A curious tightness has developed in my chest that I can only express as anxiety and fear that the ridiculous, remarkable, brave and heroic efforts of the Ukrainian people may still so easily all be for absolutely nothing.
It will never be for "nothing". Even if Putin gets his act in gear and takes the whole country, he then has to hold it against these same brave and heroic people. He will never be able to relax again.
Indeed, Putin has already lost. He will probably capture Kiev and will probably install his puppet. But the Ukrainians will never now accept that and his army will be bled dry whilst he remains a completely isolated and hated figure. He can no longer even control the criticism in his own country and I am completely convinced that this action spells the end for Putin and makes it far more likely that Ukraine will eventually end up inside NATO and, if they want, the EU.
I also hope and pray that Russians may get another chance to build a functioning, liberal democratic state after Putin and dismantle the autocracy that came before. It might be a bit of a pipe dream but there is a seat for Russia in the community of nations as a candid, honest partner and player with valuable contributions to make.
I've been calling for a clean up of dirty Russian money for years.
The problem here is that the Premier League is awash with dirty money and so is London. We host the Arms Fair every two years which directly contributes to dirty regimes.
And whilst I definitely want to ban Abramovich and his fellow Putin-loving Russian mafia, what about Saudi Arabia? What about Qatar?
I love Qatar Airways but I'm under no illusion about the country behind it.
Corruption runs deep and money talks. That's why the stock markets soared yesterday. They know our sanctions are feeble.
Frankly, if London property prices crash as a result of getting dirty money out of London, that would be a good thing. I am frankly sick of hearing about ludicrously overpriced properties, of whole areas going dark because houses are bought and not lived in, of local businesses failing because there is no local population and knowing how hard it will be for my children to get onto the property ladder because of the effects of London property being treated as a bank by the crooked and corrupt of the world.
AFAICS the people losing out to this pandering of oligarchs are the upper middle classes of London.
People who should be natural Conservative voters.
Yet its Conservative politicians who lead the pandering to the oligarchs.
The love of unearned income has really debauched the Conservative party.
The Russians are struggling and taking heavy casualties. They are beatable. Our best chance to defeat Putin’s threat to Europe is now. We should be giving Ukraine everything it wants. Despite the risks, that should include a no-fly zone. Putin’s victory would be the greater risk.
He will not nuke us because we’ve shot down some of his planes.
Fucking ludicrous. To do a No Fly Zone you've got to be prepared to a) shoot down Russian aircraft and b) do SEAD/DEAD on the Russian side of the border.
NFZ is basically speedrunning the process of going to war with Russia.
So far, the Russian military is resembling a paper tiger.
I must admit, I did enjoy reading in the Telegraph this morning how British anti-tank weapons are taking out Russian armour near Kharkiv.
Ukrainian soldiers were shouting 'God Save The Queen', after successful strikes.
Is that with the Saab kit? And I thought they just made cars...
Fck me, I immediately thought this was a piece from years ago, but last week. The Spikedtator..
It’s a perfectly legitimate view. One held by Emmanuel Macron, I believe
The Putin of 10 years ago was a very different beast. Lucid, clever, sane. A ruthless patriot, a brutal soldier, but amenable to logic. Perhaps we could have handled him better; certainly our rapid expansion of NATO right up to his borders, immediately after the humiliating collapse of the USSR now appears questionable
Does any of this excuse Putin’s satanic and pointless assault on Ukraine? Of course not. It’s pure evil. It’s also pointless even for mad dog Putin, it might well backfire quickly and even if he “wins” in the short term he loses in the end. What’s the endgame for him? I can’t see a good one
Your analysis doesn't account for the long gap -- some 6-8 years -- between the Baltic states' accession to NATO and Putin going "bad".
It's easy to compress timelines when looking at the past, but Putin was acting fairly sensibly long after 2004. All the attempts to explain this in terms of NATO membership or the Iraq war fall down on the same point, and until someone even tries to account for that huge time lag, I do not take such a view seriously.
You might be right. I’d have to go back and look at the timelines. But we agree there was a time when Putin was “sensible” - and that seems to be Liddle’s point (tho I haven’t read the article, just the headline, and Liddle does say some foolish things to provoke)
Either way Andrew Neil is quite right. One big reason we hate the new mad Putin is that he wants to crush free speech and dissent. Free speech means seeing printed opinions you might fiercely dislike
Free speech also means being allowed to whine about Woke and being cancelled when someone highlights all-to-predictable contrarianism, or in this case just reproduces an image of the headline of an article. Then everyone can point & laugh at those whiners and their endless attempts to pretend being challenged is some kind of censorship.
It’s great.
In my experience, criticism of the Spectator nearly always comes from a peculiar subset of people who genuinely dislike its viewpoint yet secretly would love to be published inside it, as it is so prestigious. A curious phenomenon
It's interesting. A decade or so ago I was a regular reader of the Speccy and found it a pleasant zippy-in-places recreational read. I now see it as bow-tie reactionary faux man-of-the-world drivel you'd have to pay me serious money to allow through the letterbox. So, has it changed or have I changed? Bit of both, I guess, but I think it's mainly me. The last 10 or 12 years, coinciding with not having to earn a living, I've made a concerted effort to really *think* about things rather than forever chasing around in a daze, swilling coffee, running for trains and planes, and it's made a big difference. It's been the decade of my enlightenment - with my Spectator habit one of its minor casualties.
lol. It seems to be coping without your subscription
Andrew Neil @afneil · 1h I appreciate academia is pretty much a one-party state these days and little dissent is tolerated from the left-wing consensus, which you so ably represent. But magazines are still relatively free: I won’t apologise for not forcing my views on my editors or their columnists.
Fck me, I immediately thought this was a piece from years ago, but last week. The Spikedtator..
It’s a perfectly legitimate view. One held by Emmanuel Macron, I believe
The Putin of 10 years ago was a very different beast. Lucid, clever, sane. A ruthless patriot, a brutal soldier, but amenable to logic. Perhaps we could have handled him better; certainly our rapid expansion of NATO right up to his borders, immediately after the humiliating collapse of the USSR now appears questionable
Does any of this excuse Putin’s satanic and pointless assault on Ukraine? Of course not. It’s pure evil. It’s also pointless even for mad dog Putin, it might well backfire quickly and even if he “wins” in the short term he loses in the end. What’s the endgame for him? I can’t see a good one
Your analysis doesn't account for the long gap -- some 6-8 years -- between the Baltic states' accession to NATO and Putin going "bad".
It's easy to compress timelines when looking at the past, but Putin was acting fairly sensibly long after 2004. All the attempts to explain this in terms of NATO membership or the Iraq war fall down on the same point, and until someone even tries to account for that huge time lag, I do not take such a view seriously.
You might be right. I’d have to go back and look at the timelines. But we agree there was a time when Putin was “sensible” - and that seems to be Liddle’s point (tho I haven’t read the article, just the headline, and Liddle does say some foolish things to provoke)
Either way Andrew Neil is quite right. One big reason we hate the new mad Putin is that he wants to crush free speech and dissent. Free speech means seeing printed opinions you might fiercely dislike
Free speech also means being allowed to whine about Woke and being cancelled when someone highlights all-to-predictable contrarianism, or in this case just reproduces an image of the headline of an article. Then everyone can point & laugh at those whiners and their endless attempts to pretend being challenged is some kind of censorship.
It’s great.
That was one of the interesting things about the runup to indyref 1. The BBC and newspaper journalists went absolutely berserk at seeing direct and often highly intelligent criticism of their output published on social media and the net more generally. Remember in the old days that they could simply bin Letters to the Editor. In the 2010s, not so much ... though BBC Scotland journos, and IIRC one Graun journalist, did start switching off comments on their pieces - quite ironic as the level of debate was rather better than the general UK politics part of the BBC news website.
I am not sure that Mr Neil has recovered from the shock.
I guess traditional media being challenged by other platforms & individuals is a big theme of the last 20 years, and traditional hacks' outrage at the lèse-majesté of these upstarts is an eternal joy. I also think there's a cultural gap, in that the more delicate sorts confused the standard ripping the pish (or flyting to be posh) of say Scotpol twitter as abuse or threats.
Oh yes. Friends of ours from down south moved to Scotland about the time. He was absolutely convinced the BBC in Glasgow had suffered mass physical intimidfation besieged by huge demonstrations. I burst out laughing and explained that if BBC Scotland were being intimidated by babies with balloons then perhaps they weren't being exactly balanced ...
Hm. 🤔 There Noticeably havn’t been waves of tit for tat diplomatic ping pong yet, compared say to Salisbury response.
I wonder if this is because in really serious crisis with potential for escalation you still need all that in place, better for your own interest your opponents diplomats and with tit for tat your own, are not disrupted and everyone’s embassy’s thrown into disorder?
A case of Labour being too oppositiony and reactionary and not properly thoughtful and sensible again today?
The baffling failure of Russian air power and ability to defend it's own supply lines make no sense. Mavbe he really did expect Ukraine to just roll over?
I'm inclined to think that "somebody* on the Russian side is a little complacent, or over-confident.
It must require a large number of assumptions about risk to line up 90 helicopters parked nose to tail on a road 20-25 miles inside Belarus.
Fck me, I immediately thought this was a piece from years ago, but last week. The Spikedtator..
The Spectator prints all sorts of rubbish. Indeed more rubbish than sensible content, as a rule.
Its fans including Neil and some PBers are always going on about how successful it is. Interesting to speculate how much the rubbish has contributed to that success.
Just out of interest have you actually read the article or are you only commenting in ignorance based on a front page?
I haven't read it as I don't have a subscription but I might actually buy a copy just to see what Liddle (who I really, REALLY dislike) is saying.
I would suggest that it is only at that point that it is reasonable to make any valid criticisms rather than just blind knee jerk reactions.
Is Liddle making a career out of deliberately being hated? To paraphrase Machiavelli, it is far more profitable to be disliked than loved?
I am sure that the basic premise is right but I just get the impression, having had a fair few personal contacts with him, that Liddle is just an amazingly arrogant and obnoxious character.
The "I'm only being an obnoxioius prick for money" defence isn't really that great a deflection anyways.
Fck me, I immediately thought this was a piece from years ago, but last week. The Spikedtator..
