player having left the big stage. Compare and contrast how Russia is dealing with France / EU with how it is dealing with the UK.
As far as I can see, Russia’s dealings with France have consisted of entertaining Macron to a bizarre meeting across the longest table in Europe, asking him to get tested, indulging his popinjay pretensions as a leader of peace and the man who brokered a new age of global harmony…. And then invading Ukraine anyway (if the diplomatic rumours are right)
He’s gonna look a total twerp if they DO invade, now. Dare I say it: even more than Ms Truss
Be fair - the dining room table in Bruce Wayne Manor in Batman (1988) was longer.
Diplomacy often ends in failure. Diplomacy rarely ends in open mockery. She flew to Moscow to cosplay Thatcher warn Russia about its threat to Ukraine and its border claims. Without having the First Clue where any of those places were. Unsurprisingly Lavrov just laughed her off as being irrelevant. Its like the big kids are doing something and the little kid wants in. Doesn't understand the rules, or what is happening, but heard the big kids say a word which they are now confidently repeating out of context.
"According to Russian media reports, not denied by the UK side, Truss’s chilly encounter with her vastly more experienced Russian opposite number, Sergey Lavrov, included an exchange that went roughly like this.
Truss: ‘Russia must move its troops away from the Ukrainian border, or else…’ Lavrov: ‘Why should we? It’s up to Russia where it deploys its troops inside Russia’ (which, of course, it is). He then asked, for good measure: ‘Do you recognise Russia’s sovereignty over the Rostov and Voronezh regions?’ At which point Truss mounted her high horse and responded with all the authority of the UK’s chief diplomat: ‘The UK will never recognise Russia’s sovereignty over these regions.’
This is where the UK’s ambassador to Moscow, Deborah Bronnert, is said to have leant across to Truss and discreetly informed her that these regions were actually in Russia. Her assumption had apparently been that they were the two so-called breakaway regions on the Ukrainian side of the border."
Lavrov asked a silly trick question and Truss made a mistake. Zero consequence except among the useful idiots in the UK who use it to undermine Truss. Which is why Lavrov did it.
A strong post, StillWaters, a damn fine try at spinning it. Unfortunately you would ask us to believe absolutely everybody would have blundered into that trap - but that isn’t true, is it?
No, she made a mistake. But whatever - people misspeak all the time.
She did not misspeak. The Foreign Secretary might reasonably be expected to have read her brief and maybe glanced at a map on the flight over for crisis talks.
Of course. And then in a discussion the names of 2 oblasts are thrown out. Perhaps she misheard, perhaps she thought they were a different name.
Consider her options:
1. Say they recognise sovereignty - real downside if it’s a quirky babe for Donblas 2. Bristle and push back - establishes the principle; downside risk is she looks a little silly 3. Ignore/redefine the question “we’re not here to talk about that. We’re here to talk about X”
I personally would have gone with option 3. But I’m not going to condemn her for going with option 2 and getting called out.
She looks a little silly and gets mocked on Twitter. So f***ng what? Lavrov is an arse and got a cheap shot in. Real world consequence zero.
Sometimes people just need to ignore the trolls.
If she had been asked about Downing St parties she would have given a more diplomatic answer.
Diplomacy is her job. The moment required the upmost care. This is they very essence of her responsibility. Instead of using language with the precision of a surgeon’s knife she bluffed it. Not good.
Sure. She made a misstep on negotiations. Cost: zero
Now we have a choice:
1. Do we mock, undermine and weaken the Foreign Secretary at a time of serious international tension as the Russian hope we will do? 2. Do we not do what the Russians want us to do?
1. Oh fuck right off. She is a narcissistic vacuous self-promoting cretin.
Kinder politics.
The alternative apparently is that we all tearily clutch our hankies as Maggie Truss waves our brave boys off to war from Southampton Dock.
Johnson has just ordered all of the British troops out of Ukraine.
Truss should have used diplomatic language. It’s her job. It’s not as if she didn’t know it was a tricky situation. Instead she made an assumption, bluffed, failed and looked silly.
What’s weird is if this was Radio 4 she would have been fine giving nuanced answers.
The positive take away is that she now knows that - to quote @Dura_Ace - Lavrov is a “sneaky old twat”.
That’s a good lesson to learn for a very low cost.
Whilst I applaud your desire to find a silver lining, I fear if she learned Lavrov was a tricky customer for the first time at that moment someone really isn’t doing their job.
It wasn't a trick by Lavrov. The naming of Voronezh and Rostov was in the context of, and immediately following Lavrov saying that Russia could do what it likes within its Sovereign territory. A smarter cookie would have known this, and said that of course Russia could do what it likes in its sovereign territory, as can Ukraine do what it likes in its.
That would have been the wrong response - it would have given permission for the military build up.
The right response would have been that they may be sovereign Russian territory but that does not give them the right to use them as a launchpad to threaten a sovereign and independent country.
To which they would have responded that isn't their intention.
They would have been lying, of course, but we would have no way of proving it.
It was an elephant trap on a number of levels, but if she said what she's reported as saying that's still a barely believable gaffe and in a proper government, would be a resigning matter.
Now your [sic] just being silly. It is not a resigning matter
Er...pardon? Saying that she doesn't recognise Russian sovereignty over Russian territory isn't a resigning matter?
As a minor matter of curiosity, what would be? Punching Lavrov in the face while shouting 'that's for Salisbury?'
The Sunday Rawnsley: Eager to wound, but unwilling to strike, Sir John and Mrs May reflect the state of the party they once led. It is simultaneously infuriated and paralysed by a scandal that is also a crisis. This leaves the Tory party and with it the government, marooned in no man’s land.
Waiting to see if the polls are verified by a heavy defeat at the May local elections “puts our councillors in the executioner’s tumbril”, as another MP puts it. The prime minister is solely focused on trying to save his own skin. He always governed from one week to the next. Now he governs from one day to the next.
One Conservative MP reports: “The phrase you hear a lot of in the tearoom is ‘we can’t go on like this’.” So I asked him whether he had submitted a letter calling for a confidence vote. He confessed that he hadn’t, before arguing that it was too early to move. He was choosing to go on like this… there is the substantial group who want Mr Johnson gone, but are hesitant about acting. “One of the worst outcomes is that we get a confidence vote and he narrowly survives it,” says one senior Tory. “If he wins by just one vote, he will stay. Anyone else would walk, but he will stay.”
The Conservative party will pay a penalty for its prevarication – indeed, it already is paying. The longer this goes on, the more this looks like a lawless government that thinks rules are for everyone else and the deeper the reputational damage sustained by the Tories. “A month ago, this was hurting only Boris,” says one former cabinet minister. “Now, it is hurting the whole government. The more they put up ministers to make a defence of him, the more it damages all of us.”
So I asked this senior Tory whether he had put in a confidence letter and discovered he was another who hadn’t done so yet. The government will remain trapped in this nightmare no man’s land, and the country with it, until Tory MPs cease equivocating and a critical mass of them decide to bring things to a head.
What a bunch of spineless wasters most Tory MPs are.
And meanwhile, the Government achieves nothing - save to bleed the young ruthlessly in order to stuff the mouths of the elderly with gold.
Research by the Intergenerational Foundation thinktank, to be published on Monday, claims that younger workers are being unfairly targeted by the government in a “tax by stealth” caused by freezes on income tax brackets and the student loan repayment threshold, as well as April’s national insurance rise.
Low-earning young people will be hit hardest by the changes, claims the report, having a significant impact on their take home pay, disposable income and potential to save for housing and pensions.
Researchers calculate a graduate earning £27,000 a year will see their deductions rise by about 20% over the next four years – from 18% of their pay to 22%. They predict their disposable income will drop by almost 30%.
...
Labelling under-30s the “packhorse generation”, the thinktank claims they are being targeted by the government, which it says is using high inflation to pull more low-income, and especially younger, workers into taxation sooner.
The mouths of the elderly are not being stuffed with gold. The state pension is less than £10,000 a year.
So where is the money going then because its those working a full week and don't have children who are paying for it.
It's not that the elderly are each getting a lot of money, it's just that there are an awful lot of them. The NHS (which is used mainly by the elderly), social care (ditto) and pensions are taking more and more of the total spending envelope, with education spending flat and everything else getting squeezed, and taxes going up. This trend will continue for several more decades. Closing the door to young EU workers (who are more likely to work and less likely to claim benefits than any other group) has made things worse.
The Sunday Rawnsley: Eager to wound, but unwilling to strike, Sir John and Mrs May reflect the state of the party they once led. It is simultaneously infuriated and paralysed by a scandal that is also a crisis. This leaves the Tory party and with it the government, marooned in no man’s land.
Waiting to see if the polls are verified by a heavy defeat at the May local elections “puts our councillors in the executioner’s tumbril”, as another MP puts it. The prime minister is solely focused on trying to save his own skin. He always governed from one week to the next. Now he governs from one day to the next.
One Conservative MP reports: “The phrase you hear a lot of in the tearoom is ‘we can’t go on like this’.” So I asked him whether he had submitted a letter calling for a confidence vote. He confessed that he hadn’t, before arguing that it was too early to move. He was choosing to go on like this… there is the substantial group who want Mr Johnson gone, but are hesitant about acting. “One of the worst outcomes is that we get a confidence vote and he narrowly survives it,” says one senior Tory. “If he wins by just one vote, he will stay. Anyone else would walk, but he will stay.”
The Conservative party will pay a penalty for its prevarication – indeed, it already is paying. The longer this goes on, the more this looks like a lawless government that thinks rules are for everyone else and the deeper the reputational damage sustained by the Tories. “A month ago, this was hurting only Boris,” says one former cabinet minister. “Now, it is hurting the whole government. The more they put up ministers to make a defence of him, the more it damages all of us.”
So I asked this senior Tory whether he had put in a confidence letter and discovered he was another who hadn’t done so yet. The government will remain trapped in this nightmare no man’s land, and the country with it, until Tory MPs cease equivocating and a critical mass of them decide to bring things to a head.
What a bunch of spineless wasters most Tory MPs are.
And meanwhile, the Government achieves nothing - save to bleed the young ruthlessly in order to stuff the mouths of the elderly with gold.
Research by the Intergenerational Foundation thinktank, to be published on Monday, claims that younger workers are being unfairly targeted by the government in a “tax by stealth” caused by freezes on income tax brackets and the student loan repayment threshold, as well as April’s national insurance rise.
Low-earning young people will be hit hardest by the changes, claims the report, having a significant impact on their take home pay, disposable income and potential to save for housing and pensions.
Researchers calculate a graduate earning £27,000 a year will see their deductions rise by about 20% over the next four years – from 18% of their pay to 22%. They predict their disposable income will drop by almost 30%.
...
Labelling under-30s the “packhorse generation”, the thinktank claims they are being targeted by the government, which it says is using high inflation to pull more low-income, and especially younger, workers into taxation sooner.
The mouths of the elderly are not being stuffed with gold. The state pension is less than £10,000 a year.
Well, of course, those reliant entirely on the state pension get a good hard kicking along with the rest of the poor, but the poor will be largely sticking with Labour and the Government doesn't care about their fate.
Most older voters are owner-occupiers, and have seen the value of their property appreciate by 10% in the last twelve months alone - mountains of capital that can be readily accessed through downsizing and equity release. A great many will also be benefiting from occupational pension schemes that were vastly more generous in the past than they are today: defined benefit pensions, especially in the private sector, are almost a thing of the past; money purchase schemes are rubbish by comparison. Meanwhile, for the expectant heirs, inheritance tax is IIRC lower than it has ever been.
The dramatic generational gap we've seen opening up in voting patterns hasn't happened by chance. The Tory core vote, besides a modest number of genuinely rich people, consists of comfortably off people born before about 1980: middle class pensioners and their heirs. In crude terms, the current structure of the economy serves to syphon off the earnings of younger workers to keep the state running, whilst asset holdings that are mainly concentrated in the hands of people over about 45 or 50 are treated with kid gloves and left to continuously inflate, courtesy of rock bottom interest rates and quantitative easing.
The higher house prices inflate, the richer the old become and the harder it gets for the young to afford to live. So much for all the trite, laughable nonsense about the dignity of work. So much for Mrs Thatcher's property owning democracy as well. It's also small wonder that the young have increasingly given up bothering to reproduce. Ours is a very sick society.
So many elements of 🇩🇪 policy towards 🇷🇺 undermine European (and German) security. When will German leaders understand that they have a responsibility to the EU which is the anchor of their modern security and prosperity?
"According to Russian media reports, not denied by the UK side, Truss’s chilly encounter with her vastly more experienced Russian opposite number, Sergey Lavrov, included an exchange that went roughly like this.
Truss: ‘Russia must move its troops away from the Ukrainian border, or else…’ Lavrov: ‘Why should we? It’s up to Russia where it deploys its troops inside Russia’ (which, of course, it is). He then asked, for good measure: ‘Do you recognise Russia’s sovereignty over the Rostov and Voronezh regions?’ At which point Truss mounted her high horse and responded with all the authority of the UK’s chief diplomat: ‘The UK will never recognise Russia’s sovereignty over these regions.’
This is where the UK’s ambassador to Moscow, Deborah Bronnert, is said to have leant across to Truss and discreetly informed her that these regions were actually in Russia. Her assumption had apparently been that they were the two so-called breakaway regions on the Ukrainian side of the border."
Lavrov asked a silly trick question and Truss made a mistake. Zero consequence except among the useful idiots in the UK who use it to undermine Truss. Which is why Lavrov did it.
A strong post, StillWaters, a damn fine try at spinning it. Unfortunately you would ask us to believe absolutely everybody would have blundered into that trap - but that isn’t true, is it?
No, she made a mistake. But whatever - people misspeak all the time.
She did not misspeak. The Foreign Secretary might reasonably be expected to have read her brief and maybe glanced at a map on the flight over for crisis talks.
Of course. And then in a discussion the names of 2 oblasts are thrown out. Perhaps she misheard, perhaps she thought they were a different name.
Consider her options:
1. Say they recognise sovereignty - real downside if it’s a quirky babe for Donblas 2. Bristle and push back - establishes the principle; downside risk is she looks a little silly 3. Ignore/redefine the question “we’re not here to talk about that. We’re here to talk about X”
I personally would have gone with option 3. But I’m not going to condemn her for going with option 2 and getting called out.
She looks a little silly and gets mocked on Twitter. So f***ng what? Lavrov is an arse and got a cheap shot in. Real world consequence zero.
Sometimes people just need to ignore the trolls.
If she had been asked about Downing St parties she would have given a more diplomatic answer.
Diplomacy is her job. The moment required the upmost care. This is they very essence of her responsibility. Instead of using language with the precision of a surgeon’s knife she bluffed it. Not good.
Sure. She made a misstep on negotiations. Cost: zero
Now we have a choice:
1. Do we mock, undermine and weaken the Foreign Secretary at a time of serious international tension as the Russian hope we will do? 2. Do we not do what the Russians want us to do?
1. Oh fuck right off. She is a narcissistic vacuous self-promoting cretin.
Kinder politics.
The alternative apparently is that we all tearily clutch our hankies as Maggie Truss waves our brave boys off to war from Southampton Dock.
Calling out an incompetent simpleton making a laughing stock of this country on the international stage is not siding with the Russians. If we wanted to play a role in this crisis she has torpedoed it.
No, it isn’t the alternative. It is anything but it is, once again, a lazy caricature. We will not go to war with Russia over this.
I also don’t recall mentioning your needless personal attack on her as siding with the Russians either. So it’s odd you choose to raise that.
Your rabid invective where political opponents are concerned is becoming increasingly more and more tedious. What do you get from it ? Does it make you feel better with your life coming on here and calling Laura Pidcock ‘Laura Pillock’. Seriously, grow up.
You didn't say it, but it was directly implied by CCHQ Stillwater who I was responding to.
Incidentally when you say my "rabid invective towards political opponents" can you add more clarity? Its just that I say lots of warm things about political opponents. I have been a Sunak fan for a couple of years and still think he would be the Tories best hope. I praised John Major. I repeatedly point out that poor maligned Theresa May added 20% vote share to David Cameron's 2015 pile so wasn't a failure. I keep talking up Starmer's efforts.
I say what I see. OK sometimes with rhetorical flourishes. But if you're suggesting that I am rampantly partisan like HY then think again. There are good and bad in every party.
As for using descriptors like Laura Pillock, Jezbollah, Liar, cosplaying Thatcher, Ricky Dicky Ding Dong Burgon, nippie etc - yeah, it does make me feel better. Better to laugh at things than cry. So mock them. Satirise them. Laugh at them. What I find funny isn't what you find funny - such is life.
"According to Russian media reports, not denied by the UK side, Truss’s chilly encounter with her vastly more experienced Russian opposite number, Sergey Lavrov, included an exchange that went roughly like this.
Truss: ‘Russia must move its troops away from the Ukrainian border, or else…’ Lavrov: ‘Why should we? It’s up to Russia where it deploys its troops inside Russia’ (which, of course, it is). He then asked, for good measure: ‘Do you recognise Russia’s sovereignty over the Rostov and Voronezh regions?’ At which point Truss mounted her high horse and responded with all the authority of the UK’s chief diplomat: ‘The UK will never recognise Russia’s sovereignty over these regions.’
This is where the UK’s ambassador to Moscow, Deborah Bronnert, is said to have leant across to Truss and discreetly informed her that these regions were actually in Russia. Her assumption had apparently been that they were the two so-called breakaway regions on the Ukrainian side of the border."
Lavrov asked a silly trick question and Truss made a mistake. Zero consequence except among the useful idiots in the UK who use it to undermine Truss. Which is why Lavrov did it.
A strong post, StillWaters, a damn fine try at spinning it. Unfortunately you would ask us to believe absolutely everybody would have blundered into that trap - but that isn’t true, is it?
No, she made a mistake. But whatever - people misspeak all the time.
She did not misspeak. The Foreign Secretary might reasonably be expected to have read her brief and maybe glanced at a map on the flight over for crisis talks.
Of course. And then in a discussion the names of 2 oblasts are thrown out. Perhaps she misheard, perhaps she thought they were a different name.
Consider her options:
1. Say they recognise sovereignty - real downside if it’s a quirky babe for Donblas 2. Bristle and push back - establishes the principle; downside risk is she looks a little silly 3. Ignore/redefine the question “we’re not here to talk about that. We’re here to talk about X”
I personally would have gone with option 3. But I’m not going to condemn her for going with option 2 and getting called out.
She looks a little silly and gets mocked on Twitter. So f***ng what? Lavrov is an arse and got a cheap shot in. Real world consequence zero.
Sometimes people just need to ignore the trolls.
If she had been asked about Downing St parties she would have given a more diplomatic answer.
Diplomacy is her job. The moment required the upmost care. This is they very essence of her responsibility. Instead of using language with the precision of a surgeon’s knife she bluffed it. Not good.
Sure. She made a misstep on negotiations. Cost: zero
Now we have a choice:
1. Do we mock, undermine and weaken the Foreign Secretary at a time of serious international tension as the Russian hope we will do? 2. Do we not do what the Russians want us to do?
1. Oh fuck right off. She is a narcissistic vacuous self-promoting cretin.
Kinder politics.
The alternative apparently is that we all tearily clutch our hankies as Maggie Truss waves our brave boys off to war from Southampton Dock.
I could wear my summer frock so it could cling to my wet body in the rain
German Hypocrisy 👉🏻NO weapons for Ukraine‘s self-defence against Russian military invasion BUT 👉🏻 366 million € (!) 🇩🇪exports of dual-use goods to Russia in 2020 alone which can be destined to boost weapons production (Nr. 4 on export list). Irrespective of EU santions‼️
"According to Russian media reports, not denied by the UK side, Truss’s chilly encounter with her vastly more experienced Russian opposite number, Sergey Lavrov, included an exchange that went roughly like this.
Truss: ‘Russia must move its troops away from the Ukrainian border, or else…’ Lavrov: ‘Why should we? It’s up to Russia where it deploys its troops inside Russia’ (which, of course, it is). He then asked, for good measure: ‘Do you recognise Russia’s sovereignty over the Rostov and Voronezh regions?’ At which point Truss mounted her high horse and responded with all the authority of the UK’s chief diplomat: ‘The UK will never recognise Russia’s sovereignty over these regions.’
This is where the UK’s ambassador to Moscow, Deborah Bronnert, is said to have leant across to Truss and discreetly informed her that these regions were actually in Russia. Her assumption had apparently been that they were the two so-called breakaway regions on the Ukrainian side of the border."
Lavrov asked a silly trick question and Truss made a mistake. Zero consequence except among the useful idiots in the UK who use it to undermine Truss. Which is why Lavrov did it.
A strong post, StillWaters, a damn fine try at spinning it. Unfortunately you would ask us to believe absolutely everybody would have blundered into that trap - but that isn’t true, is it?
No, she made a mistake. But whatever - people misspeak all the time.
She did not misspeak. The Foreign Secretary might reasonably be expected to have read her brief and maybe glanced at a map on the flight over for crisis talks.
Of course. And then in a discussion the names of 2 oblasts are thrown out. Perhaps she misheard, perhaps she thought they were a different name.
Consider her options:
1. Say they recognise sovereignty - real downside if it’s a quirky babe for Donblas 2. Bristle and push back - establishes the principle; downside risk is she looks a little silly 3. Ignore/redefine the question “we’re not here to talk about that. We’re here to talk about X”
I personally would have gone with option 3. But I’m not going to condemn her for going with option 2 and getting called out.
She looks a little silly and gets mocked on Twitter. So f***ng what? Lavrov is an arse and got a cheap shot in. Real world consequence zero.
Sometimes people just need to ignore the trolls.
If she had been asked about Downing St parties she would have given a more diplomatic answer.
Diplomacy is her job. The moment required the upmost care. This is they very essence of her responsibility. Instead of using language with the precision of a surgeon’s knife she bluffed it. Not good.
Sure. She made a misstep on negotiations. Cost: zero
Now we have a choice:
1. Do we mock, undermine and weaken the Foreign Secretary at a time of serious international tension as the Russian hope we will do? 2. Do we not do what the Russians want us to do?
1. Oh fuck right off. She is a narcissistic vacuous self-promoting cretin. 2. The Russians don't really care what we think - Britain has reduced itself to a bit player having left the big stage. Compare and contrast how Russia is dealing with France / EU with how it is dealing with the UK.
Russia knows the UK opposes it and is a prime mover in resisting its advances. Russia believes Macron is vain and wants to be seen as a peace bring so will be more likely to make concessions.
Of course Russia bigs France up.
Some of your guys just don’t have a fucking clue. You let your hatred for this government blind you to another’s plays.
Hands up how many PB-ears would have correctly guessed that Voronezh and Rostov are in Russia not Ukraine (or some other Russiany-but-not-actually-Russian place?
I’m pretty damn good at geography, but I would have not confidently known. My only knowledge is that Rostov is surely also known as “Rostov-on-Don” so that means it is probably in the Donbas, which is disputed territory of Ukraine?
The Fiendish Russians phrased the question to embarrass her. Now, arguably, the Foreign Sec should not be so “easily” tripped up, but I can see why she got it wrong
The fiendish Russian asked a question about Russian territory to the foreigner who flew over to lecture Russia about territorial claims. The location of Russia's troops is hardly irrelevant to the issue she flew in to remonstrate over. She should have spent more time reading her brief and less doing Thatcher cosplay.
She made us like like what we are - irrelevant idiots. Meanwhile the EU fronted by Macron in control both of a brief and a brain continues to represent European interests whilst the supposedly senile Biden does the same for NATO.
Hmmm. Not sure Macron has actually achieved much other than a bit of posturing over his DNA. I think you also forget the number of missteps Germany has made, including Schönbach's unfortunate faux pas which was actually even worse than Truss'.
What must be annoying the hell out of the Russians is that the West seems serious about sanctions. They must have thought the Germans at least would still buy their gas, but it looks as thought there would be at least a temporary hiatus there.
Macron sat the opposite end of Putin on a very big table. It looked quite daft.
Aren’t the Austrians refusing to approve sanctions that include gas.
I have heard that, but I also wonder how much choice they have if France, Germany and the US all agree. It needn't be for long. Two to three weeks might be enough to cripple the Russian economy and force a withdrawal.
That is also of course a good reason for Putin to go ASAP. IF he delays, leaving aside the mud in Ukraine, demand for his gas will be going down as the weather warms.
The Sunday Rawnsley: Eager to wound, but unwilling to strike, Sir John and Mrs May reflect the state of the party they once led. It is simultaneously infuriated and paralysed by a scandal that is also a crisis. This leaves the Tory party and with it the government, marooned in no man’s land.