It’s a perfectly legitimate view. One held by Emmanuel Macron, I believe
The Putin of 10 years ago was a very different beast. Lucid, clever, sane. A ruthless patriot, a brutal soldier, but amenable to logic. Perhaps we could have handled him better; certainly our rapid expansion of NATO right up to his borders, immediately after the humiliating collapse of the USSR now appears questionable
Does any of this excuse Putin’s satanic and pointless assault on Ukraine? Of course not. It’s pure evil. It’s also pointless even for mad dog Putin, it might well backfire quickly and even if he “wins” in the short term he loses in the end. What’s the endgame for him? I can’t see a good one
Your analysis doesn't account for the long gap -- some 6-8 years -- between the Baltic states' accession to NATO and Putin going "bad".
It's easy to compress timelines when looking at the past, but Putin was acting fairly sensibly long after 2004. All the attempts to explain this in terms of NATO membership or the Iraq war fall down on the same point, and until someone even tries to account for that huge time lag, I do not take such a view seriously.
You might be right. I’d have to go back and look at the timelines. But we agree there was a time when Putin was “sensible” - and that seems to be Liddle’s point (tho I haven’t read the article, just the headline, and Liddle does say some foolish things to provoke)
Either way Andrew Neil is quite right. One big reason we hate the new mad Putin is that he wants to crush free speech and dissent. Free speech means seeing printed opinions you might fiercely dislike
How does one reconcile the “Putin used to be rational” theory with what he did to Chechnya?
That one was a far away country about which we etc etc
"Ukraine’s Ambassador to Germany, Andrij Melnyk, says he is baffled by the response he has received from German officials after asking for military aid.
He says that ministers he has talked to say “you Ukrainians have only a few hours left. There is no point in helping you now”. Show this thread"
The Russians are struggling and taking heavy casualties. They are beatable. Our best chance to defeat Putin’s threat to Europe is now. We should be giving Ukraine everything it wants. Despite the risks, that should include a no-fly zone. Putin’s victory would be the greater risk.
He will not nuke us because we’ve shot down some of his planes.
Fucking ludicrous. To do a No Fly Zone you've got to be prepared to a) shoot down Russian aircraft and b) do SEAD/DEAD on the Russian side of the border.
NFZ is basically speedrunning the process of going to war with Russia.
I'd be worried if a mindset that denigrates any solution not flirting with WW3 as "appeasement" starts to take hold in influential places.
Fck me, I immediately thought this was a piece from years ago, but last week. The Spikedtator..
It’s a perfectly legitimate view. One held by Emmanuel Macron, I believe
The Putin of 10 years ago was a very different beast. Lucid, clever, sane. A ruthless patriot, a brutal soldier, but amenable to logic. Perhaps we could have handled him better; certainly our rapid expansion of NATO right up to his borders, immediately after the humiliating collapse of the USSR now appears questionable
Does any of this excuse Putin’s satanic and pointless assault on Ukraine? Of course not. It’s pure evil. It’s also pointless even for mad dog Putin, it might well backfire quickly and even if he “wins” in the short term he loses in the end. What’s the endgame for him? I can’t see a good one
Your analysis doesn't account for the long gap -- some 6-8 years -- between the Baltic states' accession to NATO and Putin going "bad".
It's easy to compress timelines when looking at the past, but Putin was acting fairly sensibly long after 2004. All the attempts to explain this in terms of NATO membership or the Iraq war fall down on the same point, and until someone even tries to account for that huge time lag, I do not take such a view seriously.
You might be right. I’d have to go back and look at the timelines. But we agree there was a time when Putin was “sensible” - and that seems to be Liddle’s point (tho I haven’t read the article, just the headline, and Liddle does say some foolish things to provoke)
Either way Andrew Neil is quite right. One big reason we hate the new mad Putin is that he wants to crush free speech and dissent. Free speech means seeing printed opinions you might fiercely dislike
Free speech also means being allowed to whine about Woke and being cancelled when someone highlights all-to-predictable contrarianism, or in this case just reproduces an image of the headline of an article. Then everyone can point & laugh at those whiners and their endless attempts to pretend being challenged is some kind of censorship.
It’s great.
In my experience, criticism of the Spectator nearly always comes from a peculiar subset of people who genuinely dislike its viewpoint yet secretly would love to be published inside it, as it is so prestigious. A curious phenomenon
It's interesting. A decade or so ago I was a regular reader of the Speccy and found it a pleasant zippy-in-places recreational read. I now see it as bow-tie reactionary faux man-of-the-world drivel you'd have to pay me serious money to allow through the letterbox. So, has it changed or have I changed? Bit of both, I guess, but I think it's mainly me. The last 10 or 12 years, coinciding with not having to earn a living, I've made a concerted effort to really *think* about things rather than forever chasing around in a daze, swilling coffee, running for trains and planes, and it's made a big difference. It's been the decade of my enlightenment - with my Spectator habit one of its minor casualties.
lol. It seems to be coping without your subscription
Maybe They must be paying for cheaper, step down in quality, hacks.
The baffling failure of Russian air power and ability to defend it's own supply lines make no sense. Mavbe he really did expect Ukraine to just roll over?
I'm inclined to think that "somebody* on the Russian side is a little complacent, or over-confident.
It must require a large number of assumptions about risk to line up 90 helicopters parked nose to tail on a road 20-25 miles inside Belarus.
RAF Basingbourn (still an MOD site) is just down the road from me. It was home to B17 aircraft of the USAAF.
Nearby there is a stately home, Wimpole Hall, which coincidentally had a wide two-mile long avenue stretching between it and the base. So the air force used it as distributed parking for their aircraft - and there are photos of these massive bombers arrayed along it.
Whenever I walk the avenue, I think of what it must have been like with all those bombers there.
I have tall, floor-to-ceiling sash windows in my London flat. Facing directly south
Every year, in late winter/early spring, there is a day when the sun shines so bright it warms my entire flat - like the heating is on, yet it isn't - and I actually have to open the windows to cool things off.
This is that day, in 2022. It is normally a wonderful day. The departure of winter. Like seeing the first daffodils in a meadow
*sigh*
Friend, the daffodils are Ukraine yellow, the sky Ukraine blue. Take it as a sign that the natural order is with them - and rejoice.
It's where O'Brien (as in 1984, not LBC) was wrong. The boot never gets to stamp on the human face forever. Winter may go on too long, it may return, not everyone will survive it, and all that is horrible to contemplate.
Fck me, I immediately thought this was a piece from years ago, but last week. The Spikedtator..
It’s a perfectly legitimate view. One held by Emmanuel Macron, I believe
The Putin of 10 years ago was a very different beast. Lucid, clever, sane. A ruthless patriot, a brutal soldier, but amenable to logic. Perhaps we could have handled him better; certainly our rapid expansion of NATO right up to his borders, immediately after the humiliating collapse of the USSR now appears questionable
Does any of this excuse Putin’s satanic and pointless assault on Ukraine? Of course not. It’s pure evil. It’s also pointless even for mad dog Putin, it might well backfire quickly and even if he “wins” in the short term he loses in the end. What’s the endgame for him? I can’t see a good one
Your analysis doesn't account for the long gap -- some 6-8 years -- between the Baltic states' accession to NATO and Putin going "bad".
It's easy to compress timelines when looking at the past, but Putin was acting fairly sensibly long after 2004. All the attempts to explain this in terms of NATO membership or the Iraq war fall down on the same point, and until someone even tries to account for that huge time lag, I do not take such a view seriously.
You might be right. I’d have to go back and look at the timelines. But we agree there was a time when Putin was “sensible” - and that seems to be Liddle’s point (tho I haven’t read the article, just the headline, and Liddle does say some foolish things to provoke)
Either way Andrew Neil is quite right. One big reason we hate the new mad Putin is that he wants to crush free speech and dissent. Free speech means seeing printed opinions you might fiercely dislike
Free speech also means being allowed to whine about Woke and being cancelled when someone highlights all-to-predictable contrarianism, or in this case just reproduces an image of the headline of an article. Then everyone can point & laugh at those whiners and their endless attempts to pretend being challenged is some kind of censorship.
It’s great.
In my experience, criticism of the Spectator nearly always comes from a peculiar subset of people who genuinely dislike its viewpoint yet secretly would love to be published inside it, as it is so prestigious. A curious phenomenon
It's interesting. A decade or so ago I was a regular reader of the Speccy and found it a pleasant zippy-in-places recreational read. I now see it as bow-tie reactionary faux man-of-the-world drivel you'd have to pay me serious money to allow through the letterbox. So, has it changed or have I changed? Bit of both, I guess, but I think it's mainly me. The last 10 or 12 years, coinciding with not having to earn a living, I've made a concerted effort to really *think* about things rather than forever chasing around in a daze, swilling coffee, running for trains and planes, and it's made a big difference. It's been the decade of my enlightenment - with my Spectator habit one of its minor casualties.
I think you missed out a third and most important possibility. It is not that you or the Speccy have changed so much as that the world has changed. It has become exponentially more polarized and treading a line through the middle of that as a commentator or reacting to commentary without slipping off the knife edge in the middle onto one slippery slope or another has become hugely more difficult.
This is a fascinating subplot to the war. Eastern Europe turning on Germany. It's not just Ukraine
“It’s in Poland’s interest that Ukraine wins this war, but it’s not in Germany’s interest,” says one of Poland’s main geopolitical experts @BartosiakJacek
The Russians are struggling and taking heavy casualties. They are beatable. Our best chance to defeat Putin’s threat to Europe is now. We should be giving Ukraine everything it wants. Despite the risks, that should include a no-fly zone. Putin’s victory would be the greater risk.
He will not nuke us because we’ve shot down some of his planes.
Fucking ludicrous. To do a No Fly Zone you've got to be prepared to a) shoot down Russian aircraft and b) do SEAD/DEAD on the Russian side of the border.
NFZ is basically speedrunning the process of going to war with Russia.
So far, the Russian military is resembling a paper tiger.
I must admit, I did enjoy reading in the Telegraph this morning how British anti-tank weapons are taking out Russian armour near Kharkiv.
Ukrainian soldiers were shouting 'God Save The Queen', after successful strikes.
Just saw that and made me smile. We have sent them 2000 of 20k apparently. Send the rest!
Bloody hell, that's a lot carnage. If the Stingers are in the hundreds too, that is a very significant contribution to how this war is going to unfold.
makes it far more likely that Ukraine will eventually end up inside NATO and, if they want, the EU.
It's a bold move by VZ to push on EU candidate membership. One of the main cases against Ukraine joining over time has been reluctance to provoke Russia. That has somewhat fallen by default now (the clause on "good neighbourly relations" ditto). https://twitter.com/ZelenskyyUa/status/1497502946480869378
Cant see the EU letting them join, even now (pending meeting other criteria of course). Various nations would still call it an escalation.
The Russians are struggling and taking heavy casualties. They are beatable. Our best chance to defeat Putin’s threat to Europe is now. We should be giving Ukraine everything it wants. Despite the risks, that should include a no-fly zone. Putin’s victory would be the greater risk.
He will not nuke us because we’ve shot down some of his planes.
Fucking ludicrous. To do a No Fly Zone you've got to be prepared to a) shoot down Russian aircraft and b) do SEAD/DEAD on the Russian side of the border.
NFZ is basically speedrunning the process of going to war with Russia.
So far, the Russian military is resembling a paper tiger.
I must admit, I did enjoy reading in the Telegraph this morning how British anti-tank weapons are taking out Russian armour near Kharkiv.
Ukrainian soldiers were shouting 'God Save The Queen', after successful strikes.
Just saw that and made me smile. We have sent them 2000 of 20k apparently. Send the rest!
Apparently they have an expiry date, so might as well
I am disappointed that Mrs May has not taken more financial measures against Russia.
There has been too much dirty Russian (and Chinese and other emerging markets) money flowing into the UK and it is creating a risk for us - political but financial also. Private banking and wealth management for ultra high net worth individuals is beginning to give off the sort of whiff which was seen in other financial sectors before the financial crash. Lots of entities have been rushing to embrace this wealth and, as always happens, some of the checks and balances, some of the “Is this really wise?” questions get ignored or assumed away.
Even if it costs us, I think we need to clamp down very much harder on the ability of Russia and some others to access our financial expertise. This was the perfect opportunity to do so. It should not be lost.
If we don’t I fear that there may be more reputation-harming scandals in the making.
And April 2018
My prediction, FWIW, is that the next financial scandals will be in the wealth management sector: lots of growth, clients from dodgy countries or with interesting backgrounds, tick the box due diligence, possibly misaligned incentives, especially to increase net new money and leverage, client advisors too close to their clients, a poor or complacent culture and a push to sell complex products.
Plus the political background is changing. See Russia, for instance.
It has a whiff to me of what it was like in other financial sectors before they went splat.
You heard it here first.......
February 2022
We are talking about dodgy Russian money financing the Tory party, Londongrad, why U.K. is not taking effective sanctions against Russia etc.
We were warned.
I hope there will be a serious reckoning with those who were involved in this and those who turned a blind eye.
And not just in relation to Russia but China, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria and all the other dodgy states and individuals whose money and reputations the U.K. has been all too willing to launder.
I wonder if, what ultimately will do it for Putin, is the last few years of budget cuts etc, that have enabled him to balance his budget and build up his war chest.
He’ll have to rely on ever greater repression to stifle dissent. That strategy has its limits.
If he gets bogged down in an expensive war, what does he do, then?
Slashing budgets further - along with shaking down the oligarchs is pretty high risk, but that’s probably what he’ll have to do.
"Ukraine’s Ambassador to Germany, Andrij Melnyk, says he is baffled by the response he has received from German officials after asking for military aid.
He says that ministers he has talked to say “you Ukrainians have only a few hours left. There is no point in helping you now”. Show this thread"
"Ukraine’s Ambassador to Germany, Andrij Melnyk, says he is baffled by the response he has received from German officials after asking for military aid.
He says that ministers he has talked to say “you Ukrainians have only a few hours left. There is no point in helping you now”. Show this thread"
The Ukrainian MoD is getting really quite graphic. They've just posted a video clearly showing 5+ Russians who have burnt to death trying to escape from their Rosgvardiya vehicle, then panning up to show many more Rosgvardiya vehicles reduced to husks. Just tragic.
It's weird that we haven't seen evidence of the crashed IL-76s, especially given that the US have confirmed the downings. But there's plenty of evidence that Russians are taking massive casualties from some of their shody practices.
The baffling failure of Russian air power and ability to defend it's own supply lines make no sense. Mavbe he really did expect Ukraine to just roll over?
I'm inclined to think that "somebody* on the Russian side is a little complacent, or over-confident.
It must require a large number of assumptions about risk to line up 90 helicopters parked nose to tail on a road 20-25 miles inside Belarus.
RAF Basingbourn (still an MOD site) is just down the road from me. It was home to B17 aircraft of the USAAF.
Nearby there is a stately home, Wimpole Hall, which coincidentally had a wide two-mile long avenue stretching between it and the base. So the air force used it as distributed parking for their aircraft - and there are photos of these massive bombers arrayed along it.
Whenever I walk the avenue, I think of what it must have been like with all those bombers there.
Fck me, I immediately thought this was a piece from years ago, but last week. The Spikedtator..
It’s a perfectly legitimate view. One held by Emmanuel Macron, I believe
The Putin of 10 years ago was a very different beast. Lucid, clever, sane. A ruthless patriot, a brutal soldier, but amenable to logic. Perhaps we could have handled him better; certainly our rapid expansion of NATO right up to his borders, immediately after the humiliating collapse of the USSR now appears questionable
Does any of this excuse Putin’s satanic and pointless assault on Ukraine? Of course not. It’s pure evil. It’s also pointless even for mad dog Putin, it might well backfire quickly and even if he “wins” in the short term he loses in the end. What’s the endgame for him? I can’t see a good one
Your analysis doesn't account for the long gap -- some 6-8 years -- between the Baltic states' accession to NATO and Putin going "bad".
It's easy to compress timelines when looking at the past, but Putin was acting fairly sensibly long after 2004. All the attempts to explain this in terms of NATO membership or the Iraq war fall down on the same point, and until someone even tries to account for that huge time lag, I do not take such a view seriously.
You might be right. I’d have to go back and look at the timelines. But we agree there was a time when Putin was “sensible” - and that seems to be Liddle’s point (tho I haven’t read the article, just the headline, and Liddle does say some foolish things to provoke)
Either way Andrew Neil is quite right. One big reason we hate the new mad Putin is that he wants to crush free speech and dissent. Free speech means seeing printed opinions you might fiercely dislike
Free speech also means being allowed to whine about Woke and being cancelled when someone highlights all-to-predictable contrarianism, or in this case just reproduces an image of the headline of an article. Then everyone can point & laugh at those whiners and their endless attempts to pretend being challenged is some kind of censorship.
It’s great.
In my experience, criticism of the Spectator nearly always comes from a peculiar subset of people who genuinely dislike its viewpoint yet secretly would love to be published inside it, as it is so prestigious. A curious phenomenon
It's interesting. A decade or so ago I was a regular reader of the Speccy and found it a pleasant zippy-in-places recreational read. I now see it as bow-tie reactionary faux man-of-the-world drivel you'd have to pay me serious money to allow through the letterbox. So, has it changed or have I changed? Bit of both, I guess, but I think it's mainly me. The last 10 or 12 years, coinciding with not having to earn a living, I've made a concerted effort to really *think* about things rather than forever chasing around in a daze, swilling coffee, running for trains and planes, and it's made a big difference. It's been the decade of my enlightenment - with my Spectator habit one of its minor casualties.
lol. It seems to be coping without your subscription
Maybe They must be paying for cheaper, step down in quality, hacks.
I doubt they need to. The Speccy has a subscription of 112,000 and rising.
It is also now the longest running current affairs magazine in history.
The Russians are struggling and taking heavy casualties. They are beatable. Our best chance to defeat Putin’s threat to Europe is now. We should be giving Ukraine everything it wants. Despite the risks, that should include a no-fly zone. Putin’s victory would be the greater risk.
He will not nuke us because we’ve shot down some of his planes.
Fucking ludicrous. To do a No Fly Zone you've got to be prepared to a) shoot down Russian aircraft and b) do SEAD/DEAD on the Russian side of the border.
NFZ is basically speedrunning the process of going to war with Russia.
I'd be worried if a mindset that denigrates any solution not flirting with WW3 as "appeasement" starts to take hold in influential places.
Russia is literally flirting with WW3. By invading Ukraine. There is no getting away from that.
Fck me, I immediately thought this was a piece from years ago, but last week. The Spikedtator..
It’s a perfectly legitimate view. One held by Emmanuel Macron, I believe
The Putin of 10 years ago was a very different beast. Lucid, clever, sane. A ruthless patriot, a brutal soldier, but amenable to logic. Perhaps we could have handled him better; certainly our rapid expansion of NATO right up to his borders, immediately after the humiliating collapse of the USSR now appears questionable
Does any of this excuse Putin’s satanic and pointless assault on Ukraine? Of course not. It’s pure evil. It’s also pointless even for mad dog Putin, it might well backfire quickly and even if he “wins” in the short term he loses in the end. What’s the endgame for him? I can’t see a good one
Your analysis doesn't account for the long gap -- some 6-8 years -- between the Baltic states' accession to NATO and Putin going "bad".
It's easy to compress timelines when looking at the past, but Putin was acting fairly sensibly long after 2004. All the attempts to explain this in terms of NATO membership or the Iraq war fall down on the same point, and until someone even tries to account for that huge time lag, I do not take such a view seriously.
You might be right. I’d have to go back and look at the timelines. But we agree there was a time when Putin was “sensible” - and that seems to be Liddle’s point (tho I haven’t read the article, just the headline, and Liddle does say some foolish things to provoke)
Either way Andrew Neil is quite right. One big reason we hate the new mad Putin is that he wants to crush free speech and dissent. Free speech means seeing printed opinions you might fiercely dislike
Free speech also means being allowed to whine about Woke and being cancelled when someone highlights all-to-predictable contrarianism, or in this case just reproduces an image of the headline of an article. Then everyone can point & laugh at those whiners and their endless attempts to pretend being challenged is some kind of censorship.
It’s great.
That was one of the interesting things about the runup to indyref 1. The BBC and newspaper journalists went absolutely berserk at seeing direct and often highly intelligent criticism of their output published on social media and the net more generally. Remember in the old days that they could simply bin Letters to the Editor. In the 2010s, not so much ... though BBC Scotland journos, and IIRC one Graun journalist, did start switching off comments on their pieces - quite ironic as the level of debate was rather better than the general UK politics part of the BBC news website.