Waiting to see if the polls are verified by a heavy defeat at the May local elections “puts our councillors in the executioner’s tumbril”, as another MP puts it. The prime minister is solely focused on trying to save his own skin. He always governed from one week to the next. Now he governs from one day to the next.
One Conservative MP reports: “The phrase you hear a lot of in the tearoom is ‘we can’t go on like this’.” So I asked him whether he had submitted a letter calling for a confidence vote. He confessed that he hadn’t, before arguing that it was too early to move. He was choosing to go on like this… there is the substantial group who want Mr Johnson gone, but are hesitant about acting. “One of the worst outcomes is that we get a confidence vote and he narrowly survives it,” says one senior Tory. “If he wins by just one vote, he will stay. Anyone else would walk, but he will stay.”
The Conservative party will pay a penalty for its prevarication – indeed, it already is paying. The longer this goes on, the more this looks like a lawless government that thinks rules are for everyone else and the deeper the reputational damage sustained by the Tories. “A month ago, this was hurting only Boris,” says one former cabinet minister. “Now, it is hurting the whole government. The more they put up ministers to make a defence of him, the more it damages all of us.”
So I asked this senior Tory whether he had put in a confidence letter and discovered he was another who hadn’t done so yet. The government will remain trapped in this nightmare no man’s land, and the country with it, until Tory MPs cease equivocating and a critical mass of them decide to bring things to a head.
What a bunch of spineless wasters most Tory MPs are.
And meanwhile, the Government achieves nothing - save to bleed the young ruthlessly in order to stuff the mouths of the elderly with gold.
Research by the Intergenerational Foundation thinktank, to be published on Monday, claims that younger workers are being unfairly targeted by the government in a “tax by stealth” caused by freezes on income tax brackets and the student loan repayment threshold, as well as April’s national insurance rise.
Low-earning young people will be hit hardest by the changes, claims the report, having a significant impact on their take home pay, disposable income and potential to save for housing and pensions.
Researchers calculate a graduate earning £27,000 a year will see their deductions rise by about 20% over the next four years – from 18% of their pay to 22%. They predict their disposable income will drop by almost 30%.
...
Labelling under-30s the “packhorse generation”, the thinktank claims they are being targeted by the government, which it says is using high inflation to pull more low-income, and especially younger, workers into taxation sooner.
Best-selling author Adam Kay has been desperately trying to remove from the internet any trace of the vile songs Your Baby and Northern Birds, which he recorded as part of a comedy duo called Amateur Transplants.
I saw Amateur Transplants the day after the 2010 general election and they were fantastic. The interesting thing is, those two songs aren’t the most offensive.
I think it’s sad that comedy is being destroyed by wokeness. Neither Adam Kay or Suman Biswas would approve of the stuff they sing about. But like Jimmy Carr, they’re act plays on our prejudices and has a cynical view of the world.
No.
Adam Kay's book, which I quite liked, nevertheless has some rather schoolboy 'humour' misogynism about it.
But on the broader point, it is absolutely NOT the case that all topics are fair game. Any decent human being doesn't make jokes about the deaths of people: whether Romas or children, for example.
I'm weary of the attack on 'wokeness' being used as a front for plain nasty, vile, human behaviour.
The Nasty Party is back.
(But I expect when Sandpit gets up in Dubai he will still like your post, so that's alright then)
Attacks on wokeness frequently go too far as part of culture war stuff, but you are getting on your moral high horse and attempting to police what other people find amusing. You're essentially declaring people should not be allowed to laugh at black comedy or offense comedy because it's not right as far as you're concerned.
That's up to you. Lots of stuff in that vein is not very amusing, but I'd much rather people feel able to approach the line of tastelessness sometimes than never approach certain topics comedically.
Take a mild example- There's an old joke about the troubles being a stupid name because what did people think 3000 died of, stress? Under your definition its joking about people dying (not as target, but it's still a joke about death so your definition says not ok)
I don't think moral grandstanding is necessary because most comedy is safer and more mainstream as people prefer that.
But I disagree with you - everything absolutely is fair game. I don't believe that makes me a bad person or the person telling it.
As for being a front for nasty behaviour it's like the famous quote about art or photography - hard to define the line, but we can generally tell it when we see it.
When it comes to moralising on other's behaviour i could never rule out something might need condemning. But I'd play it very very cautiously. The same reason I am always wary around civil liberty issues - X might be ok, buy be careful.
The Sunday Rawnsley: Eager to wound, but unwilling to strike, Sir John and Mrs May reflect the state of the party they once led. It is simultaneously infuriated and paralysed by a scandal that is also a crisis. This leaves the Tory party and with it the government, marooned in no man’s land.
Waiting to see if the polls are verified by a heavy defeat at the May local elections “puts our councillors in the executioner’s tumbril”, as another MP puts it. The prime minister is solely focused on trying to save his own skin. He always governed from one week to the next. Now he governs from one day to the next.
One Conservative MP reports: “The phrase you hear a lot of in the tearoom is ‘we can’t go on like this’.” So I asked him whether he had submitted a letter calling for a confidence vote. He confessed that he hadn’t, before arguing that it was too early to move. He was choosing to go on like this… there is the substantial group who want Mr Johnson gone, but are hesitant about acting. “One of the worst outcomes is that we get a confidence vote and he narrowly survives it,” says one senior Tory. “If he wins by just one vote, he will stay. Anyone else would walk, but he will stay.”
The Conservative party will pay a penalty for its prevarication – indeed, it already is paying. The longer this goes on, the more this looks like a lawless government that thinks rules are for everyone else and the deeper the reputational damage sustained by the Tories. “A month ago, this was hurting only Boris,” says one former cabinet minister. “Now, it is hurting the whole government. The more they put up ministers to make a defence of him, the more it damages all of us.”
So I asked this senior Tory whether he had put in a confidence letter and discovered he was another who hadn’t done so yet. The government will remain trapped in this nightmare no man’s land, and the country with it, until Tory MPs cease equivocating and a critical mass of them decide to bring things to a head.
What a bunch of spineless wasters most Tory MPs are.
And meanwhile, the Government achieves nothing - save to bleed the young ruthlessly in order to stuff the mouths of the elderly with gold.
Research by the Intergenerational Foundation thinktank, to be published on Monday, claims that younger workers are being unfairly targeted by the government in a “tax by stealth” caused by freezes on income tax brackets and the student loan repayment threshold, as well as April’s national insurance rise.
Low-earning young people will be hit hardest by the changes, claims the report, having a significant impact on their take home pay, disposable income and potential to save for housing and pensions.
Researchers calculate a graduate earning £27,000 a year will see their deductions rise by about 20% over the next four years – from 18% of their pay to 22%. They predict their disposable income will drop by almost 30%.
...
Labelling under-30s the “packhorse generation”, the thinktank claims they are being targeted by the government, which it says is using high inflation to pull more low-income, and especially younger, workers into taxation sooner.
The mouths of the elderly are not being stuffed with gold. The state pension is less than £10,000 a year.
Yet they are the richest generation of pensioners ever. And the youngsters of today the first generation to be poorer than their parents since the world wars. The comparison is fair, the discrepancy between the generations is not.
Lots of speculation about timing of Russian invasion to avoid Winter Olympics in fellow despotic hellhole China, but I wonder whether the maximum craving for attention move is to launch the invasion during the Super Bowl and overshadow the half-time show?
Truss should have used diplomatic language. It’s her job. It’s not as if she didn’t know it was a tricky situation. Instead she made an assumption, bluffed, failed and looked silly.
What’s weird is if this was Radio 4 she would have been fine giving nuanced answers.
The positive take away is that she now knows that - to quote @Dura_Ace - Lavrov is a “sneaky old twat”.
That’s a good lesson to learn for a very low cost.
Whilst I applaud your desire to find a silver lining, I fear if she learned Lavrov was a tricky customer for the first time at that moment someone really isn’t doing their job.
It wasn't a trick by Lavrov. The naming of Voronezh and Rostov was in the context of, and immediately following Lavrov saying that Russia could do what it likes within its Sovereign territory. A smarter cookie would have known this, and said that of course Russia could do what it likes in its sovereign territory, as can Ukraine do what it likes in its.
That would have been the wrong response - it would have given permission for the military build up.
The right response would have been that they may be sovereign Russian territory but that does not give them the right to use them as a launchpad to threaten a sovereign and independent country.
To which they would have responded that isn't their intention.
They would have been lying, of course, but we would have no way of proving it.
It was an elephant trap on a number of levels, but if she said what she's reported as saying that's still a barely believable gaffe and in a proper government, would be a resigning matter.
Now your [sic] just being silly. It is not a resigning matter
Er...pardon? Saying that she doesn't recognise Russian sovereignty over Russian territory isn't a resigning matter?
As a minor matter of curiosity, what would be? Punching Lavrov in the face while shouting 'that's for Salisbury?'
Lets set out the "rules" on her job. You don't have to know diplomat-level detail. You don't have to be an expert negotiator. You don't have to resign at every minor slip. Plenty of her predecessors in that job haven't been very good.
But. You do have to know the basics. Like where you are. Like what you are talking about. Like not talking over the translator so that the counterparty can follow what you are saying. You do have to know how to read a room. How to use your team so that they can advise you. How to use pauses to Stop and Think - easier when translators have to repeat every line.
Truss can do none of those things. There isn't a requirement for her to resign. But she went out there supposedly on a serious mission and made a catastrofuck out of it. Russia thinks we're irrelevant and she just reinforced their judgement. Which makes the job of her successors harder.
"According to Russian media reports, not denied by the UK side, Truss’s chilly encounter with her vastly more experienced Russian opposite number, Sergey Lavrov, included an exchange that went roughly like this.
Truss: ‘Russia must move its troops away from the Ukrainian border, or else…’ Lavrov: ‘Why should we? It’s up to Russia where it deploys its troops inside Russia’ (which, of course, it is). He then asked, for good measure: ‘Do you recognise Russia’s sovereignty over the Rostov and Voronezh regions?’ At which point Truss mounted her high horse and responded with all the authority of the UK’s chief diplomat: ‘The UK will never recognise Russia’s sovereignty over these regions.’
This is where the UK’s ambassador to Moscow, Deborah Bronnert, is said to have leant across to Truss and discreetly informed her that these regions were actually in Russia. Her assumption had apparently been that they were the two so-called breakaway regions on the Ukrainian side of the border."
Lavrov asked a silly trick question and Truss made a mistake. Zero consequence except among the useful idiots in the UK who use it to undermine Truss. Which is why Lavrov did it.
A strong post, StillWaters, a damn fine try at spinning it. Unfortunately you would ask us to believe absolutely everybody would have blundered into that trap - but that isn’t true, is it?
No, she made a mistake. But whatever - people misspeak all the time.
She did not misspeak. The Foreign Secretary might reasonably be expected to have read her brief and maybe glanced at a map on the flight over for crisis talks.
Of course. And then in a discussion the names of 2 oblasts are thrown out. Perhaps she misheard, perhaps she thought they were a different name.
Consider her options:
1. Say they recognise sovereignty - real downside if it’s a quirky babe for Donblas 2. Bristle and push back - establishes the principle; downside risk is she looks a little silly 3. Ignore/redefine the question “we’re not here to talk about that. We’re here to talk about X”
I personally would have gone with option 3. But I’m not going to condemn her for going with option 2 and getting called out.
She looks a little silly and gets mocked on Twitter. So f***ng what? Lavrov is an arse and got a cheap shot in. Real world consequence zero.
Sometimes people just need to ignore the trolls.
If she had been asked about Downing St parties she would have given a more diplomatic answer.
Diplomacy is her job. The moment required the upmost care. This is they very essence of her responsibility. Instead of using language with the precision of a surgeon’s knife she bluffed it. Not good.
Sure. She made a misstep on negotiations. Cost: zero
Now we have a choice:
1. Do we mock, undermine and weaken the Foreign Secretary at a time of serious international tension as the Russian hope we will do? 2. Do we not do what the Russians want us to do?
1. Oh fuck right off. She is a narcissistic vacuous self-promoting cretin. 2. The Russians don't really care what we think - Britain has reduced itself to a bit player having left the big stage. Compare and contrast how Russia is dealing with France / EU with how it is dealing with the UK.
Russia knows the UK opposes it and is a prime mover in resisting its advances. Russia believes Macron is vain and wants to be seen as a peace bring so will be more likely to make concessions.
Of course Russia bigs France up.
Some of your guys just don’t have a fucking clue. You let your hatred for this government blind you to another’s plays.
"According to Russian media reports, not denied by the UK side, Truss’s chilly encounter with her vastly more experienced Russian opposite number, Sergey Lavrov, included an exchange that went roughly like this.
Truss: ‘Russia must move its troops away from the Ukrainian border, or else…’ Lavrov: ‘Why should we? It’s up to Russia where it deploys its troops inside Russia’ (which, of course, it is). He then asked, for good measure: ‘Do you recognise Russia’s sovereignty over the Rostov and Voronezh regions?’ At which point Truss mounted her high horse and responded with all the authority of the UK’s chief diplomat: ‘The UK will never recognise Russia’s sovereignty over these regions.’
This is where the UK’s ambassador to Moscow, Deborah Bronnert, is said to have leant across to Truss and discreetly informed her that these regions were actually in Russia. Her assumption had apparently been that they were the two so-called breakaway regions on the Ukrainian side of the border."
Lavrov asked a silly trick question and Truss made a mistake. Zero consequence except among the useful idiots in the UK who use it to undermine Truss. Which is why Lavrov did it.
A strong post, StillWaters, a damn fine try at spinning it. Unfortunately you would ask us to believe absolutely everybody would have blundered into that trap - but that isn’t true, is it?
No, she made a mistake. But whatever - people misspeak all the time.
She did not misspeak. The Foreign Secretary might reasonably be expected to have read her brief and maybe glanced at a map on the flight over for crisis talks.
Of course. And then in a discussion the names of 2 oblasts are thrown out. Perhaps she misheard, perhaps she thought they were a different name.
Consider her options:
1. Say they recognise sovereignty - real downside if it’s a quirky babe for Donblas 2. Bristle and push back - establishes the principle; downside risk is she looks a little silly 3. Ignore/redefine the question “we’re not here to talk about that. We’re here to talk about X”
I personally would have gone with option 3. But I’m not going to condemn her for going with option 2 and getting called out.
She looks a little silly and gets mocked on Twitter. So f***ng what? Lavrov is an arse and got a cheap shot in. Real world consequence zero.
Sometimes people just need to ignore the trolls.
If she had been asked about Downing St parties she would have given a more diplomatic answer.
Diplomacy is her job. The moment required the upmost care. This is they very essence of her responsibility. Instead of using language with the precision of a surgeon’s knife she bluffed it. Not good.
Sure. She made a misstep on negotiations. Cost: zero
Now we have a choice:
1. Do we mock, undermine and weaken the Foreign Secretary at a time of serious international tension as the Russian hope we will do? 2. Do we not do what the Russians want us to do?
1. Oh fuck right off. She is a narcissistic vacuous self-promoting cretin. 2. The Russians don't really care what we think - Britain has reduced itself to a bit player having left the big stage. Compare and contrast how Russia is dealing with France / EU with how it is dealing with the UK.
As far as I can see, Russia’s dealings with France have consisted of entertaining Macron to a bizarre meeting across the longest table in Europe, asking him to get tested, indulging his popinjay pretensions as a leader of peace and the man who brokered a new age of global harmony…. And then invading Ukraine anyway (if the diplomatic rumours are right)
He’s gonna look a total twerp if they DO invade, now. Dare I say it: even more than Ms Truss
Be fair - the dining room table in Bruce Wayne Manor in Batman (1988) was longer.
Diplomacy often ends in failure. Diplomacy rarely ends in open mockery. She flew to Moscow to cosplay Thatcher warn Russia about its threat to Ukraine and its border claims. Without having the First Clue where any of those places were. Unsurprisingly Lavrov just laughed her off as being irrelevant. Its like the big kids are doing something and the little kid wants in. Doesn't understand the rules, or what is happening, but heard the big kids say a word which they are now confidently repeating out of context.
Cue mocking laughter. Aimed at Britain.
No, it’s just your tiresome desire to belittle Britain and celebrate any perceived humiliation. It really is pathological
Is the UK a superpower? No. Is it as important as, say, China? Of course not
Is Britain a pathetically oversized version of Ireland, with a bit less rain? No, not that either
It is a senior mid-ranking power, armed with nukes, a member of the G7, NATO, the UNSC, probably the most important ally of the USA alongside Japan, and the UK also wields much soft power, ESPECIALLY over Russia, with their deep links to London (because this cuts both ways). How many of Russia’s top ten thousand send their kids to British private schools, or British universities? A LOT. And a lot more than France or Germany, to name two other examples of significant European powers
Has the UK lost influence over the EU’s foreign policy since Brexit? Yes. But what is that foreign policy? Search me. it varies depending on whether you are taking to Brussels, Berlin, Paris, Vienna, Budapest, Athens, Zagreb or some fringe group of amputee pensioners in Wroclaw
Hands up how many PB-ears would have correctly guessed that Voronezh and Rostov are in Russia not Ukraine (or some other Russiany-but-not-actually-Russian place?
I’m pretty damn good at geography, but I would have not confidently known. My only knowledge is that Rostov is surely also known as “Rostov-on-Don” so that means it is probably in the Donbas, which is disputed territory of Ukraine?
The Fiendish Russians phrased the question to embarrass her. Now, arguably, the Foreign Sec should not be so “easily” tripped up, but I can see why she got it wrong
The fiendish Russian asked a question about Russian territory to the foreigner who flew over to lecture Russia about territorial claims. The location of Russia's troops is hardly irrelevant to the issue she flew in to remonstrate over. She should have spent more time reading her brief and less doing Thatcher cosplay.
She made us like like what we are - irrelevant idiots. Meanwhile the EU fronted by Macron in control both of a brief and a brain continues to represent European interests whilst the supposedly senile Biden does the same for NATO.
Hmmm. Not sure Macron has actually achieved much other than a bit of posturing over his DNA. I think you also forget the number of missteps Germany has made, including Schönbach's unfortunate faux pas which was actually even worse than Truss'.
What must be annoying the hell out of the Russians is that the West seems serious about sanctions. They must have thought the Germans at least would still buy their gas, but it looks as thought there would be at least a temporary hiatus there.
Macron sat the opposite end of Putin on a very big table. It looked quite daft.
Aren’t the Austrians refusing to approve sanctions that include gas.
I have heard that, but I also wonder how much choice they have if France, Germany and the US all agree. It needn't be for long. Two to three weeks might be enough to cripple the Russian economy and force a withdrawal.
That is also of course a good reason for Putin to go ASAP. IF he delays, leaving aside the mud in Ukraine, demand for his gas will be going down as the weather warms.
The Americans can do some fairly hardcore stuff financially without approval from *anyone* - the Austrians don't really have a veto in that respect.
Hands up how many PB-ears would have correctly guessed that Voronezh and Rostov are in Russia not Ukraine (or some other Russiany-but-not-actually-Russian place?
I’m pretty damn good at geography, but I would have not confidently known. My only knowledge is that Rostov is surely also known as “Rostov-on-Don” so that means it is probably in the Donbas, which is disputed territory of Ukraine?
The Fiendish Russians phrased the question to embarrass her. Now, arguably, the Foreign Sec should not be so “easily” tripped up, but I can see why she got it wrong
The fiendish Russian asked a question about Russian territory to the foreigner who flew over to lecture Russia about territorial claims. The location of Russia's troops is hardly irrelevant to the issue she flew in to remonstrate over. She should have spent more time reading her brief and less doing Thatcher cosplay.
She made us like like what we are - irrelevant idiots. Meanwhile the EU fronted by Macron in control both of a brief and a brain continues to represent European interests whilst the supposedly senile Biden does the same for NATO.
Hmmm. Not sure Macron has actually achieved much other than a bit of posturing over his DNA. I think you also forget the number of missteps Germany has made, including Schönbach's unfortunate faux pas which was actually even worse than Truss'.
What must be annoying the hell out of the Russians is that the West seems serious about sanctions. They must have thought the Germans at least would still buy their gas, but it looks as thought there would be at least a temporary hiatus there.
Macron sat the opposite end of Putin on a very big table. It looked quite daft.
Aren’t the Austrians refusing to approve sanctions that include gas.
I have heard that, but I also wonder how much choice they have if France, Germany and the US all agree. It needn't be for long. Two to three weeks might be enough to cripple the Russian economy and force a withdrawal.
That is also of course a good reason for Putin to go ASAP. IF he delays, leaving aside the mud in Ukraine, demand for his gas will be going down as the weather warms.
However this plays out it does rather demonstrate the strategic errors made by the west in leaving itself on the hook to Russian gas imports...
The Sunday Rawnsley: Eager to wound, but unwilling to strike, Sir John and Mrs May reflect the state of the party they once led. It is simultaneously infuriated and paralysed by a scandal that is also a crisis. This leaves the Tory party and with it the government, marooned in no man’s land.
Waiting to see if the polls are verified by a heavy defeat at the May local elections “puts our councillors in the executioner’s tumbril”, as another MP puts it. The prime minister is solely focused on trying to save his own skin. He always governed from one week to the next. Now he governs from one day to the next.
One Conservative MP reports: “The phrase you hear a lot of in the tearoom is ‘we can’t go on like this’.” So I asked him whether he had submitted a letter calling for a confidence vote. He confessed that he hadn’t, before arguing that it was too early to move. He was choosing to go on like this… there is the substantial group who want Mr Johnson gone, but are hesitant about acting. “One of the worst outcomes is that we get a confidence vote and he narrowly survives it,” says one senior Tory. “If he wins by just one vote, he will stay. Anyone else would walk, but he will stay.”
The Conservative party will pay a penalty for its prevarication – indeed, it already is paying. The longer this goes on, the more this looks like a lawless government that thinks rules are for everyone else and the deeper the reputational damage sustained by the Tories. “A month ago, this was hurting only Boris,” says one former cabinet minister. “Now, it is hurting the whole government. The more they put up ministers to make a defence of him, the more it damages all of us.”
So I asked this senior Tory whether he had put in a confidence letter and discovered he was another who hadn’t done so yet. The government will remain trapped in this nightmare no man’s land, and the country with it, until Tory MPs cease equivocating and a critical mass of them decide to bring things to a head.
What a bunch of spineless wasters most Tory MPs are.
And meanwhile, the Government achieves nothing - save to bleed the young ruthlessly in order to stuff the mouths of the elderly with gold.
Research by the Intergenerational Foundation thinktank, to be published on Monday, claims that younger workers are being unfairly targeted by the government in a “tax by stealth” caused by freezes on income tax brackets and the student loan repayment threshold, as well as April’s national insurance rise.
Low-earning young people will be hit hardest by the changes, claims the report, having a significant impact on their take home pay, disposable income and potential to save for housing and pensions.
Researchers calculate a graduate earning £27,000 a year will see their deductions rise by about 20% over the next four years – from 18% of their pay to 22%. They predict their disposable income will drop by almost 30%.
...
Labelling under-30s the “packhorse generation”, the thinktank claims they are being targeted by the government, which it says is using high inflation to pull more low-income, and especially younger, workers into taxation sooner.
The mouths of the elderly are not being stuffed with gold. The state pension is less than £10,000 a year.
Yet they are the richest generation of pensioners ever. And the youngsters of today the first generation to be poorer than their parents since the world wars. The comparison is fair, the discrepancy between the generations is not.
In the normal course of events, you'd expect every sector to be better off, simply through economic growth and technology. It's not pensioners but the young who are the anomaly here. The state pension is low. That some property-owning pensioners have benefited from house price inflation does not amount to HMG stuffing their mouths with gold, and in any case, the gains are often unrealised. And many pensioners are poor, just as many young adults are doing very nicely, thank you.
That's a pretty staggering figure and not in a good way. One thing they need to be a little careful of though is they don't get obsessed with particular groups at the expense of the overall picture, a la Gordon Brown. 80% of black people having less than £1500 in savings is certainly bad, but there are on their own figures 22,455,726 people in that category - of which at least two thirds must be white for purely demographic reasons.
Of course, that in itself doesn't tell the full story. Large numbers of BAME people live in cities, often expensive ones like London, where £1500 goes rather less far than it would in say, Consett or Whitehaven.
But if you focus on just one aspect you run the risk of missing the complexity of the situation and creating even more complex problems down the line.
As a wealthy white voter that doesn't help me either. Boris has my back!
"According to Russian media reports, not denied by the UK side, Truss’s chilly encounter with her vastly more experienced Russian opposite number, Sergey Lavrov, included an exchange that went roughly like this.