I am not sure that Mr Neil has recovered from the shock.
I guess traditional media being challenged by other platforms & individuals is a big theme of the last 20 years, and traditional hacks' outrage at the lèse-majesté of these upstarts is an eternal joy. I also think there's a cultural gap, in that the more delicate sorts confused the standard ripping the pish (or flyting to be posh) of say Scotpol twitter as abuse or threats.
Oh yes. Friends of ours from down south moved to Scotland about the time. He was absolutely convinced the BBC in Glasgow had suffered mass physical intimidfation besieged by huge demonstrations. I burst out laughing and explained that if BBC Scotland were being intimidated by babies with balloons then perhaps they weren't being exactly balanced ...
A lot of British people have been stuck in Ukraine as they cannot get visas for their wives/partners so they now have no choice but to stay. In doing so they are putting themselves in extreme danger.
What is actually noticeable about the Home Office is that, confronted with this reality, they have not changed the requirement for a visa or the process to enter the UK. The extent of their "flexibility" is to increase the number of staff processing visa applications. The superficially helpful looking tweet simply says that Ukranians can apply for a visa under existing visa rules, which is a bureaucratic process requiring form filling and evidence, not ideal if you are trying to flee a warzone.
Meanwhile up to a thousand people a day arrive on dinghies across the channel and are set free upon landing. The priorities are completely wrong. I would suggest that the Home office should be granting temporary visas on arrival to Ukranian passport holders, under the current circumstances.
The Russians are struggling and taking heavy casualties. They are beatable. Our best chance to defeat Putin’s threat to Europe is now. We should be giving Ukraine everything it wants. Despite the risks, that should include a no-fly zone. Putin’s victory would be the greater risk.
He will not nuke us because we’ve shot down some of his planes.
Fucking ludicrous. To do a No Fly Zone you've got to be prepared to a) shoot down Russian aircraft and b) do SEAD/DEAD on the Russian side of the border.
NFZ is basically speedrunning the process of going to war with Russia.
I'd be worried if a mindset that denigrates any solution not flirting with WW3 as "appeasement" starts to take hold in influential places.
Russia is literally flirting with WW3. By invading Ukraine. There is no getting away from that.
I sort-of think we should change the word 'Russia' for 'Putin'.
I'm far from convinced the Russian people are into this.
I wonder if, what ultimately will do it for Putin, is the last few years of budget cuts etc, that have enabled him to balance his budget and build up his war chest.
He’ll have to rely on ever greater repression to stifle dissent. That strategy has its limits.
If he gets bogged down in an expensive war, what does he do, then?
Slashing budgets further - along with shaking down the oligarchs is pretty high risk, but that’s probably what he’ll have to do.
A lot of British people have been stuck in Ukraine as they cannot get visas for their wives/partners so they now have no choice but to stay. In doing so they are putting themselves in extreme danger.
What is actually noticeable about the Home Office is that, confronted with this reality, they have not changed the requirement for a visa or the process to enter the UK. The extent of their "flexibility" is to increase the number of staff processing visa applications. The superficially helpful looking tweet simply says that Ukranians can apply for a visa under existing visa rules, which is a bureaucratic process requiring form filling and evidence, not ideal if you are trying to flee a warzone.
Meanwhile up to a thousand people a day arrive on dinghies across the channel and are set free upon landing. The priorities are completely wrong. I would suggest that the Home office should be granting temporary visas on arrival to Ukranian passport holders, under the current circumstances.
Good point, any Ukrainian married or closely related to a British citizen should be offered visas as a matter of urgency. We should also be planning to take in refugees.
The Kremlin says Putin gave Russia's army the order to stop the advance on Ukraine yesterday, even though clashes continued throughout last night, in anticipation of negotiations with Kyiv.
Dmitry Peskov now says Ukraine refused talks and Russia has resumed its full assault.
The Ukrainian MoD is getting really quite graphic. They've just posted a video clearly showing 5+ Russians who have burnt to death trying to escape from their Rosgvardiya vehicle, then panning up to show many more Rosgvardiya vehicles reduced to husks. Just tragic.
It's weird that we haven't seen evidence of the crashed IL-76s, especially given that the US have confirmed the downings. But there's plenty of evidence that Russians are taking massive casualties from some of their shody practices.
Is it possible that the IL-76 was shot-down or crashed, but did not have 100 parasuters onboard at the time?
” Maybe they believe their own propaganda: the Ukrainians will meet the Russian liberators with flowers, and everything will be wrapped up in several days.
"Ukrainians see they can fight back. This war could become a very serious problem for Russia.”
The government has approved the supply of weapons to Ukraine. We send machine guns, submachine guns, sniper rifles and pistols and their corresponding ammunition worth a total of 188 million crowns.
At the same time, we will provide transportation to a place that Ukrainians choose.
Fck me, I immediately thought this was a piece from years ago, but last week. The Spikedtator..
The Spectator prints all sorts of rubbish. Indeed more rubbish than sensible content, as a rule.
Its fans including Neil and some PBers are always going on about how successful it is. Interesting to speculate how much the rubbish has contributed to that success.
Just out of interest have you actually read the article or are you only commenting in ignorance based on a front page?
I haven't read it as I don't have a subscription but I might actually buy a copy just to see what Liddle (who I really, REALLY dislike) is saying.
I would suggest that it is only at that point that it is reasonable to make any valid criticisms rather than just blind knee jerk reactions.
Is Liddle making a career out of deliberately being hated? To paraphrase Machiavelli, it is far more profitable to be disliked than loved?
I am sure that the basic premise is right but I just get the impression, having had a fair few personal contacts with him, that Liddle is just an amazingly arrogant and obnoxious character.
The "I'm only being an obnoxioius prick for money" defence isn't really that great a deflection anyways.
It's strikingly common with modern alt-righters, saying stupid nasty things in an arch "am I joking or am I not?" way. It's rather irritating.
Fck me, I immediately thought this was a piece from years ago, but last week. The Spikedtator..
It’s a perfectly legitimate view. One held by Emmanuel Macron, I believe
The Putin of 10 years ago was a very different beast. Lucid, clever, sane. A ruthless patriot, a brutal soldier, but amenable to logic. Perhaps we could have handled him better; certainly our rapid expansion of NATO right up to his borders, immediately after the humiliating collapse of the USSR now appears questionable
Does any of this excuse Putin’s satanic and pointless assault on Ukraine? Of course not. It’s pure evil. It’s also pointless even for mad dog Putin, it might well backfire quickly and even if he “wins” in the short term he loses in the end. What’s the endgame for him? I can’t see a good one
Your analysis doesn't account for the long gap -- some 6-8 years -- between the Baltic states' accession to NATO and Putin going "bad".
It's easy to compress timelines when looking at the past, but Putin was acting fairly sensibly long after 2004. All the attempts to explain this in terms of NATO membership or the Iraq war fall down on the same point, and until someone even tries to account for that huge time lag, I do not take such a view seriously.
You might be right. I’d have to go back and look at the timelines. But we agree there was a time when Putin was “sensible” - and that seems to be Liddle’s point (tho I haven’t read the article, just the headline, and Liddle does say some foolish things to provoke)
Either way Andrew Neil is quite right. One big reason we hate the new mad Putin is that he wants to crush free speech and dissent. Free speech means seeing printed opinions you might fiercely dislike
Free speech also means being allowed to whine about Woke and being cancelled when someone highlights all-to-predictable contrarianism, or in this case just reproduces an image of the headline of an article. Then everyone can point & laugh at those whiners and their endless attempts to pretend being challenged is some kind of censorship.
It’s great.
In my experience, criticism of the Spectator nearly always comes from a peculiar subset of people who genuinely dislike its viewpoint yet secretly would love to be published inside it, as it is so prestigious. A curious phenomenon
It's interesting. A decade or so ago I was a regular reader of the Speccy and found it a pleasant zippy-in-places recreational read. I now see it as bow-tie reactionary faux man-of-the-world drivel you'd have to pay me serious money to allow through the letterbox. So, has it changed or have I changed? Bit of both, I guess, but I think it's mainly me. The last 10 or 12 years, coinciding with not having to earn a living, I've made a concerted effort to really *think* about things rather than forever chasing around in a daze, swilling coffee, running for trains and planes, and it's made a big difference. It's been the decade of my enlightenment - with my Spectator habit one of its minor casualties.
I think I'm broadly in agreement with your "it's me not you" Speccy break-up. My tolerance for contrarian opinion that is delivered with a slight "I may be too clever to believe all this but you probably aren't" wink has declined precipitously.
Fck me, I immediately thought this was a piece from years ago, but last week. The Spikedtator..
The Spectator prints all sorts of rubbish. Indeed more rubbish than sensible content, as a rule.
Its fans including Neil and some PBers are always going on about how successful it is. Interesting to speculate how much the rubbish has contributed to that success.
Just out of interest have you actually read the article or are you only commenting in ignorance based on a front page?
I haven't read it as I don't have a subscription but I might actually buy a copy just to see what Liddle (who I really, REALLY dislike) is saying.
I would suggest that it is only at that point that it is reasonable to make any valid criticisms rather than just blind knee jerk reactions.
Is Liddle making a career out of deliberately being hated? To paraphrase Machiavelli, it is far more profitable to be disliked than loved?
I am sure that the basic premise is right but I just get the impression, having had a fair few personal contacts with him, that Liddle is just an amazingly arrogant and obnoxious character.
The "I'm only being an obnoxioius prick for money" defence isn't really that great a deflection anyways.
It's strikingly common with modern alt-righters, saying stupid nasty things in an arch "am I joking or am I not?" way. It's rather irritating.
Penz has gone full Truss (and not looking glaikit she probably pulls off the Thatch tribute act a bit more succesfully)..
Unlimited support is so lazy and misleading. Unlimited would be declaring war against Russia not to mention not taking party donations from ex Putin cronies. If she thinks we should be doing more, which I would agree with, then she should spell out what that means rather than pretend it can be unlimited.
The government has approved the supply of weapons to Ukraine. We send machine guns, submachine guns, sniper rifles and pistols and their corresponding ammunition worth a total of 188 million crowns.
At the same time, we will provide transportation to a place that Ukrainians choose.
This is a fascinating subplot to the war. Eastern Europe turning on Germany. It's not just Ukraine
“It’s in Poland’s interest that Ukraine wins this war, but it’s not in Germany’s interest,” says one of Poland’s main geopolitical experts @BartosiakJacek
I simply cannot believe that the German public would accept taking Russia's side or even being neutral. Whether their officialdom understands that I don't know.
The government has approved the supply of weapons to Ukraine. We send machine guns, sub-machine guns, sniper rifles and pistols and their corresponding ammunition worth a total of 188 million crowns.
At the same time, we will provide transportation to a place that Ukrainians choose.
Fck me, I immediately thought this was a piece from years ago, but last week. The Spikedtator..
It’s a perfectly legitimate view. One held by Emmanuel Macron, I believe
The Putin of 10 years ago was a very different beast. Lucid, clever, sane. A ruthless patriot, a brutal soldier, but amenable to logic. Perhaps we could have handled him better; certainly our rapid expansion of NATO right up to his borders, immediately after the humiliating collapse of the USSR now appears questionable
Does any of this excuse Putin’s satanic and pointless assault on Ukraine? Of course not. It’s pure evil. It’s also pointless even for mad dog Putin, it might well backfire quickly and even if he “wins” in the short term he loses in the end. What’s the endgame for him? I can’t see a good one
Your analysis doesn't account for the long gap -- some 6-8 years -- between the Baltic states' accession to NATO and Putin going "bad".
It's easy to compress timelines when looking at the past, but Putin was acting fairly sensibly long after 2004. All the attempts to explain this in terms of NATO membership or the Iraq war fall down on the same point, and until someone even tries to account for that huge time lag, I do not take such a view seriously.
You might be right. I’d have to go back and look at the timelines. But we agree there was a time when Putin was “sensible” - and that seems to be Liddle’s point (tho I haven’t read the article, just the headline, and Liddle does say some foolish things to provoke)
Either way Andrew Neil is quite right. One big reason we hate the new mad Putin is that he wants to crush free speech and dissent. Free speech means seeing printed opinions you might fiercely dislike
Free speech also means being allowed to whine about Woke and being cancelled when someone highlights all-to-predictable contrarianism, or in this case just reproduces an image of the headline of an article. Then everyone can point & laugh at those whiners and their endless attempts to pretend being challenged is some kind of censorship.
It’s great.
In my experience, criticism of the Spectator nearly always comes from a peculiar subset of people who genuinely dislike its viewpoint yet secretly would love to be published inside it, as it is so prestigious. A curious phenomenon
It's interesting. A decade or so ago I was a regular reader of the Speccy and found it a pleasant zippy-in-places recreational read. I now see it as bow-tie reactionary faux man-of-the-world drivel you'd have to pay me serious money to allow through the letterbox. So, has it changed or have I changed? Bit of both, I guess, but I think it's mainly me. The last 10 or 12 years, coinciding with not having to earn a living, I've made a concerted effort to really *think* about things rather than forever chasing around in a daze, swilling coffee, running for trains and planes, and it's made a big difference. It's been the decade of my enlightenment - with my Spectator habit one of its minor casualties.
I think I'm broadly in agreement with your "it's me not you" Speccy break-up. My tolerance for contrarian opinion that is delivered with a slight "I may be too clever to believe all this but you probably aren't" wink has declined precipitously.
Jesus. You’re STILL whining about the Spectator?
As I said before, it’s disguised jealousy of its success and prestige
TBF you can see the same in some right wing American critiques of the NYT
@ZelenskyyUa thank my friend Mr. President of 🇹🇷 @RTErdogan and the people of 🇹🇷 for their strong support. The ban on the passage of 🇷🇺 warships to the Black Sea and significant military and humanitarian support for 🇺🇦 are extremely important today. The people of 🇺🇦 will never forget that!
Penz has gone full Truss (and not looking glaikit she probably pulls off the Thatch tribute act a bit more succesfully)..
Unlimited support is so lazy and misleading. Unlimited would be declaring war against Russia not to mention not taking party donations from ex Putin cronies. If she thinks we should be doing more, which I would agree with, then she should spell out what that means rather than pretend it can be unlimited.
Oh, I'd agree, but she's got grass roots to appeal to rather than us.
The Russians are struggling and taking heavy casualties. They are beatable. Our best chance to defeat Putin’s threat to Europe is now. We should be giving Ukraine everything it wants. Despite the risks, that should include a no-fly zone. Putin’s victory would be the greater risk.
He will not nuke us because we’ve shot down some of his planes.
Fucking ludicrous. To do a No Fly Zone you've got to be prepared to a) shoot down Russian aircraft and b) do SEAD/DEAD on the Russian side of the border.
NFZ is basically speedrunning the process of going to war with Russia.
I'd be worried if a mindset that denigrates any solution not flirting with WW3 as "appeasement" starts to take hold in influential places.
Russia is literally flirting with WW3. By invading Ukraine. There is no getting away from that.
Yep. There's only one aggressor here. For me, 2 things are crucial when assessing the risk of escalation. Is Putin rational? To what extent does he rule alone?
Fck me, I immediately thought this was a piece from years ago, but last week. The Spikedtator..
It’s a perfectly legitimate view. One held by Emmanuel Macron, I believe
The Putin of 10 years ago was a very different beast. Lucid, clever, sane. A ruthless patriot, a brutal soldier, but amenable to logic. Perhaps we could have handled him better; certainly our rapid expansion of NATO right up to his borders, immediately after the humiliating collapse of the USSR now appears questionable
Does any of this excuse Putin’s satanic and pointless assault on Ukraine? Of course not. It’s pure evil. It’s also pointless even for mad dog Putin, it might well backfire quickly and even if he “wins” in the short term he loses in the end. What’s the endgame for him? I can’t see a good one
Your analysis doesn't account for the long gap -- some 6-8 years -- between the Baltic states' accession to NATO and Putin going "bad".
It's easy to compress timelines when looking at the past, but Putin was acting fairly sensibly long after 2004. All the attempts to explain this in terms of NATO membership or the Iraq war fall down on the same point, and until someone even tries to account for that huge time lag, I do not take such a view seriously.
You might be right. I’d have to go back and look at the timelines. But we agree there was a time when Putin was “sensible” - and that seems to be Liddle’s point (tho I haven’t read the article, just the headline, and Liddle does say some foolish things to provoke)
Either way Andrew Neil is quite right. One big reason we hate the new mad Putin is that he wants to crush free speech and dissent. Free speech means seeing printed opinions you might fiercely dislike
Free speech also means being allowed to whine about Woke and being cancelled when someone highlights all-to-predictable contrarianism, or in this case just reproduces an image of the headline of an article. Then everyone can point & laugh at those whiners and their endless attempts to pretend being challenged is some kind of censorship.
It’s great.
In my experience, criticism of the Spectator nearly always comes from a peculiar subset of people who genuinely dislike its viewpoint yet secretly would love to be published inside it, as it is so prestigious. A curious phenomenon
It's interesting. A decade or so ago I was a regular reader of the Speccy and found it a pleasant zippy-in-places recreational read. I now see it as bow-tie reactionary faux man-of-the-world drivel you'd have to pay me serious money to allow through the letterbox. So, has it changed or have I changed? Bit of both, I guess, but I think it's mainly me. The last 10 or 12 years, coinciding with not having to earn a living, I've made a concerted effort to really *think* about things rather than forever chasing around in a daze, swilling coffee, running for trains and planes, and it's made a big difference. It's been the decade of my enlightenment - with my Spectator habit one of its minor casualties.
I think I'm broadly in agreement with your "it's me not you" Speccy break-up. My tolerance for contrarian opinion that is delivered with a slight "I may be too clever to believe all this but you probably aren't" wink has declined precipitously.
Jesus. You’re STILL whining about the Spectator?
As I said before, it’s disguised jealousy of its success and prestige
TBF you can see the same in some right wing American critiques of the NYT
I can keep whining for hours. I had a break and some noodles to boost my ability to sustain the jealousy.
Fck me, I immediately thought this was a piece from years ago, but last week. The Spikedtator..
It’s a perfectly legitimate view. One held by Emmanuel Macron, I believe
The Putin of 10 years ago was a very different beast. Lucid, clever, sane. A ruthless patriot, a brutal soldier, but amenable to logic. Perhaps we could have handled him better; certainly our rapid expansion of NATO right up to his borders, immediately after the humiliating collapse of the USSR now appears questionable
Does any of this excuse Putin’s satanic and pointless assault on Ukraine? Of course not. It’s pure evil. It’s also pointless even for mad dog Putin, it might well backfire quickly and even if he “wins” in the short term he loses in the end. What’s the endgame for him? I can’t see a good one
Your analysis doesn't account for the long gap -- some 6-8 years -- between the Baltic states' accession to NATO and Putin going "bad".
It's easy to compress timelines when looking at the past, but Putin was acting fairly sensibly long after 2004. All the attempts to explain this in terms of NATO membership or the Iraq war fall down on the same point, and until someone even tries to account for that huge time lag, I do not take such a view seriously.
You might be right. I’d have to go back and look at the timelines. But we agree there was a time when Putin was “sensible” - and that seems to be Liddle’s point (tho I haven’t read the article, just the headline, and Liddle does say some foolish things to provoke)
Either way Andrew Neil is quite right. One big reason we hate the new mad Putin is that he wants to crush free speech and dissent. Free speech means seeing printed opinions you might fiercely dislike
Free speech also means being allowed to whine about Woke and being cancelled when someone highlights all-to-predictable contrarianism, or in this case just reproduces an image of the headline of an article. Then everyone can point & laugh at those whiners and their endless attempts to pretend being challenged is some kind of censorship.
It’s great.
In my experience, criticism of the Spectator nearly always comes from a peculiar subset of people who genuinely dislike its viewpoint yet secretly would love to be published inside it, as it is so prestigious. A curious phenomenon
It's interesting. A decade or so ago I was a regular reader of the Speccy and found it a pleasant zippy-in-places recreational read. I now see it as bow-tie reactionary faux man-of-the-world drivel you'd have to pay me serious money to allow through the letterbox. So, has it changed or have I changed? Bit of both, I guess, but I think it's mainly me. The last 10 or 12 years, coinciding with not having to earn a living, I've made a concerted effort to really *think* about things rather than forever chasing around in a daze, swilling coffee, running for trains and planes, and it's made a big difference. It's been the decade of my enlightenment - with my Spectator habit one of its minor casualties.