Truss: ‘Russia must move its troops away from the Ukrainian border, or else…’ Lavrov: ‘Why should we? It’s up to Russia where it deploys its troops inside Russia’ (which, of course, it is). He then asked, for good measure: ‘Do you recognise Russia’s sovereignty over the Rostov and Voronezh regions?’ At which point Truss mounted her high horse and responded with all the authority of the UK’s chief diplomat: ‘The UK will never recognise Russia’s sovereignty over these regions.’
This is where the UK’s ambassador to Moscow, Deborah Bronnert, is said to have leant across to Truss and discreetly informed her that these regions were actually in Russia. Her assumption had apparently been that they were the two so-called breakaway regions on the Ukrainian side of the border."
Lavrov asked a silly trick question and Truss made a mistake. Zero consequence except among the useful idiots in the UK who use it to undermine Truss. Which is why Lavrov did it.
A strong post, StillWaters, a damn fine try at spinning it. Unfortunately you would ask us to believe absolutely everybody would have blundered into that trap - but that isn’t true, is it?
No, she made a mistake. But whatever - people misspeak all the time.
She did not misspeak. The Foreign Secretary might reasonably be expected to have read her brief and maybe glanced at a map on the flight over for crisis talks.
Of course. And then in a discussion the names of 2 oblasts are thrown out. Perhaps she misheard, perhaps she thought they were a different name.
Consider her options:
1. Say they recognise sovereignty - real downside if it’s a quirky babe for Donblas 2. Bristle and push back - establishes the principle; downside risk is she looks a little silly 3. Ignore/redefine the question “we’re not here to talk about that. We’re here to talk about X”
I personally would have gone with option 3. But I’m not going to condemn her for going with option 2 and getting called out.
She looks a little silly and gets mocked on Twitter. So f***ng what? Lavrov is an arse and got a cheap shot in. Real world consequence zero.
Sometimes people just need to ignore the trolls.
The smart move would have been to say that she is delighted with their offer to hand the Don Basin over to Ukraine and would welcome further talks to see if a settlement could be reached on that basis.
Unfortunately she isn’t very smart.
Within minutes of her saying that, an edited clip would have been on all the Russian controlled media.
With the message that the True Intentions Of The West had been Revealed - the dismemberment of Russia, supporting the Greater Ukrainian Fascists etc etc
The issue with that is that what she's said, if she said it and if they had a recording, would actually be more useful for them. She's now accused of saying the West doesn't recognise Russian sovereignty over Russian territory.
Now this may be the Russians playing silly buggers or Lavrov misremembering after he's had one too many. But it's still pretty bad.
I agree and I’m surprised how readily people are dismissing it. I expect we will hear a lot more of,it.
it would be quite PIQUANT if the Truss Mistake turns out to be the casus belli of World War Three
I see TASS are actually using it
10 FEB, 20:39 Top British diplomat refused to recognize Voronezh and Rostov as part of Russia — source
After Truss’ statements urging Moscow to move its forces, located on Russia’s soil, away from the border with Ukraine, Sergey Lavrov asked his British counterpart if she recognized Russia’s sovereignty over the Voronezh and Rostov Regions
Even as a committed TRUSS APOLOGIST I admit that kicking off the Final Global Apocalypse would be unideal for her aspirations to lead the UK Tory Party
Particularly as an invasion quite likely bolsters Bozza. And who doesn't love a Churchillian war leader?
INcidentally, if @Sunil_Prasannan isn't busy today, there might just be a new railway line for him to travel on if he can get to Burton. They're routing trains over the old South Staffs line to Lichfield instead of via Tamworth due to engineering works. Normally it's a freight only route so it might be one he hasn't done.
The Sunday Rawnsley: Eager to wound, but unwilling to strike, Sir John and Mrs May reflect the state of the party they once led. It is simultaneously infuriated and paralysed by a scandal that is also a crisis. This leaves the Tory party and with it the government, marooned in no man’s land.
Waiting to see if the polls are verified by a heavy defeat at the May local elections “puts our councillors in the executioner’s tumbril”, as another MP puts it. The prime minister is solely focused on trying to save his own skin. He always governed from one week to the next. Now he governs from one day to the next.
One Conservative MP reports: “The phrase you hear a lot of in the tearoom is ‘we can’t go on like this’.” So I asked him whether he had submitted a letter calling for a confidence vote. He confessed that he hadn’t, before arguing that it was too early to move. He was choosing to go on like this… there is the substantial group who want Mr Johnson gone, but are hesitant about acting. “One of the worst outcomes is that we get a confidence vote and he narrowly survives it,” says one senior Tory. “If he wins by just one vote, he will stay. Anyone else would walk, but he will stay.”
The Conservative party will pay a penalty for its prevarication – indeed, it already is paying. The longer this goes on, the more this looks like a lawless government that thinks rules are for everyone else and the deeper the reputational damage sustained by the Tories. “A month ago, this was hurting only Boris,” says one former cabinet minister. “Now, it is hurting the whole government. The more they put up ministers to make a defence of him, the more it damages all of us.”
So I asked this senior Tory whether he had put in a confidence letter and discovered he was another who hadn’t done so yet. The government will remain trapped in this nightmare no man’s land, and the country with it, until Tory MPs cease equivocating and a critical mass of them decide to bring things to a head.
What a bunch of spineless wasters most Tory MPs are.
And meanwhile, the Government achieves nothing - save to bleed the young ruthlessly in order to stuff the mouths of the elderly with gold.
Research by the Intergenerational Foundation thinktank, to be published on Monday, claims that younger workers are being unfairly targeted by the government in a “tax by stealth” caused by freezes on income tax brackets and the student loan repayment threshold, as well as April’s national insurance rise.
Low-earning young people will be hit hardest by the changes, claims the report, having a significant impact on their take home pay, disposable income and potential to save for housing and pensions.
Researchers calculate a graduate earning £27,000 a year will see their deductions rise by about 20% over the next four years – from 18% of their pay to 22%. They predict their disposable income will drop by almost 30%.
...
Labelling under-30s the “packhorse generation”, the thinktank claims they are being targeted by the government, which it says is using high inflation to pull more low-income, and especially younger, workers into taxation sooner.
The mouths of the elderly are not being stuffed with gold. The state pension is less than £10,000 a year.
So where is the money going then because its those working a full week and don't have children who are paying for it.
Well where it's not going is to poorer pensioners who depend on the state pension.
As I said below, the Government doesn't care about poorer pensioners, although FWIW at least the state pension is index linked so ramps reliably every year.
Where the money really counts is (a) in healthcare provision, where the vast burden of looking after legions of old crocs (often with multiple serious conditions) falls upon the state, and, critically, (b) in bleeding earned incomes white, so that asset wealth - which is disproportionately concentrated in the hands of older people - can be left comparatively untouched.
Above all, the property wealth of the Tory core vote has to be protected at all costs. Hence the fact that, as the years drag on and the population continues to age, tax on working age people's earnings will continue to become more onerous.
That new health and social care levy won't be staying at 1.25% for very long.
Hands up how many PB-ears would have correctly guessed that Voronezh and Rostov are in Russia not Ukraine (or some other Russiany-but-not-actually-Russian place?
I’m pretty damn good at geography, but I would have not confidently known. My only knowledge is that Rostov is surely also known as “Rostov-on-Don” so that means it is probably in the Donbas, which is disputed territory of Ukraine?
The Fiendish Russians phrased the question to embarrass her. Now, arguably, the Foreign Sec should not be so “easily” tripped up, but I can see why she got it wrong
The fiendish Russian asked a question about Russian territory to the foreigner who flew over to lecture Russia about territorial claims. The location of Russia's troops is hardly irrelevant to the issue she flew in to remonstrate over. She should have spent more time reading her brief and less doing Thatcher cosplay.
She made us like like what we are - irrelevant idiots. Meanwhile the EU fronted by Macron in control both of a brief and a brain continues to represent European interests whilst the supposedly senile Biden does the same for NATO.
Hmmm. Not sure Macron has actually achieved much other than a bit of posturing over his DNA. I think you also forget the number of missteps Germany has made, including Schönbach's unfortunate faux pas which was actually even worse than Truss'.
What must be annoying the hell out of the Russians is that the West seems serious about sanctions. They must have thought the Germans at least would still buy their gas, but it looks as thought there would be at least a temporary hiatus there.
Macron sat the opposite end of Putin on a very big table. It looked quite daft.
Aren’t the Austrians refusing to approve sanctions that include gas.
I have heard that, but I also wonder how much choice they have if France, Germany and the US all agree. It needn't be for long. Two to three weeks might be enough to cripple the Russian economy and force a withdrawal.
That is also of course a good reason for Putin to go ASAP. IF he delays, leaving aside the mud in Ukraine, demand for his gas will be going down as the weather warms.
The Americans can do some fairly hardcore stuff financially without approval from *anyone* - the Austrians don't really have a veto in that respect.
True, but the solidarity is important. Putin may have miscalculated the extent of unanimity amongst his opponents.
"According to Russian media reports, not denied by the UK side, Truss’s chilly encounter with her vastly more experienced Russian opposite number, Sergey Lavrov, included an exchange that went roughly like this.
Truss: ‘Russia must move its troops away from the Ukrainian border, or else…’ Lavrov: ‘Why should we? It’s up to Russia where it deploys its troops inside Russia’ (which, of course, it is). He then asked, for good measure: ‘Do you recognise Russia’s sovereignty over the Rostov and Voronezh regions?’ At which point Truss mounted her high horse and responded with all the authority of the UK’s chief diplomat: ‘The UK will never recognise Russia’s sovereignty over these regions.’
This is where the UK’s ambassador to Moscow, Deborah Bronnert, is said to have leant across to Truss and discreetly informed her that these regions were actually in Russia. Her assumption had apparently been that they were the two so-called breakaway regions on the Ukrainian side of the border."
Lavrov asked a silly trick question and Truss made a mistake. Zero consequence except among the useful idiots in the UK who use it to undermine Truss. Which is why Lavrov did it.
A strong post, StillWaters, a damn fine try at spinning it. Unfortunately you would ask us to believe absolutely everybody would have blundered into that trap - but that isn’t true, is it?
No, she made a mistake. But whatever - people misspeak all the time.
She did not misspeak. The Foreign Secretary might reasonably be expected to have read her brief and maybe glanced at a map on the flight over for crisis talks.
Of course. And then in a discussion the names of 2 oblasts are thrown out. Perhaps she misheard, perhaps she thought they were a different name.
Consider her options:
1. Say they recognise sovereignty - real downside if it’s a quirky babe for Donblas 2. Bristle and push back - establishes the principle; downside risk is she looks a little silly 3. Ignore/redefine the question “we’re not here to talk about that. We’re here to talk about X”
I personally would have gone with option 3. But I’m not going to condemn her for going with option 2 and getting called out.
She looks a little silly and gets mocked on Twitter. So f***ng what? Lavrov is an arse and got a cheap shot in. Real world consequence zero.
Sometimes people just need to ignore the trolls.
If she had been asked about Downing St parties she would have given a more diplomatic answer.
Diplomacy is her job. The moment required the upmost care. This is they very essence of her responsibility. Instead of using language with the precision of a surgeon’s knife she bluffed it. Not good.
Sure. She made a misstep on negotiations. Cost: zero
Now we have a choice:
1. Do we mock, undermine and weaken the Foreign Secretary at a time of serious international tension as the Russian hope we will do? 2. Do we not do what the Russians want us to do?
1. Oh fuck right off. She is a narcissistic vacuous self-promoting cretin.
Kinder politics.
The alternative apparently is that we all tearily clutch our hankies as Maggie Truss waves our brave boys off to war from Southampton Dock.
I could wear my summer frock so it could cling to my wet body in the rain
I feel sad for the people who want dead British soldiers/sailors/airmen and WWIII over Ukraine.
They won't get the presents they want. Will they cry? Will they need counselling?
That's a pretty staggering figure and not in a good way. One thing they need to be a little careful of though is they don't get obsessed with particular groups at the expense of the overall picture, a la Gordon Brown. 80% of black people having less than £1500 in savings is certainly bad, but there are on their own figures 22,455,726 people in that category - of which at least two thirds must be white for purely demographic reasons.
Of course, that in itself doesn't tell the full story. Large numbers of BAME people live in cities, often expensive ones like London, where £1500 goes rather less far than it would in say, Consett or Whitehaven.
But if you focus on just one aspect you run the risk of missing the complexity of the situation and creating even more complex problems down the line.
As a wealthy white voter that doesn't help me either. Boris has my back!
"According to Russian media reports, not denied by the UK side, Truss’s chilly encounter with her vastly more experienced Russian opposite number, Sergey Lavrov, included an exchange that went roughly like this.
Truss: ‘Russia must move its troops away from the Ukrainian border, or else…’ Lavrov: ‘Why should we? It’s up to Russia where it deploys its troops inside Russia’ (which, of course, it is). He then asked, for good measure: ‘Do you recognise Russia’s sovereignty over the Rostov and Voronezh regions?’ At which point Truss mounted her high horse and responded with all the authority of the UK’s chief diplomat: ‘The UK will never recognise Russia’s sovereignty over these regions.’
This is where the UK’s ambassador to Moscow, Deborah Bronnert, is said to have leant across to Truss and discreetly informed her that these regions were actually in Russia. Her assumption had apparently been that they were the two so-called breakaway regions on the Ukrainian side of the border."
Lavrov asked a silly trick question and Truss made a mistake. Zero consequence except among the useful idiots in the UK who use it to undermine Truss. Which is why Lavrov did it.
A strong post, StillWaters, a damn fine try at spinning it. Unfortunately you would ask us to believe absolutely everybody would have blundered into that trap - but that isn’t true, is it?
No, she made a mistake. But whatever - people misspeak all the time.
She did not misspeak. The Foreign Secretary might reasonably be expected to have read her brief and maybe glanced at a map on the flight over for crisis talks.
Of course. And then in a discussion the names of 2 oblasts are thrown out. Perhaps she misheard, perhaps she thought they were a different name.
Consider her options:
1. Say they recognise sovereignty - real downside if it’s a quirky babe for Donblas 2. Bristle and push back - establishes the principle; downside risk is she looks a little silly 3. Ignore/redefine the question “we’re not here to talk about that. We’re here to talk about X”
I personally would have gone with option 3. But I’m not going to condemn her for going with option 2 and getting called out.
She looks a little silly and gets mocked on Twitter. So f***ng what? Lavrov is an arse and got a cheap shot in. Real world consequence zero.
Sometimes people just need to ignore the trolls.
The smart move would have been to say that she is delighted with their offer to hand the Don Basin over to Ukraine and would welcome further talks to see if a settlement could be reached on that basis.
Unfortunately she isn’t very smart.
Within minutes of her saying that, an edited clip would have been on all the Russian controlled media.
With the message that the True Intentions Of The West had been Revealed - the dismemberment of Russia, supporting the Greater Ukrainian Fascists etc etc
The issue with that is that what she's said, if she said it and if they had a recording, would actually be more useful for them. She's now accused of saying the West doesn't recognise Russian sovereignty over Russian territory.
Now this may be the Russians playing silly buggers or Lavrov misremembering after he's had one too many. But it's still pretty bad.
I agree and I’m surprised how readily people are dismissing it. I expect we will hear a lot more of,it.
it would be quite PIQUANT if the Truss Mistake turns out to be the casus belli of World War Three
I see TASS are actually using it
10 FEB, 20:39 Top British diplomat refused to recognize Voronezh and Rostov as part of Russia — source
After Truss’ statements urging Moscow to move its forces, located on Russia’s soil, away from the border with Ukraine, Sergey Lavrov asked his British counterpart if she recognized Russia’s sovereignty over the Voronezh and Rostov Regions
Even as a committed TRUSS APOLOGIST I admit that kicking off the Final Global Apocalypse would be unideal for her aspirations to lead the UK Tory Party
Particularly as an invasion quite likely bolsters Bozza. And who doesn't love a Churchillian war leader?
Neville Chamberlain.
But truthfully, in being a third rate partygoer with one big policy who can't keep his hands off younger women, Johnson more closely resembles Asquith.
You do have to know the basics. Like where you are. Like what you are talking about. Like not talking over the translator so that the counterparty can follow what you are saying. You do have to know how to read a room. How to use your team so that they can advise you. How to use pauses to Stop and Think - easier when translators have to repeat every line.
Truss can do none of those things. There isn't a requirement for her to resign. But she went out there supposedly on a serious mission and made a catastrofuck out of it.
She is following the BoZo playbook on the path to leadership...
The Sunday Rawnsley: Eager to wound, but unwilling to strike, Sir John and Mrs May reflect the state of the party they once led. It is simultaneously infuriated and paralysed by a scandal that is also a crisis. This leaves the Tory party and with it the government, marooned in no man’s land.
Waiting to see if the polls are verified by a heavy defeat at the May local elections “puts our councillors in the executioner’s tumbril”, as another MP puts it. The prime minister is solely focused on trying to save his own skin. He always governed from one week to the next. Now he governs from one day to the next.
One Conservative MP reports: “The phrase you hear a lot of in the tearoom is ‘we can’t go on like this’.” So I asked him whether he had submitted a letter calling for a confidence vote. He confessed that he hadn’t, before arguing that it was too early to move. He was choosing to go on like this… there is the substantial group who want Mr Johnson gone, but are hesitant about acting. “One of the worst outcomes is that we get a confidence vote and he narrowly survives it,” says one senior Tory. “If he wins by just one vote, he will stay. Anyone else would walk, but he will stay.”
The Conservative party will pay a penalty for its prevarication – indeed, it already is paying. The longer this goes on, the more this looks like a lawless government that thinks rules are for everyone else and the deeper the reputational damage sustained by the Tories. “A month ago, this was hurting only Boris,” says one former cabinet minister. “Now, it is hurting the whole government. The more they put up ministers to make a defence of him, the more it damages all of us.”
So I asked this senior Tory whether he had put in a confidence letter and discovered he was another who hadn’t done so yet. The government will remain trapped in this nightmare no man’s land, and the country with it, until Tory MPs cease equivocating and a critical mass of them decide to bring things to a head.
What a bunch of spineless wasters most Tory MPs are.
And meanwhile, the Government achieves nothing - save to bleed the young ruthlessly in order to stuff the mouths of the elderly with gold.
Research by the Intergenerational Foundation thinktank, to be published on Monday, claims that younger workers are being unfairly targeted by the government in a “tax by stealth” caused by freezes on income tax brackets and the student loan repayment threshold, as well as April’s national insurance rise.
Low-earning young people will be hit hardest by the changes, claims the report, having a significant impact on their take home pay, disposable income and potential to save for housing and pensions.
Researchers calculate a graduate earning £27,000 a year will see their deductions rise by about 20% over the next four years – from 18% of their pay to 22%. They predict their disposable income will drop by almost 30%.
...
Labelling under-30s the “packhorse generation”, the thinktank claims they are being targeted by the government, which it says is using high inflation to pull more low-income, and especially younger, workers into taxation sooner.
"According to Russian media reports, not denied by the UK side, Truss’s chilly encounter with her vastly more experienced Russian opposite number, Sergey Lavrov, included an exchange that went roughly like this.
Truss: ‘Russia must move its troops away from the Ukrainian border, or else…’ Lavrov: ‘Why should we? It’s up to Russia where it deploys its troops inside Russia’ (which, of course, it is). He then asked, for good measure: ‘Do you recognise Russia’s sovereignty over the Rostov and Voronezh regions?’ At which point Truss mounted her high horse and responded with all the authority of the UK’s chief diplomat: ‘The UK will never recognise Russia’s sovereignty over these regions.’
This is where the UK’s ambassador to Moscow, Deborah Bronnert, is said to have leant across to Truss and discreetly informed her that these regions were actually in Russia. Her assumption had apparently been that they were the two so-called breakaway regions on the Ukrainian side of the border."
Lavrov asked a silly trick question and Truss made a mistake. Zero consequence except among the useful idiots in the UK who use it to undermine Truss. Which is why Lavrov did it.
A strong post, StillWaters, a damn fine try at spinning it. Unfortunately you would ask us to believe absolutely everybody would have blundered into that trap - but that isn’t true, is it?
No, she made a mistake. But whatever - people misspeak all the time.
She did not misspeak. The Foreign Secretary might reasonably be expected to have read her brief and maybe glanced at a map on the flight over for crisis talks.
Of course. And then in a discussion the names of 2 oblasts are thrown out. Perhaps she misheard, perhaps she thought they were a different name.
Consider her options:
1. Say they recognise sovereignty - real downside if it’s a quirky babe for Donblas 2. Bristle and push back - establishes the principle; downside risk is she looks a little silly 3. Ignore/redefine the question “we’re not here to talk about that. We’re here to talk about X”
I personally would have gone with option 3. But I’m not going to condemn her for going with option 2 and getting called out.
She looks a little silly and gets mocked on Twitter. So f***ng what? Lavrov is an arse and got a cheap shot in. Real world consequence zero.
Sometimes people just need to ignore the trolls.
If she had been asked about Downing St parties she would have given a more diplomatic answer.
Diplomacy is her job. The moment required the upmost care. This is they very essence of her responsibility. Instead of using language with the precision of a surgeon’s knife she bluffed it. Not good.
Sure. She made a misstep on negotiations. Cost: zero
Now we have a choice:
1. Do we mock, undermine and weaken the Foreign Secretary at a time of serious international tension as the Russian hope we will do? 2. Do we not do what the Russians want us to do?
1. Oh fuck right off. She is a narcissistic vacuous self-promoting cretin.
Kinder politics.
The alternative apparently is that we all tearily clutch our hankies as Maggie Truss waves our brave boys off to war from Southampton Dock.
Johnson has just ordered all of the British troops out of Ukraine.
Speak bollocks and carry a limp dick.
The trainers. Not the others that they haven’t admired are there.
The reality is a couple of hundred British trainers in Ukraine are a tactical weakness for the West. They won’t make a difference but I am sure that Putin would love to capture them.
That's a pretty staggering figure and not in a good way. One thing they need to be a little careful of though is they don't get obsessed with particular groups at the expense of the overall picture, a la Gordon Brown. 80% of black people having less than £1500 in savings is certainly bad, but there are on their own figures 22,455,726 people in that category - of which at least two thirds must be white for purely demographic reasons.
Of course, that in itself doesn't tell the full story. Large numbers of BAME people live in cities, often expensive ones like London, where £1500 goes rather less far than it would in say, Consett or Whitehaven.
But if you focus on just one aspect you run the risk of missing the complexity of the situation and creating even more complex problems down the line.
As a wealthy white voter that doesn't help me either. Boris has my back!
"According to Russian media reports, not denied by the UK side, Truss’s chilly encounter with her vastly more experienced Russian opposite number, Sergey Lavrov, included an exchange that went roughly like this.
Truss: ‘Russia must move its troops away from the Ukrainian border, or else…’ Lavrov: ‘Why should we? It’s up to Russia where it deploys its troops inside Russia’ (which, of course, it is). He then asked, for good measure: ‘Do you recognise Russia’s sovereignty over the Rostov and Voronezh regions?’ At which point Truss mounted her high horse and responded with all the authority of the UK’s chief diplomat: ‘The UK will never recognise Russia’s sovereignty over these regions.’
This is where the UK’s ambassador to Moscow, Deborah Bronnert, is said to have leant across to Truss and discreetly informed her that these regions were actually in Russia. Her assumption had apparently been that they were the two so-called breakaway regions on the Ukrainian side of the border."
Lavrov asked a silly trick question and Truss made a mistake. Zero consequence except among the useful idiots in the UK who use it to undermine Truss. Which is why Lavrov did it.
A strong post, StillWaters, a damn fine try at spinning it. Unfortunately you would ask us to believe absolutely everybody would have blundered into that trap - but that isn’t true, is it?
No, she made a mistake. But whatever - people misspeak all the time.
She did not misspeak. The Foreign Secretary might reasonably be expected to have read her brief and maybe glanced at a map on the flight over for crisis talks.
Of course. And then in a discussion the names of 2 oblasts are thrown out. Perhaps she misheard, perhaps she thought they were a different name.
Consider her options:
1. Say they recognise sovereignty - real downside if it’s a quirky babe for Donblas 2. Bristle and push back - establishes the principle; downside risk is she looks a little silly 3. Ignore/redefine the question “we’re not here to talk about that. We’re here to talk about X”
I personally would have gone with option 3. But I’m not going to condemn her for going with option 2 and getting called out.
She looks a little silly and gets mocked on Twitter. So f***ng what? Lavrov is an arse and got a cheap shot in. Real world consequence zero.
Sometimes people just need to ignore the trolls.
The smart move would have been to say that she is delighted with their offer to hand the Don Basin over to Ukraine and would welcome further talks to see if a settlement could be reached on that basis.