I think I'm broadly in agreement with your "it's me not you" Speccy break-up. My tolerance for contrarian opinion that is delivered with a slight "I may be too clever to believe all this but you probably aren't" wink has declined precipitously.
Jesus. You’re STILL whining about the Spectator?
As I said before, it’s disguised jealousy of its success and prestige
TBF you can see the same in some right wing American critiques of the NYT
I think jealousy of a magazine is probably confined to writer (& possibly flint knapping) circles.
The government has approved the supply of weapons to Ukraine. We send machine guns, submachine guns, sniper rifles and pistols and their corresponding ammunition worth a total of 188 million crowns.
At the same time, we will provide transportation to a place that Ukrainians choose.
A list of the NATO countries which haven't would be interesting.
The only ones which have are:
“Done nothing” UK - first, now private jets too Poland - a biggie as most Aeroflot flights to Western Europe have a significant detour Czechia - makes Poland’s ban even worse Bulgaria Estonia
The other Baltics would seriously screw up Aeroflot but may be understandably nervous.
If Germany joined in Polands ban would become orders of magnitude worse…
Fck me, I immediately thought this was a piece from years ago, but last week. The Spikedtator..
It’s a perfectly legitimate view. One held by Emmanuel Macron, I believe
The Putin of 10 years ago was a very different beast. Lucid, clever, sane. A ruthless patriot, a brutal soldier, but amenable to logic. Perhaps we could have handled him better; certainly our rapid expansion of NATO right up to his borders, immediately after the humiliating collapse of the USSR now appears questionable
Does any of this excuse Putin’s satanic and pointless assault on Ukraine? Of course not. It’s pure evil. It’s also pointless even for mad dog Putin, it might well backfire quickly and even if he “wins” in the short term he loses in the end. What’s the endgame for him? I can’t see a good one
Your analysis doesn't account for the long gap -- some 6-8 years -- between the Baltic states' accession to NATO and Putin going "bad".
It's easy to compress timelines when looking at the past, but Putin was acting fairly sensibly long after 2004. All the attempts to explain this in terms of NATO membership or the Iraq war fall down on the same point, and until someone even tries to account for that huge time lag, I do not take such a view seriously.
You might be right. I’d have to go back and look at the timelines. But we agree there was a time when Putin was “sensible” - and that seems to be Liddle’s point (tho I haven’t read the article, just the headline, and Liddle does say some foolish things to provoke)
Either way Andrew Neil is quite right. One big reason we hate the new mad Putin is that he wants to crush free speech and dissent. Free speech means seeing printed opinions you might fiercely dislike
Free speech also means being allowed to whine about Woke and being cancelled when someone highlights all-to-predictable contrarianism, or in this case just reproduces an image of the headline of an article. Then everyone can point & laugh at those whiners and their endless attempts to pretend being challenged is some kind of censorship.
It’s great.
In my experience, criticism of the Spectator nearly always comes from a peculiar subset of people who genuinely dislike its viewpoint yet secretly would love to be published inside it, as it is so prestigious. A curious phenomenon
It's interesting. A decade or so ago I was a regular reader of the Speccy and found it a pleasant zippy-in-places recreational read. I now see it as bow-tie reactionary faux man-of-the-world drivel you'd have to pay me serious money to allow through the letterbox. So, has it changed or have I changed? Bit of both, I guess, but I think it's mainly me. The last 10 or 12 years, coinciding with not having to earn a living, I've made a concerted effort to really *think* about things rather than forever chasing around in a daze, swilling coffee, running for trains and planes, and it's made a big difference. It's been the decade of my enlightenment - with my Spectator habit one of its minor casualties.
I think I'm broadly in agreement with your "it's me not you" Speccy break-up. My tolerance for contrarian opinion that is delivered with a slight "I may be too clever to believe all this but you probably aren't" wink has declined precipitously.
Jesus. You’re STILL whining about the Spectator?
As I said before, it’s disguised jealousy of its success and prestige
TBF you can see the same in some right wing American critiques of the NYT
This is a fascinating subplot to the war. Eastern Europe turning on Germany. It's not just Ukraine
“It’s in Poland’s interest that Ukraine wins this war, but it’s not in Germany’s interest,” says one of Poland’s main geopolitical experts @BartosiakJacek
I simply cannot believe that the German public would accept taking Russia's side or even being neutral. Whether their officialdom understands that I don't know.
Germany's view as to the independence and freedom of Eastern Europe has always been 'interesting'.
Though its business profits which they're interested in now rather than territorial expansion.
Fck me, I immediately thought this was a piece from years ago, but last week. The Spikedtator..
It’s a perfectly legitimate view. One held by Emmanuel Macron, I believe
The Putin of 10 years ago was a very different beast. Lucid, clever, sane. A ruthless patriot, a brutal soldier, but amenable to logic. Perhaps we could have handled him better; certainly our rapid expansion of NATO right up to his borders, immediately after the humiliating collapse of the USSR now appears questionable
Does any of this excuse Putin’s satanic and pointless assault on Ukraine? Of course not. It’s pure evil. It’s also pointless even for mad dog Putin, it might well backfire quickly and even if he “wins” in the short term he loses in the end. What’s the endgame for him? I can’t see a good one
Your analysis doesn't account for the long gap -- some 6-8 years -- between the Baltic states' accession to NATO and Putin going "bad".
It's easy to compress timelines when looking at the past, but Putin was acting fairly sensibly long after 2004. All the attempts to explain this in terms of NATO membership or the Iraq war fall down on the same point, and until someone even tries to account for that huge time lag, I do not take such a view seriously.
You might be right. I’d have to go back and look at the timelines. But we agree there was a time when Putin was “sensible” - and that seems to be Liddle’s point (tho I haven’t read the article, just the headline, and Liddle does say some foolish things to provoke)
Either way Andrew Neil is quite right. One big reason we hate the new mad Putin is that he wants to crush free speech and dissent. Free speech means seeing printed opinions you might fiercely dislike
Free speech also means being allowed to whine about Woke and being cancelled when someone highlights all-to-predictable contrarianism, or in this case just reproduces an image of the headline of an article. Then everyone can point & laugh at those whiners and their endless attempts to pretend being challenged is some kind of censorship.
It’s great.
In my experience, criticism of the Spectator nearly always comes from a peculiar subset of people who genuinely dislike its viewpoint yet secretly would love to be published inside it, as it is so prestigious. A curious phenomenon
It's interesting. A decade or so ago I was a regular reader of the Speccy and found it a pleasant zippy-in-places recreational read. I now see it as bow-tie reactionary faux man-of-the-world drivel you'd have to pay me serious money to allow through the letterbox. So, has it changed or have I changed? Bit of both, I guess, but I think it's mainly me. The last 10 or 12 years, coinciding with not having to earn a living, I've made a concerted effort to really *think* about things rather than forever chasing around in a daze, swilling coffee, running for trains and planes, and it's made a big difference. It's been the decade of my enlightenment - with my Spectator habit one of its minor casualties.
On and off Speccie reader for decades. Currently off. A few reasons:
Its diversity is good, but it currently lacks a coherent editorial world view. it should be the voice of a considered philosophically coherent conservatism. It isn't.
Bias is good; but careful slanting of facts and fact selection isn't.
It's too incestuous (politically) in its people makeup.
It reviews too many incrowd/luvvie books and books which are not worth publishing (usually the same thing). Its 'arts' covers too much trashy self regarding junk.
It shows insufficient regard for ordinary poor people and their lives and at the same time is not intelligent enough. (In this regard the NS is starting to overtake it - much improved recently).
It has too much illiterate economics.
Too many of its writers are self absorbed.
I exempt Matthew Parris from all of this.
PS You can get its gist online for free, but don't tell them.
Fck me, I immediately thought this was a piece from years ago, but last week. The Spikedtator..
It’s a perfectly legitimate view. One held by Emmanuel Macron, I believe
The Putin of 10 years ago was a very different beast. Lucid, clever, sane. A ruthless patriot, a brutal soldier, but amenable to logic. Perhaps we could have handled him better; certainly our rapid expansion of NATO right up to his borders, immediately after the humiliating collapse of the USSR now appears questionable
Does any of this excuse Putin’s satanic and pointless assault on Ukraine? Of course not. It’s pure evil. It’s also pointless even for mad dog Putin, it might well backfire quickly and even if he “wins” in the short term he loses in the end. What’s the endgame for him? I can’t see a good one
Your analysis doesn't account for the long gap -- some 6-8 years -- between the Baltic states' accession to NATO and Putin going "bad".
It's easy to compress timelines when looking at the past, but Putin was acting fairly sensibly long after 2004. All the attempts to explain this in terms of NATO membership or the Iraq war fall down on the same point, and until someone even tries to account for that huge time lag, I do not take such a view seriously.
You might be right. I’d have to go back and look at the timelines. But we agree there was a time when Putin was “sensible” - and that seems to be Liddle’s point (tho I haven’t read the article, just the headline, and Liddle does say some foolish things to provoke)
Either way Andrew Neil is quite right. One big reason we hate the new mad Putin is that he wants to crush free speech and dissent. Free speech means seeing printed opinions you might fiercely dislike
Free speech also means being allowed to whine about Woke and being cancelled when someone highlights all-to-predictable contrarianism, or in this case just reproduces an image of the headline of an article. Then everyone can point & laugh at those whiners and their endless attempts to pretend being challenged is some kind of censorship.
It’s great.
In my experience, criticism of the Spectator nearly always comes from a peculiar subset of people who genuinely dislike its viewpoint yet secretly would love to be published inside it, as it is so prestigious. A curious phenomenon
It's interesting. A decade or so ago I was a regular reader of the Speccy and found it a pleasant zippy-in-places recreational read. I now see it as bow-tie reactionary faux man-of-the-world drivel you'd have to pay me serious money to allow through the letterbox. So, has it changed or have I changed? Bit of both, I guess, but I think it's mainly me. The last 10 or 12 years, coinciding with not having to earn a living, I've made a concerted effort to really *think* about things rather than forever chasing around in a daze, swilling coffee, running for trains and planes, and it's made a big difference. It's been the decade of my enlightenment - with my Spectator habit one of its minor casualties.