Unfortunately she isn’t very smart.
Within minutes of her saying that, an edited clip would have been on all the Russian controlled media.
With the message that the True Intentions Of The West had been Revealed - the dismemberment of Russia, supporting the Greater Ukrainian Fascists etc etc
The issue with that is that what she's said, if she said it and if they had a recording, would actually be more useful for them. She's now accused of saying the West doesn't recognise Russian sovereignty over Russian territory.
Now this may be the Russians playing silly buggers or Lavrov misremembering after he's had one too many. But it's still pretty bad.
I agree and I’m surprised how readily people are dismissing it. I expect we will hear a lot more of,it.
it would be quite PIQUANT if the Truss Mistake turns out to be the casus belli of World War Three
I see TASS are actually using it
10 FEB, 20:39 Top British diplomat refused to recognize Voronezh and Rostov as part of Russia — source
After Truss’ statements urging Moscow to move its forces, located on Russia’s soil, away from the border with Ukraine, Sergey Lavrov asked his British counterpart if she recognized Russia’s sovereignty over the Voronezh and Rostov Regions
Even as a committed TRUSS APOLOGIST I admit that kicking off the Final Global Apocalypse would be unideal for her aspirations to lead the UK Tory Party
Particularly as an invasion quite likely bolsters Bozza. And who doesn't love a Churchillian war leader?
Neville Chamberlain.
But truthfully, in being a third rate partygoer with one big policy who can't keep his hands off younger women, Johnson more closely resembles Asquith.
"According to Russian media reports, not denied by the UK side, Truss’s chilly encounter with her vastly more experienced Russian opposite number, Sergey Lavrov, included an exchange that went roughly like this.
Truss: ‘Russia must move its troops away from the Ukrainian border, or else…’ Lavrov: ‘Why should we? It’s up to Russia where it deploys its troops inside Russia’ (which, of course, it is). He then asked, for good measure: ‘Do you recognise Russia’s sovereignty over the Rostov and Voronezh regions?’ At which point Truss mounted her high horse and responded with all the authority of the UK’s chief diplomat: ‘The UK will never recognise Russia’s sovereignty over these regions.’
This is where the UK’s ambassador to Moscow, Deborah Bronnert, is said to have leant across to Truss and discreetly informed her that these regions were actually in Russia. Her assumption had apparently been that they were the two so-called breakaway regions on the Ukrainian side of the border."
Lavrov asked a silly trick question and Truss made a mistake. Zero consequence except among the useful idiots in the UK who use it to undermine Truss. Which is why Lavrov did it.
A strong post, StillWaters, a damn fine try at spinning it. Unfortunately you would ask us to believe absolutely everybody would have blundered into that trap - but that isn’t true, is it?
No, she made a mistake. But whatever - people misspeak all the time.
She did not misspeak. The Foreign Secretary might reasonably be expected to have read her brief and maybe glanced at a map on the flight over for crisis talks.
Of course. And then in a discussion the names of 2 oblasts are thrown out. Perhaps she misheard, perhaps she thought they were a different name.
Consider her options:
1. Say they recognise sovereignty - real downside if it’s a quirky babe for Donblas 2. Bristle and push back - establishes the principle; downside risk is she looks a little silly 3. Ignore/redefine the question “we’re not here to talk about that. We’re here to talk about X”
I personally would have gone with option 3. But I’m not going to condemn her for going with option 2 and getting called out.
She looks a little silly and gets mocked on Twitter. So f***ng what? Lavrov is an arse and got a cheap shot in. Real world consequence zero.
Sometimes people just need to ignore the trolls.
If she had been asked about Downing St parties she would have given a more diplomatic answer.
Diplomacy is her job. The moment required the upmost care. This is they very essence of her responsibility. Instead of using language with the precision of a surgeon’s knife she bluffed it. Not good.
Sure. She made a misstep on negotiations. Cost: zero
Now we have a choice:
1. Do we mock, undermine and weaken the Foreign Secretary at a time of serious international tension as the Russian hope we will do? 2. Do we not do what the Russians want us to do?
1. Oh fuck right off. She is a narcissistic vacuous self-promoting cretin. 2. The Russians don't really care what we think - Britain has reduced itself to a bit player having left the big stage. Compare and contrast how Russia is dealing with France / EU with how it is dealing with the UK.
As with Ukraine. Ukrainian journalists didn’t bother asking Bozo a single question during his recent visit, focusing all their Qs on their own PM, and neither UK nor our imbecilic leader made much impression on the Ukrainian media.
It may not yet be sinking in to either the remaining pro-Brexit / pro-Boris rampers or the CCHQ plants who have been entertaining us on here in recent times (keep it up boys!) but Britain is a past-power.
Do we have a military threat? Well we don't have a viable army left, we have a quarter of a navy and we chopped up some of the planes we needed to even defend our own airspace properly. Carriers with no escorts and no planes are just funny. But we have Trident - a weapon so pointless that we wouldn't even fire it if nuclear war broke out.
Do we have a diplomatic threat? OK we're still a player in NATO albeit one reliant on other armed forces to do anything (hi France, can we borrow your navy as we scrapped ours?). But diplomatically? Power projects. Putin see the big powers - China, the EU, the US. He sees military groupings - NATO.
For some reason he doesn't seem bothered by impotent Britain who thinks that once having an empire means it is still relevant even having quit the big power block and destroyed its own armed force capabilities. We can't even stop him murdering people here on the streets. Then the final insult. We send Truss to tell them off. Truss - woman of a thousand instagram posts as she Thatcher cosplays her way around the world. Truss - that expert negotiator who can copy paste previous trade deals like a boss. Truss - who enters a meeting to discuss threatening troop deployments without knowing where the troops are what the countries are where any of it is.
So no. I won't stop laughing at the cosplaying joke of a Foreign Secretary. Because the rest of the world is laughing. At us. We are literally a joke. If you want to back *that*, go right ahead. Joke by association.
We can always hope that Truss gets the job as PM to ensure the utter destruction of the "Conservatives".
At least she knows how to find No.10 without a map so her geographical ability is not totally zero
Best-selling author Adam Kay has been desperately trying to remove from the internet any trace of the vile songs Your Baby and Northern Birds, which he recorded as part of a comedy duo called Amateur Transplants.
I saw Amateur Transplants the day after the 2010 general election and they were fantastic. The interesting thing is, those two songs aren’t the most offensive.
I think it’s sad that comedy is being destroyed by wokeness. Neither Adam Kay or Suman Biswas would approve of the stuff they sing about. But like Jimmy Carr, they’re act plays on our prejudices and has a cynical view of the world.
No.
Adam Kay's book, which I quite liked, nevertheless has some rather schoolboy 'humour' misogynism about it.
But on the broader point, it is absolutely NOT the case that all topics are fair game. Any decent human being doesn't make jokes about the deaths of people: whether Romas or children, for example.
I'm weary of the attack on 'wokeness' being used as a front for plain nasty, vile, human behaviour.
The Nasty Party is back.
(But I expect when Sandpit gets up in Dubai he will still like your post, so that's alright then)
Attacks on wokeness frequently go too far as part of culture war stuff, but you are getting on your moral high horse and attempting to police what other people find amusing. You're essentially declaring people should not be allowed to laugh at black comedy or offense comedy because it's not right as far as you're concerned.
That's up to you. Lots of stuff in that vein is not very amusing, but I'd much rather people feel able to approach the line of tastelessness sometimes than never approach certain topics comedically.
Take a mild example- There's an old joke about the troubles being a stupid name because what did people think 3000 died of, stress? Under your definition its joking about people dying (not as target, but it's still a joke about death so your definition says not ok)
I don't think moral grandstanding is necessary because most comedy is safer and more mainstream as people prefer that.
But I disagree with you - everything absolutely is fair game. I don't believe that makes me a bad person or the person telling it.
As for being a front for nasty behaviour it's like the famous quote about art or photography - hard to define the line, but we can generally tell it when we see it.
When it comes to moralising on other's behaviour i could never rule out something might need condemning. But I'd play it very very cautiously. The same reason I am always wary around civil liberty issues - X might be ok, buy be careful.
The joy of art - painting, music, comedy etc etc - is that it is subjective. What I enjoy may be different to what you enjoy. I can think of a whole load of jokes told by various comedians that I don't find funny or find offensive, but that doesn't make them invalid. Jimmy Carr is under attack for one joke - I don't much care for that joke but I really dislike Jimmy Carr anyway. Does that mean we should cancel Jimmy Carr? No!
You talk about it being hard to define the line - this is the critical point. The quick response by a comedian receiving groans or flinches from a joke - "too soon?" is absolutely it. What is funny now, or appropriate, or even acceptable in the wider sense will not be the same as what is funny / appropriate / acceptable at another time. We can only take things in the time they were done - you can't retroactively impose today's morality on yesterday because it will be different.
You do have to know the basics. Like where you are. Like what you are talking about. Like not talking over the translator so that the counterparty can follow what you are saying. You do have to know how to read a room. How to use your team so that they can advise you. How to use pauses to Stop and Think - easier when translators have to repeat every line.
Truss can do none of those things. There isn't a requirement for her to resign. But she went out there supposedly on a serious mission and made a catastrofuck out of it.
She is following the BoZo playbook on the path to leadership...
Even if she got the leadership, and I think it unlikely, she’s never likely to be PM as she’s just not got the appeal. Poll after poll shows that.
The Sunday Rawnsley: Eager to wound, but unwilling to strike, Sir John and Mrs May reflect the state of the party they once led. It is simultaneously infuriated and paralysed by a scandal that is also a crisis. This leaves the Tory party and with it the government, marooned in no man’s land.
Waiting to see if the polls are verified by a heavy defeat at the May local elections “puts our councillors in the executioner’s tumbril”, as another MP puts it. The prime minister is solely focused on trying to save his own skin. He always governed from one week to the next. Now he governs from one day to the next.
One Conservative MP reports: “The phrase you hear a lot of in the tearoom is ‘we can’t go on like this’.” So I asked him whether he had submitted a letter calling for a confidence vote. He confessed that he hadn’t, before arguing that it was too early to move. He was choosing to go on like this… there is the substantial group who want Mr Johnson gone, but are hesitant about acting. “One of the worst outcomes is that we get a confidence vote and he narrowly survives it,” says one senior Tory. “If he wins by just one vote, he will stay. Anyone else would walk, but he will stay.”
The Conservative party will pay a penalty for its prevarication – indeed, it already is paying. The longer this goes on, the more this looks like a lawless government that thinks rules are for everyone else and the deeper the reputational damage sustained by the Tories. “A month ago, this was hurting only Boris,” says one former cabinet minister. “Now, it is hurting the whole government. The more they put up ministers to make a defence of him, the more it damages all of us.”
So I asked this senior Tory whether he had put in a confidence letter and discovered he was another who hadn’t done so yet. The government will remain trapped in this nightmare no man’s land, and the country with it, until Tory MPs cease equivocating and a critical mass of them decide to bring things to a head.
What a bunch of spineless wasters most Tory MPs are.
And meanwhile, the Government achieves nothing - save to bleed the young ruthlessly in order to stuff the mouths of the elderly with gold.
Research by the Intergenerational Foundation thinktank, to be published on Monday, claims that younger workers are being unfairly targeted by the government in a “tax by stealth” caused by freezes on income tax brackets and the student loan repayment threshold, as well as April’s national insurance rise.
Low-earning young people will be hit hardest by the changes, claims the report, having a significant impact on their take home pay, disposable income and potential to save for housing and pensions.
Researchers calculate a graduate earning £27,000 a year will see their deductions rise by about 20% over the next four years – from 18% of their pay to 22%. They predict their disposable income will drop by almost 30%.
...
Labelling under-30s the “packhorse generation”, the thinktank claims they are being targeted by the government, which it says is using high inflation to pull more low-income, and especially younger, workers into taxation sooner.
Truss should have used diplomatic language. It’s her job. It’s not as if she didn’t know it was a tricky situation. Instead she made an assumption, bluffed, failed and looked silly.
What’s weird is if this was Radio 4 she would have been fine giving nuanced answers.
The positive take away is that she now knows that - to quote @Dura_Ace - Lavrov is a “sneaky old twat”.
That’s a good lesson to learn for a very low cost.
Whilst I applaud your desire to find a silver lining, I fear if she learned Lavrov was a tricky customer for the first time at that moment someone really isn’t doing their job.
It wasn't a trick by Lavrov. The naming of Voronezh and Rostov was in the context of, and immediately following Lavrov saying that Russia could do what it likes within its Sovereign territory. A smarter cookie would have known this, and said that of course Russia could do what it likes in its sovereign territory, as can Ukraine do what it likes in its.
That would have been the wrong response - it would have given permission for the military build up.
The right response would have been that they may be sovereign Russian territory but that does not give them the right to use them as a launchpad to threaten a sovereign and independent country.
To which they would have responded that isn't their intention.
They would have been lying, of course, but we would have no way of proving it.
It was an elephant trap on a number of levels, but if she said what she's reported as saying that's still a barely believable gaffe and in a proper government, would be a resigning matter.
Now your [sic] just being silly. It is not a resigning matter
Er...pardon? Saying that she doesn't recognise Russian sovereignty over Russian territory isn't a resigning matter?
As a minor matter of curiosity, what would be? Punching Lavrov in the face while shouting 'that's for Salisbury?'
Thats the way the Russian chose to play it. The simple fact is she made a mistake - she assumed that the two oblasts referenced were in Ukraine. Of course she should have known that Lavrov was too wily to ask her to recognise Russian sovereignty over Ukrainian territory. But that’s all it was - a simple mistake easily clarified.
Would it have been better if she hadn’t made it? Of course. Does it matter? Not even a smidgen
The trivialisation of British politics continues this morning. We are now apparently focused on a mistatement by Truss rather than the risk of the largest war in Europe since WW2.
On the domestic front we are obsessed about people working in close proximity to each other having a drink afterwards instead of addressing a serious cost of living squeeze, inflation that incompetence at the BoE Monetary Policy Committee has allowed to get out of hand, a record waiting list for the NHS, a police service that is plainly not fit for purpose and serious economic threats of further disruption from either a war in Ukraine or an invasion of Taiwan.
It is hard not to notice that these mad obsessions tend to be driven by those who have never forgiven Johnson for Brexit. Its irrational and, frankly, boring. This site is still highly educational with informed commentators on many issues but the effort/reward ratios are not what they were.
However this plays out it does rather demonstrate the strategic errors made by the west in leaving itself on the hook to Russian gas imports...
Germany in particular was warned about exactly the scenario we now face. Those warnings had no effect. So whilst you want to talk about "the west" I'd point to German policy as by far the biggest failure, and their response to Russia's actions has been nothing less than shameful.
The Sunday Rawnsley: Eager to wound, but unwilling to strike, Sir John and Mrs May reflect the state of the party they once led. It is simultaneously infuriated and paralysed by a scandal that is also a crisis. This leaves the Tory party and with it the government, marooned in no man’s land.
Waiting to see if the polls are verified by a heavy defeat at the May local elections “puts our councillors in the executioner’s tumbril”, as another MP puts it. The prime minister is solely focused on trying to save his own skin. He always governed from one week to the next. Now he governs from one day to the next.
One Conservative MP reports: “The phrase you hear a lot of in the tearoom is ‘we can’t go on like this’.” So I asked him whether he had submitted a letter calling for a confidence vote. He confessed that he hadn’t, before arguing that it was too early to move. He was choosing to go on like this… there is the substantial group who want Mr Johnson gone, but are hesitant about acting. “One of the worst outcomes is that we get a confidence vote and he narrowly survives it,” says one senior Tory. “If he wins by just one vote, he will stay. Anyone else would walk, but he will stay.”
The Conservative party will pay a penalty for its prevarication – indeed, it already is paying. The longer this goes on, the more this looks like a lawless government that thinks rules are for everyone else and the deeper the reputational damage sustained by the Tories. “A month ago, this was hurting only Boris,” says one former cabinet minister. “Now, it is hurting the whole government. The more they put up ministers to make a defence of him, the more it damages all of us.”
So I asked this senior Tory whether he had put in a confidence letter and discovered he was another who hadn’t done so yet. The government will remain trapped in this nightmare no man’s land, and the country with it, until Tory MPs cease equivocating and a critical mass of them decide to bring things to a head.
What a bunch of spineless wasters most Tory MPs are.
And meanwhile, the Government achieves nothing - save to bleed the young ruthlessly in order to stuff the mouths of the elderly with gold.
Research by the Intergenerational Foundation thinktank, to be published on Monday, claims that younger workers are being unfairly targeted by the government in a “tax by stealth” caused by freezes on income tax brackets and the student loan repayment threshold, as well as April’s national insurance rise.
Low-earning young people will be hit hardest by the changes, claims the report, having a significant impact on their take home pay, disposable income and potential to save for housing and pensions.
Researchers calculate a graduate earning £27,000 a year will see their deductions rise by about 20% over the next four years – from 18% of their pay to 22%. They predict their disposable income will drop by almost 30%.
...
Labelling under-30s the “packhorse generation”, the thinktank claims they are being targeted by the government, which it says is using high inflation to pull more low-income, and especially younger, workers into taxation sooner.
The mouths of the elderly are not being stuffed with gold. The state pension is less than £10,000 a year.
Yet they are the richest generation of pensioners ever. And the youngsters of today the first generation to be poorer than their parents since the world wars. The comparison is fair, the discrepancy between the generations is not.
In the normal course of events, you'd expect every sector to be better off, simply through economic growth and technology. It's not pensioners but the young who are the anomaly here. The state pension is low. That some property-owning pensioners have benefited from house price inflation does not amount to HMG stuffing their mouths with gold, and in any case, the gains are often unrealised. And many pensioners are poor, just as many young adults are doing very nicely, thank you.
The property owning pensioners who have done well from their property tend mainly to be in London and the South. House price inflation in other parts of the country has been until relatively recently, quite flat.
O/t, but perhaps another failure of British diplomacy; the Guardian reports today that 'The husband of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, the British-Iranian charity worker detained in Iran, has said she is “very, very angry” after learning about the collapse of a deal to bring her home.'
Apparently we were going to pay the money we owed and then it all went pear shaped. No-one appears to know why for sure.
The trivialisation of British politics continues this morning. We are now apparently focused on a mistatement by Truss rather than the risk of the largest war in Europe since WW2.
Because we are led by idiots who themselves are entirely trivial
The cosplay cabinet are not remotely equipped to deal with the crises facing us
Removing them is the MOST important political objective we should have
"According to Russian media reports, not denied by the UK side, Truss’s chilly encounter with her vastly more experienced Russian opposite number, Sergey Lavrov, included an exchange that went roughly like this.
Truss: ‘Russia must move its troops away from the Ukrainian border, or else…’ Lavrov: ‘Why should we? It’s up to Russia where it deploys its troops inside Russia’ (which, of course, it is). He then asked, for good measure: ‘Do you recognise Russia’s sovereignty over the Rostov and Voronezh regions?’ At which point Truss mounted her high horse and responded with all the authority of the UK’s chief diplomat: ‘The UK will never recognise Russia’s sovereignty over these regions.’
This is where the UK’s ambassador to Moscow, Deborah Bronnert, is said to have leant across to Truss and discreetly informed her that these regions were actually in Russia. Her assumption had apparently been that they were the two so-called breakaway regions on the Ukrainian side of the border."
Lavrov asked a silly trick question and Truss made a mistake. Zero consequence except among the useful idiots in the UK who use it to undermine Truss. Which is why Lavrov did it.
A strong post, StillWaters, a damn fine try at spinning it. Unfortunately you would ask us to believe absolutely everybody would have blundered into that trap - but that isn’t true, is it?
No, she made a mistake. But whatever - people misspeak all the time.
She did not misspeak. The Foreign Secretary might reasonably be expected to have read her brief and maybe glanced at a map on the flight over for crisis talks.
Of course. And then in a discussion the names of 2 oblasts are thrown out. Perhaps she misheard, perhaps she thought they were a different name.
Consider her options:
1. Say they recognise sovereignty - real downside if it’s a quirky babe for Donblas 2. Bristle and push back - establishes the principle; downside risk is she looks a little silly 3. Ignore/redefine the question “we’re not here to talk about that. We’re here to talk about X”
I personally would have gone with option 3. But I’m not going to condemn her for going with option 2 and getting called out.
She looks a little silly and gets mocked on Twitter. So f***ng what? Lavrov is an arse and got a cheap shot in. Real world consequence zero.
Sometimes people just need to ignore the trolls.
If she had been asked about Downing St parties she would have given a more diplomatic answer.
Diplomacy is her job. The moment required the upmost care. This is they very essence of her responsibility. Instead of using language with the precision of a surgeon’s knife she bluffed it. Not good.
Sure. She made a misstep on negotiations. Cost: zero
Now we have a choice:
1. Do we mock, undermine and weaken the Foreign Secretary at a time of serious international tension as the Russian hope we will do? 2. Do we not do what the Russians want us to do?
1. Oh fuck right off. She is a narcissistic vacuous self-promoting cretin.
Kinder politics.
The alternative apparently is that we all tearily clutch our hankies as Maggie Truss waves our brave boys off to war from Southampton Dock.
I could wear my summer frock so it could cling to my wet body in the rain
The Final Cut could be the manual for how this plays out.
The trivialisation of British politics continues this morning. We are now apparently focused on a mistatement by Truss rather than the risk of the largest war in Europe since WW2.
On the domestic front we are obsessed about people working in close proximity to each other having a drink afterwards instead of addressing a serious cost of living squeeze, inflation that incompetence at the BoE Monetary Policy Committee has allowed to get out of hand, a record waiting list for the NHS, a police service that is plainly not fit for purpose and serious economic threats of further disruption from either a war in Ukraine or an invasion of Taiwan.
It is hard not to notice that these mad obsessions tend to be driven by those who have never forgiven Johnson for Brexit. Its irrational and, frankly, boring. This site is still highly educational with informed commentators on many issues but the effort/reward ratios are not what they were.
The more important the ishoos are the less I want them handled by lazy incompetent liars.
That's a pretty staggering figure and not in a good way. One thing they need to be a little careful of though is they don't get obsessed with particular groups at the expense of the overall picture, a la Gordon Brown. 80% of black people having less than £1500 in savings is certainly bad, but there are on their own figures 22,455,726 people in that category - of which at least two thirds must be white for purely demographic reasons.
Of course, that in itself doesn't tell the full story. Large numbers of BAME people live in cities, often expensive ones like London, where £1500 goes rather less far than it would in say, Consett or Whitehaven.
But if you focus on just one aspect you run the risk of missing the complexity of the situation and creating even more complex problems down the line.
As a wealthy white voter that doesn't help me either. Boris has my back!
"According to Russian media reports, not denied by the UK side, Truss’s chilly encounter with her vastly more experienced Russian opposite number, Sergey Lavrov, included an exchange that went roughly like this.
Truss: ‘Russia must move its troops away from the Ukrainian border, or else…’ Lavrov: ‘Why should we? It’s up to Russia where it deploys its troops inside Russia’ (which, of course, it is). He then asked, for good measure: ‘Do you recognise Russia’s sovereignty over the Rostov and Voronezh regions?’ At which point Truss mounted her high horse and responded with all the authority of the UK’s chief diplomat: ‘The UK will never recognise Russia’s sovereignty over these regions.’
This is where the UK’s ambassador to Moscow, Deborah Bronnert, is said to have leant across to Truss and discreetly informed her that these regions were actually in Russia. Her assumption had apparently been that they were the two so-called breakaway regions on the Ukrainian side of the border."
Lavrov asked a silly trick question and Truss made a mistake. Zero consequence except among the useful idiots in the UK who use it to undermine Truss. Which is why Lavrov did it.
A strong post, StillWaters, a damn fine try at spinning it. Unfortunately you would ask us to believe absolutely everybody would have blundered into that trap - but that isn’t true, is it?
No, she made a mistake. But whatever - people misspeak all the time.
She did not misspeak. The Foreign Secretary might reasonably be expected to have read her brief and maybe glanced at a map on the flight over for crisis talks.
Of course. And then in a discussion the names of 2 oblasts are thrown out. Perhaps she misheard, perhaps she thought they were a different name.
Consider her options:
1. Say they recognise sovereignty - real downside if it’s a quirky babe for Donblas 2. Bristle and push back - establishes the principle; downside risk is she looks a little silly 3. Ignore/redefine the question “we’re not here to talk about that. We’re here to talk about X”
I personally would have gone with option 3. But I’m not going to condemn her for going with option 2 and getting called out.
She looks a little silly and gets mocked on Twitter. So f***ng what? Lavrov is an arse and got a cheap shot in. Real world consequence zero.
Sometimes people just need to ignore the trolls.
The smart move would have been to say that she is delighted with their offer to hand the Don Basin over to Ukraine and would welcome further talks to see if a settlement could be reached on that basis.
Unfortunately she isn’t very smart.
Within minutes of her saying that, an edited clip would have been on all the Russian controlled media.
With the message that the True Intentions Of The West had been Revealed - the dismemberment of Russia, supporting the Greater Ukrainian Fascists etc etc
The issue with that is that what she's said, if she said it and if they had a recording, would actually be more useful for them. She's now accused of saying the West doesn't recognise Russian sovereignty over Russian territory.
Now this may be the Russians playing silly buggers or Lavrov misremembering after he's had one too many. But it's still pretty bad.
I agree and I’m surprised how readily people are dismissing it. I expect we will hear a lot more of,it.
it would be quite PIQUANT if the Truss Mistake turns out to be the casus belli of World War Three
I see TASS are actually using it
10 FEB, 20:39 Top British diplomat refused to recognize Voronezh and Rostov as part of Russia — source
After Truss’ statements urging Moscow to move its forces, located on Russia’s soil, away from the border with Ukraine, Sergey Lavrov asked his British counterpart if she recognized Russia’s sovereignty over the Voronezh and Rostov Regions
Even as a committed TRUSS APOLOGIST I admit that kicking off the Final Global Apocalypse would be unideal for her aspirations to lead the UK Tory Party
Particularly as an invasion quite likely bolsters Bozza. And who doesn't love a Churchillian war leader?
Neville Chamberlain.
But truthfully, in being a third rate partygoer with one big policy who can't keep his hands off younger women, Johnson more closely resembles Asquith.
Who is cast in the Lloyd-George role then?
Well, he was Minister of Defence when he force Asquith out. So Wallace would be favourite.
The Sunday Rawnsley: Eager to wound, but unwilling to strike, Sir John and Mrs May reflect the state of the party they once led. It is simultaneously infuriated and paralysed by a scandal that is also a crisis. This leaves the Tory party and with it the government, marooned in no man’s land.
Waiting to see if the polls are verified by a heavy defeat at the May local elections “puts our councillors in the executioner’s tumbril”, as another MP puts it. The prime minister is solely focused on trying to save his own skin. He always governed from one week to the next. Now he governs from one day to the next.
One Conservative MP reports: “The phrase you hear a lot of in the tearoom is ‘we can’t go on like this’.” So I asked him whether he had submitted a letter calling for a confidence vote. He confessed that he hadn’t, before arguing that it was too early to move. He was choosing to go on like this… there is the substantial group who want Mr Johnson gone, but are hesitant about acting. “One of the worst outcomes is that we get a confidence vote and he narrowly survives it,” says one senior Tory. “If he wins by just one vote, he will stay. Anyone else would walk, but he will stay.”
The Conservative party will pay a penalty for its prevarication – indeed, it already is paying. The longer this goes on, the more this looks like a lawless government that thinks rules are for everyone else and the deeper the reputational damage sustained by the Tories. “A month ago, this was hurting only Boris,” says one former cabinet minister. “Now, it is hurting the whole government. The more they put up ministers to make a defence of him, the more it damages all of us.”
So I asked this senior Tory whether he had put in a confidence letter and discovered he was another who hadn’t done so yet. The government will remain trapped in this nightmare no man’s land, and the country with it, until Tory MPs cease equivocating and a critical mass of them decide to bring things to a head.
What a bunch of spineless wasters most Tory MPs are.
And meanwhile, the Government achieves nothing - save to bleed the young ruthlessly in order to stuff the mouths of the elderly with gold.
Research by the Intergenerational Foundation thinktank, to be published on Monday, claims that younger workers are being unfairly targeted by the government in a “tax by stealth” caused by freezes on income tax brackets and the student loan repayment threshold, as well as April’s national insurance rise.
Low-earning young people will be hit hardest by the changes, claims the report, having a significant impact on their take home pay, disposable income and potential to save for housing and pensions.
Researchers calculate a graduate earning £27,000 a year will see their deductions rise by about 20% over the next four years – from 18% of their pay to 22%. They predict their disposable income will drop by almost 30%.
...
Labelling under-30s the “packhorse generation”, the thinktank claims they are being targeted by the government, which it says is using high inflation to pull more low-income, and especially younger, workers into taxation sooner.
The Sunday Rawnsley: Eager to wound, but unwilling to strike, Sir John and Mrs May reflect the state of the party they once led. It is simultaneously infuriated and paralysed by a scandal that is also a crisis. This leaves the Tory party and with it the government, marooned in no man’s land.
Waiting to see if the polls are verified by a heavy defeat at the May local elections “puts our councillors in the executioner’s tumbril”, as another MP puts it. The prime minister is solely focused on trying to save his own skin. He always governed from one week to the next. Now he governs from one day to the next.
One Conservative MP reports: “The phrase you hear a lot of in the tearoom is ‘we can’t go on like this’.” So I asked him whether he had submitted a letter calling for a confidence vote. He confessed that he hadn’t, before arguing that it was too early to move. He was choosing to go on like this… there is the substantial group who want Mr Johnson gone, but are hesitant about acting. “One of the worst outcomes is that we get a confidence vote and he narrowly survives it,” says one senior Tory. “If he wins by just one vote, he will stay. Anyone else would walk, but he will stay.”
The Conservative party will pay a penalty for its prevarication – indeed, it already is paying. The longer this goes on, the more this looks like a lawless government that thinks rules are for everyone else and the deeper the reputational damage sustained by the Tories. “A month ago, this was hurting only Boris,” says one former cabinet minister. “Now, it is hurting the whole government. The more they put up ministers to make a defence of him, the more it damages all of us.”
So I asked this senior Tory whether he had put in a confidence letter and discovered he was another who hadn’t done so yet. The government will remain trapped in this nightmare no man’s land, and the country with it, until Tory MPs cease equivocating and a critical mass of them decide to bring things to a head.
What a bunch of spineless wasters most Tory MPs are.
And meanwhile, the Government achieves nothing - save to bleed the young ruthlessly in order to stuff the mouths of the elderly with gold.
Research by the Intergenerational Foundation thinktank, to be published on Monday, claims that younger workers are being unfairly targeted by the government in a “tax by stealth” caused by freezes on income tax brackets and the student loan repayment threshold, as well as April’s national insurance rise.
Low-earning young people will be hit hardest by the changes, claims the report, having a significant impact on their take home pay, disposable income and potential to save for housing and pensions.
Researchers calculate a graduate earning £27,000 a year will see their deductions rise by about 20% over the next four years – from 18% of their pay to 22%. They predict their disposable income will drop by almost 30%.
...
Labelling under-30s the “packhorse generation”, the thinktank claims they are being targeted by the government, which it says is using high inflation to pull more low-income, and especially younger, workers into taxation sooner.
The mouths of the elderly are not being stuffed with gold. The state pension is less than £10,000 a year.
So where is the money going then because its those working a full week and don't have children who are paying for it.
Well where it's not going is to poorer pensioners who depend on the state pension.
As I said below, the Government doesn't care about poorer pensioners, although FWIW at least the state pension is index linked so ramps reliably every year.
Where the money really counts is (a) in healthcare provision, where the vast burden of looking after legions of old crocs (often with multiple serious conditions) falls upon the state, and, critically, (b) in bleeding earned incomes white, so that asset wealth - which is disproportionately concentrated in the hands of older people - can be left comparatively untouched.
Above all, the property wealth of the Tory core vote has to be protected at all costs. Hence the fact that, as the years drag on and the population continues to age, tax on working age people's earnings will continue to become more onerous.
That new health and social care levy won't be staying at 1.25% for very long.
I’ve been trying to game the next election in my head, lately, and I keep coming back to the scenario where the tories propose a modest income tax cut - and labour not only match it, but go further.
Even if she got the leadership, and I think it unlikely, she’s never likely to be PM as she’s just not got the appeal. Poll after poll shows that.
If she gets the leadership before the next election she would be PM
I’m working on the assumption she won’t get it until after the next election. She’d never win an election she contested unless labours candidate was Corbyn standard.
' If that is their belief they'd probably stick to staying schtum.'
They would also most likely have stuck to the rather better paid employment they left to go into politics.
I don't share Aaron Bell's politics but I'm pretty sure he went into the biz for the best of reasons, as so many do.
I think that too, but the point was most people, even MPs, are passive and far from certain abou things, and also that while it doesn't drive every interaction they have personal political survival is legitimately something they would consider.
The trivialisation of British politics continues this morning. We are now apparently focused on a mistatement by Truss rather than the risk of the largest war in Europe since WW2.
On the domestic front we are obsessed about people working in close proximity to each other having a drink afterwards instead of addressing a serious cost of living squeeze, inflation that incompetence at the BoE Monetary Policy Committee has allowed to get out of hand, a record waiting list for the NHS, a police service that is plainly not fit for purpose and serious economic threats of further disruption from either a war in Ukraine or an invasion of Taiwan.
It is hard not to notice that these mad obsessions tend to be driven by those who have never forgiven Johnson for Brexit. Its irrational and, frankly, boring. This site is still highly educational with informed commentators on many issues but the effort/reward ratios are not what they were.
There is nothing irrational about wanting rid of this patently unsuitable Prime Minister, or being deeply critical about the wider failures of his Government. The cost of living squeeze would be that much less serious if the Chancellor were not about to hike NI by 1.25%, for example.
It is perfectly possible for one to show concern about multiple different problems at the same time.
It is hard not to notice that these mad obsessions tend to be driven by those who have never forgiven Johnson for Brexit. Its irrational and, frankly, boring.
It's not irrational hate BoZo for the worst policy decision since Suez.
It is irrational to continue to support a liar, a cheat, an alleged corrupt criminal as PM
"According to Russian media reports, not denied by the UK side, Truss’s chilly encounter with her vastly more experienced Russian opposite number, Sergey Lavrov, included an exchange that went roughly like this.
Truss: ‘Russia must move its troops away from the Ukrainian border, or else…’ Lavrov: ‘Why should we? It’s up to Russia where it deploys its troops inside Russia’ (which, of course, it is). He then asked, for good measure: ‘Do you recognise Russia’s sovereignty over the Rostov and Voronezh regions?’ At which point Truss mounted her high horse and responded with all the authority of the UK’s chief diplomat: ‘The UK will never recognise Russia’s sovereignty over these regions.’
This is where the UK’s ambassador to Moscow, Deborah Bronnert, is said to have leant across to Truss and discreetly informed her that these regions were actually in Russia. Her assumption had apparently been that they were the two so-called breakaway regions on the Ukrainian side of the border."
Lavrov asked a silly trick question and Truss made a mistake. Zero consequence except among the useful idiots in the UK who use it to undermine Truss. Which is why Lavrov did it.
A strong post, StillWaters, a damn fine try at spinning it. Unfortunately you would ask us to believe absolutely everybody would have blundered into that trap - but that isn’t true, is it?
No, she made a mistake. But whatever - people misspeak all the time.
She did not misspeak. The Foreign Secretary might reasonably be expected to have read her brief and maybe glanced at a map on the flight over for crisis talks.
Of course. And then in a discussion the names of 2 oblasts are thrown out. Perhaps she misheard, perhaps she thought they were a different name.
Consider her options:
1. Say they recognise sovereignty - real downside if it’s a quirky babe for Donblas 2. Bristle and push back - establishes the principle; downside risk is she looks a little silly 3. Ignore/redefine the question “we’re not here to talk about that. We’re here to talk about X”
I personally would have gone with option 3. But I’m not going to condemn her for going with option 2 and getting called out.
She looks a little silly and gets mocked on Twitter. So f***ng what? Lavrov is an arse and got a cheap shot in. Real world consequence zero.
Sometimes people just need to ignore the trolls.
If she had been asked about Downing St parties she would have given a more diplomatic answer.
Diplomacy is her job. The moment required the upmost care. This is they very essence of her responsibility. Instead of using language with the precision of a surgeon’s knife she bluffed it. Not good.
Sure. She made a misstep on negotiations. Cost: zero
Now we have a choice:
1. Do we mock, undermine and weaken the Foreign Secretary at a time of serious international tension as the Russian hope we will do? 2. Do we not do what the Russians want us to do?
1. Oh fuck right off. She is a narcissistic vacuous self-promoting cretin. 2. The Russians don't really care what we think - Britain has reduced itself to a bit player having left the big stage. Compare and contrast how Russia is dealing with France / EU with how it is dealing with the UK.
Russia knows the UK opposes it and is a prime mover in resisting its advances. Russia believes Macron is vain and wants to be seen as a peace bring so will be more likely to make concessions.
Of course Russia bigs France up.
Some of your guys just don’t have a fucking clue. You let your hatred for this government blind you to another’s plays.
If Macron’s vanity brings about a peaceful settlement, I’m all for it.
The Sunday Rawnsley: Eager to wound, but unwilling to strike, Sir John and Mrs May reflect the state of the party they once led. It is simultaneously infuriated and paralysed by a scandal that is also a crisis. This leaves the Tory party and with it the government, marooned in no man’s land.
Waiting to see if the polls are verified by a heavy defeat at the May local elections “puts our councillors in the executioner’s tumbril”, as another MP puts it. The prime minister is solely focused on trying to save his own skin. He always governed from one week to the next. Now he governs from one day to the next.
One Conservative MP reports: “The phrase you hear a lot of in the tearoom is ‘we can’t go on like this’.” So I asked him whether he had submitted a letter calling for a confidence vote. He confessed that he hadn’t, before arguing that it was too early to move. He was choosing to go on like this… there is the substantial group who want Mr Johnson gone, but are hesitant about acting. “One of the worst outcomes is that we get a confidence vote and he narrowly survives it,” says one senior Tory. “If he wins by just one vote, he will stay. Anyone else would walk, but he will stay.”
The Conservative party will pay a penalty for its prevarication – indeed, it already is paying. The longer this goes on, the more this looks like a lawless government that thinks rules are for everyone else and the deeper the reputational damage sustained by the Tories. “A month ago, this was hurting only Boris,” says one former cabinet minister. “Now, it is hurting the whole government. The more they put up ministers to make a defence of him, the more it damages all of us.”
So I asked this senior Tory whether he had put in a confidence letter and discovered he was another who hadn’t done so yet. The government will remain trapped in this nightmare no man’s land, and the country with it, until Tory MPs cease equivocating and a critical mass of them decide to bring things to a head.
What a bunch of spineless wasters most Tory MPs are.
And meanwhile, the Government achieves nothing - save to bleed the young ruthlessly in order to stuff the mouths of the elderly with gold.
Research by the Intergenerational Foundation thinktank, to be published on Monday, claims that younger workers are being unfairly targeted by the government in a “tax by stealth” caused by freezes on income tax brackets and the student loan repayment threshold, as well as April’s national insurance rise.
Low-earning young people will be hit hardest by the changes, claims the report, having a significant impact on their take home pay, disposable income and potential to save for housing and pensions.
Researchers calculate a graduate earning £27,000 a year will see their deductions rise by about 20% over the next four years – from 18% of their pay to 22%. They predict their disposable income will drop by almost 30%.
...
Labelling under-30s the “packhorse generation”, the thinktank claims they are being targeted by the government, which it says is using high inflation to pull more low-income, and especially younger, workers into taxation sooner.
The mouths of the elderly are not being stuffed with gold. The state pension is less than £10,000 a year.
Yet they are the richest generation of pensioners ever. And the youngsters of today the first generation to be poorer than their parents since the world wars. The comparison is fair, the discrepancy between the generations is not.
In the normal course of events, you'd expect every sector to be better off, simply through economic growth and technology. It's not pensioners but the young who are the anomaly here. The state pension is low. That some property-owning pensioners have benefited from house price inflation does not amount to HMG stuffing their mouths with gold, and in any case, the gains are often unrealised. And many pensioners are poor, just as many young adults are doing very nicely, thank you.
The property owning pensioners who have done well from their property tend mainly to be in London and the South. House price inflation in other parts of the country has been until relatively recently, quite flat.
And, unless one significantly downsizes, or is foolish enough to try equity release, that's dead money.
The trivialisation of British politics continues this morning. We are now apparently focused on a mistatement by Truss rather than the risk of the largest war in Europe since WW2.
On the domestic front we are obsessed about people working in close proximity to each other having a drink afterwards instead of addressing a serious cost of living squeeze, inflation that incompetence at the BoE Monetary Policy Committee has allowed to get out of hand, a record waiting list for the NHS, a police service that is plainly not fit for purpose and serious economic threats of further disruption from either a war in Ukraine or an invasion of Taiwan.
It is hard not to notice that these mad obsessions tend to be driven by those who have never forgiven Johnson for Brexit. Its irrational and, frankly, boring. This site is still highly educational with informed commentators on many issues but the effort/reward ratios are not what they were.
I'm fairly obsessed with these people having drinks with each other after work having told me, working far harder and far more difficult conditions, that I couldn't because I might be naughtily spreading Covid.
And then repeatedly lying about it.
That goes right to the heart of the credibility of government. Not just this government - government as a whole.
If they had said it was OK for co-workers to have parties, because it didn't really matter given how much time they were spending together, then there wouldn't be a problem. If they had fessed up when caught, there would be less of a problem.
Best-selling author Adam Kay has been desperately trying to remove from the internet any trace of the vile songs Your Baby and Northern Birds, which he recorded as part of a comedy duo called Amateur Transplants.
I saw Amateur Transplants the day after the 2010 general election and they were fantastic. The interesting thing is, those two songs aren’t the most offensive.
I think it’s sad that comedy is being destroyed by wokeness. Neither Adam Kay or Suman Biswas would approve of the stuff they sing about. But like Jimmy Carr, they’re act plays on our prejudices and has a cynical view of the world.
No.
Adam Kay's book, which I quite liked, nevertheless has some rather schoolboy 'humour' misogynism about it.
But on the broader point, it is absolutely NOT the case that all topics are fair game. Any decent human being doesn't make jokes about the deaths of people: whether Romas or children, for example.
I'm weary of the attack on 'wokeness' being used as a front for plain nasty, vile, human behaviour.
The Nasty Party is back.
(But I expect when Sandpit gets up in Dubai he will still like your post, so that's alright then)
Attacks on wokeness frequently go too far as part of culture war stuff, but you are getting on your moral high horse and attempting to police what other people find amusing. You're essentially declaring people should not be allowed to laugh at black comedy or offense comedy because it's not right as far as you're concerned.
That's up to you. Lots of stuff in that vein is not very amusing, but I'd much rather people feel able to approach the line of tastelessness sometimes than never approach certain topics comedically.
Take a mild example- There's an old joke about the troubles being a stupid name because what did people think 3000 died of, stress? Under your definition its joking about people dying (not as target, but it's still a joke about death so your definition says not ok)
I don't think moral grandstanding is necessary because most comedy is safer and more mainstream as people prefer that.
But I disagree with you - everything absolutely is fair game. I don't believe that makes me a bad person or the person telling it.
As for being a front for nasty behaviour it's like the famous quote about art or photography - hard to define the line, but we can generally tell it when we see it.
When it comes to moralising on other's behaviour i could never rule out something might need condemning. But I'd play it very very cautiously. The same reason I am always wary around civil liberty issues - X might be ok, buy be careful.
The joy of art - painting, music, comedy etc etc - is that it is subjective. What I enjoy may be different to what you enjoy. I can think of a whole load of jokes told by various comedians that I don't find funny or find offensive, but that doesn't make them invalid. Jimmy Carr is under attack for one joke - I don't much care for that joke but I really dislike Jimmy Carr anyway. Does that mean we should cancel Jimmy Carr? No!
You talk about it being hard to define the line - this is the critical point. The quick response by a comedian receiving groans or flinches from a joke - "too soon?" is absolutely it. What is funny now, or appropriate, or even acceptable in the wider sense will not be the same as what is funny / appropriate / acceptable at another time. We can only take things in the time they were done - you can't retroactively impose today's morality on yesterday because it will be different.
Jeremy Clarkson (yes yes) has a good column in today’s Sunday Times which makes an excellent case for Jimmy Carr being genuinely and personally funny, in the darkest way. He describes how the Top Gear team wanted Carr to go to Whitby to film something boring, so they had to tempt Carr with a helicopter ride, which he then accepted, as long as Carr could bring along Adrian (AA) Gill: a mutual friend who was at that point close to death from cancer. Carr wanted to cheer him up
Clarkson goes on:
“Later, on the sea wall, we started to talk about television, and Adrian said he’d just started watching Vikings on Amazon Prime. “Vikings?” asked Jimmy. “Bit ambitious. It’s a ten-parter, isn’t it?” That’s probably the meanest thing you could say to someone with cancer, and yet Adrian didn’t just laugh. He guffawed so hard, some fish came out of his nose.”
That’s a fantastic off the cuff joke, and very very dark. I hope if I am close to the end I have a friend who can somehow make me laugh about it. I don’t want people all maudlin and weepy all the time
"According to Russian media reports, not denied by the UK side, Truss’s chilly encounter with her vastly more experienced Russian opposite number, Sergey Lavrov, included an exchange that went roughly like this.
Truss: ‘Russia must move its troops away from the Ukrainian border, or else…’ Lavrov: ‘Why should we? It’s up to Russia where it deploys its troops inside Russia’ (which, of course, it is). He then asked, for good measure: ‘Do you recognise Russia’s sovereignty over the Rostov and Voronezh regions?’ At which point Truss mounted her high horse and responded with all the authority of the UK’s chief diplomat: ‘The UK will never recognise Russia’s sovereignty over these regions.’
This is where the UK’s ambassador to Moscow, Deborah Bronnert, is said to have leant across to Truss and discreetly informed her that these regions were actually in Russia. Her assumption had apparently been that they were the two so-called breakaway regions on the Ukrainian side of the border."
Lavrov asked a silly trick question and Truss made a mistake. Zero consequence except among the useful idiots in the UK who use it to undermine Truss. Which is why Lavrov did it.
A strong post, StillWaters, a damn fine try at spinning it. Unfortunately you would ask us to believe absolutely everybody would have blundered into that trap - but that isn’t true, is it?
No, she made a mistake. But whatever - people misspeak all the time.
She did not misspeak. The Foreign Secretary might reasonably be expected to have read her brief and maybe glanced at a map on the flight over for crisis talks.
Of course. And then in a discussion the names of 2 oblasts are thrown out. Perhaps she misheard, perhaps she thought they were a different name.
Consider her options:
1. Say they recognise sovereignty - real downside if it’s a quirky babe for Donblas 2. Bristle and push back - establishes the principle; downside risk is she looks a little silly 3. Ignore/redefine the question “we’re not here to talk about that. We’re here to talk about X”
I personally would have gone with option 3. But I’m not going to condemn her for going with option 2 and getting called out.
She looks a little silly and gets mocked on Twitter. So f***ng what? Lavrov is an arse and got a cheap shot in. Real world consequence zero.
Sometimes people just need to ignore the trolls.
If she had been asked about Downing St parties she would have given a more diplomatic answer.
Diplomacy is her job. The moment required the upmost care. This is they very essence of her responsibility. Instead of using language with the precision of a surgeon’s knife she bluffed it. Not good.
Sure. She made a misstep on negotiations. Cost: zero
Now we have a choice:
1. Do we mock, undermine and weaken the Foreign Secretary at a time of serious international tension as the Russian hope we will do? 2. Do we not do what the Russians want us to do?
1. Oh fuck right off. She is a narcissistic vacuous self-promoting cretin. 2. The Russians don't really care what we think - Britain has reduced itself to a bit player having left the big stage. Compare and contrast how Russia is dealing with France / EU with how it is dealing with the UK.
As far as I can see, Russia’s dealings with France have consisted of entertaining Macron to a bizarre meeting across the longest table in Europe, asking him to get tested, indulging his popinjay pretensions as a leader of peace and the man who brokered a new age of global harmony…. And then invading Ukraine anyway (if the diplomatic rumours are right)
He’s gonna look a total twerp if they DO invade, now. Dare I say it: even more than Ms Truss
Be fair - the dining room table in Bruce Wayne Manor in Batman (1988) was longer.
Diplomacy often ends in failure. Diplomacy rarely ends in open mockery. She flew to Moscow to cosplay Thatcher warn Russia about its threat to Ukraine and its border claims. Without having the First Clue where any of those places were. Unsurprisingly Lavrov just laughed her off as being irrelevant. Its like the big kids are doing something and the little kid wants in. Doesn't understand the rules, or what is happening, but heard the big kids say a word which they are now confidently repeating out of context.
Cue mocking laughter. Aimed at Britain.