I think I'm broadly in agreement with your "it's me not you" Speccy break-up. My tolerance for contrarian opinion that is delivered with a slight "I may be too clever to believe all this but you probably aren't" wink has declined precipitously.
Jesus. You’re STILL whining about the Spectator?
As I said before, it’s disguised jealousy of its success and prestige
TBF you can see the same in some right wing American critiques of the NYT
@ZelenskyyUa thank my friend Mr. President of 🇹🇷 @RTErdogan and the people of 🇹🇷 for their strong support. The ban on the passage of 🇷🇺 warships to the Black Sea and significant military and humanitarian support for 🇺🇦 are extremely important today. The people of 🇺🇦 will never forget that!
Primrose Hill is RAMMED. It’s a lovely spring day and a Saturday but every single cafe, bar, restaurant is jammers, inside and out. Like the peak of summer, like the sunniest Saturday in July
Wonderful to see. Lots of foreign voices too. French, German, Italian, American. Are the tourists coming back?
Such a glorious contrast to the total misery of this time last year
@ZelenskyyUa thank my friend Mr. President of 🇹🇷 @RTErdogan and the people of 🇹🇷 for their strong support. The ban on the passage of 🇷🇺 warships to the Black Sea and significant military and humanitarian support for 🇺🇦 are extremely important today. The people of 🇺🇦 will never forget that!
Fck me, I immediately thought this was a piece from years ago, but last week. The Spikedtator..
The Spectator seems increasingly to be pushing an anti-British viewpoint. But why?
There's probably some psychology at play. For years the Speccie crowd has been yearning for Britain to be ruled by, if not Boris, someone like him. Now the great man himself is in charge and it isn't all it was cracked up to be. That must be a hellava coming down.
Primrose Hill is RAMMED. It’s a lovely spring day and a Saturday but every single cafe, bar, restaurant is jammers, inside and out. Like the peak of summer, like the sunniest Saturday in July
Wonderful to see. Lots of foreign voices too. French, German, Italian, American. Are the tourists coming back?
Such a glorious contrast to the total misery of this time last year
Andrew Neil @afneil · 1h I appreciate academia is pretty much a one-party state these days and little dissent is tolerated from the left-wing consensus, which you so ably represent. But magazines are still relatively free: I won’t apologise for not forcing my views on my editors or their columnists.
Amazing that the oppressive forces of Woke permitted Brillo, publisher of that courageous Samizdat publication The Spectator, to make that tweet.
The Spectator’s right to provide tireless support for pro-Putin, far-right politicians across Europe and beyond is an important, non-negotiable freedom.
Andrew Neil @afneil · 1h I appreciate academia is pretty much a one-party state these days and little dissent is tolerated from the left-wing consensus, which you so ably represent. But magazines are still relatively free: I won’t apologise for not forcing my views on my editors or their columnists.
Amazing that the oppressive forces of Woke permitted Brillo, publisher of that courageous Samizdat publication The Spectator, to make that tweet.
The Spectator’s right to provide tireless support for pro-Putin, far-right politicians across Europe and beyond is an important, non-negotiable freedom.
@ZelenskyyUa thank my friend Mr. President of 🇹🇷 @RTErdogan and the people of 🇹🇷 for their strong support. The ban on the passage of 🇷🇺 warships to the Black Sea and significant military and humanitarian support for 🇺🇦 are extremely important today. The people of 🇺🇦 will never forget that!
@ZelenskyyUa thank my friend Mr. President of 🇹🇷 @RTErdogan and the people of 🇹🇷 for their strong support. The ban on the passage of 🇷🇺 warships to the Black Sea and significant military and humanitarian support for 🇺🇦 are extremely important today. The people of 🇺🇦 will never forget that!
"Ukraine’s Ambassador to Germany, Andrij Melnyk, says he is baffled by the response he has received from German officials after asking for military aid.
He says that ministers he has talked to say “you Ukrainians have only a few hours left. There is no point in helping you now”. Show this thread"
Powerful. A Ukrainian approaches unknown soldiers and yells at them to say "palyanitsa". Realizing they're Russian, he tells them they can't tell him not to videotape, as Ukrainians constitution allows him to.
Powerful. A Ukrainian approaches unknown soldiers and yells at them to say "palyanitsa". Realizing they're Russian, he tells them they can't tell him not to videotape, as Ukrainians constitution allows him to.
Fck me, I immediately thought this was a piece from years ago, but last week. The Spikedtator..
It’s a perfectly legitimate view. One held by Emmanuel Macron, I believe
The Putin of 10 years ago was a very different beast. Lucid, clever, sane. A ruthless patriot, a brutal soldier, but amenable to logic. Perhaps we could have handled him better; certainly our rapid expansion of NATO right up to his borders, immediately after the humiliating collapse of the USSR now appears questionable
Does any of this excuse Putin’s satanic and pointless assault on Ukraine? Of course not. It’s pure evil. It’s also pointless even for mad dog Putin, it might well backfire quickly and even if he “wins” in the short term he loses in the end. What’s the endgame for him? I can’t see a good one
Your analysis doesn't account for the long gap -- some 6-8 years -- between the Baltic states' accession to NATO and Putin going "bad".
It's easy to compress timelines when looking at the past, but Putin was acting fairly sensibly long after 2004. All the attempts to explain this in terms of NATO membership or the Iraq war fall down on the same point, and until someone even tries to account for that huge time lag, I do not take such a view seriously.
You might be right. I’d have to go back and look at the timelines. But we agree there was a time when Putin was “sensible” - and that seems to be Liddle’s point (tho I haven’t read the article, just the headline, and Liddle does say some foolish things to provoke)
Either way Andrew Neil is quite right. One big reason we hate the new mad Putin is that he wants to crush free speech and dissent. Free speech means seeing printed opinions you might fiercely dislike
Free speech also means being allowed to whine about Woke and being cancelled when someone highlights all-to-predictable contrarianism, or in this case just reproduces an image of the headline of an article. Then everyone can point & laugh at those whiners and their endless attempts to pretend being challenged is some kind of censorship.
It’s great.
In my experience, criticism of the Spectator nearly always comes from a peculiar subset of people who genuinely dislike its viewpoint yet secretly would love to be published inside it, as it is so prestigious. A curious phenomenon
It's interesting. A decade or so ago I was a regular reader of the Speccy and found it a pleasant zippy-in-places recreational read. I now see it as bow-tie reactionary faux man-of-the-world drivel you'd have to pay me serious money to allow through the letterbox. So, has it changed or have I changed? Bit of both, I guess, but I think it's mainly me. The last 10 or 12 years, coinciding with not having to earn a living, I've made a concerted effort to really *think* about things rather than forever chasing around in a daze, swilling coffee, running for trains and planes, and it's made a big difference. It's been the decade of my enlightenment - with my Spectator habit one of its minor casualties.
On and off Speccie reader for decades. Currently off. A few reasons:
Its diversity is good, but it currently lacks a coherent editorial world view. it should be the voice of a considered philosophically coherent conservatism. It isn't.
Bias is good; but careful slanting of facts and fact selection isn't.
It's too incestuous (politically) in its people makeup.
It reviews too many incrowd/luvvie books and books which are not worth publishing (usually the same thing). Its 'arts' covers too much trashy self regarding junk.
It shows insufficient regard for ordinary poor people and their lives and at the same time is not intelligent enough. (In this regard the NS is starting to overtake it - much improved recently).
It has too much illiterate economics.
Too many of its writers are self absorbed.
I exempt Matthew Parris from all of this.
PS You can get its gist online for free, but don't tell them.
Alternatively, the editors at the Spectator have realised that the future of an intellectual, highly prestigious but ancient current affairs magazine lies in appealing to a younger net-savvy readership, not the elderly gents who populate PB?
This would explain why so many of the pensioners on here have decided it is in decline, yet mysteriously it is racking up record sales, unlike almost every other printed journal in the western world
Fck me, I immediately thought this was a piece from years ago, but last week. The Spikedtator..
It’s a perfectly legitimate view. One held by Emmanuel Macron, I believe
The Putin of 10 years ago was a very different beast. Lucid, clever, sane. A ruthless patriot, a brutal soldier, but amenable to logic. Perhaps we could have handled him better; certainly our rapid expansion of NATO right up to his borders, immediately after the humiliating collapse of the USSR now appears questionable
Does any of this excuse Putin’s satanic and pointless assault on Ukraine? Of course not. It’s pure evil. It’s also pointless even for mad dog Putin, it might well backfire quickly and even if he “wins” in the short term he loses in the end. What’s the endgame for him? I can’t see a good one
Your analysis doesn't account for the long gap -- some 6-8 years -- between the Baltic states' accession to NATO and Putin going "bad".
It's easy to compress timelines when looking at the past, but Putin was acting fairly sensibly long after 2004. All the attempts to explain this in terms of NATO membership or the Iraq war fall down on the same point, and until someone even tries to account for that huge time lag, I do not take such a view seriously.
You might be right. I’d have to go back and look at the timelines. But we agree there was a time when Putin was “sensible” - and that seems to be Liddle’s point (tho I haven’t read the article, just the headline, and Liddle does say some foolish things to provoke)
Either way Andrew Neil is quite right. One big reason we hate the new mad Putin is that he wants to crush free speech and dissent. Free speech means seeing printed opinions you might fiercely dislike
Free speech also means being allowed to whine about Woke and being cancelled when someone highlights all-to-predictable contrarianism, or in this case just reproduces an image of the headline of an article. Then everyone can point & laugh at those whiners and their endless attempts to pretend being challenged is some kind of censorship.
It’s great.
In my experience, criticism of the Spectator nearly always comes from a peculiar subset of people who genuinely dislike its viewpoint yet secretly would love to be published inside it, as it is so prestigious. A curious phenomenon
It's interesting. A decade or so ago I was a regular reader of the Speccy and found it a pleasant zippy-in-places recreational read. I now see it as bow-tie reactionary faux man-of-the-world drivel you'd have to pay me serious money to allow through the letterbox. So, has it changed or have I changed? Bit of both, I guess, but I think it's mainly me. The last 10 or 12 years, coinciding with not having to earn a living, I've made a concerted effort to really *think* about things rather than forever chasing around in a daze, swilling coffee, running for trains and planes, and it's made a big difference. It's been the decade of my enlightenment - with my Spectator habit one of its minor casualties.