No, it’s just your tiresome desire to belittle Britain and celebrate any perceived humiliation. It really is pathological
Is the UK a superpower? No. Is it as important as, say, China? Of course not
Is Britain a pathetically oversized version of Ireland, with a bit less rain? No, not that either
It is a senior mid-ranking power, armed with nukes, a member of the G7, NATO, the UNSC, probably the most important ally of the USA alongside Japan, and the UK also wields much soft power, ESPECIALLY over Russia, with their deep links to London (because this cuts both ways). How many of Russia’s top ten thousand send their kids to British private schools, or British universities? A LOT. And a lot more than France or Germany, to name two other examples of significant European powers
Has the UK lost influence over the EU’s foreign policy since Brexit? Yes. But what is that foreign policy? Search me. it varies depending on whether you are taking to Brussels, Berlin, Paris, Vienna, Budapest, Athens, Zagreb or some fringe group of amputee pensioners in Wroclaw
How am I belittling Britain? I am nobody - an anonymous username on a forum talking to other (mostly) anonymous people.
What belittles Britain is reducing our armed forces so that we can barely defend our own airspace and territorial interests, never mind being able to project power as we once did. What belittles Britain is removing ourselves from the regional block and talking like we've grown in stature rather than been reduced in stature. What belittles Britain is doing something that none of our friends and allies understands and then haughtily insisting that we are right and everyone else is wrong What belittles Britain is making ourselves a laughing stock by having a clown PM who makes a speech to the UN General Assembly about Kermit the Frog What belittles Britain is huffing and puffing about the Ukraine then pulling what few troops we have out just before the invasion What belittles Britain is sending a vacuous "diplomat" to Russia to lecture Russia about borders without being able to understand where Russia is on a map.
You make the valid point about our economic power. We are not a big military power as we once were. We are not the kingmaker in one of the global power blocks as we once were. But we still have a big economy and a lot of Russians own a lot of our politicians it. We should have been threatening to freeze those assets, not impotently making military threats we can't back up. But no, Truss wants to be Thatcher. And me calling out our self-evident global embarrassment is either siding with Russia or belittling Britain apparently.
"According to Russian media reports, not denied by the UK side, Truss’s chilly encounter with her vastly more experienced Russian opposite number, Sergey Lavrov, included an exchange that went roughly like this.
Truss: ‘Russia must move its troops away from the Ukrainian border, or else…’ Lavrov: ‘Why should we? It’s up to Russia where it deploys its troops inside Russia’ (which, of course, it is). He then asked, for good measure: ‘Do you recognise Russia’s sovereignty over the Rostov and Voronezh regions?’ At which point Truss mounted her high horse and responded with all the authority of the UK’s chief diplomat: ‘The UK will never recognise Russia’s sovereignty over these regions.’
This is where the UK’s ambassador to Moscow, Deborah Bronnert, is said to have leant across to Truss and discreetly informed her that these regions were actually in Russia. Her assumption had apparently been that they were the two so-called breakaway regions on the Ukrainian side of the border."
Lavrov asked a silly trick question and Truss made a mistake. Zero consequence except among the useful idiots in the UK who use it to undermine Truss. Which is why Lavrov did it.
A strong post, StillWaters, a damn fine try at spinning it. Unfortunately you would ask us to believe absolutely everybody would have blundered into that trap - but that isn’t true, is it?
No, she made a mistake. But whatever - people misspeak all the time.
She did not misspeak. The Foreign Secretary might reasonably be expected to have read her brief and maybe glanced at a map on the flight over for crisis talks.
Of course. And then in a discussion the names of 2 oblasts are thrown out. Perhaps she misheard, perhaps she thought they were a different name.
Consider her options:
1. Say they recognise sovereignty - real downside if it’s a quirky babe for Donblas 2. Bristle and push back - establishes the principle; downside risk is she looks a little silly 3. Ignore/redefine the question “we’re not here to talk about that. We’re here to talk about X”
I personally would have gone with option 3. But I’m not going to condemn her for going with option 2 and getting called out.
She looks a little silly and gets mocked on Twitter. So f***ng what? Lavrov is an arse and got a cheap shot in. Real world consequence zero.
Sometimes people just need to ignore the trolls.
If she had been asked about Downing St parties she would have given a more diplomatic answer.
Diplomacy is her job. The moment required the upmost care. This is they very essence of her responsibility. Instead of using language with the precision of a surgeon’s knife she bluffed it. Not good.
Sure. She made a misstep on negotiations. Cost: zero
Now we have a choice:
1. Do we mock, undermine and weaken the Foreign Secretary at a time of serious international tension as the Russian hope we will do? 2. Do we not do what the Russians want us to do?
1. Oh fuck right off. She is a narcissistic vacuous self-promoting cretin. 2. The Russians don't really care what we think - Britain has reduced itself to a bit player having left the big stage. Compare and contrast how Russia is dealing with France / EU with how it is dealing with the UK.
As far as I can see, Russia’s dealings with France have consisted of entertaining Macron to a bizarre meeting across the longest table in Europe, asking him to get tested, indulging his popinjay pretensions as a leader of peace and the man who brokered a new age of global harmony…. And then invading Ukraine anyway (if the diplomatic rumours are right)
He’s gonna look a total twerp if they DO invade, now. Dare I say it: even more than Ms Truss
Be fair - the dining room table in Bruce Wayne Manor in Batman (1988) was longer.
Diplomacy often ends in failure. Diplomacy rarely ends in open mockery. She flew to Moscow to cosplay Thatcher warn Russia about its threat to Ukraine and its border claims. Without having the First Clue where any of those places were. Unsurprisingly Lavrov just laughed her off as being irrelevant. Its like the big kids are doing something and the little kid wants in. Doesn't understand the rules, or what is happening, but heard the big kids say a word which they are now confidently repeating out of context.
Cue mocking laughter. Aimed at Britain.
No, it’s just your tiresome desire to belittle Britain and celebrate any perceived humiliation. It really is pathological
Is the UK a superpower? No. Is it as important as, say, China? Of course not
Is Britain a pathetically oversized version of Ireland, with a bit less rain? No, not that either
It is a senior mid-ranking power, armed with nukes, a member of the G7, NATO, the UNSC, probably the most important ally of the USA alongside Japan, and the UK also wields much soft power, ESPECIALLY over Russia, with their deep links to London (because this cuts both ways). How many of Russia’s top ten thousand send their kids to British private schools, or British universities? A LOT. And a lot more than France or Germany, to name two other examples of significant European powers
Has the UK lost influence over the EU’s foreign policy since Brexit? Yes. But what is that foreign policy? Search me. it varies depending on whether you are taking to Brussels, Berlin, Paris, Vienna, Budapest, Athens, Zagreb or some fringe group of amputee pensioners in Wroclaw
How am I belittling Britain? I am nobody - an anonymous username on a forum talking to other (mostly) anonymous people.
What belittles Britain is reducing our armed forces so that we can barely defend our own airspace and territorial interests, never mind being able to project power as we once did. What belittles Britain is removing ourselves from the regional block and talking like we've grown in stature rather than been reduced in stature. What belittles Britain is doing something that none of our friends and allies understands and then haughtily insisting that we are right and everyone else is wrong What belittles Britain is making ourselves a laughing stock by having a clown PM who makes a speech to the UN General Assembly about Kermit the Frog What belittles Britain is huffing and puffing about the Ukraine then pulling what few troops we have out just before the invasion What belittles Britain is sending a vacuous "diplomat" to Russia to lecture Russia about borders without being able to understand where Russia is on a map.
You make the valid point about our economic power. We are not a big military power as we once were. We are not the kingmaker in one of the global power blocks as we once were. But we still have a big economy and a lot of Russians own a lot of our politicians it. We should have been threatening to freeze those assets, not impotently making military threats we can't back up. But no, Truss wants to be Thatcher. And me calling out our self-evident global embarrassment is either siding with Russia or belittling Britain apparently.
The trivialisation of British politics continues this morning. We are now apparently focused on a mistatement by Truss rather than the risk of the largest war in Europe since WW2.
On the domestic front we are obsessed about people working in close proximity to each other having a drink afterwards instead of addressing a serious cost of living squeeze, inflation that incompetence at the BoE Monetary Policy Committee has allowed to get out of hand, a record waiting list for the NHS, a police service that is plainly not fit for purpose and serious economic threats of further disruption from either a war in Ukraine or an invasion of Taiwan.
It is hard not to notice that these mad obsessions tend to be driven by those who have never forgiven Johnson for Brexit. Its irrational and, frankly, boring. This site is still highly educational with informed commentators on many issues but the effort/reward ratios are not what they were.
The more important the ishoos are the less I want them handled by lazy incompetent liars.
I have absolutely no problem with people making a serious critique of the governments policy and suggesting a better course, indeed I welcome it, particularly if the person doing it is informed and able to bring relevant material to the table. There is plenty to criticise but our media and PB seem obsessed with flim flam and gotchas. Perhaps it is a demonstration of our irrelevance on the world stage these days but its tedious.
That's a pretty staggering figure and not in a good way. One thing they need to be a little careful of though is they don't get obsessed with particular groups at the expense of the overall picture, a la Gordon Brown. 80% of black people having less than £1500 in savings is certainly bad, but there are on their own figures 22,455,726 people in that category - of which at least two thirds must be white for purely demographic reasons.
Of course, that in itself doesn't tell the full story. Large numbers of BAME people live in cities, often expensive ones like London, where £1500 goes rather less far than it would in say, Consett or Whitehaven.
But if you focus on just one aspect you run the risk of missing the complexity of the situation and creating even more complex problems down the line.
As a wealthy white voter that doesn't help me either. Boris has my back!
"According to Russian media reports, not denied by the UK side, Truss’s chilly encounter with her vastly more experienced Russian opposite number, Sergey Lavrov, included an exchange that went roughly like this.
Truss: ‘Russia must move its troops away from the Ukrainian border, or else…’ Lavrov: ‘Why should we? It’s up to Russia where it deploys its troops inside Russia’ (which, of course, it is). He then asked, for good measure: ‘Do you recognise Russia’s sovereignty over the Rostov and Voronezh regions?’ At which point Truss mounted her high horse and responded with all the authority of the UK’s chief diplomat: ‘The UK will never recognise Russia’s sovereignty over these regions.’
This is where the UK’s ambassador to Moscow, Deborah Bronnert, is said to have leant across to Truss and discreetly informed her that these regions were actually in Russia. Her assumption had apparently been that they were the two so-called breakaway regions on the Ukrainian side of the border."
Lavrov asked a silly trick question and Truss made a mistake. Zero consequence except among the useful idiots in the UK who use it to undermine Truss. Which is why Lavrov did it.
A strong post, StillWaters, a damn fine try at spinning it. Unfortunately you would ask us to believe absolutely everybody would have blundered into that trap - but that isn’t true, is it?
No, she made a mistake. But whatever - people misspeak all the time.
She did not misspeak. The Foreign Secretary might reasonably be expected to have read her brief and maybe glanced at a map on the flight over for crisis talks.
Of course. And then in a discussion the names of 2 oblasts are thrown out. Perhaps she misheard, perhaps she thought they were a different name.
Consider her options:
1. Say they recognise sovereignty - real downside if it’s a quirky babe for Donblas 2. Bristle and push back - establishes the principle; downside risk is she looks a little silly 3. Ignore/redefine the question “we’re not here to talk about that. We’re here to talk about X”
I personally would have gone with option 3. But I’m not going to condemn her for going with option 2 and getting called out.
She looks a little silly and gets mocked on Twitter. So f***ng what? Lavrov is an arse and got a cheap shot in. Real world consequence zero.
Sometimes people just need to ignore the trolls.
The smart move would have been to say that she is delighted with their offer to hand the Don Basin over to Ukraine and would welcome further talks to see if a settlement could be reached on that basis.
Unfortunately she isn’t very smart.
Within minutes of her saying that, an edited clip would have been on all the Russian controlled media.
With the message that the True Intentions Of The West had been Revealed - the dismemberment of Russia, supporting the Greater Ukrainian Fascists etc etc
The issue with that is that what she's said, if she said it and if they had a recording, would actually be more useful for them. She's now accused of saying the West doesn't recognise Russian sovereignty over Russian territory.
Now this may be the Russians playing silly buggers or Lavrov misremembering after he's had one too many. But it's still pretty bad.
I agree and I’m surprised how readily people are dismissing it. I expect we will hear a lot more of,it.
it would be quite PIQUANT if the Truss Mistake turns out to be the casus belli of World War Three
I see TASS are actually using it
10 FEB, 20:39 Top British diplomat refused to recognize Voronezh and Rostov as part of Russia — source
After Truss’ statements urging Moscow to move its forces, located on Russia’s soil, away from the border with Ukraine, Sergey Lavrov asked his British counterpart if she recognized Russia’s sovereignty over the Voronezh and Rostov Regions
Even as a committed TRUSS APOLOGIST I admit that kicking off the Final Global Apocalypse would be unideal for her aspirations to lead the UK Tory Party
Particularly as an invasion quite likely bolsters Bozza. And who doesn't love a Churchillian war leader?
Neville Chamberlain.
But truthfully, in being a third rate partygoer with one big policy who can't keep his hands off younger women, Johnson more closely resembles Asquith.
A very fair point.
Forget your historical British statesmen, Johnson reminds me more of Hynkel...from The Great Dictator.
Lizaveta's real crime wasn't that she had a poor grasp of Russian geography but that she considered neither the question nor her response to it. She just fired off an answer of reflexive bullshit because she lacked the wit to think it through. That's what makes her intellectually and temperamentally unsuited to be Foreign Secretary never mind PM.
The trivialisation of British politics continues this morning. We are now apparently focused on a mistatement by Truss rather than the risk of the largest war in Europe since WW2.
On the domestic front we are obsessed about people working in close proximity to each other having a drink afterwards instead of addressing a serious cost of living squeeze, inflation that incompetence at the BoE Monetary Policy Committee has allowed to get out of hand, a record waiting list for the NHS, a police service that is plainly not fit for purpose and serious economic threats of further disruption from either a war in Ukraine or an invasion of Taiwan.
It is hard not to notice that these mad obsessions tend to be driven by those who have never forgiven Johnson for Brexit. Its irrational and, frankly, boring. This site is still highly educational with informed commentators on many issues but the effort/reward ratios are not what they were.
I agree with you that there are serious issues that deserve more attention, but I'd make a few points in defence of the focus of this discussion forum.
1. Although we are many things, the site exists as a forum to discuss betting on politics, and a slip-up from one of the front-runners in the, potentially imminent, contest to replace Boris Johnson is a relevant discussion topic.
2. The issue with the Downing Street parties drives at the very heart of our democracy - that everyone is subject to the rule of law, and that the government can be relied upon not to lie to Parliament. If Boris Johnson is allowed to degrade those two principles (beyond that achieved by previous PMs) then the capability of our democracy to respond to the challenges we face is seriously weakened.
I expect he'll feel jolly small when he reads that. I mean, whose political judgment do we go with, Aaron Bell or 'ping'?
Hard to believe that people on here think he was wrong to have principles and morals and think he would have been far better being a coward and a butt licker to the fat crooked creature running the country. Tories really are the nasty party.
"According to Russian media reports, not denied by the UK side, Truss’s chilly encounter with her vastly more experienced Russian opposite number, Sergey Lavrov, included an exchange that went roughly like this.
Truss: ‘Russia must move its troops away from the Ukrainian border, or else…’ Lavrov: ‘Why should we? It’s up to Russia where it deploys its troops inside Russia’ (which, of course, it is). He then asked, for good measure: ‘Do you recognise Russia’s sovereignty over the Rostov and Voronezh regions?’ At which point Truss mounted her high horse and responded with all the authority of the UK’s chief diplomat: ‘The UK will never recognise Russia’s sovereignty over these regions.’
This is where the UK’s ambassador to Moscow, Deborah Bronnert, is said to have leant across to Truss and discreetly informed her that these regions were actually in Russia. Her assumption had apparently been that they were the two so-called breakaway regions on the Ukrainian side of the border."
Lavrov asked a silly trick question and Truss made a mistake. Zero consequence except among the useful idiots in the UK who use it to undermine Truss. Which is why Lavrov did it.
A strong post, StillWaters, a damn fine try at spinning it. Unfortunately you would ask us to believe absolutely everybody would have blundered into that trap - but that isn’t true, is it?
No, she made a mistake. But whatever - people misspeak all the time.
She did not misspeak. The Foreign Secretary might reasonably be expected to have read her brief and maybe glanced at a map on the flight over for crisis talks.
Of course. And then in a discussion the names of 2 oblasts are thrown out. Perhaps she misheard, perhaps she thought they were a different name.
Consider her options:
1. Say they recognise sovereignty - real downside if it’s a quirky babe for Donblas 2. Bristle and push back - establishes the principle; downside risk is she looks a little silly 3. Ignore/redefine the question “we’re not here to talk about that. We’re here to talk about X”
I personally would have gone with option 3. But I’m not going to condemn her for going with option 2 and getting called out.
She looks a little silly and gets mocked on Twitter. So f***ng what? Lavrov is an arse and got a cheap shot in. Real world consequence zero.
Sometimes people just need to ignore the trolls.
If she had been asked about Downing St parties she would have given a more diplomatic answer.
Diplomacy is her job. The moment required the upmost care. This is they very essence of her responsibility. Instead of using language with the precision of a surgeon’s knife she bluffed it. Not good.
Sure. She made a misstep on negotiations. Cost: zero
Now we have a choice:
1. Do we mock, undermine and weaken the Foreign Secretary at a time of serious international tension as the Russian hope we will do? 2. Do we not do what the Russians want us to do?
1. Oh fuck right off. She is a narcissistic vacuous self-promoting cretin.
Kinder politics.
The alternative apparently is that we all tearily clutch our hankies as Maggie Truss waves our brave boys off to war from Southampton Dock.
Johnson has just ordered all of the British troops out of Ukraine.
Speak bollocks and carry a limp dick.
The trainers. Not the others that they haven’t admired are there.
The reality is a couple of hundred British trainers in Ukraine are a tactical weakness for the West. They won’t make a difference but I am sure that Putin would love to capture them.
@Dura_Ace simultaneously mocks our inability to send any significant military forces to “defend” Ukraine (and of course we won’t do that, for the same reason France, Germany and America won’t) and then also mocks our highly prudent withdrawal of what small forces we do have there, so - as you say - they don’t become captives of the Red Army
Basically there is a whole class of people on this site, and elsewhere in British political life, who are determined to say that EVERYTHING BRITAIN IS DOES IS WRONG AND STUPID even when they openly contradict themselves. And much of this is Brexit related. And it is fucking boring, as @DavidL notes
The Sunday Rawnsley: Eager to wound, but unwilling to strike, Sir John and Mrs May reflect the state of the party they once led. It is simultaneously infuriated and paralysed by a scandal that is also a crisis. This leaves the Tory party and with it the government, marooned in no man’s land.
Waiting to see if the polls are verified by a heavy defeat at the May local elections “puts our councillors in the executioner’s tumbril”, as another MP puts it. The prime minister is solely focused on trying to save his own skin. He always governed from one week to the next. Now he governs from one day to the next.
One Conservative MP reports: “The phrase you hear a lot of in the tearoom is ‘we can’t go on like this’.” So I asked him whether he had submitted a letter calling for a confidence vote. He confessed that he hadn’t, before arguing that it was too early to move. He was choosing to go on like this… there is the substantial group who want Mr Johnson gone, but are hesitant about acting. “One of the worst outcomes is that we get a confidence vote and he narrowly survives it,” says one senior Tory. “If he wins by just one vote, he will stay. Anyone else would walk, but he will stay.”
The Conservative party will pay a penalty for its prevarication – indeed, it already is paying. The longer this goes on, the more this looks like a lawless government that thinks rules are for everyone else and the deeper the reputational damage sustained by the Tories. “A month ago, this was hurting only Boris,” says one former cabinet minister. “Now, it is hurting the whole government. The more they put up ministers to make a defence of him, the more it damages all of us.”
So I asked this senior Tory whether he had put in a confidence letter and discovered he was another who hadn’t done so yet. The government will remain trapped in this nightmare no man’s land, and the country with it, until Tory MPs cease equivocating and a critical mass of them decide to bring things to a head.
J What a bunch of spineless wasters most Tory MPs are.
And meanwhile, the Government achieves nothing - save to bleed the young ruthlessly in order to stuff the mouths of the elderly with gold.
Research by the Intergenerational Foundation thinktank, to be published on Monday, claims that younger workers are being unfairly targeted by the government in a “tax by stealth” caused by freezes on income tax brackets and the student loan repayment threshold, as well as April’s national insurance rise.
Low-earning young people will be hit hardest by the changes, claims the report, having a significant impact on their take home pay, disposable income and potential to save for housing and pensions.
Researchers calculate a graduate earning £27,000 a year will see their deductions rise by about 20% over the next four years – from 18% of their pay to 22%. They predict their disposable income will drop by almost 30%.
...
Labelling under-30s the “packhorse generation”, the thinktank claims they are being targeted by the government, which it says is using high inflation to pull more low-income, and especially younger, workers into taxation sooner.
"According to Russian media reports, not denied by the UK side, Truss’s chilly encounter with her vastly more experienced Russian opposite number, Sergey Lavrov, included an exchange that went roughly like this.
Truss: ‘Russia must move its troops away from the Ukrainian border, or else…’ Lavrov: ‘Why should we? It’s up to Russia where it deploys its troops inside Russia’ (which, of course, it is). He then asked, for good measure: ‘Do you recognise Russia’s sovereignty over the Rostov and Voronezh regions?’ At which point Truss mounted her high horse and responded with all the authority of the UK’s chief diplomat: ‘The UK will never recognise Russia’s sovereignty over these regions.’
This is where the UK’s ambassador to Moscow, Deborah Bronnert, is said to have leant across to Truss and discreetly informed her that these regions were actually in Russia. Her assumption had apparently been that they were the two so-called breakaway regions on the Ukrainian side of the border."
Lavrov asked a silly trick question and Truss made a mistake. Zero consequence except among the useful idiots in the UK who use it to undermine Truss. Which is why Lavrov did it.
A strong post, StillWaters, a damn fine try at spinning it. Unfortunately you would ask us to believe absolutely everybody would have blundered into that trap - but that isn’t true, is it?
No, she made a mistake. But whatever - people misspeak all the time.
She did not misspeak. The Foreign Secretary might reasonably be expected to have read her brief and maybe glanced at a map on the flight over for crisis talks.
Of course. And then in a discussion the names of 2 oblasts are thrown out. Perhaps she misheard, perhaps she thought they were a different name.
Consider her options:
1. Say they recognise sovereignty - real downside if it’s a quirky babe for Donblas 2. Bristle and push back - establishes the principle; downside risk is she looks a little silly 3. Ignore/redefine the question “we’re not here to talk about that. We’re here to talk about X”
I personally would have gone with option 3. But I’m not going to condemn her for going with option 2 and getting called out.
She looks a little silly and gets mocked on Twitter. So f***ng what? Lavrov is an arse and got a cheap shot in. Real world consequence zero.
Sometimes people just need to ignore the trolls.
If she had been asked about Downing St parties she would have given a more diplomatic answer.
Diplomacy is her job. The moment required the upmost care. This is they very essence of her responsibility. Instead of using language with the precision of a surgeon’s knife she bluffed it. Not good.
Sure. She made a misstep on negotiations. Cost: zero
Now we have a choice:
1. Do we mock, undermine and weaken the Foreign Secretary at a time of serious international tension as the Russian hope we will do? 2. Do we not do what the Russians want us to do?
1. Oh fuck right off. She is a narcissistic vacuous self-promoting cretin.
Kinder politics.
The alternative apparently is that we all tearily clutch our hankies as Maggie Truss waves our brave boys off to war from Southampton Dock.
I could wear my summer frock so it could cling to my wet body in the rain
The Final Cut could be the manual for how this plays out.
"According to Russian media reports, not denied by the UK side, Truss’s chilly encounter with her vastly more experienced Russian opposite number, Sergey Lavrov, included an exchange that went roughly like this.
Truss: ‘Russia must move its troops away from the Ukrainian border, or else…’ Lavrov: ‘Why should we? It’s up to Russia where it deploys its troops inside Russia’ (which, of course, it is). He then asked, for good measure: ‘Do you recognise Russia’s sovereignty over the Rostov and Voronezh regions?’ At which point Truss mounted her high horse and responded with all the authority of the UK’s chief diplomat: ‘The UK will never recognise Russia’s sovereignty over these regions.’
This is where the UK’s ambassador to Moscow, Deborah Bronnert, is said to have leant across to Truss and discreetly informed her that these regions were actually in Russia. Her assumption had apparently been that they were the two so-called breakaway regions on the Ukrainian side of the border."
Lavrov asked a silly trick question and Truss made a mistake. Zero consequence except among the useful idiots in the UK who use it to undermine Truss. Which is why Lavrov did it.
A strong post, StillWaters, a damn fine try at spinning it. Unfortunately you would ask us to believe absolutely everybody would have blundered into that trap - but that isn’t true, is it?
No, she made a mistake. But whatever - people misspeak all the time.
She did not misspeak. The Foreign Secretary might reasonably be expected to have read her brief and maybe glanced at a map on the flight over for crisis talks.
Of course. And then in a discussion the names of 2 oblasts are thrown out. Perhaps she misheard, perhaps she thought they were a different name.
Consider her options:
1. Say they recognise sovereignty - real downside if it’s a quirky babe for Donblas 2. Bristle and push back - establishes the principle; downside risk is she looks a little silly 3. Ignore/redefine the question “we’re not here to talk about that. We’re here to talk about X”
I personally would have gone with option 3. But I’m not going to condemn her for going with option 2 and getting called out.
She looks a little silly and gets mocked on Twitter. So f***ng what? Lavrov is an arse and got a cheap shot in. Real world consequence zero.
"When asked about reasons for their vote in 2019, there were far more mentions of Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership of the Labour party than of the prime minister, and little evidence that he was uniquely popular with these voters." Eye-opening from @p_surridge https://www.ft.com/content/6062ecf0-70d8-4433-bc3b-b2a66dfd162c
Truss should have used diplomatic language. It’s her job. It’s not as if she didn’t know it was a tricky situation. Instead she made an assumption, bluffed, failed and looked silly.
What’s weird is if this was Radio 4 she would have been fine giving nuanced answers.
The positive take away is that she now knows that - to quote @Dura_Ace - Lavrov is a “sneaky old twat”.
That’s a good lesson to learn for a very low cost.
Bollocks, the fact she did not know that before shows what a useless lightweight she is and how unsuited she is to run anything other than a bath.
Lizaveta's real crime wasn't that she had a poor grasp of Russian geography but that she considered neither the question nor her response to it. She just fired off an answer of reflexive bullshit because she lacked the wit to think it through. That's what makes her intellectually and temperamentally unsuited to be Foreign Secretary never mind PM.
Yes, I think that is a fair criticism and agree with the conclusion. It is a question that could have easily been dodged with a bit of thought.
Best-selling author Adam Kay has been desperately trying to remove from the internet any trace of the vile songs Your Baby and Northern Birds, which he recorded as part of a comedy duo called Amateur Transplants.
I saw Amateur Transplants the day after the 2010 general election and they were fantastic. The interesting thing is, those two songs aren’t the most offensive.
I think it’s sad that comedy is being destroyed by wokeness. Neither Adam Kay or Suman Biswas would approve of the stuff they sing about. But like Jimmy Carr, they’re act plays on our prejudices and has a cynical view of the world.
No.
Adam Kay's book, which I quite liked, nevertheless has some rather schoolboy 'humour' misogynism about it.
But on the broader point, it is absolutely NOT the case that all topics are fair game. Any decent human being doesn't make jokes about the deaths of people: whether Romas or children, for example.
I'm weary of the attack on 'wokeness' being used as a front for plain nasty, vile, human behaviour.
The Nasty Party is back.
(But I expect when Sandpit gets up in Dubai he will still like your post, so that's alright then)
Attacks on wokeness frequently go too far as part of culture war stuff, but you are getting on your moral high horse and attempting to police what other people find amusing. You're essentially declaring people should not be allowed to laugh at black comedy or offense comedy because it's not right as far as you're concerned.
That's up to you. Lots of stuff in that vein is not very amusing, but I'd much rather people feel able to approach the line of tastelessness sometimes than never approach certain topics comedically.
Take a mild example- There's an old joke about the troubles being a stupid name because what did people think 3000 died of, stress? Under your definition its joking about people dying (not as target, but it's still a joke about death so your definition says not ok)
I don't think moral grandstanding is necessary because most comedy is safer and more mainstream as people prefer that.
But I disagree with you - everything absolutely is fair game. I don't believe that makes me a bad person or the person telling it.
As for being a front for nasty behaviour it's like the famous quote about art or photography - hard to define the line, but we can generally tell it when we see it.
When it comes to moralising on other's behaviour i could never rule out something might need condemning. But I'd play it very very cautiously. The same reason I am always wary around civil liberty issues - X might be ok, buy be careful.
The joy of art - painting, music, comedy etc etc - is that it is subjective. What I enjoy may be different to what you enjoy. I can think of a whole load of jokes told by various comedians that I don't find funny or find offensive, but that doesn't make them invalid. Jimmy Carr is under attack for one joke - I don't much care for that joke but I really dislike Jimmy Carr anyway. Does that mean we should cancel Jimmy Carr? No!
You talk about it being hard to define the line - this is the critical point. The quick response by a comedian receiving groans or flinches from a joke - "too soon?" is absolutely it. What is funny now, or appropriate, or even acceptable in the wider sense will not be the same as what is funny / appropriate / acceptable at another time. We can only take things in the time they were done - you can't retroactively impose today's morality on yesterday because it will be different.
Jeremy Clarkson (yes yes) has a good column in today’s Sunday Times which makes an excellent case for Jimmy Carr being genuinely and personally funny, in the darkest way. He describes how the Top Gear team wanted Carr to go to Whitby to film something boring, so they had to tempt Carr with a helicopter ride, which he then accepted, as long as Carr could bring along Adrian (AA) Gill: a mutual friend who was at that point close to death from cancer. Carr wanted to cheer him up
Clarkson goes on:
“Later, on the sea wall, we started to talk about television, and Adrian said he’d just started watching Vikings on Amazon Prime. “Vikings?” asked Jimmy. “Bit ambitious. It’s a ten-parter, isn’t it?” That’s probably the meanest thing you could say to someone with cancer, and yet Adrian didn’t just laugh. He guffawed so hard, some fish came out of his nose.”
That’s a fantastic off the cuff joke, and very very dark. I hope if I am close to the end I have a friend who can somehow make me laugh about it. I don’t want people all maudlin and weepy all the time
When my Grandad reached his 90s he became quite determined about giving away the many books he had accumulated during his life, and was quite insistent that nobody should give him a book as a present again, because he'd probably die before he was able to read it. I think he'd have loved that joke.
"According to Russian media reports, not denied by the UK side, Truss’s chilly encounter with her vastly more experienced Russian opposite number, Sergey Lavrov, included an exchange that went roughly like this.
Truss: ‘Russia must move its troops away from the Ukrainian border, or else…’ Lavrov: ‘Why should we? It’s up to Russia where it deploys its troops inside Russia’ (which, of course, it is). He then asked, for good measure: ‘Do you recognise Russia’s sovereignty over the Rostov and Voronezh regions?’ At which point Truss mounted her high horse and responded with all the authority of the UK’s chief diplomat: ‘The UK will never recognise Russia’s sovereignty over these regions.’
This is where the UK’s ambassador to Moscow, Deborah Bronnert, is said to have leant across to Truss and discreetly informed her that these regions were actually in Russia. Her assumption had apparently been that they were the two so-called breakaway regions on the Ukrainian side of the border."
Lavrov asked a silly trick question and Truss made a mistake. Zero consequence except among the useful idiots in the UK who use it to undermine Truss. Which is why Lavrov did it.
A strong post, StillWaters, a damn fine try at spinning it. Unfortunately you would ask us to believe absolutely everybody would have blundered into that trap - but that isn’t true, is it?
No, she made a mistake. But whatever - people misspeak all the time.
She did not misspeak. The Foreign Secretary might reasonably be expected to have read her brief and maybe glanced at a map on the flight over for crisis talks.
Of course. And then in a discussion the names of 2 oblasts are thrown out. Perhaps she misheard, perhaps she thought they were a different name.
Consider her options:
1. Say they recognise sovereignty - real downside if it’s a quirky babe for Donblas 2. Bristle and push back - establishes the principle; downside risk is she looks a little silly 3. Ignore/redefine the question “we’re not here to talk about that. We’re here to talk about X”
I personally would have gone with option 3. But I’m not going to condemn her for going with option 2 and getting called out.
She looks a little silly and gets mocked on Twitter. So f***ng what? Lavrov is an arse and got a cheap shot in. Real world consequence zero.
Sometimes people just need to ignore the trolls.
If she had been asked about Downing St parties she would have given a more diplomatic answer.
Diplomacy is her job. The moment required the upmost care. This is they very essence of her responsibility. Instead of using language with the precision of a surgeon’s knife she bluffed it. Not good.
Sure. She made a misstep on negotiations. Cost: zero
Now we have a choice:
1. Do we mock, undermine and weaken the Foreign Secretary at a time of serious international tension as the Russian hope we will do? 2. Do we not do what the Russians want us to do?
1. Oh fuck right off. She is a narcissistic vacuous self-promoting cretin.
Kinder politics.
The alternative apparently is that we all tearily clutch our hankies as Maggie Truss waves our brave boys off to war from Southampton Dock.
Johnson has just ordered all of the British troops out of Ukraine.
Speak bollocks and carry a limp dick.
The trainers. Not the others that they haven’t admired are there.
The reality is a couple of hundred British trainers in Ukraine are a tactical weakness for the West. They won’t make a difference but I am sure that Putin would love to capture them.
@Dura_Ace simultaneously mocks our inability to send any significant military forces to “defend” Ukraine (and of course we won’t do that, for the same reason France, Germany and America won’t) and then also mocks our highly prudent withdrawal of what small forces we do have there, so - as you say - they don’t become captives of the Red Army
Basically there is a whole class of people on this site, and elsewhere in British political life, who are determined to say that EVERYTHING BRITAIN IS DOES IS WRONG AND STUPID even when they openly contradict themselves. And much of this is Brexit related. And it is fucking boring, as @DavidL notes
I don’t see why we have any obligation to defend Ukraine. It is not a NATO member after all.
"According to Russian media reports, not denied by the UK side, Truss’s chilly encounter with her vastly more experienced Russian opposite number, Sergey Lavrov, included an exchange that went roughly like this.
Truss: ‘Russia must move its troops away from the Ukrainian border, or else…’ Lavrov: ‘Why should we? It’s up to Russia where it deploys its troops inside Russia’ (which, of course, it is). He then asked, for good measure: ‘Do you recognise Russia’s sovereignty over the Rostov and Voronezh regions?’ At which point Truss mounted her high horse and responded with all the authority of the UK’s chief diplomat: ‘The UK will never recognise Russia’s sovereignty over these regions.’
This is where the UK’s ambassador to Moscow, Deborah Bronnert, is said to have leant across to Truss and discreetly informed her that these regions were actually in Russia. Her assumption had apparently been that they were the two so-called breakaway regions on the Ukrainian side of the border."
Lavrov asked a silly trick question and Truss made a mistake. Zero consequence except among the useful idiots in the UK who use it to undermine Truss. Which is why Lavrov did it.
A strong post, StillWaters, a damn fine try at spinning it. Unfortunately you would ask us to believe absolutely everybody would have blundered into that trap - but that isn’t true, is it?
No, she made a mistake. But whatever - people misspeak all the time.
She did not misspeak. The Foreign Secretary might reasonably be expected to have read her brief and maybe glanced at a map on the flight over for crisis talks.
Of course. And then in a discussion the names of 2 oblasts are thrown out. Perhaps she misheard, perhaps she thought they were a different name.
Consider her options:
1. Say they recognise sovereignty - real downside if it’s a quirky babe for Donblas 2. Bristle and push back - establishes the principle; downside risk is she looks a little silly 3. Ignore/redefine the question “we’re not here to talk about that. We’re here to talk about X”
I personally would have gone with option 3. But I’m not going to condemn her for going with option 2 and getting called out.
She looks a little silly and gets mocked on Twitter. So f***ng what? Lavrov is an arse and got a cheap shot in. Real world consequence zero.
Sometimes people just need to ignore the trolls.
If she had been asked about Downing St parties she would have given a more diplomatic answer.
Diplomacy is her job. The moment required the upmost care. This is they very essence of her responsibility. Instead of using language with the precision of a surgeon’s knife she bluffed it. Not good.
Sure. She made a misstep on negotiations. Cost: zero
Now we have a choice:
1. Do we mock, undermine and weaken the Foreign Secretary at a time of serious international tension as the Russian hope we will do? 2. Do we not do what the Russians want us to do?
1. Oh fuck right off. She is a narcissistic vacuous self-promoting cretin.
Kinder politics.
The alternative apparently is that we all tearily clutch our hankies as Maggie Truss waves our brave boys off to war from Southampton Dock.
Johnson has just ordered all of the British troops out of Ukraine.
Speak bollocks and carry a limp dick.
The trainers. Not the others that they haven’t admired are there.
The reality is a couple of hundred British trainers in Ukraine are a tactical weakness for the West. They won’t make a difference but I am sure that Putin would love to capture them.
@Dura_Ace simultaneously mocks our inability to send any significant military forces to “defend” Ukraine (and of course we won’t do that, for the same reason France, Germany and America won’t) and then also mocks our highly prudent withdrawal of what small forces we do have there, so - as you say - they don’t become captives of the Red Army
Basically there is a whole class of people on this site, and elsewhere in British political life, who are determined to say that EVERYTHING BRITAIN IS DOES IS WRONG AND STUPID even when they openly contradict themselves. And much of this is Brexit related. And it is fucking boring, as @DavidL notes
Some on here seem to be almost salivating at the thought of Putin invading Ukraine.
The trivialisation of British politics continues this morning. We are now apparently focused on a mistatement by Truss rather than the risk of the largest war in Europe since WW2.
On the domestic front we are obsessed about people working in close proximity to each other having a drink afterwards instead of addressing a serious cost of living squeeze, inflation that incompetence at the BoE Monetary Policy Committee has allowed to get out of hand, a record waiting list for the NHS, a police service that is plainly not fit for purpose and serious economic threats of further disruption from either a war in Ukraine or an invasion of Taiwan.
It is hard not to notice that these mad obsessions tend to be driven by those who have never forgiven Johnson for Brexit. Its irrational and, frankly, boring. This site is still highly educational with informed commentators on many issues but the effort/reward ratios are not what they were.
I agree with you that there are serious issues that deserve more attention, but I'd make a few points in defence of the focus of this discussion forum.
1. Although we are many things, the site exists as a forum to discuss betting on politics, and a slip-up from one of the front-runners in the, potentially imminent, contest to replace Boris Johnson is a relevant discussion topic.
2. The issue with the Downing Street parties drives at the very heart of our democracy - that everyone is subject to the rule of law, and that the government can be relied upon not to lie to Parliament. If Boris Johnson is allowed to degrade those two principles (beyond that achieved by previous PMs) then the capability of our democracy to respond to the challenges we face is seriously weakened.
1. Sorry, I don't agree but its a free country.
2. The issue for me is not that some idiots indulged themselves but that our PM lied about it the Commons. That is what undermines our democracy and yet another picture which may or may not have a photoshopped bottle of champagne in it is not relevant to the principle. He lied. Blatantly and shamelessly. But now we apparently have to wait to see if some incompetent copper thinks that they can issue a very likely timebarred FPN. This is what happens when politics does not focus on the important matters.
The trivialisation of British politics continues this morning. We are now apparently focused on a mistatement by Truss rather than the risk of the largest war in Europe since WW2.
Because we are led by idiots who themselves are entirely trivial
The cosplay cabinet are not remotely equipped to deal with the crises facing us
Removing them is the MOST important political objective we should have
Removing Boris is not going to change the conservative party's attitude to the EU as much as you want
It is possible a more conciliatory relationship will follow but for all your non stop anti Boris and HMG tweets, Brexit has happened and apart from the SNP no other party is going to suggest we rejoin
"According to Russian media reports, not denied by the UK side, Truss’s chilly encounter with her vastly more experienced Russian opposite number, Sergey Lavrov, included an exchange that went roughly like this.
Truss: ‘Russia must move its troops away from the Ukrainian border, or else…’ Lavrov: ‘Why should we? It’s up to Russia where it deploys its troops inside Russia’ (which, of course, it is). He then asked, for good measure: ‘Do you recognise Russia’s sovereignty over the Rostov and Voronezh regions?’ At which point Truss mounted her high horse and responded with all the authority of the UK’s chief diplomat: ‘The UK will never recognise Russia’s sovereignty over these regions.’
This is where the UK’s ambassador to Moscow, Deborah Bronnert, is said to have leant across to Truss and discreetly informed her that these regions were actually in Russia. Her assumption had apparently been that they were the two so-called breakaway regions on the Ukrainian side of the border."
Lavrov asked a silly trick question and Truss made a mistake. Zero consequence except among the useful idiots in the UK who use it to undermine Truss. Which is why Lavrov did it.
A strong post, StillWaters, a damn fine try at spinning it. Unfortunately you would ask us to believe absolutely everybody would have blundered into that trap - but that isn’t true, is it?
No, she made a mistake. But whatever - people misspeak all the time.
She did not misspeak. The Foreign Secretary might reasonably be expected to have read her brief and maybe glanced at a map on the flight over for crisis talks.
Of course. And then in a discussion the names of 2 oblasts are thrown out. Perhaps she misheard, perhaps she thought they were a different name.
Consider her options:
1. Say they recognise sovereignty - real downside if it’s a quirky babe for Donblas 2. Bristle and push back - establishes the principle; downside risk is she looks a little silly 3. Ignore/redefine the question “we’re not here to talk about that. We’re here to talk about X”
I personally would have gone with option 3. But I’m not going to condemn her for going with option 2 and getting called out.
She looks a little silly and gets mocked on Twitter. So f***ng what? Lavrov is an arse and got a cheap shot in. Real world consequence zero.
Sometimes people just need to ignore the trolls.
If she had been asked about Downing St parties she would have given a more diplomatic answer.
Diplomacy is her job. The moment required the upmost care. This is they very essence of her responsibility. Instead of using language with the precision of a surgeon’s knife she bluffed it. Not good.
Sure. She made a misstep on negotiations. Cost: zero
Now we have a choice:
1. Do we mock, undermine and weaken the Foreign Secretary at a time of serious international tension as the Russian hope we will do? 2. Do we not do what the Russians want us to do?
1. Oh fuck right off. She is a narcissistic vacuous self-promoting cretin.
Kinder politics.
The alternative apparently is that we all tearily clutch our hankies as Maggie Truss waves our brave boys off to war from Southampton Dock.
That would be just typical of Truss, with the navy in Portsmouth, Plymouth and Faslaine. She’d probably be waving off a load of oldies on some cruise.
Faslane, it is that place up north where London stores all the bad stuff they don't want near home, are you Truss in disguise
Truss should have used diplomatic language. It’s her job. It’s not as if she didn’t know it was a tricky situation. Instead she made an assumption, bluffed, failed and looked silly.
What’s weird is if this was Radio 4 she would have been fine giving nuanced answers.
The positive take away is that she now knows that - to quote @Dura_Ace - Lavrov is a “sneaky old twat”.
That’s a good lesson to learn for a very low cost.
Bollocks, the fact she did not know that before shows what a useless lightweight she is and how unsuited she is to run anything other than a bath.
She didn’t need to know it, she just needed to handle the question in a far better manner than she did.
@Dura_Ace simultaneously mocks our inability to send any significant military forces to “defend” Ukraine (and of course we won’t do that, for the same reason France, Germany and America won’t) and then also mocks our highly prudent withdrawal of what small forces we do have there, so - as you say - they don’t become captives of the Red Army
Basically there is a whole class of people on this site, and elsewhere in British political life, who are determined to say that EVERYTHING BRITAIN IS DOES IS WRONG AND STUPID even when they openly contradict themselves. And much of this is Brexit related. And it is fucking boring, as @DavidL notes
You're not getting away with that old nonsense.
I'm not what you call a typical "Brexiteer" though I did vote for us to leave the European Union.
This notion that somehow all those who voted to Remain are unpatriotic is just a baseless slur and lazy thinking as is the notion everything this country does is beyond criticism and we are always right.
It also doesn't help to keep re-enforcing the divisions of June 2016 - most of us have moved on, you seem incapable of that.
Perhaps because of your known admiration for all things "left", you can't brook any criticism of this Government - I suspect if we had a Labour-led Government you'd be piling in with both feet.
"According to Russian media reports, not denied by the UK side, Truss’s chilly encounter with her vastly more experienced Russian opposite number, Sergey Lavrov, included an exchange that went roughly like this.
Truss: ‘Russia must move its troops away from the Ukrainian border, or else…’ Lavrov: ‘Why should we? It’s up to Russia where it deploys its troops inside Russia’ (which, of course, it is). He then asked, for good measure: ‘Do you recognise Russia’s sovereignty over the Rostov and Voronezh regions?’ At which point Truss mounted her high horse and responded with all the authority of the UK’s chief diplomat: ‘The UK will never recognise Russia’s sovereignty over these regions.’
This is where the UK’s ambassador to Moscow, Deborah Bronnert, is said to have leant across to Truss and discreetly informed her that these regions were actually in Russia. Her assumption had apparently been that they were the two so-called breakaway regions on the Ukrainian side of the border."
Lavrov asked a silly trick question and Truss made a mistake. Zero consequence except among the useful idiots in the UK who use it to undermine Truss. Which is why Lavrov did it.
A strong post, StillWaters, a damn fine try at spinning it. Unfortunately you would ask us to believe absolutely everybody would have blundered into that trap - but that isn’t true, is it?
No, she made a mistake. But whatever - people misspeak all the time.
She did not misspeak. The Foreign Secretary might reasonably be expected to have read her brief and maybe glanced at a map on the flight over for crisis talks.
Of course. And then in a discussion the names of 2 oblasts are thrown out. Perhaps she misheard, perhaps she thought they were a different name.
Consider her options:
1. Say they recognise sovereignty - real downside if it’s a quirky babe for Donblas 2. Bristle and push back - establishes the principle; downside risk is she looks a little silly 3. Ignore/redefine the question “we’re not here to talk about that. We’re here to talk about X”
I personally would have gone with option 3. But I’m not going to condemn her for going with option 2 and getting called out.
She looks a little silly and gets mocked on Twitter. So f***ng what? Lavrov is an arse and got a cheap shot in. Real world consequence zero.
Sometimes people just need to ignore the trolls.
If she had been asked about Downing St parties she would have given a more diplomatic answer.
Diplomacy is her job. The moment required the upmost care. This is they very essence of her responsibility. Instead of using language with the precision of a surgeon’s knife she bluffed it. Not good.
Sure. She made a misstep on negotiations. Cost: zero
Now we have a choice:
1. Do we mock, undermine and weaken the Foreign Secretary at a time of serious international tension as the Russian hope we will do? 2. Do we not do what the Russians want us to do?
1. Oh fuck right off. She is a narcissistic vacuous self-promoting cretin. 2. The Russians don't really care what we think - Britain has reduced itself to a bit player having left the big stage. Compare and contrast how Russia is dealing with France / EU with how it is dealing with the UK.
As far as I can see, Russia’s dealings with France have consisted of entertaining Macron to a bizarre meeting across the longest table in Europe, asking him to get tested, indulging his popinjay pretensions as a leader of peace and the man who brokered a new age of global harmony…. And then invading Ukraine anyway (if the diplomatic rumours are right)
He’s gonna look a total twerp if they DO invade, now. Dare I say it: even more than Ms Truss
Be fair - the dining room table in Bruce Wayne Manor in Batman (1988) was longer.
Diplomacy often ends in failure. Diplomacy rarely ends in open mockery. She flew to Moscow to cosplay Thatcher warn Russia about its threat to Ukraine and its border claims. Without having the First Clue where any of those places were. Unsurprisingly Lavrov just laughed her off as being irrelevant. Its like the big kids are doing something and the little kid wants in. Doesn't understand the rules, or what is happening, but heard the big kids say a word which they are now confidently repeating out of context.
Cue mocking laughter. Aimed at Britain.
No, it’s just your tiresome desire to belittle Britain and celebrate any perceived humiliation. It really is pathological
Is the UK a superpower? No. Is it as important as, say, China? Of course not
Is Britain a pathetically oversized version of Ireland, with a bit less rain? No, not that either
It is a senior mid-ranking power, armed with nukes, a member of the G7, NATO, the UNSC, probably the most important ally of the USA alongside Japan, and the UK also wields much soft power, ESPECIALLY over Russia, with their deep links to London (because this cuts both ways). How many of Russia’s top ten thousand send their kids to British private schools, or British universities? A LOT. And a lot more than France or Germany, to name two other examples of significant European powers
Has the UK lost influence over the EU’s foreign policy since Brexit? Yes. But what is that foreign policy? Search me. it varies depending on whether you are taking to Brussels, Berlin, Paris, Vienna, Budapest, Athens, Zagreb or some fringe group of amputee pensioners in Wroclaw
How am I belittling Britain? I am nobody - an anonymous username on a forum talking to other (mostly) anonymous people.