I think I'm broadly in agreement with your "it's me not you" Speccy break-up. My tolerance for contrarian opinion that is delivered with a slight "I may be too clever to believe all this but you probably aren't" wink has declined precipitously.
Jesus. You’re STILL whining about the Spectator?
As I said before, it’s disguised jealousy of its success and prestige
TBF you can see the same in some right wing American critiques of the NYT
Seems Russian warships may be banned from the Black sea.
I thank my friend Mr. President of 🇹🇷 @RTErdogan and the people of 🇹🇷 for their strong support. The ban on the passage of 🇷🇺 warships to the Black Sea and significant military and humanitarian support for 🇺🇦 are extremely important today. The people of 🇺🇦 will never forget that!
Comments
People who should be natural Conservative voters.
Yet its Conservative politicians who lead the pandering to the oligarchs.
The love of unearned income has really debauched the Conservative party.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PM3woO0AbCw
I wonder if this is because in really serious crisis with potential for escalation you still need all that in place, better for your own interest your opponents diplomats and with tit for tat your own, are not disrupted and everyone’s embassy’s thrown into disorder?
A case of Labour being too oppositiony and reactionary and not properly thoughtful and sensible again today?
It must require a large number of assumptions about risk to line up 90 helicopters parked nose to tail on a road 20-25 miles inside Belarus.
https://www.militarytimes.com/news/your-military/2022/02/25/new-images-show-about-150-helicopters-large-ground-force-100-miles-from-kyiv/
"Ukraine’s Ambassador to Germany, Andrij Melnyk, says he is baffled by the response he has received from German officials after asking for military aid.
He says that ministers he has talked to say “you Ukrainians have only a few hours left. There is no point in helping you now”.
Show this thread"
https://twitter.com/visegrad24/status/1497528484868071424?s=20&t=Vx3tabRTJfv-XPumhPzI0g
Nearby there is a stately home, Wimpole Hall, which coincidentally had a wide two-mile long avenue stretching between it and the base. So the air force used it as distributed parking for their aircraft - and there are photos of these massive bombers arrayed along it.
Whenever I walk the avenue, I think of what it must have been like with all those bombers there.
https://www.wimpolepast.org/323rd_memorial.asp
COMRADE IS RUNNING. XAXAXA.
(XAXA = Russian LOL)
There's your real time reportage from the front line.
But spring always comes.
“It’s in Poland’s interest that Ukraine wins this war, but it’s not in Germany’s interest,” says one of Poland’s main geopolitical experts @BartosiakJacek
🇵🇱🇺🇦🇩🇪
https://twitter.com/visegrad24/status/1497198633246154756?s=20&t=G_q2S_ZCwuxeyVs1BfFChw
Only if the US and EU were to eject their Russian ambassadors would it make sense for us to do the same
Rather immature from Lammy
https://www.reddit.com/r/ukraine/comments/t1pfa0/ukrainian_soldier_saying_goodbye_to_daughter_and/
And Europeans still vacillitating to block the Russians from SWIFT.
by 'COMRADE IS RUNNING' is he joking that the Russian army is running away? or the Ukrainians are?
I am disappointed that Mrs May has not taken more financial measures against Russia.
There has been too much dirty Russian (and Chinese and other emerging markets) money flowing into the UK and it is creating a risk for us - political but financial also. Private banking and wealth management for ultra high net worth individuals is beginning to give off the sort of whiff which was seen in other financial sectors before the financial crash. Lots of entities have been rushing to embrace this wealth and, as always happens, some of the checks and balances, some of the “Is this really wise?” questions get ignored or assumed away.
Even if it costs us, I think we need to clamp down very much harder on the ability of Russia and some others to access our financial expertise. This was the perfect opportunity to do so. It should not be lost.
If we don’t I fear that there may be more reputation-harming scandals in the making.
And April 2018
My prediction, FWIW, is that the next financial scandals will be in the wealth management sector: lots of growth, clients from dodgy countries or with interesting backgrounds, tick the box due diligence, possibly misaligned incentives, especially to increase net new money and leverage, client advisors too close to their clients, a poor or complacent culture and a push to sell complex products.
Plus the political background is changing. See Russia, for instance.
It has a whiff to me of what it was like in other financial sectors before they went splat.
You heard it here first.......
February 2022
We are talking about dodgy Russian money financing the Tory party, Londongrad, why U.K. is not taking effective sanctions against Russia etc.
We were warned.
I hope there will be a serious reckoning with those who were involved in this and those who turned a blind eye.
And not just in relation to Russia but China, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria and all the other dodgy states and individuals whose money and reputations the U.K. has been all too willing to launder.
He’ll have to rely on ever greater repression to stifle dissent. That strategy has its limits.
If he gets bogged down in an expensive war, what does he do, then?
Slashing budgets further - along with shaking down the oligarchs is pretty high risk, but that’s probably what he’ll have to do.
Interesting times for Vlad.
It's weird that we haven't seen evidence of the crashed IL-76s, especially given that the US have confirmed the downings. But there's plenty of evidence that Russians are taking massive casualties from some of their shody practices.
https://twitter.com/ArmedForcesUkr/status/1497547507697696770?
- Mom, dad, I didn't want to go to Ukraine. They said that we were going to military training with 25th brigade and then at night of Feb 23rd they said that we are going to Ukraine to cross the border. I didn't want that.
- (Operator) Where are you now?
- Kharkiv
...
https://twitter.com/TheLamb93505287/status/1497547455721885699?s=20&t=EUvY3kiYJCowv9OcZHzyhw
It is also now the longest running current affairs magazine in history.
What is actually noticeable about the Home Office is that, confronted with this reality, they have not changed the requirement for a visa or the process to enter the UK. The extent of their "flexibility" is to increase the number of staff processing visa applications. The superficially helpful looking tweet simply says that Ukranians can apply for a visa under existing visa rules, which is a bureaucratic process requiring form filling and evidence, not ideal if you are trying to flee a warzone.
Meanwhile up to a thousand people a day arrive on dinghies across the channel and are set free upon landing. The priorities are completely wrong. I would suggest that the Home office should be granting temporary visas on arrival to Ukranian passport holders, under the current circumstances.
I'm far from convinced the Russian people are into this.
We're dealing with someone who has gone doolally.
The Kremlin says Putin gave Russia's army the order to stop the advance on Ukraine yesterday, even though clashes continued throughout last night, in anticipation of negotiations with Kyiv.
Dmitry Peskov now says Ukraine refused talks and Russia has resumed its full assault.
https://twitter.com/maxseddon/status/1497553967684849669
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10553811/Former-Russian-tycoon-Mikhail-Khodorkovsky-says-Vladimir-Putin-gone-mad.html
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10551807/Cargo-ship-thought-belong-one-companies-hit-sanctions-SEIZED-English-Channel.html
Historically I've far from been a fan of French foreign policy but they're doing okay.
"Ukrainians see they can fight back. This war could become a very serious problem for Russia.”
https://twitter.com/maxseddon/status/1497556316621004800?
And a terminal problem for Putin.
[Translated]
The government has approved the supply of weapons to Ukraine. We send machine guns, submachine guns, sniper rifles and pistols and their corresponding ammunition worth a total of 188 million crowns.
At the same time, we will provide transportation to a place that Ukrainians choose.
We are doing everything we can to help Ukraine.
https://twitter.com/P_Fiala/status/1497501014664044556?s=20&t=1cbGUm_A1UdcaR4-6Klt7Q
They’ve also closed their air space….
And just as soon as they're finished with those Russian ships, they can start.
All NATO countries have decided to send arms, ammunition and other equipment to Ukraine.. ALL.. 👍
https://twitter.com/naknudsen/status/1497499799188393990
As I said before, it’s disguised jealousy of its success and prestige
TBF you can see the same in some right wing American critiques of the NYT
thank my friend Mr. President of 🇹🇷 @RTErdogan and the people of 🇹🇷 for their strong support. The ban on the passage of 🇷🇺 warships to the Black Sea and significant military and humanitarian support for 🇺🇦 are extremely important today. The people of 🇺🇦 will never forget that!
https://twitter.com/ZelenskyyUa/status/1497564078897774598
“Done nothing” UK - first, now private jets too
Poland - a biggie as most Aeroflot flights to Western Europe have a significant detour
Czechia - makes Poland’s ban even worse
Bulgaria
Estonia
The other Baltics would seriously screw up Aeroflot but may be understandably nervous.
If Germany joined in Polands ban would become orders of magnitude worse…
Though its business profits which they're interested in now rather than territorial expansion.
Its diversity is good, but it currently lacks a coherent editorial world view. it should be the voice of a considered philosophically coherent conservatism. It isn't.
Bias is good; but careful slanting of facts and fact selection isn't.
It's too incestuous (politically) in its people makeup.
It reviews too many incrowd/luvvie books and books which are not worth publishing (usually the same thing). Its 'arts' covers too much trashy self regarding junk.
It shows insufficient regard for ordinary poor people and their lives and at the same time is not intelligent enough. (In this regard the NS is starting to overtake it - much improved recently).
It has too much illiterate economics.
Too many of its writers are self absorbed.
I exempt Matthew Parris from all of this.
PS You can get its gist online for free, but don't tell them.
Primrose Hill is RAMMED. It’s a lovely spring day and a Saturday but every single cafe, bar, restaurant is jammers, inside and out. Like the peak of summer, like the sunniest Saturday in July
Wonderful to see. Lots of foreign voices too. French, German, Italian, American. Are the tourists coming back?
Such a glorious contrast to the total misery of this time last year
https://twitter.com/christogrozev/status/1497530385273602053
I suppose an equivalent in Britain would be a Scot asking someone English to pronounce “loch”.
I think she's still definitely in contention, much more seriously. More competent than Truss.
This would explain why so many of the pensioners on here have decided it is in decline, yet mysteriously it is racking up record sales, unlike almost every other printed journal in the western world
Putin is anti-woke
She looks like a much hotter version of Le Pen, and a sexier more dominatrix version of mid-period Thatch
Clever PR
I thank my friend Mr. President of 🇹🇷 @RTErdogan and the people of 🇹🇷 for their strong support. The ban on the passage of 🇷🇺 warships to the Black Sea and significant military and humanitarian support for 🇺🇦 are extremely important today. The people of 🇺🇦 will never forget that!
https://twitter.com/ZelenskyyUa/status/1497564078897774598