What belittles Britain is reducing our armed forces so that we can barely defend our own airspace and territorial interests, never mind being able to project power as we once did. What belittles Britain is removing ourselves from the regional block and talking like we've grown in stature rather than been reduced in stature. What belittles Britain is doing something that none of our friends and allies understands and then haughtily insisting that we are right and everyone else is wrong What belittles Britain is making ourselves a laughing stock by having a clown PM who makes a speech to the UN General Assembly about Kermit the Frog What belittles Britain is huffing and puffing about the Ukraine then pulling what few troops we have out just before the invasion What belittles Britain is sending a vacuous "diplomat" to Russia to lecture Russia about borders without being able to understand where Russia is on a map.
You make the valid point about our economic power. We are not a big military power as we once were. We are not the kingmaker in one of the global power blocks as we once were. But we still have a big economy and a lot of Russians own a lot of our politicians it. We should have been threatening to freeze those assets, not impotently making military threats we can't back up. But no, Truss wants to be Thatcher. And me calling out our self-evident global embarrassment is either siding with Russia or belittling Britain apparently.
Well, you have spent the entirety of your time on this site, since the Brexit vote, promising us the terrors of the earth.
Can Britain on its own, prevent Russia from invading the Ukraine? Of course not. Even at the height of the British Empire, we could not have done so.
Can Britain, as a member of NATO, and a significant trading partner of Russia, cause harm to Russia if it does so? Can we provide military aid to those NATO members who fear Russian expansion? The answer to both questions is Yes.
Try the test of opposites. If we were on Russia's side, would that enhance their ability to annex chunks of the Ukraine and get away with it? Certainly it would. Germany wouldn't sitck its neck out, and the US might well conclude that NATO was a dead letter.
Johnson is a tosser, but by and large the government has done the right thing in relation to the Ukraine.
The Sunday Rawnsley: Eager to wound, but unwilling to strike, Sir John and Mrs May reflect the state of the party they once led. It is simultaneously infuriated and paralysed by a scandal that is also a crisis. This leaves the Tory party and with it the government, marooned in no man’s land.
Waiting to see if the polls are verified by a heavy defeat at the May local elections “puts our councillors in the executioner’s tumbril”, as another MP puts it. The prime minister is solely focused on trying to save his own skin. He always governed from one week to the next. Now he governs from one day to the next.
One Conservative MP reports: “The phrase you hear a lot of in the tearoom is ‘we can’t go on like this’.” So I asked him whether he had submitted a letter calling for a confidence vote. He confessed that he hadn’t, before arguing that it was too early to move. He was choosing to go on like this… there is the substantial group who want Mr Johnson gone, but are hesitant about acting. “One of the worst outcomes is that we get a confidence vote and he narrowly survives it,” says one senior Tory. “If he wins by just one vote, he will stay. Anyone else would walk, but he will stay.”
The Conservative party will pay a penalty for its prevarication – indeed, it already is paying. The longer this goes on, the more this looks like a lawless government that thinks rules are for everyone else and the deeper the reputational damage sustained by the Tories. “A month ago, this was hurting only Boris,” says one former cabinet minister. “Now, it is hurting the whole government. The more they put up ministers to make a defence of him, the more it damages all of us.”
So I asked this senior Tory whether he had put in a confidence letter and discovered he was another who hadn’t done so yet. The government will remain trapped in this nightmare no man’s land, and the country with it, until Tory MPs cease equivocating and a critical mass of them decide to bring things to a head.
What a bunch of spineless wasters most Tory MPs are.
And meanwhile, the Government achieves nothing - save to bleed the young ruthlessly in order to stuff the mouths of the elderly with gold.
Research by the Intergenerational Foundation thinktank, to be published on Monday, claims that younger workers are being unfairly targeted by the government in a “tax by stealth” caused by freezes on income tax brackets and the student loan repayment threshold, as well as April’s national insurance rise.
Low-earning young people will be hit hardest by the changes, claims the report, having a significant impact on their take home pay, disposable income and potential to save for housing and pensions.
Researchers calculate a graduate earning £27,000 a year will see their deductions rise by about 20% over the next four years – from 18% of their pay to 22%. They predict their disposable income will drop by almost 30%.
...
Labelling under-30s the “packhorse generation”, the thinktank claims they are being targeted by the government, which it says is using high inflation to pull more low-income, and especially younger, workers into taxation sooner.
The mouths of the elderly are not being stuffed with gold. The state pension is less than £10,000 a year.
So where is the money going then because its those working a full week and don't have children who are paying for it.
You seem to forget those "rich" pensioners paid for 50 years to get their £9K a year maximum. Where did all their money go. You Tories ensure we get teh worst pension in the developed world, always grasping for more and blaming th epoor for it , most unedyfying.
Best-selling author Adam Kay has been desperately trying to remove from the internet any trace of the vile songs Your Baby and Northern Birds, which he recorded as part of a comedy duo called Amateur Transplants.
I saw Amateur Transplants the day after the 2010 general election and they were fantastic. The interesting thing is, those two songs aren’t the most offensive.
I think it’s sad that comedy is being destroyed by wokeness. Neither Adam Kay or Suman Biswas would approve of the stuff they sing about. But like Jimmy Carr, they’re act plays on our prejudices and has a cynical view of the world.
No.
Adam Kay's book, which I quite liked, nevertheless has some rather schoolboy 'humour' misogynism about it.
But on the broader point, it is absolutely NOT the case that all topics are fair game. Any decent human being doesn't make jokes about the deaths of people: whether Romas or children, for example.
I'm weary of the attack on 'wokeness' being used as a front for plain nasty, vile, human behaviour.
The Nasty Party is back.
(But I expect when Sandpit gets up in Dubai he will still like your post, so that's alright then)
Attacks on wokeness frequently go too far as part of culture war stuff, but you are getting on your moral high horse and attempting to police what other people find amusing. You're essentially declaring people should not be allowed to laugh at black comedy or offense comedy because it's not right as far as you're concerned.
That's up to you. Lots of stuff in that vein is not very amusing, but I'd much rather people feel able to approach the line of tastelessness sometimes than never approach certain topics comedically.
Take a mild example- There's an old joke about the troubles being a stupid name because what did people think 3000 died of, stress? Under your definition its joking about people dying (not as target, but it's still a joke about death so your definition says not ok)
I don't think moral grandstanding is necessary because most comedy is safer and more mainstream as people prefer that.
But I disagree with you - everything absolutely is fair game. I don't believe that makes me a bad person or the person telling it.
As for being a front for nasty behaviour it's like the famous quote about art or photography - hard to define the line, but we can generally tell it when we see it.
When it comes to moralising on other's behaviour i could never rule out something might need condemning. But I'd play it very very cautiously. The same reason I am always wary around civil liberty issues - X might be ok, buy be careful.
The joy of art - painting, music, comedy etc etc - is that it is subjective. What I enjoy may be different to what you enjoy. I can think of a whole load of jokes told by various comedians that I don't find funny or find offensive, but that doesn't make them invalid. Jimmy Carr is under attack for one joke - I don't much care for that joke but I really dislike Jimmy Carr anyway. Does that mean we should cancel Jimmy Carr? No!
You talk about it being hard to define the line - this is the critical point. The quick response by a comedian receiving groans or flinches from a joke - "too soon?" is absolutely it. What is funny now, or appropriate, or even acceptable in the wider sense will not be the same as what is funny / appropriate / acceptable at another time. We can only take things in the time they were done - you can't retroactively impose today's morality on yesterday because it will be different.
Jeremy Clarkson (yes yes) has a good column in today’s Sunday Times which makes an excellent case for Jimmy Carr being genuinely and personally funny, in the darkest way. He describes how the Top Gear team wanted Carr to go to Whitby to film something boring, so they had to tempt Carr with a helicopter ride, which he then accepted, as long as Carr could bring along Adrian (AA) Gill: a mutual friend who was at that point close to death from cancer. Carr wanted to cheer him up
Clarkson goes on:
“Later, on the sea wall, we started to talk about television, and Adrian said he’d just started watching Vikings on Amazon Prime. “Vikings?” asked Jimmy. “Bit ambitious. It’s a ten-parter, isn’t it?” That’s probably the meanest thing you could say to someone with cancer, and yet Adrian didn’t just laugh. He guffawed so hard, some fish came out of his nose.”
That’s a fantastic off the cuff joke, and very very dark. I hope if I am close to the end I have a friend who can somehow make me laugh about it. I don’t want people all maudlin and weepy all the time
When my Grandad reached his 90s he became quite determined about giving away the many books he had accumulated during his life, and was quite insistent that nobody should give him a book as a present again, because he'd probably die before he was able to read it. I think he'd have loved that joke.
I remember when i was once an innocent man in prison - long story - I got lots of visits from kindly friends, most of whom were very sympathetic and sad for me and kind and all that. And I was and I am very grateful
But the visits that really cheered me up were from the one witty heedless friend who would come in half-drunk and make terrible but very black jokes about me never getting out and being sodomised-to-death, and then he would wander out the prison and I’d go back to my cell, feeling much better than I did after every other visit
Comments
What must be annoying the hell out of the Russians is that the West seems serious about sanctions. They must have thought the Germans at least would still buy their gas, but it looks as thought there would be at least a temporary hiatus there.
The fact that she was tripped up so easily demonstrates that she is a lightweight unsuited to the geopolitical front line. She should stick to what she's good at, looking pensive in front of various global landmarks while her taxpayer-funded photographer tells her to say Cheese.
I also don’t recall mentioning your needless personal attack on her as siding with the Russians either. So it’s odd you choose to raise that.
Your rabid invective where political opponents are concerned is becoming increasingly more and more tedious. What do you get from it ? Does it make you feel better with your life coming on here and calling Laura Pidcock ‘Laura Pillock’. Seriously, grow up.
Do we have a military threat? Well we don't have a viable army left, we have a quarter of a navy and we chopped up some of the planes we needed to even defend our own airspace properly. Carriers with no escorts and no planes are just funny. But we have Trident - a weapon so pointless that we wouldn't even fire it if nuclear war broke out.
Do we have a diplomatic threat? OK we're still a player in NATO albeit one reliant on other armed forces to do anything (hi France, can we borrow your navy as we scrapped ours?). But diplomatically? Power projects. Putin see the big powers - China, the EU, the US. He sees military groupings - NATO.
For some reason he doesn't seem bothered by impotent Britain who thinks that once having an empire means it is still relevant even having quit the big power block and destroyed its own armed force capabilities. We can't even stop him murdering people here on the streets. Then the final insult. We send Truss to tell them off. Truss - woman of a thousand instagram posts as she Thatcher cosplays her way around the world. Truss - that expert negotiator who can copy paste previous trade deals like a boss. Truss - who enters a meeting to discuss threatening troop deployments without knowing where the troops are what the countries are where any of it is.
So no. I won't stop laughing at the cosplaying joke of a Foreign Secretary. Because the rest of the world is laughing. At us. We are literally a joke. If you want to back *that*, go right ahead. Joke by association.
Aren’t the Austrians refusing to approve sanctions that include gas.
Diplomacy often ends in failure. Diplomacy rarely ends in open mockery. She flew to Moscow to
cosplay Thatcherwarn Russia about its threat to Ukraine and its border claims. Without having the First Clue where any of those places were. Unsurprisingly Lavrov just laughed her off as being irrelevant. Its like the big kids are doing something and the little kid wants in. Doesn't understand the rules, or what is happening, but heard the big kids say a word which they are now confidently repeating out of context.Cue mocking laughter. Aimed at Britain.
Speak bollocks and carry a limp dick.
As a minor matter of curiosity, what would be? Punching Lavrov in the face while shouting 'that's for Salisbury?'
Most older voters are owner-occupiers, and have seen the value of their property appreciate by 10% in the last twelve months alone - mountains of capital that can be readily accessed through downsizing and equity release. A great many will also be benefiting from occupational pension schemes that were vastly more generous in the past than they are today: defined benefit pensions, especially in the private sector, are almost a thing of the past; money purchase schemes are rubbish by comparison. Meanwhile, for the expectant heirs, inheritance tax is IIRC lower than it has ever been.
The dramatic generational gap we've seen opening up in voting patterns hasn't happened by chance. The Tory core vote, besides a modest number of genuinely rich people, consists of comfortably off people born before about 1980: middle class pensioners and their heirs. In crude terms, the current structure of the economy serves to syphon off the earnings of younger workers to keep the state running, whilst asset holdings that are mainly concentrated in the hands of people over about 45 or 50 are treated with kid gloves and left to continuously inflate, courtesy of rock bottom interest rates and quantitative easing.
The higher house prices inflate, the richer the old become and the harder it gets for the young to afford to live. So much for all the trite, laughable nonsense about the dignity of work. So much for Mrs Thatcher's property owning democracy as well. It's also small wonder that the young have increasingly given up bothering to reproduce. Ours is a very sick society.
When will German leaders understand that they have a responsibility to the EU which is the anchor of their modern security and prosperity?
https://twitter.com/JohnOBrennan2/status/1492792541875425281
CCHQStillwater who I was responding to.Incidentally when you say my "rabid invective towards political opponents" can you add more clarity? Its just that I say lots of warm things about political opponents. I have been a Sunak fan for a couple of years and still think he would be the Tories best hope. I praised John Major. I repeatedly point out that poor maligned Theresa May added 20% vote share to David Cameron's 2015 pile so wasn't a failure. I keep talking up Starmer's efforts.
I say what I see. OK sometimes with rhetorical flourishes. But if you're suggesting that I am rampantly partisan like HY then think again. There are good and bad in every party.
As for using descriptors like Laura Pillock, Jezbollah, Liar, cosplaying Thatcher, Ricky Dicky Ding Dong Burgon, nippie etc - yeah, it does make me feel better. Better to laugh at things than cry. So mock them. Satirise them. Laugh at them. What I find funny isn't what you find funny - such is life.
so it could cling to my wet body in the rain
👉🏻NO weapons for Ukraine‘s self-defence against Russian military invasion
BUT
👉🏻 366 million € (!) 🇩🇪exports of dual-use goods to Russia in 2020 alone which can be destined to boost weapons production (Nr. 4 on export list). Irrespective of EU santions‼️
https://twitter.com/MelnykAndrij/status/1492784455622270979
Of course Russia bigs France up.
Some of your guys just don’t have a fucking clue. You let your hatred for this government blind you to another’s plays.
That is also of course a good reason for Putin to go ASAP. IF he delays, leaving aside the mud in Ukraine, demand for his gas will be going down as the weather warms.
That's up to you. Lots of stuff in that vein is not very amusing, but I'd much rather people feel able to approach the line of tastelessness sometimes than never approach certain topics comedically.
Take a mild example- There's an old joke about the troubles being a stupid name because what did people think 3000 died of, stress? Under your definition its joking about people dying (not as target, but it's still a joke about death so your definition says not ok)
I don't think moral grandstanding is necessary because most comedy is safer and more mainstream as people prefer that.
But I disagree with you - everything absolutely is fair game. I don't believe that makes me a bad person or the person telling it.
As for being a front for nasty behaviour it's like the famous quote about art or photography - hard to define the line, but we can generally tell it when we see it.
When it comes to moralising on other's behaviour i could never rule out something might need condemning. But I'd play it very very cautiously. The same reason I am always wary around civil liberty issues - X might be ok, buy be careful.
But. You do have to know the basics. Like where you are. Like what you are talking about. Like not talking over the translator so that the counterparty can follow what you are saying. You do have to know how to read a room. How to use your team so that they can advise you. How to use pauses to Stop and Think - easier when translators have to repeat every line.
Truss can do none of those things. There isn't a requirement for her to resign. But she went out there supposedly on a serious mission and made a catastrofuck out of it. Russia thinks we're irrelevant and she just reinforced their judgement. Which makes the job of her successors harder.
Is the UK a superpower? No. Is it as important as, say, China? Of course not
Is Britain a pathetically oversized version of Ireland, with a bit less rain? No, not that either
It is a senior mid-ranking power, armed with nukes, a member of the G7, NATO, the UNSC, probably the most important ally of the USA alongside Japan, and the UK also wields much soft power, ESPECIALLY over Russia, with their deep links to London (because this cuts both ways). How many of Russia’s top ten thousand send their kids to British private schools, or British universities? A LOT. And a lot more than France or Germany, to name two other examples of significant European powers
Has the UK lost influence over the EU’s foreign policy since Brexit? Yes. But what is that foreign policy? Search me. it varies depending on whether you are taking to Brussels, Berlin, Paris, Vienna, Budapest, Athens, Zagreb or some fringe group of amputee pensioners in Wroclaw
Where the money really counts is (a) in healthcare provision, where the vast burden of looking after legions of old crocs (often with multiple serious conditions) falls upon the state, and, critically, (b) in bleeding earned incomes white, so that asset wealth - which is disproportionately concentrated in the hands of older people - can be left comparatively untouched.
Above all, the property wealth of the Tory core vote has to be protected at all costs. Hence the fact that, as the years drag on and the population continues to age, tax on working age people's earnings will continue to become more onerous.
That new health and social care levy won't be staying at 1.25% for very long.
They won't get the presents they want. Will they cry? Will they need counselling?
But truthfully, in being a third rate partygoer with one big policy who can't keep his hands off younger women, Johnson more closely resembles Asquith.
The reality is a couple of hundred British trainers in Ukraine are a tactical weakness for the West. They won’t make a difference but I am sure that Putin would love to capture them.
At least she knows how to find No.10 without a map so her geographical ability is not totally zero
You talk about it being hard to define the line - this is the critical point. The quick response by a comedian receiving groans or flinches from a joke - "too soon?" is absolutely it. What is funny now, or appropriate, or even acceptable in the wider sense will not be the same as what is funny / appropriate / acceptable at another time. We can only take things in the time they were done - you can't retroactively impose today's morality on yesterday because it will be different.
Would it have been better if she hadn’t made it? Of course. Does it matter? Not even a smidgen
On the domestic front we are obsessed about people working in close proximity to each other having a drink afterwards instead of addressing a serious cost of living squeeze, inflation that incompetence at the BoE Monetary Policy Committee has allowed to get out of hand, a record waiting list for the NHS, a police service that is plainly not fit for purpose and serious economic threats of further disruption from either a war in Ukraine or an invasion of Taiwan.
It is hard not to notice that these mad obsessions tend to be driven by those who have never forgiven Johnson for Brexit. Its irrational and, frankly, boring. This site is still highly educational with informed commentators on many issues but the effort/reward ratios are not what they were.
'The husband of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, the British-Iranian charity worker detained in Iran, has said she is “very, very angry” after learning about the collapse of a deal to bring her home.'
Apparently we were going to pay the money we owed and then it all went pear shaped. No-one appears to know why for sure.
The cosplay cabinet are not remotely equipped to deal with the crises facing us
Removing them is the MOST important political objective we should have
I think such a scenario is quite likely.
It is perfectly possible for one to show concern about multiple different problems at the same time.
And I am now taxiing for take off.
It is irrational to continue to support a liar, a cheat, an alleged corrupt criminal as PM
And then repeatedly lying about it.
That goes right to the heart of the credibility of government. Not just this government - government as a whole.
If they had said it was OK for co-workers to have parties, because it didn't really matter given how much time they were spending together, then there wouldn't be a problem. If they had fessed up when caught, there would be less of a problem.
But the two together are utterly toxic.
Clarkson goes on:
“Later, on the sea wall, we started to talk about television, and Adrian said he’d just started watching Vikings on Amazon Prime. “Vikings?” asked Jimmy. “Bit ambitious. It’s a ten-parter, isn’t it?” That’s probably the meanest thing you could say to someone with cancer, and yet Adrian didn’t just laugh. He guffawed so hard, some fish came out of his nose.”
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/jeremy-clarkson-cancelling-jimmy-carr-sickest-joke-netflix-holocaust-qrqdxplzv
That’s a fantastic off the cuff joke, and very very dark. I hope if I am close to the end I have a friend who can somehow make me laugh about it. I don’t want people all maudlin and weepy all the time
Jovian got peace from Persia. Doesn't mean it was smart to give up Nisibis.
What belittles Britain is reducing our armed forces so that we can barely defend our own airspace and territorial interests, never mind being able to project power as we once did.
What belittles Britain is removing ourselves from the regional block and talking like we've grown in stature rather than been reduced in stature.
What belittles Britain is doing something that none of our friends and allies understands and then haughtily insisting that we are right and everyone else is wrong
What belittles Britain is making ourselves a laughing stock by having a clown PM who makes a speech to the UN General Assembly about Kermit the Frog
What belittles Britain is huffing and puffing about the Ukraine then pulling what few troops we have out just before the invasion
What belittles Britain is sending a vacuous "diplomat" to Russia to lecture Russia about borders without being able to understand where Russia is on a map.
You make the valid point about our economic power. We are not a big military power as we once were. We are not the kingmaker in one of the global power blocks as we once were. But we still have a big economy and a lot of Russians own a lot of
our politiciansit. We should have been threatening to freeze those assets, not impotently making military threats we can't back up. But no, Truss wants to be Thatcher. And me calling out our self-evident global embarrassment is either siding with Russia or belittling Britain apparently.Forget your historical British statesmen, Johnson reminds me more of Hynkel...from The Great Dictator.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/reports-of-boris-johnsons-demise-are-greatly-exaggerated-nxpj2v653
1. Although we are many things, the site exists as a forum to discuss betting on politics, and a slip-up from one of the front-runners in the, potentially imminent, contest to replace Boris Johnson is a relevant discussion topic.
2. The issue with the Downing Street parties drives at the very heart of our democracy - that everyone is subject to the rule of law, and that the government can be relied upon not to lie to Parliament. If Boris Johnson is allowed to degrade those two principles (beyond that achieved by previous PMs) then the capability of our democracy to respond to the challenges we face is seriously weakened.
That is the problem, however much you deny it
@Dura_Ace simultaneously mocks our inability to send any significant military forces to “defend” Ukraine (and of course we won’t do that, for the same reason France, Germany and America won’t) and then also mocks our highly prudent withdrawal of what small forces we do have there, so - as you say - they don’t become captives of the Red Army
Basically there is a whole class of people on this site, and elsewhere in British political life, who are determined to say that EVERYTHING BRITAIN IS DOES IS WRONG AND STUPID even when they openly contradict themselves. And much of this is Brexit related. And it is fucking boring, as @DavidL notes
https://www.ft.com/content/6062ecf0-70d8-4433-bc3b-b2a66dfd162c
2. The issue for me is not that some idiots indulged themselves but that our PM lied about it the Commons. That is what undermines our democracy and yet another picture which may or may not have a photoshopped bottle of champagne in it is not relevant to the principle. He lied. Blatantly and shamelessly. But now we apparently have to wait to see if some incompetent copper thinks that they can issue a very likely timebarred FPN. This is what happens when politics does not focus on the important matters.
It is possible a more conciliatory relationship will follow but for all your non stop anti Boris and HMG tweets, Brexit has happened and apart from the SNP no other party is going to suggest we rejoin
I'm not what you call a typical "Brexiteer" though I did vote for us to leave the European Union.
This notion that somehow all those who voted to Remain are unpatriotic is just a baseless slur and lazy thinking as is the notion everything this country does is beyond criticism and we are always right.
It also doesn't help to keep re-enforcing the divisions of June 2016 - most of us have moved on, you seem incapable of that.
Perhaps because of your known admiration for all things "left", you can't brook any criticism of this Government - I suspect if we had a Labour-led Government you'd be piling in with both feet.
Can Britain on its own, prevent Russia from invading the Ukraine? Of course not. Even at the height of the British Empire, we could not have done so.
Can Britain, as a member of NATO, and a significant trading partner of Russia, cause harm to Russia if it does so? Can we provide military aid to those NATO members who fear Russian expansion? The answer to both questions is Yes.
Try the test of opposites. If we were on Russia's side, would that enhance their ability to annex chunks of the Ukraine and get away with it? Certainly it would. Germany wouldn't sitck its neck out, and the US might well conclude that NATO was a dead letter.
Johnson is a tosser, but by and large the government has done the right thing in relation to the Ukraine.
But the visits that really cheered me up were from the one witty heedless friend who would come in half-drunk and make terrible but very black jokes about me never getting out and being sodomised-to-death, and then he would wander out the prison and I’d go back to my cell, feeling much better than I did after every other visit
Peculiar but true